Sullla's Report - Epic Five

[Sullla]

Report is in the usual place. Enjoy.

http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4SP.html

[darrelljs]

Taking London...I never even looked that far. As soon as I finished Iron Working I checked Elizabeth's two closest cities and they had Axe's already

I think she was gearing up to take Carib down south. If so maybe London would have been unguarded and I could have snatched it (holding it though, would have been tricky).

I'm shocked you had been able to recover and pass the AIs in score by 65 A.D. I assume that Gandhi must have been building Wonders, researching techs and generating tons of culture while you were recovering your economy, and he seemed to have ballpark the same number of cities as you, plus all those Emperor bonuses. And access to Calendar based resources.

Anyway, great game as always. After the initial rush you really could have won as a builder, which I've never been able to do on an Emperor level Pangaea map. That you did it on such a tough start with the evil restrictions in place was pretty impressive. I think the key was taking London first, then wrapping up Elizabeth quickly. You hit land size parity earlier than I ever have been able to.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Great read as usual. It definitely gave me some ideas for how to better handle my game. I did finish faster than you, but as you pointed out, I was definitely walking the fine line of economic ruin (I ended the game at -29 gpt!)

[T-hawk]

You were dismayed at the quality of the available terrain, and couldn't figure out how to fit in even a second productive city. I actually hit on the answer to that: build the second city almost right underneath the capital, so it could reach the corn tile and several of those forests at the start. (Shades of the legendary Epic 12 opening by Urugharakh with 3 cities on the same freshwater lake.) Once the capital hit the happy limit, it could work all forests and leave the corn for the new city.

You thought this was the hardest game of Civ 4 so far? Maybe you're a bit too focused on the economic game. Building economically here was indeed very difficult with so little food and no happiness around. But shield production and forests were plentiful. As always, you gotta adapt. When the map says to go a-conquering, go a-conquering.

Your game did answer one question I was wondering -- how far up the economic tree did one have to go just to be able to support the cities to score domination? Seemed like not as far as I'd been thinking (banks), though up to Code of Laws for the Forbidden Palace seemed essential. One religion and a couple resources gave enough happiness for you to to work with.

[Compromise]

Kudos to you for running a sane economy on this one! Without tech trading, once you got those early English cities, it was all over.

I never considered starting my attack as soon as you did...and you're right, the jags aren't as bad as I thought. I'm curious what would have happened if you hadn't managed to take London on that first assault. Probably a much longer game, but same outcome.

Great writeup, as always. I learn something about the game from each of your writeups, and I enjoy that.

[ZuperT]

Great game and great report once again! Thanks for that!

After reading all the reports on this epic I have to say that your game was the most impressive. It was great fun reading all the good reports and there were many games where the victory was achieved by very brave and aggressive decisions. But the fact that your victory never was endangered by a collapsing economy made it brilliant.

I myself never gave this epic a shot, as I think monarch difficulty is a bit too hard for my gaming skills. But I will be reporting on adventure9.