Adventure 40 - Dantski's game

[Dantski]

Variant Rule: After 0 AD, you must reduce your science slider to 0%. It must stay at this setting for the rest of the game.


Scenario Concept: Science is outlawed! Official funding for scientific research will be banned at 0 AD. Your task, as the head of a covert pro-science cult society, is to ensure that the Roman civilization can survive (and thrive) despite this archaic ruling. Through any means necessary you must ensure that your civilisation can gain access to the technology it needs. Though the official science rate must remain at 0% to satisfy the authorities, anything else is fair game. Secretive scientists in cities, research siphoned off from production or obtaining it from other civilisations (by fair or foul means!) are all possibilities. All victory types are enabled



Alright lots of food, some ok production but not a whole lotta commerce to start with. My initial plan here was to get pyramids + great library before 1AD then hope that representation scientists + settled great people could keep me competitive in technology.

So I settle in place and start off with mysticism... *cough* This is why you should take more notes when playing because I have no real idea why I did this looking back at it. I also build a warrior first.

My brain kicks into gear shortly after and I switch to Bronze working so I can chop all those forests for Pyramids.

My initial scouting warrior gets eaten by a Panther at some horrible odds but not before I meet Hammurabi to the west.

Once masonry is finished, I IMMEDIATELY begin the Pyramids and start chopping. With industrious, those chops are worth the typical 30 hammers before maths!

I then run into Stalin, he settles St Petes north of me in amongst all the floodplains. I don't remember agreeing to him settling there, poor diplomacy I say. Genghis says hi too.

Anyhoo in 1320 BC I land Pyramids.

I switch to representation and slavery and finally start my first settler. Antium is founded to the east in 900 BC.




Very soon after, Cumae is founded ON the marble next to Antium, one of only 2 tiles that would allow me to work the fish nearby. That cities sole purpose for now is to provide marble for the great library.

Barb archers become a real pest around this time of expansion, fortunately they're all focused on the west side so I only suffer a little pillaging.

Great Engineer born in 375 BC, will be saved for TGL. He completes TGL in 300 BC. In hindsight this was possibly a mistake, I could have built it normally would too much difficulty.

In 25 BC, my science specialists produce me a GS who creates an academy in Rome.

1 AD comes along and research is set to 0%, this loses me 18 beakers per turn.

Stalin is becoming a real pain as he settles another 2 cities in my direction. His score + power may be a lot higher, but lets see if he can handle Praets.



I capture Khoisan so the west of Rome which provides some nice XP for my Praets and now they can be promoted to CR II. I am also getting construction before I attack.

Another GS starts a golden age in 425 AD to help my preparation for the Russian offensive. I declare war in the same turn (or the turn after).

St Petes is captured with minimal losses. I then bribe Genghis into the war for Mono + Aesthetics. He ends up taking Rostov a junk Russian city in the north but does little else.

I push on and Stalin lets me stay in forests right up to Moscow which I capture.




Moscow has Stonehenge + the Great Wall, how the heck did he spam cities so fast?

I take Yekaterinburg one of the offending southern settlements and Yaroslavl (confucian holy city) which was just SW of Moscow.

Then I ask what he'll pay for peace...




CoL + 60 gold is pretty good right now since despite all my commerce being converted into gold I am LOSING money at 0%! Popping over 200 gold from early huts really saved me here!

Hammurabi then sold me Calendar for 450 gold and finally I could begin to grow my cities which had been seriously stunted.

Then a possibly pivotal point in the game.





Chinook is just west of Khoisan and is a superb chokepoint between Hammu + Gandhi and myself, the previous turn Hammu killed one of the defending archers and wounded the other. Next turn he will 99% certainly take the city and have a settlement right on my border.

My one unpromoted axe has 67% odds of winning...

AND HE WINS! Phew now my western border with the new tech / land leader Hammu is secure!.

Somehow I end up building the Parthenon in 1020 AD, I really should've just built some more catapults...

Some demographics at 1020 AD

Score




A slippery slope for Stalin isn't it?

GNP




Spot the turn I took Moscow :neenernee




Went from being last in soldiers to 1st, I'm not sure how Genghis' power is so high, I only saw the odd Keshik pillaging.




Competitive here, 1st in land but low in population, not too concerned at the time though since everything is growing.

Grab CS in 1110 AD and forget to adopt bureaucracy for a hundred or so years . At this point I am STILL losing money at 0% and I keep selling cheap techs to the incredibly backward Genghis.

Khoisan builds the Colossus in 1200 AD because it could.

The 2nd Russian war begins, Yakutsk goes down first, Novgorod the new capital is razed since its 1 tile off the coast and gets replaced.



A Barbarian uprising of HA's occurs, I'm going to take the brunt of it eh? Good thing Stalin built the Great Wall in Moscow for me! The HA's attack Genghis instead but he fends them off.

Genghis doesn't like Gandhi much and declares shortly after I eliminate Stalin. He's attacking Longbows with Keshiks... There's a long stalemate then Gandhi takes or flips Vladisvostok from him and secures peace.

Build Sistine in 1350 in case I fall behind in tech and need to go for culture. 30 years later and Sankore is built as well.

If you were wondering about my earlier comment about wasting my Engineer, here's why, I lose out on Notre Dame in 1480 AD which is a late build. The Engineer might've been more use saved up.

I prioritize exploration more than our continents AI and find Justinian and Isabella who have Buddhism and Hinduism locked out on their islands. Izzy got badly outexpanded and is quite backwards in tech, Justinian is pretty equal with Hammu and myself. Somehow Gandhi with his 6 cities is the tech leader.

Now since I'm running Confucianism, both Justin and Izzy hate me, thats fine. However they are pleased towards each other.... what the heck? Two of the biggest religion fanatics in the game are in different religions and LIKE each other? Oh it appears their favourite civic is the same and they got +3 relations from past events! Not sure if that relationship turned out how the sponsor intended.

I trade for Justinians map and get Circumnav in 1540 AD.

Demographics from 1540 AD




1st in the important stats and not too far behind in soldiers.

Gandhi is first to Liberalism in 1545 AD. He must have built the Shedwagon though since he's been in free religion as long as I remember.

Once I grab Banking I pull a triple Civics switch, Pacifism, Mecantilism and Caste System are in!

I finally get my first Prophet in 1620 AD and built the Confusing shrine. My money troubles are at last at an end.

Then completely out of the blue this happens...




What the heck, Gandhi is having no problem dealing with Genghis (who declared again a few turns earlier) but wants to vassalize? Uhh sure I'll take it. This means that now I'm also at war with Genghis. He quickly retook Vladivostok from Gandhi and then I took it from him with my elite Russian veterans. Rostov fell after multiple turns of bombardment and peace was made. I

View of Rome at this point




Not too shabby!

Pop silver in Antium, 100 years later Antium also pops Gems! As Sirian said, "Sometimes its better to be lucky than good!"

SoLiberty is built in 1735 AD. Rome is now producing 180 GPP a turn! I'm first to Physics in 1802 so that another settled scientist.

Now during the middle ages I'd given quite a lot of thought as to how to win the game. Conquest was out since I didn't much fancy an intercontinental war, domination was out for the same reason although I was sure I could mop my continent up without too much hassle. Culture didn't look great and I dislike it. So that leaves Space (doable but might be close) and diplomacy. Now diplomatically looked good since Hammu liked me and was 3rd in population and Gandhi would obviously vote for me, but I needed Izzy somehow.

I built the UN in 1862 AD and my butterin' up of Izzy over the past 200 years had produced....+/-0 in relations. Argh she would never like me for previous trading with Hammu and predictably enough would never vote for me. The vote ended with me 50 short of diplo victory and with no real hope of securing enough votes.

So space it would have to be!

Shorly after this Justinian + Isabella declare on Genghis and Justin secures Beshbalik and vassalizes Genghis.

The world is peaceful for 40 more years as I move down the tech tree, I now have a 2-3 tech lead and Gandhi is really starting to fall behind. In fact it'll take him dozens of turns to research anything....Oh ok it seems he's turned off research and is running the culture slider. Pity he'll never make it.

I'd been monitoring WHEOOH for a while so this wasn't much of a surprise.




He landed a dozen units near Antium and they were squashed, he snuck a galleon past to take my junkiest ice city in the north but I retook it within a half dozen turns. I guess he was always doomed when he attacked one of my destroyers with 5 galleons and barely scratched it. I bribed Hammu into the war also. I don't like it when the AI gets aggressive on me though and a small force of tanks and infantry sailed over to his largest city of Nicaea (size 20) and razed it.

He was very willing to talk peace after, especially because Genghis had been getting his butt kicked by Hammu and had vassalized to him instead.

During the war I built 3 gorges in Moscow.

A quick look at the victory conditions showed how Gandhi's attempt at culture was doing.




Now if he was in Free Speech it'd be a worry, but for some reason bonus relations from shared Civic with Hammu was more important to him.
Well just in case he got serious about it I started building a small stack (I'll tell you about that later).

Space Elevator in 1948.

Hammu really got into the war with Justin, he sent over a lot of troops and started taking cities, in 1953 Isabella saw her chance and joined in. Initially she lost a couple of cities, but Justin wore himself out fighting Hammu too and Byzantine cities started falling like dominoes.

In 1957 Rome hits its peak of 195 GPP a turn.




Justins pain ends in 1968 when he capitulates to Isabella, his 'weak' neighbour who was too afraid of his military might 30 turns ago to declare!

Spaceship launched in 1970, Gandhi nowhere near culture victory.

With my last UN vote of the game I get Free Religion voted in. Izzy still doesn't like me!

Finsih the tech tree in 1977 AD, 3 turns to victory. Demographics from the turn before the win.




Yep 2 million behind Hammu in soldiers, he really went nuts on Justin after I bribed him into that war.




Spaceship Victory in 1980 AD



15 hour game is pretty long for me, my last solo game took 10 hours longer though. I always feel like these games take more time than they do.

21591 final score and Augustus rank. Not bad for my first run with a specialist economy and only my 3rd / 4th completed BtS game!


Was a lot of fun, thanks to soooo for sponsoring it!



...


oh yeah that stack I mentioned

Unfortunately no picture of it but lets just say Gandhi would have been mincemeat in a matter of 3-4 turns. For the fun of it I click one...more...turn.

And I can't declare or release Gandhi from being my vassal, this blows! I was pretty happy when he vassalized earlier on because he was the tech leader but..

1. You can't demand techs from a vassal who chooses to vassalize. When I asked to spare them for a good friend (and master!) he refuses!

2. You can't unvassalize them, the vassal is in complete control of their own destiny and only they can choose to become a free state again.

So my 'little' army never got to play...

Stole half his resources though, hehe.

[Veovim]

It's good to see a space race for this adventure. The 1957 shot of Rome seems conspicuously empty of great scientists. Is that a UI glitch (i.e. once you got into a second row it stopped showing the first)? Also, I'm curious why you chose to adopt emancipation instead of staying in caste system. Was the civic anger too great to handle with the culture slider, even with theatres and then broadcast towers? Did you want to run gold for military purposes (it didn't sound like it), or is there some other reason entirely?

[Dantski]

The 1957 shot of Rome seems conspicuously empty of great scientists. Is that a UI glitch

What happens is that when you mouse over the GS it tells you how many you have rather than displaying them all.

Also, I'm curious why you chose to adopt emancipation instead of staying in caste system. Was the civic anger too great to handle with the culture slider, even with theatres and then broadcast towers?

Neither Justinian or Isabella had much interest in trading resources until right at the end. Happiness was virtually always an issue for cities much above size 20. Switching to emancipation lost me relatively few beakers and by that time I was slowly pulling ahead.

Did you want to run gold for military purposes (it didn't sound like it), or is there some other reason entirely?

I got one or two techs trading for just gold, I had no reason to run culture since Gandhi's vassalization gave me control over the fat cross in all my border cities and I did run a considerable amount of espionage later on. It didn't stop Hammurabi stealing 1 or 2 techs though.

Thanks for your comments!

[T-hawk]

Very soon after, Cumae is founded ON the marble next to Antium, one of only 2 tiles that would allow me to work the fish nearby. That cities sole purpose for now is to provide marble for the great library.

I built on the same spot, and built Moai Statues in the marble city quickly. I was pleased with that city's development. It was pretty much the perfect site for Moai - just enough land hammers to build the wonder in a reasonable time (Industrious helps too).

Great Engineer born in 375 BC, will be saved for TGL. He completes TGL in 300 BC. In hindsight this was possibly a mistake, I could have built it normally would too much difficulty.

With Marble and Industrious, definitely. That makes the GLib only 140 base hammers. Less than a market, and who would ever burn a GE on that? It's also less than 50 turns for settling the engineer to pay out more than than 140 hammers, plus his beakers as well. But I completely understand what you did - settling GEs instead of rushing wonders is really hard to do even when it's correct.

So what did you do with your slider commerce over the second half of the game (the part I didn't play)? Without science or culture, it was espionage or cash? Did you spend the cash on or steal anything useful?

Regarding Gandhi, yes, Monarch AIs don't threaten culture wins quickly at all. The biggest culprit is the per-era AI modifier, which is -1% per era for each difficulty level above Prince. Most of their temple and cathedral building happens in the industrial era. On Monarch, an extra -4% is marginal, but stacks up pretty quickly to -8% on Emperor and -12% on Immortal. And that's all cumulative through three stages of building - first missionaries, then temples, then the cathedrals.

1. You can't demand techs from a vassal who chooses to vassalize. When I asked to spare them for a good friend (and master!) he refuses!

I don't believe you can from a capitulated or colony vassal either. In patch 3.19, a vassal's techs will always be available to trade (they will never red out a tech with WFYABTA or "not ready yet" or any other excuse). But you have to trade fairly, they won't hand over the techs for free.

[Dantski]

With Marble and Industrious, definitely. That makes the GLib only 140 base hammers. Less than a market, and who would ever burn a GE on that? It's also less than 50 turns for settling the engineer to pay out more than than 140 hammers, plus his beakers as well. But I completely understand what you did - settling GEs instead of rushing wonders is really hard to do even when it's correct.

Well part of the reason was that I'd get 2 scientists 10 turns earlier. With representation thats 180 beakers? Also keep in mind I was gearing up for war at this point and I already felt I was late on the warring side too. Notre Dame rush would've made more sense though.

I built on the same spot, and built Moai Statues in the marble city quickly. I was pleased with that city's development. It was pretty much the perfect site for Moai - just enough land hammers to build the wonder in a reasonable time (Industrious helps too).

Built my Moai there in one of my GA's, just nicked a mine off Antium. The city was able to contribute towards SS parts so its production was useful at the end.

So what did you do with your slider commerce over the second half of the game (the part I didn't play)? Without science or culture, it was espionage or cash? Did you spend the cash on or steal anything useful?

Honestly I was all with what to do with my commerce. Espionage ended up giving me vision into all of Hammurabi's cities, but it didn't pay off in terms of tech since Justin and Hammurabi were both spending their EP's heavily on me and once I had enough EP's they didn't have any techs I needed. I burned a reasonable amount of cash upgrading my defences when Justin declared.

I don't believe you can from a capitulated or colony vassal either

I thought when a Civ capitulated you could demand their techs, I could be wrong though.