I'm finally getting it!!!
After having spent hours browsing through all the great civ advice on this site, both in the War Academy and in the discussions, I seemed to have learned to play civ III competitively. For a decade or so, I have loved playing civ. However, it has been to me like slacking away with a Sim-City-kind of game, watching everything teeming and expanding. For the first time, I have managed to combine many of the great civ gamers best advice and implement them in one single game (in gotm21 I practised ring city placement and observing the importance of Forbidden Palace and corruption), namely this beloved gotm22!
Thanks Cracker for this very entertaining game!
A list of the strategies I unabashedly stole from the wise ones and then incorporated into my Viking game (I had to do well, hadn't I, being Swedish and all):
Got a settler factory up and running.
Micromanaged every city and every worker action very thoroughly the first 100 turns (see my QSC-22 timeline, which is my first QSC effort).
Set a goal from the start - World Domination - my player name has always meant to be irony, since I has always been the builder, or so I thought - and I followed it through every single round.
Never build anything that is not absolutely necessary the first 100 turns or so - that is, an end to humdrum building of courthouses, marketplaces and so forth . I built no more than five or six marketplaces in the game, all in good no-corruption core cities.
Focus on spreading happiness as fast and as effectively as possible from the beginning - I have hugely underestimated the similies before.
Plan the warfare so that failure in one turn means that you have backup coming to your enemy no later than the next turn.
Patiently wait till you get a Great Leader and rush to the most fertile spot you don't owe and build up your Forbidden Palace core there.
Set science to 40 turns with 0 % science as soon as possible, using the one-scientist trick. Exceptions, increase the science rate
when strategic techs are coming up, like Map Making (for the Big Sell - this is when you want to ruin your opponents finacially and getting all their techs), Monarchy (could be the Republic - but I chose the Quitai-style, figuring that the low cost in troops and the forced happy-faces effect of three troops in each city was useful), Invention (in order to get the Berzerks, in this game).
Two tactics of my own (I'm sure they are out there somewhere in the forums - my apologies then) that I decided to use:
Never raze enemy cities, not for the bad-diplomacy it induces, but for the population losses.
Rush troops now and then (despite the awful cost), in strategic locations, where war scenes of the defining-moments-kind are taking place.
Finally, it may be said that I read through some of SirPleb's and Moonsinger's QSCs and studied them carefully (my own QSC goes in their spirit). I have tried to play like a combination of these two fabuluos players, throwing in Quitai's Monarchy aggression as well.
Now, the story begins:
For details of my start, see coming QSC.
I was lucky with huts, not techwise, but economically.
I hooked up happiness early on, the best case being getting an unexpected settler in the far south of our starting double-continent, shaped like a U. I moved it near some Wines there and built a worker who made a colony on top of it, after having linked it to the city with a road, meanwhile a harbor was built in this Stockholm.
For no reason, I had behaved myself spotlessly, Russians declare war on me in the second millennium BC, I prepared a war against them already, but thought it was to soon and sought peace.
In the first millennium, France, Greece and Russia ganged up on me and I had to fight hard to conquer them one by one (Greek was the hardest military nut to crack in the entire game- their stinking hoplites are a pest
). In addition, England declared war on me, but nothing happened and I made peace again with her.
290 BC was a pivotal date in this game. I managed to get two leaders in the same turn!
How, well the first leader appeared perfectly right by the city where I wanted to place the Forbidden Palace - and I rushed it immediately. A few war moves later, I get another leader, which I used to build an army. In this game, I got more leaders than ever before, ten or so, the Heroic Epic really pays off, guys).
England destroyed the Celts.
I destroyed the English. It was a time-consuming process, however.
Not much later, I shipped my many galleys over to the new World and surgically went in and killed off the Aztecs' two cities (The Lighthouse was a must-have in this game - which I built without a leader in Bjorgvin).
All the above-mentioned wars took place on a prehistoric level: warriors, archers, horsemen, spearmen and the occasional swordsman (except the English - I used Med Infantry there).
At last, I got to use the Vikings. I deliberately stalled a Great Leader for three turns and built myself Leonardo's Workshop and cut the upgrading price for my hordes of archers in half - great
. I systematically shipped them, along with lesser troops (200 or so) onto the New World and the Americans, specifically (I noticed they had most culture and lay in the best target position). This I did from two fronts, the long western coast of the our starting U-continent and the mid-eastern coasts of the U. The troops were accompanied by ridiculous amounts of settlers, in order to fill in the gaps in-between the conquered cities. I used MapStat all the time and knew I was beyond in POP but had a number of tiles to claim before reaching the domination victory (which I have ever never won, mind you).
By 720 AD it was all over, I was declared the winner, and managed to get a 11,000+ Jason score (according to the gorm calculator). I am astounded and quite happy
I humbly acknowledge the huge importance of all of you guys and this site in general for making my great win possible. Thanks!