Nuts. I'd been expecting something like that to happen eventually - this was the first war I've had since the Babylon war.
I still had animate enemy moves on, and it takes me 25 minutes (on a 1.2 GHz machine) to even regain control of the game. Zillions of Iroquois modern armors stream over the border. They don't capture anything at home (except workers); some leftover tanks they'd sent to Germany long ago did grab one city from me over there.
Here's what I'm up against:
not to mention war weariness has instantly maxed (maybe the WW thresholds don't scale with map size?):
Oh, and this had happened a little while back:
Meaning that I can't even recapture the cities the Iros take from me, unless I want to take on Russia as well. In any normal game, of course, I'd immediately sign an alliance or MPP with Russia, but can't do that here.
This happened late on a Saturday night, and I saved and quit. Sunday afternoon, I loaded up the game, and started collecting my legions of radar artillery and armors to plink away at the Iroquois stack, giving my attention about half to that and half to NFL action. (Go Vikings!)
By halftime of the Giants game, I hadn't even finished using my modern armors yet. Over an hour and I was maybe halfway through the turn, if even that much.
Forget it. I've got zero appetite for hundreds of hours of blisteringly dull clicking. I've done the fun parts of this game, which were certainly entertaining. I clicked to retire to see my time invested so far - 48 hours. That's about as much as I can take here. We're talking at least that much again to finish, for very little enjoyment and the only real reward being an entry on this Epics results page.
There are zero strategic decisions left to be made; invading other civs will not pay off mathematically now with over 2000 base score and no other civ holding more than about 700 tiles worth of land. If someone does get big, I can conquer them starting in about 2035 AD if I really want to, but it's more likely that I'd poach the land away as anyone conquered anyone else. I've got no interest in spending another 50 hours of mind-melting boredom just to see how many times I get nuked and how many units I have to use to blockade civs from getting eliminated.
This wasn't a time issue - it's still September as I write this. The final nail in my Epic 36 coffin was that right around this time, Sirian mentioned that his report would have over 400 screenshots, and Urugharakh posted that he spent two hours planning strategy during the 4000 BC turn. I knew that I would not (indeed, already hadn't) had the patience to poach every possible crack and settle for every possible water tile, so I wasn't going to be winning the Epic anyway.
It was fun to this point, though. My score at the present would be:
EPIC 36 SCORECARD - T-hawk
Game Completed: - No
Tiles: - 1644
Cities: - 72
Tile Density: - 22.8 tiles per city
Built Ancient Wonders: - 110 (Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Great Library)
Polite Rivals: - 2 (could be more with gifts)
Size 36 Cities: - none currently (could build up a few)
10k Culture Cities: - 14 (assuming they did not lose culture to bombardment)
Future Tech: - on pace for 49, easily reachable
Blood Enemy: - Babylon
War Crime: - Declared war after demand refused
Enemy Eliminated: - Yes
Era of Elimination: - Industrial
Blood Brother: - None
Number AI's Survived: - 8 (could probably prevent any more from elimination)
Invaded Non-Enemy: - No
Used Nuclear Weapons: - No
Cities Hit by Nukes: - None yet but likely eventually several
AI Destroyed Wonders: - Colossus
SCORING
Tiles - 1644
Wonders - 110
Rivals - 2
36's - 0
10k's - 56
Tech - 245
Subtotal: 2057
MULTIPLIER
Bonuses +5%
Invasions -0%
Survivors -0%
Wonders -1%
Nukes -0%
Net Multiplier: +4%
FINAL SCORE: 2139
