1365AD     Was It Honorable?


There is little drama in winning a conquest or domination victory. You know that sooner or later you are going to win long before the actual victory screen pops up. There is none of the tension of a tight spaceship race or the uncertainty of a UN vote. With that in mind, I won an unexciting domination victory in 1365AD when I was 14 tiles over the domination limit:

The burining question for this game will be whether it was honorably played or not. I did not feel that anything wrong had been done to Babylon or America; they both made demands of me and eventually started wars that they couldn't possibly win. England though is another story. They weren't threatening me at the time, and I goaded them into declaring war on me. Was I within my rights to do so? I believe that the text of the rules states that I was. But I also feel that it was not in the spirit of the honorable ruler to do so. I am curious to see what others will think when I post this on June 10th. In any case, the game was played fairly at all times with no exploits used and this being the only "dastardly" move in question. I never started a war, kept to all agreements, and still ended up controlling the world.

I learned from this game that Emperor is now within my capabilities to play and do well on. I surprised myself at how easy the game was. Did I have a great start, or am I just that good? More games on Emperor will be needed for me to determine that, but I believe that my Civ3 skills are very sharp at the moment. I had horrible combat luck throughout the early game, was getting my units trashed by barbarians at all times, got nothing from any goody hut but barbarians, and I still won this game in a walk? Maybe it's just that after winning on Deity the rest of the game seems somehow easy. Regardless, I don't think I'll be playing Monarch difficulty anymore...

The final histograph and world map from 1365AD, with early victory bonus added in:

The final score of 6505 was just a shade below my score in my Deity game (GOTM7) of 6647. This was a good game for me, one of the best I've ever played. I'm looking forward to playing Epic#2 with its variant scoring system now that I have finally finished my writeup! Thanks to all who took the time to read through this, and I hope you enjoyed the game as much as I did.

The competiton has since ended; click here to view the final results. The game was fun, and I did quite well (2nd highest score, although the goal was for fastest victory in each category). If you enjoyed reading this game and would like to play in one of the Epics, check out the link on the Epic1 index.