Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

Yup, very expensive. Hopefully worth it. Extra gold was because I accounted for inflation possibility this time.

I also chickened out and called off my Thoth attack. I'm fairly confident in my ability to win an always peace game from here. A Thoth attack carries a lot more risk. Would have been fun though. My poor cavs are bored.

We might reconsider it if we get another military tech advantage but I guess Free Religion will be our final religious civic and I'll start wealth building. Also, Thoth recently adopted Emancipation and it's eating into my happy crutch.

I broke 1k hammers in demos:

[The Black Sword]

The Obituaries

Oxyphenbutazone(T171)


Oxy was the great unknown in my player ratings ... I think that's still true after the game. The Mayans expanded out to a nicely sized empire, they set some good borders which let them go through most of the game without any military to speak off. Oxy looked to be in a good position coming into the mid-game and I kept expecting him to make his move. Throw a golden age, starting putting that Phi trait to use, Liberate something. The world waited, held it's breath, and when it released the world had passed the Mayans by. To be fair, I think this coincided with Oxy's holiday, and the lack of a permanent turnplayer probably didn't help. Still they sat passively and held their (no) military strategy for too long. The Mythologicals bullied some land out of them, making Oxy the prime target for the Mongol hordes and their new weaponry. The Prophet Becko foretold their doom. At this stage Oxy put up a good fight. Attacking muskets vs cavs was never going to be an option, so he stacked hill cities with as many whipped CG2 muskets he could, and forced some casualties. He could have survived a bit longer if he kept his units fortified in Gurton Buster instead of Homeskillet though.

Oxy, you are released from your burden.

Dtay(T172)



That's 2-1 to me now . By the looks of things we might be back to even after PB18 though. Dtay seemed to have a pretty weak opening in this game. That can be explained to a certain extent by his two late traits but he also seemed a bit unfocused to me. His city count remained competitive for a long time but he wasn't getting as much out of them as the rest of us. Part of that was surely in the border popping. The rest of us all had pretty efficient methods, the Malinese even had something against monuments! As a result his food was quite low and his GNP in particular flatlined. The GLH and Pyramids is a rather terrifying combination though and through snagging those he seemed to be recovering. Unfortunately Thoth then made his ill-advised attack, giving Comm a clear target for his Knights and burgeoning Mali collapsed. Dtay deserves credit for surviving for quite a long time from this position though, with two vultures right beside his capital. Thankfully for me, he made himself very hard to digest, especially for Thoth. Eventually of course, the superior numbers were going to tell.

Dtay, you will be dearly missed.

[dtay]

That's 2-1 to me now .

Part of that was surely in the border popping. The rest of us all had pretty efficient methods, the Malinese even had something against monuments!

Yeah...

There was a point in the game where I was seriously popping my borders through WONDERS. Capital popped, and each of the Great Wall, the Great Lighthouse, and the Pyramids popped others...

[Commodore]

Dang, good thread! That was a pretty casual-sounding utterly dominant game from you there.

-That was a pretty early golden age, but it seems to have worked out for you, so what do I know?
-Stupid missed shots at GEs. You missed a lot of bullets to get the Kremlin.
-Becko, you're a treasure. Excellent dedlurker and I hope you play your own game soon (get TBS to lurk you)!
-SO MANY CAVALRY WHY OW OW OW.

Looking forward to your wrap ups. Mind if I log in to the Mongols and look around?

[The Black Sword]

1. I've had a quick look through the other threads hoping to find someone denouncing that GA. No luck I think it was a very strong move, it broke us right through the stagnation period. I can't really say it was my master plan though, since it probably wouldn't have happened if we hadn't expanded so fast to move past the 1 turn revolution threshold.

2. Hey, I missed all my Engy shots too! I was damn surprised how quickly you made up the ground to Communism.

3. Agreed!

Password is Joao, feel free to look around.

[The Black Sword]

The final borders of the Duchy. We were doing some research building along to Bio and Medicine because throwing 3k gold at a big rusty statue and Commodore landing a GS for 2.5k Biology bulb, my lead in that area of the tree had evaporated.

I'm glad to see the game end now, but I do wish I got to play with the whole Sushi + Rep/KremlinSlave Econ.

My army:


Demos:


Tech, I'm missing Drama, Theology(but I have Paya), Compass and Optics on the left:


I hadn't decided on the plan post Medicine. Too many options.

Everything I killed off Oxy:


Seems like the others were criticising him a bit for keeping the forces in Gurton Buster. He left 11 real units there, and me wade through 85. There were some mistakes in his defence but I think he whipped himself as hard as he could.

[The Black Sword]

So, here's my end game summary of sorts, I can't seem to make myself write a longer one.

What put me ahead in the game:
-Joao + Stonehenge obviously fits this map perfectly.
-That goes even better with the bit of extra Pindicator land I was able to get for free.
-My early emphasis on happy caps and commerce - I was fortunate to have more accessible happy res than most(though, to compensate, my first few city locations sucked) and I concentrated on that more than most too with the Monarchy research. I knew I'd run into commerce problems, so I focused on growing all the pop I could onto cottages and coast.
-My first two golden ages really opened up the gap between me and the pack. The first getting me a few key techs so I could use my food-hammer advantage again, the second with its 6 GPs.
-Finally, I think everyone else made some sort of critical mistake; Thoth attacking dtay, Gaspwyn's overexpansion culminating in the alphabet bulb and Comm's initial underexpansion. They all had some good periods from the mid-game on, but it was always playing catch-up.

The biggest question I have is whether I was too aggressive/aggressive enough with my cavalry. I doubt I would have got the concession so quickly if I had tried to invade Thoth at the end, so there is that. On the other hand, it's clear I whipped a few too many Cavs if I was just going to go the peaceful route. One thing I was wondering whether I should have attacked Thoth first instead of Oxy. It would have been a much riskier path, but at a stage where I had a massive military advantage. Assuming that worked, I think Maya would have still been there as an easy conquest for later. Trying to judge the war weariness that would come out of these actions was something I found really hard.

On that subject, I have to give Gaspar, Lewwyn and Noble credit for being some damn annoying neighbours. After the fall of Hyperborea, I was thinking that any further aggression would be going in that direction. But they bulked so much stuff up on my border that I had to decide that was the worst option. Additionally, the land was very defensible in that direction, no way to fork multiple cities at once. The stand off in Westward Ho and Quivira had to be the worst border situation in the game. Seems they felt the same way in their thread.

The final rival was Comm, who was making me work for my first-to boni at the end of the game. I specifically didn't want to take Gurton Buster so we wouldn't have a land border, but pretty soon after I was wishing I could send some cavs at you to stop you focusing so much on GNP!

[Becko]

So... I take it you won't be needing someone to cover your turns anymore?

Seriously though: awesome game from start to finish, and I'm honored to have been able to join up for the ride. And, frankly, a bit embarrassed to have my name in the thread title given how little I've contributed. :P

FWIW, I have been dedlurking regularly all the way through -- still haven't checked any of the other threads -- but I never could seem to find the time to reply (I'm a very slow writer, which also explains the thread resuscitation). So I'm sorry for not being a more active assistant, but thanks for the words of encouragement (from Commodore, too). And again, congrats on a well-played game.