Epic 8 - Strauss of Arabia

[Strauss]

4000 BC: The history of Arabia begins.



Start with two (!) Warriors and a Settler. The starting position is interesting: it will have HUGE commerce thanks to Silk, Incense and two Gold hills. Shields won’t be a problem either with forests and hills. The site is low food though, despite the Cows. Outside the city centre, it’s only 25/27 food. That will max this city at what, size 12? I will probably need to chop down forests to put some farms there. Moving one west would give extra food, but lose the gold and coast. So I settle in place. The hut gives out nothing….



The city needs improvement, but I also really want a religion. I decide to go for Polytheism (Hinduism) and delay the Worker. With the Cows giving extra food anyway, it can wait for now.

The warrior scout in the west pops a hut and gets Mining! Always nice, especially now that Worker techs are temporarily overruled by religion.



I meet all of my rivals quickly. I meet Elizabeth in 3760 BC, very close to me, only 9 tiles away. I meet Hatshepsut in 3730 BC. Damn. I don’t like her as a neighbour, she becomes too powerful. “Never start a land war in Egypt” has become my motto.
I then meet Mao of China in 3580 BC, Tokugawa of Japan in 3010 BC (he’s probably to the west of China), Roosevelt of America in 2920 BC, Julius Caesar of Rome in 2830 BC and Mansa Musa of Mali in 2770 BC. All eight civilizations in this world are on one continent. Since eight civs is more than the standard for this map, I expect some crowding.




Domestically, Hinduism is founded in Mecca 3430 BC and I convert immediately. I then start on some Worker techs.
Buddhism falls very late, in 2800 BC. No Spain on a lake here! Hatshepsut is the founder, causing some early friction between us.

I leave Archery aside in favour of Bronze Working. This is a bit of a gamble, but if it works I’ll have a very good defence.

I gain Bronze Working and a Settler in 1990 BC, and here is my dotmap:



Medina is founded on Red Dot in 1780 BC.



I pondered for quite some time as to if I should settle to the west or the east of the river. I went with the safe approach and settled west.

In 1480 BC, Stonehenge is constructed in Mecca.



940 BC becomes an important date in Arabian history. Judaism is founded very late. Liz adopts Organized Religion in 925 BC and becomes a Jew in 910 BC. In the same year she plops down Hastings to the south of Red Dot.



Elizabeth has now become my worst enemy. She is both a religious foe and is taking over my intended city sites. War has become inevitable, and I will need to start serious preparations soon. However, I am still stuck at two cities and Mecca is busy building the Oracle. For the moment, the only remaining city site is in the south. It is a good coastal site, and will be able to run a lot of specialists.

In 835 BC Mecca completes the Oracle.



I pick Metal Casting as the free tech, since I felt I would need Forges more than Confucianism. I ended up building only one Forge until 500 AD and I also didn’t build the Colossus.

In 745 BC Moses is born in Mecca and I use him to build the Kashi Vishwanath.



It has effect quickly as Hinduism spreads to a couple of cities. As it spreads to Gao as well, I hope to make Mansa and Mao my friends. Mansa will be important to tie down England and/or Egypt in a war, and friendship with Mao is needed to secure my western flank.

I settle my third city, Damascus, in 625 BC.



I wanted to move one east to get rid of some useless tiles, but the English Settler 2 tiles to the north will almost surely settle on the spot, rendering the site useless for me. So I swallow the couple of useless tiles.







With my third city founded, I have run out of room to expand. The gap left between Mecca and Medina is not worth a city, even despite the presence of Marble. That marble sure is in an awkward position, and it will be some time before I connect it.
My demographics are simply pathetic. I’m last in 4 important departments, and the rest doesn’t look impressive either.
It is clear that I will have to fight my way out of this sardine-can.

Alphabet comes in in 490 BC and I make some trades.

Mansa converts to Buddhism in 385 BC, leaving me with no friends at this moment. I will try to send out Missionaries to convert both Mansa and Mao to Hinduism as soon as possible.

Mathematics comes in in 310 BC. I start on Literature to get the Great Library quickly. Although I may not have handled things optimally until now, I later felt that this was my first truly weedy move in this game. I was preparing for war with England, and should have focused on this. Throwing in a Great Library without access to Marble forced me to divide up my attention for a long time. Mecca would be tied to the Great Library, and with Damascus not capable of supplying military forces yet, Medina was the only city training military units. And military is something I was desperately short of.



And that became painfully obvious when Elizabeth declared war on me in 295 BC. Her invasion force consisted of one measly Chariot, but it was able to run amok for 75 years, pillaging the country around Mecca and preventing me from connecting the Iron near Mecca, until my Axeman was finally able to bring him down.



That screenie pretty much sums up the war against England until 25 BC.
I also convinced Mansa to join the war against England for Alphabet. It would still take me until 25 BC before I was able to gather a large enough force to take the war to Liz.
Hastings fell in 25 BC. I kept it, since Egyptian cultural presence was too heavy to found a new city on ‘my’ dot.

[Strauss]

5 AD is a good time for making up the balance. My state remains poor. Demographics are only slightly improved. However, in spite of this I am still in third place in score, although quite far behind Hatshepsut and Julius.
The fall of Hastings has given me the initiative in the war with England. Catapults and War Elephants will come soon. England is finished, but I will need some time to bring up the forces necessary for that. The war could last well beyond 500 AD.

The following 4 centuries are not very eventful, except for Mansa converting like 20 times. 440 AD is rather eventful though. I leave Hastings undefended for one turn, with the Great Prophet Ananda inside. An English Horseman attacks and kills the Axeman coming out of Hastings. The city is wide open, but the foolish Englishman turns the other way!
Great relief is followed by the message that the Great Library has been built in a distant land. Mecca was one turn away from completing it itself. Losing the Library was a consequence of the dividing up of attention I mentioned earlier. I slipped in a War Elephant during the building of the Great Library, and it cost me.



There is a lot more good news as well. After 400 years of preparation, Nottingham falls to the Arab hordes.




I make peace with England at a favourable price. After nearly 700 years of war, Arabia is at peace again. I am now at a glorious amount of five cities. The war has slightly improved my condition, although this should pick up pace once Hastings and Nottingham become worthy cities. I build the Temple of Solomon in Nottingham in 455 AD.

What follows is 700 years of peace. I attempt to catch up in the tech race and solidify my position.

In 1136 AD, Arabian troops march into England again:



I declared a couple of turns too soon, as a trade with Roosy for Machinery gives me Macemen. Nevertheless, the war against England is a breeze:







I keep both London and York.
Liz is now limited to two cities, both of which later turn out to be ice-towns.

[Strauss]

After the Second England-Arab War, I still need to take care of Egypt. I cannot let Hatty sit there, as she will become more powerful the longer she lasts. I am not strong enough to take her head-on. I plan to surround Egypt on all sides, by becoming friends with Mansa and Julius, and conquering China. My relations with Mao have detoriated at rapid speed and he will never become a friend. I start moving my troops to Medina in preparation of this invasion.

Again, I take my time in building up troops. When I am nearly finished, Hatty suddenly positions sizeable stacks of Knights, Macemen, War Elephants and Catapults near Hastings.



She will attack me soon. My garrisons in Hastings and Nottingham are rather limited, so I move part of my Chinese invasion force back to Hastings to fight off the invasion force. I definitely don’t like the idea of a war with Hatshepsut at this stage. She always makes me bleed heavily before I take her down. Everyone hates Montezuma, Genghis and Tokugawa but Hatshepsut is my biggest nemesis. She is capable of packing a much bigger punch than those three guys combined. She was my neighbour in the two solo-games on Monarch I’ve played up until now. I conquered everything around her, but was forced to leave her alone.

Sure enough, Egyptian troops attack next turn:



As mentioned, defence is light. Hatty gives my defenders a pummelling but she fails to use all forces available for the attack. She moves an entire stack that could have crushed Hastings back into her own territory. Weedy move… She does the same in 1424 and misses her last chance as I move a large stack into Hastings.

I call up my friends to join the war, but Mansa is still friendly with Hatty and Julius asks for Education, which I don’t want to give up, as I don’t want to risk losing Liberalism at this stage.

Although the Egyptians have lost the chance of taking Hastings, they continue to pillage the countryside. It takes me until 1554 to wipe the entire force out.

In 1484 I get Liberalism and grab Nationalism as the free tech. It is expensive and will give me great head start on the Taj Mahal.
I also convince Julius to join the war in exchange for Liberalism



Its effect shows immediately as Rome captures two large Egyptian colonies and Hatty’s power drops down rapidly. I send some Camel Scouts out and this is her defence of Heliopolis:


Not quite what I’m used to from Hatshepsut. I send out invasion forces from Hastings and Medina to take the war to Egypt.

I end all of Egypt’s hopes as Mansa joins in the war. The Triple Entente of the Hindus has been formed!



Taj Mahal finishes in 1547 AD and the second Arabian Golden Age kicks off. Suitably enough, Heliopolis falls to a CG2 Longbowman in the same year. I briefly lose it in the interturn, but in 1550 I kick Hatty out for good.





In 1559, Egypt mounts its last offensive of the war as it captures my three out of my only four Workers in a surprise attack.
However, in the same year, the mighty city of Thebes, along with the Parthenon, the Notre Dame and the Mahabodhi falls to the Arab camels and elephants.



In 1568, Mali screws up on his attack of Memphis and leaves the city to me:



In the same year, I conclude a glorious peace with Egypt:



With only Alexandria left and Roman and Malinese troops encroaching on her, Hatty will not live to see the 17th century.

[Strauss]

The war with Egypt was a great success, and has catapulted me into first place in score. I was lucky that she declared war on me while I still had all my troops within my borders instead of marching through China. My demographics look good and will only get better from now on.
With Egypt out of the way, Rome and Arabia are left as the world’s superpowers. The third Hindu, Mansa, is less prosperous and remains a mediocre power.

In this position, it is time to start thinking about going for victory:

Time: Unacceptable. It will take too long (still over 300 turns, half of the entire game!)

Conquest: This victory will require me to go through my friends Julius and Mansa. I wouldn’t mind in personal games, but in an Epic I want to go the honourable route.

Domination: Same as conquest.

Cultural: Only realistically possible in Mecca I think, the rest hasn’t built up enough culture to make it.

Space Race: I don’t like the Space Race, but I can use it as a back-up plan, should something go wrong.

Diplomatic: I like this one the most. This was one of my rare games in which I truly made an effort to establish friendly relations with other civs, and got rewarded for it against Egypt. I think a Diplomatic Victory would be a suitable end to this game. I will go to Mass Media quickly.

The wars are over! I declare peace to the world!

Peace does come to the world in 1586 with the Fall of Egypt. Mansa captures Alexandria.

Mali gains another city in 1628 as his enormous cultural pressure causes Memphis to flip to himL.

In 1738, Hinduism finally becomes the world’s Number One Religion, deposing Buddhism.

In 1746, Julius declares war on his old ally Mansa. However, the war only lasts a few days as I immediately dial up Julius to make peace in exchange for Democracy, which is worthless since I already completed the Statue of Liberty.
Now that we’re on the subject, this was also one of my first games in which I made heavy use of specialists. I ended up with at least 3 specialists in every city, 2 free ones from Mercantilism and the SoL, and 1 regular. Of course, when you’re limited to 3-5 cities for the first half of the game, you begin to appreciate the power of specialists.

In 1833, the United Nations is built in Mecca.



It was designed to preserve peace in the world, but Julius decides to ruin the atmosphere of flower power and declares war on poor Elizabeth one year later. She only lasts 7 more years.

In 1835 elections for Secretary-General are held, and I discover my biggest blunder of the game: I had completely missed the fact that, with the size of his land and cities, Julius would almost certainly be my UN opponent. I had spent the last 2 centuries trying to please him as much as possible to gain victory!
After recovering from my initial shock, I go out to see who I can still please enough to vote for me. I unleash my charm on Roosevelt, who quickly goes to Pleased, although it does take some time before he actually votes for me.
The biggest coup however is this:



A friendly Tokugawa: I think that deserves a honourable mention .

Consequently, I finally win like the twenty millionth UN election in 1873.

[Strauss]

Afterword:

Finally getting around to playing AND finishing an Epic, it was a highly enjoyable experience. I didn’t handle the start as well as I could have, making my position much more difficult. On the other hand, desperately fighting and trading my way out of that hole gave me a LOT more fun than steamrolling over every AI. Well, once I had actually climbed out of the hole. It wasn’t that fun when I was still in it

I was caught with my pants down and invaded twice, and in both cases I was lucky that the AI either didn’t have enough troops to really hurt me (English Chariots), or didn’t use its troops efficiently (Siege of Hastings). It was also funny to see Blake mentioning that the AI was so stupid for not whipping its population into submission when at war. I used the whip two times in this game, and that was not during a war.

I started this game on the Friday before the deadline and finished on Sunday afternoon. I think this partly explains how I managed to miss that Julius would run against me, dragging the game on for 38 turns. On the other hand, getting Toku up to Friendly counts for something I think! : D This game also maintains my perfect record of Monarch solo-games, which I hope to keep intact. It also maintains a 100% record of Hatshepsut as my neighbour. Let’s hope that doesn’tstay intact.

With my already limited civ time being taken up by Succession Games, I don’t know if I’ll be able to give the Adventures a crack as well. I will definitely play Epic 9 though!