Get Democracy, and shift to Case System and Universal Sufferage. Build the Statue. Monty declares in 1786, and I again get my newfound bestest buddy Peter to join for a tech. But the Aztecs don’t frighten me much – what does scare the HELL out of me is Japan. Look at what they’ve got!

If Toku had attacked me now, I would have lost much of my holdings of former Greece. I spent every turn 100% CERTAIN that that was coming, and was frantically getting units into Athens despite feeling like doom was neigh. I expected to hear horns every time I hit enter to end the turn…..and it never came.

I eventually came to realize that Tokugawa was engaged in war against me – a psychological war! I was getting jumpy and nervous. His unit stack was building…tons of rifles and cavalry. I had never seen him so technologically advanced! I even refuse to adopt mercantilism in 1813 when he tells me to do so. Look at his power graph:

It makes NO SENSE why he didn’t attack me. I end up pulling a reverse jinx on him, to try and show my readiness for his inevitable wrath.

Back in non-mindgames land, Montezuma declared war again, but I thought this would follow the pattern set by the 50 billion prior Aztec wars. He’d send a few weak spurts of enemies, I’d fend them off, etc. etc. I even got Peter to join in again (for democracy) just in case. But this war took a very different path than I expected…

He razed San Francisco!! That spot has such bad luck…I take my revenge by capturing Assyrian (and 4 workers hiding there – wonderful for my new railroading needs).

And then I raze Catza…Catti…whatever.

Monty agrees to peace a few turns later, and I found Phoenix (should have been Houston, but A. I hate Houston, and 2. I wanted the city to be a Phoenix rising from the grave of the two cities to be razed in its stead).

I had just beelined to Electricity so as to get some of those fun late-game culture producers going (I haven’t been talking about my culture acquisition much, but it was all pretty rote stuff. I spread Christianity around, and thus had enough temples for Confucianism, Hinduism, and Christianity in order to get 3 cathedrals in Boston and Phillly, and 2 in Washington. The only mistake I made is that I forgot for the longest time that Castles generated some culture, but I did get around to building those in the 1700s).

Here’s what was going on in my cities in the late 1880s

And this made me laugh out loud – had never seen it before

I popped a great engineer, and used him to rush the Eiffel tower (I figure the one point isn’t worth the multiple turn faster finish I’d get). Meanwhile, the moment that I had been agonizingly dreading for 50 or so turns finally came

Way too late, Tokugawa. I already had infantry and many machine guns, and he made the foolish foolish mistake of attacking Athens from across the river! What was he thinking?!? Does the AI really not calculate for that?

Toku’s biggest stack

This is the longest intra-turn set of AI attacks I’ve ever had to watch; Toku throws about 30 or more units at me, and loses most all of the battles. His power is devastated one fell swoop!

The Aztecs declare AGAIN, which is a war I keep going for most of the rest of the game. Cultural victory is set to wrap up any time now. I never really did any number crunching or “planning”, so Washington hits legendary in 1914, while Boston and Philly have a number of turns to go. In the interim time I figure that I might as well try to get a Navy Seal up to level 5 strength, so I take advantage of Monty’s weedy “I’ll send a few cavalry into America’s territory every few turns that don’t really do anything” to train Navy Seals. Unfortunately, I have a string of bad luck that mirrors my earlier missionary failures. I have 3 Seals that get up to around 22/23 exp, only to lose on 80%, 85%, and even 90% odds! I was trying to set them up very well, but it never pans out.

I had decided not to build Hollywood the first chance I got, because I liked building it in LA.

Here’s me taking Ravenna, solely as a means to get experience to some Navy SEALs (plus slight revenge for Seattle/SF).

I finally get another great artist, and culture bomb him in Philly.

Speaking of great artists, I see one spawn in Medina, which is a city that sits RIGHT up next to my borders…will he be there in one more turn? I move a ton of tanks next to the city – I can’t attack this turn, but I would be in position to do so on the next. I don’t even know if you CAN capture great people like that, but I’m going to try if he’s still there next turn.

Alas, he was gone (moved or added to the city or something), so my dream of ending the game many turns early did not come to fruition. Would have been a glorious move though.

It became clear that the next AI on the chopping block was Germany – the Incans, of all people, were aggressively sending units over and had captured 2 of Germany’s cities!!

So I do what I have to do – war vs the Incans to protect Berlin (note that with this I bat for the cycle and have gone to war against every other civ..although I never actually engage in battle with an Egyptian unit, so I don’t know if it counts).

Then Peter tries to go after Germany! I dread the thought of having to go to war against what grew into my only ally…a ton of tanks get halfway across my borders before I cancel open borders and send them back into Russian territory. I’m going to do whatever it takes to defend Germany without starting a Russian war…fortunately, while I might be constrained about gifting units, nothing says I can’t try to “curry Frederick’s favour” in other ways…

My attacks on Ravenna – and Montezuma’s counter-attacks – finally produce a Navy Seal that doesn’t die when absurdly close to level 5 strength. I get that 26 exp (and a few to spare), and rechristen the unit. He is named after the world’s greatest ever cultural achievement: Short Circuit (and because of the level 5 thing)

At this point it is just a matter of playing out the turns until I get the victory. Philly goes legendary in 1947 or so, and Boston makes the leap in 1954

Oops, I forgot about Hollywood – which was one turn away from completing in 1954. I could have delayed victory a turn to let it finish…but I was never really gunning for points. I couldn’t go without building it for ceremony’s sake, though…so I play one more turn just to make sure that I create the wonder that the damn game is named for.

Here’s a peek inside my three core cities:

Proof that Johnny 5 Alive was still..umm..alive.

Here’s a look at the more or less final territory lines

The power graph throughout history – note Japan’s huge dip when they attacked me! My ending would have been delayed a few decades if Toku hadn’t have sat on his heels for such an inexplicably long time.

I rise to the vast heights of…Poland. Fabulous! Of course, this is actually my one and only score in my hall of fame, since I reinstalled the game to play this.

I’ll be fascinated to see how alliances shake out in other games, and how the player’s decisions affect which civs live and which ones die. I had never really played a full game on aggressive AI OR a cultural game, and to try out both at once was a hell of a lot of fun. The cultural part of the game wasn’t much fun to write about – towards the end, I felt a lot like a student in the weeks before senior graduation; you know the date of release is coming, nothing much going on in the interim, and if they have a pop quiz on the last day of class…you’re not going to try real hard to get an A as opposed to a B on it. Which is precisely why I let Tokugawa pillage everything in Pearl Harbor/Sparta during the last 30 or so turns. I just kept hitting shift+enter. The turns in the 1200s took me about 20 minutes per turn though – took me just forever to get through.

There would have been a lot of things I could have done to speed things along. If I had constructed an adequate defense earlier on, I wouldn’t have had my cities pillaged so much during those war-on-all-fronts periods, and growth would not have been retarded to such a large extent. Sistine’s would have made a WORLD of difference. Not getting that was such a weedy move, that it deserves its own stoner comedy film starring Method Man and that latino friend of Dave Chapelle's from Half Baked. And I really really needed to play the relations more strategically. If I had had more scouting info early on, I would have known which civs posed a large threat, and been more inclined to spread religion to them, side with them in wars, etc. I knew in my heart but not my head that it would be wise to get at least one neighboring civ to the pleased/friendly realm, but I didn’t execute until far too late. Once I did get Peter to that stage, things became infinitely easier – I could focus defenses in places that needed it, sic him on Monty when I needed the help, etc. If I had been smarter about that, I could have been able to go on the offensive much earlier, wouldn’t have needed to use my core cities to pump military units for the middle part of the game, and could have managed a MUCH earlier finish. If there’s anything else really stupid I did, do call me out on it! Thanks to Sulla, my bosses for not caring about me coming into work late, and everyone else’s reports I’m looking forward to reading.

Scoring:

Cultural Victory in 1954 - 25

8 AI Civs alive – 32

Parthenon built – 7

4 Libraries at 260AD – 4

3 Temples at 260AD – 3

5 Universities at 1502 – 5

2 Cathedrals at 1502 – 4

Navy Seal at Combat V – 5

Total: 85