Adventure 26 - Holiday Surprise
This game had no clues as to its settings!
It turned out to be on immortal difficulty with an isolated start (the other AIs were on a continent together). Worse than that ... Sullla had deleted every single resource from our starting continent!
BTW, I'm really annoyed at my computer for not taking some screenshots. I played up to 1000 ad on my laptop, then switched to my desktop for 1000-1400 ad. For some reason, my desktop didn't take the pictures and they turned out to be the most interesting part of the game! I think the pictures only take if you open the game from scratch rather than double clicking on the save file. Anyway, that period will have to make do with some pictures grabbed from savefiles.
I settled on the spot and noticed a distinct lack of resources. I couldn't imagine that Sullla would leave us without at least copper though, so I started on a worker, mining and bronze working. Nope! No copper. Oh well, I console myself with the ability to chop forests and use slavery, all the while writing Sullla's name into my book of grudges.
I was pretty shocked at how to proceed and decided simply to spam warriors. I didn't see the need for an early settler, since there were no good tiles to work anyway! Also I really needed some barb protection, so I just built about 10 warriors. I remember from SGOTM 2 over at civfanatics (a game with raging barbs) that the winning team just ignored archery and built a million warriors at the start, thinking to bust the fog and team up on any barb archers and it worked well for them. Whereas our team had researched archers and axemen but suffered a lot from barb attacks since we couldn't afford the sheer number of men to bust the fog. It worked quite well for me - I only saw a couple of barb archers before all the fog was busted and they only took out one of my warriors each before falling.
Techwise I went for the wheel and pottery, and my one worker cottaged those floodplains.
Once I realised I was isolated I came up with a plan. I didn't think I could win a spacerace because all the other AIs would be sharing trade routes for years and would be miles ahead on immortal (this was even while I was thinking that the AIs had no resources too!). So it was either cultural or diplomatic. Conquest/dom would be out because without food I have no production and therefore few troops. Culture would be ridiculously hard without food, because while you could generate good culture from the slider you have no production to build temples or cathedrals. Plus I hadn't gone for any of the early religions. Also I hate playing culture via the slider because it's such a gamble of whether someone will declare on you. So it's diplomacy, and I wanted to try the religious victory option because I hadn't done it before and it seems the perfect cheesey way to win on this cheesiest of adventures.
So after pottery I went to priesthood, writing and monotheism and built the oracle to grab theology and christianity.
![[Image: oraclexn5.jpg]](http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5665/oraclexn5.jpg)
After those techs I went for monarchy for the happy bonus (all those warriors I built earlier suddenly came in handy again!) and then it was a literal beeline to optics. No time for even mathematics, I needed to see where the other AIs were and how they were situated with each other before I could plan how to befriend them and/or missionary them.
I settled my first great prophet and used the other for a shrine. New York built the apostolic palace in 375AD. The production bonus for christian buildings turned out to be really useful, and monasteries became much better than forges for production and science.
![[Image: aprx7.jpg]](http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/4686/aprx7.jpg)
I found out that the other AIs were all on a continent together, and their lands looked fertile with lots of resources ... yikes! However, they were all at war a lot, with Genghis doing what he does best. I knew this was happening earlier on because of all the great generals being produced in a distant land.
On the plus side I did see a few islands that I could plant a colony on to vote for me in the diplo elections.
I traded optics away for maths, currency and calendar, and then stupidly gave Mao theology and got code of laws. That's a completely useless tech for the benefit of Mao going into theocracy just before I would missionary him! He'd better come out of it before I want to win the game, grr.
My missionary tactic was to missionary islands first, because they are likely to stay small and not build monasteries. AIs building monasteries seemed very scary as it let them spread their religion. Thus Hammurabi and Churchill got missionaried. I held off the other civs because I was scared of the cities I wanted to spam becoming really big and also building missionaries. But when relations dropped below cautious I hit the city before the AI could cancel open borders (this only happened once, but it was OK since I gifted a tech and got back up to cautious).
The only AI I couldn't infect with christianity was Pacal, who didn't like me and wouldn't open borders. He didn't like my religion or trading partners. But I had a cunning plan! There was a roman city that was 75% mayan and likely to flip, so I infected it. Sure enough ...
![[Image: pacalcitysm0.jpg]](http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3125/pacalcitysm0.jpg)
Well I felt proud of myself at the time but this all became pointless later on because Pacal's relationship with me improved. I had forgotten that he's easy to befriend because his favourite civic is hereditary rule - d'oh! Well at least I had gotten christianity into a low population city.
I had tried to keep worst enemy trading modifiers to a minimum, but hadn't completely succeeded. People were cautious and would open borders but I didn't really see a chance to get anyone to vote for me. The people who I had no negatives with except religion had the wrong favourite civic. And since in the new patch you can't get a diplo win on your own ... that meant creating a cheesey little colony. I had actually planned on this as my tech after optics was astronomy. After trading for currency my research was up to 100% because I could build wealth in my cities and a market in my shrine city of New York. My plan was to raze this barb city
![[Image: barbcityqw2.jpg]](http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9936/barbcityqw2.jpg)
and place one city 2S of its ruins and another on the iron. However, by the time I got over there Hammurabi had captured the barb city. By the way, I was basing all this on the assumption that you need two cities to for a colony and not one. I haven't even checked if that's true yet ... I hope it is. Meanwhile everyone had dogpiled the English. So I just rerouted by barb-capturing party to invade Warwick. This was a mild inconvenience since Warwick was my English christian city so I had to reroute a caravel+missionary to mainland england - somehow I didn't think the bulldog would open borders to me after I had captured his island city. There's a reason Churchill is in the game and not Chamberlain. Fortunately I found a low pop english city that had just flipped from babylonia.
Thus my stack of infinite DOOM
![[Image: sodoo7.jpg]](http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/9641/sodoo7.jpg)
(yes, I didn't even bother to build barracks in my cities) declared war on Churchill. No danger of a counterattack because he didn't have astronomy.
I put my new colony under the rule of Asoka.
![[Image: asokahi0.jpg]](http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/4051/asokahi0.jpg)
I was trying the odd diplo victory in the elections and it seemed that I had enough votes, it was just that no one would vote for me. Worryingly though Pacal was increasing his vote tally - he was spreading christianity! I spammed settlers and set my cities to max growth, and also built spies and upped the espionage slider. my plan was to poison all the christian cities the AIs controlled if it turned out I didn't have enough votes. When the crucial vote came, the first one after I had created a vassal, I was shoked to see that Asoka was standing against me! Oh no! Why was this? He only had a population of 3 but I guess since he was the only christian civ that makes him the opponent. That's a slight disaster, since not only would I not get his 6 votes, but also I would have no one except me voting for me and could not win. My only plan would be to tech to liberalism and gift it to Asoka, because Asoka's favourite civic is free religion and that would get him out of christianity. But that would take a while and I feared Pacal spreading more christianity. But when the results came in ... I won!
![[Image: diplowinhn6.jpg]](http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/6987/diplowinhn6.jpg)
I didn't notice, but Pacal had gone to free religion a few turns before. That coupled with our fairly long mutual struggle with Churchill, large fave civics bonuses and a gift had gotten him up friendly and he voted for me. Well, quite embarrassingly I blundered that one up horribly and still ended up accidentally winning. I didn't even need to poison any water.
![[Image: diplowin2az4.jpg]](http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/9337/diplowin2az4.jpg)
Second to the "Why doesn't the diplo victory have a movie?" question has to be "Why does a religious apostolic palace victory have a UN logo in the background of the winning screen?" Disappointing.
Anyway, sorry for the exremely cheesey winning tactic, and for even bungling that up and fluking a victory. I did enjoy the game though after the initial holiday surprise
The apostolic palace is really stupid though. Don't think I'll go for that victory again.
This game had no clues as to its settings!
It turned out to be on immortal difficulty with an isolated start (the other AIs were on a continent together). Worse than that ... Sullla had deleted every single resource from our starting continent!
BTW, I'm really annoyed at my computer for not taking some screenshots. I played up to 1000 ad on my laptop, then switched to my desktop for 1000-1400 ad. For some reason, my desktop didn't take the pictures and they turned out to be the most interesting part of the game! I think the pictures only take if you open the game from scratch rather than double clicking on the save file. Anyway, that period will have to make do with some pictures grabbed from savefiles.
I settled on the spot and noticed a distinct lack of resources. I couldn't imagine that Sullla would leave us without at least copper though, so I started on a worker, mining and bronze working. Nope! No copper. Oh well, I console myself with the ability to chop forests and use slavery, all the while writing Sullla's name into my book of grudges.
I was pretty shocked at how to proceed and decided simply to spam warriors. I didn't see the need for an early settler, since there were no good tiles to work anyway! Also I really needed some barb protection, so I just built about 10 warriors. I remember from SGOTM 2 over at civfanatics (a game with raging barbs) that the winning team just ignored archery and built a million warriors at the start, thinking to bust the fog and team up on any barb archers and it worked well for them. Whereas our team had researched archers and axemen but suffered a lot from barb attacks since we couldn't afford the sheer number of men to bust the fog. It worked quite well for me - I only saw a couple of barb archers before all the fog was busted and they only took out one of my warriors each before falling.
Techwise I went for the wheel and pottery, and my one worker cottaged those floodplains.
Once I realised I was isolated I came up with a plan. I didn't think I could win a spacerace because all the other AIs would be sharing trade routes for years and would be miles ahead on immortal (this was even while I was thinking that the AIs had no resources too!). So it was either cultural or diplomatic. Conquest/dom would be out because without food I have no production and therefore few troops. Culture would be ridiculously hard without food, because while you could generate good culture from the slider you have no production to build temples or cathedrals. Plus I hadn't gone for any of the early religions. Also I hate playing culture via the slider because it's such a gamble of whether someone will declare on you. So it's diplomacy, and I wanted to try the religious victory option because I hadn't done it before and it seems the perfect cheesey way to win on this cheesiest of adventures.
So after pottery I went to priesthood, writing and monotheism and built the oracle to grab theology and christianity.
After those techs I went for monarchy for the happy bonus (all those warriors I built earlier suddenly came in handy again!) and then it was a literal beeline to optics. No time for even mathematics, I needed to see where the other AIs were and how they were situated with each other before I could plan how to befriend them and/or missionary them.
I settled my first great prophet and used the other for a shrine. New York built the apostolic palace in 375AD. The production bonus for christian buildings turned out to be really useful, and monasteries became much better than forges for production and science.
I found out that the other AIs were all on a continent together, and their lands looked fertile with lots of resources ... yikes! However, they were all at war a lot, with Genghis doing what he does best. I knew this was happening earlier on because of all the great generals being produced in a distant land.
On the plus side I did see a few islands that I could plant a colony on to vote for me in the diplo elections.
I traded optics away for maths, currency and calendar, and then stupidly gave Mao theology and got code of laws. That's a completely useless tech for the benefit of Mao going into theocracy just before I would missionary him! He'd better come out of it before I want to win the game, grr.
My missionary tactic was to missionary islands first, because they are likely to stay small and not build monasteries. AIs building monasteries seemed very scary as it let them spread their religion. Thus Hammurabi and Churchill got missionaried. I held off the other civs because I was scared of the cities I wanted to spam becoming really big and also building missionaries. But when relations dropped below cautious I hit the city before the AI could cancel open borders (this only happened once, but it was OK since I gifted a tech and got back up to cautious).
The only AI I couldn't infect with christianity was Pacal, who didn't like me and wouldn't open borders. He didn't like my religion or trading partners. But I had a cunning plan! There was a roman city that was 75% mayan and likely to flip, so I infected it. Sure enough ...
Well I felt proud of myself at the time but this all became pointless later on because Pacal's relationship with me improved. I had forgotten that he's easy to befriend because his favourite civic is hereditary rule - d'oh! Well at least I had gotten christianity into a low population city.
I had tried to keep worst enemy trading modifiers to a minimum, but hadn't completely succeeded. People were cautious and would open borders but I didn't really see a chance to get anyone to vote for me. The people who I had no negatives with except religion had the wrong favourite civic. And since in the new patch you can't get a diplo win on your own ... that meant creating a cheesey little colony. I had actually planned on this as my tech after optics was astronomy. After trading for currency my research was up to 100% because I could build wealth in my cities and a market in my shrine city of New York. My plan was to raze this barb city
and place one city 2S of its ruins and another on the iron. However, by the time I got over there Hammurabi had captured the barb city. By the way, I was basing all this on the assumption that you need two cities to for a colony and not one. I haven't even checked if that's true yet ... I hope it is. Meanwhile everyone had dogpiled the English. So I just rerouted by barb-capturing party to invade Warwick. This was a mild inconvenience since Warwick was my English christian city so I had to reroute a caravel+missionary to mainland england - somehow I didn't think the bulldog would open borders to me after I had captured his island city. There's a reason Churchill is in the game and not Chamberlain. Fortunately I found a low pop english city that had just flipped from babylonia.
Thus my stack of infinite DOOM
(yes, I didn't even bother to build barracks in my cities) declared war on Churchill. No danger of a counterattack because he didn't have astronomy.
I put my new colony under the rule of Asoka.
I was trying the odd diplo victory in the elections and it seemed that I had enough votes, it was just that no one would vote for me. Worryingly though Pacal was increasing his vote tally - he was spreading christianity! I spammed settlers and set my cities to max growth, and also built spies and upped the espionage slider. my plan was to poison all the christian cities the AIs controlled if it turned out I didn't have enough votes. When the crucial vote came, the first one after I had created a vassal, I was shoked to see that Asoka was standing against me! Oh no! Why was this? He only had a population of 3 but I guess since he was the only christian civ that makes him the opponent. That's a slight disaster, since not only would I not get his 6 votes, but also I would have no one except me voting for me and could not win. My only plan would be to tech to liberalism and gift it to Asoka, because Asoka's favourite civic is free religion and that would get him out of christianity. But that would take a while and I feared Pacal spreading more christianity. But when the results came in ... I won!
I didn't notice, but Pacal had gone to free religion a few turns before. That coupled with our fairly long mutual struggle with Churchill, large fave civics bonuses and a gift had gotten him up friendly and he voted for me. Well, quite embarrassingly I blundered that one up horribly and still ended up accidentally winning. I didn't even need to poison any water.
Second to the "Why doesn't the diplo victory have a movie?" question has to be "Why does a religious apostolic palace victory have a UN logo in the background of the winning screen?" Disappointing.
Anyway, sorry for the exremely cheesey winning tactic, and for even bungling that up and fluking a victory. I did enjoy the game though after the initial holiday surprise
The apostolic palace is really stupid though. Don't think I'll go for that victory again.
You were the only one to win Epic Ten, and will almost certainly pull out the only victory from this hellhole of a map that I drew up. So, uh, can we get you to play the turns for the Realms Beyond team in the Apolyton Pitboss game? 
