The conclusion and afterthoughts

Last wars in history. Kumbi Saleh and Awdaghost easily fall under the pressure of my City Raider grenadiers; there's no match for them at this time of the game. Gao falls some turns later.

I complete the Statue of Liberty, which grants each of my cities a nice specialist, and Representation makes this a big deal, since I have a lot of cities.

As I research communism, I make a three civic swap, to freedom of speech, emancipation, and state property. 3 turns anarchy! While I wait for the anarchy to end, I conquer Timbuktu and make peace with Mansa.

Finally! Now I have (pretty much) reached my early game expansion goals . The next ages are very quiet, with me running away in pretty much everything except power, and leaving all of the other AIs in the middle ages. It's been a while since my last Space victory, so I'm aiming for that now. How fast will I be able to accomplish it?

I kill Hatty "by accident", when Toku asks me to do so. I sign the Defensive Pact with Mao and Tokugawa (!), which grants me a big protection in case some crazy fool (Caesar...) attacks. In 1900, when the first vote is made, I remember there was another victory type, aside from SS... Thanks to the double defensive pact, I win a diplo win in 1905 AD.

Summary

One of my best played games, in my opinion, despite some moves, which are inevitable. The starting position was very crowded, and while I founded my second city a bit late (due to the chopping mistake), I immediately had both Mali and Arabia's second cities just at the gates of my empire! If Hatty had chosen such a location, too, I would have bben completely unable to wage an early war, without metals. I know, I had horses, but I just can't use them. The mounted start to be somewhat effective from knights on, in my games, which is another reason for my happiness to avoid both Hatshepshut and Saladin. My immediate research of IW was a big gamble, and if I didn't have iron nearby, I would have been cmpletely screwed tech-wise. One thing I liked about the game was grabbing the Pyramids. I've seen that not many people have done that, but it was a big help to my military production early on, and a nice happiness boost later, with representation. Not to mention the three engineers that the wonder popped, together with the HG. The artists have also been critical, the two culture bombs I landed were key moves in my games, IMO. That little squeezed city I converted with the second bomb, Yue-Chi, actually manages to get out of the hole, and through intensive cultural care, it managed to gain most, if not all, of its radius tiles. The wars could have been led better, but I've made worse ones before... so I'm happy this way. I was never aiming for conquest/domination, it wasn't in the spirit of such a nice leader like Elizabeth, and I constantly tried to have a good economy while fighting my way to victory. My cities never prioritized military, and in the late wars, I had them only producing one unit every so builds.

I felt I had done a good job diplomatically, too. While not even coming close to the excellent achievement of Sullla, it has some good things too. When I saw the hindu dominance, and Caesar, who founded Taoism, diplomatically quite isolated, I decided to go for the Hindu bloc. It included Mao, but I'm quite in good terms with him in my games (must be the shared political views... , and Toku isn't that bad as some people say. He just won't sign OB if he's cautious, but he'll eventually be quite easy to befriend once "pleased" is accomplished, and he'll happily agree to a defensive pact. It's not the first time I can get a defensive pact with him, and I already won one game thanks to his votes. Signing two defensive pacts was a great move in this game, as it basically secured the votes of those two civs. The funny thing is, I didn't get the reputation hit with the second civ I signed the pact, as Mao and Toku were best friends, thanks to religion too.

One word about the Hindu dominance: it most probably has to do with the fact that the founding city was Thebes, right in the centre of the pangaea, and the civs who most rarely converted were the farthest away, like America and Arabia. Toku converted to the most widespread civ, as he never opens borders...

Um, I guess I might include some endgame screenshots as well. First of all, my empire from the north, to the centre, and finally the south:

The bare map, good for border showing purposes. I had quite the most land at the end of the game. Cultural influence was very important late in the game.

And finally, my most-loved city: the rebel Yue-Chi. At the end, it only had a couple tiles available to work (still don't get the conversion), look what it could achieve at the end .

And lastly, two screens that tell the difference between me and the other AIs at the end.

I don't want to exploit your bandwidth further. Almost 18 hours of game, but obviously most of them I just had the computer turned on, and I was away from it . Great game (although I liked Epic 6 more), thank you Sirian and Griselda and everyone at RB see you in the next adventure!

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