Epic Fourteen: Victory


I clicked next turn and received the victory splash screen:

I always like to win Conquest victories in Always War games. Anything else just feels like leaving things undone. I was also on pace to win a Domination victory in a couple of turns as well, once my cities came out of resistance. As far as the pace of the conquest, here are the relevant dates for each opponent:

Churchill: 1330AD - 1555AD (Turn 286 to Turn 331, 46 total)
Augustus: 1560AD - 1655AD (Turn 332 to Turn 351, 20 total)
Wang Kon: 1660AD - 1690AD (Turn 352 to Turn 358, 7 total)
Suryavarman: 1695AD - 1704AD (Turn 359 to Turn 362, 4 total)

Every campaign took less and less time, in a clear snowball pattern. I finished the whole thing in about 75 turns; that was noticeably slower than what I had done in Epic Six, but pretty good given the much stiffer resistance, I think. I wonder what the comparisons will look like to those who didn't eliminate the Aztecs early in the game!

As a shadow game, any comparisons with other players are suspect, and unfair to others. Nevertheless, I always like to see where I stack up relative to our other elite players in terms of finishing dates. I won Epic Six just after 1500AD, and that was one of the faster wins reported back then. Using that as a metric, I am going to estimate that this 1706AD finish should be quite competitive. No doubt it can (and will) be done faster by others though. I wonder how a determined knight push earlier in the game would have fared, or if someone will manage to knock out multiple opponents in the Ancient age with a determined rush. The 1000BC rule is supposed to limit the potential for that, but maybe someone will be able to do it. We'll see.

Here was my top-promoted Gallic Warrior:

I generated a Great General on the final turn of the game, and was moving him towards this guy for another 20XP, but he didn't make it in time. I won too fast! Oh well. 50XP certainly won't be winning that honorable mention. It was fun trying though.

Here's the final tally in the other categories:

First Dun constructed: 200BC
First Great General: 1225BC
Highest XP on Gallic Warrior: 50
Naval Unit to reach Combat V: N/A
Cities in 1500AD: 14
First Tactical Nuke: N/A

Here are some pictures from the replay. First, the starting locations:

This is the best angle to see how I moved the Aztecs and Khmer starting positions slightly further to the north, to create the breathing space around the player's start. Don't think that I'll always leave room for the player in Always War games, so don't assume anything in future events!

By 825BC I've taken out the Aztecs, and have started digging in for the long struggle ahead.

The years immediately preceding and following 500AD were the period of greatest crisis in this game. It's easy to see why here on the replay screen: the AIs had all finished expanding, and were sending large numbers of units my way. Meanwhile, I had only six cities, no more than each individual AI, and was fighting off four opponents at once! As I filled out that empty territory with another five cities, the pendulum swung back in my favor once again. Believe me, it was a very close-run thing for many dozens of turns, especially around Gergovia.

This picture shows my civ at the start of my offensive push into English territory. With double the cities and territory of each AI, I'm now comfortably able to move forward. There's still a lot of struggle ahead, but I'm no longer in danger to lose the game.

Churchill destroyed.

Augustus destroyed.

Wang destroyed.

And finally Suryavarman. As I explained above, the pace of conquest really picked up dramatically at the end.

In terms of the Demographics, by far the most interesting statistic was the Power graph. This picture shows my relative military strength for the greater portion of the game's duration. Notice that during the BC years, I'm not only trailing in power, I'm actually LAST in the rankings! This was the era of the great sieges outside Gergovia, when I was simply too weak to meet the AI armies in the field. In fact, it's really not until about 1000AD that I finally start to separate from the pack of AIs and distinguish myself as the top dog in military strength. In other words, I couldn't pull away until all those extra cities in my back lines started to mature and begin contributing troops. By 1500AD, it was all over aside from the tedium of physically capturing each AI city.

Here's the killed screen:

The game went on for quite some time, necessitating this cut-and-paste screenshot. As I stated in the body of my report, the AI heavily emphasized mounted and siege units in their stacks. Lots of horse archers, chariots, knights, cats, and trebs. The AI does build more axes and maces than it used to, but they're still a minority of the AI forces. Since war elephants had the best odds against almost everything on that list, I built them in very large quantities. The 25 uberphants that I trained was the second-most of any unit, behind only the cuirassier (almost all of which were built in the endgame's final two dozen turns).

And my unit losses. Just like in Epic Six, I had the highest casualties among my melee maces and axes. Those seem like rather thankless positions in the Civ4 armies, because axes/maces either face long odds as City Raider attackers, or try to take out enemy axes/maces at good (but not great) combat odds. Cuirassiers also appear due to their high-risk blitzkrieg, and war elephants because they were the backbone of my army for so long. Everything else was distinctly less in terms of losses.

Final kill ratio: 664 to 124, 5.35 to 1 overall. Not too shabby, if I do say so. I was over 10:1 in Epic Six, but the AIs never even reached Feudalism in that game!

Quick final thoughts: this scenario played out closer to my initial vision than any of the others I've created for RBCiv thus far. The AIs put up a constant fight from start to finish, working together as a team and specializing in the areas that best suited them (Wang = research, Augustus = wonders, Monty/Churchill = units, etc.) I intended for the game to be difficult, and I think it will prove to be. Frankly, I think I would have lost the game without my own spoiler knowledge, knowing that I had to eliminate Montezuma right away before he could get off the ground. We'll see plenty of victories, but there should be a good number of defeats reported as well. That's the way it should be; Always War is meant to be HARD. Based on how everyone else did, I'll use that to determine the appropriate difficulty level for future games with this variant. I expect that we'll come back to Always War at least one more time before Civ5 comes out (whenever THAT may be!)

Thanks for reading, and for all those who participated, I hope you had a good time.

Conquest Victory
1706AD
Hall of Fame Score 101747
In-Game Score 4766