The first two overseas AI civs had been eliminated and Xerxes was in retreat back to the center of his empire. At this point, I'll post a map showing what Persia looked like in 1420AD after I had taken away their southern island.
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The Great Lighthouse, my main target, was in Pasargadae. Taking that city would prevent the Persians from ever reaching my homeland again; they didn't form any danger there, but were rather annoying to say the least. Note also my minimap, which had the entire southern hemisphere mapped out and was working on clearing out the fog entirely. I was also due to research Metallurgy on the next turn, with the enormously important tech of Military Tradition beyond that. Heh, as soon as I got cavs this game was going to be OVER. Persia was the only one who had reached Feudalism for pikes at this point.
There remained the question of what to do with Ajax, the leader that I had gotten when capturing the last Chinese city. All wonders out there were already under construction on my mainland, so I decided to use him for a smaller version of one...
Behold, the mighty Wall Street of Anyang! :) But it saved me from having to rush a cultural building there, got me the extra cash immediately, and once Anyang built a warrior to put on that tile to the southeast, the city was 100% secure from invasion (until marines came along... not likely!) That was one of the more humorous episodes of this game.
In 1430AD I had landed a half-dozen knights on top of Persia's iron source near Susa. On the next turn in 1435AD I pillaged that source, so 1435AD goes down as the date for that particular scenario challenge. I could have pillaged something much earlier of course, but there was no reason to do so. More knights arrived in Persia a turn or two later, enough for me to attack and take Susa (pikes, size 9, on a hill) with some losses in 1445AD. More importantly, in 1445AD the tech Military Tradition was discovered and knights all across Greece were upgraded to cavalry. This was going to make things a whole lot easier. And indeed that was the case, as Antioch captured in 1455AD under cavs seeing their first action of the game.
Sometimes you just have wacky stuff happen in this game; the next little vignette provides a good example of that. In the course of attacking the Persian colony of Borazjan near Egypt I was lucky enough to get another leader, #8 on the game. I had no use for a leader anymore, and since I only had 5 knights in that remote area an army would be a poor choice. So I used Ajax to rush a harbor in the captured Borazjan so I could use its barracks to upgrade the knights to cavs. Wouldn't you know that in the very next battle on the same turn I get ANOTHER leader?!
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In the midst of my leader frenzy on the small island west of Egypt, I had also taken Persepolis from the Persians. Xerxes retreated to Pasargadae, but that proved to be no shelter as I reached the hateful city in 1470AD and burned the Lighthouse to the ground (OK, not really as I captured the city). In 1475AD Arbela was taken as well and Persia was reduced to a number of small tundra fishing villages with no resources to speak of. Never again would Persian immortals or galleys trouble my shores with their vile presence. A reasonable person would have left Xerxes be as he was no threat any more. But Alexander was obsessed with claiming the whole world for himself, and he continued to press on with the relentless neverending attack.
Leo's had also completed (manually) in 1475AD, brining the total of hand-built wonders to 4 (Great Wall, Copernicus, Smith's, Leo's). I also finished Sistine manually at around this time but did not write the year down; I can find out from looking at the replay if anyone is truly curious as to the date. My lack of leaders and slow speed of conquest was actually having one good side effect, as those hand-built wonders would score me plenty of scenario points later on. As for the game though, I was getting ready to launch a third major fleet over to Egypt in the near future, and my home resources were going towards that at the moment. The small remnants of my China/France force were taking Egypt's westernmost island while the main attack would come from the east and carve up their mainland. Pretty nice how that turned out, largely be accident. And in the northern wastes, I continued to capture and raze Persian cities, razing taking place because I was starting to collect a lot of land and did NOT want a domination victory. Sidon was captured and Tyre razed in 1485AD, my former knights (now cavs) with the names "Sir Ajax" and "Sir Pyrrhus" clashed with Egyptian forces near Borazjan, and the Egyptian fleet of 15 more cavs set sail, all in that same year.
The Egyptian force landed in 1490AD, the same year that I razed what must have been my 5th or 6th Persian capital out in the tundra. This was what Egypt looked like in 1490AD, just before I began my blitz across their homeland.
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Egypt looks so nice and peaceful at this point. That wouldn't last long. The island just peeking out on the extreme far west of the picture is the one with Borazjan; I had 5 cavs there, the remains of my invasion force that had swept through China and France, then up through the archipelago of islands; you can see the path on the minimap. Also on the minimap you can now see the location of Japan and the diminished stature of Persia. I had most of the fog busted at this point, but a few tiles still remained in the northern seas. You can see I was researching Music Theory, just so I could build Bach's and get more points. I had a city on palace prebuild for it and was naturally guaranteed it in any case; no AI civ was past Theology techwise. Up to this point in time there had been no combat between me and Egypt due to the distance between us, but all those cavs that had just landed next to Memphis were about to show Cleo that Alexander meant business.
1495AD saw the fall of both Memphis and Alexandria, and I now had spices! WLTKDs broke out all over the Greek mainland. Up in the far north, Hamadan was razed and Ergili captured in order to maintain two cities on the tundra island. On the next turn I captured Heliopolis and Lisht (on the westernmost Egyptian island), further gutting Cleo's empire. Pi-Ramesses fell in 1505AD giving me control of incense as well. My people went nuts at home with the addition of incense; Alexander achieved a 92% approval rating thanks to all these fancy luxuries. So after centuries of struggling with massive unhappiness problems in a brutal Spartanlike struggle for survival, my people were finally relaxing and celebrating under the spoils of war. Too bad that Cleo and Xerxes couldn't say the same thing. My cavs had reached the final Persian tundra island in 1510AD, razing Daruish Kabir and capturing Zohak so I could maintain one city there. On the same turn Thebes fell to the ever-victorious army of cavalry and Cleo fled to Giza for safety. Elephantine similarly fell in 1515AD. With the razing of Ghulaman and Ishtakar in 1520AD, it was the end of the line for Xerxes:
Their business complete, my cavs loaded up on the waiting caravels and set sail for Japan far to the west. (And I mean FAR to the west; just look at the minimap to get an idea.) I reached Giza in 1525AD and kicked Egypt off of its starting island for good. Spears just don't do very well again cavalry, especially not cavalry in large numbers. :D Perhaps more significantly, as of 1525AD I finally had the entire minimap revealed, with all tiles of fog busted by my exploration efforts. Here's a blownup picture of that:
It also shows pretty well the progress I was making in my worldwide war. With Egypt down to one island remaining, it was time to close in on Cleo and prevent any chance of escape. Hieraconoplis was captured in 1530AD and I got another leader in the battle! It was used for, um, a harbor so I could build modern units there. I'll spare the leader pic here because I've included too many pics as it is. El-Amarna and Byblos were both razed the next turn in 1335AD, cutting Cleo down to just two cities. Also in 1535AD my fourth major invasion fleet set sail for Azteca, also consisting of 15 cavalry in 5 caravels. Although I haven't talked much about it, I spent a great deal of time in this game coordinating reinforcements across enormous stretches of water using nothing but caravels. I've never had supply lines stretch so far in any other game, that's for sure! The "chaining ships" exploit certainly would have been useful in this game if it had been allowed. So while I've skipped a lot of the boring logistical details in this report, rest assured that getting my units where they needed to go in as short a period of time as possible was a major obstacle.
1540AD saw another number of important things pop up. I completed Bach's Cathedral in New York thanks to another longtime prebuild with the palace. It reduced the number of unhappy citizens on my main continent by two in each city... but wait! I don't have any unhappy citizens - they're all smoking incense and getting drunk on wines! Well then I guess all it did was give me scenario points. :) I also researched Magnetism and entered the Industrial Age, pulling a thoroughly useless Nationalism (for this game) as the free tech. I already had all the forces I needed to win the game, so there was certainly no need to mobilize. More important was the option (finally!) to build galleons that could carry 4 units at a time. By this time though most of the grunt work of transporting units was already over. Back in Egypt, Asyut was razed in 1545AD and the following turn the last fortress of Abydos was stormed and burned to the ground. Cleo surrendered herself up to Alexander:
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With that capitulation, all that remained was to go after the islands controlled by Japan and Azteca. Neither one had any offshore possessions, and although the Aztecs had made a decent showing in terms of tech by reaching up to Engineering and Monotheism, the Japanese were still lacking basic techs like Currency and Construction. My forces, never ones to be subtle, landed en masse simultaneously in both Japan and Azteca in 1555AD (now THAT's timing!) I didn't take a picture of Japan because their civ had such sorry land it was obvious they would be destroyed in a matter of turns. As for Azteca, I took this picture on the turn that I landed there.
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This map was as much for my reference as anything else to make sure I spelled those impossible Aztec names correctly. 1560AD saw Edo captured from Japan and Tenochtitlan taken from the Aztecs (might as well strike hard at the top target first). On the next turn I achieved the refined cultural achievement of building Newton's University manually in my mainland of inebriated Greeks. I also barbarically captured Nara and razed the city of Osaka from the Japanese, cutting their continent in half. That's Alexander for you. Satsuma followed in 1570AD as well as Atzapotzalco (phew) on the Aztec island. Tlatelolco was my only conquest in 1575AD. That was more than balanced out by the exploits of my armed forces in 1580AD, who razed Kyoto and then proceeded to use the space opened up to jump to both Kagoshima and Tokyo and raze them as well. A stunned Tokugawa was put to the sword at Alexander's whim:
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As if the death of the Japanese wasn't enough, I also razed the cities of Calixtlahuaca (gaa!) and Tlacopan in 1580AD. It was a glorious turn indeed for my armies. Xochicalco was similarly razed in 1585AD and Tlaxcala captured on the same turn for strategic reasons. I had now separated the Aztec island in two and it remained only to destroy the remaining cities to achieve victory. Winning before 1600AD would be a tight race, but I thought I could do it. In 1590AD, my 11th and final leader of the came popped in the razing of Tzintzuntzen:
The only possible thing for him to rush would be Shakespeare's Theatre, but the tech for that wouldn't come in until 1600AD and I believed I would win before that date. So Ajax moved to Tenochtitlan to see if he would get the opportunity to build the wonder. 1595AD saw the capture of both Teotihuacan and Texcoco however, and the Aztecs were DEAD.
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There followed a humorous attempt by me to try and see if I could rush Shakespeare's using scroll-ahead techniques and "The Big Picture" exploits. I determined that you cannot in fact rush a wonder with a leader the turn a tech comes in since there is no right-click "rush project" option when you click on a leader in the city display like there is with the "upgrade unit" option. Naturally I wouldn't have counted the wonder if it had in fact been built, but I found the whole episode amusing. I had won the game too fast to build the wonder! 1600AD was a good solid ending date however. For the game's concluding remarks go to the next page...
