Adventure 62: Grumpy Victoria

[DTG]

Four self-imposed variants:

1. One City Challenge (and: build a lot of wonders).
   
2. Always War: must declare war as soon as I meet an AI leader and remain at war until the end of the game.
   
3. Redcoats only warfare (no siege or mounted units before or after Rifling)
   
4. Conquest victory the only acceptable victory condition.

London would be the greatest, nay, the only city in the world, and all other lands but a garden for her majesty's pleasure.

I later toned down the last variant: other leaders would be allowed to dwell in far away lands, provided that my continent be free of all other AI leaders. (or: I didn't want to build a navy and spend another hour conquering far flung cities...)

The initial foreign encounters went about as well as could be expected:







^^^^ I'm missing the Joao pic, but you get the idea.

All my early efforts were centered upon beautifying the capital. Occasionally the other leaders would stop by and, in a fit of jealousy, try to take my shinies. It never worked:









Much to my surprise I lost the Liberalism race, so I had to research Rifling at a leisurely pace. But I eventually broke out with a few elite troops. Needless to say, things did not go well for the AI (spoilered wall of pics):

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The end game was like playing freaking whack-a-mole:













But eventually, Victoria finally had some room in which to live:





Here were some of the more notable heroes of the glorious English conquests:










Cao Cao was the consummate English gentleman.

And finally, the capital:



A valuable lesson that I took from this game: building Settlers, Workers, and rebuilding Work Boats takes valuable hammers from those so-called "unnecessary" wonders. And Redcoats.

To end things, I took two island cities from Portugal and the Dutch for peace. Because, eh, why not? Her majesty would like to vacation overseas every now and then. And peace was dubbed acceptable because the Queen had mellowed since 4000 BC.

I tried to get Barbarians to conquer London and finish things up. But they never came.

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Thanks for the map and game.

[LKendter]

560 / 577 - WOW, that is the most promoted unit I have ever seen.

[Huinesoron]

Wow, you managed to win (well, effectively win) with a variant like that? Well played, indeed.

London's cultural borders, though - I never realised quite how screwy culture could get on coastlines until now.

(And hats off to Cao Cao! Spiffing, sir, absolutely spiffing.)

[BRickAstley]

Congrats on destroying with that variant. That is surely a very sexy capital. Who needs strategic resources!