[spoilers] OT4E's crusade

[OT4E]

After 40 year of stranging through the desert I found this:

[mackoti]

Who made this map?Well the honey and milk  waiting for you..

[OT4E]

Who made this map?Well the honey and milk  waiting for you..

Tasunke madi it.
Shame on me that I allready have Globe theatre...

[OT4E]

After TBS got subbed the game is moving with a very nice pace. But it also became less challenging for me of course. DZ gave me peace and it doesnt seem that he is interesting in denying me any of chumchu's lands. I started it ASAP:


Though my spoils can not complare with this:


GJ, why are you so bad?

I swear I saw 60+ rifles when I checked F5, but where are they all?

Ah I see now, they are guarding this important point:


Do you really fear dutch so much?

I started settling "Tasunke's gift":

There will be 1 uber-city and then I will share some resources with other coastal cities. We will see.

Also there is a couple of other barbarian cities filled with building. This one I have already taken.

For some reason it was frozen to size 1 but didnt auto-raze upon capturing.

And another one, I am going to capture in a few turns:


Demographics:


Gavagai though had +550 gpt last turn. His low GNP comes from lacking constitution and that I have canceled some resource deals in which I was providing him unique happiness. But this is misguiding. He has got Communism and will launch Golden age which will last 12 turns since he had captured MoM last turn. With state property he will rise his food and cut some maintance.

Here is the situation in techsnological tree:

[OT4E]

Chumchu is out. I got most of his land but Donovan pressed some tiles with his culture from cities TBS captured earlier. Also he has planted one city pretty aggressive. I knew I couldnt keep last cities and had to replant them. But our peace treaty was about to expire and my forces were spread around and wounded.


I pulled everything in my front and it worked. DZ declared me war but didnt attack and moved his cavalry in the back city. I think he saw I had Great Artist. I wasnt going to bomb it because I need to start my GA soon and I have almost no chance to pop anything else than GS.

Donovan is not giving me peace again. What changed? I dunno. But I decided to use this time to kick him away from his annyoing islands. He managed to get 4 cavalries in so it wont be as easy as I hoped:


Also I declared war to Gavagai. First of all I wanted to capture MoM-city for a turn to run extended GA, but he pulled in 5 rifles in on the turn I wanted to attack. Though I was sure he couldnt see my general-ships.


After not having success here I decided to try my luck with his islands cities and it surpisingly worked. He kept just 1 unit each so I cut 27 pop from him at once. It was still important because he is the main contender at this moment.


Meanwhile game is driving deeper to industrial age. I got Assembly line and as you can see I am making Factories almost everywhere


And here is my new brand uber-city:


I think it will be able to build settler soon and continue growing. Weird.

[OT4E]

So it is over. First of all I must say it was interesting and exciting game and I thank everyone for playing it. I will place some statements now and I will try to add some details later if I find time.

1. The map was good. Though it wasnt as balanced as people here suppose it to be. Me and Cairo got easier starts obviously for having just 1 land neighbor, though I think mapmaker expected us to have heavy skirmishes for islands but it is different things when you have to contest for mainland. Neither of me or Mr. Cairo could seriously expect to get a piece of each others core. So we established peace quick. But one of the main circumstances was that Cairo got attacked by GJ and couldnt find time to spoil my peaceful well being. I knew that trying to steal islands from Mr.Cairo was never worth good relatinship with him.

But in general I think that others had more land naturally and better land. Need to mention that people starting near flood plain rice had advantage because it gives 4 food without any improvements. I was really suprised how people got more food than me when I planted on sugar.

2. Leader and civ were great. I still wonder why nobody tried to try to grab it. Tasunke says there was no tie. I knew I need survive till dikes. They dont give you automatic win but they give you more than anything else.

But I cant say that the fact I was Dutch can justify that noone give a shit to tech Astro in any reasonable time. I was happy when Cairo got Collossus because it was something like a written obligation not to go for Astro but others could pay more attention to the seas. May be the map shape didnt suppose that anyone could gain much from having Astro. And finally I could kill that warrior in TBS cap with common galleon. 

3. I screwed early game because of that unnecessary Great lib race and that chumchu appeared to be much more aggressive and forced me to build much military early.

GL served me well at least by giving me those 2 low% great artists which I used in operations against chumchu and TBS. But it wasnt worth to sacrifice expansion for it. 

4. Several things played very well for me, so I think I got lucky in general with this game:

 - missionary saved me from losing front city to chumchu's early HAs

 - chumchu left his island colonies unattended even after seeing my EIs. EIs full of knights were tresspasing his lands and he did nothing about it. Also he hasnt even got optics.

 - TBS left his cap with a single warrior. He could have scouted my Boating group with trireme and he definitely should keep some sentries or at least cover his awesome cap (making ~450 beakers) better. I think noone was even close to that.

- TBS gave me peace after losing cap probably because I could raze one more island city. He wanted to go for Jerusalem obviously but he didnt know I have a perfect plan to capture it earlier.

 - Chumchu doesnt know how to make wars. In fact he had sent several stacks into suicidal attacks while I could really suffer from his consolidated army

 - DZ stole GS from Physics from Gav

 - DZ gave me peace to finish chumchu and didnt attack me while I was vulnerable and attacked me when I was already fine

 - Gav didnt build Kremlin

- Gav neglected Constitution and Corporations so his economics wasnt that strong which brought me some technological lead

 - Nobody expressed any interest for middle island. People didnt really scout seas well.

From negative factors I can mention:
 - TBS attacking chumchu literally on the same turn I was going to but giving peace to chumchu right after taking a couple of cities
 - GJ didnt give any resistance to Gav which allowed him to continue pursuing victory. If GJ reacted properly and Gav couldnt gain much from that campaign. But GJ lost interest after his failed attempt to conquare Cairo. Also GJ seemed to be well prepared to my virtual invasion on his islands keeping like 10 rifles on each. Well done, mate!

[Gavagai]

1) It was a funny thing with Physics scientist because Donovan has burnt another scientist to get it. And he even could not have known for sure that we are in a race because he did not have research visibility on me.

2) I never had an option to slot in Representation and Corporation. Initially I beelined State Property because it is an OP civic on this map, much more powerful than additional trad route. And then it immedately became a race for Combustion. The benefit of Representation for me would also be marginal because, in contrast to you, I did not have a lot of island cities with seafood to dump into specialist. I dumped my extra food into workshops on mainland which is much more powerful.

3) Kremlin was a non-factor because it needs democracy and I was very far from it. I was not even trying to build it. Also, I had more hammers than commerce. It could become a huge factor later, after I got tanks - bombers - battleships - missilies - subs and could afford to dump all commerce into rushing units. But we never got close to this.

4) GJ was doomed because he had two fronts (even three in his paranoid imagination) and no strategic depth. However, it still was a mistake that he did not beeline Infantry and ignored Cavalry.

[OT4E]

Here are some pictures at the end.

The situation on my land front:

My army was fairly distributed among 3 cities to make direct hit costly. I didnt have overwhelming advantage there but railroads connecting my border cities really helped me to stop worrying about being too much split.

Uber-island garnisson consisted of 13 infantries, 11 riflemen, 6 cannons, 7 catapults and machine gun. I got just 1 destroyer produced so far but got free upgrades for 4 transports.


Demographs:


I was going to switch Police State - Slavery - Theocracy next turn. Golden age was coming to the end, but I was starving some pop to get 3 -person GA, though those 1200 and 1400 GPP costs were pretty expensive.



Niding had size of 21 before I started it. I wanted to grow it to 22 to get 5 coin domestic trade routes but factories stole all the food surplus from there. May be it wasnt good idea.

Total unit count:

+ 14 cavalries and 5 knights

Units lost in battles:


So, MR.Cairo, I lost 50 catapults too

Infrastructure built:


Some more overview screenshots:



Islands I got from DZ/TBS:


Core:




Victory conditions:

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

How did you only build 4 granaries?

[RefSteel]

How did you only build 4 granaries?

Interesting that it records it that way....

In a Medieval start, every city starts with Granary + Lighthouse (if applicable) for free. The 4 granaries must have been in captured cities where the granary didn't survive the conquest.