After capping Peter I sent my army south to invade Mongolia while I built a ton of paratroopers that I placed in NE russia ready to jump over the mountain range. Genghis capped quickly after taking two cities, then I began my assault on Zara from two sides.
In the south my main army was slow. After taking too many cities and leaving too many defenders behind, the ratio of siege/other units was badly skewed and I didn't have enough units that could actually kill things. I placed my army next to Zaras city, the artillery ripped through his defenses, but with only 11 units in the stack capable of killing things, it took me 4 turns to destroy his stack that consisted of anything from infantry and artillery to chariots and horse archers. Eventually his main stack was destroyed and I took 3 cities in the south.
The northern parabombers on the other hand were very successful, quickly taking his 5 arctic cities and then they worked their way south towards his capital. Zara parked all his airforce in the south, leaving no counters to my bombers in the north. Once Aksum fell Zara had had enough and capitulated.
At this time Darius was still >60 turns from culture while I was missing 5% of land from domination. I pumped up my culture slider and sent the army towards Persia. Victory screen when I was ready to attack:
If Izzy had capped earlier, like any decent woman should have in her situation, I would have won this already...
Darius was easy, took Susa and one other city on the first turn and placed 20 paratroopers next to Persepolis. At that time AC offered me a brilliant deal:
Next turn I took Persepolis and Darius was done.
Stats and points:
This was a very long game with lots of land to conquer. It feels like there's less water on a hemisphere's map than on a continents/fractal map even with regular sea level. With low sea level I should perhaps have added still one more civ here as there was plenty of room to grow for everyone (except Genghis...).
I learned some more about later era warfare, in particular I noticed many mistakes in maintaining a good composition of my army later into the war. I should have stopped building cannons a lot earlier and produced more redcoats/infantry. This game also made me research some revolting mechanics and how to deal with that issue. I also learned that I'm still lazy and not quite focused late game. I for example popped a GE and used it for Christo Redentor as I was in State Property and couldn't do corps. But after building CR I completely forgot to do civic changes, for example never adopted Police State. Then I learned that parabomber is still awesome!
