AU402 DAR6: After 1500AD

[vmxa1]

I thought this was very appropriate.

[vmxa1]

Since it took about 167 hours to play. Well actually counting all the crashes and reloads and so forth it was much longer. Anyway the rank seems very proper.

[vmxa1]

The huge greenish civ is the Mongol horde and they were in great position as they had a large island and took it over. I don't think they ever got off the island. To show how poor the AI is, it was not able to stay up with the top 5 or 6 civs in techs. I sold it many or bribed it.
It would attack me from time to time with Ironclads while I was in possession of nukes, battleships, you name it.

[vmxa1]

I managed to get some where near the top towards the end. The thing that killed me was the early wonders and all the culture. I was so far behind in the early culture race and got no wonders until very late.
Even when I pulled ahead in tech and had late wonders mostly build they beatme out of many with leaders.

[vmxa1]

Here is the final shot with the mini map.

[vmxa1]

Just for the heck of it and the fact that I got a bit upset with Ghandi, I sent 72 units to Calcutta in the next to final turn. I had hoped to grab the UN and get a vote, but the wonder was in Deli and I could not get there in time.
The other bad aspect of England was shown by my not getting a leader until something like 2015 and only two for the whole game. In clearing out all of a fully developed Japan and then China, you would expect better.
The battle for Calcutta shows the way it was. I bombarded a Tower defender with about 4 ships, nothing. I hit the metro with 15 arties and got two hits.
I lost 25 MA's out of my 72 units on the assault and got exactly two promotons. No leaders, just two promotions.
I did not count all the fights that took place.
I laughed at the counter atack as it was nothing but a few hits to the city and a bunch of MI's wrecking the roads. Funny as I wanted to starve the pop anyway and now all those units are sitting ducks in the open.
The city was captured with all the improvement other than the culture ones, even the airport. This let me sell of a few things for a temple and send over more units. It also let me get the benefit of the spices that I captured immediately. I had a stack of about 20 units sitting on one tile with spices and I think the city was on one as well. Any the game ended then.

[vmxa1]

The game had many strange events in it. Many funny one. Well not funny HA HA, so much as strange or crazy.
Things like Carthage not being eliminated and it was the lowest score civ in the game and had only three cities nearly all the way. It declared war on the biggest civs. Just before I declared war on India, I went to all the civs, but a few and got an alliance to prevent the loss of any luxs deals. I also gave the big ones a free lux to encourage faithfulness. Anyway I gave Hannibal techs from way back around Electricity. One other small civ was going to war and did not even have Nationalism, but it was not eliminated?
The Mongols asked me for an embargo against Carthageinaround 2047? Mongols must have had 65 cities to Hannies 3 and it was looking for help?
Then Germany wanted one against Carthage as well and Germany is number two?

Other thoughts, why do we need to be asked if we want to continue when we irrigate over a mine or the other way around? I mean 6-8 workers to do the job and I have to respond to all of them? Once I said yes the first time, why ask about the rest?

I made no effort to work the tiles in captured land, just put up roads and rails and clear off pollution.
The whole game I only had the one coal on the Iron island. In fact I never had any resources run out or any new ones appear.

I would go back and play this properly, but that would be sick. This was quite painful at times. On the 1.7 I had wars going on with 20 or more civs. Most had a few hundred units, so time got out to over an hour a few times. None ever got past about 25 minutes on the 3.06.

I can't help thinking I could have avoided all of this if only Arrian had posted the save he promised me from his huge game. I would have seen the times and been happy, but NOOOOOO.

[nbarclay]

[I've finished the game, but I'm way behind in reporting its progress. This picks up after my last real DAR, from 1500 AD.]

When last we left off the story of the mighty Carthaginian nation, the forces of Carthage had just started operating against Russia. At first, Carthage's troops were content to attack a few small captured Aztec towns and kill vast numbers of Russian troops that had invaded the Aztecs while waiting for imported workers to build roads and rail lines from the coast. The Aztec people marveled at the magnificent new technology our Army Corps of Engineers brought to their lands for the first time. But then our forces were assembled and it was time for the main offensive to begin.

As a preliminary operation, Carthaginian troops occupied the last two significant cities under Russian control on the west side of the mountains. Infantry, supported by artillery, moved into the mountains themselves, but a Russian counterattack never materialized. Apparently, Catherine had not thought to keep any reserve of offensive forces in her homeland in case of such an emergency.

The next phase of the operation was quick, decisive - and abortive. The first Russian city on the far side of the mountains fell exactly as planned, but another Russian city maintained cultural borders strong enough to interfere with the delivery of reinforcements. Cavalry moved in to hold the city but lacked the movement to press the attack farther immediately. Had Russia posessed any significant number of knights in the area, they could have made our forces pay. But they didn't.

The following turn, the Carthaginian blitz started in earnest. The borders blocking rail travel were dealt with, and several cities fell. But Russian musketmen were intent on ensuring that victory would not be nearly as easy or as cheap as it had been in Egypt and Arabia.

Easy and cheap or not, though, the forces of Carthage were determined. Within a few turns, Catherine the Great (as her Russian subjects had called her in more prosperous days), or Catherine the Terminally Stupid (as she had become known in Carthage after her preposterous extortion attempt and even more preposterous declaration of war), took on a new name: Catherine the Exile. Somewhere amidst the world's vast oceans, she still ruled at least one small group of Russian settlers in an endless search for a new home, but her days of power were over.

Surprisingly, courthouses were sufficient (coupled with the Forbidden Palace in southeast Arabia) to bring corruption down to reasonable levels in even the most distant Russian cities. The vast Carthaginian treasury (over 20,000 gold) found a purpose at last, rushing libraries, courthouses, factories, and marketplaces all across the former Russian territories.

[vmxa1]

All hail Hannibal.