Adventure 11: Scowler gets slapped!

[Scowler]

Ow - my cheeks are still raw from the blows of the Russian minx...

First time reporting at RB ... and as for being an "extreme" adventure ... yes, I can confirm that it did just what is said on the packet...

I took the hint and founded Hinduism, and then went on to build Stonehenge with the intention of grabbing a Prophet and using the shrine to unite the continent under one religion. Unfortunately, I was sluggish doing so. Catherine switched to Buddhism just before the Prophet was born, and although she switched to Hinduism for a while later she went on to found Taoism and stayed with that until Free Religion.

Alex was more obstinate: he never liked me enough to consider changing to Hinduism even after I spammed all his cities with missionaries. I guess this was because he grabbed Confucianism and converted in 675BC, but even then Greece seemed more Hindu than Confused until fairly late in the game.

Vicky/HC/Mansa made themselves known in 1040BC, and although they never bothered me they declared war on Cathy in 550BC.
Unfortunately, I made a mistake and refused to aid her when she asked; she held it against me for such a long time. We eventually kissed and made up, signing a defense pact, but by that time the game had long since been lost.

There was more drama to come. Alex then decided I was weak and declared war on me in 150AD. He was able to take a newly founded border town, but otherwise got nowhere. If that wasn't enough, Cathy wanted in on the action and also attacked in 640AD. I was able to hold them both off, but virtually all my improvements were pillaged, fatally stunting my nation's growth.

Cathy eventually gave up and signed a peace treaty in 860AD. Since her losses had exceeded mine she paid 130g for the privilege. Alex took a bit longer to see sense, but he too agreed to peace in 1070AD and also paid me war reparations.

By this time it was clear I would never regain the ground I had lost, especially with the relations soured with my neighbours. I decided to continue anyway, just to see what would happen.

Alex declared war a second time in 1535AD, attacking with crossbows, cats, and maces, but again made no headway. He was forced to withdraw once more in 1610AD, after paying around 300g for peace.

There was a brief period of calm afterwards. Nappy & Co. had assaulted Vicky & Co. but I saw nothing of what went on between them...

Finally, the inevitable happened and Nappy declared war on me in 1700AD - and he was bringing cannons and cavalry!
At that point I had only maces and spearmen for defense so I quickly lost Basra and Najra before buying Gandhi off with Damascus (which included our only copper resource).

Knowing it would only be a matter of time before they came back for more I did my best to beeline for chemistry. I didn't quite make it: time ran out in 1832. I got Chemistry in 1844, a couple of turns after Nappy & Co. had finished Apollo. By the time the war was over I was down to my last city, but I packed it full of grens. I was also able to sign a defense pact with Cathy and so was relatively safe at last.

From then on it was largely a matter of just pressing turn. Somebody build the UN and Nappy & Co. were voted into office and enacted various resolutions, although never having enough to win victory outright of course.

The French team launched in 1937.

Even though the game was clearly lost at a quite early stage it was sufficiently thrilling for me to want to play through to the finish. Thanks Sirian for such a fun scenario!

[Sullla]

Wow, that looked rough! They don't call these games Extreme Adventures for nothing, I guess!

I hope you still managed to enjoy things...

[T-hawk]

I took the hint and founded Hinduism, and then went on to build Stonehenge with the intention of grabbing a Prophet and using the shrine to unite the continent under one religion. Unfortunately, I was sluggish doing so. Catherine switched to Buddhism just before the Prophet was born, and although she switched to Hinduism for a while later she went on to found Taoism and stayed with that until Free Religion.

Sullla's game somewhat to the contrary, you usually can't wait for a shrine to spread religion to a rival that you want to keep friendly. You need to actively train and send all the missionaries yourself.

Did you really get Hinduism into all of Greece's cities and he still wouldn't convert? It's rare to actually have an AI of a different religion still pleased enough to convert at your request. But it's common for the AIs to just convert on their own when you've spread your preferred religion to a plurality of their cities and population.

How soon did you get to Hereditary Rule for the shared civics relations bonus? I'm guessing not by the time either attacked you?

[jonottawa]

If I'm reading the report correctly, Alex founded Confucianism, in which case it's a no-brainer that he wouldn't convert.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

If I'm reading the report correctly, Alex founded Confucianism, in which case it's a no-brainer that he wouldn't convert.

You can convert an AI that has founded a religion. If he founds the religion after you have converted him to your religion, he won't convert right away to the one he founded - see my game, where Alex founded Taoism but stayed in Hinduism. If the AI founds a religion, converts to it, and then you want to convert him to something else, it's a bit harder. This is mainly due to the fact that he had a headstart spreading his religion to his cities. You need your religion to have a higher number of followers in his cities for him to convert.

Maybe there are some AIs who would never convert away from their founded religion, but I doubt that. I'd rather guess that the reason that for example, Isabella usually cannot be converted to something other than Buddhism is that Buddhism had a lot of time to spread in her population, so every other religion coming to her later will have a hard time "overtaking" Buddhism.

-Kylearan

[Sullla]

Sullla's game somewhat to the contrary, you usually can't wait for a shrine to spread religion to a rival that you want to keep friendly. You need to actively train and send all the missionaries yourself.

Just so that there's no confusion, I did the majority of the religious spread in my game with missionaries. I already had 11 Hindu cities (only 5 of them Arabian!) at the time that my shrine was constructed.

[mbuna120]

In my game, I had a pretty early shrine. I did not have to actively convert alex OR cathy. They converted one turn apart from each other. Hinduism spread to 3 or 4 of each of their cities all by itself. I was planning on spamming missionaries, but didn't need to right away. They hadn't switched back, which made it all the more confusing and frustrating when Cathy declared on me from nowhere... Even after the war, when I realized my position was hopeless, they were both strong in my religion, and Victoria had just converted to Hinduism also. Vicky got started from my shrine, but I did send her some missionaries. My continent was hindu, but they were also backstabbers

[Scowler]

Sullla's game somewhat to the contrary, you usually can't wait for a shrine to spread religion to a rival that you want to keep friendly. You need to actively train and send all the missionaries yourself.

Yes, I was trying to do that, but not quickly enough it seems! And then things were further delayed by borders closing due to war.

Did you really get Hinduism into all of Greece's cities and he still wouldn't convert? It's rare to actually have an AI of a different religion still pleased enough to convert at your request. But it's common for the AIs to just convert on their own when you've spread your preferred religion to a plurality of their cities and population.

Looking back, I think I missed at least one of his cities ... but regardless of that, I checked through the saves and here is an example from 1610 (this this would have been when borders had just reopened after a war, so the religious status of these cities must have been in place for a while):

Athen: H C T
Sparta: H C*
Corinth: H
Delphi: H C
Assyrian: H T
Baghdad: H
Knossos: H
Thermopylae: H
Mycenae: B
Pharsalos: C
Argos: T

So at that point Hinduism was definitely the predominant religion, and had been for some time, but he was still unwilling to switch.

How soon did you get to Hereditary Rule for the shared civics relations bonus? I'm guessing not by the time either attacked you?

Correct, though I'm not sure it would have made much difference with Alex anyway, the untrustworthy scoundrel. I later got +3 from him for civics, although this was offset by -1 for close borders (the outpost - Baghdad - he took). So I was able to open borders to send missionaries through, but he still couldn't resist declaring war again.

As for Catherine, I also suffered -2 for borders after she beat me to the sweet spot south of Mecca by 2 turns. And then I received another -2 from her from refusing to help her against Vicky & Co. - a stupid mistake on my part when I had the opportunity to gain a "mutual enemy" bonus.

Thanks for all the feedback. I will remember it for my next game.