Just recently submitted the game, a few hours before the deadline. First one I've managed to finish before the deadline.
End Result:
Conquest-Class, cause I suck
Game status: Spaceship Victory for Human Players
Game date: 1780 AD
Firaxis score: 3295
Jason score: 3343
Time played: 21:43:41
The land behind the chokepoint was pretty nice, but needed more resources. CFC Central made a nice Settler Factory that I didn't get started early enough, and GOTM Forum, my second city I built on the coast a bit southeast by the wheat and Wines would have made one if not for corruption robbing it one short of the necessary shields. I started off falling a bit behind in tech and expansion, even allowing a Persian and a Roman city on my area behind the chokepoint. Luckily, some quick wars solved that- I captured the Roman city with donsigs and MDI's for a GA, and later attacked the Persian city when they were getting dogpiled. Somewhat hilarilously, the Persian city culture flipped to me right as soon as my units were outside the gates.
Somewhere in the mid IA, I managed to get up to the same tech level as everyone else, thank you very much Theory of Evolution.
The lack of resources hindered me a bit, but luckily, all that I needed was in Persia and Arabia across that strait, who conveniently were utterly destroyed by Rome, letting me get Horses by settling in a gap in the cities, and Oil and Uranium by just grabbing some Arabian cities myself. Arabia's Aluminum city was taken by Rome before I got to it, but that was easy to solve due to Rome's lack of Oil and being at war with everyone. Coal was right outside my borders in the GOTM Staff, so I declared war, grabbed that city, then made peace when hordes of Infantry approached me. Worse than having to do all this to get resources, the Coal and Oil both later decided to conveniently vanish.
I traded for them for a litttle while, then eventually got Rome's Coal and Oil in what used to be Spain and later France, but by that point it didn't really matter anymore.
The Elites' lack of Eliteness was somewhat disappointing. The Modern Elites were still at the beginning of the IA when I launched, and for the whole game, they were small and never really managed to get anywhere. The Ancient Elites managed to do well, and reached a large size with decent power that took a few cities in war, but were still not quite in the Modern Age by the end. I don't think they were really all that aggressive with their UU, they had too much space to expand to for them to have a reason to fight an early war. I suppose they could have done worse, but I expected more from them, they were called "Elites", after all.
Polynesia did do a lot worse, ending up trapped on their island and with a few nearby cities on the coast by the Ancient Elites for the whole game. They did manage to take a few of Arabia's cities in the area, but other than that, didn't do anything with their ships. They weren't the weakest living nation at the end, that title goes to Spain and their one city, but still, I expected them, like the elites, to be stronger and scarier. The GOTM Staff, on the other hand, did pretty well, one of the largest, most advanced, and most powerful civilizations at the end, and got a good deal of cities from various wars.
As to other stuff that happened, Egypt got dogpiled and somehow managed to avoid losing much- they didn't lose more than a few cities, and took back everything they lost except two cities they lost to Rome, which they eventually got back, with some more, at the end. Other people that nearly everyone else went to war with didn't manage to do this- Mongolia was utterly destroyed by the GOTM Staff, Arabia, and France, and Persia was destroyed mainly by Rome at the same time. Spain somehow managed to hold onto one city, but was otherwise totally destroyed by France, the Modern Elites, and Babylon. Arabia and France fought Rome on their own for a while, and briefly were winning until everyone went to war with them- they even fought each other.
The end result of this was Arabia getting destroyed by Rome, me, the Ancient Elites, and Polynesia, and France getting destroyed by a whole bunch of people, mostly the GOTM Staff, Babylon, and Egypt. Finally, at the end, Rome ended up at war with pretty much everyone, and went from being the largest civilization to dead rather quickly, mostly because of my Tanks and Bombers. Their lack of Oil really caused their doom.
Greece was probably the most powerful one in the game, being even a little bit more advanced than me at the end due to being Sci/Comm, though we researched different tech paths. Luckily, I managed to build the Space Ship before they did. And they never even had more than a few cities off of their island. Egypt also was very powerful, as was the GOTM staff despite having practically no strategic resources in their territory at all. Trading for them really saved them, as did having war elephants, but at the end they didn't have Oil or Saltpeter, and were quickly falling behind because of that. According to my Military Advisor, their military fell down to average compared to mine when it had theirs had been much stronger than mine for a while. Rome was doing pretty well until everyone declared war on them- they were still third in score at the end despite their destruction- then they just went downhill rapidly. The Ancient Elites and Babylon did reasonably well, the Modern Elites not quite as well, though they could have certainly done worse, and Polynesia just sucked. The other 5 were doing somewhere between okay and good before some other people destroyed them.
I don't remember exactly when I built all the wonders, but I built the TOE, Hoover's, The Internet, SETI, and the UN, all in either in CFC Central or GOTM Forum, since they ended up being my two most productive cities by a lot. I also captured a few cities with wonders in my war with Rome- Mecca and Medina had JS Bach's and Sistine, Persepolis had Leo's, Rome had the Pyramids and the Great Wall, and there were a few others I'm probably forgetting. The ones in former Arabia, Persia, and Rome were all really too late to help, but it probably saved a me a couple hundred gold upgrading to MI's and MA's.
In the end, I was able to pre-build most of the SS parts with the Manhattan Project, a Palace, and ICBM's when Greece finished Manhattan, coasting to victory and launching my space ship off of this crappy planet with it's near-total lack of resources.
All in all, nice game, it was fun to play, and the first time I've ever won a game on Emperor that wasn't an SG. Maybe I'll try again some time without two free spears and techs...
But now I've really got to stop this really long post before matrix gets annoyed, and also, despite what the Science Advisor might say about sleep, I'm tired.
; it sounds like your week is really clobbered.
I did build a few muskets, and here's why: to delay my golden age. I think my GA came right around steam power.
