Session Four: Axis Victorious
The back of the Allied powers had largely been destroyed in our last session, but the final work of hunting down the British and Russians remained to be carried out. We were able to get all five players together once again for a final night that would finish the game once and for all. After spending the usual couple minutes to look things over and become reacquainted with the game, things picked up where we had left off the last time in 500AD.
One of the tactical weaknesses of the AI civs that we kept seeing over and over again throughout this event was the desire of the AIs to send out additional settlers, even when their core territories were burning down. Take a look at more weed on the part of the British here:
I guess all that open land on this Large Great Plains map was a temptation the AIs couldn't resist. (This is something I plan to keep in mind for future MP events, since the AI didn't handle it well here.) In any case, flashing that settler pair right next to Ruff's huge Praetorian/cat stack was certainly less than wise.
While the huge Axis armies were off in the east, Ruff fell asleep at the wheel down in the south:
Whoops. It hardly mattered at this point, but losing a former capital to the barbs? Weed alert! 
By the way, I had a brief moment of terror before realizing that Paris was founded by the "other" France and my capital city had not been razed to the ground. Gave me a bit of a scare though - Ruff, don't do that to me! 
Oh, and the AI is still off chasing religions instead of researching the military techs needed to save itself. I tell you, sometimes this AI is a flat-out idiot. I think it handles things tactically rather well, but the strategic level still needs work. Why the AIs never researched Feudalism in this game is a head-scratcher.
Ruff's Italians mimicked the barbarians by doing some burning of their own:
And from there it was on to Hastings, this time with regoarrarr's Germans holding the torches:
Good work being done in the south. What are those slackers in the north doing? 
Ah. I see that they have been busy too! 
Moscow was the last AI capital still holding out, and Peter seems to have stacked most of his defenders there. It was a definite keeper, with Parthenon, Chichen Itza, and Sistine Chapel inside. Cynyck gifted the city to Dreylin, which allowed him to pass me in score! 
This kind of effrontery will not stand! 
I resolved to grow my cities larger in population to push my score past his again. How can I "supervise" things if I'm not leading the team in score?!
And look, I can fight too! Really!
See, I took a barb city! Everyone fears the might of Vichy France! (OK, you guys can stop laughing now.) 
While regoarrarr and I were cleaning out the last two barbarian cities in the south, his Germans in the east were finishing off the final British city:
One left to go. 
And seriously, what's the deal with all these AI workers in their cities? We were capturing them by the dozen in this game, with so many extras that Dreylin was trying to gift them away to other players. Maybe the AIs just kept running their workers to the east, and we started capturing them in large numbers at the end of the game? That would make sense, but I really have no clue if that actually happened.
All those burned cities meant long supply lines, but the Axis powers were up to the task:
Ruff's troops advance towards Russia here across the vast emptiness of the eastern forests. (Keep in mind, this is less than a quarter of the entire map.) There are some road connections missing in places, but on the whole the soldiers were moving east at a pretty good rate. Dreylin and cynyck had similar lines running across the north of the map, but I got a better picture of the one here in the south. Sorry about that, guys.
To make up for it, here's another picture of the northern forces in action:
Novgorod only had two defenders in it, a spear and an archer if I remember correctly. Once Dreylin's maces and cats made their way to its gates, the city was toast. Similar Russian weed was observable at the Christian holy city of St. Petersburg:
Umm... why does this Russian core city have only two archers on defense? Answer: two spears have moved out of the city, guarding a settler - moving right into the teeth of Dreylin's army! 
Err, that was not particularly smart. After the crazy session we had on the first night, these AIs were largely ineffective. They certainly should have put up more of a fight, so I'm not quite sure what happened here.
Anyway... by now the game was in its final stages. Cynyck's Japanese forces were raging through the heartland of the old Russian empire:
Quite a lot of Japanese there! (The main stack is the easternmost one, just to the right of the lone worker.) At the same time that the Spanish/Japanese forces were closing in on the remnants of northern Russia, Ruff and regoarrarr completed their conquest of the south:
Look at the Axis stacks swarming around the ruins of Yekaterinburg! Peter had a couple of axes/swords in the area, but they were badly overmatched. No doubt the German/Italian forces would have continued on to Rostov - but cynyck got there first. 
It's hard to see in this picture, but St. Petersburg and Rostov are both under simultaneous assault. Cynyck's samurai are in mid-animation in the south, while Dreylin's horse archers are exchanging shots with the archers in Rostov. (By the way, what's up with all those workers in Rostov?!) As it turned out, St. Petersburg was the first to fall:
And at Rostov, with our typical luck for this game, a sole defender remained with 0.1 health left: 
But with several samurai still waiting to attack, there would be no miracle for the Allies:
The last Allied civ fell in 840AD. 
And when we clicked through to the next turn, we won a Conquest victory in 860:
Thanks for the game guys, it was a real pleasure. I would go to war again with the rest of you any day. 
Now a couple of quick shots from the demographics:
The GNP bars, where you can finally see my contributions! I also generated all of our Great People in this game, so I hope that they were well used. Regoarrarr and all of his floodplains cottages were really starting to mature at the end of the game and kick in some serious income too. Dreylin and cyncyck were in competition for the Epic Five bankruptcy award. 
You can also see where my economy nose-dived around 500BC when the barbs were pillaging me, and the huge initial charge out in front produced by Roosevelt's floodplains cottages + early Bureaucracy. It's a good thing that he was swarmed by Praetorians before he could put that commerce into some better military technology!
And the corresponding power chart, showing everyone's military strength. I think the power numbers indicate that Ruff was our MVP for this game, putting those Praetorians/maces to good use throughout the game. Of course, it helps when you have a five cow start, right? Actually, everyone made valuable contributions on the military side of things except for me. But hey, I was playing as Vichy France - I had to stay in character!
Despite what Sirian may have posted in the forum thread, this game was entered into my Hall of Fame under the Multiplayer tab, along with the usual replay. I think that may have been a "horse archer retreat" moment there, if you know what I mean. The replay was fun to watch, but basically showed the same stuff I've already chronicled here.
The only problem with this game was that it was too easy! As a result, I decided to revive a different idea for our next Epic MP game. Stay tuned... 
