Adventure 62: Huinesoron Makes Things Difficult(er)

[Huinesoron]

(Closing Date is the 13th; it's nearly 10am on the morning of the 13th by my clock; unless I'm wrong, that means it's time for a report!)

I managed to write a report only half the length of my Adventure 61 monstrosity... but that's still 4,400 words. So I'll do what I did last time: link to the whole thing, then Spoiler out a summary version.

Adventure 62: Huinesoron Makes Things Difficult(er)

The task with Adventure 62 was to create your own variant. I went with an idea I'd brought up on the forum:

Huinesoron's Ridiculous Variant: 'The Common Denominator'

• England may not in any way acquire its Unique Unit, the Redcoat.
  
• England may not build its unique building, the Stock Exchange (though it may keep it in captured cities).
  
• If at any point England sees another civilisation's Unique Unit, it must declare war as soon as physically possible, and continue the war until it can no longer see an enemy UU.
  

I had a decent, though somewhat slow, start, expanding out to four cities:



I took the Great Lighthouse, Pyramids, and Colossus. Then I got bitten by my variant, and had to declare on Jaguar-loving Monty:



That war was long, and overlapped with a brief skirmish with Pacal over a Holkan, but I did manage to take one of Monty's cities:



I lose it later in a Carrack-instigated war against Joao, who drags in Pacal to help him. Hilariously, though, Joao also declares on Monty - who promptly reclaims the city. I take advantage of a random event to make peace with Joao, and go on to take Pacal's second city:



And that, unfortunately, is pretty much my high point. The war that ruins my chances is my own fault, not variant-induced: the Apostolic Palace forced peace between me and Pacal, and by the time I re-declared he had both swarms of Riflemen (disallowed by my variant) and airships. I tried and failed to take his capital, and ended up selling the about-to-be-conquered Chichen Itza back to him for peace:



Then I start a military build-down for economic reasons, but have Joao declare on me before I get anywhere. He takes one city, I give him another he's about to conquer for peace... yeah, I make a habit of that, it seems.

Willem (AKA the one person I haven't declared on) asks me to help him take out Monty. Since the Power graph looks like this:



I agree, and retake one of my own cities (it had revolted to Monty, of all things).



Oh yes, it's elephants versus rifles. I actually used a lot of elephants, because a) I didn't have access to horses, and b) with the stables and a couple of Great Generals at my capital, I could stack three promotions on them right out of the door. They done me good.

But it was all ultimately in vain: Pacal stole a Religious Victory.



Okay, so I lost, and some parts were a bit of a grind - but I had fun. My ridiculous variant certainly altered how I had to play - this was my map at the end of the game.



And that New World exploration was a mistake: it led directly to the first war with Joao.

Final result: Apostolic Palace loss on turn 357.

Thanks again for the game - it was fun!

[LKendter]

That was a brutal game.

[BRickAstley]

Great report! I would have never thought of something like must declare on UUs; that is truly a difficult challenge.