conquest, 1762 AD, 3610 points
I'll try to recap chronologically what I did, unfortunately I don't remember precisely at what time I did it... so bear with me!
for the next tournament I'm going to write down the main events (wars, new goverment, etc.) as they occur, so you can expect a more detailed recap next time.
btw, I still don't know why the summary replay at the end of the game never works for me.
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so briefly, as I have to attack tournament 6 now :
the persians were conquered very quickly, and the starting island was settled in the following years.
I had obviously overestimated the persian army, so I was left with a fair share of various military units who had nothing to do... by that time I had discovered map making and explored the parts of the world in my vicinity.
I decided that the small babylonian island would be the next step of my expansion. My swordmen took care of them in a few turns, and the babylonians were scaled down to some remote islands in the west and the south.
Since my war against the babylonian was very quick, I had no need to raze their cities so I kept all of them including one with the Great Lighthouse.
A great leader appeared during my war against Babylon. I didn't use him immediately.
I then settled the island west of my starting location, to join my empire to the newly-conquered former-babylonian island.
due to corruption, all these cities were pretty useless and slow to build (I whipped a lot as I was still under despotism. I had decided to have a very aggressive behavior and thought despotism was the way to go). Perhaps I should have switched to monarchy at this point and used the GL to build a forbidden palace on the western island, but I didn't as I decided to keep
the GL to build an army (and then build the heroic epic in order to get another GL).
I was trying to decide who to attack next and had made my choice for the russians, when the greeks attacked me for no apparent reasons.
I had knights and they had not, so they were conquered rather quickly. I built an army for the occasion. The army was size 1 as it had to travel with a trireme to the greek island (the southern one, with their capital), where I added 2 elite knights to it (which was a mistake, as my only amry was then stuck forever on that island -- I thought caravels (which I was beginning to build) could transport size 3 armies, and I was wrong, as I didn't play long enough to discover magnetism.
An archer (dunno why I still had archers left...) defending a a freshly-captured greek cities against two swordmen spawned a Great Leader, while the heroic epic was still being built (I think... I promise next time it won't be such a mess!!!
).
When the greeks were exterminated, I used that leader to build a forbidden palace on the island south of my starting island, and north of the main greek island.
This island was small but nice, and this way the former greek cities I had not razed could also benefit from the effect of the forbidden palace.
This is also the time when the great Zulu Despotism became a monarchy.
At that point I had always been lagging in tech and had caught up only by trading tech against peace treaties against vanishing civs... and I noticed that apparently neither the russians nor the germans were looking in the way of military tradition.
As I was only 2 techs away from it I put on a massive research effort (I had approximately 3000 gold in treasury + Wall Street) to discover military tradition as soon as possible. It was one of the rare times when I researched techs instead of buying them around and trading them agaisnt my mercy, I had 0% tech pretty much since the beginning of the game, with one scientist in one remote city to discover at least something every 40 turns!
)
All my knights were gathered in a city located in the eastern part of my starting island, by the sea, with enough caravels to embark them all.
As soon as I discovered military tradition, I use my remaining money to upgrade all my knights to cavalry, and embark them the following turn.
as the main russian island was only 2 turns of sea travel away, it was a matter of turns before the weak russian civilization fell to the great zulus!
Then I attacked my strongest opponent, the germans, who surprisingly had still not discovered miltary tradition.
my attack was not very well planned (caravel arriving one by one, on various locations) so I suffered many losses during the first few turns.
I even lost a city on a remote island which was defended by only one impi, and it just so happened that that city had saltpeter as resource!!
At that point I the germans refused to talk to men so I had no way of knowing whether they had discovered miltary tradition or not!!
Fortunately when they took the city they also destroyed the harbor, so I had time to take the city back!
It pointed out to me that the germans had NO saltpeter in their resource, and I also noticed that they had only one source of iron, which I quickly cut off.
Perhaps it took me as much as 15 turns to exterminate the germans as I made a few mistakes and underestimated their defence (they had only pikemen to defend cities but they were numerous, and when they still had iron knights were coming out of everywhere and really hurting my cavalries [I had only cavalries as I hadn'nt bothered building musketmen]), especially on the northern island.
I decided to raze their cities except the last few ones, and destroyed many great wonders in the process. it was a pity to raze those wonders but I couldn't run the risk of the cities reverting...
When I was done with the germans, I still had to take care of my old babylonian friends, who had only 2 cities left, in the icy and moutainous mountains south of their starting location.
I had rush-bought regular cavalries from the two cities I had on that island, but somehow they managed to lose against bowmen!!
I would never have though that the babylonians would be the last ones standing, but I never sent enough units at the same time to take care of them once and for all.
I sent 3 cavalries from the babylonian starting island, and they were destroyed, giving me a conquest victory.
I had one unused great leader at the end of the game, who spawned during my war against the russians (or was it the germans?
)
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I'm not too happy with how things went, it could have been much better had I switched to monarchy earlier and used my first great leader to build a forbidden palace on the island west of my starting island which hosted quite a few cities.
then again, had I done this perhaps I would have felt cosy just staying on three islands (the starting one, the one west of it, and the babylonian one), I wouldn't have attacked the other ones and perhaps I would have eventually lost a space race or a UN vote, so...
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to conclude:
Zuluuuu powwwwaaaaaaa!
).
