Adv. 45 Wrapper the n00b does... n00by things

[wrapper]

[A more detailed report (with screen shots) will have to wait until this weekend.]

Last adventure, you may recall, I almost lost on Turn 0 when I declared war on a "settler" that was really a small stack of scouts and archers. This time around, I decided not to wait until Turn 0, and pretty much lost on Turn -1 with my choice of wonders.

I was leaning toward going for a cultural victory, with wonders such as Sistene Chapel and Eiffel Tower. However, before playing the game, I tried a few games at this difficulty level, and always came up short in two areas, research and military. So, it made sense to me that whatever wonders I chose, had to make up for this shortcoming. So, I chose Oxford University and Heroic Epic.

It took a while to realize, when micromanaging my capitol, I couldn't efficiently focus on both military and beakers to the fullest extent. I tried building an early military for a rush, and putting wonders in a second city, but I missed out on basic "necessities" such as Stoenhenge (two turns) and the Oracle (three turns). I then tried focusing on research/wonders, but got clobbered by barbs.

I tried to hang on as best as I could, but somewhere around 100 AD it became obvious. I chose extremely poorly, I couldn't balance my research with military growth, and I'm sure I made some tactical errors that just made it worse. So, I quit... and restarted with two different wonders, just for fun, since I didn't get very far on the map anyway.

For official scoring purposes, let's call it retired at 1 AD.

My replay -- where I went for a pacifist, three-city cultural victory, was much more interesting.

[wrapper]

Ugh.

I haven't posted my report because of a hard drive issue on my home computer (bad sectors all over the place, had to replace). Unfortunately, my last backup was a month ago, before I played the game, and I reformatted the old HD to use as a backup without trying to salvage anything.

In any case, I tried the game a second time, world-building with Sistene Chapel/Eiffel Tower, focusing on culture and wonders in only three cities. Some highlights of the replay from memory:

-- Followed a similar tech path early (something like Myst/Poly/Ag/Wheel in whatever order). In other words, I "played dumb" and did not beeline AH knowing that horses would pop.
-- Never had war declared.
-- Failed to build a lot of mid-game wonders, but the failure $$ was quite useful, keeping the beaker/culture bars at or near max most of the time.
-- Settled my first GP (artist, 30-ish turns in I believe); was hoping to culture bomb with future artists, worked out fairly well until the end (damn Scientists).
-- Had one city flip from yellow to orange, right around the time Rameses demanded a tribute I had to refuse. When I noticed a mega-force building up on my border, I gifted it back to him, and he was my buddy the rest of the game.
-- By keeping my civ compact, and feeding my two border cities with the UUs from the capital, I was able to fend off barbs for the most part.
-- Got my 50k culture in the capital early, and a second one much later. Shifted my capital to the third city, don't think I've ever done that before.
-- Was about 3000 culture shy in my third city (less than ten turns at the rate I was churning) when Rameses beat me to it -- culture loss, sometime in the early 20th century I believe.

Missed it by that much.

I have to say, this game SUCKED when I was trying the military/research approach (Heroic Epic/Oxford University), but the culture-first replay was MUCH more fun.

Looking back, even though I only missed by one more Great Artist, I think a better combination for this approach would have been Oxford/Eiffel Tower. As it was, I couldn't found a religion, and I think an extra wonder or two in each city would have made up for the +2 per specialist you get from the Sistene Chapel.