Zara was the first to Liberalism, in 1370AD, but I didn't care. I ignored the scientific/economic branch of the tech tree completely, and focused on getting cavalry and riflemen instead. While doing this, I declared war both on Sitting Bull and Suryavarman (and thus, Hammurabi) again.
Suryavarman, leader of the Apostolic Palace, had proposed earlier that one of Justinian's cities should be returned to him (when Justinian still lived). I couldn't tolerate that of course, and not knowing how the vote might turn out, defied the resolution. I didn't know what the consequences were at that time. Here they are:
A happiness malus of 5, wow! 
Kijnd of appropriate for this, though. However, I had enough happiness resources in this game for that not to matter that much.
On with the war. Against Sitting Bull, I conquered my way west, leaving him his southern cities for now.
I had no interest in Sitting Bull becoming a vassal of Zara Yakob as I wanted to remain peaceful with him (although I was sure I could take him out, too), and so vassalized Sitting Bull as soon as I could.
This meant Mission Accomplished in the western theatre.
In the meantijme, I had also advanced on Suryavarman's core.
Next up was the Khmer capital.
After that, I had to take three more cities before I vassalized him as well in 1530AD. Then, Babylon fell.
This was enough to vassalize Hammurabi too in 1540AD. I later learned that vassals only count half towards the domination limit, so it might have been more effective simply to capture all cities instead of vassalizing. But I grew tired of the war and the game, and this seemed to be the less tedious route.
It still wasn't enough to win though, so I declared war on Joao, took two cities and won a domination victory in 1575AD. Here's the world one turn before the end:
This had been a fun game! I really enjoyed focusing on military and war, to test the new AI. It turned out that Monarch is a bit too easy with the AI receiving less boni, but the AI does fight a lot smarter now. It was surprising to me how I didn't miss building wonders at all, but again this is probably because of the low difficulty. I'm not sure what I should make of ejspionage though, as I had completely ignored it and the game went perfectly fine for me nonetheless.
My next game will be less single-mijnded and I will try out more of all the new features, but I had fun playing the game aggressively, as I always do with potluck games. I'm looking forward to reading how the other civilizations did!
Previous Page