This is without question one of the most interesting games I have played of Civ and would like to thank Sirian for the idea and opportunity to participate.

Playing a Civ like the Romans presents some interesting challenges. At deity the militaristic trait is either a godsend or completely useless. Much depends on starting position and even more on the nearby Civs. If one is lucky enough to find a weaky then a conquest game is certainly possible.

The commercial trait is more enigmatic however. How does one play to that? With scientific or religious one takes advantage of cheap temples or libraries. However with commercial people seem to just play a normal game and simply bank the extra commerce.

I pondered this as I considered my opening. The bonus of an extra trade is nice as is the ability to have a couple extra non-corrupt cities. How to take advantage of this? I decided that the best way to do this was with a denser build. If each city gets an extra commerce then it behooves me to have lots of cities. Ditto for Commercial's other advantage. (Bearing in mine the problems of corruption of course) I decided that each city would max out at 12 pop and have just 12 useful tiles to use.

I wish that Sirian had not offered his 3500bc start. This got me thinking..... why? Normally I would have moved to the Dye and would have been happy with the position. However I got pondering....Was there a trick? The only avenue that seemed likely was towards the "coast"

Normally I would most likely have not done this as I dislike moving the worker to a square he will not immediately work but I was starting to double guess everything. To make a long story short the wheat was discovered and Rome was founded in the same place as Sirian.

Having played a few games on Deity I knew what to expect from Barbs. My general rule is to ignore Huts. The possibilities of a good outcome are far outweighed by possible consequences. It pained me somewhat but 5 huts were left unopened as I searched for the other Civs. (eventually I got 3 of them 1 empty the rest barbs)

When the first reports of outlying barb encampment were returned by my exploring warriors (who promptly died trying to take the camps out) I decided to put into operation "Project Petticoat".

Special units of workers were built. These were trained in the art of the three Ps. Padding, Pushup and Promiscuity. Their mission was to lure the simple but homicidal barbarians into tactically unfavorable positions whereby my sturdy warriors could then bonk them on the head or they (the barbs) would have to attack across rivers. When not otherwise occupied they of course built roads/mines/irrigation.

On the whole this worked rather well. Despite many wandering Barbs and no less the 2 rounds of 3 camp uprisings I emerged with little loss other then one small sacking and one worker who fled somewhat too slowly (or lured too well depending on your POV) I was however really disappointed by the performance of my troops and did not honour many with promotion.

Soon after the Barbarian troubles began I was to meet the first of my peers. This was the Chinese (hence to be known as the Blue Devils") A fellow by the name of "Mao" was their leader. A reprehensible chap who immediately demanded tribute. I was in the middle of project petticoat and as such was in no condition to refuse. I was soon to learn that he was actually quite enlightened compared to our other conferees. Contact was soon established with the "Yellow Peril", the "Purple People Eaters" (PPE) and The "Green Menace". It was easy to see the pecking order. The Yellow Peril and the Green Menace were at the top with the PPE in the middle and the Blue Devils and I at the bottom.

All was not dark though. The Blue Devils were not a great deal larger then myself. A windows of opportunity was open and if I could quickly take advantage of it then the rest of the game would be much easier. Since the working of iron was know to me I quickly ordered the raising of veteran legions.

However the windows quickly swung shut. My only working iron mine ran out and while others were relatively quickly brought online it took too long. Many years were wasted and I was stuck with useless Barracks and troops. A reevaluation of how to proceed was needed.

Sotto Voce

The Iron disappearing really hurt. The Chinese had to resupply by sea and their northern cities were easily conquered. This would have given me a large area and a horse resource while denying any horses to the Chinese. Along with the lost early golden age I could have made peace on my terms. As it was I wasted a lot of valuable time. Without this early war a conquest victory was out of the question. I now had to change to a diplo/ship strat.

Cont..

The Blue Angels (formally known as the Blue Devils) were a most reasonable people. A cordial relationship was to develop between us that was to last thousands of years. The basis of this relationship were clear. We offered them iron and money, they offered us the fruits of their research. Friendly relationships were extended to the others. The Yellow Peacocks, the Purple Curry Eaters (PCE) and the Sweet Green Peas (SGP) They were quickly joined by the Black Panthers , Orangemen, and others. Soon it was a veritable rainbow of chatting leaders.

Despite my early setbacks the whole peninsula was soon a most pheasant Roman hue, except for a couple of blots caused by my overeager neighbours desire for closeness. Relations with the others took on a all too familiar tone as I groveled, pleaded and begged my way to almost equality technologically. It seemed to do me little good as I at no time ever had the ability to convert this into military parity. I had to spend all my time keeping my people happy and finding ways of generating more cash from my cities. A plan was conceived involving the sale of virtuous roman matrons but this failed when it was found just how little they would bring in.

Allegro

This game has I admit lost something of it shine for me. It was now the typical deity horse trading session whereby I keep a low profile while following the AI up the tech tree. Since the only Wonder that matters is the UN (which is easy to plan for and prebuild) the only thing to keep my interest was balancing city growth in micro as I had a lot of small cities. The resources fell fairly well with coal, saltpeter and oil being local and rubber available fairly cheaply. I was buying a tech every three turns and looked to win a diplo victory around ~900AD. However something came up to make the game interesting again.

Cont..

The years passed quickly and easily. The Roman empire although uncultured and rude in comparison to foreigners was at least rich. Sometimes being a parvaneau is something of a blessing as I was ignored for the most part by my more powerful neighbours. Not so was the fate of the Blue Meanies (Otto) who was eradicated by a most formidable coalition. Soon it was the turn of the SGP (Aztecs) to fall under the gun. They had seemingly earned the enmity of the entire world and were visibly shrinking as I observed the conflagration from the comforts of my combination command post/bunker/spa.

Being the kind fellow that I am I decided that I could at least allow them to spend their final days sipping vintage wines and drapeing their remaining women in multicolour silken fabrics. All I asked in exchange was a mere pittance. The secrets of motorized transport plus another technologies too small to even remember. They most rudely refused this and wanted a rather impressive amount of money also, more then I had on hand at the time. (I was rather short having overindulged recently) would they be willing to accept credit? They would! Excellent...

In a very short time I watched as the green faded from the map. I was rather sad to see them go but my current account suddenly looked a lot more rosy and I had some available items for export. I decided to talk to my peers and see what I could drum up for my wears.

Imagine my surprise when almost every door was slammed in my face!!! It seemed that everyone had enacted some sort of cash and carry policy. It was no tickee no shirtee wherever I went.

Aldante

I was, to say the least, somewhat surprised when my reputation took the hit from this deal. It's not like I was the cause of being unable to fulfill my side of the bargain. In addition this came at a most unfavorable time. It was only a few more techs till fission and the U.N. However I can not deny that I was banking on their being eliminated. In fact I would have been somewhat embarrassed had they continued to survive. A turnabout is fair play, the biter bit, or fair cop all seem to apply here so I drove on.

Would I have made the deal otherwise? No of course not. I was on seemingly on track for a relatively easy diplo win and all the trade accomplished for me was a few turn savings. However things now took a most curious twist. My interest in the game increase immensely as I tried to figure a way out of the box I now found myself in.

I would like to say that I acted in a decisive manner. That I at once saw the winning plan and pursued it. Nothing however could be further from the truth. I moaned and bitched as AI leader after AI leader spurned my best offers. All my heretofore useful lux and resources were only so much garbage. I could trade them for gpt deals but I would only get a pittance as the AIs were rushing up the tech tree and fighting numerous wars. In a word they were all broke.

My state of mind at the time could best be shown by the fact that I wasted 15 turns before I triggered mobilization despite the fact I had no useful infra to build.

So I pursued a middle path. (a huge error) I built up my military while still vainly pursuing the U.N. The spaceship was completely out of the question as even with all my cities on wealth (around 700gpt) there was no way I could buy my way up the tech tree fast enough. Also with many smaller cities I didn't have the productive capacity to crank out 1000 shield parts.

The rest of the game doesn't really lend itself to story telling. So I will relate it plainly. I lost out on the U.N. by eight turns. I was in fact very lucky to get even that close, although it was a cascade from Seti. It was time to fall back on my other strat which was to grab it and then win the vote.

I had a stroke of luck in that the Chinese got the U.N. so that at least I wouldn't have to build a navy to get to it. I had by this time quite a formidable army (although somewhat dated) and was shortly going to pull the trigger on my U.N. conquest gambit when I got nailed by another bombshell. The Chinese signed an MPP with the Egyptians. This was indeed bad news. I had an ROP with the Egyptians but could not in all good conscience use it to get to the Chinese. I in no way had enough time to fight my way through both Egypt and China. (It is moot whether in fact I even could as Egypt had a formidable army itself. I was weak to them and average to the Chinese.

I had resigned myself to the loss when I finally caught a break. (although around 8 turns had passed) Egypt declared war on the Indians!! A quick check of the map showed that India also bordered China. I decided that it was not an exploit to use my ROP with the Egyptians to beat the snot out of the Indians and then fling myself upon the Chinese. The question was would I have enough time? I quickly allied with the Egyptians and once war was forced marched off to battle.

It went pretty much as I expected. India folded like a cheap suit. City after city fell to my army (no leaders though) as I slowly crept towards the Chinese border. I grabbed choice sites and quickly got multiple WLTK days despite WW with the influx of new lux. I knew I was running short of time though.

In a word I fell short. The Americans launched as I was pounding down the last India city that was next to the Chinese. I was about 5 turns from capturing the U.N. (Although I still am not sure when the vote would then happen)

So result is spaceship loss in 1270. Score of 1552.