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**Carch** · January 1, 2008, 20:22

I thought I'd do a writeup of my game to try to explain what happened at the end. I really enjoyed the game... right up to the last five turns. It was close, it was tense, and it was interesting, until... well, you'll see.

I started off thinking I'd better get Bronze to take care of all those trees, and after I'd explored a bit, thinking I'd better get Iron to take care of all that jungle. Then when I where my rivals were, I thought I'd better start expanding pronto.

I settled Rome in place (what a sweet start spot that was!) and at about turn 30, set up a production city between the gold and copper southeast of Rome. I got workers going later than I usually do, because I decided Rome could eat clams for a while.

So... somewhere around turn 40, I ran into the other Caesar. Now, I don't know what kind of crazy juice you guys were drinking when you decided this was a grand old map, but a Caesar vs Caesar showdown? And giving the AI easy Iron? That's just mean.

At any rate, after getting Iron Working and finding no iron anywhere near me, I went for wonder techs and tried to get the Pyramids and Oracle built. Amazingly, I was able to do it, despite being up against THREE Industrious leaders. After getting those wonders, I got my third city going around turn 75 or so (1000 BC). Not expanding quite as rapidly as I'd liked, but I'd got both the Pyramids and Oracle, so I was satisfied.

I continued expanding, founded Confucianism, and got my fourth city up near Rameses to deny him some Copper to my west. Turns out it didn't matter, because HE had Iron. Like everyone else. Except me, the Roman whose unique unit requires Iron.

Just as I was thinking everything would be cool and peaceful and I could research Aesthetics and Literature and grab the great library, round about 125 AD (turn 120) Churchill plopped down a settlement in MY next city spot--south of Rome. Well, so much for expansion by Settler. It was time for expansion by Axeman. I got a barracks up in Rome and started cranking Axemen from both Rome and Cumae.

After a long war, lasting about 80 turns, through Longbows, Macemen and eventually Trebuchets, I finally captured the last continental English city and got Churchill as a vassal. During that war I got several Great People, including an Engineer who I used for Machinery, and a Prophet who discovered Philosophy (founding Taoism as well, in the same city as Confucianism).

As an aside, I should point out that I pulled ahead of the pack in score fairly early on in the game, and stayed ahead through most of the game, with one exception. Augustus paced me the entire game. We were neck and neck in the general score. I suspect this is because he had a huge open area to his south and islands to his east to settle, so he was able to expand without fighting much farther than I was able to.

After recuperating from the war, I was significantly ahead of Augustus, with 1707 points to his 1588. The others were further behind with Rameses at 1327 and none of the other leaders yet past 1000. Unfortunately I wasn't watching the power curve at this point, because though I picked up a lot of population, income and production, Augustus really started ramping up his military and had a force much stronger than mine.

Lincoln was my next target, mainly because he stood between the bulk of my territory and Augustus, who I really needed to beat down. In 1500 (turn 210) I marched my main force to his northernmost city of Philadelphia. It was taken after a tough fight, and a quick cease fire ensued.

The peace ended up lasting quite a while as I rebuilt the English cities, tried to keep ahead of Augustus, and rebuilt my invasion force with gunpowder units. I continued research on a military track, heading for Rifling. I also had an eye on Astronomy & Chemistry, because I wanted to have a try at slowing down Augustus with Privateers.

When I finally did get Rifling (around 1700 - turn 250), I spent a big pile of money upgrading all my units to Riflemen, and switched to researching Cannons with Chemistry & Steel. When I got them, I upgraded my remaining Catapaults and Trebuchets. Conveniently, right about that time, Stalin asked me to go to war against Lincoln. So I sent a dozen riflemen and four shiny new Cannons to New York. By 1810 (turn 275), New York was mine and I was marching on Washington.

Then, in 1820 (5 turns later), that weasel Stalin met me at Washington, and after my cannons had beat down the defenses, he marched in and took the city out from under me! Regardless, I was able to get Lincoln to capitulate, and declared war on Stalin a few turns later to take back Washington. I probably should have just let the city go, since I could have culture-flipped it, but I was frustrated! Turns out that location became strategically important later on, too.

My next research target was Assembly Line, to give me Infantry which would hopefully out-tech anything either Augustus or Rameses could throw at me. I was pretty much committed to a Domination win at this point, since Conquest & Time weren't options. During this period of preparation I started sending out Privateers to make a little extra gold, and hopefully slow down Augustus and Rameses a bit more. I was pulling further ahead of Augustus, but I still (unfortunately) wasn't watching the Power curve.

By turn 300 (1860 AD) I was 1 turn away from Railroad, and had my invasion force all upgraded to Infantry. All throughout the 1800's, Augustus kept trying unsuccessfully to pull off an Apostolic Palace Diplomatic victory. It was starting to get on my nerves. My cities were growing so fast, though, that I had to take a side-trip to Biology and Medicine before I could continue my military research track. Sick cities are just so unsightly...

By the early 1900's my Privateers were washed up, so I figured I'd try building Sid's Sushi. Naturally, both Augustus and Rameses switched to State Property. Grr.

Finally, I'm cranking out tanks, I'm all stacked up on Augustus' border, and then... Rameses builds the UN. The LAST thing I wanted was to lose to a Diplomatic victory when I was so far ahead in score and tech. So I moved everyone on rails from the southern border to the western border and got ready to push through three cities to Thebes. How hard could it be? Three cities? I started off with a dozen infantry and a few cavalry, cannons and tanks. Against riflemen and cannons, I thought I had a pretty good shot. Then the spies came--killing reinforcement production. Then the cannons came--doing enough collateral damage that his riflemen could take out my tanks. Then...

Augustus declared war. Despite a quick (and costly) truce with Rameses, and me taking my entire invasion force, now 25 strong to reinforce Washington, Augustus' stack took the city. He had so many units I swear the combat took ten minutes to resolve.

Then he followed up with FOUR MORE stacks of at least a dozen units each, plus another huge stack headed for Ravenna. When Ravenna fell, I couldn't go on any longer. I didn't have the production to keep up with these gigantic stacks, and I was losing to technologically inferior units. And I was sure that the way my luck had been going, if I had stuck it out, I would have lost to a diplomatic or cultural victory.

So... there you have it! It was an interesting game for me, but after being ahead the whole game and doing well (or so I thought), I just couldn't watch my cities be crushed one by one by the other Caesar.

**RobWorham** · January 2, 2008, 00:20

Great write-up Carch!!!!

Thank you for a great read!

**LaTuFu** · January 2, 2008, 07:51

Mine had a similar frustrating end to Carch's although it was more peaceful.

I was also pretty surprised and frustrated with the lack of iron in any reasonable proximity to me.

I chose to do a quick expansion, grabbing 5 or 6 cities in rapid succession to stake out a territory, then sat back and developed my economy and traded techs to keep up with the Caesars.

I realized fairly early on that Stalin, Lincoln, and Churchill were significantly weaker than Ramses and Caesar, so I chose to keep the latter two as friendly as possible until I could get to technologies that would allow me to compete with their militaries.

I was able to take a couple of cities from Churchill, but I never could sustain an offensive against him. I was about to turn my efforts towards Lincoln, and he offered up Vassal status before the first siege began.

Augustus was a couple of techs ahead of me at this point, and Ramses was rolling. It was about this time that his eastern borders slowly started creeping in on my cities, forcing me to either gear up for a large war with him or crank up my culture output. I tried to straddle the middle, cranking up my cultural sliders and cutting back on research while I built up an army to take him out.

*Poof* he won a culture victory on me and I was done.

**Nugog** · January 2, 2008, 15:14

Here is the unlocked save for those who want to take a look.

DOWNLOAD

**gbo** · January 6, 2008, 12:54

Well, downloaded the game and got started. So far so good. Then real life got in the way and it seemed that over the next couple of weeks I didn't get more than a few minutes here and a few minutes there to make any headway. Did get Churchill as a vassel fairly early - turned out he had two cities separate from his main group that I didn't notice. I will blame that on only having intermittent time to concentrate. After that I was making quite good progress toward a culture victory. Then more real life stuff came along. Anyway finally got a chance to finish this up, or so I thought. Just as I was getting my thoughts back in order and remembered just what I had been intending along comes Augustus with his minnions Stalin and Lincoln and in one turn take three of my border cities and pretty much cripple my empire. At this point I decided to wait for game 7. Having no iron was quite a shock.

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