Epic 10 - How KMad tried to have hope in a world with no faith

[KMad]

this is the first time i played an RB event on schedule and actually have a report of any kind to include. a disclaimer is in order: my clark-ette kent identity is a contractor, mostly as a technical editor. so in my off-hours in forums, i go completely the opposite direction. throw in whatever makes me giggle to amuse myself, skip uppercase for speed, ramble and chatter since i'm free from the "get to the point and make sure idiots cannot misunderstand" chains i face when doing real writing, all that stuff that can drive some personality types up a tree. you are probably best off just reading the summary with pictures, and skipping the turn-by-turn to save your time and sanity. you have been warned.

my favorite thing: when ironworking came in, i got to say "i got pig iron, i got pig iron!!!". i've been known to settle quite crappy cities just to get pigs and iron into one cross and name the city PigIron. i didn't rename the capital since it was, of course, the capital.

the most striking thing about my game was that all seven religions were founded in distant lands. my continent didn't get a single one. the happy cap of 3 is harsh, we all know that. it's worse if you can't get any temples. i mean i couldn't get any temples. i had zero options. if i'd sent a caravel to the other continent, they couldn't have given me a missionary. i had to just wait for them to send me one, or survive until astronomy and go try to capture a city with religion. i've never been in that situation before, and i do not recommend trying it for yourself. i threw the mini-map/scoreboard in to show how little i've seen of the world, and to show that nobody adopted anything in case you doubted me *giggle*.


i suspected isabella (and perhaps, despited the originator's denials, a customized world map ). the replay showed that huayna and isabella started together and that huayna founded BuddHinduism !! he snatched both the early ones from izzy! she made sure to grab all five of the remaining ones tho. they got along the entire time. mao's eventual declaration on me was the only war the world ever saw.

the only "deity" games i ever play are OCC, since they're very quick and they amuse me, and easier than normal games in that i don't have to deal with the land-grab issue. i'm also not a war-monger by nature, i like deity OCC aiming for early diplo victory via peace, making everybody like me--deity makes it easier in some ways since you can tech faster with all the techs they have for trade. i usually stack the deck by picking opponents tho. i never have barbs turned on at deity. and OCC is totally overpowered since you get to have globe theatre in every city .

anyway, that's to say that even tho i've supposedly played on deity, those games are umm, "highly edited" might be a good term for it, not your usual games, they're wicked fun for me tho. i totally knew, however, that they'd not prepare me for this game at all. i mean, in theory i'd have to fight and stuff! but, i read carefully "We’re throwing you to the wolves with Deity difficulty, but all victory conditions except Conquest have been turned off. The AIs cannot simply tech their way into space; you must be eliminated militarily to lose the game." apply rules lawyering to fit my mood, and it doesn't say i have to fight them by my iniative. it says to lose i have to eliminated military. onus on them to pick on me. so i'll try to get along with them and see if we can all go our merry ways until 2050 AD.

having to actually deal with the landgrab was the pits. this is what the Candyland Empire (i renamed it, Japanese sounded too off-the-shelf, i wanted off-the-wall) looked like at what was probably our most shining moment (pathetic tho it was).



that's 140 AD.

edit: i wrote that "having to actually deal with the landgrab was the pits." sentence before reading other reports. now i see i got luckier than i knew in that respect! no barbs where i wanted to rush to, only place they got near me was up at silverbeaverville. altho i fogbusted fishyponies on purpose. but mao galley-swiped several people it looks like; i saw them sniffing around on galleys but neither guy managed to get a city inside what i considered "my territory". lots of y'all had to deal with both of those issues. i didn't settle the last 3 cities until really late, but it worked out. end of post-reading-reports edit.

mao declared war in 200 AD. he was pleased but i knew the day would come someday from one of those guys. there were two heartbreaking moments in the war, that were each far sadder for me than actually being defeated. the defeat i didn't mind; these two things, they were like "ouch, don't rub salt in it!"

clip from the turn by turn and then a picture of the #1 heartbreaker:

260 AD he razed osaka! it didn't auto-raze, he razed it. how rude! it was a nice little city! would have a nice big city some day, i just hadn't had time to let it grow, i needed workers and settlers. poor osaka.

290 AD O M G. insult to injury. julius settled a city right on the ruins of osaka. that is cruel, damn cruel. i hope i lose this war. cuz if i don't, i'm gonna have to quit anyway, because JC done broke my heart and i can't fight a war to get that city from him. that's not fair for him to do that. that's ruder than mao razing it! my precious second city, my copperville.


vulture combat settler. no respect.

and then this...

440 i'm 3 turns from monarchy. if i'm still alive then, this is like totally the right time for hereditary rule if there ever was one! kyoto defense down to 27%, tokyo defense down to 35%. those are my best 2 remaining cities, two of the only three good cities i ever had. mao's golden age ends. i cannot say that i am disappointed to hear that.

...skip to 500 AD, he takes kyoto and tokyo which had been suffering from :mad: citizens, and then ...

ok that was kinda mean. i go back into civ after alt-tabbing to type the paragraph above. and come out of anarchy into HR. and my people cheer since my government is re-established. they cheer cuz they're happy. and in the meantime i lost the 2 big cities that were having the unhappiness issues. it seriously made me sad to hear that cheer, how sappy i am? poor citizens. they'll be so much more unhappy with mao! talk about cruel oppression.

and a shot of the world as i knew it, a few turns before my demise. i was down to one city, so much of the world was still completely black. but i'm not used to this much of the world being dark and in fog of war it was just freaky! i never even saw mao's holdings, i was doing my exploration of their lands, now that the barb threat was finally gone (see land-grab), when he declared, that axe-man was the first to die.


edit: oh yeah, mostly_harmless reminded me i didn't put in what year i saw my doom! 695 AD was the final year of the Candyland Empire.


the candyland empire survived for 4695 years, which calculated stats-wise was 4 hours and 4 minutes, including time to alt-tab and document historical events.

all top 5 cities were unknown to me. the only wonder i wasn't in the dark about was rome's great library.

i lived to see a later date on the calendar than i thought i would. my diplomacy of trading resources and such with julius did work, at the end he was pleased, and he never did officially get mean, in the sense that an AI would have given him negative modifiers for his behavior. he didn't even dogpile in, and if there's ever been someone low on the powergraph, it was me! mao, not so much, the only + i could get was OB and he declared at pleased cuz he's a big fat meanie.

mao killed me. but julius broke my heart. setia on the ruins of osaka, the very next turn. show some decency, those were great Candyland citizens that died and they deserve a lot more respect than one turn.

but it was a nice little empire while it lasted, in my biased opinion, and the citizens managed some accomplishments they truly didn't think they could. and they had some good, fun times along the way.

turn-by-chatty-turn follows, but you have been warned that reading it might drive you nuts! turn-by-turn is the easiest way for me to write it and i CBA too pare it down to a real report since i want to read the others, and play more civ!! so it's really long and boring.

[mostly_harmless]

So when was your final defeat, just for the record?
Certainly a different game experience, having no religion at all.
btw nice chatty report! ;-)
mh

[KMad]

400 BC deep breath for courage, set research towards BW

3490 survive first attack, first wolves go for me on a jungle hill across a river yay!

3430 meet mao

3370 my warrior loses vs a wolf at 99.4% odds. yeah this bodes well.

3370 i see my first people barbs. i survived that attack yay.

3250 i meet JC and barb archers are outside my city, i may not last 5 turns!

oh yeah, they don't enter culture right away either do they?

3010 barb archer kills my cover promoted warrior that was heading back home . that's 2 lost already. can't fogbust, and don't see any copper at all oh boy.

2860 i set tech on archery, i don't often get that one!

2770 judaism FIADL. that makes all 3 early ones FIADL. of course all lands are distant, even china and rome, since i never made it that far exploring.

2470 tacitus tells me i'm smallest, yeah i knew that. especially since i just 2-pop whipped a worker, to take care of happies, and since my barracks was finished and overflow would make an archer. i dunno about the worker thing, but i feel like i won't get anywhere without improvements, but i'll need to protect each and every one of them, oh boy. most people start worker first, i wasn't about to tho since the barbs would kill him anyway. but now i'm finally brave enough to.

2350 wheeee my shiny new archer wins against barb warriors that came by

2290 SH built. someone has time to build wonders?

2140 warrior wins vs barb warrior trying to kill my mine! my archer was up north, found a hut guarded by a barb warrior. i figure kill him, get exp, get a hut, cool. the exp was nice, the RNG was odd and gave me masonry. at first i thought 'yeah thanks, i'm gonna what, build pyramids? research monotheism to go OR altho i don't have any religion and judaism was founded already? this is a total waste.' more on that later.

so, i can make a granary, city walls, or units. and i like have no options for happiness, silk after calendar, silver up north when i have the time to think about another city. a granary while my happy cap is 4 (at that only because the palace gives +1), ummm, no, i can't whip fast enough to need it. archers galore it is.

1930 barbs aren't real smart. warriors just attacked my archer on the other hill, from across the river. i ain't complaining. i did survive past 2000 BC, hadn't thought i would, am quite sure i won't get past 1000 BC.


1860 5 more turns til kyoto's culture fogbusts the corn tiles to the east. please expand! i'll still have the south tho, and that one forest sticking out there.

1780 i decide to fogbust down south, and maaaaaaaybe dream about another city down there by the fish and sheep. heading toward AH, to work the cows i love cows, but i was so worried about defending the cows that i didn't rush to be able to improve them. agri's done in one, then go to AH.

1750 it dawns on me that i don't even see any happies other than that silver, and the dye down south in the jungle (IW) and it's dye (calendar). oh, and one fur up north. i want IW, since i don't have copper and i want axemen, the barbs'll have 'em, but i have so much i need to get. can i build the internet yet?

1720 speak of the devil dye, heading to the fish spot i see JC's color on the clams. well, at least he'll fogbust for me. bismarck did that for me in a game recently, was awesome, he got totally picked on at the city he founded near the site i barely beat him to. JC will fogbust for me this time ... if he doesn't beat me up soon. barbs galore from the west, might be nobody over there. i of course can't tell at all!

1600 christianity is founded. no signs of either of my neighbors getting any of these religions. ummm guys? some help here? i'll want a temple you know? oracle built, i wonder if they took theo with it? maybe SH gave a prophet already???

1570 here goes nothing, let's start a settler to whip out. and rotate archers, one's at 9 exp sheesh. east coast is fogbusted now tho except one forest tile yay

1540 i talk to my neighbors. JC has writing so i get open borders. and find out he has FIVE cities not counting than his capital! now i know they start with 2 settlers on deity but i'm building settler #1. yeah ok i'm supposed to kill him someday???? OB with mao too, but he only has 3 spare cities.

1510 nooooooooooooooo! i see a barb axeman by JC's city. and i didn't even research IW yet, much less make a city by any iron. i'm gonna die.

1480 that axeman kills my guy, but that wasn't what i meant by i'm gonna die, i meant my whole civ. wow this is scary.

1390 AH is in, there are horses where my settler being built was gonna go anyway, sweet!!! how soon does the AI come in galleys to settle every tile? IW is 26 turns wowsa, i could try alphabet ... yeah right, like i'd have anything other than alpha to trade, and maybe not even that, they both have writing. in my deity OCC games i get to alpha first by a mile, but i beeline to it there and have no barbs, NOT the same here by a long shot. (i didn't notice when JC finally got alphabet, but i noticed in taking new screenshots today that he didn't have it still in 155 AD when i'd settled my last city. and then he finished GLib in 455 AD. once he finally learned the alphabet he really liked it i guess).

1300 haha now i get time to go further west and i see copper! ok, hmmz, will they come for the ponies if they're off on this peninsula, is it safe to leave them and snatch the copper? the copper will fogbust for me more ... but leave me more frontline with the barbs. but it's valuable stuff. oh and chariots aren't as good in vanilla as warlords anyway. copper it is. tech to mysticism. three religions founded and i don't know how to make an obelisk lol. oh crap now i go step on the southernmost tile there and see i have to choose between sheep or a 2nd fish. probably sheep cuz i don't want that much water, but i'll probably not get the spot either so i won't obsess over a dot map yet, might not even get the spot.

highest archer is 9 exp. have to remember to watch that, at 10 they're capped and should be rotated. i do want one to hit 10 for heroic epic for darn sure.

1270 confucianism FIADL. it just now dawned on me that theology came before conf. conf always goes first ... but i suppose that's because i aim for it. here i haven't had time to give it a thought! scores atm ... JC 604, mao 544, me 186. and i still haven't seen any of their cities except one of JC's.

1240 pyramids built. seems like it's taken a long time! and OMG neither of these two slackers converted to conf either. isabella's off on a lake somewhere building a hydra isn't she?

1120 BC i *finally* got a pasture on my cows! and forgot to watch my settler to see when i could 2pop whip him, was too busy taking notes, what a reporting noob!

985 BC livy says i'm the least advanced. but guess what livy? it's 985 BC. it's after 1000 BC! and i'm still alive! yeah i have one city and don't know any techs, but i'm alive!

940 osaka is founded by the copper. not on either blue dot the AI recommends, i could see the case for each of them, but sorry AI, i just don't wanna go that far away right now. i'd get homesick. eep a JC galley over on the east coast. dude i'm building settler #2 for fishy ponies, don't take it ok? you have a ton of cities! you have 6 now besides your capital according to the trade screen, spare me some land k? thanks.

895 brave exploring archer finds a barb city to the west. i'm sure even those guys have more cities than me.

865 doublevictory! i can build libraries now, and i outsmarted this report. i remembered to 2pop whip settler #2 to get rid of unhappy faces yay! perfect timing, i can dump overflow into the library. cuz i have, like, a ton of reading to catch up on compared to these guys. and i hate that all the religions are hogged elsewhere. are we sure this map isn't heavily customized like epic 4????

850 BC the people of candyland have 3 cities! settled kyoto by fish and ponies. oh yeah, i changed my details to be the Candyland Empire. it made me giggle. i don't imagine there's a rule against it but if there is, well, too bad, it's my empire now baybee.

760 i mined my copper last turn. didn't get a chance to road it since a barb archer showed up next turn. and he beat my archer that was defending it. my 9 exp archer /cry.

745 wow he didn't pillage it! he attacked the city instead, and lost! go me!

715 ok now there's another one coming but at least the mine lasted long enough for a citizen to work it and finish building the obelisk, which will expand the city and fogbust more so it's good longterm! i thought about building on the copper, so that it couldn't get pillaged, but didn't want waste a grassland copper. and no health bonus on emperor+ is a nono if avoidable.

655 speaking of bonuses, how the heck am i gonna get my neighbors to like me? until i decide to like, be brave and kill 'em hahahahaha? i have nothing to trade them techwise, i never will! but julius has double of some resources, and i have a cow, lemme see if i can work something out. cool! he went sugar for cow, tokyo's only at 3>1 health atm but i have piggies and fish to hook up yet, and will have sheep and corn too, so yay!! i got a happy , and it should help foreign relations. now i gotta try to trade for his dye too before mao gets it. if there's one thing i've learned from OCC games (deity level and below), it's lock in those resource trades ASAP or they will the stuff to somebody else and your chance is gone.

640 pigs finally hooked up, swapped 'em for dye. woot! both those guys have spare iron. i heard a rumor that if you meet rome, you want them not to have iron. i decide not to worry about this atm.

625 JC builds another city where i was pondering city #4. i either gotta go way far west or southwestish, in an area that's still black to me and probably settled or junk, or go into tundraland, or play 3CC. or, like, go to war, hahaha yeah right.

595 BC i finally learn to work iron. and see some at tokyo. no way! i got pig iron, i got pig iron! i love getting pigs and iron in the same city, it just might be my favorite thing! if it wasn't my capital i'd so rename it to PigIron. but the capital of Candyland is traditionally Peepsville, so it can't be PigIron. the only thing that stopped me from naming it Peepsville was that the folks at RB would think i'm nuts if they knew i did that, if they actually read my report, so might as well try to appear as sane as i can.

460 BC mao is pleased with me just cuz of OB. still have NO clue where his actual cities are. JC has tons of resources, the guy is insane with them, he must be all over the place. i'm hoping to get a "years of" bonus so he comes off cautious some century.

355 i realize i have NO money. and yet i'm in the middle of building another settler for the west coast just cuz JC is insane in his landgrab, if i don't go grab NW now i can't, like, ever. well, i could if i kill him, but, this isn't called "final fantasy". never played that but the title suits that scenario.

340 OMG HAHAHA one of the funniest moments i've ever had! i had just finished typing up the 355 notes, and then went in and hit noticed a chinese archer/settler where i plan to go and thought aww shucks. then i hit enter, and see a barb axeman standing on city ruins. i never even saw the city itself hahaha. just a message "tianjin has been tazed by the barbarian state."

310 BC yay fishponysheepville gets its border expansion. i have 2 workers, i need more. and kyoto needs to grow but i keep using it for settlers and workers!! wow, JC doesn't have copper. i thought that guy had everything. too bad he doesn't need it til it's time to build a space ship which he can't. oh, or when he wants to build statue of liberty.

295 grrrrrr JC built on those chinese ruins. i guess i'll go up to silver/dye/fur, aka the relatively new barb city known as Burgundian.

250 ...or not. mao there with swordsmen, but the city is size 1, 2 archers in it, don't wait for it to grow, mao, hit it now and let it autoraze k? please?

190 BC hahaha thank you mao i win!!!!! my archer that was standing on my iron, since some of the north wasn't fogbusted and i wasn't bright enough to actually, like, go fogbust it, i was on defense. well duh, otherwise the barbs couldn't have made a city. anyway, i hadn't noticed that the barb culture border was there until mao's arrival. i moved archer my up with mao's 2 swordsmen. well, after hitting enter mao's swordsmen were gone, and burgundian was down to one wounded archer. i figure i have nothing to lose, nobody else was around to hurt the guy if i didn't kill him, so i might as well get rid of the city if i could, while it was still pop one so that nobody could easily move into my back yard. it isn't where i want to keep it for myself to save a settler. my archer's 8/10, i'd left him unpromoted cuz he was a rotater, not assigned to a forest or a hill or anything. i promote him but his odds still aren't stellar vs. the archer fortified in the city. he bravely went for it and he won lmao! i got 15g and cleaned up a mess and he hit 10 exp, for level 4!

160 BC taoism FIADL. i think i might not be first to liberalism in this game.

55 BC yeah ok on 2nd thought burgundian was in fact where i do want to settle my city. but that's a mere technicality. it was ugly, it was barbarian. and settlers come fast cuz of the piggies and cows. and i'll have time to grow kyoto big someday, and take advantage of the s JC's giving me.

10 BC state of the empire: trading JC my (only) cow for dye and my (only) pig for sugar. sugar gives me happy and will give me health with grocer if i ever get to guilds. i don't expect to ever see the cow or pig health doublers, and i'd really rather have unhealthy people than unhappy ones. the unhealthy ones still work, they just eat more. atm his happies are the only ones i've got, altho i do now have my own, they're just not yet hooked up. i just settled three!!! brand new cities real quickly. i may be organized but courthouses would sure help. but it's almost 0 BC and i'm here. and i captured a city! yeah it was a barb one, and i had mao's unintentional help, but it counts!

i wish our continent had a religion waaaaaaah. if i get optics think the other continent would gift me a missionary or three? oh they can't in their territory, rats.

mao's pleased with me, JC's cautious.

i want civil service so bad. kyoto could be a really nice city, now that i can let it grow. i got obsessed with the land grab but had no alternative. i really wanted that deer up by satsuma, decided i better grab it now, altho the city really isn't a great one, particularly since JC's creative so i won't even get all the crap tiles it ought to get. i just beat a set of roman horse archers/settler to the deer spot (now Satsuma), and new burgundian was the one mao died at. i can't stop laughing at my timing.

[KMad]

20 AD ewwwww no i really need is alphabet so i build research. can't build more units, this is not good, i can't afford to pay their salaries! i guess i'll start the palace and take it out of the queue or something lame ... no, cuz then i have to finish it somewhere or i never get gold for it ... but it saves me gold ... changing to alphabet before i finish CoL takes forever ... let's finish CoL, these guy's prolly kill me before then anyway. oh right, i can build walls! i learned masonry from the villagers! and here i thought it was a waste back then! i hardly ever build walls, and i don't expect the walls themselves to allow me to survive any DoWs, but it gives me something to build that doesn't cost me maintenance. thank you villagers oh so long ago.

50 AD. it's AD! i lost a bet, i owe my husband something. you guys get no details about what that is. in less kinky news, i'm so going broke. i had no choice but to overexpand tho, i mean seriously. and i think now the barb threat on our continent has got to be gone. i'm paying 1g unit cost, i think too many workers but i actually don't have enough workers. no angry citizens yet but i don't have not enough happies, my cities just haven't had time to grow up to their happy limits. i can't remember the last game i had no religions this late. it's terrible!

80 AD i can't believe i still don't know math lmao. or alphabet. or a god to pray to. or a zillion other things.

95 wow new cumae is pop 16. and that's not even his capital!!!

110 oh ok rome is only 12. ooooooooooh i have an idea! a plan so cunning you could brush your teeth with it! JC doesn't need copper, since he has iron. but neither do i! let's trade him for wine that doesn't help him a bit, but it doesn't cost me a thing either and it sure does help. he fell for it woot!

140 AD and i realize that the joke at Satusuma is on me. even if my culture does reach the whale, by the time it reaches far enough from satsuma for a workboat to get there past the ice, they'll probably be obsolete, cuz it would have to go thru ocean so i'd need another expansion hahaha. but hey, at least i have my own luxury now, silver, sweet silver. and satsuma was really for deer anyway. take that, julius. if you cancel our deals, i'd have, ummm, 20% of the luxuries i have currently, so i'll be okay, sorta kinda. but i'm gonna get another soon from beavers so there!

200AD and there it is, mao declared war on me. mao, the one that was pleased!!! julius was still cautious, and close borders and all that, i figured it would be him. i was about to save and go to bed, but let's see how long it takes him, i have only one archer in most cities, couple spearmen, cuz hey, i didn't expect this to last long *giggle*. [note: i think it ended up lasting another 90 minutes more, but much of that was typing notes not game play of course.] i do have barracks and walls almost all over cuz i couldn't build anything else except units, and couldn't afford them. he already killed my only axeman, the one that had been on barb duty and was currently mapping out china and rome. mao seems to be mostly horse archer man tho, we'll find out. time to whip! learned CoL this turn, no time to make courthouses tho. being broke may not be an issue soon, that's kinda cool huh?

230 AD in the first round, osaka, my city #2, he lost 3 units, i lost 1. he attacked across a river, lame! he has 9 units left, 4 outside osaka now and not across the river, and i have 3 left in that city, so there goes my luck, but hey, i survived a round! cho-ko-nus headed to satsuma so that one's going down for sure, it's a baby city. deleting my workers haha.

260 AD he razed osaka! it didn't auto-raze, he razed it. how rude! it was a nice little city! would have a nice big city some day, i just hadn't had time to let it grow, i needed workers and settlers. poor osaka.

290 AD O M G. insult to injury. julius settled a city right on the ruins of osaka. that is cruel, damn cruel. i hope i lose this war. cuz if i don't, i'm gonna hve to quit anyway, because JC done broke my heart and i can't fight a war to get that city from him. can't culture him out, i have no religious weapons in a culture war. that's not fair for him to do that. that's ruder than mao razing it! my precious second city, my copperville.

mao also has a stack of 4 horse archers, 2 CKNs, and a catapult at satsuma, the deer city. dude it's not gonna take that much, it has an archer and no walls.

305 AD islam FIADL. satsuma razed. and mao starts a golden age. he's celebrating. i'm fighting his units when he can't fight me back on his turn, like when he's in a stack so i'll stay in my city, or once he didn't have anything that could reach me the next turn cuz it was my land so he could only move one tile at a time. that's brave for me, i'm not by nature a warmonger! i've won all of those battles, then again i only fight them when they're 77+%.

350 AD he hasn't actually attacked kyoto yet that i remember, just razed around it. if he has it was a while ago then he pulled back, but it was where i attacked his units outside of it. he's back now in style tho.

365 ha!!! he collateraled me at kyoto with a CKN and killed an archer. but then on my turn, all that was left on the forested hill was a fresh horse archer, and the CKN with health of 1. nothing else than can reach me next turn. and i have a combat 2 formation spearman, he had 96.5% odds, he won. combat 2 axeman vs. injured CKN, 99%, he won. haha mao isn't by kyoto atm. he'll be back and crush me, but i live another year.

380 now the guy has knights. anybody have pikemen i can borrow? heck even impis?

410 AD wow. so knights kill my spearmen even across the river with the walls up. and now he's bombarding the walls. oh actually not really. combat log shows his odds were 30.8%. he just took a risk and won. and he's hurt now, and no other units on that side, and no ponies coming from the other next turn, so i'll take a risk and get that wounded knight out of my face! oh not so risky, 99.3% for my spearman, knowing the RNG i'll lose for sure. i did win, that's cool .

425 yeah yeah cruel oppression. listen guys, if you don't die for the cause, we all die for no cause. got it? k. we don't inherit the planet from our ancestors we whip it into a frenzy or something or other i dunno just shut up and turn into archers and spearmen and try to hold the fort.

440 i'm 3 turns from monarchy. if i'm still alive then, this is like totally the right time for hereditary rule if there ever was one! kyoto defense down to 27%, tokyo defense down to 35%. those are my best 2 remaining cities, two of the only three good cities i ever had. mao's golden age ends. i cannot say that i am disappointed to hear that.

455 JC builds great library. seems late? next turn tokyo will be cut off from iron i think. he hasn't pillaged the ponies yet. i guess he knows i'm not bothering with chariots since they won't hurt him. nothing i have is worth anything unless his troops are at death's doorstep anyway.

470 kyoto is at 12% defense, has 7 troops outside of it at perfect health that i cannot scratch, including 2 cats and a CKN that will do collateral damage. i have 8 units in the city, none have strength higher than 5, his lowest strength is 5--the cats, highest is the knights at 10.

485 somebody circumnavigates. mao converts to hinduism. lemme see who lost how many units, that turn was painful, monarchy did come in but i'm not sure my cities will live long enough to come out of anarchy and be happy under HR. ok i killed a cat, his other cat withdrew, i lost 3 archers and a spear.

i notice that mao doesn't refuse to talk any more. i check, he'll give me peace for tokyo, the horse/fish city. dream on mao!!! sulla says where there is life, there is hope. well, where there is setia there should be osaka. the rudeness of the AI behavior has ticked me off, and i refuse to give in to mao's demand for my great city. *i* built it up from nothing, he doesn't deserve it just because he's pushy, that's ridiculous! i have (...checks F5...) 5 archers, 1 axeman, 2 spearman left, for a total of 4 cities, 2 of which are junk, and i'm in anarchy so i can't get anything out next turn, i might make it! that's my definition of "where there is life, there is hope", not "give in to make it last longer". to me, the "bitter end" includes sticking to my pride. that, or i'm tired and want to go to bed and don't want to have to see setia there cuz it makes me wanna pout. so anyway, press enter.

500 AD ok so now he's the owner of tokyo anyway. but i didn't give it to him, i made him work for it. he owns kyoto too grrrrrrrr. those 2 junk cities i mentioned? they are all that remains of the Candyland empire. wow. that really didn't take him all that long! what a jerk.

ok that was kinda mean. i go back into civ after alt-tabbing to type the paragraph above. and come out of anarchy into HR. and my people cheer since my government is re-established. they cheer cuz they're happy. and in the meantime i lost the 2 big cities that were having the unhappiness issues. it seriously made me sad to hear that cheer, how sappy i am? poor citizens. they'll be so much more unhappy with mao! talk about cruel oppression.

515 hey i might as well pillage this iron i was guarding, now that it's his.

590 AD hahaha! he bribed the barbs into the war. a marauding barb galley pillaged my fishing boats up at new burg (that barb city i razed and the resettled by silver/fur). mao took it that same turn. i was gonna screenie cuz i was laughing, but it got fog of war'd.

so, now i'm down to one city. 2 archers, 1 spearman in it. and a distant civilization is the first to discover liberalism.

wow, the world is really really dark in 590 AD if you have only one city and no holy city for LoS or anything. it's like fog of war EVERYWHERE! freaky.

now he'll talk to me, but won't do peace, only a cease fire. not that i'd take peace, was only checking.

650 JC adopted mercantilism. i still don't even know math! he converts to islam. he's pleased with me, and declare on mao isn't redded out but i got nothing to sweet-talk him into it. and since i look like toku, i hiiiiiiiiiiighly doubt i'm his type and ought to bother trying to flirt.

665 i love when my spearmen win against knights *giggle*. shame i can't make any more of 'em.

695 i think this is it. i have one archer in edo, he's at 1.4/3 strength. oh wait he earned a promo... now he's 2.2/3 CG2. and i whipped another one. and that's all i got. and mao has 3 knights outside, only one with deep wounds, and a cat. my defense is 42% but that hasn't mattered much so far, i lost 4 units last turn, he didn't lose a single one.

/sigh i have been defeated. and now i get to see what really happened.

hahahaha isabella was over there, but huayna got both buddhism and hinduism!! izzy got all of the rest, and she and HC apparently got along quite well this whole time. mao declaring on me was the only war in history. there isn't a "one more turn" option so i can't see the diplomatic screen, i wanted to see how all the AIs felt about each other, shucks, i'll never know.

the candyland empire survived for 4695 years, which calculated stats-wise was 4 hours and 4 minutes, including time to alt-tab and document historical events.

all top 5 cities were unknown to me. the only wonder i wasn't in the dark about was rome's great library.

i lived to see a later date on the calendar than i thought i would. my diplomacy of trading resources and such with julius did work, at the end he was pleased, and he never did officially get mean, in the sense that an AI would have given him negative modifiers for his behavior. he didn't even dogpile in, and if there's ever been someone low on the powergraph, it was me! mao, not so much, the only + i could get was OB and he declared at pleased cuz he's a big fat meanie.

mao killed me. but julius broke my heart. setia on the ruins of osaka, the very next turn. show some decency, those were great Candyland citizens that died and they deserve a lot more respect than one turn.

but it was a nice little empire while it lasted, in my biased opinion, and the citizens managed some accomplishments they truly didn't think they could. and they had some good, fun times along the way.

[scooter]

I died right around the same time because I had a similar situation, where the other continent monopolized all of the early religons up to Taoism. When somebody (mao I think) finally landed it, I thought I caught a break, and patiently waited for it to spread to me... and waited... and waited some more... Needless to say I died before it ever spread to me, bad break IMO... I would have a mini-report up, but I gave the game a second shot (did much better, lasted until 1500s), and in doing that I must've somehow accidentally overwrote my screenshots from the game (either that or they just didn't take, I can't figure it out), so it wasn't worth putting up a report w/o any pics...

[sooooo]

Hi KMad, I think your city placement was really good, probably the best of all the reports. You only had 1 "junk" city to claim the two hapiness resources, silver and furs, yet that city still had fish. Also I think your first settler went to the correct spot - the grassland copper with floodplain, but could also share Kyoto's pigs. Should have thought about that one myself. Similarly Edo and Tokyo use the land efficiently.

[KMad]

why thank you! you should my grin, i'm like a grade-school kid that got a gold star from the teacher *giggle*.

i looked at my screenshot again after reading your post, and it is so glaringly obvious how much i'd gone into pure 'get the settlers out, now make workers -- do not pass go, do not collect any food to grow with' mode. osaka is size 3, arpinium (JC's city) is size 10. i settled mine before he settled his, i can't remember how much sooner. neither of us has any religion for culture. all i had was an obelisk and a library. he can make those too i assume, he didn't have alphabet for me to know for sure. we've both had our border expansions, and my culture's strong enough to hold his back where our crosses overlap, so i must have been there quite a while longer ... but my city is 1/3rd the size of his! and it wasn't that osaka didn't have any food available, i just wouldn't let 'em stop to grow.

i don't often overlap and share food like that, especially with the capital, but here it just made sense to me. if i was going to be brave and put a fence around the pigs and defend them with all these barbs around, they were going to darn well get used all the time! tokyo i knew exactly where i wanted it, my only debate was about 3 seconds when i saw the 2nd fish but i knew wanted the sheep and more land, not more water. and that was before i knew there were ponies there! AH came in before the settler and i wanted it even more, but i did settle the copper first since i knew i should. i thought i was being smart by keeping an archer down south there to fogbust ... but in sullla's game the barbs had already made a city way before then, so that was luck too. then with tokyo set, edo just made perfect sense, really pretty for a filler city/fishing village. and my last city. those guys were brave.

darrell's city map is spooky similar to mine. same osaka, his tokyo is one tile different from mine (i think his is a barb capture and not actually his Tokyo), same silver/beaver city. he had bad luck tho ... my edo was settled by that mean old poacher mao in his game!

[Gotag]

Having your second city near your capital early in the game is pretty critical at higher difficulties especially if you can share a developed bonus food resource.

You reduce distance maintenance and jumpstart the second city. In addition you usually don't harm your capital much since you'll hit the happy cap pretty quickly and would have to swap off the high food tiles anyway. You can swap back and forth alternating the whip too.

Great report!!, pity Mao was mean as it would have been a hoot if you had survivied till the finish. Candyland deserved a better fate but the gods were unkind.

Gotag

[KMad]

aww thank you gotag . we did try, and we had fun surprising ourselves lasting so long. of course i have to say "we" since i couldn't have done it without my brave citizens! your vote of confidence is much appreciated!

the shared pigs were really handy. the blue dots the AI recommended were too far, i knew that much. and even granary-less kyoto was having no issues growing back fast post-whipping, worse than no issues, growing back faster than happy cap could handle before i brokered the "trade my single health resources for his spare happy resources" deals. so that was another area where i thought it would work out, and it did ... better than i expected, so i chalk it up partly to luck in the sense of going partly by faith in what i'd read, more than knowing it from experience, since i'm not used to actually putting it into practice.

thinking about it this way gives me new perspective into parts that were fun and eye-opening for me. now i'm off to post in sullla's thread .