It's not so bad to lose every once in a while, keeps the game fun. I didn't feel this was that extreme a variant, so the Americans won fair-and-square.
Not sure why I didn't mobilize on my turns. I thought about, but can't remember a reason not to. If we had thought of it early it might have meant 10 more tanks/MA's, which probably only would have gotten us one more turn.
I'm not sure we did anything wrong besides have an over-active volcano on our territory. IIRC, volcanoes should erupt on average once in 5000 yrs, and ours went off twice in the first 3000. That ensured we had an uphill climb in tech. We couldn't properly broker techs because we always had to acquire through peace-renegotiation.
Every war Abe fought in, he won. He had the advantage of sharing the central part of the landmass with us, which translated into his core never being threatened by the other AI. Every war was fought on his fringes. If we had been able to stay reasonably current in tech, we could have crippled him in the Cavs vs. Rifles era, as Abe essentially dogpiled himself. But we had MW's and Spears, so a frontal attack was suicide.
About the only thing we could have done differently was precluded by the variant rules. About every 30-40 turns we could have tried to dogpile Abe, to cut off his gpt from the other Civs. With a busted rep I have no idea whether this would have worked or been really stupid.
Normally when the game degnerates into a 1-on-1 between the player and a single AI, the player wins. But not with a busted rep and spotting the AI almost an entire era of tech.
One thing that can help in these situations is to eliminate the other AI ASAP to cut off some of the leader's gpt opportunities. Again we didn't have the military to attack anyone much sooner than we did, and Abe was almost Modern by that time, so it wouldn't have made a difference.
Adding cash-rush to the enormous unit support of Fascism adds up to very large AI armies.
Not sure why I didn't mobilize on my turns. I thought about, but can't remember a reason not to. If we had thought of it early it might have meant 10 more tanks/MA's, which probably only would have gotten us one more turn.
I'm not sure we did anything wrong besides have an over-active volcano on our territory. IIRC, volcanoes should erupt on average once in 5000 yrs, and ours went off twice in the first 3000. That ensured we had an uphill climb in tech. We couldn't properly broker techs because we always had to acquire through peace-renegotiation.
Every war Abe fought in, he won. He had the advantage of sharing the central part of the landmass with us, which translated into his core never being threatened by the other AI. Every war was fought on his fringes. If we had been able to stay reasonably current in tech, we could have crippled him in the Cavs vs. Rifles era, as Abe essentially dogpiled himself. But we had MW's and Spears, so a frontal attack was suicide.
About the only thing we could have done differently was precluded by the variant rules. About every 30-40 turns we could have tried to dogpile Abe, to cut off his gpt from the other Civs. With a busted rep I have no idea whether this would have worked or been really stupid.
Normally when the game degnerates into a 1-on-1 between the player and a single AI, the player wins. But not with a busted rep and spotting the AI almost an entire era of tech.
One thing that can help in these situations is to eliminate the other AI ASAP to cut off some of the leader's gpt opportunities. Again we didn't have the military to attack anyone much sooner than we did, and Abe was almost Modern by that time, so it wouldn't have made a difference.
Adding cash-rush to the enormous unit support of Fascism adds up to very large AI armies.
