Adventure 34 - Mc(I)C(S)lure

[McClure]

Well, like I'm sure most people did, I settled on the Corn ...



You know something good is coming after that :neenernee

Short version: Chose a Great Prophet and settled it immediately, eventual Religious victory/Backdoor Domination in 1690 AD (turn 248 normal speed).

Much fuller report later ...

[T-hawk]

Hey,

I can't help but notice quite a few modded interface elements in that screenshot. Not a big deal for an unscored event, but any such mods do necessarily relegate such a game to shadow-land. If it's BUG, we had a thread discussing that .

That said, I look forward to the full report, even as a shadow. Reports from McClure back in the days of Civ 3 succession games were always quite interesting.

[Ruff_Hi]

It is BUG and, I too look forward to an ICS report.

[McClure]

This was actually my 2nd go at the game. The first also used a settled Great Prophet, and was well on the way to victory, but seemed quite … lacking. It was completely unstylish and this event cried out for a victory with panache. (Or pancakes, I was getting pretty hungry.)

So after thinking about it a bit, I located my muse: Charlie’s traits and UB were crying out for ICS. We can use Imperialistic for fast settlers and Rathauses to keep maintenance costs down. And being protective means we can build perfectly acceptable city defenders without needing Barracks.

I had read a few previous ICS SG’s (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=267595 and http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261986 for the successes), but neither had used the HRE, so at least we were in somewhat new territory here.

With the meta-game decided I re-visited Great Person selection: Artist/General/Spy were useless for this variant, and the Engineer was marginal. What I needed most was money as I would certainly crash my economy hard in the settling, so the choice was between the Merchant and the Priest. While the Merchant would give an extra coin, the Priest was advantageous as it would also give a boost of 3 hpt to settler production. GP chosen, the game is afoot!

My first step is to hack the save back to Normal speed as I dislike Epic speed. This apparently re-shuffles the deck on random events. Or maybe it doesn’t. I’m confused, but it’s mostly irrelevant. Just a head’s up in case I get events no one else does.

The second step is to settle the capital. Having played the game once already I could sort-of dotmap based on the capital location, but this wasn’t the deciding factor in moving to the corn. I wanted a 3 fpt CC so I could grow to size 2 in the minimum number of turns and still complete a pair of Warriors.



This is important because the sub-variant starts here: If we’re going to ICS, let’s throw both cheeks into it. Every time a city grows to size 2, it builds a Settler. Every time a city grows to size 4, it builds a Settler. Every time a city grows to size 8, it builds a Settler. Yup, we’re going I(CD)S: Infinite cell-division sprawl! (It’s a shame Mark1031 isn’t on these boards anymore, so he can cringe at my biological mixed-metaphor in city names. Zygotes don’t make spores. But I’m just an amateur at this anyway.)

So by virtue of settling on the Corn I can build my 2nd city on turn 19.



By turn 39 I have a third city up, and a Settler in production. Zygote has already built a Settler at size 4 and goes back to build my 1st worker. (What don’t all games go like that?)



Spore 2 (eventually re-named to Spore 1-2 in a vain attempt to track which cities built which settlers who founded what new cities when … Why?) Eh, anyway, the artist formerly know as Spore 2 would eventually house Versailles and a Shrine, and yield the unintended consequence of making Lizzy build her Hermitage in London to keep from losing all of its tiles.



Took the safe option as Health would never be a problem since I expect to have small cities, and because I’d kill over half my population to try for it. (Note: ICSing was also tempting on this map because we didn’t have access to much in the way of happies, so smaller cities were better.)

[McClure]

This is probably overkill since only my border cities would require expansions, but I like culture and wanted a prophet source to build my eventual shrine. Charlie has a chance to found a religion right off the bat (although I suspect those who tried might lose out to Mansa and Izzy), and I think a popular play will be Oracle-ing CoL, but I decided to hand-research through CoL and skip the Oracle in favor of faster expansion.



Thanks to the settled Prophet we’re out to 6 cities and can still run 100% science. That’ll change fairly soon as one notes four of the six cities are building Settlers. I never said cities couldn’t build Settlers at sizes that aren’t powers of 2.



So in 900 BC we found Taoism in Spore 1-2. We’re also going broke but the Prophet Zygote spawns will fix that soon enough. The free Missionary went to convert Lizzie and the first built Missionary converted Caesar, so there was never much of a threat that the AI would attack during the massive initial expansion.



CoL also unlocked Caste System, which was essential to keeping the economy afloat during the rough seas ahead, since I won’t stop expanding until the land runs out.



This guy does his thing and the economy is a bit healthier. I also discovered a side-benefit to ICS: each of my cities that had Taoism served as a seed for infecting (damned biological mixed-metaphor again) AI cities (and my own) with Taoism. The religion spread very quickly even without significant effort on my part to build Missionaries.

[McClure]

Of course, Caste System is much more sexy with this phallus. Now I can research and make money with merchants.

Surprisingly, by this point in the game (~250 AD) I wasn’t the clear land leader and was lagging in troops and pop. Being 1st in GNP is a bad sign for the AI, though …



The variant also calls for a strange tech-path. After CoL, I bee-lined Music (through Lit) to open up Sistine and use the free GA to bulb Theology to open up the AP. That almost worked (had to backtrack to Drama first to get the bulb right).



The backbone of the ICS/Religious economy is the combination of the Apostolic Palace, the Spiral Minaret, and the University of Sankore to provide cash and bulbs from religious buildings. I added Sistine to my must-have list for no real apparent reason, other than style points. I had delusions of passive-aggressive conquests, but that is somewhat at odds with ICS settling.

Right about this time the land that could peacefully be settled ran out, stopping us at ~16 cities. When I saw the end coming I relaxed the “city must build settler” requirements, as having 20-30 Settlers in reserve seemed foolish. There’s a fine line between clever and … stupid.



Here we’re researching Paper for U of S, and we get what is ultimately a lame quest. I eventually completed it, but all I got was an extra happy from each Colosseum. You can also see Lizzie and Augustus as my Taoist brothers. Augie did discover his own religion (Philosophy) but never converted. This allowed me to continue to research the top of the tech tree and backfill the bottom with Lizzie and Augie. And Mansa, who’ll trade with anyone.

Build the AP



Lose the election.



You can also see from this picture that I wasn’t running strict ICS. A few legal sites were simply garbage so I passed on them, and if a Knights-move instead of 3 squares in an ordinal direction allowed being coastal or on a river I took that spot instead. The Knights-moves generally then had grids built around them, so it stayed within the spirit of the variant.

[McClure]

Then we build Sistine and discover a bug:



The Sistine culture is applied retroactively from when the building is constructed, so it has already doubled despite only exisiting for one turn. We can also note that Taoism is fairly-well spread already.



Yes, I’ll gladly pay 30 gold now for 8 gpt pre-multipliers. This event caused Peter to convert, making it 5 Taoist civs in the game.

We build the University of Sankore in 1070 AD, worth about 50 bpt at the time.

Circa 1100 AD:



A dominant economy with nary a cottage in the empire. Power of the Pyramids! Still lagging in soldiers, although that’ll change soon.




The effect of the Spiral Minaret on the economy. In 1210 AD we also snag the free GM from Econ and are going to use Liberalism as part of a military build-up of Cuirassiers.

[McClure]

A fully tricked-out Monastery. Now it’s killing time.

In 1280 AD we take Military Tradition from Liberalism, and pop a GA to change civics:



Going Mercantile puts a crimp in the AI’s economies, and drafting is generally a backbone of the ICS strategy. Not here though.

I had really wanted to attack the outcast Izzy, but the geography really dictated that Lizzie eat a Cuirassier rush. She had ceased being useful for tech trades and I wanted her land. The war will be fought with Cuirassiers as almost every city will be razed to better fit my grid. I will keep London as it has a shrine, and serves as a new seed for the grid.

A few turns later, at the conclusion of the GA, an army has been formed. All those Muskets are draftees that will follow the Cuirassiers and garrison the new cities I build. All of those settlers were produced in the last 3 turns and a few more would be produced.

War is declared in 1360 AD …



I guess Sistines did help with something (getting 1st-turn access to multiple English cities).



The war grinds on, Mansa declares on me without coercion from Liz although he mostly runs around aimlessly. By 1420 AD he pays me for peace. Whatver, dude.

Then Liz pays Augie to attack me. It was obviously a bribe as Augie doesn’t even have a stack to attack me with in the early turns. After burning through much of the English country side I then thought about vassalizing Liz, but decide against it and she vassalizes to Augie instead. Your funeral, toots.



So that was 15 turns to eliminate the #2 AI in score. Have to do better next time. On a completely different note: We’re producing > 400 bpt at 0% science, and I’m running 30% lux for no apparent reason. Really, I have no idea what I was doing there.

[McClure]

I also made sure to assign a spy specialist to each city that could support one (hence the robust espionage total). I wanted to see if the AI would divert part of their economy to espionage to counter, but even in the waning stages of the game they did not. I had thought that was one of the flaws in the BTS AI, but maybe a patch fixed that.



The New England. Workers will be around soon to plow under those nasty cottages and let us start running more specialists. I’m still at war with Augie, but am planning to whack Mansa next as I like his land better. Despite my significant advantages in espionage spending, he successfully steals my military plans and pre-emptively surrenders. OK, one less nail to hammer. The war with Augie is then called off because he bores me. :zzz:

I then look at the board and decide this game needs to end. So I’ll avalanche Izzy and see where we stand after that. And I do mean avalanche. Having this many cities means I can have 7-8 cities building military simultaneously, on top of what I can draft, so the invasion begins in 1590 AD with a pair of 16-Cavalry stacks. Cities fall … and fall … and …



Interesting event. I forget what the other two options yielded, but it wasn’t of any use at the time. The war is going a little slower because Izzy has fairly robust cultural borders and a lot of hills to slow down the Cavs.



The backbreaker. Now how to finish … Izzy has off-shore holdings and I’ll be damned if I’m going to build a boat. So she has to live. I need this game to end with an AP victory or else I’m going to be stuck doing an overseas invasion as Caesar doesn’t have enough territory to trigger domination. So …



Build the SoL for kicks, assign more Spies ….



No guys, really, I got this one.

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yeah …



Capitulate Izzy, leaving her with one mainland city and forcing her out of Theocracy. That gives me 5 turns to do this …



End up paying her off to switch to Taoism so her votes count double and …



Hmmph. Didn’t need her votes doubled anyway.



That is an alarming score for Monarch.

[McClure]

A few post-mortem shots from near the end ...



We ended up with 40-42 cities, and produce > 850 beakers at 0% science . I also appreciate the 500 EPT with 0% spending as well.

Those beakers were partially produced by Pyramid-powered specialists, as well as the University of Sankore ...



operating on > 60 Taoist buildings (3 Cathedrals as well). Throw in multipliers and the U of S was producing > 150 bpt alone.

Our ~38 Taoist cities were among 70 in the world ...



And the demographics were worthy of a "Domination" victory



That's a > 2:1 advantage in GNP on the next AI with (essentially) no cottages.

Rathauseseses helped with city maintenance, but the Civic maintenance



Hmmm ... maybe staying in OR wasn't the best idea?

[Edit: And tomorrow morning I'll resize the screenshots. Scrolling is irritating 2: ]