I have no iron and I must scream

[Quasar1011]

In retrospect, my big mistake was using a SGL to rush Sun Tzu's -- I should have saved him for KT.

No no, you did fine. Sun Tsu's doesn't expire, while Knight's Templar does. Remember that any city you capture (culturally or militarily) or found, will automatically have a free barracks in it. In most games, I personally consider Sun Tsu's War Academy to be the best wonder of all!

 

[Jason Fliegel]

No no, you did fine. Sun Tsu's doesn't expire, while Knight's Templar does. Remember that any city you capture (culturally or militarily) or found, will automatically have a free barracks in it. In most games, I personally consider Sun Tsu's War Academy to be the best wonder of all!

Actually, the game is working out quite nicely, and as you pointed out, Sun Tzu's has paid me lots of dividends. In retrospect, I made no mistakes, since I'm now Top Dog.

I was able to grab Knights Templar, since I had been building toward Leonardo's. This meant sacrificing Leonardo's, but given my lack of iron, this was a sacrifice I was willing to make. I eventually went to war with the Mongols, who controlled the nearest source of iron and was able to seize that iron. Since then, there's been no looking back. One by one, I've taken apart my rivals -- the Inca, the Mongols, the Arabs (who were actually my friends, but everyone else was carving them up so I got in on the action), and the Aztecs. Now, all that's left are the Iroquois (about a dozen cities and a full age behind me*), the Aztecs (one city left on the opposite side of the Irroquios' territory), and the Mayans (fewer cities than I have, but they aren't too far behind me, technologically speaking, and they have a powerful military). At this point, I need to figure out which victory to go for, but I'm definitely winning this game.

* I should submit a screenshot I took as a SOTD: it shows that I'm research the Laser and could trade Atomic Theory to the Iroquois. Meanwhile, up in the corner, Sid is telling me that the Iroquois are our scientific equals.

 

[Jason Fliegel]

Thought I'd bump this thread to let everyone know I finally had a chance to win this game. I wound up with a domination victory in the 1950s or 1960s. The end game was a little boring, to tell you the truth -- it was down to me (60% of the land and late Modern Age technolgoy), the Mayans (30% of the land and 4 or 5 techs behind me), the Iroquois (10% of the land and a full age behind me), and the Aztecs (they had one city left).

We were on one big continent shaped sort of like the letter C. If you look at your keyboard's numberpad, the Iroquois were at the number 9, I was at the numbers 8, 7, 4, 1, and 2, and the Mayans were at the number 3 with a half dozen cities at the number 8.

I swooped in and captured all of the Mayan's northern cities (the ones at the 8) in a single turn, then sent my troops down to the only remaining front. For 4 or 5 turns, they send SoDs consisting of Infantry, TOW Infantry and Tanks into my territory and I smacked them down with Bombers, Artillery, and Modern Armor. Eventually, I wore them down to the point where they had nothing left to throw at me and I started sending my Modern Armor into their cities. Just when it was getting fun, one of my new conquests expanded its borders and I was declared the winner with about 2000 points (Regent level).

The moral of the story is even when things look their darkest -- when I was surrounded by aggressive neighbors and had no iron -- it's possible to pull out a victory. A game that looked unwinnable in the Middle Ages turned out to be competitive by the early Industrial Era and a cake walk by the Modern Era.