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**draethor** · December 2, 2007, 18:45

4th place with under 21k points? Jeez, guess I wasn't the only one to find this game challenging!

I love Terra maps, they're probably the map type I play the most, so I was excited to see that this game was a Terra map. When I loaded and saw the gem and ivory resources sitting within the iron cross, my jaw dropped in disbelief. With such a great starting point, how could things go wrong?

As I scouted the area around me, I noticed some pretty decent town sites. A lot of people really hate jungle, but I kind of like it - I'll just make IW a priority, build a few extra workers, and cottage spam it. This was made even easier with fast workers. Also, I didn't even really notice at first that the nearby copper was covered by jungle

but as I was about to research IW, it wasn't that big of a problem.

I opened borders pretty quick and scouted out my neighbors to figure out who to invade first. My strategy on a Terra map generally involves killing 2 or 3 neighbors before astronomy then colonozing the crap out of the new world. This sets me up in the mid-game with really any victory condition intact.

My mistake, was choosing Mansa Musa as my first target. I saw his gold, and became obsessed with it. I needed to hoard the gold! It would be mine!

Predictably, the war with MM stretched out for like 100 turns. I had axes and catapults at first, and took pretty extreme losses against his skirmishers. I added elephants as quickly as I could, but MM knocked out some spearmen so the elephants were only moderately useful.

MM finally died, but my economy was hurting and I had only tech parity instead of a lead since I had to run at a deficit to support my military. The kill coincided pretty cleanly with astronomy finishing, so I loaded up some galleons with promoted soldiers and sailed over to pay the new world a visit.

The other factions in this game got to astronomy slower than I expected they would (of course, I helped this along by bribing the AIs to war with each other as much as possible in the interim). I ended up controlling roughly 90% of the land mass of the new world. This would have set me up somewhat nicely for a domination win, but I thought the AI was set to aggressive (I should have been able to figure out that it wasn't, of course).

By the time I was in a position to go for a winning condition, my constantly bribing of the other nations to war had created a pretty complex diplomatic situation. I could invade only Justinian, anyone else would've triggered a world war against me. So I did exactly that, and convinced Brennus to join in with me. I took 4 towns, the other AI took one, and as I was worried about Brennus making Justinian a vassal, I made him mine first (the rest of his land was very low quality).

So invading anyone = world war against me. Great. I still thought it was on aggressive AI, and I didn't think I could take a world war, so I went for a space race win. Got it very easily since by this time my new world cities had matured.

**RobWorham** · December 2, 2007, 19:23

Nice review draethor!!

**Shalkai** · December 4, 2007, 18:35

Definitely an interesting and challenging game...

Pregame plans were to shoot for a domination as first choice, but be ready to switch as always if play demands. Ghandi isn't great for conquering, but he can build a nice efficient empire to support a plain-jane army.

I won't be doing an early-turn play-by-play because
1. The first few thousand years was pretty routine, and
2. I didn't take real good notes.

I plopped Bombay over by the bronze and fish SW of Delhi, like probably 90%+ of you, and my third city was way NW of Delhi by all the dye to claim that and cut off Mansa.

Mansa was starting to get a pretty good tech lead over me (and the AIs I could see) after 1000BC, so I took a tour thru his lands as soon as I got writing and arranged Open Borders. Gold AND gems for his capital...no wonder! I had to do something about that, so time for an early war. There's no iron anywhere in sight, so it's gonna be axemen, and toss in a few catapults once I learn Math.

I kick off the invasion around 250BC and take two border cities with light losses. Mansa throws everything he can into Timbuktu, though, and kills most of my first attack stack. Our armies battle around his capital for a while, but I'm not making much progress. I decide to try for peace, and Mansa is willing to pay techs to get it. I didn't get the gold (yet) but I did hem him in and cut his research down to size. I'll settle for that since Justinian is becoming a threat with a big army, and I just found Isabella (5th of 6? AIs) and she of course hates me and my different religion.

After finding Izzy and noticing that she and all the other AIs I'd found were spiritual, I wondered if this was an all-spiritual game. Sure enough, I finally find Hatty a few turns later. No unrest in this game! Cute....

I end up solving my Iron problem by founding a city waaaay up north in the arctic tundra, past Justinian, so I can make things better than bronze axes. There's just not much iron in the old world, looks like.

So things progress quietly, and I'm first to optics and circumnavigation...even though I don't get the bonus. I never did figure that one out. I even had my 2nd caravel travel round the world, back to its home port, and still lost the bonus to Mansa about 10 turns after that. Strange.

Brennus picks a few inconclusive fights with other AIs, while I beeline Astronomy and settle/conquer about 6 or 7 cities in the new world before anyone else founds a city there. Mansa annoys me once again by beelining Democracy and erecting the SoL before I can do it. OK, Mansa...time for another "discussion". If there is one wonder I really want on a big continent, it's SoL.

So, I build up a big army with conscription and by building cannons, and get it ready in the south. BUT, Justinian has other ideas. He declares war on me the turn before I was going to hit Mansa. (sigh) OK, J, let's play. He takes one of my border cities for two turns, then my armies get to the north and I roll. I've got the blessing of Zeus by now, so J is ready to talk after I take a couple of cities. I make him give me another one, then return my attention to Mansa.

The delay allowed Mansa to upgrade bows to riflemen, but it doesn't affect the outcome much. I take Timbuktu and two other cities, then accept his capitulation. I'm happy now - I got his good wonders, his good resources, and he's now a vassal so he'll be helping me. That works.

OK, so that took care of Mansa (permanently) and Justinian (temporarily) as threats. Hatty, however, has been winning all the little wars out west, and has founded a few cities in the new world as well. She is now first in score, and has three of the top 5 cities. It looks like she is going for a culture victory...her top three are at 18k-23k culture already. This is about 1800AD or so.

Time for a major strategic decision: Ignore Hatty and just go for domination, or go for cultural with my 3 best cities and then work for domination with everything else? I decide to go conservative and do the cultural/military combo. I'd have to go thru at least two other empires to get to her, and chances are I'd be in war with just about everyone if I tried. It's really tough to stop an AI on the cultural victory path with non-military means, or even judge when they'll finish. A few lucky GA pops and they can finish way earlier than you planned for...

Luckily, I'd been hoarding GPs for corporations for quite a while. There's a Great Merchant that's been twiddling his thumbs in Bombay (double-holy city+Wall Street) for over 5 centuries just so he can found Sid's Sushi. I also saved a GE that appeared around 1800. Combustion and Medicine get priority - I want the cultural corps. Switching out of State Property hurts big-time (income drops over 200gpt) but I found CrCon and Sid's nice and early. +75 base cp in my big three cities, and border cities too, works quite nicely.

Pretty soon, we're down to three power blocks. Hatsepsut puts Hannibal in charge of the new world colonies, and then she vassalizes Isabella. Justinian and Saladin form a permanent alliance, then they vassalize Brennus. Then there's still Mansa (my vassal) and I, in the tech and power lead.

I'm on track to pass Hatty with city culture, so time to build up a big army and go a-conquerin. I've still got open borders with Just and Sal, so I move my forces up into position to hit Isabella and Hatty.

Then Justinian spoils my plans again - another DoW, this time from Jus/Sal/Bren on me and Mansa. My troops poof back to my lands, and the big war commences. I used poor tactics in this war, dividing my forces up too much...I should have concentrated them and conducted just one major attack from the start. Instead, I attacked both Justinian and Saladin, and after taking one city from each, my small SoDs got wiped out.

The enemy armies got enough time for one shout of victory before I nuked them, so then nobody had any SoDs.

I had about 3 times the prod of all three of them combined, so eventually I started taking quite a few cities. This wasn't really what I wanted to do, though. Eventually war-weariness started to hit me a bit (and hurt them even more) so Saladin deigned to talk with me. I offered peace if he gave me both of his big cities between me and Izzy, expecting rejection - but he accepted! OK, works for me. Clean up all the fallout and build more tanks. Brennus, the fool, renounces allegiance to Sal/Just and declares he is free.

At this point, I'm like 12 turns from a cultural victory, so I decide Brennus is free to join my empire. I only need about 10% more land area for a domination, but it will take more than 12 turns to actually conquer enough cities and get them to come out of revolt - and hope that Hatty doesn't have any GAs up her sleeve.

So I take the sure thing. Delhi, then Djenne, achieve legendary culture while I take all but one of Brennus' cities. On my last turn I accept Brennus as a vassal, then Bombay finally crosses the limit. I like the world to be at peace at games end.

All in all, lots of fun and challenge. By the end I had one of the hugest empires I've ever had (~65% of world pop) but the challenge was in reacting to the computer AIs. Mansa couldn't be let run free with unlimited research....Justinian was in wars all over, and was a serious challenge once he was in a permanent alliance plus had a vassal....and Hatty had a good solid base and was well on her way to a quiet cultural victory if not caught or stopped. Not a routine game where everything goes according to MY plan!

Shalkai

**draethor** · December 4, 2007, 21:43

So things progress quietly, and I'm first to optics and circumnavigation...even though I don't get the bonus. I never did figure that one out. I even had my 2nd caravel travel round the world, back to its home port, and still lost the bonus to Mansa about 10 turns after that. Strange.

I believe this map was wrapped toroidally rather than cylindrically, if this is the case you have to go all around the world left-right AND up-down (at least, I think this is the game where I learned that)...

**RobWorham** · December 5, 2007, 02:06

Great write-up Shalkai!!

**Shalkai** · December 5, 2007, 14:07

Aaaaah!....Thanks, Draethor. I wasn't sure if it was some weird bug or what. So that's how it works!

Learn something new every game....

Shalkai

**Theseus** · December 5, 2007, 15:09

Ditto on the "Aaaaah!"

I had done the east-west exploration first as well, and couldn't figure out why I didn't get the bonus.

I'd have to re-open the game... does toroidal always provide for a passage through the Arctic/Antarctic ice? If not, can subs pass through?

**draethor** · December 6, 2007, 01:19

There was no ice on this toroidal map.

I don't know if they all lack ice or if it was removed from this one (I'm guessing none of them do).

I'm not really sure to be honest, this is the only toroidal game I've ever played and I just figured after not getting the circumnavigation bonus I'd try something else.

**EPW** · December 7, 2007, 14:32

I was invaded by Mansu very early on - one of those surpise attacks the AI sometimes does. I was able to garner peace before I was completely wiped out by giving him a city he was about to conquer.

As a result of the war, I only had my original capitol for most of the game.

After pressing the enter button a couple hundred times, I made a defensive pack with Mansu which eventually lead to a permanent alliance.

Using my new found power I declared war on each civ in turn, eventually vassaling them all.

**Nugog** · December 7, 2007, 14:34

Originally posted by EPW
Using my new found power I declared war on each civ in turn, eventually vassaling them all.

Nice!

**pmonsieurs** · December 9, 2007, 10:44

I tried to make a report based on the replay of the game...

2040 BC: Random event, giving all my melee units the cover promotion
1920 BC: Found Bombay near the copper
725 BC: Complete the oracle, found conficianism in Bombay
500 BC: Declare war on Mansa Musa and pillage his mines around Timbuktu. I have to wait for catapults before I can attack his cities.
325 BC: Justinianus converts to conficianism
250 BC: Found third city near the Dye
125 BC: Great prophet born, construct shrine
100 AD: Great beast found, +1 food on ivory camp near Delhi
225 AD: Adopt Hereditary Rule
400 AD: Hatseput declares war on me
520 AD: Timbuktu is captured
760 AD: Capture Gao connecting Indian territory, made peace with Mansa and Hatseput to replace lost units.
940 AD: Complete apostolic palace with conficianism. This gives a huge increase in production, as I am building monastaries and temples in all my cities.
1180 AD: Random event: Triremes receive combat 1 promotion. I build some triremes before getting caravels to benifit from the bonus, then upgrade them.
1200 AD: Complete the great library in Bombay
1230 AD: Declare war on Mansa Musa
1370 AD: Complete University of Sankore
1410 AD: First to discover Liberalism, take Astronomy as free tech
1440 AD: Djenne captured
1505 AD: Capture Walata
1530 AD: Joyous wedding, +1 relations with Justinianus
1555 AD: Capture Kumbi Saleh, make Masa a Vasal (with one poor coastal city remaining)
1610 AD: Capture barbarian city on other continent, providing access to Iron
1630 AD: Great merchant and great scientist born in Delhi
1670 AD: Varanasi founded, providing access to horses
1695 AD: Brennus declares war on justinianus
1700 AD: Agra founded, declare war on Brennus. I am trying to get Justinianus pleased with me to get a defensive pact, so I join the war. However, I am never friendly enough with him the entire game,
1705 AD: Calcutta is founded, curcumnavigate the world (I didn't know you also needed to cicumnavigate from top to bottom)
1710 AD: Because of a random event, Brennus and Justinianus make peace
1720 AD: Complete the statue of liberty
1740 AD: Capture nearest Celtic city
1760 AD: Adopt state property and emancipation, start golden age
1765 AD: Make peace with Brennus
1806 AD: Found Lahore
1812 AD: Found Madras
1814 AD: Found Bangalore near the oil on top of the other continent
1816 AD: Declare war on Brennus again
1820 AD: Capture second Celtic city
1822 AD: Capture barbarian city on other continent
1830 AD: Found Hyderabad. Also, first city of Justinianus founded on other continent
1846 AD: Hatseput declares war on Saladin
1854 AD: Capture barbarian city on new continent, found Madurai
1856 AD: Found Ahmedabad
1860 AD: Start golden age
1870 AD: Kolhapur founded
1874 AD: Complete Apollo program
1876 AD: Justinianus and Isabella (Vassal) declare war on Brennus
1884 AD: Found Akhetan on old continent
1888 AD: Hatseput splits from its colony, creating Churchill on the small continent below Egypt
1890 AD: Capture the last city of Brennus
1892 AD: Saladin asks to become a Vasal. I agree, which means I declare war on Hatseput and Churchill. Hatseput appears to be heading to a cultural victory, so declaring war is not a bad idea anyway, and now I have access to her through Saladin's land.
1896 AD: Mathura founded
1898 AD: Ujjain founded
1909 AD: Capture Memphis
1914 AD: Capture Pi-Rameses
1919 AD: Justinian declares war on Hatseput
1920 AD: Thebes captured
1923 AD: Capture Alexandria
1924 AD: Capture Heliopolis
1925 AD: Capture Giza and Bagdad, raze Bagdad because I can't keep it inside the culture of Saladin. Egypt is destroyed.
1930 AD: Justinian completes Apollo Project
1933 AD: Complete the space elevator
1935 AD: Declare war on Churchill
1937 AD: Found Sravasti
1944 AD: Churchill is destroyed
1947 AD: Isabella completes Apollo Project
1948 AD: Launch the space ship!
1957 AD: Won a space race victory. I almost won a domination victory, with 61.8% of the landmass controlled.

**KMoore** · December 11, 2007, 10:52

I’ve been playing around with a wonder based super specialist strategy and decided to give a variation of it a try in this game. The strategy is to build as many wonders as possible in your capital and settle all the resulting great persons to develop a mega production / science city. It works well and is great fun, but probably isn’t the best way to generate a high score.

I built Stone Henge, The Great Wall, Pyramids, Statue of Zeus and The Great Library early in the game. I had expanded to six cities at 0. Like others, I coveted Mansa Musa’s capital since early in the game. Mansa was teching with blazing speed. I infiltrated Mansa early and stole many techs. I kept delaying war with Mansa because, even with the technology stealing, I couldn't get a military tech advantage.

In 920 AD, just as I was preparing to attack Mansa, wars began breaking out. Saladin declared war on Isabella and then in 1110 Isabella declares war on me. I suppose she wanted to enlighten me in the ways of Buddhism, even though we didn’t even share borders. Isabella was an annoying diversion requiring me to post more troops in outpost cities although the fighting was light. In the meantime, Justinian declared war on Brennus.

Finally, in 1270, I attacked Mansa Musa. The war lasted about 300 years until he was eliminated in 1575. During one 10-turn interval of peace, Hatshepsut vassalized Mansa so I wound up fighting her as well.

I was first to Liberalism in 1575, selecting Astronomy so I could colonize the new world. In 1675, I settled my first city in the new world.

Justinian was busy subjugating the rest of the world at an alarming pace. He vassalized Brennus in 1540, Saladin in 1795 and Hatshepsut in 1806. Justinian and I shared Judaism and had been friendly for some time, so my strategy was to effectuate a permanent alliance with him at the earliest opportunity. I’m pretty sure this would have given me an immediate domination victory. His power rating was much higher than mine and he wasn’t far behind in tech, so I didn’t want to go to war with him.

I was trying everything to get a permanent alliance with Justinian. Our relationship score was very high but he still refused to consider it or a defense pact so I pursued a space victory as the back-up strategy.

I never play this map type and I handled settling the new world badly. Even though I had a 200 year head start on everyone else, I had only settled 4 cities when Saladin showed up there in 1852. I wasn’t very aggressive because I already had high expenses, had settled on a space victory and didn’t think more cities this late in the game would be that helpful. I turned 3 cities into a colony shortly after settling them and was disappointed at how slowly they expanded. In the meantime, I ended up scrambling to beat the AI to city locations that secured oil, coal and aluminum, which I didn’t have on my home continent. I under estimated how quickly the AI would settle these locations with access to strategic resources. In the end, I got all three of them but it was close. I think it was a mistake to settle the new world slowly, because the cities that I did settle turned out to be quite productive. I could have had much more prime real estate and population had I focused on it.

Between 1854 and 1943, Hatshepsut, Saladin and Brennus broke free of Saladin (Great!). Surely Justinian would enter a permanent alliance now: our diplomatic score remained high and I’m ahead of him in overall score? Nope. In 1969 and 1970, Hatshepsut and Saladin become his Vassals again (Crap!). I completed my first space ship part in 1959 and was well on my way to a space victory.

In 1985, I was about to launch the spaceship when Saladin threatened to steal victory. He declared war on Brennus in 1985 and completed the UN in 1986! I was only 12 turns from victory and I was sure that Justinian would vassalize Brennus, call a UN vote and win a faux diplomatic victory. In a desperate attempt to avoid that outcome, I declared on Brennus and raced to vassalize him before Justinian could. Poor Brennus, we took 7 cities from him between 1988 and 1992 – 3 by me and 4 by Justinian. It felt like the USA and USSR racing to Berlin at the end of WW2. At the end of each turn, I was checking to see if Brennus would vassalize. In 1992, he agreed.

Although Brennus was my Vassal, I was still worried that Saladin could win a UN vote. My space ship would arrive in 6 turns, but I knew he would have the opportunity to put forth a resolution before then. After all my efforts and hours of play, would Justinian snatch victory before my space ship could land? In 1993, the dreaded UN vote came, and what did the AI chose? Environmentalism!!! If only I had known all this time that Justinian was really a front for Green Peace.

The space ship landed five turns later and I won a squeaker. I kept checking for a permanent alliance until the very end and Justinian would never do it.

This was a fun game with a number of challenges: subduing the Mansa tech monster, securing strategic resources in the new world, unsuccessfully trying to engineer a permanent alliance and the final tense battle for victory. A better AI surely would have won the game. I can’t help wonder if the AI isn’t shaking its’ virtual head “thinking” “geeezzz, what do I have to do to let this guy win”. Maybe it had the last laugh.

**RobWorham** · December 11, 2007, 13:05

Thanks KMoore, great breakfast reading!!!

**jbp26** · December 13, 2007, 11:17

i found this game to be very difficult. i had a hard time building up a proper momentum- i feel like i rely far too much on an early war to propel my early expansion. mansa musa, the obvious target, was teched way ahead of me and i could never catch up on power. i entered into a far too long arms race with justinian and eventually went to war with him. the rest of the game was basically a constant war- i'd fight someone to the brink of annihilation, then they'd capitulate to someone else and embroil me in more war. i did manage to form a permanent alliance with mansa musa and colonize most of the new world. i was on the brink of a domination win and won by diplomatic victory again.

in retrospect, i made a lot of mistakes in this game. i should have rushed mansa musa, or at least stolen as much of his tech as possible. i almost completely ignored espionage. that alone would have changed everything.

also, one particuarly cheesy mechanic really spoiled the enjoyment of this game for me. i hate that when an enemy capitulates to someone else, the master instantly declares war on you. it doesn't make sense- i can understand them surrending to someone else for protection, but the new master should give you the option of ending war with the vassal, or declaring war on them. i hate how you can have a perfect relationship with someone and they will suddenly turn on you completely for their new slave.

ah well. better luck next time.

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