My report is going to be somewhat brief. This was a very unusual game for me. Were it not a tournament, I probably would have given up, which I suppose is a testament to hanging on until the last city. Or, in my case, two cities.

Point total:

Oracle, check. 10 pts.

Shakespeare’s Theatre in capital, I missed it by 4 turns. No dice.

Magellan’s, lighthouse, Adam Smith’s? Not a chance.

Highest literacy rate, check. 5 pts. 15 so far.

Honourable game, check. 10 pts. 25 so far.

Fastest finish or highest score… uh, no. Zilch.

Control starting land mass (or any other land mass)… no, but close by the end. No points.

Russians didn’t get mapmaking before I got writing, first contact. 2 pts. 27 so far

No cities 30 + by the end. Nothing.

Control all gems, the easiest objective ever, unless I missed one. 10 pts, presuming they’re all right next to the capital. I checked, but maybe I missed one. 37 to date.

SDI, Future techs and AEGIS cruisers? None, none, none. No points.

Thar be no whales or fish in sight. No points.

Lastly, 25 pts for a diplomatic victory, and 4 more if nobody else did it before 1844, which I highly doubt. So, probably 62 pts total, maybe 66. (or 52-56 if there’s a gems I missed)

My empire has two phases, neither of which are very interesting stories, although they were kinda fun to play. The first stage was almost all playing as much “farmer’s gambit” as possible, given the situation. I expanded until I hit the Russians; I even made it to the west coast of the continent. I made a successful oracle grab, followed by a successful GL push. I think, looking back, that this early game wonder load was what crippled me. But I didn’t see it that way at the time. ;)

My first phase lasted all the way until the middle ages, and my war heffallumps. Then, I decided it was time to bring my landmass under control. The Russians were at war with three powers each almost twice their size; I decide “hey, wouldn’t this be a great time to take 14 war elephants and grab some cities while they’re distracted?” Uh, no. They killed all 14 on 3 pikemen, and proceeded to eat my cities. As in “all my cities except two”. They even took two cities on the bottom of our cute little starting peninsula and razed them to the ground.

I managed to beat them back. Somehow. I kept them at bay long enough to buy peace at an outrageous price, and hang on by a thread until the modern age, where I became the trade baron, because tech STOPPED. Communism is a joyous thing. People simply ceased researching things. So I actually took a tech lead, and tricked out my new techs in exchange for money, tech and continued survival. From this point on, I was in OCC mode, except with an extra city. I got dragged into another war with the Russians, but I managed to scramble enough artillery and infantry to hold the mountains forever. I even managed, in the late 1700s, to turn the tide and start taking back cities. But by then, it was too late; I’d already slapped down the UN. The first vote I had was inconclusive, with the Russians and Egypt voting for Cleo, and the Babs (one city!!!) and Japanese voting for Toku, with everyone else for me. So, I figure, if I wipe out the Russians, I win! So I proceeded to do so. But before I could get them quite gone, the Zulus ate the Babylonians, and Cleo dropped off the ballot anyway. So when the next election came up, Toku voted for Toku, Cathy abstained, and I won a diplomatic victory.

My wonders were: Oracle, Great Library, J.S. Bach’s Cathedral, Theory of Evolution and Universal Suffrage.

Diplomatic victory in 1844. Civ score: terrible. ;)

Jester

PS: Score was 1776, if anyone wants to know. :)