I realized when writing this what the perfect characterization for my Greeks would be: they were really American hippies! Laying around on the beach all day (all my cities were on the coast), doing no work (no shields in any cities), smoking some of that fine Greek incense, telling all the other civs to mellow out and relax. That's a rather amusing take on a totally peaceful and uneventful archipelago game. Regardless, here was the situation in 1200AD:
This image has been lost.
Notice that my best rate of science even at 100% rate was most definitely not a 4-turn one; the decision to go for space in the other game was definitely a good one in terms of finishing fast. Also notice that Sparta is about to complete Newton's University, which will kick off a nicely timed golden age for me (due to my control of the Lighthouse, a commercial wonder). Probably the nicest feat in those early wars was avoiding a hoplite victory that would have triggered a useless golden age while also avoiding losing any cities. More accurately, sometimes you just get lucky defending with warriors. In any case, I would be able to profit from it now in the Industrial Age.
I had also entered the Industrial Age in 1200AD, pulling Nationalism as the free tech which I was able to sell for an enormous amount of money. This was actually the first time I had turned on research since getting The Republic back in the ancient age. From this point on, I would research nonstop until the end of the game. I entered my golden age as planned in 1250AD, which allowed me to get a 4-turn tech rate where I had not been able to do so before. My discovery of Steam Power in 1260AD before anyone else had it led to more massive brokering and tons of more cash to finance more rushed buildings in my colonies as well as even faster research. By the time I discovered Industrialization in 1285AD, I had effectively bankrupted all of the other AI civs in the game.
Smith's was built in Athens in 1335AD; I love it when the AI civs ignore those optional wonders and they can be snagged up easily in the Industrial Age. This went nicely with Universal Suffrage, which completed in 1385AD in Sparta. I have pictures for all of these but don't see much of a point to posting them. It's also late, and I want to finish this report and upload it ASAP, so no useless wonder pics today. The next wonder to be built was of course Theory of Evolution; I timed it to complete on the same turn that I discovered Steel and thus pulled three techs in one turn (1450AD), not too shabby! Too bad there were no rivers anywhere in my territory to build Hoover's... but wait, my faraway gems colony surrounded by Roman cities has a river in its 21 tile radius. Why not build Hoover's there, as there are almost no rivers on this map? It was an idea that was just crazy enough to work.
More positive news and the most interesting thing in some time occurred in 1500AD when Herkaleia flipped back to me. After centuries of foreign oppression, the Greek citizens were reunited with their comrades. Hooray!
Interestingly, the faraway Iroquois had the city at the time in the unending AI colony wars. The next event of any importance whatsoever was the building over the Hoover Dam by my tiny colony of Ephesus in 1595AD; I'll print the picture so I can show what the city looked like:
It took over 30 turns to build Hoover there but still got it, so the AI competition was not exactly fierce. Of course I was also well ahead in tech by this point, so there was never even a chance for anyone else to start Hoover's. I got all of one free power plant from it, but the feeling of sastisfaction was priceless.
And, umm, with that the game was pretty much over. I entered the Modern Age in 1605AD and drew Rocketry as the free tech. Research was set to Fission, which I still couldn't get any faster than 7 turns. I was glad that I would not be researching any other Modern Age techs, though of course research plants would have helped out considerably. Even after I discovered Fission in 1640AD there was still the matter of building the actual UN, which was NOT a trivial issue on this map where I had no shield production whatsoever. Sparta, set to a starvation diet at size 20 with a factory and coal plant, could still only muster 65 shields per turn. At that rate, it would take a while to complete the UN, since I could only prebuild 600 shields with the palace. As a result, I was still 6 turns away from the wonder when I discovered the tech and switched production. There was no competition from the AI civs, however, who were all still in the Industrial Age.
Well, the UN finished as scheduled in 1670AD and I naturally held the vote, having buttered up the other leaders the turn before with lots of nice presents. The result:
Diplomatic victory just as I had hoped, with Caesar (of all people) as my opponent. Shaka voted for him I discovered from a reload due to a MPP that they had. So only 4 votes out of 5, despite the fact that I gave Shaka over 5000g in presents the turn before! Grrr...
This was a very uneventful game, but it was quite interesting due to the utter lack of shields and food in the starting position. I haven't dealt with a start that bad since Epic12, and this ranks up there with the legendary GOTM5 spot (although it wasn't quite that bad). Rushing city improvements was the only way to build them in the majority of my cities in this game, and I've never played out a game where that was the case before. The thing that saved me was that the AI civs weren't in great positions either (if much better than mine), and the human can manage a low-food, low-production situation much better than the AI civs can. So this actually turned out to be a very easy game, although it was fun to play as well. I am very interested to see how others coped with this spot; if you didn't manage it right, it could have turned into a real nightmare rather than a cakewalk.
Well those are my results. I definitely chose the right victory condition for each game, though naturally I could have achieved the other one on each map as well had I wanted to. Neither game was all that hard, but it was fun to play some relaxing non-Deity building games. I think I was able to get some pretty fast finishing dates for the victory conditions, and while they are likely not the fastest, they should nonetheless stand up well. After playing three games in rapid succession with the Greeks, I'm pretty familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. They can be quite effective in all kinds of situations and I wouldn't mind playing them in any situation - but not again for a while, trust me. Now I'm very much interested to read about how others did, and compare notes with those who faced the same situations in the persona of Alexander.
