Parkin was kind enough to type up this summary of the action from Game Two. Thanks!
The early game was a mess as Korea pointlessly marched its army halfway across the map to Russia, Boudica wasted her time fruitlessly attacking an Aztec city on a hill pre-Catapults, and both De Gaulle and Churchill failed to settle critical nearby resources such as Gems in any reasonable time. Monty had great land but failed to expand beyond 4-5 cities, while Stalin expanded into dangerous locations that would prove difficult to hold. Only Huayna played a semi-solid early game, but even he neglected to research his critical bottleneck tech of Calendar for a considerable time.
Korea continued to troll both Russia and the wider world as the game continued to the middle ages, sniping cities from Boudica and Churchill as both France and the Aztecs collapsed in quick succession following two consecutive AP votes for world war courtesy of Huayna. Wang Kon also stole at least half the wonders during the middle period of the game. Churchill did surprisingly well for himself considering his central position, making the most of Korea's trolling and other AI conflicts by picking up border cities here and there from Russia, France and the Aztecs. Boudica finally made some headway by capturing a lot of good Aztec and French land, including the French capital of Paris with the Mausoleum of Mausollus, and capitalized on her gains by a quick war with Churchill in which he went from having equivalent power rating to around 2/3 power rating in just a couple of turns. Meanwhile Huayna made some slow but steady progress in beating back Stalin.
As the age of Rifling dawned, Boudica made her push to capture the three troll Korean cities on her border after Wang Kon had moved his military out of position with yet another trollish war declaration on Russia. With those buffer cities between Churchill and Boudica gone, England didn't stand much more of a chance against the Celtic hordes - despite their crazy tech rate. Not to be outdone by Boudica, Huayna Capac finally polished off Russia with a new wave of more advanced Cavalry, and turned his eyes to Korea in the south. Huayna had been "pleased" with Wang for almost the whole game, but two foolish civic switches by Wang removed their shared religion bonus and Huayna's favourite civic bonus and brought him down to only "cautious". Inca wasted no time marching its advanced army into backwards Korean territory, chomping through land faster and faster as both Infantry and Tanks appeared on the battlefield.
It was a race between Huayna and Boudica to see who could eliminate their rival first. Huayna won the race with his superior technology, finally eliminating Korea by taking their last city of Pyongyang. Ironically this was the city with the Statue of Zeus, which had caused Huayna significant happiness issues during his war - he took every other Korean city before going for that one, go figure. Meanwhile Boudica made slow but steady progress against Churchill, not helped by a poor AI pathfinding decision which left her main 107-unit stack immobile for a dozen or so turns. England proved significantly tougher to chew on than Korea, having unlocked its Redcoats just prior to Boudica's declaration of war. Still, sheer numbers eventually won out, and Boudica finally eliminated Churchill from the game sometime in the early T300's.
From hereon in the game was a peacefest, with both Boudica and Huayna too happy with one another to declare war - helped by diplomatic boosts from several city liberations to one another following the demise of Korea and England. Both sides were too evenly matched in population and land for a diplomatic win, and domination was off the table, so at this point it was down to culture or space. As Huayna was pretty much a whole era ahead of Boudica and snapping up the Modern techs at an alarming rate, the game predictably ended in a space race victory for the Inca some 40 turns later.
All in all this proved to be quite an interesting game to watch almost the whole way through - with bizarre AI decisions leaving the playing field surprisingly even for a very long time, and Korea entertaining everyone with its constant trollish decisions. Churchill did remarkably well with his central position, and was a dark horse candidate to win in the midgame. If it hadn't been for Boudica he might have even pulled it off. As it is, he was eliminated so sadly we won't be seeing him in the wildcard match - nor will we be entertained again by the antics of Korea. (As Sullla says, survivors only!)
Final standings:
1. Huayna Capac (spaceship T348)
2. Boudica
3. Churchill (eliminated)
4. Wang Kon (eliminated)
5. Stalin (eliminated)
6. Montezuma (eliminated)
7. De Gaulle (eliminated)
