OK I am going to give up.....

[Velociryx]

Go you! GREAT job! And yep, I'll still continue to post my DAR, but will give it a lower priority, since you already won the game! I'm also going for a space victory, but mine has a bit more "militant-ness" attached to it, and that's what's making it such a painful process to write and prepare (lots of battle reports...UGH). Was hoping I'd be able to play some more last night, but the workload is beginning to take its toll (tax season, our busiest time of year.... ) Still, I'm inching forward!

-=Vel=-
(back to work with me)

[poiuyt00]

Vel I do still really want to see your game. You dont have to do a huge write up, but if you could post a save or two, or at least a shot of the island like mine so I could compare. Thanks..

[Velociryx]

Okay, okay....so rather than do a big writeup like I'd planned, I'll just give you the highlights. This is a screenie of the turning point in the whole game, not long after Galleons were acquired.

After the last segment, we did a LITTLE BIT of back filling (mostly to get Monarchy, so we could increase our happy cap by +1, but there were a couple of other sweet additions we needed as well....horseback riding, archery!), and then, we moved toward banking. Why? Cos that's the backbone of the financial trait....and we're alone on an island, so Merc will rock, AND we gotta be able to afford to keep our army up to date and stuff.

While I'm researching, I'm also building Five things:
1) Garrisons (which I'm behind in)
2) Horse Archers (gives me an attack option later, cos I can upgrade them to the invincible Cossack)
3) Settlers/Workers to continue filling the continent
4) Basic Infrastructure
5) A fleet. I want six galleys, cos I will eventually want six galleons, if we decide for aggression.

So we get to work doing all that and time passes.

Pretty shortly, we get Optics and hit the water. I want four caravels. #1 heads due west, #2 heads due east. Halves my time for the circumnav bonus, and I don't know if anybody has beaten me to the water yet. #'s 3 & 4 are roving, and they'll meander around the map wherever I feel like exploring. As luck would have it, since I was building caravels on my north coast, they both meandered northward, and that's where both america and france lived.

I met america first, and marked the tile where I met him via the line tool, so that when I uncovered more of the map, I could estimate how many turns he had beaten me to the water (met him on the sea, with a caravel)...best guess is that he beat me to the water by at least four turns. Three techs behind washington when I met him....mostly old stuff, so that's not so bad.

My eastward sailing caravel encountered spanish and egyptian borders, and we were actually three techs AHEAD of them both. Traded music and some other old crap of mine to catch up on techs I had skipped over, wound up still ahead of them in tech (by two) and caught up completely (even) with France/USA. Note here: I sold music three times, to three civs, and it netted me a total of FOUR techs. That's how you wanna try to trade. The amount of "beakers of research" I got in trade for Music was far, FAR more than the amount I invested in it, and that's the goal.

Once I got paper, I made a gob of money selling world maps. I made an even trade with Washington, then asked "what will you give me for" to everyone else and made almost a thousand gold just in the map trade. Louis was especially interested to see where long-time enemy George's cities were.

And in surveying the maps, I came to a troubling conclusion. George's land was really a good bit better than our own. If we didn't act decisively, we were gonna have a tough time of it, because he could both out produce and out tech us with his land (and, as we would discover later on, he had aluminum, and we did not)

Our Holy Trinity of tech with Russia is Astronomy, Gunpowder, and Military Tradition. I got Liberalism first, and so took Nationalism as my freebie tech, researching GunPowder and then Astro as I raced for Galleons/Cossacks...got there, and then TURNED MY RESEARCH OFF for a number of turns, so I could speed through upgrading all my units. I had about 4 Horse Archers, 14 Knights, and the 6 Galleons I wanted.

Eighteen Cossacks represented our entire future.

Already, despite our best efforts, Washington's GNP was nearly double ours, and we were just BARELY keeping in the same ballpark, production-wise. We were ahead in tech, but with the kind of edge he had in GNP, we couldn't keep it, so we had exactly one shot.

I was dismayed when I saw that there were already 1-2 Riflemen sprinkled into the mix of Washington's garrisons (kept an eye out for them via my caravels).

In the end tho, the die was cast. We had no choice but to attack.

Every city I had was set to building Cossacks, and we loaded up our eighteen bold warriors (who suddenly seemed tiny indeed, compared to the titan that America was becomming), and attacked:

[Velociryx]

Invasion Seattle

[Velociryx]

1645.....

[Velociryx]

1650

[Velociryx]

1665

[Velociryx]

1700

[Velociryx]

1720 - Made peace with a gutted America, being unable to maintain the attack for any longer (too many cossacks tied up defending newly conquered towns, and too many defenders in the remaining towns to take without siege engines to soften them up)

[Velociryx]

We would fight two more wars with the US, one with France, and one with Spain. Additionally, we bribed Egypt and England (with tech) to attack Spain (both Egypt and England were building space ship parts at this point, and I bribed them to slow down their research...sure, it cost me two techs, but the result was that they stopped building ship parts and started building troops.

With my own continent secure, and all of the American continent under my belt by the early 1900's, it was a piece of cake. Heck, even after the first war, when I took half the American continet, it was a walkover....the land he had was just terriffic...ours was good, but had lossa desert...his was just plain awesome, and we put the southern half to good use....nobody could touch us after that.

Scary? You bet! I wasn't sure how our Cossacks would fare vs. entrenched Riflemen, but they did okay...

Eighteen cossacks (plus reinforcements of course) for five American Cities....yeah, I'd call that a good trade.....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Mopping up.....

[Swiss Pauli]

Thanks for the update, Vel!

Lots of handy tips for me, especially for tech trading, upgrading and the strategic use of bribery!

[Velociryx]

In my mind, there were three points that really got driven home in this game:

1) Cossacks rule. I ignored the odds calculator, which consistently told me that I had only a ~25% chance of winning battles against fortified riflemen in cities. (note that the first five cities were taken with NO siege engines whatsoever...pure cossack butt-kickness, with an average loss of one cossack per city taken). Eighteen Cossacks basically gutted America's empire, cutting it in half. Now granted, I was churning them out at home just as hard and fast as I could (including some pop rushing of cossacks to get another couple boatloads ready to ship out earlier, rather than later), but the damage had already been done by then, and the reinforcements only served to allow me to keep the pressure on.

2) There are LOTS of ways to make money. I sold maps prolly a dozen times in that game. None were as profitable as the first go 'round of course, but I usually managed to net at least 50, and often more gold. Plus gpt deals for resources, plus coin picked up in addition to techs, plus shopping techs around to multiple buyers....the list goes on and on, and that KIND of cash inflow is what allows you to hang in the fight longer without wrecking your research too badly.

and as you mentioned,
3) Diplomacy can be both a sword and a shield. I bribed France to join me in attacking America, later bribed Egypt to help me fend off Spain, and then later, bribed both Egypt AND England to make war on Spain to "keep them busy"

Good stuff.

Last night, I started this game again to see if I could do it more peacefully, and with more focus on making straight for the necessary techs to start the space race, so that my victory will be a closer mirroring of poiyut00's

-=Vel=-

[fed1943]

Sorry for puting a silly question.But I couldn´t find how to negociate for myself or another civ begin,or join, a war.I guess is in diplomacy menu (F4)but I never found the command.
Someone can,please,tell me.
Best regards,

[Verrucosus]

Thank you for sharing this game with us. I'll certainly get back to this thread when I'll find myself alone for the first time. No two games are alike, but there's much to be learned from this kind of specific analysis.

fed1943, asking someone to attack a third player is not a "command" on the F4 screen, but part of the list of tradable items that appears during negotiations. I've seen it often on the left side of the screen. However, now that I think about it, I'm not sure whether (on the right side) I have the option to offer attacking someone in return for something I want. Interesting point!