I.Larkin, Congratulations on a fine game! It looks like you will be the civ laureate this month. Great balance of research and conquests. How about one or two minimaps?
Palul#42, Yes, there are other options besides using cavalry as your most advanced unit. I.Larkin used artillery to beat the French. I threw about 50 cavs against the walls of Athens as a comparison. Many deity players, like Own, prefer tanks, using smart trades and ToE to get in front in technology.
Maybe such games won't take so long.
My Own Game
Overview
This was a thrilling game, probably the most enjoyable GOTM ever. I had some setbacks. In the early game a barb warrior killed my first, escorted settler on a hill. Later, I was jumped by the Germans, who with some help from the Persians brought my cavalry army down from about 80 to 50. Why couldn't the Germans let me set up my ROP rape in peace? At this time I was also waging a slow war with Russia (later China), so I had non-phony wars with three civs at the same time. I was anxious to keep the Germans from reaching Replaceable parts.
Speaking of mistakes: The first was missing out on one of the two 4 turn settler factories. The second was my consistant rejection of aqueducts in my core cities. It is true that the great number of hills in the starting area made aqueducts unnecessary in a number of towns, but not alll. I was too anxious to pump out troops to make the long term investment of aqueducts. Partly due to the large map, which I've not played very often, I misjudged the time it would take to dominate the rest of the world. At the end, I would not have had trouble reaching 67% population if I had had the aquaducts in my home core. And by then there wasn't any surplus food in most of those cities because of mined grasslands.
The third mistake which is connected with the lack of aqueducts was my poor self-research. Wheeling and dealing was the method I used to get most techs and the only monopoly I had was Military Tradition. The fact that my keshiks did not start a golden age meant that I didn't have full control over when to start the Golden Age, and so it didn't come until I was researching Metallurgy. On the other hand, this timing was not so bad because only then was my second core in Arabia fully developed. Also, I do not regret choosing monarchy over republic because I hate war weariness, but naturally it had a very big negative effect on science as the game progressed.
Key events with comments
3950 BC - Settled Karakorum 1NW.
1125 - Entererd the Middle Ages.
Japan refuses to leave, declare war. We get our gpt back.
950 - Peace with Japan for two towns. Reason: they landed a swordsman in core.
825 - New war with Japan. (The swordsman started to walk away but refused to leave when he was almost out.)
750 - Hurried FP in Hovd.
690 - We get The Republic, trade, and revolt to monarchy.
490 - We pillage the Arabian iron route. Hehe.
Japan eliminated.
290 - War with Arabia.
250 - Hurried Leonardo's Workshop.
30 BC - We are about to capture The Hanging Gardens of Damascus.
11 keshiks move within reach of Damascus.
90 AD – Flipped palace from Karakorum to Mecca 2.
260 AD - War on England.
Arabia eliminated.
270 AD - We trade banking and Chemistry (2t left) from Germany for 77 gpt, dyes, 1g, TM. They declare on the interturn.
280 - We ally Rome. Rome becomes the punching bag of Germany, Persia, Korea, Spain and later Greece, who are also allied against us. As usual, Rome is a tough nut.
290 - Hurry Magellan's Voyage for a Golden Age at last.
390 - We learn Military Tradition and stop research.
400 - We hurry Shakespeare's Theatre in Nottingham.
430 -
England destroyed.
440 - War on Russia. Some civs reach the IA, and most of them get Nationalism right away. Ally China.
Peace with Germany.
460 - Leader #5 trains the first army of about 6.
510 -
Rome eliminated, by us I'm afraid.
In respect of them – we don’t want a sleazy half measure - we sacrifice 65 gold to investigate Rome and see just two musketmen (one is elite) and unhappiness unheard of - at least we’ll remedy that. The red colors will be missed – Rome is the sturdiest AI of all.
When we declare, Rome is cautious, or should I say incredulous? Don’t worry Cesar, your life will be spared.
550 -
Korea destroyed.
590 - War on Spain (ROP violation.) The conquistador's reach will be a nuisance. Heroic epic hurried - what a mistake. From now on the leaders are decidedly fewer.
710 – Moscow captured (Sun Tzu.)
720 -
Russia eliminated.
720 - MPP between Germany and Ottomans ends. We sign MPP with Ottomans.
730 -
Spain destroyed.
750 - IT: Germany declares. Otto enter our side and Persia the German side.
870 - Captured Beijing. Otto has taken 1/3 of China, we have 2/3. But there would be one flip to Otto.
880 -
China has zero towns.
970 (IT) –
Germany destroyed. We got only about 1/3 of Germany because we were busy with Persia and China. New MPP with Otto. (Now cheaper.)
He may take a part of Persia, but the risk of him declaring is too great without MPP.
1000 - Persepolis (Bach) captured.
I would have liked to have hurried Bach in 290 AD but the need for a GA was greater.
1020 – MPP with France. They have one with Greece.
IT:
Persia eliminated. We got their whole core, Jeanne and Otto some distant towns.
1060 – Turn of no return. We declare war on Greece, but don't attack because they have MPP with France. 91 cavalries.
IT: Success: The Greeks kill 3 of our cavalries. Us, Otto and France have ganged up on Greece.
1070 - Hurried Pentagon.
1210 –
Greece gone. The war went smoothly and we took abot 3/4 of Greece. The Ottomans were quite useful though.
What looks like a few Greek riflemen on the left side is actually some 30 riflemen and guerillas walking on a pillaged road towards death by siphai. Near Bremen, we are about to slay our first infantry unit.
With the demise of Greece I had reached the territorial domination limit. I had also joined a great number of workers to increase the population. But as the fog cleared I loaded MapStat and found out I was 7 pop short of the population limit. What was worse, on the following turns this number slowly increased. I decided to:
1) Research Steam for some extra food. (6 turns.)
2) Attack France. As you can see in the screenie above France still had some towns in ex-Germany. Those I would be able to capture.
I don't know in which order I did this and I probably wasted many turns, because I was really tired and there was only 3-4 hours left to submit and I needed to get ready for work soon.
1240 – France and Ottomans have reached the modern age.
1315 - Just 3 pops to go. French tanks are hammering Herakleia but I have enough cavs to keep the city. As the Ottomans start to chew up France the total world population dwindles.
1320 - Domination victory. territory is at -66 and population at -6.
This was an unusual game in some respects:
- In terms of razing towns, this was unprecedented. Kudos to civ_steve for the fact that it was the Mongols who did it.
- Rome and Ottomans were incredibly useful as cannon fodder and buffers.
- I have never had such good use of ships on a real pangea map before. I would keep a city with high flip risk for one turn, then sail a settler into it on the second turn and abandon the city.
- I suffered severely from a damaged rep. I could not sign alliances at all unless the partner was already at war, so I actually needed to use the risky MPP alternative - for as few turns as was possible. With the Ottomans growing extremely powerful (in all fairness they were the real power leaders) I could not afford to have them signing MPP with other civs so for the last quarter of the game I signed with them myself. This increased the cost so that the other AI wouldn’t sign MPP with the Ottomans. Of course, in the last two wars, the Siphai was immensely useful in killing off riflemen/guerillas/infantry but missing out on most of the bounty. With “animated battles” turned on, an Ottoman turn could take several minutes.
- I used other people's railroads to a huge extent. Ottoman workers railroaded my territory in former Korea and former England. It's annoying that your own cities won't be railroaded, even if they are surrounded by railroads, if you don't have Steam Power, but it's clear from this graph that the effect on score was positive while Hanging Gardens was in effect.
The last score boost at around 1290 AD comes from attacking France and maybe from quelling resistance in the Greek metropoles. The setback afterwards comes from learning Steam Power.
- I don’t think that it’s ever been suggested to me to build Battlefield Medicine with Magnetism as my latest tech.
- I’ve never been so uncertain about whether I would actually win the game or not, on time and at all. Usually you have a good or bad gut feeling. Here, the predominant feeling was 60/40, but it dropped below 50/50 more than once - until the Ottomans demanded Territory Map and 1 gold with troops in position for attack.
Seeing how this was such a fun game - and for other reasons - this is a good time for me to retire for real from civ3. Thanks for all the exciting games. Have fun!
) Or did you reach another Victory type?
Why did I not play this one to the end? 
and glad you enjoyed the game! I know Large maps are somewhat painful to play, but it's good to get out of the Standard size map and style of play now and then.
Never seen that before. So it looks like on Deity the AI indeed is a bit smarter than on lower levels. (Or is it perhaps because on lower levels the AI always has still something else to finish (e.g a Wonder), when it gets an MGL, while on Deity its production is so great that it has everything finished "by normal means", and when it then gets an MGL, it has no other use for it than creating an Army...?)
