CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Two

As the years crawled on and on and on, and no war with Japan, I figured that the game would end this way.

One tile! One tile left on my homeland not under my control! One tile between me and 6 points. Yet I was limiting myself to honorable options, and Japan got steadily more pissed at me for being snooty about my borders, but they also kept violating them.

I built two more fishing villages on my homeland to pressure the Japanese, but with that army of theirs in there, the city refused to flip to me.

Here are my three size 30 cities, and yes, I did avoid global warming wiping out any of these scores.

Then, finally, just a few turns before my launch was coming due, they finally got fed up and told me to bring it on.

I easily swept over the two Japanese cities that I wanted to control, but then there was still one tile left under Japanese cultural control on Big Island, with a city of theirs reaching across the water. I could not raze any cities, or starve any population, and I feared a flip. So I went ahead and invaded the Japanese mainland with my infantry and armor. I had made use of my initial army victory by building the Academy and training a new army. I filled it with three mechs and landed. I then rapidly captured four Japanese cities, including the one offending at Big Island, and just stopped there. Holed up and waited a few turns for the launch.

The launch was almost anticlimactic. I did not want to wait around to go for the Missile Defense points because of the threat of global warming to my size 30 cities.

Definite Score:

25 - Victory

6 - Shakespeare's
4 - Magellan's

10 - Honorable Game

6 - Control starting continent
9 - Landmasses x 3 (Two islands NE of start point, Big Island between Japan and Zulus)
4 - First Contact x 2 (Russia, Zulus)

24 - Size30 Cities x 3

10 - Control all gems (too easy, the ones at the start were the only ones)
10 - AEGIS Cruisers x 10
4 - Fish/Whales x 4

Subtotal: 112 pts

Chance for Score, depending on other results:

Space Launch: 1790AD
Game Score: 4319 pts

Here's the final map from the replay. In the first shot, I've marked the location of my size 30 cities. In the second shot, I've marked the fish I scored in green, and the fish I had a chance to score but the AI's got there first, in red.

Persia finally got wiped out a couple of turns before the launch, too. On the final turn, I accepted peace with Japan in exchange for three colony cities.

I hope the other participants of this game enjoyed it. The goals may SEEM to have been random to some, but there was purpose and balance to them all. Now whether the balance could be improved is something I hope to discuss.

The Oracle goal was meant to be a red herring, in the sense that if you stop to build it you will fall too far behind on land grab and end up missing out on other scoring. There might be a chance to grab it with a leader, though, if you went to very early war. The Lighthouse and Hanging Gardens are among the most useful wonders for water-focused archipelago maps, as are Smith and Magellan. (Smith pays for all those harbors and markets). Shakespeare, like Oracle, was something you had to give up stuff to get. The rest of the main scoring was aimed at rapid expansion: first contacts, settling fish locations, size 30 cities, you had to grab land yourself, and early, to score these. The late-game scoring options would come at the expense of fastest finish scoring, and the militaristic scoring of taking over lots of land masses would come at the cost of honorable score points. I sought to make the balance interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what players made of this game.

Click Here if you wish to download my final save from Epic Two.

- Sirian

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