Matrix vs. Niek

[Matrix]

I recently finished a PBEM against Niek, a friend of mine. Since the whole point of CDZ is that people can participate in the fun of games, I thought I'd give you a review. :) (Not to brag or anything because I won... [mischief])

Here are the starting positions:
http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek01.jpg
I was Saladin. Niek ("Nicodemus Optimus Maximus") was Genghis Khan. AI: Cyrus, Huayna Capac, Alexander, Julius Caesar and Washington.

As you can see, Cyrus and I were together on a small peninsula. That was rather narrow, so I came to the conclusion quite early that I had to kick Cyrus out of there.
http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek02.jpg

http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek03.jpg

When I also figured out I didn't have iron and Cyrus did have iron [sad], I knew I had to act fast. But his two cities were simply loaded with archers!

Enfin, here goes... (in 50 BC)
http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek04.jpg

And he's out! :) Wasn't as hard as I anticipated. I then had a lot of units left and considered marching on towards Huayna Capac. I was very close friends with Alexander who, dispite having the Judish holy city himself (and later the Islamic holy city too!) stayed Hinduist throughout the game. Anyway, I thought I'd rest them there. My science rate wasn't that high anymore anyway...

Meanwhile Niek captured one city of the Americans: Boston, in 175 AD.

In 940 AD Niek declared war on Huayna Capac too. In 1000 AD I decided to give it a go with my old units after all.
http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek05.jpg

My units got fried. [sad] I either should've attacked immediately after Cyrus, or not at all. But not then.

However, Niek was more successful, although it went rather slowly, because Alexander was a big friend of Huayna Capac as well. But in 1080 AD Niek captured Thermopylae and made peace with him soon after. In 1490 AD Huayna Capac had only two cities left, and by that time I had camel archers and musketmen. :) So I decided to have another go, this time with success!

http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek06.jpg

And while battling happily with the Inca's I got a very interesting question in 1550 AD:
http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek07.jpg

Normally I make my own plan. But I figured that I'd go after Niek anyway, once Huayna Capac was out of the way. And why not catch him by surprise? I immediately got Alexander to attack him as well (in exchange for Banking), and a few turns later (took a lot more persuasion) Washington too. In other words: it was the whole world against Niek.

In 1575 AD Alexander liberated Thermopylae.
In 1585 AD I captured Tiwanaku.
In 1615 AD I captured Machu Picchu.
In 1650 AD I captured Karakorum.
In 1755 AD I captured his capital: Veendam.
In 1780 AD I captured Boston, his last city, and eliminated Niek.

I then finished the game, by attacking subsequently conquering Greece, Rome, the last bit of the Inca, and a small part of America. I then had a domination victory. :)

http://www.straland.com/images/cdz/Niek08.jpg

Replay (http://www.straland.com/download/Civ4replays/Matrix_AD-1939_15.zip)

[BCLG100]

how long had the pbem been going for?

[Matrix]

We started on january 24th. :) I eliminated Niek last monday (november 12th) and finished the game tuesday.

[BCLG100]

oh right nice one then :)

[Kemal]

Congrats. What was the difficulty level of this game exactly?

[NHJ]

The difficulty was Noble. As you can see I started somewhere in the middle of the right half of the continent. I'm afraid I didn't take any screenshots (will do in current game). Basically, early expansion went fairly smoth, if a bit slow, and early on I declared war on the Americans, because I didn't have any Iron and they did, conveniently located in Boston, right next to the border. When most of the land was settled I declared war on the Incans, more or less together with Matrix, Things were fine until after some time the Greeks declared war on me and the front got a lot larger suddenly. I made peace with the Incans and managed to (barely) hold off Alexander. At this point my economy was stretched out too much and my forces were thinned out already, so it took a while before I captured Thermopylae, the nearest Greek city which also conveniently was the Tao Holy City. I wanted to spread Tao in my cities (I didn't really have a religion at that time), and started building missionaries there. Unfortunately, about 100 years later everyone decided to go to war with me. The Greeks in the southwest, Matrix in the West, the Americans in the northeast and the Romans, who had kept to themselves pretty much up until then, attacked from the south. I had maybe one city at that point that was not near a border, which complicated things a bit. By then I couldn't do anything more than defend my cities and hope for the best. I held out for about 200 years, and made peace with the Americans and the Greeks. The Romans didn't want peace and had quite the army (lots of Knights), although they didn't coordinate their attacks very well.

[Matrix]

quote:Originally posted by NHJ
I'm afraid I didn't take any screenshots (will do in current game).I didn't take screenshots either when playing, but loaded some old savegames. ;)

[NHJ]

quote:Originally posted by Matrix

quote:Originally posted by NHJ
I'm afraid I didn't take any screenshots (will do in current game).I didn't take screenshots either when playing, but loaded some old savegames. ;)


The only saves on my computer are the ones made after my turns, which I can't open, and the ones I received from you were in my Inbox, but I deleted most of them already because they were cluttering things up. So, no screenshots, I'm afraid :)