Now that I had control of my continent, I already had all the land I would ever need for the whole game. The starting continent alone was very close to the domination limit (about 90% of it). Therefore the only reason to attack the civs on the other continent was to destroy them, not to make any material gains (except for luxuries). With Nationalism only 1 tech away, and myself with no navy to speak of, I ruled out an invasion with cavalry as the main weapon. The plan I developed was to race through the Industrial Age as quickly as possible, building all the necessary infrastructure where it was lacking, and then crush the other civs with panzers. I had just touched off a Golden Age in 1110AD with the leader-rushing of Adam Smith's, so it was a perfect time to be laying track with workers and building factories. And it would also give me a chance to finish off this game's lovely ladies who were languishing in an icy prison.
It took a few turns to move about a dozen cavs to the opposite end of the continent where Russia's last continental city was located, in the eastern jungles where I had left it earlier. It only took two turns in 1180 and 1190AD to destroy Russia's captial and new capital in the northern tundra, prompting this message:
Yes, the Russians were weak with no culture to speak of. The next century passed relatively quietly, with the primary event of notice being the laying of railroad tracks by my workers. Since I was already bored with the game (it was clearly over; no one else could beat me), I simply automated ALL of my workers using Shift-A in order to avoid taking years to finish the game. In a tight game, I would never EVER automate workers, but here I just had my corrupt cities pop out over 100 of them and set them all to their tasks. They proceeded to make incredibly foolish decisions, like prioritizing jungle cutting in useless cities over building rails in my core, but I was too lazy to care at this point.
I planned to take out England next at this point, since they only had 1 city and France had 4 scattered across the northern islands. But England had a MPP with China (go figure...) so I targeted France instead. Joanie also made the incredibly stupid move of sneak-attacking Liz with a longbow, thus triggering the MPP. I had to take action before China conquered them and got some cities on my continent. The challenge here was getting my units to their cities, which were spread out and necessitated using galleons to move units. The result was a war that took *gasp* 3 turns to complete from 1275 to 1290AD, before I got this message:
Shockingly, I got a leader in this war too! And it was with a LONGBOW, of all things!
I had rushed a longbow to capture Grozny from Russia, in which it went from regular to elite in two battles. Then in its first battle as an elite unit, it killed the French defender in Bayonne and produced a leader! To think I get a leader here when I utterly did not need it, while in other games I could have killed for one only to be denied... But that's the luck of the draw.
Things continued developing at their normal rate. I fully developed my dual core around Berlin and Moscow with all the nice buildings that all cities should get. I was ready to pull my hair out in frustration over the stupidities of the AI worker decisions (no wonder it's possible to win on Deity...) but restrained myself. Everything was normal until something completely out of the blue happened that infuriated me:
WHAT THE HELL?! How does London, populated entirely by Russians at this point, flip to a city that's over 20 tiles away and on another continent? My culture is a lot higher than England's too! I included the minimap in picture so you can see just how far away the Engligh capital is. Now culture flipping really doesn't bother me very often, but this was just plain ridiculous. I was seriously angry at this. I had 4 more turns of peace left with England, but there was no way I was going to wait that out. I immediately declared war and conquered back London. If I hadn't rushed Smith's there... it would have been razed and replaced with another city. Needless to say, I was very sastified to get this result:
Eat that Liz. You deserved it. 1 turn war, from 1355AD when the flip occured to 1360AD when I ended the threat.
I snapped a few more pictures of interest during this long and for the most part peaceful interlude. One of the former English cities (York) qualified for the Iron Works, which gave it enough production to be a useful city. I don't get to build the thing often, so I was happy to construct it and take this picture in 1420AD:
I had built a LOT of workers over this peaceful interlude. I decided to take a picture of them to show everyone just how much I loved my retarded little automated workers:
That shows a pretty good world map as well. As for tech, I was flying through it with all my libraries that I had built for culture but was now using for research. TOE was built (first wonder not rushed with a leader) in 1330AD, while Hoover's followed a century later in 1430. I had left the AI civs in the dust, and they were all quite a few techs behind. In 1460AD, I discovered Motorized Transportation and research was turned off. The clock was running out for the three remaining civs, who were not safe at all just by being on a separate island. I built over 50 tanks in 6 turns and launched my invasion fleet for the western continent. Who would be the unlucky first target? Next page...
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War with Russia: 1180AD - 1190AD Total Turns: 2 Result: Conquest |
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War with France: 1275AD - 1290AD Total Turns: 4 Result: Conquest |
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War with England: 1355AD - 1360AD Total Turns: 1 Result: Conquest |
