Epic 3 - sooooo's report

[sooooo]

Epic 3 - Rise of the Incans.

Epic three was a large map with only 3 opponents (Hatty, Roosevelt, Louis). Furthermore, there were no barbs. Scouting would definitely be important then. Monarch difficulty.

I moved the settler 1NE to get the cows in the BFC. I set reseach to Meditation because none of the AIs have Mysticism. Hatty is spiritual, and nearly always researches Mysticism first. I wouldn't go for the hydra because she usually likes to get whatever religion (Hin/Bud) hasn't been founded yet and then Judaism. I start with a worker for the unusual worker+religion combination. Purely because we start with agri and have corn to farm. I wanted those settlers built quickly!

After we founded buddhism, I researched animal husbandry, then the wheel, then mining.

I built a scouting quecha. At size 2 the capital built a settler and I founded my first city west, encompassing the cows and the rice.

Wow, we're on a big continent. I was quite lucky with my scouting, and found Louis pretty quickly. I pumped out settlers to block him off.

My next two cities go here:



The next city is placed on the south coast to hook up the iron:



Unfortunately, Louis had avoided my attempt to block him off and sneaked a city in here with a settler on a galleon:



On a continents map (in fact on most maps), I think it's best to knock out your nearest neighbour no matter what victory you are going for. Thus once I had built a few swordsmen, war was declared in 50AD. I razed the two cities he'd sneaked onto my part of the continent because they did not fit in with my dotmap. I captured three coastal cities, all of which were in nice fertile locations:



I have to declare peace because Paris was very well defended. I researched construction and built 9 cats. Then I redeclared war and took Paris and Tours and razed another. I declared peace in 1250AD and he was reduced to one desert island city until the modern age.

I had not decided on the victory I wanted yet. The only ones allowed were conquest, cultural and diplomatic. I guessed I would go for a backdoor diplomatic victory, with a culture back-up plan. Culture would be a very long grind because I had not built any of the early wonders. Thus no parthenon, no sisitine chapel and no pyramids. Also I only had 1 religion which meant just 1 cathedral in each city. I built the national epic in Lyons and pumped out 3 great artists. These were merged into my 3 chosen cutural cities: Lyons, Marseilles and Cuzco.

I basically turtled along, gradually settling my (large) continent. The biggest mistake I made was not settling the surrounding small islands soon enough. Hatty and FDR got these, and would become troublesome later. This is what stopped me being in contention for the highest pop city.

Empire in 1559AD:



I built a stupa in the 3 culture cities. Then I got the eifel tower and built the hermitage. With free speech, my culture was slowly building. My GP farm concentrated on artists and I saved them all. I went for culture because Hatty and FDR were always slightly ahead of me in tech so I felt uncertain about an invasion.

I got a few more modern wonders: Broadway, Rock&Roll, Pentagon, Statue of Liberty, Taj Mahal. Mainly for the associated culture.

The tech pace was really quick. I went for plastics then turned off science turned up culture. I built the internet in 1919AD which gave me the last of the techs. I was never the tech leader the whole game. Internet does not give you future techs, which was annoying.

Then my patience snapped. I just can't be bothered to press enter until my cities hit the limits. I built 20 artillery, loaded them on transports and declared on FDR in 1854. He had a DP with Hatty so I guess I declared on her too. For some reason he had all of his ships in one city. I razed it and in one stroke his navy was gone. Then I razed washington and detroit. I was 1 artillery short of razing his holy city New York, but had to get peace.

Back to the culture. Hatty had built the UN and FDR was voting her sec general every time. They shared a religion and a war (with, er, me). She killed off my best civics (state property, pacifism) which slowed me down.

FDR and Hatty declared on me. This time is was quite damaging. Their cities on the surrounding islands peppered me with bombers, and most of my improvements were destroyed. All my cities were unhealthy and starving, which really cut down on my specialists. It also took me out of the running for highest pop city. I was able to stop invasions with my impressive navy. Anyway, eventually I got peace after taking out Hatty's only city on my continent. I had another war later, and Hatty took back that city. With my starving cities, Hatty was getting close to a Diplo win. The number she was short by got less and less every time, and by the end she was only 15 votes short. I got the culture win in the embarassingly late year of 2013AD.

Empire at the end:



1st pop checkpoint: 460,000
2nd pop checkpoint: 9885,000
Largest city at the end: 23
Date I entered Modern Era: 1863 (Radio. I did not beeline to this because I fogot about these points)
Finish date: 2013, cultural victory.

In summary, this was a fairly bungled game. I wish I had just gone all out for a military victory. I should have expanded quicker too. I was financial so a few cottages could have offset the maintenance cost. Nevermind, it was a fun epic. I missed the barbarians though :sob:. Thankfully they returned in the next epic ...