The one thing I did notice was that the usual "Secret Pacts" made against me were not much in evidence. This had very little impact on the game. In conquest, everything that moves gets killed, and if it doesn't move it is bribed! However, in a perfectionist AC game it may be useful if the alliances against the human player are reduced. Has anyone else similar thoughts?

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 10-03-2000 02:42 PM Yeah, but it is a nice challenge. I've never managed to win bloodlust with a spotless reputation. I've come close though.

Thanks John. It took me a long time and the main problem is running out of time. I once did it by 1920 but it usually takes me until about 1990 because you have to wait for the AI to get mad enough to attack you. Surrounding an AI city with units and / or paying double for subverting cities (no incident) usually provokes them eventually.

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 10-03-2000 02:42 PM Yeah, but it is a nice challenge. I've never managed to win bloodlust with a spotless reputation. I've come close though.

It doesn't seem that hard to win a bloodlust game with a spotless reputation if you only subvert cities. Eventually, all those OCCing AI's will decide to declare war and that will be that. I had an old game I never completed where 5 AI were left, all OCCing and 4 had declared war on me quite a few turns after I reduced them to 1 city. The 5th was only recently reduced, so hasn't had time to decide it would rather have war. If they only have 1 city and they declare war on you, its pretty easy to wipe them out with a spotless reputation

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 10-07-2000 06:28 AM I don't use subvert city if I'm trying to win this way, it seems to break the rules for my money. Also it may be easy on a small map but I only ever play huge, where they have a shed load of cities. Last time I tried it I don't know if I'd properly worked out how reputation worked too, so I may have been handicapping myself further. I'll give it another go and see how I do.

I personally find it easier to win by subverting all AI cities on a large map vs a small map. The reason is that you have so much more economic power when you have room for lots of extra cities. The expansionist AIs' cities are cheap, and you can grow them into huge money generators quite quickly, while those AI keep founding new ones for you since they have room to expand (no need to found your own cities) and with the extra money, you can buy even the largest perfectionist AI city next to its capital. The perfectionist AIs will tend to have the same number of cities reguardless of map size, so the smaller the map, the harder they are to take out. As for reputation, all I ever do is subvert cities untill they decide to make war (no rep hit), max taxes for 1 round and then go on a coordinated buying spree when the cities are 1/2 off If you line up a couple caravans or freights to go to AIs you're not at war with and have a lot of cities, you can sometimes buy off an entire empire in 1 round if they have railroad or you have lots of engineers. For democratic AI, I'll box them with whatever units and wait for them to sneak attack or revolt to talk to me.