RB21 - The Mongol Hordes

Nice going, regoarrarr. I was considering playing 8 turns myself this go-around, but you evened it out for us. Thanks. :cool:

regoarrarr said:
I see that my engineer in Persepolis has been vetoed. It would have been really nice to have had an engineer to rush the Taj Mahal.

That would indeed have been a nice plan, except that Lizzie rushed Taj with a Great Engineer on my turnset. :lol:

OK, I'm grabbing the save and I'll see what I can do. We have Rifling, and we have the draft, so you should know what that means...

uncle-sirian-cuba.jpg


I can reuse pictures from my previous succession games, can't I? :mischief:
 
(0) 1550AD Alright, we're in really good shape here. I run through our cities and change a few things, but city management isn't all that important at this stage of the game. We're rapidly progressing towards a victory here, so I'm just going to do the best I can to speed that along. I notice that regoarrarr has been drafting lots of soldiers, that's some very nice work there! :goodjob: About the only nit I have this turn is the workers sleeping in former England (tons of work still to be done there!) and the excessive building of windmills. We want mines on those hills! (I usually only build windmills if a city is short on food. If it's got sufficient food, probably better to get the additional shields.) But on the whole, we're running pretty smoothly this time. Even managing to run at 60% science with all our cities and no State Property civic yet, woohoo! :cool:

More good news: I check the power bar, and Huayna has been doing some serious damage to Washington! Go get him, buddy! :hammer:

RB21-39s.jpg


In fact, we just passed Washington in soldier count, and are now #1 in overall power. Oh yeah!

I'm preparing to declare on Wasington in a turn or two. But we're not going to take the long route through American culture - we're going to take the Huayna express! Watch:

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It's three tiles east of Susa to reach Boston, but only one turn north of Ollantaytambo! This means that down the road we may see a flip of that city to Huayna... but for now, it helps us out a lot. Shuffling units around...

(1) 1553AD More units complete, I generally keep our low-shield cities building cats (since we can draft rifles), while the higher-shield cities focus on rifles as well. (Once we have Chemistry, we'll want to swap over to at least some grenadier production, for a better mix.) Our comical naval war with Cyrus continues, hehe. Draft Turfan, Satsuma, and Susa.

(2) 1556AD Washington revolts to Theocracy and Vassalage, a welcome sign (go ahead, spend turns in Anarchy...)

(3) 1559AD It is time. I declare on Washington and cross the border with a sizable stack:

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We have 5 rifles, 1 knight, 4 muskets, 1 elephant, 3 maces, and 11 cats. They have... 2 longbows. That's a bit one sided! :lol:

Some of our drafted rifles in the west have no trouble cleaning up that stack which has been wandering around for the last thousand years or so:

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Draft Hastings, Nottingham, and Canterbury. I forgot to draft last turn, my bad! :crazyeye:
 
(4) 1562AD On the interturn, we have... zero counterattacks! Wow, Washington is a total paper tiger. He still doesn't have Replaceable Parts either, so we can almost certainly eliminate him before the dreaded rifles arrive.

I also forgot to mention that I asked Peter to declare on Washington last turn, and he did - for free. Remember when I said that it's better to have two civs at "Friendly" and everyone else at "Annoyed" than have a bunch of lukewarm trading partners? I think our diplomacy paid off handsomely in this game! (Then again, if you're not going to be fighting and simply trying to tech as fast possible, having no close friends but also no enemies can be a valid strategy.)

I bomb the defenses down to zero with our cats (7 shots, yikes! we sure have a lot of them!) and then send in the troops. With only 2 defenders (practically nil potential for collateral damage), I'm not going to waste our cats in suicide attacks, so the rifles go first. Rifle kills longbow, rifle kills longbow (both at 65%), and the city is ours! :hammer:

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Wow, that was easier than expected. That city was on a hill too, so the longbows were getting the hill synergy defensive bonuses. Umm... this campaign might be over sooner rather than later! Begin moving on Atlanta.

(5) 1565AD Between turns, two cannon attack Boston and retake the city. We had a bad roll there with our rifle on defense (lost at 80% odds). Of course, that just means that Boston has 1 cannon with 1.4 health inside it, so we easily take it back. (Actually a bit of a break there, as the cannon hit the city instead of our incoming stacks. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!)

Discover Chemistry between turns, start research into Steel. Once we have cannon, we will never need to research any technology ever again! Interestingly, Washington already has Steel but still lacks Replaceable Parts. I've never seen an AI hit the bottom of the tree like that before. Too bad the AI doesn't know how to use cannon properly... Old Sarai founded in the tundra north to claim land and whales. We are now over 50% land area!

Huayna is battering New York pretty hard in the south:

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No clue if he'll take it or not, but our mace on the forested hill will keep an eye on things.

At Bactra, we lose two cats and retreat another, but that gets our muskets up to 90% odds to win, and we clean up from there:

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Cyrus, exit stage right. Oh, and raise your hand if you thought that we would eliminate Elizabeth before CYRUS at the start of this game. Yeah, that's what I thought! :lol:

(6) 1568AD Forbidden Palace completes in London; distance maintance costs drop from 80 to 53. That's a savings of 27gpt; certainly not insignificant, but I wish the effect were a little more noticeable. Too bad the FP doesn't affect "number of cities" maintenance costs...

Washington hit us with some cannon between turns, killed a sprinkling of rifles and cats. Fortunately, our main attacking stack was not damaged. Given what I'm seeing in his cities, I think his reserves are getting close to exhausted. I kill three more cavs and two more cannon in skirmishing outside his cities... he can't keep absorbing those losses. Even an Emperor AI has limits.

I also whip Globe Theatre in Susa. Go irrigated floodplains!

(7) 1571AD Zero counterattacks this turn - that's good news. Another sign that Washington is running out of steam. Lose all three suicide cats at Atlanta, but after that the battle is easy. It IS rifles against longbows and crossbows, after all. Result:

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By the way, Atlanta has Versailles in it! I swear, we've had more luck with capturing wonders in this game... Who needs to build 'em, when you can just TAKE 'em from the AI! :evil: (I used to play the Mongols the same way in Civ3, and it was just as much of a blast there. We're the Mongols! We just take whatever we want! And later, if we're really nice, we might let you live to tell the tale.)

(8) 1574AD Still no counterattacks from Washington. Looks pretty toasted, and will REALLY be gassed after we take his capital. Draft Susa again. (Looks like we can draft there every 2-3 turns, so keep abusing that city mercilessly!) This is a turn of repositioning.

(9) 1577AD Washington hits ONE stack with ONE cannon between turns. Uhh.. yes, that did kill a musket, but it's certainly not going to stop us now. Persepolis finishes a rifle and I set it to produce a settler; we're probably going to need to fill a cultural border or two here, and I'd like us to have a settler on hand in case we need one. We can probably use a couple of settlers more than a couple more rifles.

Huayna and Washington sign peace. What a weenie. If we don't hit the Domination limit from taking out America (and that's a distinct possibility), Huayna is definitely the one to hit next.

Here are the defenses at Washington:

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I use our cats to bomb to zero this turn, and I'll crown my turnset with the city's capture next turn. (It might be possible to get it this turn, but we don't want to come up short, especially with it on a hill.)

(10) 1580AD Washington pulled additional defenders into his capital this turn from throughout his civ. This could be a decisive battle!

The Battle of Washington
Suicide cat dies at 0%
Suicide cat withdraws (0.2%)
Suicide cat dies (0.2%)
Suicide cat dies (2.9%)
Musket kills mace (70%)
Rifle kills longbow (99%)
Musket kills longbow (66%)
Musket kills longbow (80%)
Mace loses to cannon (40%)
Mace kills cannon (91%)
Rifle kills cannon (99.8%) and the city is ours! :xmassign:

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What can I say, it was another red-letter day. ;) We had a LOT of injured units there, but managed to finish the job. Going to be some healing taking place at Washington, but Zeviz can handle it.
 
I wasn't able to put any real defenders in Washington (no movement points left); instead, I crammed a bunch of crippled cats in there under the operative philosophy that we'll just pack in more units than they can kill. Heh. Unless Washington can cough up six different attackers, he's not getting his capital back (but expect to lose some units there between turns... :()

We should probably be able to take New York and Chicago next turn, or at the very latest in two more turns. Zeviz can judge when it will be most prudent to attack. Once they're gone, Washington will be down to just three cities (and judging by my spying galley... they ain't got much in them). Figure maybe 15 more turns to kill Washington.

After that's done... well, I think we're going to be a little short of the Domination requirement (we are currently at 52.13%, need 64%). Huayna makes the best target, because (amazingly) he is considerably LESS powerful than Peter! We'll evaluate the situation as it develops, but I think we will probably have to attack the Incans before this thing is finished. Peter is about +20 with us right now, it would be cruel to attack him.

I think Steel is the last tech we ever need to research. Once we get there, turn off science, upgrade all outdated units to rifles/cannon, and then kill whatever is left until we trigger Domination. Not the most subtle approach, but we ARE the Mongols here. :satan:

Keep drafting Susa, it can be drafted every OTHER turn (yikes! Globe Theatre loophole abuse alert! I agree there should be a happiness cap with Globe, but if it isn't there, we may as well use it.) Our other cities are just about ready to come out of their last drafting unhappiness, so keep an eye on that too. Be ready to draft out another round.

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It was a bad set of turns for Washington. :mischief:

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And the map. The Americans are gassed, now let's finish them off! :hammer: I hope there's still something left by the time Kylearan gets back! :lol:

Kylearan (skipped for this week)
sooooo <<< on deck
regoarrarr
Sullla
Zeviz <<< UP NOW
 
Very nice work Regoarrarr and Sullla. Let the mop-up commence!

The AI seems to be hugely disadvantaged by going along the bottom of the tech tree instead of going for rifling. Mainly because it cannot upgrade its longbows to grenadiers. Therefore when it decides to build a "garisson unit" it goes for another longbow rather than a grenadier. Do you know why it was decided to let archers upgrade to muskets/grenadiers but not longbows?

I hope we can win this without attacking our friends. They have been priceless for us and we'd be much further behind without being buddhist and sufferring WFYHBTA.
 
Very impressive progress in the American war. :goodjob:

I'll play either this evening or tomorrow evening and hopefully will be able to continue the success of this campaign.
 
Sorry about the delay. I couldn't play yesterday, but I'll play this evening. (In a couple hours.)
 
1580AD(0) We currently control 52% of the world and need 64% for domination. Our power is twice higher than Washington's and will keep growing exponentially, because we are about to discover Steel(Canons) and shut down research to upgrade all old units.

We can probably get the remaining 12% just by conquering Washington, but we need to prevent Boston from flipping to HC. We can do this by either piling tons of units into the city, or using a Great Artist. The city currently has 8.62% chance of revolt, so we'll need at least 10 units in there. This makes a Great Artist much more appealing. The next GP will come either from Arbela in 14 turns (54% Great Artist, 46% Great Engineer), or from Kyoto in 15 turns (31% Artist, 63% Merchant, 4% Engineer). Arbela looks like a more guaranteed place from which to generate the GA, so I order a Theatre(3) there to replace Engineer with 2 Artists. I know that it's our main troops factory, but we need that GA much more than we need a couple extra Rifles. For some reason making this change causes Engineer specialist to get replaced with a citizen. I guess the governor read my mind. :)

IBT: Surprizingly enough, there are no counter-attacks, despite the fact that Washington was protected by a wounded Rifle and a stack of Cats.

1583(1) At Chicago, we bomb away most of city's defenses and will be able to take it next turn.

Peter has a 15 units stack at New York, so we have to take the city now, without spending time to bomb away the rest of defenses. The first sicide Cat gives our Rifles 92% chance, so I attack with a Rifle and it dies. Second Rifle wins at 88%, third one wins at 97%, and Mace cleans up the wounded Longbow giving us 184$, a Worker, and the city that contains Chichen Itza.

Almost all of our cities are fully improved, so I give some Workers Trade Network orders and put the rest to sleep. I also disband 4 workers, because we have well over a dozen of them and there will be nothing for them to do for the rest of the game (game will end before railroads), so they are just costing us upkeep.

Most distant troops are directed to Boston to prevent revolt, while frontline troops are mainly getting into cities to heal. I upgrade one of the Macemen in Washington to Grenadier to aviod having to fight Grens with Rifles.

IBT: We lose a scouting Musket to Cavalry, but there are no further attacks.

1586(2) Battle of Chicago: First suicide Cat dies. Second "suicide" cat wins at 12%, letting Musket and Mace clean up easily. (Last 2 defenders were Pikemen, so Mace had better odds than Musket.

Peter's SoD is heading towards Phyladelphia, which is defended by only 4 units (Gren and 3 LBs). We can't allow Peter to take the city, because that would force us to fight another war to reach domination. So I try to delay his stack by pillaging the road under it. :evil:

The game is now a race to capture Washington's last 3 cities, so I am pushing ahead as hard as I can with all available troops. Wounded Rifle dies to wounded Cav, but Elephant finishes the job. New York is left protected by a single Gren upgraded from Mace (there are no enemies in range, while the other units in the area move to Pillage the hill I expect Russian SoD to occupy next turn. The hill had a village, so I had to use 3 units to make sure it will be pillaged in time. All other healthy units, along with all Cats, move towards Phyladelphia, with they will reach in 3 turns.

1589(3) Russian SoD moved diagonally onto a hill, as expected, so I pillage another roads to delay them even further. Meanwhile, more and more units are heading towards Philadelphia.

HC's borders have expanded far into former American territory, so I am no longer certain that capturing the rest of America will be enough to trigger domination. However, I am still building units, so we shouldn't have problems either way.

1592(4) Persepolis Rifle->Temple to put more cultural pressure along our borders. Arbela hires 2 Artists and chances of GA are up to 55%.

We have trained a Settler, but there is no place to settle him, because all our lands are already covered by our borders, so I put him to sleep on a hill sout of Arbela.

1595(5) Philadelphia's defences are reduced to 0, while some units shuffle around it, prepairing to move on as soon as the city falls.

I put 10% on the culture slider partially to remove unhappiness in a couple cities, and partially to give our new American cities more happy specialists for border expansions when they come out of anarchy.

1598(6) We discover Steel and can buy following technologies: Divine Right, Liberalism, Constitution, and Economics from Peter or HC, and Scientific Method from HC. Out of those techs, Constitution and Economics are the only ones that might matter before the game is over, because they will enable research of Corporation. Divine Right is useless, and Liberalism wouldn't be very apropriate for Mongol Hordes. :)

Peter is willing to not only stop war with Washington, but also give us Economics, map, and 80$ in return for Steel. In a solo game I'd have fun trying to outrace Peter's SoD to America's final cities, but this is an SG, so I play it safe and take the deal.

Next I sell Steel to HC for Constitution, map, and 180$, and start researching Corporation(7). Both Peter and HC already have it, but this doesn't matter, because the game will be over withing a couple turnsets anyway.


The attack on Philadelphia proceeds as expected, with a single suicide Cat clearing the way for Rifles to attack at 90+ percent odds.

1601(7) Seattle is guarded by 2 LBs and a Pike, so I attack with a small stack without waiting for reinforcements and ignoring 20% defense. A single suicide Cat allows Rifles to attack at 95+ percent odds and easily capture the city. Meanwhile, a massive SoD is moving towards Uzbek and Boston finally has enough troops in it to remove all chance of revolt.

1604(8) Massive stacks approach last American city.

IBT: Washington counter-attacks for the first time in a while, killing one of wounded Rifles in Seattle with a Gren.

1607(9) Unfortunately for Washington, whose 2 Grens are still guarding useless mines, his last city is defended by Longbow, Musket, and Pike. I have so many units nearby that outcome of the battle wouldn't be very different even if Washington did withdraw those Grens into city when he had a chance. 3 Cats decrease defences from 60 to 33%, 2 more suicide without even scratching the CG2 Musket, so I use the other 3 to bombard and attack with a Rifle which also dies, but causes enough damage to enable the next 3 Rifles to destroy all defenders, wiping out American Civilization.

1610(10) We get a GP and it is... A Great Engineer from London. I completely forgot about that city's wonders and it crept up on me, bypassing Arbela that had only 1 turns until its GP.

In other news, Washington and New York expand their borders and we are now at 61.38% of land area. The game will probably be over in 7 turns, when the last of former American cities comes out of resistance. New York is starving due to nearby Incan culture, so I whip the theatre there. If the last 2 cities coming out of resistance will still leave us a few tiles short, we can turn entire populations of cities like Washington and New York into specialists, getting second border expansions there in just a couple of turns.

I guess Sooooo will have the honor of finishing it up, unless we want to wait for Kylearan.
 
Wow, what a great last turnset. Paying Peter to make PEACE with Washington was just hilarious! :lol:

Here's what things look like in the east in the post-American world:

RB21-51s.jpg


We only need 2% more for Domination, which we will easily get once the American cities come out of resistance. Now I am SERIOUSLY tempted to grab the game and finish it out, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes here. :p Either sooooo or Kylearan (whoever sees this first) should grab the save and hit "next turn" a bunch of times until we win. I will suggest 1) we should run 100% culture (or as close to it as possible) once Corporation is discovered next turn, and 2) we have a settler fortified south of Arbela which can and should be used to plug any cultural gaps we might have to speed up the finish date.

More pictures to be added once the game concludes! :cool:
 
(0) 1610AD Zeviz has things running smoothly, and this cat's in the bag. All I do is wake up our settler and move him towards the east, where he'll fill in tiles... somewhere. :crazyeye:

(1) 1613AD Corporation in. I select Military Tradition next as best fitting the theme of this game. ;) Set all cities that finish stuff to build culture. Dial us up to 60% culture - that makes our people HAPPY! :beer:

RB21-52s.jpg


36 happy Mongol faces, sweet! Use our Great Engineer to rush Wall Street in York, the Hindu Holy City with shrine. What else are we going to use him on!

(2) 1616AD With Wall Street in tow, crank luxuries up to 70%. Seattle comes out of resistance, putting us at 62.4% of land.

(3) 1619AD Philadelphia pops its borders and we win the game! :dance:

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I actually thought it would take another turn or two. I guess that the 70% culture led Phillie to come out of resistance AND expand its borders on the first turn, for a double-whammy border expansion. We grabbed 20 tiles at once right there and blew over the limit. What a nice finish! :cool:

We finished the game at +14 with Peter and +13 with Huayna:

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I seem to recall a certain someone posting a number of pages back that it would be useful to ally with these two AIs and then crush everyone else with their help. I won't mention again who that was, but it DID work out rather nicely, didn't it? :mischief: :lol:
 
Alright, now for some replay shots:

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Wow, was the start crowded or what? This is a normal pangaea map, nothing special on the settings - can't believe we rolled such a packed start! Sardine can for sure. Washington definitely had the best start here, everyone else was pretty tight. The icy north turned out to be a big plus for us in this game, although when we started out things certainly didn't look very good, did they? :)

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It was about this time when I was seriously wondering if we were going to have a chance to win the game. Everyone has us totally crowded out of the good land, and we're stuck with just a horse resource and some wild plans. With no promotions or metals on hand here, it was not an enviable situation. Hard to believe, but CYRUS was the big dog on the block at this point. How times change!

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And this was the turning point in the game, capturing Pasargadae's rich location and Persepolis, which had the Pyramids inside (!) It was nice to play out a different strategy in this game than the stereotypical axe rush. We had no copper or iron, and didn't use promotions either, but a bold rush to Horseback Riding and some timely use of keshiks (plus regoarrarr's excellent denial of invisible iron!) saved the day. These were times of great and daring deeds for the Mongols.

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By 500AD, we've caught up to the other civs in power (if not in technology), but still remain in the middle of the pack. The following Japanese campaign (and the miraculous capture of the Colossus AND Great Lighthouse combo!) would be the second turning point in this game, taking us from "average" to number one status.

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From here on, everything will be a downhill run. According to the replay, our wonder captures from Toku were even more miraculous than I previously thought. Toku built Hanging Gardens in 515AD, got a Great Engineer from that in 710AD, finished the Sistine Chapel naturally in 755AD, then rushed Colossus in 770AD, and we captured Kyoto in 800AD. He finished two hugely helpful wonders in the THREE turns before we captured his capital (!!!) Folks, you can't make this stuff up. :lol:

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England destroyed. :hammer:

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Game over. Look at the time and all those sessions, hehe. But it was worth it in the end - Domination in 1613, with our underpowered start and variant rules! Woohoo!
 
Demographics looked rather nice:

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We were #1 in everything at the end of the game, even soldier count (which is rather tough to do on Emperor usually). How cool is that? :cool:

The statistics were fairly unremarkable; we killed mostly longbows and archers. I should mention though that we lost 44 catapults in this game - almost as many as all other losses combined! Gives a whole new meaning to the term "suicide catapult", wouldn't you say? :D

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We just managed to crack the 100,000 mark on score too! I don't give much credence to the scoring system in this game, but I do enjoy seeing the six digit numbers in my hall of fame. :) My third-highest Firaxis score.

The variant was fully as brutal as I expected... the most interesting things that came out of it were 1) the units were very much "faceless" entities with no promotions to distinguish them, and 2) I think we'd all agree that we missed Medic units more than anything else! :crazyeye: You don't realize how vital that fast healing is until you have to go without. That was a bit of an eye-opener too.

Attached to this post is the final save file; just hit next turn and watch the replay stuff. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone on our team. While we often disagreed about some things ;), the group worked well together and achieved a very impressive finish. Thanks everyone, you all made valuable contributions. :goodjob:

I plan on starting another succession game sometime next week. It's going to be FIVE times as much fun as this one! :lol: (But you'll have to wait until it opens to understand that joke, sorry! :p)
 
Well done team! Despite our different playstyles, we played pretty tightly after an umpromising start. Key moments were (a) regoarrarr and Zeviz's conquest of Persia, (b) Sullla's convert to buddhism-and-isolate-Lizzy gambit and (c) Toku's :smoke:.
 
wow amazing win. just amazing.

I too was saying "hmm how are they gonna pull the rabbit out of this hat?" just prior to the toku bashing.

I mean the pc civs were running away with tech and dove tail that with the no promotions rules..... owowowow.

Must say though that toku was your biggest friend in this game.... a first I've even said something that silly yet was still true.:lol:

Toku - an asset. A first and prolly last ever.

Amazing game guys.

Cheers!
-Liq
 
That was a very fun game and I've learned a lot about warfare. It seems the different playing styles added to, rather than subtracted from the overall quality of the game.

I still can't believe we've managed to pull this off after being locked in at the start. :goodjob:
 
Hey, you promised that the game would come back to me for a turnset when I'd be back! :crazyeye: Sheesh, you all played an awesome round, great stuff. :hammer:

Sulla said:
also forgot to mention that I asked Peter to declare on Washington last turn, and he did - for free. Remember when I said that it's better to have two civs at "Friendly" and everyone else at "Annoyed" than have a bunch of lukewarm trading partners?
That's definately a part of the game I need to improve - asking the AIs for favors. And yes, you present a pretty good point here why making some real friends can be a very strong move!


I agree with Zeviz that our different playstyles produced some good synergetic effects. I think different playstyles are no problems in SGs if you discuss everything and if every player is willing to play differently than he normally would if that is the path the majority of the team wants to follow after the discussion. :goodjob:

I really like those games best that have a challenging start, like RB13 or this one here. Digging out of early holes is fun. :) Thanks Sulla for setting this up!

-Kylearan
 
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