Intermediate Game 12 Discussion Thread

[Nugog]

Intermediate League Game 12 has closed for submissions. Please feel free to discuss your game in as much detail as you want. The more we talk, the more we can learn from each others successes and failures......

[Nugog]

Congratulations to EPW for his impressive diplomatic victory! Ms_Summer grabs second place with a space race win, while draethor just grabs third place with a slightly better domination win than jbp26!!! Great to see things tightening up in this league!!!

1st : EPW : Won Diplomatic Victory - 1906AD - 5929 points / 61188 points

2nd : Ms_Summer : Won Space Race Victory - 1890AD - 5590 points / 54565 points
3rd : draethor : Won Domination Victory - 1926AD - 6465 points / 50391 points

jbp26 : Won Domination Victory - 1932AD - 6250 points / 49288 points
JungleIII : Won Domination Victory - 1936AD - 5613 points / 45353 points
pmonsieurs : Won Diplomatic Victory - 1872AD - 3141 points / 32950 points
crescentfresh : Won Cultural Victory - 1890AD - 3085 points / 27536 points
Tata : Won Cultural Victory - 1956AD - 2964 points / 11785 points

Chuckman : Lost to Space Race - 1989AD - 3580 points / 10089 points - LOST

Congratulations to all those who took part in this game.

[RobWorham]

Let's hear the nitty-gritty then.......

[Nugog]

[EPW]

I suppose I have to post a write up since I won

[Nugog]

Originally posted by EPW
I suppose I have to post a write up since I won

[RobWorham]

Originally posted by EPW
I suppose I have to post a write up since I won

Careful EPW, your enthusiasm might be contagious!!!

[EPW]

I suspected that we were on the 'new world' from the beginning since we were the Incas. This was confirmed when I found Monte a few turns after we started. I immediately declared war hoping to take his capitol with my quecha. My hope was dashed when I saw he was on a hill, and he didn't have archers. RAther than making peace I decided to park myself in his territory for the next few thousand years to slow down his expansion. This worked very well and I was able to expand into all the land North of Monte by 1000 ad. Pacal also tok advantage of the situation and took most of the land to montes south. I made peace with Monte in 875BC.

I decided to concentrate on expansion rather than wonder building, and I only got the Great Wall and the hanging garndens by 1000AD.
By 1000 AD I was preparing for war with Monte again.

Monte, being the fool he is, declared war on me around 1100ad. I quickly gathered my forces and put an end to the Aztec aggressor.


I started to run away with the game at this point, I was much larger than all my rivals and everyone was nice and friendly.
I declared war on Pacal in 1724 AD, this would be my most challenging war. But not that challenging, I made peace with Pacal in 1788 having conquered all but 2 useless cities, and I was left with a sizable army.

Willem vna Oragne and his Mongol hordes decided they'd had enough of me and declared war in 1830, luckily he didn't seem to have any navy. I also cajoled the Germans to attack them.
I built the UN in 1840, ideally I would have had an invasion force ready by this time, but alas that was not the case.

I captured Amsterdam with infantry in 1864 and they immediately capitulated. Kublia decided that Victoria would be a better protector.

I declared war on Victoria in 1870, I captured Oxford in 1871, wiped out her entire army in 1872 and she capitulated in 1873.


Knowing my score was going down every turn, I declared was on Joao II in 1878, and he capitulated in 1879.

The sole remaining power, Bismark, was next, and he would take the lives of many of my troops. I also had to deal with his French vassal () Bismark's land was comparable to my own, and it took time to push into his territory. He also had infantry and airships, and would have fighters before the war was over.

De Gualle proved to be a real pain. I didn't put too many units into france, hoping my vassals would deal with him. But de Gualle had dozens of those annoying 2 turn musketman and they took cities that I had left lightly gaurded. They also refused to break away from Bismark and surrender to me.
Bismark capitulated in the face of my modern armor in 1902, and also after I bought Issy to attack him.

France decided to save himself and surrender to Issy after Germanys fall. This was inconvenient since I was so close to getting a domination victory. I had to declare war on Isabella the same turn. Isabella surrendered almost immediatly, in 1905. This forced peace with damned France once again.

Luckily the UN vote came up and I was able to squeak by with a diplomatic victory, 66 years after I had built it.

[jbp26]

arg. missed 3rd place by 1000 points!

when i saw the setup for this game i anticipated quechas cutting a bloody swathe through europe. but i just knew rob and nugog wouldnt be that kind. then i planned to rush montezuma, but i just couldn't find him for the longest time. ok, plan C. so i had a huge amount of open territory and raging barbs were on; that meant expand like crazy and build lots of troops.

the barbarians were never a problem for me, becuase i kept my garrisons stocked. i didnt even need that many troops, just a few at the borders. i made sure to keep rotating them as well, to give everyone the benefit of experience. this worked out quite well because when i finally did go to war with montezuma, my army was already stocked with 10 exp veterans. i ran over him and made him my vassal in no time. i had friendly relations with pacal so i didn't attack him; i was hoping that i could avoid that war entirely and just make a permanent alliance. in retrospect not making pacal my vassal sooner delayed my victory a number of turns. it wasn't major, but maybe enough to bump me up to third.

any, after the war with montezuma, i focused on infrastructure and expansion. by the time i started encountering the civs from the other continent, i had almost the whole land settled. this translated into a tremendous lead in production and technology. no one else was even close in power. so i sent my modern army into the territory of the dutch and captured their 3 largest cities in somethign like 3 turns. they quickly capitulated, and i similarly handed their cities back.

this pattern would follow for the rest of the game. i'd declare war on one civ, knock out three cities, and because of the huge disparity in power, they'd immedietly capitulate. then id return the cties and move on. reinforcements were never an issue since i hardly took casualities, and could airlift in as many units as i needed. the other contient collapsed quickly, and then i had to unfortunately double back and smash pacal as well which i should have done in the first place.

this was a very enjoyable game, i really liked the setup.

[draethor]

Yeah great setup here.

I found Montezuma relatively early on, and simply decided to pump out a few Quecha units and rush him. I popped one from a hut as well (right near Monty's border) which was nice, so I had 4 Quecha to his 1 warrior defender, so he died very early on. Pacal proved to be a little more annoying, but I took all his good towns and vassalized him by 1200 or so.

The game got EXTREMELY interesting from here. This is because Pacal, Montezuma and I had founded every religion but Taoism. Van Oranje got Taoism in Europe, and spread it EVERYWHERE. This means everybody was his friend. I was also slow to get the AP (thinking I had a massive tech/production advantage) but this was not the case.

So I had an entire continent of friends to attack. Those civs only once went to war against anyone but me, and it was a 4 on 1 dogpile that quickly vassalized de gaulle. They also had the AP and would outvote me on anything, so I normally avoided war until immediately after an AP vote, and had to defy several times. I also attacked high population centers as quickly as I could and only BARELY survived a potential religious diplo loss (was less than 2% of the total votes needed away from losing).

I had by far the most territory and commerce, however the AI's single religion had enabled them to set up a huge tech trading bloc, and I had to fight tooth and nail for every city. Even though I had at least triple the GNP of the #2 AI (quadruple or higher after I got astronomy), I had relative tech parity until very late in the game.

It was somewhat predictable though, I attacked van oranje to gain physical control of the AP (though it would be some time before I gained actual control of it) - he was the hardest fight since he was the strongest AI. After he fell though, the pace of conquest started to pick up.

In any case, this game would've been a very simple one for me had europe not been united under a single religion. I had never seen so many AIs all friendly with each other before, and that made things EXTREMELY difficult. If I had been able to use normal divide+conquer tactics this game would've ended at least 100 turns earlier.

[Nugog]

Thanks Guys!

[EPW]

polyplus

[RobWorham]

Originally posted by EPW
polyplus

Have you not received yours yet???

[EPW]

no...

[RobWorham]

Hmmmmm, I've given the prize giver a nudge........