So I decided to play the first CivFanatics Game of the Month (GOTM) for Civ4.

Noble? Romans? Not my usual fare. (Been quite a while since I've done something on this order with Civ4, actually. Been inhabiting higher levels for most of this year.)

I moved the settler one tile east to settle and went Worker First, with Agriculture as first research.

I used two early forest chops to speed along Granary and Barracks.

I had two workers and Rome to size 6 before I started my first settler.

I built my first Praet before I trained my first Archer.

I cranked three settlers in a very short span. Then it was Forge, Oracle (Philosophy), and Library.

I warmed up against the Greeks by training my Praets against Barbs, including one city capture.

Then it was time for war. I lost eight Praets in the fight. Captured five cities, doubling my city count. Great Lighthouse taken in Athens. Greece eliminated in 325AD.

From there, it was a wonder building bonanza. I had fun even though it was a steamroll. Noble is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here!

I decided to aim for early Diplomatic victory, see how early I could push it. I was well on my way! I converted both China and Germany to my faith. They were closing in on Friendly terms and a very likely vote of support. I'm sure that would have been enough to get the vote.

But at this point I had a change of heart. I could cruise to a vote win in the early 1700s, or... I could set the competition aside and try something else interesting.

So instead of pushing toward Mass Media, I went toward Railroads and prepared for a factory run. I haven't fought "AI-Best-Unit = Longbows" with Tanks since the AI was in early development. (It's not much of a contest!)

So here's the challenge: Could I win by Conquest without any gimmicks? No razing. No anarchy. "Beat the clock" so to speak, on trying to take all the cities before I trigger Domination. Have to go very very fast for the end run. It's certainly made harder with Sistine and Eiffel in place, too.

So I built up Airports galore and started cranking the tanks. It's all pedestrian stuff until I start to approach crunch time.

Wouldn't you know it, the ONLY unit killed in the entire war...

A Camel Archer and two Jumbos had softened it up first, of course! Still, it's funny every time I see one of those pikes stabbing a tank and the tank blows up!

So here I am taking out the last of the Arabs.

I'm in a race. I only need three turns to conquer all of Germany. Three! (I've got forces transporting down from China, and coming from three other sides.)

Blah. Didn't make it. Two turns short.

Hamburg and Munich would have fallen the next turn. Sail transports in to Munich, unload, and drive tanks inland to Cologne. Two separate task forces closing on the last city in the south.

What tripped me up was two mistakes.
1) I had captured two Academies intact in China. Blah.
2) I overlooked a city that was running high culture.

Academy plus Mercantilism/Sistine is 6 culture per turn.
+1 for State Religion.
+50% for Broadcast Tower (Eiffel).
That's 10 cpt. That's an automatic border pop!

So three cities I didn't expect to pop did, and that was that. I would have had to go to Anarchy to revolt out of Mercantilism to get the win. But "no anarchy" was one of the restrictions I put on myself.

Anyway, I had fun with the game, and with the twist of a challenge at the end. Submission is a somewhat pedestrian Domination Win. I didn't read all the way through the spoiler thread, but I saw that some folks concentrated on military and got it done with Cavalry. I've seen Aeson do that before, so I knew that was how the military side would go. Maybe I should have finished off the diplo win just to see where it would have ended up? Too late now, though.

Civ4 plays faster for me than Civ3, so maybe I'll have the time to play some more Gs OTM in between my regular activities.

- Sirian

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