Adventure 20 - KMad's report

[KMad]

pre-game thinking: i am horrible at early warmongering. and early is like, before modern armor just about. probably even on settler level! i do the political "oh don't fight me" thing, which isn't really going to get me a domination victory here. for me, axemen are barbarian protection, not a weapon to go capture somebody's capital with. i'm really really bad at axe-rushes. so i knew i'd be taking my sweet time at this one. and i knew health would drive me crazy. no grocers was going to be HUGE, and oasis was probably going to lack resources in the first place. in fact, it did even more than i realized it would, because it was small so people didn't have enough to share in trades even when we got along, ugh! nobody knew mysticism, so i could get a hydra, but i decided that i did not want a hydra. i know my style, domination will take me the thousands upon thousands of years. shrines are lovely even if religions don't spread, since apart from money, they let you run 3 more priests if you have the food. so given that, and no banks for wall street if i have less than 5 holies, and knowing that grocers give me health, so 4 cities with grocers is better than one, i was going to do everything in my power to avoid a hydra.

i read a few reports sunday night and those people settled on the spot. so i'll explain why i moved. i didn't want that many peaks and water tiles with no seafood. in-place i was stuck with 8 tiles that would never give me any hammers, or any food surplus to whip, no matter how many worker turns i was willing to invest, and no chance of resources revealed later. well ok, oil in the water, if i ever got to plastics. i settled one south on the grass hill. kept sheep and wheat, got rid of a peak and 5 water tiles, made the 2 remaining water fairly worthless, but overall i think it was a good deal. and with the health concerns i knew i'd have, i wasn't about to chop those forests for cottages. i would need health at my capital since i knew this would be a long game and i hate staring at green ugly clouds. i needed more flatlands tiles for cottages and less water, so i moved. this is a snapshot from the inside i took from the earliest save i found:

on a river still, production, flatlands to cottage (the time it took me to get around to building them ... let's not go there!!), forests i figured i could keep. i did it, hoping there wasn't bronze or iron on that hill. to me the move was worth losing a harbor, particularly on a map where i wasn't sure i'd get all 3 types of seafood. in fact, i was missing crabs until literally the turn that i won, haha on me!

i researched meditation first to be different, since i always go polytheism when i'm aiming for a religion. most of my huts were gold, which annoyed me but ended up getting me two free cities without making any new enemies . i marked some potential city spots on the map while some warriors were out exploring, but because i hadn't built a settler yet i didn't continue the religious tech path. often i like to control religious spread in normal games, but bizarrely here it didn't matter as much to me ... if i had to dominate the world, then by definition i wasn't going to be able to get along with everybody anyway, so if they want to make holy cities for me, that would be great.

napolean founded hinduism in 2480, and judaism in 1720 BC. it was good luck that the same guy founded both (and in separate cities!), so there was only one AI with a self-founded religion to deal with. but i never did bother with trying to make anybody one religion or another, we all got along well enough even as heathens until i declared war on 'em, it was odd. i self-researched CoL to found conf and then oracle CS, self-researched philosophy for once (rather than lightbulb it) and popped a prophet for most of DR, so i got all 5 of the religions that he didn't. i didn't use the "only i know mysticism" advantage to hog all the religions, actively avoided hogging the early ones, but i really loved being spiritual and i did about a zillion anarchy-free swaps. if i had to pick a favorite trait, on most days spiritual probably would win.

my cities: by 2200 i'd seen 3 sets of horses, 2 were in spots i'd already marked as "oh maybe think about a city here" before AH came in. my second city was to the west, on the coast towards cathy, getting the fish/ponies/wine. i left the marble/fish/ponies for later.

my third city was a gift from the barbarians. gold hill, corn, cows, plains hill, oasis, more FP than your doctor wants to know about. in 1800 it was only pop 1 so it would autoraze, but it was working a floodplains so i hoped it would grow fast and nobody would beat me to it. they didn't! in 1320 Cuman belonged to me. i used some of the gold from those huts way back when to upgrade a warrior to an axeman to get it. i hadn't built a single axeman yet, but i did have the copper hooked up. the barbs in the city were still only warriors then, not archers, he didn't even have to use a promotion to get a heal between the two fights! i felt very powerful *giggle*. many years later, in 1180 AD, i ended up moving my palace there to help with distance costs, and because the commerce was really good enough that bureaucracy was worth it . when i later traded for ironworking, Cuman, turned out to have iron yay! it was my only source of iron until after i took over France, now that i think about it.

in 1040 i saw another juicy barb city. it wasn't on the exact tile i had marked, it missed the freshwater bonus, but it had 2 elephants, 3 floodplains, lots of rivers in the BFC. i knew oasis map only had horses in the north. if i could control who got access to elephants to some extent too, so much the better! it grew to pop two in 800 BC, and my brave axemen convinced them by force to join the Candyland Empire. when SciM came in and i could see oil, the two cities that had oil closest to them were, you guessed it, the former barb cities *giggle*. i needed oil about as much as barbs did, mind you, but still cool. Medina i placed myself, and had to move because of the barb gift of Ellies, and i think i could have placed it better, but, that's okay.

by that point i did have some commerce finally, and was working on oracle. i still didn't know masonry because i was ignoring religions still, and seeing it on the trade screen gave me important information: nappy and fred "had their reasons" for not wanting to trade it to me. that gave me hope that they'd build the pyramids for me, and leave me the oracle, and maybe i'd have time to self-research CoL and pick CS from the oracle. it would take 11 turns to research CoL, but this is vanilla so then i could get CS right away, so i took the gamble and won, yay!

this is the Candyland Empire is 500 BC:

as usual, i renamed the capital Peepsville. so the first city i founded with a built settler is named Mecca, fish/pony/cow/double wine northwest. Medina, i ended up not liking where i put it, but hey what can you do. the free conf missionary is on his way from Mecca to PV, he failed. what's even worse is that i had whipped Mecca to size 1 hoping that it would not be picked as the conf holy city, since the other cities would have more health issues. the RNG did not reward me for my cruel oppression grrrrrrrr.

i had basically no barb issues. PV had a ton of culture fogbusting for it (holy city, stonehenge, now the oracle too), mecca had cathy fogbusting to the west, and cuman had nappy to the south. medina and ellies were where my two big beefy axemen were, so the few barbs that did try to harass me had to come to the places i was best prepared to handle them. so the barbs weren't troublemakers for me. they were basically free exp and free cities, except for Bulgar which made Fred mad at me, more on that later.

my first GP was a prophet from stonehenge. since Buddhism was as well spread as any other religion on the planet as far as i could tell, being in a total of one city, building the shrine seemed an obvious choice. it did spread the faith some after that, including to a nappy city that was EXACTLY where i was going to place my own, by the east coast ponies and marble grrrrrrrr. i'd been actively not fogbusting that spot, i was saving it for the barbs to make me a free city you dork! i was not amused.

so, my next city, Damascus, went over there in 150 BC a bit north. it got the clams, and i got culture on those ponies before nappy did (stonehenge and buddhist missionary, his city was buddhist but his state religion wasn't buddhism haha). so cathy and i were the only ones with horses ever. i didn't realize until writing this report that Damascus was the last city i ever founded that was part of what i considered "my real empire". at the end i'd settled 12 cities, but most were crappy "claim these land tiles as my own before somebody else does" cities. looking at the list on the turn after i won, there are 12 cities i think of as "real" cities. i built 4 of those, but that's counting my initial settler. 2 the barbs built for me, and 6 nappy built for me. i didn't settle a single city after Damascus for more than 1000 years, and then i went on a little "okay, let's block this land so that they don't annoyingly make one" spree of 3 cities within 80 years, but they weren't great cities by any stretch of the imagination.

375 BC Pyramids BIADL. but nobody changed civics, and nobody had changed in the last 5 turns so nobody was in a waiting period? that was really odd. napolean finally went Representation in 100 BC, which is 11 turns later, so then i knew it was him. the biggest bummer about the pyramids being built was that i didn't know currency, so i couldn't ask fred for the gold he got for losing the race /sigh.

my original plan was to attack cathy first, figuring it would be best to just own the north, easiest on the economy, etc. also she had crabs in moscow's cross, but no spares to trade, and i didn't have crabs. then in 75 AD i decided to go for nappy first instead. he didn't have horses, he didn't have elephants, he had cities real close to me that wouldn't cost a lot and would be productive, and he had the pyramids. welllllllllllll, it takes a while for me to get ready for a war. and i'd never had open borders with him, since he held a grudge, something about me being buddhist while he was hindu or something. so i never got to see paris itself, and couldn't judge until i actually declared and went inside the closed borders how many troops he had in there. that is my defense for my weedy behavior later.

in 350 AD i got the message "Ananda is born in a foreign land." nappy's is the only land i haven't seen, ananda is a prophet, make the hindu shrine for me buddy! he did, in 375. and then in 400 AD the absolute OMG thing. Parthenon BIADL. Parthenon is just as sweet captured as it is using my own hammers, i want that one! that was when i 100% decided "cathy honey you can live, nappy made me presents that i can get much more use out of than he can!" i got homer in 500 AD for being first to music, and saved him for the war.

560 AD, Imhotep born IAFL, from parthenon-powered pyramid-GE points i'm sure. so i'm wondering what nappy will build for me? i got my own lucky engineer in 600 AD, had run a forge for a few turns in PV which had a mix of GP odds but no GE sources other than the forge. so i sent my engineer to build angkor wat in Ellies, which was food-rich but poor in hammers. AWat makes priests awesome everywhere, as many hammers as an engineer + 1g and i need gold. and the building itself lets you run 3 priests in the city where it's built, so bingo, use a GE on it to get it somewhere that would by definition benefit the most but be least able to build it! several turns went by, nappy didn't make anything with his engineer. i decided to gift him a tech, as a sort of subtle request for a present. i gave him theology, and...

bingo! of course seeing the theocracy part first i was like oh CRAP i forgot that comes with it i am sooooooooooo dead now! he'd gone to EOOHRN status in 600 AD. i was not his worst enemy, freddy was since he some other kind of heathen, and i was #1 in power. i figured that nappy would declare on fred but of course i'm paranoid and would have freaked if he had declared on me. i was definitely going to joyfully try to conquer france while nappy was distracted if he declared on fred.

in 800 AD (remember how i said it takes me a long time to prepare?), Heron was born in a far away land. in vanilla it doesn't tell you what type they are, so i checked the xml, bingo, engineer. notre dame was on my "this is just as good captured" list, but nappy didn't even know alphabet yet , so it took a few turns to gift him up to music. these are my actual turn notes from 860 AD: "oh napoleon, bless your predictable heart! Notre Dame has been built in a far away land!!!! and gifting him music got him up to cautious hahahahaha. nappy will even give me open borders, yay, i wanna see paris! combat1 medic march axe, archer, cg1 archer, cg2 archer. behind 60% defenses. that's IT. holy crap i've been ready for CENTURIES! but no, actually i wasn't, i needed the extra shinies." Lyons i'd been able to see into the whole time, it was paris i couldn't, and i figured it's his capital, it would be better defended. well, not in this case, he had way more troops in Lyons than in Paris *giggle*.

so ummm, yeah, i kind of took a long time preparing and was ready really a lot earlier than i thought i was . but i got two special ordered presents! and in 920 AD i told nappy his head belonged on a pole...

[KMad]

this is how the culture was spread out before any cities changed ownership. you can see nappy's annoying Rheims on the coast, and how george and cathy both expanded around fred, it's kind of a jigsaw puzzle.


so i started taking French cities. he wasn't really good at fighting back. 1010 was a big year, i got both Paris (hindu holy city, complete with shrine) and Orleans (jewish holy city, no shrine), completing my collection of seven holy cities. (oops, make that 7=6 in this case, since mecca was a double holy. yes, mecca, the one i'd wanted not to be a holy at all. thank you, RNG!)

homer came along for the ride because creative fred's borders were pretty close to paris. given that paris had wonders that i'd be getting the effects from, but not the culture points for, i wanted a great work there. this is the picture the turn i captured paris and orleans, after the culture bomb.

the tiles to the west remained no-man's-land for 2 or 3 turns like they always do when they've been contested, but i took them over soon enough.

look at the paris nappy built for me, i love it so so much!

the obelisk is my free one from stonehenge, i had no calendar resources until i captured some french cities so i'd been avoiding calendar. in fact, no buildings at all survived the war in nappy's cities, except for the wonders and shrine. but i am not complaining the forests tho, that's unreal! i guess we know why he was a bit behind and didn't know alphabet in 800 AD, no commerce, but how bizarre is it that an AI has that many forests left in his capital in 1010 AD? he built the pyramids, and he wasn't the only one trying, since Fred also gave me the 'We have our reasons" redline. maybe he'd chopped for the mids and later got regrowth? but when i watch the AI workers, they don't actually chop, the forests get chopped as they irrigate or make cottages, which makes it impossible to get regrowth. so i don't know.

EDIT: read swiss pauli's report. his picture of paris from inside is just 80 years after mine. nappy built 2 wonders in my paris (mids and parthenon, cuz the chapel and notre dame were GE'd) and only GLib in swiss pauli's paris. but my paris has TEN forests left in the city cross and his has only TWO! that is so bizarre .


Tours was the most annoying city to travel to, so it was the last to die. but i about jumped for joy when i got there. i'd never been able to see that pigs tile due to the whole closed borders issue, i had no idea there were piggies there. pigs = health! i took Tours in 1060, and the French civilization was destroyed. this picture is that turn after he's dead. i love that blue tile that still is french, they haven't gotten the memo yet i guess *giggle*. i picked up silk, sugar, and pigs from nappy, one shrine, and four world wonders, two of which i'd special ordered. i also arranged to get dye, secondhand. george had never been willing to trade me his spare dye for anything less than my spare horses, even when i tested it by having 50 gpt available, not gonna happen. capturing louis's marble/fish city got me a 2nd source of fish, so i could trade him fish for dye.

thinking about it today, the smart thing to do would have been to move a stack quickly on his roads town to Tours while we had open borders, then moved them out to no-man's land and declared, saving myself that really long annoying journey. but was i smart? no, of course not *giggle*.

basically, that is how much i truly suck at the whole "wage an early war" thing. i decided who to target in 75 AD. i didn't actually declare war until 920, but then by 1060 he was gone forever. it sure does take me a while to get going huh? but once i decide i'm ready, the actual war is fairly fast. when the bad guys declare on me, i tend to die fairly fast. which is why i'm so good at the whole political "let's be friends, don't hit me ok?" thing. i have to be!

Bulgar, that barb city north of Tours, was more annoying than i knew. those red letters make it hard to read, but i'll type it out too.

i had seen Tours (but only from the northeast) and Bulgar years and year and years ago, and i planned to raze Bulgar and resettle it north just to block the land for myself. well freddy goes and captures Bulgar in 940, during my war. i was all pissed off, i did not want him as my neighbor in what was about to be my corner! then i saw barb swordsmen hanging around outside of it on my way to Tours, and i rooted for them (without telling fred of course). the barbs won in 1000 AD, and took the city back, yay!. so then i was able to raze it when i got around to fighting them after nappy was taken care of. i later discovered that Fred gave me "-2 you razed one of our cities!" penalty. i knew that the current owner wasn't always the one that gives you the razing penalty, but i hadn't thought that him owning it a grand total of six turns would be enough for it to count in his mind as his. maybe because it was a barb city, there's no waiting period, just instantly "our city yay"? didn't make him mad enough to want to kill me, so it was okay.

in 1030, buddhism (my state religion) got a natural spread to Chicago, so i had holy city spying capability. but Chicago was a German city, it flipped from america that very turn *giggle*. george's troops were still standing in it, at 50% health. that was probably the most funny holy vision timing i've ever had.

so okay, i went to war, one guy's dead, i got some very nice cities from him. every one of his cities was well place IMO. one was brand new, i actually put off the war a bit to let Marseilles grow to pop 2 so that it wouldn't autoraze *giggle*, but they were all in good spots. does this mean that i should go on with my killing streak and dominate the planet? no of course not! it means "OMG i had a successful war, now it's time to crawl back into my comfort zone" duh! so i did the sort of things that are rather more typical for me.

in 1180 i moved my capital, from Peepsville up north to Cuman, the former barb city with the gold. it had excellent commerce even tho its villages weren't yet towns and some of PV's were, and it was closer to my new french cities. i figured if it had a negative impact i could move it back, since it wasn't the Forbidden Palace, it was the real Palace, and i didn't see any rule against that . distance maintenance went down by a whopping 9 gpt, beakers went up by 6 yeehaw. 1200 i got a lucky GS (40% odds, i got very few scientists this game) and he made an academy in Cuman. that palace move totally scared me. in 1240 i'd been tweaking things make sure to get my next GP from Ellies, while it had a chance to catch up to the cities with more GPPs. it was guaranteed to be a prophet, and was going to come in 1250. then in 1240, ack, Harkuf is born in Cuman! it was fine, he was the free economics GM, i just didn't think of Cuman as my capital so i didn't make the connection *giggle*. he got me 1700g at a cathy city that was only pop 8, there were several bigger cities on the map, but that one was the most profitable, so he went there. i was doing okay gpt wise but i didn't have a big treasury so i figured that was the way to go.

then i built stuff like hagia sophia, spiral minaret (but forgot to note the before/after gold), taj mahal, oxford, my first camel archer, settled some totally crappy cities on the eastern side just to make sure fred didn't settle there to annoy me, and debated with myself over and over about who to attack next, cathy or fred? holy cities had been spread out according to my eeeeeeeevil plan for grocers/banks, so i was able to build wall street, it went to peepsville which had the buddhist shrine. wall street is like a zillion hammers so i started it during the golden age, had to whip away i think four citizens for that 5th bank to qualify for it, but it was worth it to be able to start it with the bonus hammers. i just still sort of feel bad for those four people.

1450 was a double whammie year. the Golden Age ended, and Scientific Method came in. so i lost all that bonus commerce, and the great library, and my 13 monasteries! at 50% science, i fell from 640 beakers to 500 overnight, gold from 571 to 461. PV had GLib and 3 monasteries, it went from 121 beakers to 70 waaaaaaaah. but i really figured i was teching more than i needed to anyway. that most people who really know how to fight wars would be actually fighting those wars by now, and that i was being silly, so, i didn't really worry about science too much.

in 1490 i finished wall street, PV could pull in 96g at 0% science which was cool. i was almost done researching physics and debating whether to be silly and drag out liberalism all the way to radio to build the eiffel tower to get tiles with culture. that same year Fred finally adopted Bureaucracy . it just really brought home how different the game plays out when we're not trading with each other ... i usually do. i didn't have +4 fair/forthright trades with these guys in this game, because i knew i'd have to kill them, and that was 100% bizarre for me. i always have that bonus with the ones i pick as my friends, but here i picked no friends.

george washington was teching by far the fastest of the AIs, but he was the one i'd decided i didn't need to fight to win, or if i did, i could leave him for last and would probably only need a city or two. so i wasn't really worried about technological superiority. it's more like, well, you know how everybody says that the AI sucks at overseas invasions? well, that's pretty much how i am, but in land wars. it's not about the tech, it's the fighting itself, i'm just not good . so i was way out of my comfort zone in the goal for this game! but it was fun and wacky.

but then somebody else did have to die ...

[KMad]

i'd been making a bunch of troops even during my little wonder-building extravaganza there, figuring i'd have to take over cities someday to get these land tiles for domination, and by 1520 i was ready to go to war with cathy. i had 4 stacks, 2 great artists along for the ride. one stack was in george's borders and could reach her southernmost city in one turn, one stack up by her pony city, a stack to head to here, a stack to head to there, that sort of thing. so i called up cathy and said "that's a pole in my pocket, and no you are not happy to see me." even though i thought i could win the battles, i wasn't quite ready to capture Moscow or St Pete yet, because of this:

that tile marked X, and like 8 or more around it, would be legal to settle if there's no culture there. fred had a settler wandering around up there, and when i capture those cities, the tiles won't be covered by russian culture. i want that land for myself, so i just wouldn't capture those big 3 until i can settle my own city on the X. i don't need X to pop its borders, i just need it to exist, and then the 2-tiles-away rule does the rest of the work. but i was afraid to wait even one turn between capturing those cities and making X city because if george got that square i'd have to go further north and that's less tiles and that's not a good thing.

anyway, 1520 i declared war and captured Vladivostok which was right on my border, with an american city to the west and german cities to the south. i culturebombed it. capturing her workers was fun, they changed clothes, from turbans to overalls!

1525 i took Novgorod (her pony city up north) and Yekaterinburg (her southernmost city, pressured by George from SE and NE). i used my 2nd GA to culturebomb Yekat.

1530 George learned Military Tradition. interesting choice, given that he never ever had any horses, so he couldn't make cavalry, and hasn't ever earned any experience except by killing barbarians, so he can't make west point. it enables defensive pacts, but he wasn't friendly with anybody, and it's not a pre-req for anything at all. i think george was a bit there. i took Yaroslavl and here is an excellent example of why hubby thinks i go into war a bit overprepared. from my notes: "i have a stack of 19 standing right here ready to fight. she has 2 longbows with no promotions, 40% defense, and is not on a hill." but you know, safety in numbers. i didn't want to, like, die or anything! i'd seen three horse archers of hers total before the war, so obviously i knew she could make troops *giggle*. and seriously, that stack was going to moscow/st pete too, it wasn't just for Yaro. even i am not quite that insane. Yakutsk was a completely crappy city surrounded by george and fred, the only thing it had going for it was one oasis tile, so i'd never be able to whip anything out of it, i razed it when i won that fight this turn.

1535 liberalism came in. i considered taking communism because "communism ... now included free with liberalism!" sounds funny to me. fission was also an option, but i thought that might be unwise since i had gifted george uranium after learning physics to earn +s (he couldn't use it for anything after all *giggle*). so, for my silly option i took radio, to be able to build the eiffel tower, thinking i'd finish off cathy, see what kind of numbers her land gets me, take over some more tiles with culture and see how much i need at that point. Virgil was born in PV, i think i got more GAs in this game than in epic 11!

then i started thinking, well, i bet i have enough troops for fred too. WW is about the only problem in the russian war. eiffel helps with WW (part of why i'd wanted it). i could get miltrad quick, and i had 2k in the bank. and i had the pyramids. fred had gunpowder, but nothing upgrades to muskets, he'd have to build them, and he didn't have nationalism, so he couldn't turn his nation into a hood. so i was pretty sure i could beat him quickly, even tho at this point cathy wasn't dead yet. for me, that's incredibly brave! i think the "random human personalities" box was checked for this one!

and i wanted to try something i'd never ever done before. so i pulled a Shaka! i adopted Police State before i even knew the pre-reqs to the pre-reqs *giggle*. of course, pulling a Shaka is adopting police state in about 500 BC, but it still made me feel brave and warmonger-y. i had never used police state in my entire life . i went nationhood too, since drafting is fun, and free religion for happiness and for culture to grab tiles with. the happiness difference was very impressive. science took a big hit of course, losing rep while i was in merc, but MilTrad was the last tech i planned on bothering with, after that, just get gold. steel seemed a bad idea because not only would cannon be overkill, i wouldn't be able to build cheap cats any more. altho i guess i could if i pillaged my iron--didn't think of that while i was playing. mecca had been 26>26 happiness at 20% culture before the civics swap. afterwards, 28>22 with all the happy faces from religions, barracks, and lowered WW. and then i could afford to draft with nationhood, super cool! holy vision went away with free religion tho, i always miss that.

1540-1560 cathy had 3 cities left, i couldn't capture them since i hadn't settled X yet, so all i did was bombard defenses to 0. that was annoying, but even tho i was trying new, different things and going outside my comfort zone, i wasn't going to DoW fred just to kill his settler before i had my typical 3-more-stacks-than-required near his territory. come on, that might be dangerous! besides, george could settle the spot anyway. i drafted various cities back home, to deal with fred soonish.

in 1540 i realize that the culture bomb way down south in Yekat took a tile from george that's actually legal to settle, and i now have another GA since Virgil was born! this type of thing is not going to win me the game, but it sure is going to make me giggle, so i made a settler and a pony, and started them walking with Virgil to settle on that tile if it's still mine i'm done hiking.

1550: not only was that tile stilll mine, Yekat had by then stolen a village-5-turns-to-a-town from george yeehaw! yeah yeah, we're supposed to choose wisely, and using Virgil for moves like this aren't going to win me the game. but i just could not resist!


how fun is that? a culture bomb way off in yekat got me that tile, so i could settle that close to Boston! now my family has this thing about Boston. i went to college there, and we love veggietales. likely nobody that reads RB has ever seen them, but in their song "pirates who don't do anything" they have a line "and i've never been to Boston in the fall". when i sing the song with my nephews, i'm required to giggle and put my hand over my mouth during that line, since i cannot sing it. in my case it would be a lie, i lived in Boston during the fall four years in a row! so anyway, it really really really made me giggle way too much and i couldn't not do it, i don't care how weedy y'all think it makes me . i am already a proud possessor of a Queen of Weed crown baybee.

1555 popped another one. all this time i thought they were unhealthy just because they were unholy and had no grocer!


1560 finally my "i shall make it illegal for fred to make cities up here" settler is on the spot and ready! so Moscow, St Pete, and Rostov are captured, and cathy is out of the game. i had been chopping some of the forests that nappy had thoughtfully left me at paris for eiffel tower, and it was now whippable for 18 population. since paris has a total population of 18, and the tower will be done in 4 turns without whipping, i decided to not sacrifice anybody.

1565 WW was gone now until i start the next war, and the only troops i was even slightly short on were catapults, cheap to make even without the police state discount. definitely time to change civics. so i picked 3 cities to draft, went thru cities to do a round of whipping, then did a civics swap to US/FS/caste/merc/FR and went thru cities again to see who wanted to rush buy. a few cities were a bit upset still, some grudge about having been drafted or somesuch, so i turned up culture, that wouldn't hurt with claiming tiles anyway.

i move troops down towards fred, planning to attack from former france but also from america too. my thinking was, the longer i wait to start it, the longer i end up having to wait for his cities to come out of revolt, like i'm waiting on cathy's still. which is darn annoying! i had 61.21% of the land in 1575 with three russian cities still in revolt. oops, i found out that southern russian border city i settled (so that fred couldn't settle) was in danger of flipping to america! then i decided i didn't really care. there probably weren't enough turns left for it him to get two successful revolt rolls, since you only get a chance to roll once every 10 turns, and if he got that lucky, well, he deserved that city. so i left it with one musket in it and completely ignored the 8% or so chance to revolt, again very not typical of me!

1575 new plan, because i'm still suffering the annoyance of waiting on russians to recognize the awesomeness of the Candyland Empire, is to raze the German cities and resettle my own. that means i won't have his population to whip away, but i'm in US so i can buy stuff, and i wouldn't actually have his population to whip away for 5-10 turns as it is what with the revolting. this way i can stay in caste for more border pops = more land tiles. i looked at germany and marked out a dot map for where i'd settle cities, and came up with 7 spots, knowing that 2 was probably enough, almost positive 3 would be enough, once the last of cathy's cities came out of revolt in 5 turns. but you know, safety in numbers. i did my little "plan where to send this stack, which way should that stack go" thing, and got it all set up. i got to micromanage and obsess and it was great fun, i was really in the mood for that for some reason, i got a kick out of it! and that was KNOWING for sure that the game wasn't going to last 30 turns from this point no matter what. so the cities had NO NEED to be perfect cities. they could be craptacular, it absolutely totally completely 100% did not matter, in theory. but it mattered to me, because picturing the city crosses in my head and then putting the "x" signs on the map is cool *giggle*. that turn took forever, and i wasn't even at war ... except with my own indecisiveness. it was terrific fun! i am so lucky that hubby was at work. if he'd been watching, he might have needed surgery to preserve his vision after all the eye-rolling he'd have done!

1580 yay eiffel tower finished! i'd been so obsessed about that wonder.

1585 i had 62.49% of the land. start moving settlers to meet up with troops. at that point i realize i might have crossed the overprepared line into complete insanity territory. after everything moved down from former russia, and the stuff i'd build/drafted etc., was in place, i had 6 stacks of doom and destruction! one could start the fight the turn i declared (city touched my borders), 3 could start fighting the turn after the DoW, berlin sadly would take 3 turns to reach, 4 turns to start fighting. meanwhile, i think it'll take only two cities + the russian cities to realize my greatness to end the game, so we're talking like 7 turns maybe. but overkill is fun

in 1595 i was at 65.16% land, with two russian cities yet to come out of revolt. i declared war on Fred and captured Cologne that turn, paris put out so much culture that its borders touched the city itself. i razed it so that i could resttle, but my culture expanded instantly. that by itself took me up to 66.20%! so now, this late in the game, i realize that 1% isn't exactly a million land tiles, but that was about a perfect case, most of his cities i'll have to fight his other cities to gain tiles around. anyway, i'm here, i have the troops, i have the settlers, i have the dot map, i'm gonna kill him til it's over. settle Anjar two tiles further west. i worked the 1 pop as an artist, it's making 30 culture/turn, not bad at all. and because i realize 1% isn't all that many tiles, and because the battle at Cologne was such a riproaring success, i did something really bizarre for me. i'd been counting Frankfurt as "can't fight til next turn, because the cats have to move a turn to get there to bombard it." i went crazy tho. i could reach it and attack with my camel archers and cavalry this turn because they have two movement, so i did! even tho the city wasn't at 0% defense, little miss cautious me! and i won razed it to settled Fustat, which i stagnated to work an artist. i went even crazier... i bought theatres in both cities without a single hammer invested! i was really going nuts. neither of those things is typical for me. being overprepared, that's very typical. fighting a city that still has defenses up, when i have seige that can get there next turn? no, not typical *giggle*.

1600 oh wow -- i won? that was enough, cool i had NO idea when i started the war with cathy that the game would be over so soon. that was wild! and after hitting "one more turn", finally, after thinking about it and wanting them oh so many thousands of years before ... i finally got moscow's crabs! literally on the turn i won. sid has quite the sense of humor sometimes *giggle*.

looking over stats at the end was really weird. i had 27 cities at the end, and according to statistics i built 12 cities. but that's including the crappy ones i built purely to claim land tiles for myself. looking over the final list, i realized that of the cities i considered my core, i only built 4 of them, and one of those used my starting settler! i got 2 really great cities from the barbs early on, and 6 cities from louis that were all at least good and a couple were fantastic. that never ever ever happens to me. i guess that must be why some people like to use axes on other civs instead of just on barbs huh? there just might be something to that "capture somebody else's capital early" theory after all.

edit: one last thing. i didn't notice the score until i reloaded the last turn again today to take some replay screenshots. granted, i reinstalled the game a couple of months ago, so not all of my games are included on the hall of fame, and not all of my games are played without mods. but of the games on my hall of fame, this one is far and freaking away the highest hahaha. it is so very very very true that cultural and diplo and OCCs score low on the official formula . none of my other vanilla games have scores even half this high, i about cried from laughing too hard when i noticed that! i don't usually pay attention at all, since i play the kind of games that Firaxis has decided "don't really count" for scores. i should probably not even admit that i seem to never have scored even half of 73,499 points before this game. now i'll go run off and giggle some more.

[Swiss Pauli]

Nicely played, though I think obsessing about health is somewhat...errrr..unhealthy.

[KMad]

Nicely played, though I think obsessing about health is somewhat...errrr..unhealthy.

and obsessing about the eiffel tower is perfectly rational?

[Ruff_Hi]

... because the battle at Cologne was such a riproaring success, i did something really bizarre for me. i'd been counting Frankfurt as "can't fight til next turn, because the cats have to move a turn to get there to bombard it." i went crazy tho. i could reach it and attack with my camel archers and cavalry this turn because they have two movement, so i did! even tho the city wasn't at 0% defense, little miss cautious me! and i won razed it to settled Fustat, which i stagnated to work an artist. i went even crazier... i bought theatres in both cities without a single hammer invested! i was really going nuts.

Go Girl! We have to get you on a war based SG one of these days. And congrats on your victory.

[FeedBack]

Congratulations, Kmad! You beat me by two turns!

This game proves you're no longer a war-free girl. Actually, I do think you over-prepare. But it's good when the resistance isn't that high, isn't it?
I echo Ruff. You need to be dragged in a warmonger SG. Soon!

[The Judge]

Good win.

[Rik Meleet]

I like your style of playing and reporting. For you it really matters.