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**Fleme** · March 16, 2008, 09:08

Hahha

What a game. Given the terrain and limitations I chose to run a specialist economy and have a small empire to go along with it. I think I originally settled some 6 cities and started on my way. I tried building wonders where I could and ran a Representation-powered Specialist economy all the way.

I was a clear tech leader throughout the game but the AI's were vastly larger than me. Being Aggressive, they naturally declared war on me rather soon and it was more or less Always War for me, with me defending against huge stacks of doom with superior weapons (Rifles against Knights, Infantry vs Grenadiers/Cuirassiers).

I managed to survive quite well even though there were times that I was at war with all except one AI (Victoria, shared my faith) and it was really hard to make any kinds of moves on the AI. I constantly kept losing my small bordering cities and taking them back as the AI stacks dispersed and couldn't gain any headway until very late in the game. I formed a permanent alliance with Victoria (who had a LOT of land) and since she then gained my technologies, enabling her to build Infantries, we finally started gaining ground. Elizabeth was Vassalized soon, Boudica followed immediately after her. Ragnar was next on the block and after him we moved on Isabella. While on conquest in Spain we soon got a Domination victory. This was 1947 AD and the score was so poor that I'm not even going to utter it here.

That was the first, and the last time I'll ever play Boreal.

**Tuberski** · March 16, 2008, 10:14

Wrong thread.

ACK!

**Nugog** · March 16, 2008, 10:22

Originally posted by Fleme
Hahha

What a game. Given the terrain and limitations I chose to run a specialist economy and have a small empire to go along with it. I think I originally settled some 6 cities and started on my way. I tried building wonders where I could and ran a Representation-powered Specialist economy all the way.

I was a clear tech leader throughout the game but the AI's were vastly larger than me. Being Aggressive, they naturally declared war on me rather soon and it was more or less Always War for me, with me defending against huge stacks of doom with superior weapons (Rifles against Knights, Infantry vs Grenadiers/Cuirassiers).

I managed to survive quite well even though there were times that I was at war with all except one AI (Victoria, shared my faith) and it was really hard to make any kinds of moves on the AI. I constantly kept losing my small bordering cities and taking them back as the AI stacks dispersed and couldn't gain any headway until very late in the game. I formed a permanent alliance with Victoria (who had a LOT of land) and since she then gained my technologies, enabling her to build Infantries, we finally started gaining ground. Elizabeth was Vassalized soon, Boudica followed immediately after her. Ragnar was next on the block and after him we moved on Isabella. While on conquest in Spain we soon got a Domination victory. This was 1947 AD and the score was so poor that I'm not even going to utter it here.

Originally posted by Fleme
That was the first, and the last time I'll ever play Boreal.

Really? I thought you had enjoyed it.

It is a challenging map script - that I think everyone should play - at least once.

**jbp26** · March 16, 2008, 14:11

i had a lot of fun with this game. the egyptians are a great civ and i've never ran a true specialist economy, so this was a good learning experience.

i started off by finding victoria first and aggresivelyexpanding towards her. i declared war once i had a reasonable stack of war chariots and quickly captured most of her cities, including london, which was built on a lake- the commerce from that would turn out to be quite useful. already i was running into money problems, so i built monuments and libraries everywhere jsut to be able to run specialists. i had a couple cottages at my capital, that and the lake at london basically paid for my whole economy. i learned quickly that slavery was a bad idea- i had a slave revolt, and since my capital was generating 95% of my income, i ran out of money and almost had my whole army disband. i went into caste system early and didnt change back.

after the war with england my economy was in the ground. i fended off a few attacks with my tiny army for a couple hundred years and built the majority of the wonders in the game. eventually i conquered my next neighbor and vassalized them, and at this point i was by far the lead in power. but conquering would have been tedious and difficult, so i decided to just go for a cultural victory. i built nothing but cultural stuff for the next few hundred years (but forgot to run free speech until almost the end of the game... doi). this almost cost me the game in the end- i completely neglected my army, and everyone else more than caught up to me. in the last 5 turns boudica sent a huge army into my territory adn captured 3 cities. she was just a few turns away from one of my cultural cities when i won.

all in all, very enjoyable game.

**draethor** · March 16, 2008, 15:48

I hadn't ever run a specialist economy here and wasn't even thinking about it, so I did my normal "pay for everything with religion" route. I founded Confucianism and rushed to get war chariots, hoping I could find someone who didn't have archers yet. Turned out that was Elizabeth, so I quickly took her towns, one of which was a double judaism/hinduism holy city.

At this point though I realized that I was pretty dumb for not going Pyramids and representation, since I was running at least one specialist per city. I noticed Boudica had it in a town near my border, so I built up a huge army and took several of Boudica's towns here, and switched over to representation as fast as I could. This cut my research time down by a third... oops.

With now 4 religions and their temples (Boudica had founded buddhism) and the pyramids, the rest of the map quickly fell as I maintained a large tech advantage the rest of it. I notice that CharonJr managed an AP diplo win, I narrowly missed one myself around 1450, missing it by around 2% of the total votes. This made me sad, because I had just whipped four or five of my towns the turn before the vote, meaning my total population was down 5% or so... the diplomatic leader option never came up again because I took over several of Ragnar's towns, including his only one with Hinduism... I was never able to spread it to any of his towns again.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this game. First time I've ever run a true specialist economy (even if it wasn't until 800AD or so...) and I realized how powerful it can be in these circumstances.

**N35t0r** · March 16, 2008, 19:27

Indeed. Lots of fun.. and lots of war. I made ample use of the spiritual trait, and I was pumping out 17 exp troops from my heroic epic city for the last half of the game.

In the last war I had, which ended a couple of turns before my victory, I had racked up over 2k war weariness. It was killing my economy, but I managed to sign a favorable peace. I gave back tons of cities during the game, as well, trying to get people on my side.

**Chuckman** · March 16, 2008, 23:30

First time on a boreal map. The dearth of resources caught me by surprise.

I made a number of mistakes. I expanded too quickly. The quick expansion meant for most of the game I was 0-20% science rate. I did not optimize city locations. I went the land grab route so some cities were definitely sub-optimal. I did not grab the Pyramids so no Representation early. I did not run a specialist economy. The biggest mistake was at the end. I will get to that shortly.

I did do some things right. I used the Oracle slingshot to grab Code of Laws for Courthouses and founding Confucianism. I took advantage of the Spiritual trait jumping civics back and forth between times of war and peace. I did a pretty fair job running a production economy. Boreal is a good map for that with loads of forests and plenty of deer and sheep. I was able to keep a marginal military tech lead against Ragnar so he did not overwhelm me no matter how hard he tried.

Ragnar was super aggresive. He vassalized Lizzie fairly quickly. I did grab Liverpool while that was going on. Then Vicky declared war on me. A few turns later Ragnar attacked Vicky. He marched his armies across Egypt and Russia and vassalized Vicky while I only captured two cities. After that I tried a push against the Celts to my West. Ragnar attacked them to his East. He vassalized the Celts after I only captured one city. Then he vassalized Russia while I tried to build up for what I thought would be the eventual big attack on me.

Then the big attack came. It was 5 on 1 with Isabella on the sidelines. Ragnar's big push came from the East. At that point I was at Riflemen and Machineguns. Ragnar was at Musketmen, Grenadiers and Currasairs. The Viking vassals were still mideval with Macemen etc. The big push was an 80+ unit stack of death. I was able to hold it off with about 30 units mostly Rifles and Machineguns. The West was not well defended by Ragnar. I captured Vicky's last two cities eliminating her. I captured the three cities that Ragnar had captured from Vicky. This was enough to allow Russia to break free. I made peace with Cathy. The Celts managed to regain their city I had captured. In the East I held off the stack but not by destroying it. Ragnar would probe by attacking with a few units but he never smashed it to pieces on my big defense. Then he got clever. He broke up his stack and went for multiple cities. I lost two border cities and fell back to the Confucian holy city. War weariness was becoming a problem. I eventually bought peace with technology.

So now the Vikings go back and vassalize Russia. I sign a defensive treaty with Spain as the only other free nation. The turn after I sign the defensive pact, Ragnar attacks Isabella. He was focused on her so I was able to grab back my two border cities to the East and even captured one English and two Russian cities. Than Spain is vassalized. Ragnar comes storming back toward me. He is by far the biggest threat. I shift forces back toward the East. Russia recaptures their two cities. I lose one of the Eastern border cities back to the Vikings. I buy peace again with more technology.

All the while I am slowly building towards cultural victory. Through the AI spreading and captured cities I had 6 different religions. I had built the Sistine Chapel. I was able to found Creative Construction and Civilized Jewelers. I built the Eiffel Tower. I also made the fatal mistake of building the UN. At this point Ragnar was in the 50s for both land and population. He was elected secretary general and two votes later he won a diplomatic victory. I was 7 turns away from a cultural victory. Live and learn.

**RobWorham** · March 17, 2008, 02:24

Great write-ups one and all!!!!

**crescentfresh** · March 18, 2008, 00:40

A little stymied by the map type, but the challenge turned out to be fun. I left unchopped every forest/tundra tile without fresh water(and in a fat cross) thinking they would one day be useful with a lumbermill.

Question: Is this statement right? : You can irrigate tundra adjacent to fresh water only. You can't spread irrigation (post

Civil Service) THROUGH tundra or TO tundra? Clarify please if this is wrong.

Lines were drawn early with 3 buddhist civs and 3 Hindu civs taking sides. Ragnar and Isabella were the Buddhist superpowers so I went that way. Most of the early wars were along those religious lines until civs started turning on their allies, while I tried to make nice with everyone.

I'm impressed by the 3 guys that got diplomacy victories in this one and I want to learn how.
I have only a few diplo victories ever, and never from the Apostolic Palace. Diplo victory against Aggressive AI was my goal, but without clear objectives on how to go about it, I failed and ended up falling back on cultural victory. Tried to be nice to everyone as much as possible, but maybe I just ended up giving away lots of techs for no good reason. My diplomacy/religious victory strategy needs a lot of work.

Probably did not help that I only had 6 cities until 1772 when I took a 7th from Liz. I was not the aggressor in any wars ever, but how much of a difference does that make when trying for diplo victory? None of the cities I culture flipped seemed useful, so I disbanded them. Mistake? I declared war once on distant Boudica, when Isabella (top power, same religion) asked me to help her defend herself from Boudica's DoW. I did not take cities from anyone except 2 from the barbs, until I took one city (7th and final city) in 1772 when Liz declared war on me and I was resigned to culture vic. From Leeds I got two new religions to spread, build temples, and then cathedrals in my culture cities. All three cities went legendary in 1930-1931.

World Wonders:
Great Library
Statue of Zeus
Parthenon
Sistene Chapel
Hagia Sophia
Versailles

**draethor** · March 18, 2008, 05:33

I used to get lots and lots of diplo victories, couldn't get domination (and still don't have a conquest one, sigh). Only done two AP diplo wins, and never in this tournament.

I'm super tired and just spouting off the top of my head so some of these facts may be incorrect, but the gist of it will be true at least.

Two ways of getting diplo wins as you know - UN and AP. As far as I know, the prerequisite for an AP win is that the AP religion needs to be spread to every culture. If every culture in the game has it, the vote goes something like this (not exactly, but close):

1 vote per point of town size for every town that has the religion - i.e. a size 10 town with the AP religion will be worth 10 points, a size 15 town without the AP religion will be worth 0 points. The numbers may be a little off here, but the gist of it is correct.

Players can vote for whoever they choose, obviously whoever has the most votes wins. Note that you can (and should) skew this in your favor by spreading your religion to every single one of your towns and trying to grow them, and spreading your religion to only the smaller towns of your opponents. Incidentally this strategy has a lot of other benefits (since it gives you more votes relative to other cultures), so even if you can't get open borders with someone to spread them your religion, you'll still rule the AP.

The UN vote is very similar to the AP vote, except it simply assigns points for total population rather than populations that follow a certain religion. It's actually possible to vote yourself the winner, even without anyone else voting for you - this case occurs when you have a ton of population (but aren't at the domination land cap). The best way I find to ensure a diplo win is to team up with a medium strength computer, make sure to leave a better computer alone (so your medium strength friend doesn't become your opponent in the election), then kill everyone else. You'll have huge relationship bonuses for always being war allies, and he's almost guaranteed to vote for you. This strategy will generally allow you to nab a diplo win a fair number of turns before you'd have the domination win open.

Of course, you can also get a diplo win by being super nice to certain computers and crossing your fingers. This is more of a luck-based approach though since they might always just abstain or be friendlier with someone else, and also your final score will tend to be lower (final score weights very heavily on population, so if you have 15% of the total population and pull off a brilliant 1800AD diplo win you'll probably have less points than someone who pulls off a 1935 domination win... kind of lame I know, but going by points is the most fair way to go).

Edit: since this might seem to be weird given charonjr's score... I would bet you that he was close to a conquest win. That's probably why his score is so high... Also, when picking a computer to team up with, make sure he's not Montezuma (or someone else who will just backstab you), he already likes you enough to follow you to war, and he's not friendly with computer #2.

**draethor** · March 20, 2008, 23:44

Ok, rereading this when I'm not exhausted:

Probably did not help that I only had 6 cities until 1772 when I took a 7th from Liz. I was not the aggressor in any wars ever, but how much of a difference does that make when trying for diplo victory? None of the cities I culture flipped seemed useful, so I disbanded them. Mistake? I declared war once on distant Boudica, when Isabella (top power, same religion) asked me to help her defend herself from Boudica's DoW. I did not take cities from anyone except 2 from the barbs, until I took one city (7th and final city) in 1772 when Liz declared war on me and I was resigned to culture vic. From Leeds I got two new religions to spread, build temples, and then cathedrals in my culture cities. All three cities went legendary in 1930-1931.

Technically, not being the aggressor in any wars is a good thing. You take a decent sized relations hit for declaring war on someone.

That said, one of the strongest and easiest modifiers to get is being a war ally of someone. As you did with Boudica, I often declare war when asked to with computers that are far away. Though don't do it when the computer asking you for help is likely to kill or be killed by that AI (otherwise you lose an ally, or if the computer is close to being #1 or #2 behind you in score, that's bad).

It just sounds like you were trying to be everyone's friend, that doesn't work. Blocs of computers are usually established pretty early on, just pick one of those blocs and do everything you can together. Defensive pacts, go along with them to war (and invite them along to your wars), gift techs... if one of their cities gets taken and you get to take it back, gift it to your friend (assuming it's a crappy town, of course!).

**crescentfresh** · March 21, 2008, 01:42

thanks for the feedback draethor and putting some extra thought into it.

Now that I look back on the game some more... You're exactly right...there were 2 blocs early on. Buddhist and Hindu. I chose to go with the Buddhist bloc with top powers Ragnar and Isabella, but I never went as far as declaring war on my Hindu neighbor Liz with Ragnar.

Isabella is the one AI I never crossed...and she certainly benefitted from my loyalty...when I met the cultural victory condition she had exactly twice my score. It was nice that she never attacked me, sure, but she never voted for me either and I don't know why I expected votes in return for loyalty.

Maybe it's not a feasible strategy to try and get a diplo victory just through...diplomacy. I was just a modest power who tried to get along with everyone....but part of a good diplo strategy, after reading your posts... is domination, frankly. Playing somewhat like you are going for a domination victory. I was never the top power all game and only 2nd in population. 1st in population is really important for all the votes for self, I suppose.

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