Adventure 13 - mike p's report

[mike p]

So here's my first crack at a RB Adventure. Feedback on my report will be appreciated first time out, even more than on my play.

Looking at the settings, I decided right out of the gate to try for a cultural victory. I figured I might as well get some mileage out of those castles! And, while cultural probably isn't going to be a winning strategy as far as fastest time, I should at least be able to finish, right?

The constraints will make city placement more difficult since the first building has to be walls.

I started by settling in place and finding Fish just out of range to the east and Sheep just out of range to the west. I queue up a workboat and work coastal tiles for the extra commerce. Research wise, I'm going Mysticism, Polytheism, and then Masonry and then might as well go for Monotheism while Judaism is still available. Plus Organized Religion will allow me to get culture pumping without needing to build walls first.

3360 BC Hinduism is founded in Athens. At this point I've explored the starting island and have a bit of a dilemma for my second city. If I grab the gold, then the corn will go unused and I ultimately decide that food is more important, and hopefully there will be a sea food resource on the other side of the island north across the channel from the gold. My workboats go out exploring.

2760BC I meet Mansa Musa. I wonder if he'll be as runaway powerful in a no tech trading game and somehow doubt that he will be.

2200BC Monotheism due in 1, Sparta is founded to become the Holy City and expand right off the bat, allowing a corn farm food resources - I haven't gotten around to Animal Husbandry so the tastiness of pork is still underappreciated by the Greek people. Need to prioritize pottery because every tile that isn't a bonus resource is getting a cottage there. With all of the plains it will still have a reasonable amount of production.



It's clear that with a small empire (6 cities) we won't have a whole lot of resources so I'm planning on going the cottage spam/culture slider route, especially as there is no fresh water for farms on my home island so specialists won't work well. And 2 surplus food can support 2 plains cottages or only 1 artist. As it turns out, there will be enough food here to cottage every tile and have enough for two specialists left over, so I probably won't ever even need Caste System.

I revolt to Organized Religion and Judaism so that Sparta can build a Missionary for Athens prior to starting the Walls. I reason that units before walls must be OK or else everyone lost this Adventure in 4000BC.

1520BC Walls are complete in Athens. I start an Obelisk because every bit of culture will help. Previous to this I've built a settler, 2 warriors, 2 work boats and a worker or two.

925 BC Bronze working is complete and the only source of copper is just underneath my first cottage. The Greek Empire engages in the world's first Urban Renewal project as a result.

900 BC Walls are whipped in Sparta.

650 BC Writing is done, it's Library and Great Scientist time.

375 BC Circumnavigation of the globe is complete and I send my workboats back home.

25 BC I've been agonizing over where to put my third city and I really need a production powerhouse site for some wonders. I settle Thermopylae on a plains hill on the island to the north. It will grab me Rice and Ivory and the two extra food from the rice will let me work both grassland hills and still grow slowly with a lighthouse. Start walls right away. It isn't the powerhouse site I was looking for, but it should serve. Xi Ling Shi is born in Athens. I'm pretty sure he's a Great Scientist, and he builds an Academy in Athens - we're going to need the culture and the beakers.

450 AD I found Christianity in Sparta. I send the Missionary to Thermopylae since I don't want the failure chance in Athens. We can then spam missionaries from Therm.

500 AD Corinth was founded on the island with the two gems. After noticing a Russian galley heading back west through my territory, I decided to whip a settler out of Sparta. Thanks to the Circumnav bonus, I was able to overtake the Russians and beat them to the gem island by 1 turn. A few turns later, Buddhism spread to Corinth from Spain. At first I was ticked that my missionaries didn't get there first and then I realized that have a fourth religion was a good thing! (I'm certainly no cultural victory expert.)

710 AD Socrates is born in Athens, but moves to Sparta to build an Academy.

760 AD Catherine has foolishly built a city right next to my production power house of Thermopylae. What was she thinking? A few turns later she has (briefly) wrested control of the ivory from me and I remember that she's Creative.

840 AD I almost whipped the Colussus in Thermopylae for the culture war, but I needed full production from there to get started on the Sistine Chapel, so I laid off the whip. With predictable results:



1170 AD Delphi is founded to the west of Athens. It can work the fish and sheep and one mine and plenty of coast, though some it's tiles overlap with Athens.

1210 AD Civil Service is complete and I revolt to Bureaucracy.

1250 AD I won't make the mistake of waiting too long to whip a wonder anymore, but I still came up short on the Hanging Gardens in Sparta.



1290 AD I see 2 galleys heading west from Mali, loaded up with warriors. Mansa doesn't seem too unhappy with me, but I figure it's probably time to go to no state religion, to help relations, and to get culture from all of my religions, instead of just from Judaism.

He declares war anyway and lands four warriors on my horse pasture. I whip an axe in Sparta and upgrade a warrior and he pillages the pasture and gets his invasion force killed off. If he sent anything stronger than warriors I probably would have lost the game.

I have two galleys afloat and build a third one in Athens to sink his fleet and I win my first attack, but lose the second, but my third galley cleans up the wounded Malinese galley. And that's pretty much the whole of the War of Malinese Aggression.

I also found a city in 1290 on an island to the east which has fish and iron and lots of strategic desert.

1460 AD I pop a great engineer and will be able to complete my first wonder, the Hagia Sophia in Thermopylae.

1635 AD I've been working priests instead of artists in Sparta to try to get a Great Prophet for a shrine and some $$ and I end up with one, and use it to build the Temple of Solomon. I switch over to artists.

1650 AD I'm the first to discover Liberalism! I revolt to Free Speech and Free Religion. Athens has a full suite of 4 monestaries so I don't need Organized religion, and once each city has all four religions and temples I won't have any unhappy problems either, even before the cultural slider goes up.

At some point around here, I lose the game as I notice that I've built a university in Pharsalos before building a castle. As this was my sixth university, I hold off on starting Oxford in Athens until Pharsalos gets a castle done.

1745 AD The Temple of Solomon has polluted my GPP pool in Sparta and against the odds, I get another Great Prophet. The Church of the Nativity will provide 6 gpt and 4 cpt, so up it goes.

1820 AD After researching Constitution, I revolt to Representation and switch the culture slider up to 90%, with 10% tax and zero science. I've been able to settle a couple of great artists in Thermopylae, but we're starting to get to culture bomb time instead.

Of course, my dreams of further great artists go mostly unrealized. I get another Great Prophet and almost use him to build the Hindu Shrine, until I realize that it's classified as a world wonder and would be built in my capital. So I merge him in Sparta instead.

I also spawned a bunch of long shot Great Engineers at the end, but at this point I was too far behind to use them for wonders. When I finally got a non GE, it was an Artist, so I couldn't even use them for Golden Ages.



1958 AD The war horn sounds and I think 'Oh sh*t.' But it's just Gandhi declaring on Isabella. Once all of my temples were done I made it a point in my non cultural cities to build at least one unit between every bit of infrastructure, but I was still pitifully weak at this point.

1989 AD Finally, Ykaterinburg revolts and I burn it to the ground.



2010 AD Only one city left to go Legendary and it looks like this:



2011 AD Thermoplyae hits legendary culture and the game ends.

[Strange Power Duck]

You got rated as Dan Quayle too?
I see a pattern here: Cultural Victory = Dan Quayle.
I'm sure our late ending dates and low scores had nothing to do with it. The 'Dan Quayle' position is there solely to honour those who think that 'Artist' isn't necessarily preceded by 'Martial'...

Still hurts though...

[mike p]

I wasn't pleased to see Mr PotatoeHead either. Looking back over things, I should have just stuck with Great Artists everywhere instead of trying to get a shrine. Too much priest pollution ended up setting me back 3 great artists and probably 15 years of time.

[sooooo]

Thanks for the report Mike. Weird how you got all of those great engineers. In any non-cultural game, I always want one but usually get artists instead. Obviously it's the opposite when you want culture .