Having just dominated my continent, it was now time to ferry some units over to the other one and see how many points I could score there before time was up. Starting in about 1930AD, I had stopped sending units up the roads to England and instead began sending them across the bay to the other continent, where they were assembling for an attack on the coastal Aztec city of Tlacopan. The turn after 1950AD, I was in for a pleasant surprise; instead of going to 1955AD, the new date was 1952AD! This meant that instead of 10 more turns left in the game, I would have 25 more turns. If that doesn't sound like a big difference, it was. Now I would have the opportunity to potentially kill one of the remaining civs, if I was lucky.
By 1952AD, I had assembled a force of some 8 archers and two spears on the other continent, and decided that was more than enough to start taking some more cities. War was declared on the Aztecs on that date, and my units moved in for the kill. Tlacopan was taken without any problems on the following turn:
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There was just one problem about declaring war on the Aztecs: their cities were all on the other side of Spain. You can see that for yourself on the minimap that I've included. The chances of taking all of the Aztec cities and eliminating them in the next 25 turns were just about nonexistent. It would be in my best interests to concentrate on Spain instead of going after the Aztecs. So I decided that I would sign peace with Monty as soon as I could and go after Isabella instead, in hopes of securing those 20 bonus points for eliminating her civ. It had been worthwhile to fight the Aztecs though, since that city was an excellent forward base for future operations.
The rest of my story concerns the dealings on the other continent. But I cannot leave out mentioning the problems that I had with barbarians on the starting continent in the 1950's and 60's. At that time, all three of the remaining civs, myself included, had all jumped into the Middle Ages, which of course caused all the barbarian camps in the world to go through massive uprisings. Of course, all of the camps in the world were located in the wilderness to the west of England, and it didn't take them long to come knocking at my doors. Here's what it looked like when they did:
The really sad thing is that there are just as many barbs as you can see in this picture still out in the fog waiting to cause more trouble. I had never seen so many barbs before all at once, and the few archers and spears I had in this area fought desperately to keep the lifeline that the roads formed from being pillaged. Of course I got rid of most of them by moving spears out of cities and allowing them to rape the useless colonies, but there were just so many that even this didn't get rid of all of them. Finally they were all just about gone by 1970AD, and I had just barely managed to keep the road from being severed. That would have been bad, if I had lost access to my incense that was in England. It was an amusing diversion, but a diversion nonetheless.
On the other continent, I was again suffering from lack of roads to transport my archers. What had the other civs been doing with their workers, anyway? I began sending my own workers over as quickly as possible, but with galleys only able to carry two units at a time, it was going to take a while. In 1962AD I reached the borders of Spain and declared war on them as well. On the next turn, Monty was willing to talk to me and I made peace with Azteca. I also immediately signed him to a military alliance against Spain; was I going to be able to do this in time? It was going to be close. Murcia was captured from Spain in 1964AD, and the next target was Madrid itself. I faced a few counter-attacks from the Spanish, but I didn't see too many units. I have to believe that the Aztecs were drawing a lot of them away from me, which was most helpful indeed. After a trek through the mountains in the center of the continent, my archers finally reached Madrid. And it was defended by... a single spear! :smoke: Major weed there, Isabella! I took the Spanish capital and also autorazed the city of Zaragoza in 1978AD.
The fall of those two cities left the Spanish with only five remaining cities. I had 11 more turns to try and get all of them. This one's going to go down to the wire! Capturing Madrid had also cut off the last Spanish source of iron, so I wouldn't have to face any more swords or (thank goodness) ever see a pike. Santiago, a tiny coastal city stuck in against the coast, was captured and auto-razed in 1982AD. I was pushing forward on all fronts now, but there was so little time left! 1988AD saw the capture of two Spanish cities, Seville and Toledo. There was now only ONE more Spanish city left, thanks to the Aztecs capturing one earlier; was I going to have the movement points left to reach it? I signed a ROP with the Aztecs to try and get it; with only six more turns, this was going to be so close! I plotted out the movement of all of my units even remotely close to the last city and realized that I would in fact make it to that last city, able to muster about 6 or 7 archers outside it by 1996AD. I was going to do it! But alas, I was denied the opportunity to finish off the Spanish myself:
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The Aztecs beat me to the punch by just a little bit. Notice I have three archers ready to attack next turn, more on the way, and three galleys full of archers only two turns away themselves. So in the end, it didn't really matter that I missed getting their last city, as Spain was still destroyed anyway. Still, I would have liked to administer the deathblow myself (and get the three extra points), but the twenty bonus points were what I had wanted all along in any case. Since I had captured 7 of the 9 Spanish cities, I think that there shouldn't be any question about deserving points for destroying Spain.
Now it was 1994AD, and the game was almost over. I was in position to attack Azteca, but I couldn't since my peace treaty with them wasn't due to run out for a few more turns. I also had a ROP in place with them as well. So with only three turns remaining in the game, I simply hit the "next turn" button three times and saved my game for the final time on the last turn. Not surprisingly, I won a histograph victory - my first ever, ha. I combined that picture with one showing my units at the end of the game, to give you an idea of what I was building.
Workers. Spears. Archers. Galleys. And the odd warrior for military police. Who needs anything else? My game came to a grand total of 737 points, woohoo! One of my lowest ever. That just goes to show how silly is the way that the game calculates score. A more important scoring system was the scenario scoring for this game, so I'll calculate up the points right now.
| Number | Points | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cities Captured (Starting Continent) | 15 | x 2 | 30 |
| Cities Captured (Other Continent) | 7 | x 3 | 21 |
| Civilizations Eliminated | 3 | x 20 | 60 |
| Found City on Foreign Landmass | 1 | x 5 | 5 |
| No Use of Despotic Whip | 1 | x 10 | 10 |
| Total Points | 126 |
I think that 126 points is a pretty good score for this game. While I don't think it will be the highest, it should be fairly competitive when compared to everyone else. I will be interested to see if anyone was able to kill off all four of the other civs; knowing this group of players, I would not be surprised at all if someone did. I also will be interested to see if using chariots instead of archers produced better results. They would be faster and have the retreat ability, but could suffer extremely high casulties with only one attack point. It will be interesting to find out, nonetheless. This was an entertaining game, and proved to me that an archer rush can be sustainable even at very high difficulties. It might not work as well on a larger map size, though. Thanks for reading my report, and I hope you enjoyed it! I'll leave you with a final few pictures from the replay.
Starting Positions:
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Before Attacking England:
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Final Map:
