A brief history of the Mongol Empire:
The Dave-Grs Alliance
I quickly expanded to 3 cities and started building Keshiks. My neighbors were grs, Saladin, and RegentMan. RegentMan and I ignored each other, Saladin was an AI, but grs and I started off friendly.
grs 3/24/2006 said:
Hi,
we just recently met ingame. I am playing as Ghandi and would like to know, if you are interested in allying with me? We could agree on peace, share research and help us in war times later on. Interested?
DaveMcW 3/24/2006 said:
Hello neighbor grs!
The Mongol people would be happy to sign an agreement of peace and mutual defense. The only thing we ask in return is to avoid sending any Indian settlers within 6 tiles of our capital.
grs 3/24/2006 said:
Hi,
I guess the border I see is 3 tiles away from your capital. If that is the case, 6 tiles is perfectly acceptable.
I would like to ask you, not to settle further south than that in return. I also would like to establish an ingame open borders agreement, once anyone of us knows writing, to increase trade revenue.
DaveMcW 4/30/2006 said:
Hi grs,
Last month you offered me an alliance, and I responded with a non-aggression pact. But the Matrix incident made me realize how important it is to have good allies.
I would be happy to sign a permanent alliance with you for as long as you'll have me.
Conquest
With my southern border secure, the Mongol hordes began their westward conquest.
I built a road to Arabia, which coincidentally passed 4 tiles away from RegentMan's capital. And my Keshik stack just happened to stop there on its way to invade Arabia. When RegentMan logged in, his capital had fallen and he was at war.
RegentMan surrendered as his last city was about to fall, saving me the trouble of capturing a well-defended capital and allowing me to invade Theoden earlier than expected. RegentMan turned a marginal patch of land into the most profitable city in the world, and ended up paying for half my empire's upkeep in tribute. Thanks to him, I never had to build the Wall Street national wonder (I built all the others).
I double-moved against Theoden too, capturing 3 cities before he ever saw the Keshik army. Robboo declared on me to fulfill his defense pact with Theoden, but never actually fought me. Tubby sold iron to Theoden, which allowed him to build spears and escape with one city.
The Great War
Meanwhile grs had captured all of Arabia and most of Egypt too. Then the dogpile began.
grs 6/25/2006 said:
Sadly I have to tell you that not only Robi_D declared and Meleager/Matrix will do in 9 turns, but also BCLG will declare on me in 750AD (or maybe 5 turns later). Additionally Mauer and Whomp are already moving troops through BCLGs lands to my backyard. I am not sure you have a real choice to help me or not, since they will probably attack you after me, but if we want to give them a real fight, you should start to move some more troops towards them. Please tell me how you decide.
DaveMcW 6/25/2006 said:
Yes, I don't think I have a choice. Do you have any idea what kind of troops they have, so I can build the appropriate counter? I am building maces and catapults right now.
Grs went down fighting, but he bought me enough time to research to cannons. I wiped out all enemy stacks with cannons, and began signing peace treaties.
Building My Way To Victory
After peace was achieved, Meleager and I raced to claim Saladin's old territory. We fought a pretty fierce cultural battle to secure resources. Later when Meleager was conquered, I swallowed up the entire fat cross of his border cities as they lost all culture.
Despite having peace, everyone was very reluctant to trade techs with me. My GNP was in last place due to lack of trade routes, but my actual research rate (thanks to Oxford University) was the best in the world. So I managed to beeline to Artillery to keep my army modern enough for survival.
I began planning my beeline to the Internet, which seemed to be the only way to become equal in tech. When Tubby gifted me all his techs I was able to build Factories earlier than planned, which sealed my victory.
I finally managed to get Open Borders with the world, which boosted my GNP a bit. It probably helped everyone else more than me (since my cities were so huge), but it also gave them an incentive to keep the peace.
Spaceship
I was so confident now that I turned down a gift of Industrialization from Meleager. I offered permanent peace to all my neighbors, and cranked up military production as I closed in on Fiber Optics.
BCLG had no chance at outbuilding me on spaceship parts, so I sold him Fiber Optics and Genetics for almost nothing to keep the attention off of me.
To avoid sabotage, I used production overflow on the last few parts so they were only being directly built every other turn. And I logged in at the end of the turn just long enough to add the part, gain production, and remove it from the queue.
My password was
MongolEmpire
when it came to my survival in the game, but I got to play Civ IV in a way not possible in single player. I had fun, and I hope you all did too!
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