Epic 7 - Bede's Bathing Beauties

[Bede]

Epic 7 Mano y Mano

Domination Victory: 1994


From the opening my objective was survival to Astronomy and then a push to Domination or Score Victory. Either objective requires maximum population so the secondary objective was to secure the resources and buildings to ensure health and happiness. The next objective was developing the land and using the resources, the population and buildings to maintain a strong research capability.

I could see the village NW of the settler and a nice plains hill on the coast to the west. The warrior went north just to see what he could see and the settler went west to get a scout from the villagers.

The scout climbed the hill and the stone appeared so the settler decided that the hill would make a great spot for a capitol. Lake and coast for early commerce, stone for the Pyramids and grass hills for mines and grasslands for irrigation along the lake and river. Not a fast growing site but a good mix of early commerce and hammers.



Thebes is built in 3940, research set to Fishing and the town starts building a barracks while waiting for growth.

The scout heads north from Thebes and the warrior wanders southeast.

By 3910 I find what I think will make a prime second town with fish, wheat, silver, floodplains and forest.



I will come to regret that choice in the future when Alex sends his boats to wreck the fishing nets, and I don't have access to the Eastern Ocean. What I didn't know was that there were more fish resources in a safer location farther north and that the island stretched from ice cap to ice cap but the biggest problem was missing the pigs. Nonetheless Memphis when it is finally founded will become a strong production and commerce town, despite suffering frequent disruptions of its fishing industry.

In 3730 the scouts gets a gift of gold from some generous villagers and by 3490 I have a view of the whole island.



With Fishing in hand the race for a religion begins in earnest and by 3220BC (T26) Buddhism goes to Alex, but in 3100BC (T30) the Egyptians learn Hinduism and immediately convert.

With that happiness in hand it is time to learn Mining and train the first worker. And go on from there to Masonry, Bronze Working and the institution of Slavery, and the establishment of Judaism and the adoption of Organized Religion.

In 2440BC the first barbarian warrior appears from the north.



Thebes is still working on its worker and the scout was killed some time back by a marauding lion. There is a single warrior guarding the approaches to the cultural border in the far north.

The warrior survives his battle and promotes to Combat 1.

When the worker finishes Thebes begins work on the Pyramids. There are a few more moments when work on the Pyramids has to stop while some hammers are added to a warrior to protect the realm but barbarians are little more than speed bumps on the road to the Pyramids as they never enter the cultural borders from the south.

At 970BC (T102) the Pyramids are finished with the help of forest chops and a culminating whip.

Representation is immediately adopted and the warrior which had been in queue for what seemed like forever receives his club and is sent to to the east to clear the path for the settlement of Memphis. At this point I still had only the one warrior on barb watch in the far north as every time a barbarian wandered close he wandered away again without ever crossing into the borders.

By 5AD the Egpytians are well on the way to meeting their objectives of survival and prosperity.




There are only two small cities but both are a long way from the health and happiness caps. Thebes is building a library and researching Literature and accumulating Great Engineer points for finishing the Great Library. Memphis is building Stonhenge to counterbalance the Engineers at Thebes by producing a Propet for the shrine

I make the acquaintance of the neighbor in 110AD when he plants a city on the elephants. That is going to require a little change in plans.




But not immediately.

Stonehenge is built in 165AD in the barbarian city of Thracian to the west of Egypt and south of Greece. Memphis immediately starts on a settler to claim the central part of the home island.

The Great Library goes up in 185AD with the help of the first Engineer from the Pyramids



and Thebes builds another long delayed warrior and starts on a galley to build the iron colony.

Two of the three legs of the stool are now in place with the Pyramids for happiness and the Representation scientific boost to citizen specialists and the Great Library for more science. So the course is set to build the Hanging Gardens for health, then colonize the iron island for military, remove the Greek from the homeland, expand across the rest of the home island, then begin the gradual conquest of the outlying Greek colonies.

However I was in no hurry. In an effort to culture bomb Knossos I headed to Music but lost Homer to the Greek by only eight turns (365AD T191) just before the iron colony of Elephantine was founded in 530AD (T202).

And since Knossos effectively blocked northward expansion at home Thebes started Notre Dame (it's only +1 happiness but every little bit helps. Besides what else was I going to do train a military? )

Alexander did absolutely nothing with Knossos so the town grew very slowly and the culture of Helioplis gradually encroached upon it. So I waited.

And waited and waited some more.

Some hundreds of years later here is the state of the empire





And did I say something about military, this is the MilAd report in 740AD



So I guess I'll wait some more.

It was in 745AD however when Alexander put an end to the waiting.....


-30-

[Bede]

In 770AD Alexander changed the state of our relations by declaring war. But the plans didn't change much. Knossos was weakly defended, one archers and a phalanx. There was a galley covering the fish nets at Memphis and a warrior on a hill to provide early warning of attack by land or sea, so the Egyptian nation kept on keeping on, training axemen in between working on Notre Dame and the Hanging Gardens, applying the whip as necessary to keep the population under the health and happiness caps.

By 1070AD the borders at Knossos expanded and the Egyptian army had grown to four axes and two warriors in range of Knossos, so it was time to put an end to the Greek encroachment on the island. In the intervening years not once had the Greek so much as done more than sail a galley past Thebes, then sail back to the northwest.



And in 1085AD at the cost of two CR1 axemen Knossos became Egyptian.



In the interval the Egyptian scientists researched Civil Service (Bureaucracy immediately adopted), then Calendar to exploit the Banana plantation at Heliopolis (which became a shared food resource with Knossos when the time came), Meditation and, immediately after the capture of Knossos Hunting to exploit the elephants at Knossos.

Metal Casting was learned in 1142AD, Construction came next in 1184AD and then Currency in 1226AD.


Memphis finished the Hanging Gardens in 1106AD.

It was not until the mid 12th century that I discovered that Alex had founded another city in the northlands and that was the city where Taoism had been founded in 575AD. So another stack of axes was dispatched to deal with Argos.




His defenses were equally light at one phalanx and one archer, but the outcome was even more favorable to Egypt. At a cost of one CR2 axe the city is Egyptian.



I chose to burn it despite its status as the holy city of Taoism because it was not located where I wanted my northernmost town to be.

Following the destruction of Argos the northern troops set up a picket line in the north but failed to destroy the last landing Alexander ever made on Egyptian shores some years later, a settler and longbow pair in 1376.

Alexandria was founded in 1292AD and the settlement of the home island was complete.



In 1374 a Greek galley with a longbow and settler appears off the north coast and my response is too little, too late. The Greek succeeds in planting Rhodes on a little dry spit.



Notre Dame finally finished in 1388 in Thebes.


It takes until 1571 to put enough force at the gates of Rhodes to capture the city but when done t'is done well even though t'were not done quickly.



It burns.

Egyptian science is rolling right along picking off the technology the realm needs to keep growing and prospering. Compass and Optics are the most important though it takes until 1748 to get the Circumnavigation bonus. The caravels were more interested in mapping out the Greek island holdings than circling the globe, though the bonus proved most valuable since Egyptian ships were able to evade the more powerful Greek navy in later years during the campaign to domination.

A long period of prosperity ensues, no battles are fought while the Egyptian people grow fat and wealthy and numerous. Alexander is not amenable to a reasonable peace, always wanting Knossos and the treasury when he stops by for a chat. But he never does anything to make me want to accept a peace treaty with him either. Other than his feeble attempts to settle the island and an occasional foray by his navy to break the nets at Memphis and exercising his mounted troops on the island at Corinth his army never shows a threatening face.

Thebes builds the Colussus in 1610 and in 1643 Tacitus announces that Bede RBCiv Epic 7 the Glorious is the largest civilization in the world despite the fact that other than settling Pi-Ramses on the gems island no Egyptian has ever set foot on a distant shore.



That is going to change, but it is going to change when we are damn well ready for it.

[Bede]

Now ensues a long period of basking in the sun on the many sandy beaches, catching sowbellies in the lakes and stripers off the rocky headlands and salmon and trout in the rivers.

Engineering, Monarchy, Feudalism, Guilds, Banking, Paper, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts, Gunpowder, Rifling and finally Astronomy And Chemistry are discovered between 1571 and 1812.

Not a shot is fired in anger though Alex continues to harass the coastlines with his caravels then frigates while the Egyptian navy hides in the eastern coastal cities waiting for their opportunity.

Then with Astronomy and Chemistry in hand research is shut off to upgrade the galley fleet (4) and the single caravel and the run to domination begins in earnest. Riflemen, War elephants, catapults and grenadiers form the sinews of war with a small fleet for backbone.

The first target is the island city of Troy which could even be reached by galley, but galleons are safer and faster as they can outrun Alexanders's frigates.



In 1824 Alexander's frigate which had been sharking along the east coast, bemused by the basking beauties on the shore, falls for the first of Bede's Bathing Beauties.



The returning fleet is lurking off the coast of Pi-Ramses and another galleon is waiting to escape from Heliopolis. A frigate tantilizingly swans out of Alexandria and the Greek sailors, long deprived, take the bait, leaving a safe passage for the galleons in and out of Heliopolis.

Some may consider this an exploit akin to pulling puppet strings but I had great fun taking advantage of the Egyptian navy's superior speed and Alexander's horny sailors. The Bathing Beauties continued to work even after Alex was patrolling the coasts with a destroyer, as long as they stayed just outside its reach, so near and yet so far, here one minute, gone the next.



Meanwhile the Egyptian army invests Troy after a frigate bombardment to weaken the defenses. The town is defended by a mere two riflemen.



The battle is bloody but successful



And in 1839 Pharsalos on the wine island is Egyptian, followed by Thracian in 1877 on the island south of Greece where I discover Stonhenge in a barbarian town,




then the capture of Halicarnassus, Ephesus, Delphi and finally Mycenae in 1904 complete the conquest of the southern isle.

The state of play in 1905:



Egpyt has passed Greece in score!!


No 1 in Land Area and only slightly behind in population.



The military remains puny



The frigate fleet has taken a beating from Alexander during the seiges on the southern island but there are enough galleons to move the troops around and the islands are close enough together so the ships sail from port to port and are only briefly exposed to the Greek fleet and only when just out of range thanks to the Bathing Beauties.

Alex finishes the Apollo Program in 1909 while Egyptians are busy colonizing the empty islands. The colonization effort causes a brief moment of economic panic but that is resolved by the employment of many merchants until State Property can be implemented in 1976.

In 1985 the final push begins as I need a mere 2% of the land area for domination. Alexander's two cities of Herakleia and Eretria should be all that is needed.



Herakleia first as it has but four defenders and I have far more attackers in hand at Troy. Weak they may be relative to the defense but God is on the side of the big battalions.

The landing force is attacked by two SAM Infantry out of Eretria but God is indeed on my side as one succeeds and the second dies to Egyptian grenadiers and the battle for Herekleia commences with a frigate bombardment, cannon attacks and grenadier assaults.



The battle as always is bloody but conclusive.



The successful grenadier garrisons Herakleia, joined by a wounded comrade, while the crippled SAM infantry at the gates of Eretria is slaughtered and the army moves north and invest Eretria.

The Greek navy appears from wherever it was hiding and cripples the fleet, but their job is done. All that is needed is the capture of Eretria in 1991 and the expansion of the borders at Herakleia in 1994 to complete world domination for the Egyptians.

On the cusp of victory Egypt dominates the scoring table and Alexander has many spaceship parts to build and few cities left in which to build them.



The Egyptian military remains puny but clearly sufficient to the task.



but as my pappy used to tell me "It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog"




Battle casualties were always high and got higher once Alexander entered the Industrial Age



but reinforcements were always ready when the time came.


I had much fun guiding the Egyptians to victory. From the beginning I felt completely in control of my destiny. The map size and configuration helped, as did the tactical ineptitude of the opponent. I never felt I was too far behind to meet my goals, however, and just kept plugging away at growing the population and when I felt ready to launch the run to domination moved ahead at my own pace and in my own good time.

[Dreylin]

I was wondering where the "Bathing Beauties" were going to come in!

A good read, worth the wait!

[Kylearan]

Hi,

thanks for finishing the story of the Bathing Beauties! Well worth the wait, it was a good read!

Strange that Alex failed to be more active in the war, as he failed to do in so many other games. Congrats on your victory!

-Kylearan