I finally finished my first game (Greeks, standard map, Warlord) with a Diplomatic victory in 1840 AD. The victory screen is hysterical. All the other leaders make comments, one of which is the subject of this thread. The Indians, who I conquered, said "Oh Yeah - you and what army? Wait. . . never mind." And the Russians said "You couldn't possibly have won - you must have cheated!"
A few comments from my game:
- I played a very peaceful builder style. By the end of the game I had 17 cities, all completely built up and thus producing wealth. My science and treasury income were blowing everyone away.
- I did fight some early wars (hmm - I don't know what could have possible happened to the poor Indians
), but didn't fire a single shot for the last few hundred years.
- I never got a single Great Leader the entire game. Not for lack of trying - in the ancient era I fought a big war with the Egyptians and won a lot of battles with Elite units but never got the GL. I never saw an enemy army either, so I've yet to see an army period.
- I built lots of planes but never had a chance to use them. Also, I never got to finish the top end of the tech tree because I won the game the same turn that I built the UN. I was researching Space Flight at the time. So I missed out on some features of the game.
- I got off to what I thought was a horrible start, but now I realize it was only horrible because I was rating it in Civ2 terms. In Civ3 terms it was a fine start. In the end, I realized Warlord is actually really easy. So I'm moving up to Regent for my next game.
- I've been reading all the talk about corruption, but I never had too much of a problem with it. I think it's mainly because I didn't expand to far - I focused on building up a core (5 or 6) of excellent cities. But I was the Greeks, who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption. So for my next game I am going to play a civ who is not commercial, and see how the corruption is. I'm thinking Babylonians - Religous and Scientific means half price temples and libraries. That should get me off to a big culture start.
