Turns 150 - 174
Here we finished the forbidden city, slotting in more +gold policies as I've been buying builders & traders and letting hammers finish districts and buildings. I begin researching industrialization on T160 with expected finish time of T165, starting factories all over. I've been pretty weak on culture, so I spent some envoys to bring Nan Madol on-board, their Suzerein bonus causes coastal districts to give culture, I have a few of those (not a lot).
This turn-set also saw the beginning of missionary spam, first from the Japanese and then later from the Americans. Egypt has also expanded, through me onto the far side...
I also learned that Builders can only rush wonders if the city has the wonder at the top of its queue, so I spent several turns while the Capital built its factory swapping the build to the Colosseum and pushing builder charges into it. This felt solid to me as the Colosseum would solve amenities for my spaceship cities. I also built a few crouching tigers, planning on grabbing the Chinese achievement as long as I'm here.
Turn: 150
Traders are better Now:
Useful Later:
Turn: 152
Civic Setup:
Turn: 155
More Great Engineer:
Turn: 157
Forbidden City Done:
Civic Setup:
More Chops:
Turn: 160
Beeline Industrialization:
Missionary Spam Begins:
More Production:
Turn: 162
Continue Drafting Eurekas:
Turn: 163
Use Envoys for Culture:
Theological Combat:
Civic Setup:
Turn: 164
More Spam and Egyptian Settlers:
Turn: 165
Industrial Era at the turn of the milennia:
Super Late Colleseum:
Turn: 166
Cant rush with Builder unless city is building 2:
Turns 175 - 199
The Egyptians found another city on my far side, but I just can't be bothered to care. I build traders and just keep the trade-routes flowing. My goal is to start transitioning the trade-routes onto my spaceship cities eventually for more production, but for now they're being used to prop up the newer cities. I start Ruhr, and I place another forward city onto Egypt for two purposes, the first is niter, so I can build muskets and cash city state quests and Eurekas. The 2nd is to create a canal for my ships to exit the large lake they're currently in.
In the rest of the world, the AI warred against itself, seemingly with inconclusive results. I also kept buying builders as they cost roughly 2.5 turns of gold income at this point and could convert gold into production/food for new cities through chops and improvements. Some cities worked on cheap wonders for more TR's (Colossus) or card slots (Potola Palace).
I experimented with the colonial taxes civic since I had some of my cities on the other side of the continental divide, but it didn't feel very strong and eventually I think I subbed it out for rationalism.
Some cities got added to the south, either for sea access canals, or to have IND districts in range of the spaceship cities. I also thought copper was an amenity resource, but it turns out its just a bonus resource. Oh well.
Turns 200 - 224
I enter the modern era on T201. Also Egypt and America declare a joint war against me. I have some gold for upgrading and it goes about as well as you would expect for Egypt. I take her capital and the coastal city, as it is in range for ship-based bombardment, but I don't full-kill her and instead take the city cessations. I honestly think this was a mistake as they continues to use envoys to challenge Jerusalem, which I need to hold to anchor my religious flank against Saladin.
I also finish big ben, the extra economic slot is quite nice, the gold doubling didn't amount to as much b/c I had to spend my reserve to upgrade units to deal with Egypt and America.
My sea scouts found a nice island with 5 pearls which I marked for colonization, but It ended up not being important enough and I never did settle it.
Turns 225 - 249
At this point I'm just trying to bring the game to conclusion, this means 3 relatively high production cities, and a lot of science and free techs + eurekas to get to the end of the tech tree AsAP.
I'm also still finding huts, which are giving needed boosts to tech/civics. At this point I'm running about 5x the science rate of the next strongest power (America), and my completely and utter lack of theater districts means I'm in no danger of an accidental cultural victory. It's at this point that I realize I've forgotten to beeline electricity for power plants, so I make up for that mistake and start building them everywhere as well.
Mustn't also forget the American apostle spam I have to deal with as well. A combination of theological perks for America means that I'm finding it hard to kill their Apostles in an efficient manner. Going communist doesn't really help with the apostles, but it's great for everything else.
Turns 250 - 270
My Civ is not purely configured for research and production, with the satellite going up on T251. I have a nearly completed oxford waiting to bulb expensive techs, and also some great scientist help (Charles Darwin to the Galapagos). I also get a very useful great engineer (Goddard, +20% spaceship production and eureka for rocketry), perhaps I should have gone even wider so that I got to him earlier? The Moon Landing is completed on T261, 10 turns later. I'm thought that I would be bottlenecked on production, but it turns out I'm completely the projects in good time and my actual bottleneck is actually powering through the tech tree to unlock the mars components. The spaceports are up and ready with max production boosters in place, but I just need more tech. I start the first mars component, which actually is ready tech-wise much earlier than the other two in my #2 city b/c city #3 doesn't have it's spaceport up yet. My plan here is to let Taiyuan get ahead and then swap its good tiles to Longxi and Xi'an for the final push on the last two components.
Also, the civic that gives you +10% science per city state ally helps quite a bit with finishing out the tech tree in a timely manner.
Turns 271 - 275
These turns I just do some micro to keep the timers in alignment, trying to keep the tall pole down as much as possible. District cost scaling is pretty vicious now that I've almost got the entire tech tree, 583 production for an encampment in a fishing village is terrible.
I experimented also with E-Commerce for trade-route performance, it ended up not mattering and I think the fact that most of my TR's will be internal for Production means that I would need to have changed these over long ago for that civic to matter.
Other things learned here: the forests you plant are 2nd growth and can't be chopped for production, but river lumberyards are still helpful.
Turns 276 - 278
These turns are mostly watching the counter tick down. I took pictures of the overall world stage, there is quite a lot of open space out there, the AI just cannot fill it effectively at prince and I was super-lazy as there was no point in filling it. I have no theater districts, yet am still halfway to a cultural victory, and of course the AI continues to spam more missionaries at me.
Both the remaining components for the colony launch of T278 in tandem. Some-day I'll get all 3 to go together.
Also, based on launch order it looks like the capital processes production first.
This was a fun game to cut my teeth on, though the AI opposition was very disappointing. I can see quite a bit of optimization space for the science victory, and I liked the feeling of locating cities based on their water-availability and resources. I really don't like the religious combat mechanic, as it was taking up maybe 80% of my turns in the final stretch when really I just want to jam end-turn 10 times and call it done. Trade-routes seem really strong, and civics are fun to juggle though I did find myself settling into a permanent set that didn't really change, maybe if I hadn't been able to land the +Card wonders it would have felt more dynamic.
