Long Live the Queen — Wrap Up

The game is done. Queen Victoria reigns victorious, putting all comers to shame in nearly all respects. She secured a place as the world leader in Science, Military Might, and of course Culture- the means by which we technically won the game. We lagged behind in religion but it’s hard to say whether that makes any commentary on us as a group of players or not. ;)

Paeroka held the reigns when victory came about but to my mind, almost the greater victory is that all 8 of us who started the journey — almost a year ago, a week or so shy — were still active participants at the end. We certainly had gaps in the flow here and there as life did lifey things to people (or at least their time). There was one player skip on account of injury but otherwise all here and accounted for.

The Players and the Game

I started us off and became a bit of a warmonger early on, pushing us to capture some of Gilgamesh’s cities but dragging poor Rakuno and everyone after into battle with me. Rakuno as noted became — like it or not — my ally in war for a good number of turns, securing capture of two cities before ultimately pursuing a path of commerce and science.

Paeroka for her part enjoyed expansion and keeping England’s borders ever moving outward. Tessa similarly enjoyed expansion but also expansion of the internal variety. Looking back over the earlier turns, it becomes easy to spot where some of our leanings toward the Cultural victory we ultimately achieved originated.

Krikket really liked boats. It is a shame we were playing on a Pangaea map given this, but never let such trivial matters like ‘There aren’t any islands!’ stop you from doing what you enjoy. Krikket also managed to ultimately transfer this love of boats for one of space shuttles and had control for our moon mission launch. UnwiseOwl while following Krikket in turn order was the one who established our Space program, allowing Krikket to launch in the next cycle. UnwiseOwl upon reflection actually set us up for both the Science victory we thought we were going for and further aided the Cultural victory actually achieved in equal measure throughout his reigns. He also enjoyed securing land for ourselves to block frenemies earlier in the piece.

Rambling Redshirt kept us in a fairly balanced position throughout the game, until a clear thrust toward Science was decided near the end. Kanter was the recipient of two early game war declarations which set the tone for the rest of the campaign, by way of Kanter becoming keeper of the military and ensuring we didn’t have technology several eras out of date… Too often.

When our player-powers combined… Well; that there is the result.

We controlled the majority of the south; with a cheeky little city up in the north just sorta sayin’ ‘Hi!’ to Catherine and the French. All up we own 12 cities, 9 of which we founded and 3 we conquered. Across which we built over 120 buildings, almost 30 districts, and 6 wonders of the world.

We attracted 16 great people and founded 1 religion.

We lost just 6 units over the course of the entire game, while killing more than 60. A 10:1 ratio is something I think we can live with! Particularly when you consider we entered into combat over 200 times throughout the course of our 419 turns.

Or 420, depending on how you count it. Turn 419 was the last turn played — but it was on the transition to 420 the victory screen appeared.

Thank-you!

Sincerely, thank-you to each and every one of the players who embarked on this journey with me a year ago. It has been my great pleasure to play in this format with all of you. :)

Thank-you too to any and all who’ve been following along as readers, too. Or if you missed any of it — don’t worry. It’ll all be kept for posterity right here.

Also! As we’ve been discussing in the Blaugust Discord, in #gaming-together, it’s looking like we’re going to try this again real soon — with XCOM 2 this time around.

Keep an eye out here for more details on that real soon. :)