I barely noticed this city. I only caught it thanks to a +1 visibility range unit when on the hill next to Medina. I get a further surprise when I find the Arab capital to the north.
At this point I have sufficient strength to move on two fronts. I doubt I will pay the penalty that Germany did for a two front war. This game is in wrap up mode, and the biggest delay is unit healing and replacing bombard units. My goal in the south is three visible cities. I want Delphi, the Russian city, and then Corinth. This won't extend the front much, but it will add toward the domination count. I already have the needed population, and I am just waiting on another 19% of the world.
You know, I should give a navy a try.
Delphi falls shortly after Kagoshima. I swing south and quickly take out Vladivostok. After a bit of healing Corinth falls.
Just how tall is this part of the landmass? I really didn't expect Arabian borders to survive the fall of Mecca. Picking up the Sistine Chapel will help with domination, as the two free specialists will have a culture boost.
The coal sources turned out to be nicely placed. Picking up more shields in Cologne (heroic epic / west point) is really appreciated.
The fall of Najran finally eliminates Arabian borders in the north.
Sparta falls, and that should pretty much break the back of Greece.
That takes care of Arabia.
The next move is on Thermopylae, and it falls easily. Sparta in the south follows. This is the end of Greece, but it still isn't enough for the domination win. 93 turns is enough time for a few more cities, but I am also running out of real life time to spend on the game.
And it is a wrap. I didn't think I was quite there, and that I needed to take St. Petersburg. As you can see in the domination victory screen I was looking to relieve cultural pressure on two cities to gain a few more tiles.
Watching the replay was interesting, as there was a message that Peter makes peace with Roosevelt in 3220 BC. That is a complete what the, as there was no war declared message. With looking at the starting locations, I am very glad an AI didn't start to the southwest. I suspect a more games would have been lost with another to close AI.
This was a major marathon needed 18 sessions to complete. The rock, paper, scissors model of combat war is way to time consuming. When you have stacks of 10+ units that can attack it takes to long to find the best attack, and best promotion combination. If the AI did a better job of mixed stacks it would be brutal. The only thing that saved me was that the stack of 5 elephants had NO melee defense units. This let my stack of pikes eat them alive. Pikes were the number one unit for me during the middle ages.
The below is the kill list from the game.
There will be no honorable mentions for Panzer kills, as I never got that far. Between unit costs, and unit supplies my economy was never doing that great. That is despite two well spread religions, several key economic wonders, and as many cottages as the lack of food would support. Part of the problem was the blasted 2 move units from the AI would eat all the captured cottages before the borders would expand and I had enough troops to protect them.
Checking one more turn answered why the domination victory caught me off guard. You *don't* get the last cultural expansion messages before the game ends.
This guy gets honorable mentions for me, simply because he was the highest promoted unit in the game.
