It was a game of firsts for me: first Venice game, first time building GL on deity and first time finishing with a score above 10,000. I also beat my previous personal record of unhappiness with -79. It was also one of the longest games I played in terms of playtime (if not the longest). I ended up with a military supply cap above 230. The last turns of the game took maybe around 10 mins each to play due to the really high number of units I had to move. The game felt a bit laggy near the end when moving units and capturing cities. I suspect it is due to engine limitations, because the game never seems to use my computer's full resources.
Achievements
1. Buy city states with MOV's -
6 points (13 in 5 different eras, bought 4 MoV with faith, 1 MoV from Optics, 1 MoV from LToP)
2. Puppet the whole map -
6 points (93 puppets + Venice)
3. Obtain 9 or more Great Galleas's and keep them alive until the end of the game -
3 points (I had a metric ton of units near the end, but I don't think I lost any battleships)
4. Make MAD Money at some point during the game -
3 points (Nationalism helped with the number of units I had)
5. Build Colossus and Petra in Venice for extra trade routes -
4 points (Made a early tech detour to secure them)
Bonus Achievement. Annex a city -
0 point
The whole game I only trained a few Great Galleass and rush bought the rest to get the required nine for the third achievement. I also rush bought around 10 Great War Bombers. That is it.
So how did I reach a military supply of 230, you ask?
The first way was by buying CS which had a lot of military units, especially naval military units and more precisely Privateers. The second way was by upgrading these Privateers to Destroyers. It is quite expensive (around 390 Gold I think without Professional Army and Pentagon), but upgraded Privateers keep their Prize ships promotion. The Prize ships capture percentage seems to be based on Combat Strength differential, the higher it is in your favor, the higher your chance of capturing the ship. Destroyers get around 80% capture chance on Privateers and Frigates and not much lower on Ironclad. I also think it is influenced by any Boarding Party promotions you may have. So what happens if you capture 80% of all your opponents naval units and add them to your army? You end up with A LOT of units, that's what happens.
Conquest path
Japan first
then split my army in two
one half toward Polynesia
one half toward Austria
then both sides against the Huns
(Mongolia was already decimated by the Huns)
then Carthage
and finished with Greece which had the lead all game (amongst AIs) for an epic showdown
in which I decimated its armies in 2-3 turns
The endgame felt a bit tedious. Capturing 80+ cities does take some time even with 7-move Battleships on Archipelago. If I had not already completed the other achievements, I don't think I would have went for it. Unhappiness was only a problem in maybe the last 15 turns when I was conquering cities too fast and city resistance prohibited me from rush buying local happiness buildings in time. The last few turns where I took many CS also killed my happiness when I lost the boost from Porcelain, Jewelry and Cultural diplomacy. This game also permitted me to notice something I had never noticed before: it seems the number of rebel units that appear near your cities scales with the number of cities you possess in your empire as illustrates the following screens.
Tech path
I went Pottery > Writing
Then realizing I could complete GL in the low 30s, I took a risk and went for it.
Bronze Working then Iron Working from GL T30
Currency > Philosophy > Education > Optics
I went late Optics, because I wasn't sure if the MoV spawned would increase the GPP counter and delay the first GS. It turns out it does not. That was a major mistake and delayed expanding, cargo food route, exploring, trading, etc. Also, the AI seemed to have very weak production, so in hindsight it wasn't necessary to rush Iron Working and Currency that much. Getting GL should have raised some alarms in itself. Another big mistake that game was to delay conquest until getting Battleships. Some civilizations when reaching Ideologies went into Order city spam "I must settle every little island that exists" mode. I bribed Atilla to go to war with many civs, but I only saw him raze one city. In all game, I only saw three cities get razed and one was by a CS. Atilla did however take down Mongolia with the help of Carthage and Greece. Another dumb mistake was forgetting all about Circus Maximus. Also, I guess I should have went for Meritocracy since the base unhappiness of 3 per city became a problem with such an absurdly high number of cities.
Turned out to have Iron in the 4th(!) ring only - such a crap spot. Had to buy a bunch of lousy sea tiles to make Venice grow there.
I did spend all my gold buying Cargo Ships, so had to postpone a little to buy some CS with Iron.
You cant try to hide like that in the north with impunity when Autocratic-Enrico is raging.
