Congratulations akots!

Well deserved win! At least from what I could see after I took over.

I think it was decided when you killed barbu. Although all others could have voted for Ian at some point to stop you, I don't think that would have been right. I had no special bonds to neither you or Ian, so I think staying neutral (but letting you pay for me being neutral ;-) ) was the right way. Maybe if all would have started attacking you when you attacked barbu, it might have been possible to stop you. But then again most Civs had slow boats with weak units at that time. If I had sent some units, they would have arrived after barbu was totally killed.

Thanks to mauer for hosting and thanks to all for letting me get a civ after I already subbed for two other people.

Hey, did the AI found Mining Inc. in Kyoto in the final turns? Interesting.

Akots surprised me and I think I mostly suck in the earliest turns.

In any case, congratulations, akots! [goodjob]

I think prior to attacking Barbu, I have secured peace with IanDC and he had no objections against that. Robi and you seemed to be preoccupied there and had no much interest in interfering and I was probably able to handle a lot of weaker units including ships and knights/muskets with infantry and cannons. I was also very close to tanks, and while IanDC had some troops, there were a few frigates and SoL to give him a hard time to sail and land any force. Viking AI was also friendly to me and unlikely to do anything harmful.

I really did not need barbu's lands since there were a lot of free islands around which could have been settled and I had to pillage everything around his cities and build farms all over the place and considering the effort that went to this war and resistance of the cities, I would be better off just expanding into empty areas of the map. However, barbu was a threat in terms of diplomatic victory and cultural victory and this were the driving force of that war, nothing else.

Indeed, the AIs went corporation heavy for the last turns and founded a few, indeed as many as they had available to them apparently. I was in State Property, so could not found anything useful in any case and all great people were spent for Golden Ages.

Well, we have exchanged diplomatic insults related to iron and stuff for some 10+ turns before actually going to war, so you knew it was coming but still chose not to prepare and not to connect the horses. Also, you were quite persistent with that second city and although in the end agreed to give away the iron, that would not be really helpful in that type of situation. I've already had more or less complete picture of the starting landmass and saw that you had a plenty of room to expand to the west yet you decided to expand to the east even though there was nothing of importance for you there.

Good game Akots!

Well deserved win.

About the diplomatic victory, I played thast badly the few turns before we went to war. I think I had the numbers to get Ian to win. I should have treathen that I would vote for him if you attacked me. The vote did not fall on the right turn and I had already lost too mutch pop to be an impact on the vote.

Appart from that, I had no intentions of letting Ian get the diplo win when we were at peace. I did give him the head of the apostalic palace when I went out for the culture run. You were a threath to both of us, I figured we could use some leaverage at some point. The plan was not bad, but poorly executed.

Akots, you surprised me with the size of the stack at that point in time. I too was preparing for war, but you destroyed my war factory before it was finished, let alone produced anything.

Well, I've put some effort into it, slaved and chopped a few trees. It was not a very big stack, it could have been twice or three times bigger (and that would have really slowed down any future development of mine) but looking at your powergraph, I estimated it would be able to do the job.