Epic 13, Byzantines - DaveV's unfinished game

[DaveV]

A quick report for an unfinished game:

I founded Buddhism, Willem founded Judaism and spread it aggressively. After all my neighbors converted, I could see which way the wind was blowing, and converted to Judaism.

After discovering I had started without copper, I expanded out to the iron, beating Willem by a couple turns. By 650 BC, I had established my five cities:


Willem declared war in 110 BC, despite our shared religion and trade (but that's OK, I was planning to attack him anyway and this saved me penalties with his friends). After a slow buildup and some inconclusive fighting, I took his two closest cities and took a peace break in AD 900. After a second buildup and DoW by me, I killed him off in 1365. Willem vassalized himself to Pacal when he was down to one city, but again, that was OK because Pacal was next on the list.

After rolling up a few of Pacal's cities, I saw this stack from Ethiopia in 1595:


I kept my Jewish friends happy, kept attacking the Hindu enemies, then just ran out of time in 1795. The game was progressing very slowly, and after 20 hours of playing the deadline arrived.

I think I was well on my way to domination, but it probably would have taken 20 more hours of play. I was killing off a lot of units, and getting a lot of war weariness. The Hippodrome helped a lot, but I was getting a lot of unhappiness from Apostolic Palace, yearning for homeland (I always picture John Cleese saying "Pining for the fjords? What kind of talk is that?"), Emancipation (I hate to let captured cities starve when I can whip them instead), and attacks against fellow Hindus.

The meat grinder:


Score and minimap:


Victory conditions:


Demographics:


Conclusions: The AI built a lot of units, and conquering was slow work. The cataphract and hippodrome were a great combo for warmongering.