1375AD     Surveying the Battlefield

And so, like all great endeavors, it eventually came to an end:

Before I start breaking it down, I really do have to say this was one of my favorite games ever to play. From the slow opening, to the desperate struggle to hold the lines in the golden age years so that my backline cities could catch up on infrastructure, to the painfully slow and grueling early offensives, and then culminating finally in the massive, incredibly fast, truly cathartic purge of the western civs - I couldn't have planned a better game myself if I drew it up. Virtually every decision that I made proved to be the correct one, and the AI civs shot themselves in the foot at exactly the right moments throughout the game to give me what should be a VERY early victory unless I've seriously misjudged the nature of this game. In order to understand what was going on in this game, I had to go back and look at the postgame replay to see what was going on in the fog before I contacted the AI civs.

What I didn't know when I was starting out was that the northern AI civs were at each other's throats practically from the beginning of the game. With the ultrapacifistic Gandhi sitting between the superaggressive Temujin and Tokugawa, this probably isn't all that surprising. The Mongols captured Delhi from India in 2150BC, and India was reduced to a single city not long after that. Although I can't tell for sure from the replay, it appears as though then Temujin and Tokugawa went to war, which is how Delhi ended up in Japanese hands (as it was when I bought Japan's territory map in 570BC). With India essentially permanently crippled for the rest of the game, and the Japanese and Mongols severely weakened from their constant fighting, my northern front was rather easy to handle. None of the civs there had developed themselves properly; they had been in an Always War sitation from the beginning of the game too, just not against me! The Japanese were the only ones who had time to start organizing their civ into better shape, but I was able to interrupt them right when they were starting to catch up to the western civs at about 1000AD. The Mongols were simply too close to me and too behind to stand a chance. The Indians never recovered from losing their capital so early. I expect to see vastly different results from a game in which these civs didn't fight each other in the extreme BC years.

The other critical thing that the replay revealed was the reason why the Babylonians were so weak in my game. They had ended up in a war against America and the Iroquois in about 800BC-500BC! Babylon lost two cities on the replay to the other civs and was thus confined mostly to the tundra in the south, not presenting a great threat at any point in time. This was why I wasn't traded contact with Babylon until much later than the other western civs (I contacted all the others by 1000BC; didn't get Babylon's contact until 690BC). And it also explained why the Iroquois stopped sending Mounted Warriors against me around 750BC; they were heading WEST to attack Babylon! This was a major break for me, as that was a time when I desperately needed a respite to build up my civ. The AI civs who stayed out of war - Persia and the Ottomans - proved to be my most dangerous foes throughout the game.

Here I'd like to break down the factors which allowed me to win this pretty dominant victory; as you'll see, some of them were under my control, others weren't. Perhaps this will prove useful to the reader should you ever try your hand at one of these games:

* Dissention among the AI civs was a huge boost to my civ, though I didn't know it until after the game was over. See my above comments for more info on that particular topic.

* My overall strategy was solid. My philosophy was the same one Sirian espoused in his Epic 6 report: always to be advancing forward or defending what you have, but never to be pushed back. Pushing too far forward only to lose what you have is extremely wasteful of resources, and you cannot allow that to happen in the critical stages of an Always War game. For all this fighting and all the cities I captured, I never lost a single city. Not a one. That more than shows that I knew when and how to advance against the AI civs without overextending and getting pushed back. You must be patient when playing this game; until the last 50 or so turns, my progress was slow at all times.

* You must know when and how to build non-military units. The AI civs work as a team on research, and Monarch difficulty isn't a joke when it comes to advancing in tech. If you just spam military units in the early game without building marketplaces, libraries, aqueducts and the like, you'll be in bad shape when the AI civs start to bring more advanced units against you. In particular, the early Middle Ages can be rough if the AI civs can get to knights/MDI before you get to pikes (it can definitely happen, trust me). Even with my lines barely holding in the early AD years, I knew I had to keep most of my cities on infrastructure builds. It was the buildings that I constructed then which allowed me to run roughshod over the AI civs later - because they had neglected to develop their cities properly.

* Workers - I can't praise them enough. You need them near the battle lines at all times; woe be it to the player who needs a road at some critical juncture and finds himself without a stack of workers on hand to take care of it!

* Combined arms are your friends. If you don't love catapults and cannons after a game like this, you never will. Without artillery support, I would have been run over in a heartbeat for most of the game. I saved the lives of hundreds of units through the use of bombardment; in the early years of the game, I made it a policy to have at least one city building catapults at all times. I ended up with close to 50 of the things; though they were of no use in my final massive attacks, they ensured that I was still alive to see those blitzes. Using both horsemen and swords was similarly critical to staying alive in the early AD years. They both have different functions and need to be used that way; it's the fact that the AI civs don't understand this which allows the player to enjoy such success.

* AI Foolishness was also rampant in this game. I've already mentioned their wars against each other, but also keep in mind their ridiculous setter/spear pairs which continued to be sent out to grab the tiniest bits of open land on the map. That drain on their civs seriously weakened all of them, and I was still killing Ottoman settlers as late as 1350AD (they never learned their lesson). The AI civs also absolutely killed themselves on the tech progression in the late Middle Ages. They researched a ton of optional techs like Music Theory, Navigation, Democracy, and Free Artistry, many of them after they had reached Military Tradition. In essense, they were deliberately delaying their entrance into the Industrial Age, prolonging the most dominant era for cavalry. This is about as stupid a move as you could possibly make, which gave me the time I needed to trample them into the ground in that massive 1295-1375AD blitz. To make matters worse, the AI civs discovered Democracy right at about the time that my blitz was starting and most of them revolted to the new government (!) So right at the moment that my attack was at its height, they were floundering about in anarchy, unable even to counterattack me with new units. And while the AI civs could somehow stay in Republic without collapsing from war weariness, they could not do so in Democracy; most of the Ottoman and Egyptian cities were starving down in size as I went on that last run due to the need for entertainers everywhere. The stupidity of the AI civs was strong in this game...

* Hammurabi's Gold was perhaps the final piece of the puzzle which caused the early finish. I got about 25 cavs out of his treasury, all rushed right up by the front with no need to walk all the way across the continent like the cavs built at home. Since most of my cavs were retreating instead of dying, this surge of new units cash-rushed every turn allowed me to keep going essentially with no interruptions right through the entire western part of the continent. The huge stash I captured upon killing him financed the fleet of three caravels and nine cavalry which took out the cities on north island all by itself; it was like getting a free army out of nowhere. I couldn't have done it as fast without all that free cash, and I still have no explanation where it came from; Hammurabi was in a Republic at the time.

There you have the main reasons why I feel I was successful. Of course a lot of it comes simply from familiarity with the game; I've played more than 50 full games of Civ3 by now and if I don't know all the ins and outs by heart, there would be something wrong with me. Other players could potentially have done better by outexpanding me in the early game (more than likely that most did), by getting the Great Library and more of the early wonders due to leaders, and by rushing forward to Military Tradition as soon as possible (I was content to follow the lead of the AI civs until I got Metallurgy). But one thing I doubt anyone could have done was enjoyed this game more than I did; the slow start actually proved to be a lot of fun overcoming to arrive at an early win. You can see I invested a lot of time in this game; the clock says 42 hours and I can assure you that I was present at the computer for just about all of that. Tack on another 10-15 hours for this report, and you'll see that I'm talking a serious expenditure of time here. But when you're enjoying the game the time spent isn't a chore, and I have as much fun reading through these reports several months after the fact as anyone else does reading them for the first time. It's a labor of love, and while at times it can be high on labor and short on love, in the end it's all worthwhile when I get a finished product that I'm happy with.

I hope you enjoyed reading through this game; if you liked it half as much as I enjoyed playing it, then I should have brought a smile to your face. As always, I can be contacted at MSoracoe@hotmail.com should you have any questions, comments, or concerns you would like to voice to me in private. I'll leave you with the final combat table, with the golden ages for each civ also included: