Well, sloppy play meant needed some luck to pull this one out.
This time I founded about six cities outright, then went out to conquer Rome, which I completed sometime after 1000 AD. Waited to get cannons and rifles before going after Darius.
Got really bogged down fighting him ... his muskets, cannons and pikes killing off my troops more than I was expecting. Then I discovered why ... he gets to move 3 hexes with each, which is why he kept getting at wounded units that I thought were safe.
The other bog down issue is I went and bought a CS out from under Catherine, and she got immediately unfriendly and I lost the happy resources I was trading with her. This kicked me into -10+ unhappy which really reduced army effectiveness. I had to burn down a couple of small puppets to solve that.
So while I am taking Persia's second to last city (my CS ally later killed off his last city), Arabia and Cathy both declare on me ... and Arabia lands a cannon, an art, and some other unit ashore right at undefended Athens, which is 2 turns from Redentor.
Fortunately, I had another city close enough to double bombard the units, and enough gold in the till to buy a Cavalry. So I just managed to pick off the wounded units before the second city (their first target) fell.
I was also helped a bit by the revolt that occured. Losing the Arabian happy resources dropped me to -20+ unhappy, which has some odds of barb units ("rebels") spawning in your lands. So two barb AA guns show up outside of Athens, but they went and attacked and killed one of the Arabian units !!!
By then the army from the Persian theatre showed up, and mopped up the mess with all cities intact.
Cathy never showed up on my land with troops, she instead went after the CS I was allies with on her continent. Was at war with Cathy for the rest of the game, which in fact was my salvation ...
Far from a well-planned game and eventually lost to Catherine's UN.
She somehow managed to 'steal' one of my allied city-states giving her the ONE damn vote she needed
. Happened a couple of times in the game, can you basically bribe a CS now even if they're already allied? or has it always been like that and I've just never noticed?
Annoying cos was just about to start the final spaceship part.
Someone built the UN, and we had 3 victory votes, each with Cathy one vote short of a win. It became clear to me that being at war with her was essential to not losing the diplo vote, as during peace she could buy a CS away from me, but at war, she can't give them any gifts. So the key was to keep all my CS allies as allies and keep the war on, which made them immune to any ideas of bribery on her part.
Got a little nervous near the end when everyone on the other continent DOW'd me
For "kicks" I allied with all the Military CS's on the other continent just to give the warmongering civ's something to distract them.
Russia was HUGE, running around with Tanks and Mech Infantry. Waited in fear for an invasion, but it never happened.
I had a real problem with Happiness ... I was -14 for a long time.... just couldn't get the Civs to trade with me
Thanks again GOTM staff for the effort to make the game possible !
My game was a lot like this one ... Huge Russia, way ahead of me in tech (should have beat me to space if that had been her agenda ... but I guess she was obsessed with Diplo?) That and the high unhappy ... burning down some small puppets is sometimes the only short term solution, if you can't trade don't have a policy solution, and have already maxed out happy buildings. The forever war with no invasion was a feature of my game too.
At the end, I left the parts on the trucks outside Athens until the turn I had the last one, then assembled all at once to launch. Anyone know if that affects what the AI knows about your progress?
Turn 293, 1846
No RA abuse, tech blocking, exploits/cheesiness of any kind.
Fun map! Built NC at 2 cities. Unified the mainland except for a token city I left Darius since it seemed like he would still do RAs after I stole the rest of his empire. Catherine was inching toward crushing the last of her competition across the pond when I launched. While not a great date, I improved over my only other finished space race game by about 70 turns, so I am learning--and what's better, the game is improved enough now with the patch that I care. I see how I could easily shave off 30-40 more turns with simply tweaks.
Game is definitely more fun but far from ready for satisfying competitive play until the tech blocking RA abuse thing is fixed. Personally, I wouldn't be interested in trying real GOTM competition, if that kind of thing was mandatory strategy for every successful entry.
Builder strats are more fun/viable, but AI is of course still utterly pathetic with war. Tile yield changes are a solid improvement and of course reduced turn times were a must-fix, and the improvements mean I can play a whole game now and not have to nap between turns.
What exactly is the RA abuse you are describing?
I'd agree, I think the game is starting to feel more like a real Civ game, but there is more to tweak. I still need to see how city specialization applies (if it even does) in Civ 5 ... currently I can't say I really do that.
I'll add the save file tonight.
dV
Just happy to have won a game... its been a while. I think the key was recognizing that getting the good settling site was more important than getting all the early national college kond of stuff. (Kudos to those who managed to do both). After getting the first threee cities settled, it was a matter of military victory over my continent. Darius had lots of wonders, so was first. Rome next. Of course, this makes me a bloodthirsty devil and Catherine is at war with me for the entire AD era.
