Adventure 9 - Veovim's game

[Veovim]

This was my first game after a long stint of Oblivion, so I was eager to see if I can still play (and play well enough to survive this variant!). I definitely had lots of fun trying to find the best way to accomplish my perpetual catch up. Thanks to Sirian for sponsoring this!

This scenario sure puts the Spanish Empire in a fine mess. Workers are obviously the highest priority, so making getting some cities to size 6 is the first step. The size 5 cities are rearranged to maximize food, and the others are swapped over to granaries (to have as many tiles used as possible once I can start improving them).

After some consideration about what to set research to, I decide on Alphabet. I'm obviously going to get into a tech hole, and trading looks to be the best bet to get out. If I get to Alphabet before some AIs, that is. In addition to maximizing food in the size 5 cities, I tried to work lots of river tiles, and raised science to 30%.

In 175 AD (one turn after Christianity was founded), I noticed this:



Saladin has a double holy city! That looks like a tempting target once I get a credible military built.

Wanting to give me more reason to attack him, Saladin captures Sarmatian (the barb city to the right of Spain) in 275 AD.



As various costs mount, I had to lower science to 20%. I don't have a record of exactly when I got my first workers out, but I think it was sometime around 300 AD. Cottages came online just as science went down to 10%, so I thankfully didn't get stuck there for more than a few turns.

I finally complete research on Alphabet in 940 AD. I pick up Bronze Working, Monotheism, Mathematics, and a bunch of gold in trades.

I set research to Code of Laws, and researched most of it. I was obviously running out of time towards the end of the research (~1040 AD), so I mooched the rest off of Caesar (thanks, buddy!) and traded it for a couple techs (including Currency, I think). I did get thrown for a minute when I couldn't trade it around immediately after acquiring it. Have things always been that way?

I noticed that nobody had yet researched Philosophy, and managed to get there in 1280 AD at 3rd. I managed to trade it around for Civil Service, Feudalism, Literature, Theology, Horseback Riding and Metal Casting (I think they were all at last). That sure did a lot to get me out of the tech hole. Unfortunately, it was also the last of my major trades. After a couple minor trades (I don't remember what), I hit the "We fear you are becoming too advanced" limit with some civs in 1480. I think that was the first time I had ever seen it.

With Theology in tow, I converted to Buddhism to ally myself with Hatty and Qin and Theocracy. I built up a force of maces and conquistadores, and invaded Arabia in 1515. I captured Sakae (the ex-barb town in the north), and razed Sarmatian in the west (it was getting crushed culturally, and would have flipped to either Hatty or Qin). After seeing minimal resistance (a couple units that only pillaged one or two tiles tops), I proceeded to capture Damascus before making peace in 1570. I built a bunch more troops, redeclared in 1620, and took Baghdad and Medina:



Damascus is just north of there. Peace returns in 1680, and that was the end of my military conquest. I might have continued, but Saladin had reached rifling in between wars. My pinch conquistadores were faring well against grenadiers, but not so well against city garrison rifles, so the war weariness would have made the fighting pretty hard (and damaging to my economy). Fighting a war with obsolete units was an interesting experience to be sure. It was definitely worth it, though, as the holy city revenue lets me raise science up to 80% (it was at 60% most of the game).

Things were pretty quiet for me from then on, trying to close Hatty's tech lead. They were not so quiet on the other side of the world, though. Julius remained at war with Saladin after I made peace, and his luck started to fail. Liz declared on Julius in 1695 and took a city from him. She made peace in 1985. Saladin managed to capture (and razed) another of Julius's cities, and finally made peace in 1810. Julius saw nearly a century of peace, but it all fell apart for him when Liz redeclared in 1906, and was joined by Qin in 1916. Qin started taking cities, and the Romans were eliminated in 1941. Why did I see fit to mention all this? This warring effectively removed Liz and Qin from the space race (Qin completed Apollo in 1947, and Liz never completed it).

In the peaceful third of the world, things start to get interesting when Hatty completes the Apollo program in 1888. Mine completed in 1908. Mansa Musa built his in 1922, and that was it for civs that managed to get beyond the SS Casings (Mansa only got as far as one thruster, though).

I built Broadway and Rock & Roll mainly to deny them to Egypt, then the space elevator. I didn't need it, but it was nice to have anyways.

I got a bit of a scare in 1944 when Hatty put herself up for diplomatic victory. That didn't work out so well for her, however:


I triggered a golden age and swapped to Universal Suffrage (from Representation) in 1958 and my production went through the roof:



I won a space race victory in 1965 by a nice margin: Hatty was missing her engine and life support, and didn't even have the tech for the stasis chamber (Genetics).

[Veovim]

Now for some random musings from the replay:

One particular civic swap probably changed the end game greatly (I saw it while the game was going on, but didn't realize how long it had lasted). Things could have swung very differently if Hatty hadn't gone on a military building binge between 1854 and 1892. She spent that entire time in vassalage and theocracy. If she had spent that period with her economy going full steam, I would have wound up with a narrow window to attack her before she reached Mech Infs.

I also noticed a key difference between my approach to the spaceship and the AIs'. After starting Apollo and getting labs up, I went for Genetics (with coal plants and labs I needed the health), while they went for Satellites. Generally I think that would be the safer move (since you need 3 thrusters), but I planned to make up for that with the golden age (to build all of them at once).

There were a lot of great prophets. All the names were used up, then there were 11 more.

I didn't generate enough great people on my own (2 of my four people were prophets from Medina; I'm not counting the fusion engineer in that). I really should have tried to specialize my cities some more, and have one or two pumping out great people.