Apolyton July Tournament Results and Spoiler

[Chemical Ollie]

I was quite slow in the start, as I wanted to settle my cities in positions that were good for the long term. I expanded peacefully until about year 0. I can't remember in which order, but Aztecs, Rome and India all declared war on me (but only one at a time). With plenty of horses, I took what I wanted from them and made peace. I used my first leader to build FP in a former Indian city to get a big and productive empire.

[Chemical Ollie]

I have only had a few turns of peace each time before some other stupid civ decided to make war on me. I never started a single war. Sometimes I had to fight on 3 fronts, which was the only real challange so far. Despite republic, I have not seen any war disorder, thanks to Hanging Gardens (captured from India), Bach's (built by a leader) and plenty of luxuries. Even without cathedrals in most of the cities!

I have only had a few setbacks:
1) The roman city with furs flipped back to them after the peace agreement
2) Another Roman city flipped back and took 15 of my 25 knights with it. AARRGGHH.
3) The Chinese are coming through France with massive knight and cavallery stacks. They razed one of my luxury cities and India (who I was in peace with) resettled the spot before me.

It is now 1550 and I just went industrial. I'm in war with China who sends hordes of cavallery, but I will mobilize and start to build rail, so I have good hopes to fend them off. India and Rome are pushed away from the good land in the middle. Here's the score table at AD 1525:

[Txurce]

"Roughing it" was applicable to this game, but mostly in reference to the AI civs. I've never seen the AI respond more poorly to adverse topography. Their cities stayed surprisingly small, and their research rates were abysmal. (This made the game easy, but refreshingly different and therefore interesting). It certainly justified my immediate intent to expand slightly into India's jungle and grassland, then retrench. By keeping the other civs in relative check, Babylon finished second in size despite limited expansion, and first in every other meaningful category, including population.

I was the tech driver - that is, trading tech for tech or gold at favorable terms - from the start of the Middle Ages. I sold tech throughout most of my industrial era, and eventually stopped except when more gold made a difference in my research rate.
I did achieve a couple of things I never had before: the building of a maxed science city (Colossus, Copernicus, Newton, SETI), and had the biggest tech lead I've ever had when I launched in 1810 - the AI was still researching mass production.

As a result, warfare was Civ2-style child's play. No one ever managed to get a significant force to Babylon's borders. I warred twice against India - taking the luxuries around their capital and later, uranium - and once against the Aztecs to take an isolated city with oil. When China declared war once, I allied with France, which slowly lost its continental holdings. By then I had tanks, and proceeded to conquer back for France all of its lost lands. In fact, I created a true buffer zone all around Babylon.

To appraise the buffer, note that France had been reduced to the island in the northwest; every other French holding is a gift from Babylon.

[Txurce]

Here's my 1808 saved game, one turn before launching. My score was 2838.

[Chemical Ollie]

Domination victory AD 1948 at score 3300 something (see image). Boring game with a lot of slow, grinding war to wear down the other civs. I had only a few turns of peace in total from AD 0 to AD 1948. I let them start all wars so that war disorder was minimal. I took control of all 8 luxuries by 1500 (IIRC). Did some mobilisation to speed thing up, but the ability to build temples and marketplaces in conquered cities is more worth than the ability to build troops a little faster.

Now I will finally download the new patch.

[watorrey]

is there an august game?