Whole Empire challenge

Yes.

I had an army of 30 legions (+catapults, war elephants, horse archers) in Mediolanum just sitting there waiting for the europeans to spawn. I actually sent ten of them to collect exp points and clear barbs (~15) from Iberia, so that Spain wouldn't flip them. Lost zero.
 
I did the historical French colonial empire, once upon a time. Or most of it, any way. I missed some pretty big parts of Africa and Louisiana. I was tempted to restore the French Empire too and mess around with Illyria, but I decided against it.

Other than that, I had a pretty good Roman Empire on my last computer. With the minor nitpicks that it didn't include the Rhineland or the western half of Iberia... And included Persia. xD I couldn't help myself. Rome has some really kickass city names in that area.
 
As America, I controlled all of the US, including Kaulai (Hawaiian island), Alaska, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Saudi Arbia and Baghdad.
 
I recently eked out a victory over the computer as England in the BTS map 1000 AD at the difficulty level of Deity. I ended up with Canada, USA, Belize, British Guyana, Capetown, East London, India (as a vassal), Australia, New Zealand, a Spanish Vassal (representing control of Gibraltar and English/American commercial enterprises in the Spanish speaking world), an Incan Vassal (likewise being a manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine), a Chinese vassal (Hong Kong+economic penetration of British/American interests), a Khmer vassal (Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Borneo, etc). Due to possible incredulity with regards to a win on Deity I feel like the following narrative is warranted. I had to get the Oracle, Great Library, Sistine Chapel, University of Sankore, Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Statue of Zeus to make London the engine of the British Isles that it needs to be until North America subsumes Britain's role as "offshore balancer."

In order to accomplish the above you'll require a certain measure of luck in the form of getting either drama or metal casting from the Scottish village (build scout in Bristol first turn) which enables you to expand the cultural borders into Normandy where you can then chop down French forests just in time to build the Great Library (doubly to France's chagrin more often than not), or build workshops for the extra production boost.

You'll also need to trade Justinian for marble on the first turn and you'll have to switch to building the great library when the Oracle is one turn from completion (this maximizes chance of getting G.Engineer), but don't forget to switch back to Oracle before some upstart Eurasian power beats you to it! With a great engineer and Oracle and G.Library built you are then free to build Sistine and with luck one gets a second G.Engineer (speed up by all the great person bonus points acquired by the wonders) with which to build University of Sankore. Of course Sankore requires paper so you must start studying that from turn 1.

Also I can't stress how important Sankore is and making sure every city has a monastery and Christian temple. With Sankore these two buildings act like little universities that double as small factories (+1 hammer from temple and +2 from monastery). The science and production edge are critical to building the city improvements in the UK cities early on that will make your nation competitive (can't stress this enough). Assuming you time everything just right (and receive the aforementioned lucky breaks), it is then relatively easy to get an aqueduct, hanging gardens, and statue of Zeus completed (maybe call up mansa musa for ivory to boost Zeus production speed).

Now during this time France will mistakenly believe that we are their good "brothers of the Faith," and leave themselves wide open to our Machiavellian duplicity by taking out Paris while they are spread thin trying to expand in Russia's hinterland. If you can bring in the Germans as a war ally to do the heavy lifting (ie, they kill all but one or two Parisian defenders allowing the triumphant British forces to finish the job) all the more better. The Oracle will give you gunpowder, so you should be able to hold it no problem, this will effectively "châtrer" France for the game (pardon my French;)).

In the interest of recreating the British Empire and not playing by making England a continental Hegemon, I refrain from holding any further cities on the (Except possibly if one captures Cordoba and renames it Gibraltar:)) continent. France can usually be counted on to build the Temple of Artemis, thus it behooves England to wait til it occupies Paris to enact its Golden Ages. With just a little more luck, you'll get a couple useless great prophets to do just that.

As a matter of fact I experienced 24 turns of Golden Age before 1600 (and another 12 turns sometime in the 19th century). This enabled the other key component of the UK's strategy, namely being the first to discover Liberalism. This let's you get Astronomy for free (if you're first to get liberalism of course) and kicks off the age of colonization. Getting paper and Liberalism first might involve some tricky accounting in the form of producing research, scientists, etc., but its basically the lynchpin of any early UK strategy.

One more historical detour was necessary though, that being the settling of Iceland (more on that in a second). The next imperatives research-wise are of course rifling, chemistry, and steel. The next target: Spain. In the higher difficulty levels (emperor and up), I've noticed that Saladin holds Cordoba against the Spanish Reconquista usually 'til a political solution is imposed in Spain's favor after the middle ages by the Apostilic Palace. This makes for a weakened Spain, ripe for vassalage by a savvy British invasion.

Once Cordoba reverts to Spanish control, strike while the iron is hot and try a two prong attack: Barcelona through Southern France and Santiago by sea. With redcoats and even trebuchets this shouldn't take more than 5-6 turns. When Spain capitulates, one magnanimously liberates their cities and grants them the technology to defend themselves against Europe in exchange for them cutting off open borders with all the Mediterranean powers. By now the cultural borders of the UK extend from Greenland to Morocco, so every European power is land locked (provided you cut off open borders with them) and blocked from setting up colonies.

This leaves you and Spain with the New World as your oyster. You might have needed a handful of privateers to mop up any European ambitions that made it through the UK's blockade before it was fully set up, other than that you are now free to take that army you used in Spain over to America to crush Montezuma and set up America, Canada, Belize, & British Guyana. Any war that you can touch off between Russia and Germany is undoubtedly a good call. Germany will be surrounded and feeling its historic 'squeeze', without a colonial outlet or the sophistication to realize how badly the UK is bending it over a barrel with the Atlantic blockade, it will see Russia as its primary existential threat.

Give Charlemagne rifling or whatever it takes to make him attack Russia. Russia will almost never back down from a fight, which will commit Germany to a life and death struggle with its eastern neighbor, thereby allowing the Brits to expand with little worry over domestic security. Always hedge with a respectable number of frigates and ship-o'-the-line's to keep Britannia safe. Another key component to this strategy is holding off on scientific method, even until you have assembly line or other comparably advanced technologies.

This maximizes the effect of the great library and your 5-6 monastaries (remember Sankore makes your monasteries more than worthwhile). Of course setting up the far flung British Empire and its American heir are probably impossible without state property (ironically enough), thus one must time the discovery of communism and the settling/conquest of North America properly so as to not go bankrupt. On deity, you have to destroy the Aztecs well before 1800 or they just rack up a stupid amount of guys.

Build a New England city as a base of operations and send 9-12 guys to Tenochtitlan. Of course you have to deny the Aztecs access to Chichen Itza (due to the +25% city defense bonus granted to pre-rifling civilizations), just take it when its a barbarian city and rename it Belize. Take Mexico City and have your second wave of troops take the Eastern seaboard of the US and then march to New Orleans and Houston respectively. Build a fortress in Southern Mexico (and expand Mexico city's borders to encompass it) with captured workers to facilitate a canal to the Pacific. You should have a contingent of 3 settlers, 4 redcoats, and 2 workers headed towards the canal so they can go build Southern Australia (Perth, Adelaide) and New Zealand (Christchurch).

By now it should be in the early 1800s and you've got North America in the bag (don't forget settlers for San Francisco, Vancouver/Seattle and there's even room for an LA). You should be studying assembly line because you'll need it to subdue India (another imperative that goes without saying). You should have started sending redcoats and cannons to the Southern cone of Africa on a transit to India. Capture the barbarian city that represents capetown and use the outpost to upgrade soldiers as needed.

Finally, head for Tanjore with as many guys as possible. The Indians could have riflemen by now hence the need for infantry, as long as you bring enough guys and treat the Indians nicely 'til you invade they will capitulate. Give them back Tanjore and flood Britian with Ivory, Spices and the finer things in life thus achieving the stability your empire will absolutely need in order to function on deity. Next up you'll probably have to dislodge the Chinese from Australia with the now free'd up troops from India. Now its around 1900 and you still need to get Kenya, Rhodesia, Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, and of course most of the Middle East. Good luck on that one though.

If you have the space-race victory on (as I almost always play) you'll be too busy building up the brain trust in North America just to keep intellectual parity with who ever the research hotshots are. I was also able to vassalize the chinese and Khmers, to which I wave my hands and claim represents the opium wars, British control of Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong and assorted Asia/Pacific commercial interests (just as holding Paris represents "penetration of British Commercial interests into the continent"). In 1941, the Russians made a move on Paris and Spain.

Reasons of state caused me to let it happen, however in the end I had enough military gear in theater to convince the Russians to sue for peace and liberate Santiago, which I dutifully returned to the Spanish protectorate. This was because a huge Byzantine empire started eviscerating the Russkies, who in turn started getting ravaged by Saladin. Another trick Peter likes to use on the UK is capturing Paris and flooding the UK with paratroopers. This is easily defeated by having one unit, it could even be a worker, on each square of England in their potential range, that coupled with a good navy and air force and Britain can pretty much weather any storm.

In the end I beat the Byzantine's by one Fusion engine, and that was with the help of the space elevator and a late game golden age that started in 1950 (with 4 great people, yes my fourth golden age, no it wasn't purely luck because I tried to get various cities to produce specific great people, but it was the only one that didn't last 12 turns having just lost Paris' Temple of Artemis). So, on Deity its possible to reconstruct the English speaking world and a large portion of the Anglo/American area of Influence if you will, but taking Africa and the middle east requires no space race, even more luck, and some liberty with time bench marks, at least that's my opinion/experience. I very much welcome any critiques or insights others might want to offer about this account, and would also welcome an epic "great game" with any humans out there thinking the same. GarryOwen!

PS always circumnavigate the globe to give Britain that naval edge and resist temptations to horde technologies when possible
 
I'm sure all that is great, but 1/ it's unreadable (you should use the return key) and 2/ it's totally in the wrong forum.
 
I posted here because the initial thread said: "Did anyone managed to achieve a whole colonial Empire? if you do post it here. the ones that count are the British,..."

I failed to notice the "Civ4 - Rhye's and Fall of Civilization" sub-category, and clearly the BTS 1000AD map isn't part of Rhye's work. It won't happen again.

I posted to this thread because I thought it would be relevant to anyone wondering what a proof-of-concept for attempting to execute the Anglo/American empire on Deity looks like (while still managing a technical victory).

Forgive my confusion gentleman. I freely admit to being a noob with respect to forum protocol. Thanks for the welcome Gruekiller, and JujuLautre: How about you as Japan, and I as England, face off one of these days? :salute:

GarryOwen!
 
Ladies and gentlemen, the ENTIRE historical Mayan Empire!

Spoiler :
 
It ain't entire since you didn't settle in Yucatan.

But my culture encompasses it, so it's all good. Besides it took a lot of careful planning and effort to create such a vast empire. Cut me some slack :p
 
Pax Ottomania

Spoiler :


I went slightly further than the 1683 boundaries - Spain offered Pamplona for peace after two failed crusades and I took both pillars of Heracles to deny Cordoba the Atlantic Access. Captured Vienna for the UHV, but decided to keep it just because. I also conquered as far north as Kyiv (cropped from the image) to keep the Muscovites at bay. Genoa had a dozen units in Malta, so I didn't bother recreating history there.
 

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