Space 100 Yard Dash?

[Zhahz]

The last 50-60 turns of the game though I wa on the edge of my seat. I have never gotten this kind of suspense from a game before.

Pretty cool, uh ?

Yeah, I gotta say that in some ways I dislike space race but it does add some tension and causes me to actually think about endgame strategy other than winning by points when the time expires. I lost my first ever full game due to not noticing the space race parts completion notifications. Since then I have to fight in almost every game to prevent it. I've even won by domination simply because I had to eradicate AI after AI who were going for space race.

I've had several close finishes like Panth describes where I've had to start a war or attack an AI myself to stop them from whipping out a space race. Usually when an AI civ is geared for space race they are super efficient at it once the actual parts start to build - and they always have very strong and modern city defenses too.

Spies and sabotage are an option but it usually costs thousands of gold just to kill off partial production on an SS piece.

I had to stop Elizabeth last night and I figured it would be no problem even though I wasn't really ready to do an invasion - I loaded up 3-4 transports worth of modern armor, artillery (bombers wouldn't be in range), gunships, and a few mech inf, and had about 10 stealth bombers ready but when I landed my troops she actually attacked them, which was a shock (because usually space racer AIs have strong defense but few counterattackers).

She wiped out my whole invasion force except my artillery, which I loaded back onto my transports and sailed home to rebuild another frickin invasion force. I figured it was game over but fortunately my attack put her off building ship parts long enough. My next invasion took out London and she only had 6 cities total which I proceeded to mostly raze (she was sandwiched in between a more powerful spain and equal russia and I gave one of her cities to russia that ended up within spain's cultural border hoping they'd go to war). I didn't want to leave any chance of her finishing her last 2 parts.

Of course, while I was fighting england the spanish started building parts, so I switched over to fighting them immediately after the english. I was counting down the turns. I'd invaded england with about 18 turns remaining. All this time Japan, who were on their own little continent, was catching up to me in score. I ended up winning by score, barely, and it was my worst winning score yet (5kish) - but I did win. I missed completing my own space race by about 2 turns because nonstop war weariness killed my production.

 

[Fieryphoenix]

Two games ago I was doing a standard epic monarch game. That (censored so re-edited) sweet sweet girl Isabella and later Catherine started cranking out the parts. Isabella was one part away.

So I took away her core cities, leaving only her new world colonies. None of them had the capacity to finish that last part. Instead, it was ME rushing... to get 64 percent landmass! Did it in 2045. Whew!

I must say... people who think the air units are worthless really need to take a second look... one or two won't get you far but twelve will massacre whole cities.