Vikings can be nice people....I began a King level game, Raging Hordes, and got lucky with one of my first goodie huts. It gave me a horsemen, with which I was able to investigate a good chunk of my portion of the massive world continent (few islands, and a smaller sub-continent also existed). By the time I contacted my nearest neighbors (Greeks, Japanese), I had a good chunk of the continent, and had been a monarchy for some time. I traded technology, and let my two neighbors fight each other for a while. By then I had a fair sized empire, and had just completed the Great Library, when the Greeks, being Greeks, attacked. Soon I had a two front war going, as the Japanese joined in. The Greeks where easy to bottle up-they where on a narrow peninsula with 2 right angled turns in it-and I accepted their cease fire. Then I went after the Japs, who soon where running out of units. It turned out that they had only 4 cities....They didn't last long.

As a reward for my suffering empire, I switched to a Republic, AND STAYED THERE FOR MOST OF THE GAME. First the Celts where wiped out by the Spanish, who then began getting frisky when they obtained gunpowder. After I took one of their cities, they became quiet again. When the Greeks attacked again, my Dragoons let them keep only Athens. I then gave the Greeks some Technology, and entered an alliance. The Americans where on their own small sub-continent for the longest time, as where the Zulus, who only 1 city in the 1700's!

The Spanish soon became a major headache. Each of my cities (~ 30 by now) supplied one military unit (Had Sun Tzu's Wonder.), thereby spreading out the unhappiness, and I kept up a fairly sizeable force on the border. The combination of the Sun Tzu's and Leonardo's wonders where great, as I kept one upping the Spanish in technology. They would attack with dragoons, I soon had cavalry,etc., etc.

And all this time I was still a republic. As the others waffled back and forth with fundamentalism or communism, I built up a steady stream of cities, technology,and wonders (Bach; Mich.;Women Suffarage.) One mistake I made was letting the Spanish get the UN. Now a monotonous pattern of ...they break the cease fire, I take a city, the UN forces a cease fire occured. But I was patient.

I slowly took out their ports, one at a time, with my Marines & Navy each time they hit me. And then I finally got cruise missles....(~1920) Finally! Enough was enough! I poured in the bombers and Missles, and Madrid (and the UN) was mine! But then the Americans decide to steal technology from me while I was involved with the Spanish! In the next 20 years I systematically wiped both of them out. While my Navy was mostly taking care of the Americans, my Army and Air Force whittled away the Spanish. As an afterthought, I took out the Zulu's after they foolishly declared war on me in support of the Spanish.

I was supreme, with only Athens not in my republic. Instead of taking them out, I built, built, to build my spaceship. I switched to Democracy once I had the Statue of Liberty (Thanks America!) I had only minor guerilla trouble, and the fool greeks decided to attack with their muskets when I launched my spaceship! I waited until 2020, when my spaceship landed, to take them out. (They still hadn't discovered Navigation!) And was rewarded with the title STASH THE MAGNIFICENT! Who says you need to be a fascist to rule the world??

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Robert J. DiStasio, Jr. stash@datasync.com
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