Epic 8 - sooooo's report

[sooooo]

Epic 8 - Potluck

This game was Monarch difficulty on a standard pangaea. The only restriction is that we cannot declare war before 1000 BC.

Sirian rolled me a start with Mali. That's cool - Mansa has my favourite two traits in the game.



It might not look like much in terms of resources or hills, but this is a pretty good start for a financial civ with its many grassland forests. No river, but we can't have everything. We strangely start with 2 warriors - I'm guessing that's to do with the potluck variant. I settled on the spot. We only have food visible to work 1 plains hill mine, so losing a second hill is irrelevant. With an extra scouting warrior from the beginnning, I began with a worker. I started research with bronze working.

My strategy for this game is just to play a "standard" old skool monarch game. Rather than do anything out of the ordinary, I thought I'd play a normal game to give some of the other Malinese emporers something to compare against.

Thus being financial, I want to cottage most of those grassland forests. Not going to play around with specialists - cottages are what we used to build and if they were good enough then they're good enough now. Therefore my early research targets will be bronze working and pottery to cottage, and animal husbandry to pasture the sheep.

And since we've got to chop those forests anyway, we might as well get some military out while doing so, right? That's why I went for bronze before animal husbandry - to find the location of copper.

Since we're on a plains hill, the worker finished before BW and I started a warrior. BW luckily revealed copper in the BFC of Timbuktu, giving a decent production tile in the capital. Agriculture was next as it lead to both animal husbandry and pottery. After those three techs, I went for writing then alphabet.



I chopped a forest for my first settler while building a warrior. My second city was founded in 2650 BC, getting cows, corn, ivory and 2 wines in the BFC. It was slightly short on food, but farming over one of the wines should provide a nice 2-1-3 tile and keep us going. That city started on a worker - pretty unusual but I wanted to get those food resources up asap and the first worker was busy hooking up the copper and chopping forests at the capital.

Timbuktu built stonehenge, then went for axes. Once Djienne's food resources were improved it built a settler. Unfortunately those egyptians beat me to the site I wanted.



I was going to found on the spot my settler is on next turn. Egypt founded 1S of that spot, which doesn't get the fish. But it still had enough food for some cottages if I were to take it. So Kumbi Saleh had to be founded in this less than optimal tundra location:



It had marble though, which would be useful for the great library. As you can see, there's no other decent city sites in my area of the map. To war then! After completing a barracks, Djienne did a double axe-whip, which added to the axes my capital had chopped out during the forest->cottage transformations gave me 9 axes to play with, and a 10th on its way down. Djienne and Timbuktu were now building libraries.



I declared in 670 BC and got Thebes in 625 BC. Elephantine fell in 565 BC. Memphis was pretty well defended and I was low on axes, so I got peace in 475 BC, for priesthood only.



As you can see, I was researching literature. I would build the great library in Djenne as it had the highest production. It also got the national epic, but I was not able to hire any extra specialists there because of a lack of food.

Rather than continue the war, I stayed peaceful for a long, long time. 5 cities is enough to build with. Oh, there was a phony war with Tokugawa at Mao's request, but I never actually fought. I basically beelined to civil service, because Timkuktu was a cottage monster. It was researched in 380 AD. Here's the capital just before that point:



After that I spead buddhism to my cities and cottaged nearly every tile at Elephantile. Thebes and Djenne were geared for production, with Thebes getting the Heroic Epic. Scientists from the great library build academies at Timbuktu and Elephantine. With a large tech lead over the AIs, I thought the quickest way to close out the game would be to go for cavalry, as they can tear through longbows without suicide catapult support.

I went to theology and built 10 catapults in my heroic epic city - split into 2 stacks of 5. With the extra XP, they could get accuracy straight away, meaning they can bomb down defenses in 1 turn. Also, none of them would actually have to fight because cavalry don't need the odds boost. Liberalism was discovered in 1166 AD, taking Military Tradition. After the discovery of gunpowder, I revolted to Vassalage and chopped, whipped and built a load of horsies. Oh, and I built the Taj Mahal just before too, giving golden age production to do so. Thanks, marble!

War was declared in 1268 AD. I had 2 stacks to finish off Hatshepsut: One to go south and wheel round into Arabia and the other to go east from Thebes and wheel south to join the other at Saladin's capital.



Saladin was dead by 1424 AD. Cities fell in 1 turn - the catapults bombarded and the cavalry killed all the defenders. With the double move, cavalry can attack and occupy a captured city in the same turn, so there's no chance of it being retaken. Also, the war wasn't delayed by having to ship suicide catapults to the front lines. Toku sneak attacked me while I was in Arabia, but diverting a few of my reinforcement cavs prevented in him taking any cities.

The English war of 1466-1520 proceded in the same manner.



By now I had researched steel and upgraded my catapults to cannons. I declared war both Qin and JC on the same turn in 1535 AD. JC had been beating up on Qin previously, and captured 2 chinese cities close to me.

No one had even paper yet, let alone rifling.



JC and Qin were left with 1 or two cities. Tokugawa put up a decent fight, at one time decemating one of my stacks with massed catapults. But I got 2 cities from him and that put me over the domination limit. Empire the turn before the win:



Domination in 1595 AD. All thanks to cavalry. They're useless if the AIs have rifles, but without them their longbows don't stand a chance.

Thanks for the game, I'm eager to read other reports.