Adventure 52 Ronald's report

[Ronald]

Adventure 52 Knowledge is power

The setting:
Map script: Donut, balanced resources, center ocean
Game speed: normal
Difficulty: immortal
Civ: Inca
Leader Huayna Capac
World size: small
Opponents: 5
Victory: any
No random events

Some preliminary thoughts on the game:
Immortal: That is the most interesting difficulty for me. It is the one, where I have to fight hard to achieve victory. Most of the times I win, but it is always interesting and definitely no easy play for me.
Donut is a nice map, like inland see you have only two neighbors. There is not so much land, so early land grab is very important. Opening screens reveals we have only 599 land tiles, that will be about 30 cities or 6 per Civ, so early expansion is very important.
Hopefully we have nice neighbors. Let's see what the mapmaker had in mind for us.

Here is the start and I am trying to find out where to settle:


Settle in place: Probably nothing wrong but I don't like it. No fresh water
Settle 1 N: Brings the lake as a 3f3c tile to the city, no river.
Settle 1 S: has a river, gets 3 more water tiles also not perfect. Being financial, water is not so bad.
Settle 2 W: would have been really interesting, but at the time I did not think about it.

I finally settled 1 S. I am curious where other people settled.

Game Summary: Domination Victory in 1824, never used spies

[Ronald]

I met my first neighbor: it is Qin Shi Huang (Ind, Pro)
Not a bad neighbor to have, no backstabber, no religious lunatic, decent trade partner. Him being also Ind makes on the one hand my Ind less valuable, but since he is so close to me, he is most likely my first target. So hopefully he will build some nice wonders for me.



My second neighbor: Mansa Musa (Fin, Spi)
Nice, really nice neighbor to have. The best trading partner in the game, almost never starts a war. He most likely become the economic powerhouse in the game. I have to watch that he is not running away. The mapmaker was really kind this time

The other civs are a mixed crowd:
Tokugawa (Agg, Pro): the worst neighbor to have starts right next to Qin. They will probably fight quite early
Boudica (Agg, Cha): Another warmonger. Could be helpful to slow down the tech pace of Mansa and/or her other neighbor, the last civ in the game:
Cyrus (Imp, Cha): Imp could be very valuable on this small map. He has the best chance to end up with the largest empire after the early expansion.

After having explored most of the donut, it is time for some dotmaps:
the first 2 cities I want to plant in direction to Qin to get as much land a possible.



Pink dot would be nice, but is very unlikely to be available. Cities 3 and 4 need IW to clear jungle, that is why they come after 1 and 2. The 2 black dots are filler cities. The one closer to Qin will have horses, but no food, so will be difficult to grow. The second will be great after Calendar with 2 happy resources and the pig from Cuzco.



Pink dot would again be a very strong city, but will be settled by Mansa much earlier than I can get there. Orange city will be city 5 if the spot is still available



Tech path so far was: AH, Fishing, working on BW (got mining from a hut) next should be Wheel, pottery, IW, writing, Aesth, Poly, Lit
After finishing the work boat, I will chop and whip settlers and workers



2nd city is settled, working on number 3



3 rd city is built, Quechuas are on the way to bust fog for the next two cities, IW is due next turn to be able to remove jungle.



Ollantaytamba is built. It should be able to grow and connect marble by the time I finished researching literature.
I did not compete for any of the early wonders. The first wonder I really want is the Great Library to catch up with the others. Parthenon and Mausoleum are the next plans. I want to bulb Philo and part of Education, be first to Lib, take Nationalism, build Taj Mahal and fire up 2 or 3 golden ages.

[Ronald]

But that is still distant future. First, have a look at my next neighbor:



Qin is in really bad shape, only 3 cities so far and room only for 2 more. He will be a good first target, but also that has to wait for some time.

For now, let's build more cities and workers:



The initial expansion phase is now over. I still would have space for 2 more cities. One north of Cuzco, the other close to Mansa. Probably I should have built them, but somehow I never did.
That's the state of my empire:



And here are my cities:



Cuzco is building the Great Library and then will grow all cottages.



Tiwanaku is slow building Maoi and is working at a GS for bulbing Philo



Machu Picchu is building Mausoleum



Ollantaytambo will get lots of cottages and will become my second commerce heavy city.



Corihuayrachina will become my production city: Farms, mines and workshops as soon as I have a 10 XP unit, it will build heroic epic



Huamanga is not a great city. It will be a hybrid and definitely useful



Vilcas has no food resource, but with the farms and the horses it will be able to build units at a good pace.



Vilcabamba will be a good commerce city quite fast. The borrowed pigs will let it grow fast and when needed it can borrow iron as well.

So far, I am quite happy with the development of the game. I think I am in a very good position. I have the most land and the most amount of cities. With the Great Library, the cottages and some good bulbing I should be able to catch up fast.

Great Library was built in 150 AD, Parthenon in 300 AD and Mausoleum in 350 AD. My plan is working.

It is now 500 AD. I am 1 turn away from paper, Boudica just declared war (with no units in sight) and for the first time I am no longer dead last in score.

[Ronald]

In 560 AD, I am just 3 turns away from education, next turn I am building Maoi and still no sign of any units from Boudica.



My Capital is producing more than 130 beakers, national epic is just a few turns away



It is 860 AD. I won the race to Liberalism. Took Nationalism as my free tech. Started to build Taj Mahal, research on Military Tradition. I am producing 400 beakers at 100% and for the first time I am number 1 in score





Time for a few statistics (I am in my GA, so it looks even better):











We are now in 1000 AD and I am making almost 600 beaker at 100% (and GA)



The same shot in 1200 AD: Now I am at almost 1000 beakers, fired up my next GA and prepare for war against Qin.

[Ronald]

Qin Is in really bad shape:

He lost the city of Nanjing to Toku, the border city of Guangzhou is very little defended, I am marching in:







Guangzhou is belonging to me.

The forces in Beijing are no match for my army:







Then also Shanghai falls. The more difficult opponent will be Toku. You can see his stack in Nanjing and in Satsuma. Shanghai is completely surrounded by Japanese culture.

[Ronald]

It took some turns before I felt that I have enough units to declare war on Tokugawa:





After the first round of the battle of Nanjing:





Second round:





Third round:



Victory at last, and a lot of Japanese units died in the battle of Nanjing. Still, Toku produced new units at a good rate and the war was bloody on both sides. The final outcome was clear, he had no chance against my superior units and larger production capabilities. One city after the other was conquered:







After the research of railroads I founded Mining Inc. and gained a whopping 20 hammers for each city:


Also completely unexpected Mansa wants to become my Vassal. Great, be my guest.



Qin is the vassal of Boudica. Since I will DOW him in the near future, I have to give my military techs to Mansa, so that he can defend against Boudica




In 1690 AD finally the last Japanese city fell. A good point in time for some more statistics:







h[img]ttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/73414713/adv52/Civ4ScreenShot0070.JPG[/img]

[Ronald]

Now I started to the war against Qin and Boudica. It was quite easy to capture the last Chinese city:







The other front, Boudica versus Mansa was more interesting. Boudica has a rather large stack outside of Djenne, but Mansa suicided his artillery and the stack is badly wounded, so, there should be no danger for Djenne:









and now also my stack of fresh Infantry and Cannons is arriving:



The battle of Comuladunum was not vey challenging:





After loosing the city of Comuladunum, Boudica had enough and became my next vasall.





I was very close to a domination victory.

[Ronald]

So now it is just Cyrus, but he is advanced, especially he has Fission, so beware of nukes:







He will be tough, but the final outcome should be clear. I have a much higher production, so he will be toast.
When I had another look at the map I noticed something I had not checked before:







No Aluminum. So no Modern Armor. Tanks will be the most advanced units. Let's go for the final kill:







Ecbatana has the Statue of Liberty and the HQ of Creative Constructions:



When his next city Pasargadae fell, Cyrus Handed in his capitulation





So next turn should give me a conquest victory:



What? Domination! Why?
Maybe somebody can explain to my why it was a domination and not a conquest victory.

And the final victory screen:



Close to 1,5 million points, good.

Thanks to T-hawk for this great adventure, I enjoyed every minute of it. Looking forward to Adventure 53

[Ronald]

Replay:

I replayed the game until 1000 AD with a different position of Cuzco (2W) and a much denser city spacing. I managed to settle 11 cities ( I had 8 before) and created a much stronger economy:

[Qgqqqqq]

Umm you only get conquest if you eliminate all opponents (you had 3 alive don't think vassals count). What is the problem?