I Have No Pithy Title - Adv 44 by McClure

[McClure]

I've played a few of these Adventures/Epics, although I'm usually a solo/SG player. Currently don't have consistent time to start my own SG's or play in the multiplayer frenzy (Yeah, kids will do that to you). But this one looked quick and fun so I threw my proverbial hat into the mixed proverbial pool and got a completed game (and a wet hat) to show for it. The results:

Duel map and 18 civs means 1 city/civ or so. When looking at the starting position I gave very serious consideration to burning a turn to found on the Marble hill (3 hammer CC) and committing to a Worker steal/Warrior rush on one of my neighbors (and also because I preferred the Sheep tile to the Clams). Opening the game and moving the Warrior put the kibosh on that



Korea will found in place and I won't win a cultural battle over the Sheep, so we'll just start in place.



Alright Norm, the anthem please!

As one can tell this is a shadow game because I use the evil BUG mod.

Now we have to go bonk some heads. Since every civ starts with Archery (including us ) and duel maps make AA techs go quickly, I had visions of Oracling Feudalism and embarking on the dreaded Longbow rush (Hey, I've done it before).

But after noting the Horses in our BFC I opted for the path of least resistance and set to foment a Horse Archer rush. Took my sweet time getting there, though. I teched BW for chops, Fishing for food, and Writing for OBs. Cost me some time on the build-up, but the terrain info was valuable for choosing the order of targets.

Initial thought was to hit Major Monogram (Stalin, nice disguise Francis!) first



but realized terrain would have been useless with Byz having founded Buddhism. Next thought was to first target Constantine, but just after he built me the Oracle he showed up with Spears. I had 6 HAs waiting and played tag while he moved his units aimlessly around his territory, but couldn't get the units in a good position to strike the city due to the expanded cultural borders taking away the direct diagonal approach.

So I whacked Wanger instead. I suspect he got caught chasing shiny things as he only had 3 Archers and died on the turn of the war declaration. Turns out Seoul was useless because of the Old Woman's culture, even suffering through a Byz revolt while I stuffed Archers inside of it.

Kept my pimp hand strong and took out MM very soon after he build the Great Lighthouse for me. Again, I declare, I capture, AI never gets to move.



City was doubly useless from holy city culture (Constantine and Izzy).

Killing Constantine would make things a whole lot better, so I went to Construction and built 6 Cats. In the interim, Constantine built both the Colossus and the Buddhist shrine (My How's Your Booty). For the first time, an AI got to move after my war declaration.



Unfortunately for the Byz, they couldn't figure out to move their units into the city, or even to attack my stack. Arriving next to the city, and realizing that bombardment (much like 911) is for suckers, I attempted to suicide the six to soften the defenders. This failed miserably, as only two of the Catapults died and one wasn't even allowed to attack.



We have now come to a fork in the road: I had intended to hit four cities and consolidate, but my HA/Cat stack (with a pair of Vulture defenders) has at least one more kill in it. I want this to be Izzy for more shrine gold and to get Moscow out of the crapper. So I need more troops. But .. I am revolting to Caste System (counter-indicator) and researching Aesthetics (presumably to build the Parthenon, but yet a stronger counter-indicator). To put it in an acronym: SNAFU.

But from here it's a drunken man behind the wheel of a steamroller, as we will soon reach the stage where the single-city AI's can't research any longer. The next killing zone is Maces and I expect to bag another 4-5 heads. The point of Caste System was to bulb my way to Maces ... check the bulbing preferences to see if my specialist-heavy strategy is overly complicated, or merely stupid.



(Shiny BUG ... ooohhhh) I have no idea what that picture means. I'm guessing that I want to use food to research Civil Service.

Then we made contact with the enemy. Booberella to be specific. Wench made me revolt back to slavery to fight off her foolhardy attack. Then on my way to Maces, friggin' Constantinople flipped to Babylon .

But before anything eventful happened I made Boudicea pay me for peace pre-CS, and the war machine was back on the rails.

Civil Service/Machinery were researched, I sold techs to upgrade my four Vultures, I was ready to activate Hammer's dental plan ... and then, of course, all-chest-no-brains declares war on me again! Taking the logical response, I pay Babylon to attack Pacal (rudo, rudo, RUDO!), dispose of Boobies troops, then larf when Paris flips away from her. With Hammer's troops on holiday, I declare and get two-turn kill. (Viva fast troops!) Also make peace with the Celts (again).

[McClure]

OK. Now it's about over. I have 5 cities with minimal cultural pressure on 4 of them. Researching Drama to help salve the whipconomy I'm going to be running. I figure I need 9 Maces, 9 HAs and 12 Cats to put this continent away. Izzy is next, then it will be mandatory to march on Pacal. After that (or during) I need to go find the other 4 AIs, which I surmise is the surprise. During the lull while accumulating enough troops to attack Izzy, I built my first Wonder of the game



(Don't adjust your monitor. The pictures really look like that. ) I believe I had 4 golden Ages during the game, so this shiny was worth it.

In the middle of the first GA it's time to rid the world of Izzy:



She looks tired, but don't worry hon. There's plenty of time to sleep when you're dead.

It was right about here that I realized how I was going to win the game:



Continental killing continued unabated. Pacal had the audacity to own two cities and to be culturally pressuring Madrid.



A few splattered Catapults fixed that. Paris would be burned to the ground as it contained nothing of value.

Contact with the other continent was made around this time. Unfortunately there wasn't any real big surprise, just four AI's crammed onto a rock. I also think Boobie declared on me again during this stretch (to no avail). She declared war so often and never accomplished anything. The wars all blend together ...

Monty (of all people) was pressing Mutal, so he was next. I had a set of unfortunate dice rolls and managed to have Tenochtitlan come out of "captured revolt" directly into Indian revolt, then immediately to Indian flip. I just couldn't justify leaving my army that far from the front during the war ...

What war?



Well ... I researched to Rifling and eliminated Cyrus (clink ... clink ... Come out to play!), capturing Persepolis and burning an ex-NA city. Then I took both of Gandhi's cities got out of the war business. Oh yeah, yet another war declaration from Chesty McGee. Stopped that one with the AP (built by Izzy?) since I can't be bothered to capture her cities.

Liberalism came up moderately late (1605 AD) and was used on Medicine.



This fellow was waiting around to start a business in Persepolis.



Sushi was spread to Madrid, Babylon, and Moscow. The first two were for the Cultural Victory, the latter was the home of my National Epic and Globe, so I could run about 20 Artists/turn. (Turns out the Globe was probably unnecessary, but it had to go somewhere.) I think by the end of the game Sushi was worth 180 cpt (pre-civics, pre-multipliers).

I researched all the way to Refrigeration as for some reason I wanted to build Supermarkets. Bit of a mistake, but likely didn't delay the end by many turns. I only hit the culture slider for the last 6-8 turns, and I think at max sustainable the slider contributed 20-30% of a cities total culture.

Babylon near the end



1600 cpt. Hee-hee. The other two legendaries were comparable as I only required three Artist bombs to have each city go legendary on the same turn



And one more example of the interesting screen shot behavior one can get by embracing the penguin ....





I believe that is what happens when you capture only some of the many layers that the video card outputs.

[SIZE="4"]Final Result: Cultural Victory at a leisurely 1824[/SIZE]