Game:

Civilization V (2010)

Duration: 5:29:05

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2

Challenge from Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/34jn5j/civ_of_the_monthmonthly_challenge_ethiopia/

The challenge is the following: Playing as Ethiopia on a Large Pangea map, win versus a single team full of Shakas and one Gandhi.

I manage to pull a domination win on emperor, to win on emperor you really need a defensible start, because they will swarm you with units as if it was deity, and if you start at the middle of the map, completely on the open, then good luck. I played it on Marathon because I wanted a domination victory.

Achievements:
The Weakest Link – Exterminate Gandhi.
Out-Shaka’d – Obtain a domination victory.
Exploiting the Weakness – Obtain 2 great admirals, without the exploration policy (note, if you want to obtain this, show off 2 great admirals and a shot of your policy trees)
The Great Raid – Assemble an army of horse-type units and pillage every single tile available to you. (did I? it was a single horse :P)

I go afk at 33:00 and the pause lasts until 34:15.

I go for war to try to push the ais to stop their improvements and just go full military, giving me an edge. At 1:45:00 I accept a peace treaty while I make time for Impis to weaken.

I save at 1:45:47, ? and ?.

The first map I rolled was open so I restarted, the second map had a flank covered with sea, so I scouted to check the rest, and it turned to be awesome. I had gone no ruins so their team didnt get all the goodies, and also chose raging barbarians in an attempt to make the lose workers early on. That forced me to go archers early but I went on to harrass the ais with them as a result, I even managed to wipe the population of one of the capitals (I let them recapture it because it was on an open area, no point to keep it).

While I could have turtled on my corner thanks to several very narrow passes, I wanted to get that Kilimanjaro (gives half cost for moving on hills), I went for a not so defensive position for its city because I was hoping to get the marble nearby, but I never got the chance, so that was a bad idea i general. I did lose a lot of elite units sadly, that slowed me down, I didn't know Impis on top of everything, also had 3 moves, that's crazy not even Persia has 3 moves permanently.

Gold was an issue due to lack of trade partners, I managed to "secure" some city states to trade with but they aren't 100% fool proof. Also due to them being a single team, you lose every United nations vote.

I "turtle" (while fighting back) until I get my unique unit, it is then that I definitely go for the kill. Unluckily I couldn't grab the Great Wall, not only would have that equalized their 3 moves, all of them get the benefits and it is a pain in the ass to attack.

I managed to get the city states to conquer Shaka's cities, and more than once! lol, once I started conquering I'd hit some happiness issues, luckily I did manage to steal both Chichen Itza and Notre Dame, then I remembered I had honor and just spammed scouts, the scouts helped once I realized I needed them to keep the razed cities' lands under sight to prevent barbarians. Even so I had to do some juggling to get happiness not to hit -10/-20, I went autocracy instead of order to get even more combat bonuses and to see if I'd hit gunboat diplomacy, I won before that.

Funny that Gandhi's capital was so open to naval siege, had I known that side of the map I would have just heavily turtled on mine and went naval conquest first... after all he had the Great Wall.

I left the ending at 1x speed, but the rest is at 5x and you can speed it up further by using youtube's speed setting. The game lasted 17 hours and some more.

You may download the save here: http://www.reddit.com/r/civsaves/comments/36qa7x/bnw_ethiopia_emperor_marathon_pangea_large/

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