TSG11 After Action Report

[Monthar]

I usually go
1 trad
3 lib
1 trad (wonder)
(patro till Astro 1-2)
3 Freedom
1-2 Trad (get museum/opera with it)
2 freed/Patr dependent on how many CS
fill Patronage
fill rest

That's only 4 trees. What's the 5th one?

 

[MadDjinn]

That's only 4 trees. What's the 5th one?

I'm betting it's Piety since that's a staple of culture games. (free policies and all)

 

[RedRover57]

My hats off to anyone who finished this cultural victory in under 300 turns. I finished on turn 345 and thought I played it pretty well. I settled 3 cities (capitol by the mountain, second city on the N coast by the furs and third on the NW coast by the whales) and played peaceful the whole game. The only DoW against me was a last ditch effort by Monty who promptly sued for peace after losing a few units to my CS allies. But Monty had a rough start due to barbs and he never really recovered. Alex had a huge army and was hostile most of the game but never attacked. He wiped out Monty but then did nothing with his army for the last 100 or so turns. I guess I had enough units defending my capitol (4 land and 4 ranged) to deter him, plus having all of the defensive SP's and H. Castle.

My capitol built a ton of wonders - the only major ones I missed were SH (it went fast and I was building the NC first) and Ankgor Wat. I did not sign a single RA the whole game since by the time I found the other civs I had the tech lead and instead used my cash to buy up CS allies and keep my defending units upgraded. Because of the potential threat from Alex I ended up filling in more of the bottom of the tech tree (i.e., through Artillery) than I usually would for a peaceful cultural game.

The policy trees I took were Tradition, Piety, Patronage, Freedom and Order.

I could have easily won a diplomatic victory quite a few turns earlier but went for the cultural VC. At the end I was running close to 800 beakers/turn and over 500 culture/turn, and my capitol had around 30 pop.

 

[RedRover57]

A few additional comments regarding the AI in my game. Basically, the AI civs were completely incompetent:

Monty - He was totally gimped at the start by barbarians. They slowed down his development so much that he never recovered.

Ramsses - It looked like he was going for a cultural victory to start. He built SH and had 2 policy trees filled by mid-game, but for some reason decided to start expanding and helping Darius wipe out both Sully and Rome. So he was never a factor.

Darius - He dominated the other continent and looked like he was going for a diplo win mid-game (with up to 7 CS allies at one point), but he never built the UN and ended the game with tens of thousands of gold in reserve. I easily bribed a few of his CS away from him and he never tried to get them back.

Alex - He had a massive army but ultimately did nothing with it other than wipe out Monty. He ran his economy into the ground and had a tough time upgrading all those units, so he fell behind in tech and I could easily deter him from from attacking me with my few but upgraded defenders. For some reason he only had one CS ally this game, likely due to lack of cash.

Spoiler :

This screenshot shows a portion of Alex's troops just sitting in the water for the last 75 or so turns, basically doing nothing. Even if he had tried something he would have been dead to my heavily fortified and defended capitol. Plus I had a couple of subs and destroyers lying in wait to take out his helpless embarked troops.

I would like to see a deity game of the month since it seems that the AI is so incompetent that the only way it has a chance is to massively cheat. Although, I find deity games to be pretty tedious.

 

[ssjos]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 11
Date submitted: 2011-05-11
Game date: 1730AD Cultural victory
Turns played: 256
Base score: 683
Final score: 1339


Got a horrible start. Moved settler 2 turns to the left in search for food but I only found desert and coast.

So i moved it back for another 3 turns and settled 2 squares to the right of the start pos on my 6th move. Found early eldorado and bought second settler, which was founded at the end of the river towards monty. (nothing very useful from all the huts though (1 gold and a few maps etc. and 1 upgrade for a scout))

Almost gave up when monty first declared me, however, my crappy 4 pop second city on hill with an archer actually manged to defend quite well.

Got beaten to SH and GL and CI, but manged to get oracle down. Monty broke 2 RAs so my tech was extremly slow. When i finally reached astro I sent 2 scouts and 1 worker to scout the world which worked out quite ok.

I sold shitloads of cotton, sugar and marble and tried to make RAs, however, the computer civs didnt really like me and they were short on gold early game so I didnt get that many.

Instead I invested alot in allying city states and went for city state science SP and did quite alot of manual science.

Somehow, my cities were eventually fairing better and I had quite high population. This was used to build some wonders, markets etc. and I started to out-tech the AI (using both my own science + RAs).

Monty kept declaring war, but I had allied both the CS that were between him and me so he didnt really cause any damage. My tech and gold was flowing well, and after i build sinistien chapel and lovre i got some culture also.

Rest of game was mostly more selling cotton and more buying RA. I got huge production towards the end and built like 10 more semi-useless wonders while waiting for policys to finish.

Kinda messed up my tech somehow as I expected to get my late built porclein tower out so I could pop radio. Instead someone built it when it was 1 turn left and I had to reasearch radio manually for 15 turns

Finally, I manged to build the Utopia project in only 8 turns , hardcore production city + 3 chopped forests.

 

[ButSam]

Glad to hear I am not the only one that really struggled. Wanted to try to get into this one, fired it up, and I got pummeled, so I reloaded and tried again...not much change. I've never won on this level; won on King once before the very first patch, when the game was MUCH simpler than it is now...but I got destroyed worse than I thought, even with reloading in the middle and trying different techniques, so I am at a loss.

Perhaps the game difficulty is ramping up with the new patch especially, and it is time to try a game (or at least the next Culture game) at King level?

 

[Aaronius]

Glad to hear I am not the only one that really struggled. Wanted to try to get into this one, fired it up, and I got pummeled, so I reloaded and tried again...not much change. I've never won on this level; won on King once before the very first patch, when the game was MUCH simpler than it is now...but I got destroyed worse than I thought, even with reloading in the middle and trying different techniques, so I am at a loss.

Perhaps the game difficulty is ramping up with the new patch especially, and it is time to try a game (or at least the next Culture game) at King level?

The last two maps have been very tricky for the required victory condition IMO.

 

[Ogaw]

Won on turn 329, made som mistakes but I dont see how I could do it in under 300. Maybe a better result next time.

 

[leif erikson]

Won on turn 329, made som mistakes but I dont see how I could do it in under 300. Maybe a better result next time.

Welcome to CFC and GoTM.

Please read the thread as some players did manage sub-300 victories.

The last two maps have been very tricky for the required victory condition IMO.

Must be learning.
Please remember, never trust a mapmaker.

 

[subber]

first submission - most exciting game I played in Civ5!

Turn: 402
1982AD
Cultural victory

Spoiler :

Was a long way to get there.
Found Eldorado first, at the same time met Monte
Wasted a thought on wiping him off before investing into cultural stuff but discarded the thought.
Used gold to build granary and worker
Settled second city at coast within range of El Dorado and cottons (however going east of Mekka might have been a good choice as well due to lots of hammers)
Tried Stonehenge, but other civ was faster, as with almost all wonders (sixtine chapel, Eiffel tower, redentor…). Did some random wonders including library and pyramids, later Kreml.

Allied with Cape Town, then Monte declared war on it, and that’s when I declared war on Monte. Managed to defend Cape Town for a while but then he took it. He was strong and settled the continent until east of Mekka.
With 4-5 camel archers and a great general I managed to take two cities east of Mekka from him, leaving him the southern part including Cape Town and Monaco.
I never got iron until Monte had musketeers, I managed to defend with 4-5 camel archers.

Met other Civs, basically all friendly. Egypt quite ahead of me and Alex with a huge army. Traded with everybody, as much as I could. Egypt built one wonder after the other and was ahead in social policies. At the same time Egypt allied with almost all CS.
I bought myself into ally with all the cultural CS ensuring a new SP every ~10 turns.

Kept Monte away from my cities with canons and later artilleries, very powerful. I use a great General with 3 artilleries and like one longsword or rilfeman to defend. Additional build fortress and aim at building Kreml and getting the respective SP to make the cities stronger.

When I took Cape town he offered peace along with 4 cities of his, I changed one city for 88 GPT ensuring cash flow for almost the rest of the game. Burned one city, gave one to Darios for nothing, one to Napoleon for declaring war to Egypt to ensure happiness remains.

It was a head to head race with Egypt in policies but he was in future when I was entering modern age. However when Napoleon declared war on Egypt, a world war began, and Napoleon and Alex declared war on me. At the same time UN was up, but nobody got more than 7 votes, I sometimes had to throw 2000g at a CS to keep it allied. Egypt must have switched to UN-victory as goal, didn’t make progress anymore.

No enemy troops showed up on my continent and I finished Utopia in turn 402. Most exciting game ever where during the course of the game I already got the feeling I would fail… luckily didn’t give up!

 

[burfmeister31]

This was my first attempt at playing the game of the month. I decided to just go with one city since the cultural victory gets progressively harder as you build more cities. Things were going alright, I settled Mecca at the start point given. I initially went with the Liberty track and made a beeline to the Meritocracy social policy. With the Great Engineer that provided I rushed Stonehenge. I tried to get to Philosophy as quickly as possible to build the Oracle but the turn I started to build it someone else built it and I don't know who it was. I then decided to build the Pyramids instead and was able to complete them.

Things were relatively peaceful until about the Medieval age. Montezuma declared war but never really brought any force to bear and I was able to easily beat back whatever single unit he sent my way with my two pikeman and crossbowman. I became allies with Florence rather early on.

Then Alexander started to build some cities near me. He built one near Quebec City and the other around the Cotton, Furs, and El Dorado to the north. We remained at peace however and I was able to build the Porcelain tower. I rushed it with a Great Engineer.

I continued to make progress and I finished the Liberty, Piety, Freedom, and Patronage tracks by about turn 315. I had also completed all of the national wonders which was a great help. I became allies with Monaco near this time as well but I was well behind in terms of technology.

Then Alexander decided to attack. By this time I had upgraded all of my units to rifleman and I had 5 of them but Alexander had modern infantry, paratroopers, and rocket artillery. I was easily beaten and Mecca was taken.

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome to the GoTM and CFC.

No enemy troops showed up on my continent and I finished Utopia in turn 402. Most exciting game ever where during the course of the game I already got the feeling I would fail… luckily didn’t give up!

That's the spirit and Congrats.

Then Alexander decided to attack. By this time I had upgraded all of my units to rifleman and I had 5 of them but Alexander had modern infantry, paratroopers, and rocket artillery. I was easily beaten and Mecca was taken.

Alex can sure be a pain. Sorry to hear of your loss.
playing it out.
You can get revenge next time...

 

[Neuro]

Finally got some free time this weekend to play Civ, so I loaded up the GotM and went to town!

This was an interesting game for me because it's nearly identical to the first HoF Beta Gauntlet, which was also Arabia and Culture Victory, so I had a lot of experience with this type of game. In culture games, I always follow the same basic path: never build another city, and puppet the nearby AI cities. With Arabia it's even more important to grab some puppets and hook them up to the trade network to take full advantage of the UA.

Spoiler :

I knew from the starting screenshot that I wanted to either move 1W and settle on the cotton, or settle in place. I finally decided to settle in place, as I dislike losing a whole turn of development. But as they say, no plan survives initial contact, and with my very first move, I sent the warrior east along the river, I saw that third cotton. Now I had to decide whether to SiP or move E and settle by the mountain. I had previously discounted the idea because the Observatory isn't that important to me, because when I get access to it, I need my cash and production for other things. Also, the last GotM didn't have a second type of lux, so I thought maybe this was it. I eventually decided that a slow opening was ok, since I would be getting 6 Cotton eventually, and that would power some nice trading.

Spoiler :

I settled E by the mountain, continued sending my warrior east until he hit coastline + a ruins (+1 pop), and turned him south. This is where something interesting happened. I met Monty here, right by Cape Town, and his scout landed between me and a barb camp, which attacked his scout and took it to half health. I decided to take a chance, and jumped his scout with my warrior, and then took out the barb camp (which was hurt from attacking the scout) next turn. I figured it was best to stop Monty from exploring up north, plus it put him on the defensive early on.

Spoiler :

I finished a scout and sent him west. Got 2 ruins (upgrade to archer and Calender!), then hit Quebec and had to turn north. Found another ruins (culture) and El Dorado, which was undiscovered. At this point, I started thinking that the north was isolated, since I was still finding ruins. I finished building a monument and was gonna buy a worker with my new cash, but my warrior (which had continued south exploring) ran into Monty who was busy fighting barbs and left his worker unprotected. Instead of buying a worker, I bought a Granary and held the rest for a Library, which I was about to get. Grabbed the worker and immediately made peace with Monty. I sent the worker back home and kept the warrior moving south, where I discovered that Monty and Me were almost certainly alone.

Spoiler :

My initial research path was Pottery, (Calender), Writing, Philosophy, Sailing, Optics. I was hoping I could find some other civs before Astro, so I started pushing down the top of the tree.

My initial build order was Scout, Monument, Stonehenge (just a few turns, till I got Writing), National College (bought Library and Granary), Oracle, Stonehenge, and since no one had finished GL, I worked on that.

As soon as I hit Optics, I sent the warrior out along the coast looking for other civs. I found Greece, but no one else, which was quite a disappointment. I traded with Monty and Greece both and made RAs with both, though I was fairly sure Monty would break his. I ended up parking my warrior in that small gap just north of Capetown and Monaco, and had the Archerscout keep the capital barb-free.

I kept hoping monty would build a city at that gap; with wheat, cotton, and a river, it would have made a great puppet, but he never did. He did expand to 5 cities quickly though, and even built Hanging Gardens, which I thought was very nice of him. Surprisingly, he went the entire RA without breaking it, though he DID launch an attack shortly afterwards. Monty's RA gave me Civil Service, Alex's gave me Education (both courtesy of tech blocking), and the GL gave me Astronomy like 3 turns later.

Spoiler :

My Social Policies were: Tradition, Aristocracy, Liberty, Citizenship, Patronage, Philanthropy, and at this point I hit Astronomy, so I filled in Freedom, Constitution, and Free Speech.

Once I got Astro, I sent my Archerscout out looking for other civs, and purchased two chariot archers. I was beelining to Chivalry for the Camel Archers, which are one of the best citykillers in the game, especially early on. I screened the chariot archers behind the fortified warrior, and managed to kill off all of the jaguar warriors he sent north. The Archerscout found the cluster of citystates to the west, then bumped into Sulemain, Ramses, and Darius, finally giving me the cash I needed. I decided against RAs, as I had already hit Renaissance Era and it would have cost me too much, plus I used Oxford Uni and my first GS to get Navigation and Archaeology, so there wasn't much else I wanted to RA.

Spoiler :

Once I hit Chivalry, I upgraded the two chariot archers to Camel Archers and moved them south, taking out Monty's cities one by one. It wasn't the quickest way to do it, but it was completely safe. The archers would duck into range, shoot the city, then duck out, and the warrior stayed out till the city was almost dead, then it went in and finished it off. I took two cities north of Monty's capital, then when I moved into position he sued for peace, offering me all his cash, gold, and 2 of his remaining cities, leaving him with his capital and one tiny city all the way in the desert to the south, which I didn't want anyway.

Elsewhere in the world, I had been forced to buy another warrior to protect my capital from pesky barbs, and right about this time I finally got Iron Working. I upgraded both warriors to swords, and moved them south to prepare for the treaty expiration. Once ten turns were up, I rushed Monty's capital and took it, leaving him the tiny little city to the south. Naturally, he sued for peace ASAP, and I finished my conquest of the Aztecs with five shiny new puppets. I had been running a road down to his northernmost city, and Monty had kindly roaded up all his own cities for me, so once that linked up, my cash problems were eased considerably.

Spoiler :

After building the Great Library, I built Chichen Itza and the Porcelain Tower. I used Meritocracy to get a GE that built Louvre, and after the tower I believe I finally started on the Sistine Chapel. In case you're wondering (no pun intended), I didn't build a single normal building (except Monument) till almost the end of the game. I traded cotton, marble, and sugar to anyone and everyone for gold and gpt, and bought up most buildings. I waited until I had 4 cities and had bought an Opera House before I took Legalism, so that it would give me a Museum in my capital (those things are just too expensive), then worked on Hermitage. My capital was always building wonders, with Marble and Aristocracy helping out tremendously.

I kept selling my luxuries to keep my happiness below the first Golden Age until I had gotten Chichen Itza built. Once it was built, I was able to keep in Golden Ages for a long while. First GA helped finish Porcelain Tower and Sistine Chapel, and then I burned a GG to finish Hermitage. Educated Elite gave me an Engineer, which I used on Taj Mahal for another GA, followed by the GAs in Piety and Liberty. This led me all the way through to Telegraph, which I believe I got in turn 204. I had timed a triple great person pop in Mecca to give me an Artist, Engineer and Scientist a few turns before I finished Military Science, and when I completed MilScience I bulbed Steam Power, Electricity, and Telegraph in turn 204.

Spoiler :

The Engineer pushed Cristo to a 4-turn build, and after that I need about 25 turns to finish up the policies. I remember starting Utopia on turn 233 and it needing 11 turns to build. Sadly, I didn't have the tech to reach Solar Plant, but I did manage to build Hydro Plant the turn I finished my 5 trees. At first I thought I was screwed on Aluminum, but there was some up by El Dorado, so I used my free settler to drop a city right on top of it as soon as I finished my fifth policy tree, and bought the hydro plant immediately. Eleven turns later, I got a Cultural Vic in the year 1670 (Turn 244).

Spoiler :

I read a lot of people saying this was a very hard map, I'd have to disagree. You begin with a strong starting spot; river, lots of luxuries, and marble. You are in a very defensible area, with a narrow entrance you can use as a chokepoint. Surrounding you are four city-states, two culture and two maritime, with three difference resources between them (including two you can't get on your own). You have El Dorado in a spot that almost guarantees you will be the one to find it, and multiple Ancient Ruins nearby. Your nearest neighbor is an aggressive expansionist (which is what you want) and you don't have to worry about him teaming up with someone else to kill you.

Now, granted, you only have two easily accessible trading partners, and one of them is an unreliable psychopath, but all things considered, this is a fine map. Now, LAST gotm, that was a hard map. I messed that game up so badly I didn't even submit a game, but THIS one is just fine.

Anyway, I hope people enjoyed this write-up. I know it was quite lengthy, but hopefully some of the newer players will glean some insight into Culture games with it.

 

[Taronas]

Ok, I'm guilty of not submitting the first playthrough that I lost

I read all reports carefully and some more strategy articles and I tried again and this time i made it - barely but still I won on Emperor! Build the usual 3 cities over time, got lots of nice wonders. Instead of overreacting to Montys DOW (He declared later this time but war lasted until the end) I only build a handful of units and upgraded them over the course of the game. They were used mostly to help Florence defend Montys attacks. Alex did not show up on our continent this time and was never a thread at all.

Florence: Great Ally! They asked for lots of things like "certain type of Great person", "road", "meed one other civ" etc. which I could all met and I was at about 900pt with them in the end but still, Aegypt would throw it's money on Florence to be their Ally.

Aegypt: the real enemy this time. Although he did not DOW me (he even joined in against Monty but never came across the ocean) he was running hard for Diplo. It was very close at the end: During the 12 rounds I needed to build the Utopia I struggled to keep my allied buddies on my side, sold everything I could to get enough money. And managed twice to keep Ramsess at 9 of 10 votes and then: Victory!

It was already past 2000AD but I'm still proud of winning this one

 

[Taronas]

Anyway, I hope people enjoyed this write-up. I know it was quite lengthy, but hopefully some of the newer players will glean some insight into Culture games with it.

Definitely, thank you!
Although your story sounds like it was a walk in the park which it definitely wasn't for me

 

[Tabarnak]

Great game Neuro! Tks for the write-up.

Both Oracle and the GL are certainly a nice boost. 1 city only is clearly the best path even if you don't have a coastal start(throwing scouts in oceans can do the job). And successful RAs.

 

[tommynt]

Now, granted, you only have two easily accessible trading partners, and one of them is an unreliable psychopath, but all things considered, this is a fine map. Now, LAST gotm, that was a hard map. I messed that game up so badly I didn't even submit a game, but THIS one is just fine.

Maybe u have just been lucky with Monty declaring war few turns after RA agreement ended instead few turns before end?
U should knoew how much of a difference thats makes ..
10-15 turn later astro = 10-15 turns later win

In my game Monty declared war 3 times just allways few turns before RA ended, sure I should have known after 1. time ...
Also hes closest city was like 12 tiles away from me - donnu about puppeting such stuff ..
Finding greece was also not THAT easy for me - the "obvious" bridges been in north west of the ciyt state and later again west of another - both ended in "nothing".

Well gz on your win, but I truly wonder about AI acting when monty makes full RA with u after u declared war on him early on and I am superfriendly (gifted even back a worker from a barb camp) to him and he still declares war for no reason

 

[Neuro]

Maybe u have just been lucky with Monty declaring war few turns after RA agreement ended instead few turns before end?
U should knoew how much of a difference thats makes ..
10-15 turn later astro = 10-15 turns later win

When did you sign your first RA with Monty? I did mine the turn he went into the Classical Age, which was turn 43 or 44. I also sold him my marble the same turn to drain his cash and gpt, so he wouldn't have the gold to fight, and it slowed him down long enough for the RA to run it's course.

Monty is coded to be a warmonger, that's all it is. I can't be sure, but I think he only respects aggressive civs. His [Friendly] tag actually said "You two have gone to war in the past, but he doesn't seem to hold it against you".

Also, why does 12 turns away matter for puppeting? There's not a distance calculator, so the only issue is the cost of the road, and Arabia gets a bonus in that regard.

 

[drlucifer]

Ugly game. My plan going in was to look for a luxury-heavy spot for a second city, and after I found El Dorado and the cottons up north that’s where I decided to go. That turned out to be a bad spot for a city that took a long, long time to get to the point where it was worth the increase in SP cost (especially as I failed to build both the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre there).

The GL went on turn 28- probably either Egypt or France. Monty rushed me on turn 54, but I beat him back and by turn 81 I had Stonehenge, NC, and Oracle. I signed peace with Monty, but a little bit later he DOWd me again, and that war lasted pretty much the rest of the game (with very little actual fighting taking place, he just wanted ridiculous concessions for peace). This meant I had to hard-tech Astronomy, which ate up a lot of turns, before I could really get going on selling luxuries. Eventually I had a few Artillery and a Rifleman and puppeted two of his cities so he’d end the war.

Egypt seemed like a threat for a Cultural victory, which I’ve rarely seen- effect of the patch? I eventually bribed the Ottomans into killing them to be safe, and from there it was pretty much coasting.

The game dragged on so long I ended up having to build Cristo, and I also went ahead and got SOH to save a few turns. Other than that, I think my only wonders were Stonehenge, Oracle, and Chichen Itza. I did try several others as mentioned above, but Egypt was not messing around.

 

[backnine31]

Ahhh...another GoTM, another victory. Slugged this one out for about 20 hours and a week of game play. Lot's of fun! I really have no idea how you people get these things done so fast. I keep managing to win but it takes me damn near twice as long to do it. I really do have fun in my games though so I guess that's all that matters.

So, I'll try to recap but I have problems remembering what I did yesterday let alone trying to remember how I started this game a week ago....

Spoiler :

I settled on the cotton which I was happy about early, somewhat regretted as I got behind in techs (no observatory), and then ended up happy again later as I had more than enough cotton to go around. I even ended up putting a culture monument on the other cotton near Mecca.

Anyway, I went for Trad and the one next to it to start (can't remember the name right now). I ended up settling a 2nd city up to the west of El Dorado to get a coastal city and get the culture bonus. I then built the NC, GL, and Stonehenge. I settled a third city on the north coast for the furs and more cotton and was going to be done settling when Monty got all 'roid rage on me and wouldn't leave me alone so I ended up settling Baghdad in between CapeTown and Monaco and fought him off for a while.

At that point I made the decision that I was going to have to take him out if I didn't want to deal with him the whole game so I went to the bottom of the tech tree and ended up puppeting his entire empire (9 or 10 cities I think). I had no iron and he was substantially ahead of me tech-wise so it took awhile for my inferior units to take out his artillery and rifleman but I eventually managed with cannons and rifles after the Angkor Wat finally grew Mecca large enough to get the iron. This definitely slowed down the culture though as I had to build a few units and research those war techs for quite a few turns before getting back to the culture side of things.

I managed to get the Oracle and Angkor Wat but that was it for me as far as wonders. I was basically in 6th place tech-wise for most of the early game. Napolean got overrun by Sully and I took out Monte. Those were the only two behind me for a while.

In the meantime, Sully was running roughshod over the rest of the world. Ramesses was popping culture at a very good clip for a while but just when I was starting to think I might need to cross the ocean and take him out, Sully took care of him for me. Once I saw that happen, I just stayed in his good graces as long as I could. When Sully gets rolling, noone's going to stop him so when he asked me to declare on people, I did. That's when I decided to puddle jump onto Alex's island. After parking a couple of 4-range artillery down on the Cape of Good Hope and it's little island, I blasted away on his again superior armies with those two artillery and a couple frigates/destroyers. Once I took out about 15 of his units, including all of his artillery, I hopped over with 2 mech infantry and a great general. By then I upgraded my artillery to rockets and moved them over as well and wiped him out in about a dozen turns.

While I was doing that, Sully continued to pound away on the rest of the world, knocking Caesar down to one city, Ramesses down to two, and Darius to one. That basically left the world to me and him. He all of a sudden decided to start buying up CS's so I needed to cut them down to a point he could no longer win a diplo game against me. I had liberated Monaco from Monte so he was in my pocket and I liberated Venice from Alex so I had him too. There were 11 left total and I owned two so I figured when he eventually built the UN I'd need to cut down two more so his 2 votes and the other 7 CS's would only give him 9 votes. So I went north from Alex Island (I named it in honor of the fallen) and took Warsaw who had been an erstwhile ally of Alex. Then, when Sully did indeed build the UN, I went and took Sidon cuz Seoul was having one of those disputes so I figured I might as well get the culture pop, short-lived as it may be.

I survived two votes and filled the 5th SP tree on the same turn as I built the Sydney Opera House so I actually started a 6th tree. I had annexed one of Monte's huge production cities with what turned out to be about 70 turns left ( I felt I needed it to build units for protection if and when Sully came calling) and it turned out to be just what I needed to build Utopia in 9 turns, one turn short of another vote. I had 168 production in that city with a GA running at the end.

All in all, it was a blast. I think I was running about 1300bpt by the end and I got up to around 715 culture per turn at the high point. It was still taking me 10 turns per policy through cuz I built 4 cities and annexed a 5th. I think my last policy cost just over 7000 culture. I guess that would probably explain a 419 turn game, eh?

So, in conclusion, I know where some of the wasted time came from but I can't get myself to care too much. There are just a few things that I love doing in these games and they cost time.

One, I really enjoy building cities. For some reason I get a lot of satisfaction out of putting them in the perfect spot and then fleshing them out building by building. I hate skipping "unnecessary" buildings. If there's one sheep, I like to build a stable. Just how it is. And if I don't need a city but there's "a perfect spot" to get lots of things I really don't need, I build it. What are ya going to do? It's fun....

Two, I love juicing my armies. There is nothing more fun than taking 3-4 rocket artilleries, that shoot twice, with a range of 4, all the while healing themselves on every turn, and completely obliterating huge armies standing in my way. That and a couple destoyers juiced over 500 exp pts. It's just way too much fun! The problem with that is it takes a lot of time to get there so I guess I'm never going to finish very early unless I break myself of that habit---which may never happen cuz it's a blast.

So, there you have it. My only real danger of losing came from Sully late in the game. At the end, he and I were the only two civ's left in possession of our capitals. With my juiced armies, I don't think I would have had much trouble getting a Domination win with Istanbul being a coastal city. I had 6 jets, 2 stealth, 6 destroyers, and plenty of rockets. I'm sure I could have one turned him if I had needed to. The only real dicey spots were early when Monte came after me and I had no iron and then late when Sully finally declared and took Sidon back from me. If he had liberated it, he would have had the last vote he needed (which actually wouldn't have mattered cuz I got Utopia built in the turn before that vote) but he ended up keeping it so there were never enough for him to win that way. Otherwise, it was a long journey, but I felt like I was going to get there eventually. And I did.

Thanks again to the twisted mf'er(s) who gets his thrills designing diabolical maps. I'm not sure who's worse. You for designing them or me for being dumb enough to play them!!! That's a complement by the way. It truly is a lot of fun to discover what little evil tricks you have up your sleeve.

One final note: I got to see for myself how the vote worked with CS's I had liberated but were at war with me at the time of the vote. Sully had over 60,000 gold at the end and bought up all the CS's, including the two I had liberated, so when he declared on me, I was a little nervous for the 2nd vote as it put me at war with all of them. Sure enough, the vote came through at 9-3 with my two liberated CS's voting for me despite being at war. Kinda cool to see it work so I thought I'd mention it.

Keep up the great work!! Thanks!!!