This is the reason I decided against conquest or domination, and why I will not go for those victories at all on large or bigger maps. I'm perfectly happy to spend up to 10 hours on a single game, but beyond that I tend to tire of endless warfare that consists of my tanks stomping through enemy longbows.

This was my first time with a donut map as well, and I was pleasantly surprised by the choice of terrain surrounding the start. Lots of grasslands and a nice mix of resources meant this would be a relatively relaxing game.

I'm going to try to keep better notes in future games (anyone object to screenshots?), but here's what I remember of this one, with the help of my replay file.

I built worker first as I usually do, then pumped out two scouts to pop huts. I got to maybe 8 of them, and popped one or two worker techs (nothing major, but helpful nonetheless) along with a couple warriors, one worker, and some gold. By the time I got Writing I had already met all the other civs, so I signed Open Borders with them for a small teching boost.

My initial expansion was to the south, since I saw better lands down there (looking back, I'm glad I did so, since my southernmost city was the only one capable of building the Space Elevator, which chopped at least a dozen turns off my launch date).

As far as early wonders go, I picked up Stonehenge, as I usually do in games where I don't play a creative leader, as well as The Great Lighthouse, The Oracle, The Great Library, and The Hanging Gardens.

Meanwhile, the other civs did a significant amount of early warring, although only the Vikings gained anything of note (they took 3 cities away from Lincoln in their first war and then temporarily vassalized him, but it stretched over 800 years).

I got bogged down due to a slightly-too-fast pace of early expansion, however, so I wasn't really able to take advantage of all the infighting among the AI's. My economy was running below 50% for about 2000 years, between 1000 BC and 1000 AD, IIRC. Not good. By the time I had recovered, there was very little desirable land remaining.

Therefore, I decided then and there to go to war to expand. The lands to the south were better, I believe, but I declared war in 1450 on the Native Americans to the north instead since I had what I thought was a solid friendship with Suryavarman to my south. It was a nice, efficient war, and by 1580 I had reduced Sitting Bull to one lonely city (unfortunately, that city was located south!!! of Suryavarman, and I was unwilling to go to war my buddy to wipe Sitting (Duck) Bull out) and vassalized him.

Next came another period of economic expansion and land improvement, and slowly I extended my GNP and production dominance (I started out only up about 50% in both over the closest AI, but by the time my second way started I was close to double, I believe). In the meantime, Ragnar had reduced Lincoln to OCC status as well, but he never developed the production or GNP to rival me, for whatever reason.

In 1655 I got bored and still had a significant military force left over from the war with Sitting Bull lounging on my western border, so I declared on Russia just for fun. I took two cities from Stalin in about 5 turns (Moscow was one of them - more on this later), but then that two-timing dunce Suryavarman decided to stab me in the back (despite being pleased with me and sharing my religion) and declared on me in 1700. However, Surya was way behind technologically, and I drafted Rifles in bunches to defend my cities. He lost over a hundred archaic units along my eastern frontier while I negotiated a vassalization deal with Russia. In 1710, Caesar apparently saw the opportunity to dogpile me and declared as well. Fortunately for me, Russia acted as a buffer between us and I saw a total of one Roman unit the entire war, a silly horse archer, I think. At this point every civ in the game was at war with at least one other civ due to various vassalizations. In 1755, Suryavarman finally had had enough of his futile war and capitulated as well, even though I had only taken on city (these string of capitulations were surprising - I remember in Civ 3 a civ would refuse to capitulate until it was down to its last couple of measly cities, but here I had barely taken anything from Surya).

For no apparent reason, in 1802 Mansa came begging for protection as well, and I took him up on it, bringing me up to four vassals. Earlier in the game, Lincoln had asked as well, but I turned him down since at that point I wasn't comfortable with either the threat of war or the diplomatic hit I would take for having a vassal. Monty declared on me in 1844, but I totally ignored him, basking in the wonder of having 4 vassals acting as buffers between my cities and his. At this point there were only 5 true decision makers in the game, since Ragnar + Lincoln were also teamed up. That teamed declared on Shaka in 1880, and by 1886 Shaka had joined the cool kids and gone begging for protection (Caesar gave it to him). Now there were only 4 free thinkers left! This is the largest amount of vassalization activity I have ever seen in a civ game.

As I was busy building spaceship parts, the aggression continued. I get the feeling that if I were to keep playing, sometime in the next 100 years one of the big AI's (Ragnar, Caesar, or Saladin, who had just started making his move and was last seen rapidly gobbling up cities) would get big enough to surpass me in both production and GNP. Thankfully, though, I got the ship built fairly quickly, so all that will remain just a guess.

Oh, and about Moscow? I picked up Moscow in 1690, and in the 250 years I held it, my cultural influence never went above 20%. It was in revolt literally 80% of the time, although it never actually reverted to Russian control. I burned one Great Artist on it in the 1700's to try to stabilize the situation, but within 20 years it was right back in constant revolt. It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that I finally got the problem under control by building cultural buildings whenever the city temporarily came out of revolt, and then burning another Great Artist around 1900. The war with Russia probably cost me more than I gained, to be honest, but I couldn't resist, what with over 25 units just lying around doing nothing after stomping Sitting bull.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game and look forward eagerly to future games, although I hope we get one soon on a standard map so I can refine my fighting skills.

Last edited by pwangsta on 17-09-2008 at 19:21