Epic 17 - Darrell with Pericles

[darrelljs]

It will have to be a mini-report for this one…I started too late to do a proper job of it. I picked Pericles because I think he is the best leader in the game. Two strong traits with great synergy, an outstanding UB, and a solid UU (although I prefer the vanilla version). Given the traits I plan on playing a specialist economy, and given this is Monarch I will do a lot of settling instead of lightbulbing. The opening is very promising, I moved the Scout NE/NE and had a chance to trade an Oasis, two grassland hills, a grassland, and a plain tile (the latter four forested) for three floodplains, a grassland river and plains river tile. If I had chosen a Financial leader I probably would have done it, but settling in place gives me a real production monster which is great for a super specialist city.

I set research to Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry while building a Worker. I got lucky and popep Mining from a hut as well as about 200 gold. After the Worker completes he farms the Corn and pastures the Sheep. I build Warriors until size three, then two more Workers. After Animal Husbandry I went for Bronze Working and Masonry. The Workers farmed the floodplains then chopped out the Pyramids. Writing for Libraries was the next choice. I didn’t bother with The Wheel -> Pottery because I had enough surplus food to fuel growth. After Writing I went for Mathematics, then Mysticism -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Code of Laws:



You can see I had settled a city to grab the Marble. The next turn I popped a Great Engineer from the Pyramids, which I settled. This brought the time to complete The Oracle and Code of Laws down, and in 900 B.C. I completed the Civil Service slingshot. uberfish will be happy I didn’t use a Great Scientist on Mathematics . The starting location was quite strong, and with the extra Workers and early Pyramids I was able to complete the slingshot at a reasonable date. True, in an SE you don’t see a lot of gain from the commerce boost, but the capital is so Hammer rich that it will still prove to be a big boon. After the slingshot, I pumped out four quick Settlers to claim the land immediately around Athens (fog busting Warriors were key here, the barbarians were up to Archers by now). For the tech path I headed for The Great Library. Here is Athens as I start building it.



With Iron in the BFC, Athens is a true production monster . I got Iron Working, Alphabet and Monarchy in tech trades with the AI. They were teching okay for Monarch, but were still falling behind me. That fall would accelerate once they began warring with each other…first Rome against Greece (the other one), then the Aztecs against the Mongols. I was in a good position to win by conquest, but figured space race would be easier.

After nailing the GL, I backfilled some critical techs like Currency and Calendar, then started churning out two turn Settlers. Monty was slow to expand and I was able to claim several cities in the north despite not prioritizing it. I think maybe a barbarian city slowed him down, which was nice because it meant I would never have to declare war on anyone. Monty had founded Buddhism, which he spread to myself, Kublai Kahn, and Caesar. We were like a big happy family. A big happy crazy family since Monty would declare war on Caesar three times . I was able to get Caesar to Friendly, and he was my main tech trading partner and well ahead of the other AIs as a result

From a tech perspective I pretty much beelined a Liberalism -> Biology slingshot. The AIs were so far behind that I just manually researched Biology, and ended up grabbing Radio with the free tech. Along the way Kahn declared war on me. Some free advice would be don’t declare war on someone running an SE and holding a large tech edge. After killing about a gazillion obsolete units, I razed all his cities. I didn’t bother resettling the land, Caesar and Monty filled it in and had even more border tensions . Anyway, long story short I cruised to a space race victory in 1896. Here is the southern part of my civilization:



And the northern part:



No cottages, of course. Here is Athens:



1316.20 beakers and 535 hammers (of course, you have to take into account I was building Research at the time) isn’t too bad. Mining, Inc. and Sid’s Sushi Co. are contributing a lot as well, I nailed all the “resource” wonders and had a spare Oil to trade. The 3.13 AI does all sorts of crazy things with resource trades, canceling a deal and then offering to give you a Fish for everything plus all your Gold, only to give it to you for an Incense three turns later. So this number fluctuated quite a bit, but here you see it at pretty much the optimal point. Note the 25 settled Great Persons, with each Hammer magnified by Ironworks and each Beaker magnified by Oxford University. Here’s my GP farm:



I saved those forests to place the National Park here. In a Golden Age the GPP total was well over 300, but the steady state total of 284 is still pretty good. Here’s my bill paying city:



72 gold from hosting the corporate headquarters for Sid’s Sushi Co. and Mining, Inc. and half that again for Merchant specialists. I had a lot of fun with this game, it is tough to run small, peaceful SE economies on the higher level, except maybe with Peter. At Monarch you can do it without too much micro and have a nice, relaxing game. Thanks to the sponsor for a cool map setup and a neat game idea, I can’t wait to see who everyone else played !

Darrell

[Ruff_Hi]

That sounds like a totally interesting game. I must try a full on SE game. I usually play partials where I swap to cottages in the mid game.

[sunrise089]

Amazing capital, very impressed. I have no idea what you even did to make that city...

That sounds like a totally interesting game. I must try a full on SE game. I usually play partials where I swap to cottages in the mid game.

I though it was always better to switch to a CE later one...but a 1300bpt capital may suggest otherwise.

PS - Ruff, your sig is out of date.

[Ruff_Hi]

PS - Ruff, your sig is out of date.

Gee - nagged here about my sig too!

[Benno]

Amazing capital, very impressed. I have no idea what you even did to make that city...

I reckon the 25 merged Great People might have helped

[timmy827]

Congrats. Settling in place gave both an early and late game production powerhouse capital, and with the marble near the start I wondered if someone would go with wonderspam/settle approach.