Adventure Nineteen: Manifest Destiny


Here's a picture of the progress I had made on the eastern continent:

I rotated the map so that I could get all the cities in view without having to zoom too far out. Haerbin was of course my original settlement, now building a Confucian missionary to provide some culture for the other cities. Pretty much all the cities surrounding it were former barb cities (Cherokee, Ghuzz, Hsung-Nu, Illinois, Avar) which I had recently taken. There was another barb city nearby as well, but the location was so wasteful that I burned it down and replaced it with THREE of my own! (Shenyang, Taipei, and Taiyuan) That may have been a waste of scant settlers, but I'm just too compulsive to accept a poorly executed dotmap!

In the south, Loyang and Kumming were also self-founded cities that hugged the coast. Thanks to losing that earlier city, I still hadn't made as much progress down there as I would have liked... but the north was now firmly under my control. Been shipping huge numbers of units across the sea for centuries on end, which was a fun logistical challenge. Also note the SPY unit exploring in the south. You won't see that happen too often!

The English city of Hastings finally flipped to me in 1655AD; since I had too much overlap in that area already, I rejected the city and watched it burn down. Little effect, but at least it made my territory look much neater! The other event of note was the falling of the last barbarian city:

Farewell, barbs. You were noble and brave opponents. But with their removal from the scene, I now found myself in a race against the AI civs to secure the rest of the land. The Aztecs had already landed one settler in the northeast corner of the continent. Of course, I wasn't going to stand for that, so I took a page out of the RB29 playbook:

Two cities only three tiles away, pursuing a gameplan of max cultural aggression. Give me enough time, and I can guarantee that this city will flip! The real pain here was that sheep were the only resource I still lacked, and this was one of only two sources in the entire world! Argh. Thanks a lot, Monty.

I was building settlers as fast as I possibly could; three different cities in the New World were cranking them out. Meanwhile, my workers were building roads (and then rails) to speed them on their path to the south. There was no time to bring settlers and workers over from the other continent! Fortunately, I just barely managed to grab some of the spots that I wanted. First, this one:

I was heading for the spot one tile to the east of the horses (with a later settler planned for one tile north of the pigs). But the Japanese have just landed their own settler ON THIS TILE, so I'll end up founding right here, beating them to the spot by a half-turn. Now that was close.

And on the very next turn, I would narrowly beat Saladin to another spot to the east. What a coup!

Yangjiang was just founded this turn; I don't know exactly where that Arabian settler was headed, but this would have been a strong possibility. As it was, the Arabians would claim the last spot in the extreme southeast of the continent, while the Japanese were left to settle with a very poor tundra spot on the southern-most point. Here's the overview map of the fully claimed south:

All told, I think I did pretty well here. The AIs did manage to claim 3 tiny toeholds on the eastern continent, but I got everything else. 22 cities all told! I shipped most of my workers over from the Old World, and continued to produce them non-stop in the north, but they were still vastly unable to cope with demand. Just look at how underdeveloped those cities above are! I was actually doing a pretty good job in the north, but the south remained a backwards region economically for some time to come. Of course, once I get all these cities grown up to size 15-20 and cottaged/mined up to speed, I'm going to be kicking some serious AI behind.

Well, that was fun - but now that the race to settle the New World has come to a close, there's not a whole lot more to do. I lead in every possible statistical margin by an overwhelming amount, so I'll just try to find the fastest possible way to cash out with a victory. Let's check the victory status screen, shall we?

I certainly wasn't waiting for a Time victory. Conquest would be too much work, Culture wasn't what I had in mind for this game, and I was hoping to avoid having to go to the end of the tree for Space. That leaves the Domination and Diplomatic victories... I had been hoping that grabbing all the land on the eastern continent would be enough to reach Domination, but as you can see, I'm a bit short. Granted, I'll pick up some more territory from borders expanding, but that's not going to amount to more than roughly 60% overall. Looks like I'll be a bit short.

So Diplomacy is the backup plan, let's try that. I'd been beelining to Mass Media, and I completed the United Nations in 1740AD. (That's the second-fastest I've ever built it, incidentally.) Let's hold an election and see what happens:

Well, that's what I was afraid of. FDR is the only one to vote for me, and if they won't vote for me in the Secretary-General elections, they certainly won't vote for me to win the game. My diplomatic relations in this game have just been awful; Montezuma and Huayna hated me, Tokugawa was his usual standoffish self, and Saladin (who I had good relations with) was the UN opponent. I agreed to cancel deals with Victoria in BC years (trying to placate Monty, remember) and she held it against me the ENTIRE damn game. Refused to talk to me until about 1500AD. That's just ridiculous, but because of that one decision I had no chance to turn her into an ally. So I don't have enough votes; 362 out of 640 is only 56.5%, and I need a little over 62% to win.

Sigh...

Guess we've got to do this the hard way, then.

One-turn tanks. Yep. The backup-backup-plan has been to build a crapload of tanks and attack Montezuma to get that last 4% of territory that I need. Add in support from artillery and bombers, and I'll wipe the floor with him. He still doesn't have anything better than rifles.

That should do it. Let's send in the air force:

Well, you can pretty much guess how that went. In the next four turns I capture four different Aztec cities, including their capital:

Payback achieved with Monty.

Since those city captures put me over the amount of territory needed for Domination, I stopped and snapped some finishing pictures. First, my original core in the Old World:

Next, the New World continent, almost entirely flying the Chinese banner.

There was actually a Japanese revolt in their only city over here (you can just see it at the extreme southern edge of that picture), so I was close to picking up another city over here too. The north is pretty well developed, but much of the south was still a work in progress when the game ended. My score was nearly equal to that of all the other civs combined.

And on that note, I won the game the following turn in 1806AD:

I almost had enough population to vote myself the Diplomatic victor too! Could have won that victory as well at the next election, once my eastern cities had grown a little bit more. I think the Domination victory was more impressive, however. I'll be interested to see how that stacks up to others who pursued Domination. It's actually pretty hard to get a fast date for Domination on a Terra map, because that huge extra continent raises the land requirement significantly. I'm sure that there will be some very fast Conquest victories, but this should be among the fastest as far as Domination goes. (For what that's worth in a variant like this one, and with my spoiler knowledge of the map!)

Finally, here are four replay shots. First the starting positions:

Darrell definitely picked a very strange map here. I'm not sure I would have gone with this one, but it sure was unique! That group of islands in the southeast part of the main continent was wild, and the Huayna/FDR/Saladin starting locations right on top of one another should play out interestingly across different games. The player is pretty cramped here at the outset; I'm curious to see how everyone handles that. Kudos to anyone who gets a better landgrab than me (by peaceful means) - you've got your hands full in that regard!

Landgrab finished on the starting continent by 500AD...

Incans gone, my first cities appear in the New World.

And the final map. The eastern continent filled up fast, didn't it? (Note also the two spacefillers in the extreme south to claim land for Domination purposes!)

I'd like to thank Darrell for sponsoring this game and producing such an entertaining variant. It was a lot of work at times to make sure all the starting files went out correctly, but I think the result will be worth it. Congratulations to everyone who participated in Adventure Nineteen!

Domination Victory
1806AD
Hall of Fame Score 69818
In-Game Score 5277