Adventure 48: Science trumps Religion... barely.

[Profane]

As you can probably tell in the Adventure 48 opening thread, I put a Forest in my Capital tile after settling. Put in Ivory too (turned out to be an almost total waste) for 4 hammer.
Resources around my capital were Copper, Iron, Marble, Stone, and an even amount of Corn + Wheat. All forested except 3 cereal tiles. No other food resources - Rice stinks, and the others don't contribute as Corp resources.
No Coastal tiles placed, and I dumped rivers all over the fat cross just for fun.
Jumped right into the game without testing beyond the first 50 turns or so (on a different map).

Bronze Working beelined, followed immediately by Masonry. The plan was to chop out Pyramids, which is critically important - Planned to go Specialist economy (Republic-Bureaucracy-Caste-Merc-Pacifism) to power my research, hence my city name 'University Base'.

Managed to secure Pyramids - swapped to Republic (along with OR I think?) immediately. Built Stonehenge, Oracle too, just because I could. Took Temple of Artemis, Great Wall, Parthenon, Great Library, MoM, HG.
Grabbed Mathematics with Oracle - In that test game I tried I couldn't grab Civil Service in time, so I played it safe here. Civil Service was teched next.
Built Globe Theatre, which was the key national wonder in the game.

I'm pretty sure i'd have not gotten most of these wonders if I hadn't chopped like crazy.
IIRC I got an early Scientist who founded an Academy immediately.

Now Shaka moved a stack up to my borders while I had only Warriors and some Dog Soldiers (I think) defense :shock: Well time for Macemen upgrades!
And alternated 1t builds (Macemen alternating with Cats I think).
Managed to repel their stack just after they bombarded University Base to 0%. I kind of regret dumping rivers for fun; it meant I could not counterattack without the amphibious penalty. After that stack broke, I started spamming Macemen, Crossbowmen, Cats, (and around 2 Pikemen and a lone Elephant) thanks to HE, hence failing to grab wonders after that - they were mostly built by Sury and the gang overseas.

Somewhere along the line, Sury declared on Isabella (who I was aligned to by Buddhism) and asked me to do the same. Didn't have much choice there - Isabella was doomed anyway - silly girl tried to grab one too many religions, IIRC.
Well, I was slowly razing Shaka's cities, and when his capital went down (along with Colossus and Great Lighthouse, I think?), I realised he had offshore cities. Damn it!
Around this time it was posted that my Forest tile in the capital was illegal. Bummer. Deleted it via WB to minimise damage, although most of the damage was already done - 1 hammer isn't much this late in the game, but is a ton in the early game.

Somewhere along the line I grabbed Taj (for denial), and got Liberalism first as well and chose Rifling as the free tech.


Upgraded my junk to Rifles, and cleaned up his cities on the mainland while Sury filled 'em up. As my Rifles were shuffling back to my territory, Sury declared war on me! Darn it, I was hoping to grab Assembly Line before attacking.


I had visibility on most of his cities, and so moved up my Rifles next to a former Spanish city crushed by my culture. I massively screwed up here - the visibility caused me to be overconfident, and I lost nearly all my troops when suicide cats from the darkness hit them.

Retreated, and quickly spammed Infantry (Assembly Line just came in). Managed to repel Sury's ugly stack as he spent turns bombarding UB's defenses. After that, went on an offensive. Burned down his cities (along with Chichen Itza which he built), when suddenly the folks overseas (Hannibal, Cyrus, Charlemagne) come knocking.
Especially Charlemagne - he DoWed me and landed a ton of medieval junk next to UB. Thankfully I was building Marines in there, and managed to hold out until my Infantry returned home.


After that he'd try another feeble Amphibious landing (EDIT: Just after I eliminated Sury), and never invaded again, though I kept burning his colonies on the continent.
Hannibal popped up capturing the barb cities around. He had a TON of troops (Cavalry), and I just didn't have the production capability to fight that. He proceeded to colonise the entire continent (except the south, which was Cyrus' territory). My Tanks pillaged most of the Towns around the place (except the first few colonies that Hannibal established. Damn.).

Now the problem I had was that:
1) I didn't have a clear tech path for scoring
2) The other Continent was a Christian lovefest.
3) Non-coastal = no sabotaging the Christian Brotherhood.

Hannibal went crazy with tech suddenly (his cottages must've fully matured on the other continent). I grabbed Space Elevator and Internet to prevent him from getting those, and I quickly built the spaceship parts.

In the end I launched with only 3 thrusters, taking 16 turns to reach. I'd win as long as Hannibal doesn't decide to come knocking - he became Annoyed with me.

Now, 1 turn before my spaceship arrives, Hannibal completed Fusion, cleaning out the whole tech tree. DAMN IT!



University Base, at the end.

Needed 8.8k gpp for next GP.

So, for scoring:

0: Tech Lead over AI
0: Techs lacked possessed AI (Thanks, Internet!)
-5: Bloody forest in Capital for when it mattered early in the game
Total:
-5.

I really regret not clarifing whether I could place forests in the City tile before jumping right in, or at least waiting a few days before attempting the game, because that cost me 5 pts.
Also, I think not building Ironworks hurt my spaceship race - I built HE (to save my sorry behind vs Shaka), NE (specialist economy), Globe (obviously), Oxford (necessary to keep up in tech), NP (more specialists).
Then there's Cereal Mills. I think it was a bad decision to go for it. It only gave +12 food, and I could've had an assortment of health in the early game if i went for other health resources instead. AND it cost a ton to maintain.
Oh well. I guess i'm in the running for the worst score this time.

[Profane]

Hmm, come to think of it, i'm an idiot.
Should've kept Sury around instead of eliminating him; would've slowed down the tech rate of Hannibal (and Cyrus) by preventing colonisation of my continent. D'oh!

[Bruindane]

This report made my night, thank you. Seeing Hannibal & Cyrus colonize the starting continent certainly answered my lingering 'what if?' about eliminating Shaka, Isabella, and Sury early.

[T-hawk]

University Base? Nice Alpha Centauri reference. And 8800 cost for the next Great Person has to be a record. (If a dubiously useful one; 8800 GPP to ~1800 beakers of bulbing isn't so great a conversion ratio.) Yes, you hit the same problem as most of the big food specialist players: the escalating cost of Great People diminishes their returns significantly.

As for the forest in the city center, I think that can be overlooked. Technically it wasn't illegal at the time you did it, and you removed it when it came up. Surely you were set back more by Shaka warring than it benefited you. (I'll admit I'd take a harder line here if you were in contention for a top score.) I was hoping the game would be set up for warring to be a score-competitive option, but perhaps it didn't work out so well for you. Yes, a continent of a religious bloc is possibly the best way to speed tech for a group of AIs, both since they won't fight and will trade techs.

Also, I think not building Ironworks hurt my spaceship race - I built HE (to save my sorry behind vs Shaka), NE (specialist economy), Globe (obviously), Oxford (necessary to keep up in tech), NP (more specialists).

That's only four national wonders. Was there another fifth besides Ironworks? Cereal Mills isn't a national wonder; did you build Wall Street?

[novice]

Also, I think not building Ironworks hurt my spaceship race - I built HE (to save my sorry behind vs Shaka), NE (specialist economy), Globe (obviously), Oxford (necessary to keep up in tech), NP (more specialists).

That's only four national wonders. Was there another fifth besides Ironworks? Cereal Mills isn't a national wonder; did you build Wall Street?

Heroic Epic
National Epic
Globe Theatre
Oxford University
National Park

That's five by my count.

[Profane]

Hmm, I don't even know why I built 2 Engines
Well, Space isn't my forte (>90% of my wins are Domination), and I wasn't thinking through much of my decisions near the end...
It's my first real OCC too, so I didn't realise just how slow it is to build a spaceship with a single city, and cleaning up Modern wonders just for denial instead of focusing on Space was a poor choice (3 Gorges? ) especially with a fast techer like Hannibal...

Christianity was basically the only religion ever to appear in the faraway continent till Islam, which came in very late.
Shaka grabbed Hinduism early, and Isabella grabbed Buddhism and Judaism early too. Sury converted to Hindu, I grabbed Confucianism because I was rushing for Bureaucracy (on hindsight, that might've been a mistake; it was probably likely to be founded in the faraway continent had I been more patient) and Taoism because it was on the way to Liberalism.

Islam, as usual, always appears way too late anyway, after the entire continent on the other side converted entirely to Christianity.