Epic 12 - Zeviz's Report

[Zeviz]

Hi. I finally have a CIV capable computer, so I was able to participate in this event.

I haven't played CIV since last fall, so I was a little worried about jumping straight into a "difficult" Epic. I've played FfH2 mod over the past couple of weeks, losing several games on Immortal, but that experience doesn't translate well into this scenario. (Somehow I doubt summoning Infernals to get a fresh start will be an option here. ) But enough of these preliminaries, and on to the game, which can be summarized in three sentences:

I need about half a dozen cities for a comfortable spaceship launch. Our start was bad in the long term, but had great short-term commerce and production, with Copper nearby. Asoka settled very fertile lands, but had neither metals nor horses to defend himself with.

So I've expanded to 6 cities using axes and cats, filled in two more cities later, and then played a typical peaceful space race, launching in 1895. And now the details:

The usual way out of a bad start is to attack a neighbor with good lands and the scenario description heavily implied that it would be our only option here. So my research went into Animal Husbandry (pasture and horses). When horses turned out to be too far, I went for Mining->Bronze Working. If that hadn't revealed accessible copper, I would have gone all the way to Iron. However, after finding Copper in acceptable location, I switched to economic research of Mysticism (border pop for copper city), Agriculture -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alpha... Never mind. Alphabet wouldn't be very useful in a situation with only two trading partners, one of whom I am about to attack, so I went for Math->Masonry->Construction instead. Which takes us up to the start of Indian war in 565BC.

Meanwhile, my production went into: Worker->Warrior->Warrior->Warrior->Barracks(partial) The 3 warriors and Barracks allowed the city to grow to size 4 before starting to train settler, so I was able to work both furs nearly all the time, making me the leader in GNP.

My second city was founded in 1870BC, and started work on Obelisk, which it build naturally, because my workers were too busy building roads and improving the capital to dirty their hands with forestry. Meanwhile, the capital finished its barracks, trained a scout, and put some production into infrastructure (perhaps a library), waiting for the copper to become available.

Note that I didn't care about the barbs, because after FfH2, where any unit straying outside your cultural borders gets devoured in a couple turn, I was very underwhelmed by regular CIV's Barb threat. Once I had to recall a couple scouting warriors to protect empty capital from an archer that popped out of the fog to the south. I even started training another warrior due to pop out when archer arrives, but the archer turned back and I stopped warrior training. Another time I lost an axe guarding copper to a barb axe, so I had to divert a catapult heading to the front to finish it off. There were one or two more barb incidents, but I mostly allowed AIs to do the barb watch for me.

Why did I found Beshbalik in such a way that it would require a border pop to connect the copper? Let me give you a preview from the endgame:

This "copper town" turned out to be my highest production city, building two largest spaceship parts, as well as my entire modern military of ... a single musketman. But more on that later. For now, let's go back to the situation on the Indian border, that looked like this in 565BC:

I had only 4 axes in position at the time, but declared war anyway, because I couldn't miss this nice bait (there is a settler under one of the archers that are walking past my stack):

(The picture is called "Asoka asking for trouble" ) And the 2-archer stack highlighted in this picture? That's all the defenders of Delhi.

However, the AI turned out to be not completely incompetent and while my stack waited for reinforcements under the walls of Delhi, Asoka produced an archer every couple of turns, so I had to turn north to Bangalore, while waiting for the newly-built Cats to get there. Bangalore, by the way, later became my GP farm.

Once the catapults entered the scene, however, there was nothing Asoka's archers could do. Delhi fell with minimal losses, as did the city to its south-east, that later became a hybrid production-research city. I then swung north-west to capture the city next to the elephants. At that point my GNP dropped to 0, I began running out of units, war weariness got up to 1 or 2 (a big deal for happy cap of 5), and I discovered Alphabet. So this was a good time to make peace. Here is a strategic view at the time (40BC) :

Note that Alex' first war against Mali, which started at about the same time as my attack on India, also ended at this time.

I later founded a filler city Between Beshbalik, Delhi, and the southern former Indian city, and a fishing villaged next to horses in north-west corner of our continent, for the total of 8 cities, half of which were quite weak.

During that peace negotiation I made one of the first major mistakes: I forgot that I'll need to chose a religion to befriend HC, so I decided to go my usual atheist route and ignore Polytheism to avoid WFYABTA limit. After sleeping on it, I remembered that common religion is the key to befriending HC, and that Organized Religion is a great builder civic, so I had to buy Polytheism from HC, along with a bunch of other basic techs. I sold my Alphabet, because I had no intention of going for Great Library. My economy was in too bad of a shape to go wonder chasing. In fact, I ignored all early to mid game wonders (none of which I was in a position to attempt) except Hanging Gardens, that I missed by 8 turns in 1130AD.

However, Asoka turned out to be even more of a pushover than expected, and was willing to trade with me despite a recent war, so I bought Monotheism from him and switched to OrgRel right away, but didn't chose a religion until my religion of choice was well-spread. (HC switched from Judaism to Hinduism, so I had to spread around the second religion before I could switch.)

After this, things went along the typical pacifist space race blueprint: I've picked up Currency (Markets for cash and happiness), then Metal Casting (forges for production and happiness), then went on the CoL->CS->Paper->Education->Philosophy->Liberalism beeline, researching or trading for all the Astronomy prerequisites. So I was able to take Astronomy from Liberalism in 1340.

I met the first off-continent AI, Fred, in 1130. He was angry at me for trading with HC, but that anger dissipated quickly, probably because Alex became his biggest enemy.

Meanwhile, HC attacked Asoka in 1220 and took two of his last 4 cities. I was hoping to steal one of them from under HC's nose, but got my stack of millennium-old veterans in place too late, so I ended up not joining the war. Alex also started plenty of wars with Fred and Mansa, which I couldn't see directly, because I never made contact with Mali, and met Alex himself only in 1571. (I never built ships, so I met AIs only when their caravels reached me.)

Hopelessly backwards Cyrus sailed by in 1328, but trading with me helped him keep up with the tech leaders, so in the end Alex was the only AI who was more than an age behind. The technological backwardness didn't stop Alex from being the power leader, with double the power of most other AIs.

Meanwhile, I built only infrastructure in my cities, because the other continent had its own wars to worry about, and HC was kept Friendly or Pleased by shared religion, shared civics, and later just the bonuses from trade, OB, resource deals, giving in to demands, etc. Asoka hated me, but was far too weak to do anything about it.

After Liberalism, I researched towards Economics, missing the Great Merchant because switching to Free Religion caused HC to drop to Pleased and refuse to sell Guilds. I then researched Printing Press (cash) -> Replaceable Parts (lumbermills) -> Gunpowder -> Chemistry -> Steam Power (on path to Assembly Line and Factories) I also got Nationalism -> Constitution -> Corporation somewhere in there for more income boost.

While researching Steam Power, I remembered about the Statue of Liberty. Doing a couple quick calculations showed that the wonder is well worth the effort, so I diverted my research towards Democracy and then, with two forest chops and a Great Engineer to cut the production time in half, I constructed the Statue of Liberty in the capital in 1712AD. Of course it then took me several dozen turns to remember to switch to Representation to take full advantage of new specialists.

I was delaying Scientific Method as much as I could, because I inherited Asoka's 3 religions, which meant that I had 3 monasteries in all research cities. However, in 1625 I saw that HC has Scientific Method, so I bought it, abusing his Friendly status, and outraced him to Physics. (It turned out that he was researching Biology, rather than Physics, so I wasn't really racing him, but I didn't know that at the time.)

After that, I went back to research Assembly Line, and then continued up Electricity line to Computers (labs), picking up Broadway, Rock'n'Roll, and Eiffel Tower on the way. Then I beelined to Robotics (Space Elevator). I was able to start the Space Elevator only in my GP farm, where it was expected to take 50 turns (a time decreased slightly by a Golden Age). Then I proceeded along the usual paths towards Satellites, then Fusion, then Genetics, finishing with Environmentalism. I traded for anything I could buy, but I was a tech leader for most of the mid-late game, so there were few trade opportunities in Industrial age and almost none after that.

HC completed his Apollo Program in 1811, but his research rate was too slow, and Cyrus overtook him in the end.

My own Apollo Program was started in 1838, and completed in 1854, thanks to four forest chops. I didn't chop any forests in the early game, saving them for emergencies. So I used up some of the extra forests during the space race, speeding up Apollo Program and the final two parts.

A few years after completing Apollo I decided that it was time to switch into max production mode by replacing Representation with Universal Suffrage and starting a Golden Age using Artist and Prophet from my GP city. (My other GPs were used to found 5 Academies and rush Statue of Liberty. The Fusion Engineer cut a turn off Ecology research, and last two GPs were a useless Artist and a last moment Engineer.)

HC completed the UN in 1886, but I didn't care, because I was just two turns away from finishing Ecology research. After that, my 6 workers chopped some of the forests I've been saving whole game, to allow my capital and second city to finish the final two parts in 1895.


Spaceship victory in 1895.

Here is the final world map:


And the final demographics:

Not bad for 8 cities, 3 of which are stuck at size 12-13 due to lack of food or health, while the largest ones are size 17.

[uberfish]

Welcome back Zeviz, still going the small empire space route I see I like what you did with Beshbalik, well played to break the 1900 AD mark with only 8 cities and some of them being mediocre.