My Closest Win Ever

[Roibeárd]

I thought I'd share a story about a very close call.

It was a cultural win with Ghandi/Standard Size/Normal Speed/Continents. Space Race shut off.

So, I decided to seriously go after my first cultural win. The game went along nicely. I own about 2/3 of a nice continent. Lots of resources. No health or happiness issues. Louis XIV is to my north and loves me, plus his cities are sending lots of religion cash to me. I'm maintaining a decent tech/points lead. Keeping up on military defense. Early in the game I took out Monty, because I knew he would just be a nuisance later. I've also got two holy cities. One which I founded and Tenochtitlan, the Jewish holy city, that I took from Monty. (statements like that always make me laugh )

Using some of the strategies I learned in these forums , I start cranking up the culture spending late in the game.

My capital goes lengendary, then my second city. By now, the UN has been founded and Mao gets elected General Secretary. I'm getting a little nervous because as diplo victory votes come up, he's getting all of the votes, only Elizabeth and Kublai (the smallest and weakest players) abstaining is saving me. Funny that Mao is at war with Kublai (why wouldn't he vote for me?). Anyway, as Mao is wiping Kublai off the map, his population is creeping up and those votes are getting closer and closer.

Now the Huns are gone and Tenochtitlan, my third city, is now a little over 46,000. I'm six turns away from a cultural victory if I can survive those UN votes. I'm gifting everything to other players, hoping they'll change their votes.

A stroke of luck! A great artist is born in my capital! All I've got to do is move him to Tenochtitlan (2 turns) and I've got my cultural victory!

The artist gets to Tenochtitlan. The next turn, the dipo victory vote comes up. I vote, then expend the artist in Tenochtitlan. Cultural victory. Life is good.

Now, I'm dying to see how that vote would have turned out, so I re-load the auto-save. This time I just leave the artist alone and move to the next turn to see the results of the diplo vote. Liz abstains again, but someone has increased his population just enough for Mao to win by one vote.

WHEW!

 

[Lord Frosty]

Talk about a close call! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sisiutil]

Great story, well told. At what level were you playing?

 

[Roibeárd]

Just Noble.

Funny, I usually don't even bother to finish games. In fact, in another thread, you'll find me complaining about how boring the late game is.

 

[ArmoredCavalry]

snatched from the guilotine at the last second, good job

 

[swedia]

one turn, nice job

Closest I've ever come is 7 turns. If a great artist had'nt been born in my last legendary-wannabe city then hatty would have won a time victory

 

[SkippyT]

So, did you win!!?

 

[lost_civantares]

"Hatty would have won", So I would guess yes.

It always makes the game interesting when they leave you on the edge of your seat!

 

[greenpeace]

I think culture is one of the most nerve racking wins, because you can really only wait it out and hope.

 

[Mango]

I've got you beat. I won a Time Victory in my first game on the same turn that Mansa built his ship. Apparently ties go to the human.

 

[Rannos]

So everyone excluding the english and mongols voted for Mao? If this is the case I would've annilated Louis to make make sure that Mao wouldn't achieve victory. Then again I never go for cultural...

 

[Sloth Bear]

One vote? Wow that's as close at it gets!

 

[sirtommygunn]

wow i mean holy crap
but good job on the win party!
Mao
|
V
<-you

 

[Party]

Wow that's close!
My closest would be in BTS when I had my spaceship racing two other ones to get to Alpha Centauri first!
Now that was close! I had all possible thrusters mounted on mine so I took that one.

But one vote the next turn, that takes the cake!

 

[Gooblah]

The closest I've had was a Diplomatic Victory; Hatty had 450, i had 455...
And that's because of a mini-back door domination...not enough to vote myself in, but i had a huge chunk of teh votes.

 

[McGoo]

Closest I had was a OCC (Warlords, Noble). I finished the ship in 2050. The last 10 or so turns were nail-bitters. I had workers chopping everything outside the BFC (at least what was left). Lots of micro-managment (even for a OCC game). Had to keep the BFC forests with lumbermills for health until the last turn...chopped all 6 of these forests in 2049 to win.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

That's a good victory. You always appreciate a win when comes down to the wire.

Like my last game playing as Isabella on a fractal map. Started with 3 AI on my continent, everybody was going along nicely, we all had a good amount of land but I wanted to add Justinian's to mine which took three wars and 40:angry: war weariness as he spammed a lot of units. I finally capitulated him.
Then I set my sights on an annoying Pacal who decided to go cultural and was stealing all my tiles and flipped a city I mopped him up in about 15 turns with currasiers as he severely neglected military.
All this time the tech pace is going pretty slow all the wars bogged me down, but Mansa was doing alright as he was steadily building a Spaceship on his lonely little island. Realizing that he'd beat me to space I decided to knock out the last civ on my conti and go for domination.

So I did that and captured the last city...

But 'Houston we have a problem', Mansa launched and the last city to come out of resistance would take 11 turns and I needed every last tile of the landmass and even then I wasn't sure, I should have destroyed Justinian.

So I had to work some magic and rush buy a whole lot of transports to go and capture Timbuktu which was thankfully a coastal city.

I think I got there in 9 turns which turned out to be essential as I didn't gain enough land when the borders popped in my captured cities.