TSG 240 After Actions Thread

vadalaz

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In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state your victory/loss date (preferably in the post title) and describe your path to glory in this post! Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game.

Quick links: Upload submission | Announcement thread | Opening Actions

- In what order did you conquer the capitals? Who was the toughest foe?
- How many armies did you have, and what was their composition?
- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?
- What did you think about the Iroquois' unique bonuses in this game?
 
iroquois-west.png
iroquois-east.png

2024-03-02: T330 Domination Victory

Long time lurker, first time posting. Fun game!

T036-T067: Founded my four core expansions at Osinika (SW of the Fountain of Youth), Grand River (NW of Onondaga), Akwesasme (W of Mt. Kilimanjaro), and Buffalo Creek (SE of Onondaga).
T158-T177: Invaded Sweden with crossbows and knights. A small army captured and razed Birka (N of Antananarivo). A larger army of crossbows slowly pushed into Stockholm, which was protected by the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall, from roads built to the east.
T217-T234: During this period, William conquered India and Isabella conquered Portugal. I founded Brantford (NE of Kabul) to prepare for the invasion of the Netherlands.
T257-T263: Used artillery and what remained of my crossbow army to defend against a Swedish Carolean invasion.
T289-T308: William posed a diplomatic victory threat, so I allied Kabul and Antananarivo with gold and invaded the Netherlands with an army of paratroopers, artillery, and bombers. First took Amsterdam and then Groningen (SW of Amsterdam) with Iron Curtain courthouses.
T324-T330: Invaded Spain with stealth bombers and XCOM squads, quickly taking Lisbon and Madrid. I received Cordoba (SW of Madrid) in a peace deal shortly before capturing Delhi from the Dutch and winning the game.

I built a small number of Mohawk warriors for barbarian control in the early game (so many barbarians!). It's nice that they don't cost iron, so I had plenty to sell to then-friendly India and the Netherlands.
Longhouses are infamous for being worse than the workshops they replace, but on a boreal map, they may have been a slight advantage? I did work more lumber mills than usual, and deer tiles were excellent the entire game.
The Great Warpath was occasionally handy for shuffling my workers, but not in a game-changing way.
 
T168 domination victory. Continuing from the openings thread, I razed the strange Indian city on the way to the Netherlands, but perhaps I should not have. William did not have a lot of units (none of the AI did throughout this game), but a few pikes and swords are still scary for composite bowmen. The problem was that after rushing machinery, I did not have a city to upgrade my units in, and I had to be a bit careful to push into his lands, since this type of domination victory is all about taking care of your ranged units to obtain the overpowered range and logistics promotions.

I finally broke the Dutch defenses around T130, and then I went north towards Ghandi, who had built Great Wall in an expand. I ran into a few Indian knights, but I did not suffer many losses, except that I lost a scout because my treasury was depleted! Not sure I've had that before in all my hours of Civ 5. I needlessly wasted both my generals on Ghandi's GW, and when I went east to Spain I could have made good use of them, since Madrid was actually a very defensible city, and she did have two Tercios out. I lost a couple of units, but since my capital had done almost nothing besides spam units, I had sufficient reinforcements for Portugal. Lisbon was 46 strength when I arrived, which is generally not nice to fight into with crossbows, but with Statue of Zeus and a few range and logistics promoted crossbowmen, the city went down in a couple of turns. Selected in the final picture: the original scout archer with range, logistics, and march.

Iro_end.png

Some final notes: the barbarians were a real pain this game. It was to be expected that on such a map you can get barb camps all around your lands, especially since the beleaguered AI do not settle many cities. Especially early on, when units are at a premium and you would like to use all of them to push into the AI, having to keep three or four units behind to defend your lands from barbarian invasion can slow the attack down.

About the Iroquois civilization, I quite enjoyed playing them this game. I love the early movement of units inside your territory, and the longhouse tiles look cool. However, the downside is that you end up chopping far fewer forests than you normally would. I think any civ would have had a very good game on these lands, since the forests chops would have made for a very fast start, and underneath the forests were useful plains river tiles.
 
Finally won domination at turn 247.
My game did not go well. I went liberty but could not capitalize it. I had gold and happiness problems throughout the game. Even with commerce completed.
Maybe because I completely eliminated all enemies, so everybody hated my guts and didn't trade with me.
Also I lost too many units against Sweden slowing my whole game down. Even lost 2 scout upgraded to archers. Must have been playing really sloppy.
And I echo that the barbarians were indeed trouble!
 
Domination victory turn 131

Before the game, I created a map with the same settings to see what kind of map it is and who the Iroquois are. In this test game, I have there was a good capital with 2 hammers, 2 happiness resources and many food, but I didn't find any place for a second city. In addition, I was convinced of the fundamental possibility of winning this game before turn 100.

Therefore, when starting this game, my plan was simple: a quick domination from one city, nothing superfluous - only troops. For the same reason, I settled on copper. I started with 2 scouts and archery. The warrior went to the southeast, then past Kabul to the northeast to Hong Kong, where he was stuck in wars with barbarians for a long time. Unfortunately, he passed by the fountain, which I eventually found a little later than turn 50. In total, I collected more than a dozen ruins, but unfortunately there was not a single cultural one among them. Therefore, after 2 scouts and archer I built the monument. Both of my scouts turned into archers early, there were a lot of barbarians around, so there was no alternative to the choice of Honor. There were 3 wounded barbarian units of 10-20 hp around the capital only. Thanks to them, I quickly got the next institute - a free general, then a double experience, after which I decided that this was all I needed to win and moved on to Liberty: open, free worker, + 1 hammer, free settler (for the fountain) and the golden age at last.
About science, my path was like this - archery - bronze working - metalwork (for advanced bows) - pottery - writing (for embassies and planning) - iron working, etc.
After the monument was built, I built an archer, a spear, and bought another archer. I pumped everyone at Kilimanjaro and went to Stockholm. I started the war with Sweden very early in order to block ruins from scout, but without real military action. There were 3-4 units near Stockholm, but 5 archers quickly dealt with them and on the 47-48 turn I captured Stockholm. Then I went east and northeast to look for India, but having discovered the fountain of youth, I went to him first. On the 62nd turn, I declared war on India and here I made a serious mistake. Because I did not have time to scout the map properly at first, my 2 archers and 1 spear were "lost" on the map - fighting with the barbarians and continuing the exploration, I thought 4 archers, a spear and a warrior would be enough for me to easily capture Delhi, but so far I have been clearing 3-4 turns of warriors and archers around Delhi. Power Delhi grew from 16 to 21, there was a war elephant in the city itself and it was not possible to capture it quickly. Around turn 70+, I built a Statue of Zeus, brought 5 archer and went for the final assault. And a couple of turns before the capture, a Terracotta army was built in Delhi (+1 elephant and +1 advanced bow) I immediately lost one archer and decided not to retreat, which cost me 2 more archers and 1 spear, but I still captured Delhi (about 80 turn). I upgraded the 3 remaining archers and a warrior, bought/built a couple more bows and spears in Delhi, but I lost the pace of conquest.
I still wasn't familiar with Spain and I didn't know the map beyond the Delhi-Utrecht-Rotterdam-Amsterdam line. As a result, I made the wrong decision to go further east, capture an unknown capital, then Lisbon and then Amsterdam from 2 sides. As a result, while I was messing with a couple of pikemans and warriors for 10 turns near Madrid, Holland with its 5 cities built a bunch of units (advanced bows + pikemans). I started a war with them in advance by assembling a group of troops east and slightly south of Hong Kong, but he ignored it and sent the entire army to Delhi. I had to buy a wall and advanced bow, I tried to distract him from the rear, killed 4-5 units, but the city was supposed to fall, but at the last moment AI offered me peace and even Gold (resource) as compensation. I was lucky that I didn't have to capture Delhi again. In Lisbon, there were a couple of archers, a couple of warriors and a couple of swords, I captured it very easily.
And on turn 123, after 10 turns of the peace, I attacked Holland again. I had about 15 units in 2 armies, his units were dispersed, the only problem could be the Great Wall that he had built during the time of peace. But I could shoot cities from outside cultural borders. After capturing Utrecht, Rotterdam and Groningen, I spent 2 out of 5 generals to capture the territory around Amsterdam with the help of fortresses and easily and quickly took the city.

After the game, I replayed the game from turn 62. This time I again did not manage to capture Delhi before the terracotta army and it cost me the loss of a spear, but I captured the city on the same turn, it saved all 5 pumped archers. After upgrading them and the warrior and buying a mohawk in Delhi, I immediately headed to Amsterdam from the northeast. Without the piks and the Great Wall, the city fell very easily in about t92. Next, I divided the army: 2 advanced bows and 1 mohawk took Lisbon on turn 100, and 3+1(new) advanced bows and 1 mohawk took Madrid on turn 101.
If I hadn't initially left behind 2 archers and spear when attacking Delhi, I would definitely have finished before turn 100. So it's possible!

p.s. I don't have an English version of the game, so I'm not sure what the correct name is for the technology that allows you to build colloseums and what are the correct names for advanced bows )
 
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Won turn 176.

Could probably have been faster, I didn't take the optimal tech patch. After reaching Engineering, I decided I needed NC and detoured to Philosophy. Maybe I'd have been quicker if I'd gone for Machinery and XBs directly.
EDIT: Oh and I also grabbed Optics at some point because I thought my units would need to know how to swim, but they ended up never doing that

Ruins were good to me this game: 2x culture, 2x pop, Archery, and some gold (+ 1 map)
My pantheon was Dance of the Aurora
Policies: Full Tradition, then Commerce opener, then 2 in Patronage

Capitals went in this order:
t92 Stockholm
t138 Delhi
t149 Amsterdam
t161 Lisbon
t176 Madrid

None of them were particularly tough opponents. However, after DOWing Netherlands and taking one of their cities (the one east of Hong Kong, which I intended to keep to upgrade my CBs to XBs in), Gandhi attacked me from behind. So my troops, which were already on the borders of Amsterdam, had to march back.

I did a peace deal with Netherlands in which I took another city of theirs, which I razed. Then conquered Delhi and afterwards, returned to take Amsterdam.

The rest was straightforward. Portugal had Great Wall in their secondary city, but didn't have much in terms of cultural borders. They didn't even own all the tiles in the 2nd ring so some of my XBows could move in easily.

I then took Spain in a pincer movement, my main army moving north from out of Lisbon, and a secondary army of 4 XBs, 1 Knight, and 1 Longsword attacking Madrid from the north. Both armies razed one city each, and arrived on Madrid's doorstep simultaneously. It fell quickly after a few turns of siege.

I was allied with Hong Kong for most of the game. It was in a good strategic location.
I had a good chuckle in turn 147 as I got a message: "Hong Kong has set the city of Sigtuna ablaze" (in fact, Sweden and Portugal had double DOWed me at some point. I ignored Sweden as they didn't have any troops left. But Hong Kong took care of them for me :))

Here's a couple of screenshots:
Screenshot_20240303_014335.png

Hong Kong razing a Swedish city

Screenshot_20240303_231021.png

Victory

A fun map and a great game! I might want to replay it with a better tech path and see by how much I can improve my win time.
 
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Thanks to everyone who tried out this map! I'm glad to hear you had some good campaigns with your Kilimanjaro/FoY supertroops. I replayed the map for a Domination victory and ended up with a turn 137 win. It was neat to see @Bemep42 beat that by a few turns with a unit-first strategy. In my game I built the NC before fully committing to conquest. Fighting through a few Dutch cities cost me quite a few turns, and if I had accepted a few more losses I think I could have still taken Lisbon and Madrid.

Here are a few progress shots from my game:

Iroquois50.png
Iroquois100.png
Iroquois128.png
Iroquois137.png
 
Domination victory turn 154.

I got so much wrong, but my game is picking up, the weak part is still civ 5 mechanics and tricks.. in this game I couldn’t work out why my unit had a mountain altitude training promotion.. it was only half way through the game that I learned about the properties of Mt. Killi. Hehe. However, on reflection, it would have been a few turns detour and I am unsure if it would be worth the loss of turns for the faster mountain movement later in the game.

My strategy was weak. I marched my army west to Stockholm, only to bring it back east to Amsterdam, by which time it was looking a tad weak (and no Mt Killi bonuses). I had to rely on xbows for Spain and India, and got them on turn 120. There was a lot of marching in this game. There was no need for the NC , those resources would have been better spent on the army. Very little infrastructure was required to win this game. I built too much.

With hindsight, I think Amsterdam would have been an easy first target, Portugal would roll over and Spain would be easier early in the game.. then to Gandhi, who can defend, so maybe he would be a better first target? Then onto Sweden.

With a secondary army being built in the capital (and no NC) a win before crossbows is possible, T100-120, but if not wait until xbows on T120 and finish somewhere between T120 and 130.

I have reinforced my notion that the NC is only needed for Dom victories on Deity level or Immortal standard size maps and bigger (unless you want to play with more fun troop units).

Anyway, that’s what might have been.

What I actually did was open Liberty, opened Honor, then citizenship for the worker then worked through Honor, double xp a priority. I wasnt going to build science but I got Writing from a ruin and decided to go for the NC (which I got at T93). Early game was beeline to comp bows and Stockholm fell on T75, NC built T93.
Tired and lazy game play saw 3 units lost for the capture of Amsterdam on T107, but they were all sacrifices I made, 1 cb, 1 scout and 1 warrior. This is a game cheat / exploit really, utilizing bad AI code, this strategy would never work vs a real opponent.

The problem was I attacked Amsterdam from the north, mainly, and met his troops, who reinforced every other turn, It was actually the archers in the south who did most of the city take down, and the whole army would have had an easier time from the south. I took a city for peace, next to Delhi, but decided to raze it and go for Portugal.
Portugal rolled over T119, as she always does.
Heal and xbow upgrades T120 and north to Spain. I got my economy into shape, decided to take representation for the golden age, rather than complete the Honor tree at T128. Madrid was captured after a satellite city on T140. Finished Honor tree around this time.

Built a secondary army for defence and CS quests for the final takedown of Delhi.

My army was ridiculous after the conquest of Spain, another indication of wasted resources and effort. But why not have some fun? I declared war on Gandhi to give him 10 turns or so to prepare. I had to go through Cahokia (ally to India) to reach Delhi, while my assembled secondary army harassed the Indian troops. Cahokia T147. 1 turn for optics, that’s where the NC comes in handy. Delhi T154. Left with an army to take on the world, except there's no one left to conquer.


Barbarians were a pain but good xp and culture. My CS were mainly culture gifts, I had no faith through the game until I captured Amsterdam and Lisbon, ended up with a stack of useless wonders, but I did build statue of Zeus. In the later game I had 40+ faith per turn and was building mosques every 4 turns. I never had chance to found a pantheon or religion. My first faith points came after all the religion slots were already taken.

That was a lot of troop marching for what was supposed to be a small map. I don’t like building monuments early, its scout scout archers. Then monument, maybe.

I like the Tradition open then Honor, but early workers is an issue, its a slow start to build an army and the army captures the real estate from your hard working neighbours. This game worked well with Liberty opening but the low city expansion is a factor for all sorts of reasons.
In future I might consider, 1. open Liberty, 2. open Honor, 3.open Tradition or Citizenship or Warrior code, depending on game, worker steals etc) then towards Military tradition, and then maybe even pick up opening Tradition if it didn’t happen on the third policy.

Higher Waffle.png
 
T185 domination is quite fast for me, as I am a compulsive builder. Had I not built the Artist's guild, perhaps I could have had two strong armies when only Delhi and Madrid remained. On the other hand, as the Black Adder, sorry Vegetable, said, treasury was an issue and the two golden ages generated from great artists were not entire useless. But the writers' guild was.:o

Continued from spoiler 1:
Amsterdam captured on t150. Signed open borders before they woke up from the daze and started hating my guts. I hope passing through the Netherlands en route to Delhi and Madrid will deter them from trying to take Amsterdam back.

3rd golden age in 153, 12 turns.
T163 captured Lisbon.

168 – Great Engineer, no 2. Now selling buildings to keep up research towards Chemistry (8 turns left). But what do I do with chemistry if I can’t upgrade the trebuchets? My army has gotten economically unwieldy.

169 – Printing Press from Spy in the Netherlands. War on Spain, but unfortunately Panama City is allied with them, so it’s messy. I have troops near Delhi too, but they are not ready. Tough decision, but I don’t think I can take on both Spain and India at the same time. When India asks me about the purpose of nearby troops, I say they are moving through, which is the current truth.

170 – Leaning Tower of Pisa hurried by the engineer > Great scientist > chemistry. 1 trebuchet upgraded. Economy improving thanks to pillaging and some plundered trade routes.

173 – Great writer > Patronage opener. Quite unnecessary but I just find it hard to build nothing but military.

179 – Madrid.

185 – Delhi.

Following the reasoning on turn 169 above, I will definitely take more chances early in the next domination game. Perhaps I had a bit too much respect for the difficulty level.

Enclosed is a picture I'm calling the Stopping for Lunch Bug.

GOTM240-Stopping for lunch bug.png
 
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Excellent! I think we may go from a game where the closest neighbour was rather easy to cope with, to one where the dealings with the next-door neighbour will be extremely interesting.
 
DomV T409. Wow, what a game! Several times I was sure there was no way I was going to win this. And I almost called it quits a few times too. Lots of interesting things: Something happened that has never happened before. I was being harassed multiple times by a technologically inferior civ but he didn't let a little tech deficit deter him from DoWing me several times. And I made a stupid mistake that could have cost me the game. But Hiawatha could not be denied.

Summary:
- In what order did you conquer the capitals? Who was the toughest foe? -- Went for Gustav first since he was closest and I had to take out one of his Mt. Kili cities in the early game anyway. Then a long, long, long delay before I took my second capital - Amsterdam, which was by far the toughest; this is where I thought I had lost it. After that, it was smooth sailing for Portugal, Spain and finally Gandhi (with a very fitting end for him, see below).

- How many armies did you have, and what was their composition? -- Only one army. I've never gotten the knack of having multiple armies.

- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them? -- Four self-founded cities (see final screenshot below). One of them late in order to have a city near Amsterdam to base my attack from. (After my stupid mistake of forgetting to stop razing William's city that I conquered near Amsterdam).

- What did you think about the Iroquois' unique bonuses in this game? -- Bonuses were awesome early game for movement and city connection. The longhouse did help with production throughout the game though.

Some details:

After conquering Stockholm, the Iroquois army moved toward the Dutch. Unfortunately, William was on a tear; I've never seen him play so well. He had the tech lead, and the lead in CS Allies. In fact, at one point, he had them all. This has never happened to me before and it made the war so much more difficult:
Spoiler At war with every City State :
War with all CS.jpg

He also managed to stay one tech leap ahead of me at all times. I got Artillery and was closing in on his capital when he gets GWBombers, and I have to halt my advance because I don't have any defense against them. Then when I get GWBombers and Triplanes, he gets Bombers. And when I did conqueror Nijmegen, nearby Amsterdam, I start razing it to get it down to 1 pop so as to not cause me unhappiness but it is in a good spot to aid in the attack on Amsterdam. I had planned on Citadeling my way in close to Amsterdam. But dagnabit, I forgot to stop razing the city! I ended up founding one of my own later to provide healing and cover. Edit, Oh I also lost 4 GWBombers when Nijmegen disappeared!
Spoiler Major Mistake :
Forgot Nimogen.jpg


When Gustav attacks for the umpteenth time, I'm worried. But finally, William is willing to make peace - and he's even offering me a city. I don't want a city, but I'll take 5000 gold and 150 gpt. That was his mistake, he never should have made peace and allowed me to recuperate. In the few years of peace, I was able to buy some of the strategically placed CS out from under him with his own gold he had just given me!

William must have been paying Gustav to attack me. I was ahead of Sweden in tech; when he attacked with Carolinians, I had GWInfantry. When he attacked with GWInfantry, I had Infantry and Rocket Artillery. But I'll give it to him, he tried his best. I didn't want a city of his but I finally just pillaged all his land and hoped that would keep him from coming back for a 5th try.
Spoiler Seriously Gustav, again? :
Gustav attacks again.jpg


Finally, on T374 I'm able to capture Amsterdam. I don't know how those of you who captured it with XB were able to do it. That was some seriously rough terrain. It took me until Rocket Artillery/Bombers/Mobile Sams to finally get it.
Spoiler The fall of Amsterdam :
Fall of Amsterdam.jpg


Portugal and Spain were easy pickings after that. I was way ahead of them in tech and they had easy land to conquerer. India was a little more difficult because of the distance and rough terrain - and William blocking the way. But in a fitting end for Gandhi, he goes out in a blaze of glory as I nuke his cities to ashes.
Spoiler Nuking Gandhi :
Fitting end for Gandhi.jpg
 
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T197 finish. I normally get into trouble when attempting these so I never post them, but this time things went surprisingly well. I guess deity is significantly harder than immortal because a couple of times I forgot I was playing on immortal. This is my first game of civ in a couple months, so I didn't expect to have to write up a report, but here I am. Fortunately, I can use the message log to jog my memory.

Early game felt sluggish, but that's to be expected on this map. There seemed to be an excess of bonus resources than normal on borealis, so it got better once I got granaries up and running. Never played Iroquois, but I heard that their longhouses were bad. With all of the forest tiles around and going with a liberty honor build, I actually didn't even notice a difference. Those unimproved forest tiles were lowkey handy early on, and when I finally got them improved, my small cities were pretty good for how small they were.

Didn't bother with religion at all this game, thought it probably would have helped with gold and happiness. I just struggle to find build time for shrines in the early game, and didn't feel like fooling with it this time. Hoped to get lucky and have AIs spread their religions to me, but they didn't have anything good. Happiness usually kills my deity domination runs. I've definitely had to finagle getting above -20 from -50 in only a couple turns before my captured cities flip over to the AI in the past. In this game, between Fountain of Youth, Taj Mahal, being allied with Antananarivo from very early on, and lots of horses for circuses in every city, I was at +20 at one point, and I only went negative in the beginning when expanding and once briefly while burning a few useless cities.

Founded Osininka T29 towards Stockholm with my free liberty settler since they were the closest. I didn't see any really good spots to settle, so that was my only expand for a while. Settled the other cities around T50 or so after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, because I wasn't sure if just 2 cities would be viable. If I had to do over again, might not bother settling Grand River, but it turned out okay. Akwesasme with the Fountain of Youth was nice just for the extra build queue, happiness, and a forest path to conquer lands in the east later on. Finally annexed Stockholm T87 without losing a single troop. He had built Hanging Gardens, so it quickly outpaced my 1st expand. I went ahead and finished him off while waiting for builds to complete, like Terracotta Army. I was surprised that wonder was still around, but we take those. Just upgraded my last comp bowmen too before it finished, I had a sizeable army to put Gandhi down T118. Would have been a nightmare to push into without Kilimanjaro.

For some reason, Great Wall and Statue of Zeus still hadn't been built, so I built those in my cap and 1st expand so I didn't have to deal with those from the AI. That's pretty rare to get Great Wall in. I was making do with half a dozen comp bows and mohawks, and didn't have much else to build somehow. Markets were researched a bit late, and I couldn't afford any more troops or buildings anyways. Gold was a struggle, I was negative for most of the early game, but capturing cities got me just enough to get by. I had xbows researched, but didn't have money to upgrade, so DOW Netherlands to plunder two caravans, got 3 xbows and went in with the rest comp bows. Lost most of them, taking Amsterdam T155, but the one that survived I upgraded to xbows and by this point I had many more coming out back home and slowly marching their way east. Engineered Taj Mahal some time around here to make sure I had enough happiness and gold to finish the game.

Spain had an army marching for Amsterdam as well, and almost took it from me. I let her take Utrecht while my forces gathered and healed, and then pushed her weakened forces out of the area easily. When I got to Seville, Portugal was about to do the same thing to Spain that Spain did to the Netherlands, but this time I DOW early, and just started shooting everything indiscriminately. Portugal had a tech lead and got to muskets first, and had a massive 25 pop city, so after I took Seville (T177), I sent everyone I could spare to Lisbon. Lost 2 xbows a turn to a strength 42 Lisbon and a couple of muskets, but I ignored them and had enough xbows by this point to replace them as they went down. Lisbon finally fell T189. It cost me a lot of crossbows, but I had plenty left to finish Spain off. Annexed Barcelona just to buy a couple of newly researched cannons, but it was overkill at that point. Ended the game with 10 xbows and 6 muskets, so just imagine what I had before the battle of Lisbon.

Spoiler :
Screenshot (1116).png

Spoiler :

Screenshot (1117).png


Spoiler :

Screenshot (1118).png

 
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