Epic Two: Western Slave Traders - Uberfish

[uberfish]

Opening the save Delhi has already been founded, not in the spot I would have chosen but I'll live with it. And we immediately have a tough decision to make. Founding a religion would normally be tempting but isn't allowed by the variant rules. In any case, we need a food resource online asap in order to work the gold and still grow. This means researching AH or fishing. AH will take 28 turns to research going via Hunting, fishing only nine. However it will take about 15 turns to get the fishing boat out and 5 to move it into position and build the nets at which point I would still have to build a worker. Therefore I decide to go for AH first and allow the worker to build. It can start building the gold mine while waiting for AH to finish.

Buddhism gets founded while I'm pressing end turn. I start on Fishing and a warrior. When the cow pasture completes I set Delhi to work the gold and build two boats. I will switch back to high food, growth mode when the clam is online. The next techs are sailing, so I can get off my island, and Wheel to connect resoures. I then head towards Bronze and Iron so clear the irritating jungle sitting on top of my gems. Frustratingly, the AI gets Hinduism extremely late in 2110 BC as my first Galley pops out and I start on a Settler which I send to the middle of the island immediately to the SE. A worker will chop an obelisk there then start roading and clearing the jungle. Meanwhile I have a fishing boat out exploring the world.

My fishing boat contact Caesar and Cyrus to the west and I send one out in the other direction. I notice the map seam... Why is this game called Eastern Gem Dealers when we start in the west? Iron Working finishes in 1420 and I start work on connecting my gems. Open Borders with Caesar. Masonry is next for the Great Lighthouse, then Meditation and Priesthood. I have no experience with Archipelago, but since the computer will be researching Sailing and is founding religions extremely slowly, I think it's more likely that I'll miss the Great Lighthouse rather than the Oracle if I don't go for it first.

In 895 my two gems are connected and I have contact with Toku and Mao too. I start on Mathematics, hoping for Currency from the Oracle and perhaps an enhanced chop to complete it. Cyrus has extra Ivory. He won't trade it straight up for gems. He will trade for both gold and gems. I am not sure whether this is sanctioned by the rules as being profitable or not since the ivory is not immediately useful for elephants. Since it's currently a break even on happiness having a second gem that can't be sold anyway, I take it. As it turns out, this trade would have absolutely no effect on the game anyway.

I do indeed get the Great Lighthouse in 790 BC, and circumnavigate with fishing boats in 715 BC. Caesar, and then Genghis demand gems as tribute in turn. Which I refuse as no gifts are allowed When Mathematics comes in I try one chop to speed the oracle, but the computer unfortunately gets it in 655 BC before I can whip it to completion. Oh well. I research Alphabet next, but no one will trade anything useful without giving Alphabet away which I am not willing to do at this time. I research Currency next as planned so I can start selling gems, as I connected the third source in 400 BC, and finally contacted all enemy civs - er, customers - in 355 BC.

During this time I have been working on settlers as and when I can. Heading east down the gem trail. Always east, towards more gems. The expansion plan (note how much of the world has been uncovered by fishing boats):



Shortly after this, trading opens in earnest. Cancelled the current gold+gems for ivory deal with Cyrus - since I no longer have excess gems this trade would result in a net loss not a profit. Instead I sell gems to him and two other civs for 1 or 2 GPT each. Cyrus and Caesar rapidly get annoyed with me for trading with their worst enemies (each other.) I will be periodically checking the trade screen, and cancelling and renegotiating the deals when they have either more GPT or a resource I want. I also trade for pottery, polytheism and CoL.

Delhi starts work on the Hanging Gardens and then Great Library, while my other cities are either whipping their population like mad since it's their only reasonable way to build infrastructure or using their food surplus to build settlers or workers. In 220 BC I discover the sixth (which I'm guessing is the last) gem source. Every one of my first 6 settlers has claimed a gem site; besides this being in the spirit of the game, there's another reason for this... Genghis for some reason has settled two cities on the wheat island south of me ignoring islands nearer his capital, which must surely be draining his economy into maintenance at this stage. At least there aren't any gems on it. My capital growth ends up temporarily capped by happiness since I can't keep my gems, researching Calendar and Drama then trading for Monarchy and revolting to Hereditary Rule quickly fix this problem.

I start work on Civil Service as Delhi is the only good production city right now and bureaucracy would really help with that. In 65 AD an Engineer is born in Delhi. Another tough decision. Pyramids are still open. However I no longer have a monopoly on Literature and it's possible some AI may have marble. I value the great library more at this point, since I am not really running specialists much because of all the whipping. However I wouldn't get full value from the Engineer if I used him to rush the library since that already has 10 or so turns invested into it. I compromise by adding him as a super specialist to Delhi, which will still speed the Great Library by a few turns and help my production all the way to the end game.



That's the 4th city - I compromised on its positioning so that the second border expansion would claim both gems and wine. Below you can see Genghis being annoying. Red circles are where his cities must be, I'll claim Blue myself later but Gems are a higher priority for now.



The AIs are busy fighting religious squabbles amongst themselves. I don't see anything changing hands but the two highest scoring AI Caesar and Cyrus on the one hand repeatedly declare war on each other, and Cathy has been involved with skirmishes with the members of the Buddhist bloc (Genghis, Toku, Mao.) I make an executive decision that religion is bad for business and not to ever adopt a state religion, and also that Optics will be my next priority to fend off any attempted invasions. Since Genghis ignored his south island expansion with 2 crab + gems in favour of stealing my south island, I return the favour by stealing his now.

I get a second great engineer in Delhi. Pyramids are actually still available, but I don't see much point in building them this late. I don't think I'd get much benefit from them before I research constitution myself, and Colossus is an 8 turn build anyway so there's little point rushing that. I add him as another super specialist. The Colossus completes in 695 AD and I connect the 4th gems and sell it, then head down the road to Liberalism. My production still sucks and I still only have six cities in 725, all on the gem sites of course, but I can finally take my capital off wonders for a bit to build settlers. I connect and sell the 5th gems in 815 AD and the 6th in 890 AD. My scouting Caravels have failed to uncover any more gems in spots that galleys couldn't reach so it's likely that I indeed have a monopoly now.

Caesar finishes the Pyramids in 995 AD, the latest I've ever seen it built. The great library coughs up a scientist in 1085 as Education completes, and I get an academy. I reach liberalism in 1178, and since it's an island map take the obvious choice of astro...

No, I don't take astronomy. I take nationalism! All expansion sites can be reached by Galleys and I need that Colossus to fund my expansion to far flung resource colonies. The AI is suffering badly tech wise due to expanding too far away from home too early and letting me have all the Gems, and won't reach Astronomy any time soon. I need the Taj Mahal and Statue of Liberty for victory points.

In 1364 AD I reach Democracy. The next GP is a scientist, and it builds an academy in Bombay (influencing this decision is the factor that this will also help with the culture war.) I am heading to Economics next. In the meantime I trade Civil Service around for a pile of gold and switch to Universal Suffrage for a bit to rush things like settlers, work boats, granaries and a university. In 1448 AD Delhi completes the Taj Mahal. When Economics comes in 1460 AD I switch back to Representation along with the compulsory Free Market. With 1500 in sight I check the rules and note there is in fact no bonus for Statue of Liberty, but there is for seafood controlled at 1500 AD. I quickly build a few fishing boats and send them out to claim the various useless extra fish within my cultural borders. Next research target will be Rifling, I want to draft up a better defence force than 1 axe/mace per city before anyone gets astronomy.

Upsettingly in 1478 AD Tokugawa declares war on me, presumably due to the ridiculous diplomatic penalty I have from trading with his worst enemies: -6 from trading and a further -2 from refusing to stop trading! He only has one galley that I can see, and empty at that. I whip a couple of Caravels. Annoyingly, I lose a galley that guarding a fishing boat at favourable odds and it gets pillaged costing me 1 victory point. Even more irritating, another Japanese galley sinks one of my caravels defending on a coastal tile a few turns later. However he has no invasion force anywhere in sight and my caravels will be able to cover anything he does send.

In 1502 AD I check the scorecard. I control 17 fishy resources and six gems. The only Japanese troops in sight are a few empty galleys and a longbow/settler pair on a galley, which I promptly sink. In 1532 Rifling finishes and I connect up the 3rd gold, which I thought was a monopoly but on closer inspection there's one next to Rome. I have a huge tech lead thanks to wonders (AI lacks Education and banking.) My main problem is I have only one decent production city because all the high production sites were taken by the AI while I was out grabbing gems, and I'll be forced to obsolete my wonders soon.

Time to look at the score sheet again before I forget which wonders give points and figure out what win I'm going to go for...

I'm already down 10 points for missing the Oracle and I need to make this up somehow. There are a few points awarded for fastest victory in several categories, but going for fastest victory is incompatible with the bonus goals of building ICBMs and SDI and researching future techs. Points are awarded for being a pacifist but it seems going to war and conquering islands will trump this in points since it's one per island, so long as I don't eliminate anyone and thus lose customers. If I am to get any cities to size 25 (it's possible with 2 seafood, one city will need a great merchant to help) I'll also need more health resources, which are very sparse on this map and explain the AI's massive spreading out this game.

So warmongering it is! It seems the best plan will be to do a lot of conquering now, allow the victims to remain alive but small so I can sell gems to them afterwards, and then play Sim City for a while and get really bored once I get near the domination threshold.

With Rifling finished I switch to Nationhood for 5 turns and draft 6 riflemen while researching Astronomy and Chemistry to upgrade my boats. The loss of the Colossus does hurt a little. Rinse and repeat. I still only have one city that can has any decent hammer production whatsoever, so almost my entire military will be made up of Drafted riflemen from this point on. I'm not sure why I get the unhappiness penalty at this point, surely being drafted into the army is better than being whipped to death to build some random building! I will hold off on Corporation for a while as well, since it does nothing but lose me cash with all my cities being coastal, and Riflemen are a more efficient draft per population than Infantry, so I'm in no hurry to get Assembly Line. I'm also delaying Scientific Method since I'm about to own two holy cities and I want to build the relevant Monasteries.

I continue alternating 5 turns of nationhood, then 10 turns in bureaucracy since this is the only decent way to get an army from my low hammer cities. It takes a while to ship the troops around but Toku can't put up any serious resistance. In a hundred years I reduce him to two islands in the north. Unfortunately he doesn't have any cash to buy gems with now, hopefully he'll acquire some by the end of the game.

In 1670 I begin the next war, against Genghis. I haven't really forgiven him for stealing my south island expansion. I take that Wheat island, then his home islands, then notice another island of his with gold on it that is unfortunately culture contested by both Russia and Persia, but I take it too. He has 1 gpt after I sign peace in 1730 so I sell gems to him again.

The Mongol home island had a convenient bottleneck allowing the troops setting up to invade Karakorum to defend the already captured Beshbalik.



Rushed the forbidden palace in 1703, as close to halfway around the world from Bombay as I could manage.



Caesar has managed to pop a second gold source from a mine, so I declare war and go for his two main islands. The expansion falls quickly but there are tons of troops on the main island with Rome, so he gets to grenadiers by the time my rifles arrive in force. It's a bloody struggle to take Antium - the one difficult battle of the game - but once it falls I upgrade the troops to infantry and that's the end of resistance. I sign peace and reopen the gem shop as another key piece of my late game strategy, the Kremlin, completes. This will allow me to finally give up slavery in the future and still build hospitals and things in zero hammer cities. I have conquered the Sistine Chapel so Rome's borders pop quickly, giving me the world Gold monopoly in 1804.

There's one source of silver missing. Cyrus owns it and he's reached Riflemen by now. While rush buying infrastructure I'm building up a Marine force to defeat him. With the islands I took from Genghis and Toku I finally have some cities other than my capital that can put out regular hammer based production. But I get interrupted by...

Mao declaring war on me in 1849... just like Tokugawa, the best troops he has are Medieval era and no invasion force is even in evidence. WTF!

The AI in version 1.61 seems to like declaring war randomly even when it has nothing. I take all his scattered colonies but leave his two core islands because they are too large, only control resources I already have, and I want to keep him buying gems. That diversion over we move back to the Persian front:



I proceed with the war on Cyrus as planned, activating his defensive pact with Catherine that I didn't realise she had, but she apparently doesn't have any mobile troops either. Marines, destroyers and battleships swarm all over Cyrus taking both his core islands and his Antarctic silver colony before the first city comes out of rebellion:



He sues for peace and I leave him with a few scattered islands again. I take a couple of small islands from Catherine too and she also signs peace shortly after. (At this point I am taking only small islands, to squeeze more in before the Domination threshold hits.) Both of them immediately buy gems, and Tokugawa has found 1 gold somewhere so I have all 6 civs as customers again. I then notice that Cyrus, for reasons best known to himself, didn't bother connecting up his silver so I have to connect it myself, attaining the Silver monopoly in 1890.

The UN completes and I promptly vote myself Sec Gen then force free trade, open borders and free religion. It seemed fitting with the theme of the game.

The rest of the game is just boringly maximizing score since I have crippled any AI that could possibly pose a threat. I reach the 100 million pop mark for the first time ever in 1930, and future tech 5 in 1933. I emulate real world history by passing the non-proliferation treaty after building my nuclear stockpile, and then start sending settlers out to all the crappy small islands for points. I had allowed Mao and Cathy to keep their large islands mainly because they were weak anyway. Larger islands would bring me closer to the domination limit and I wanted to settle lots of small islands in the endgame for points.

I nearly blow a fuse when the city governor for one of the newly founded point cities decides to steal a tile from one of my size 24 cities which was running a 1 food surplus and turn it into a 1 food deficit for 10 turns, forcing the game to drag on an extra 20 turns if I want to max its size out at 25... I'm also running a lot of culture to try and claim islands, which seems to be moderately ineffective because the spread of culture across water is extremely inconsistent. I do manage to spawn another great merchant speeding up the end by a bit.

Finally in 1994 I turn off 'avoid growth' on all my 49 food size 24 cities - just six of them, I just couldn't make myself farm over Delhi - and let them grow to 25. The next year I order 19 settlers positioned on random islands to found cities, which triggers domination:



The next screenshot shows a few things. 1) It's possible to build a city 2 diagonally away from another city so long as they're on separate islands. 2) My empire is laid out in a really ugly fashion. 3) Our spy is totally puzzled as to what on earth the Japanese are doing with that aqueduct.



No one has even built Apollo yet. I then had to count my islands... I used alt-S to put a little number on each island to ensure I didn't count any island twice. I may have missed one or two somewhere, but I'm going to claim 112 islands, minus one which is a one tile peak so 111.

The 6 size 25+ cities:



And trading summary:



So, the scoresheet:

220 BC______ discovered all sources of Gems. (Hint: Gems appear only in jungles!)

895 BC______ connected second Gems.

400 BC______ connected third Gems.

695 AD______ connected fourth Gems.

815 AD______ connected fifth Gems.

890 AD______ connected all Gems AND have all six rival civs as Gems Customers.

1804 AD_____ connected and controlled all Gold sources in the world.

1890 AD_____ connected and controlled all Silver sources in the world.



Items to score in 1500AD:

6__________ Gems sources controlled and connected. (30)

17_________ Seafood resources (Fish/Clam/Crab/Whale) controlled and connected. (17)



Items to score at game's end:

Yes_________ Did I remember to follow all the variant rules? (No religions founded, adopt Free Market, etc?)


Yes_________ Did I win? (25)

Domination__ Victory type (0)

1996________ Finish date

Yes_________ Did I capture or raze a city to acquire Gems, Gold or Silver?

Yes_________ Did I capture or raze a (non-Barbarian) city for any other purpose?


6___________ Gems controlled. (30)

6___________ Customers. (30)

6___________ Gold controlled. (1

6___________ Silver controlled. (12)

6___________ cities I founded by 1500AD that have reached size 25. (4

111_________ total number of islands that are COMPLETELY within my borders. (111)

No__________ Did I build the Oracle AND use it to discover Math or Currency? (0)

Yes_________ Did I build Taj Mahal? (5)

Yes_________ Did I earn Circumnavigation bonus? (4)

Yes_________ Did I build Great Lighthouse? (3)

Yes_________ Did I build Hanging Gardens? (2)

Yes_________ Did I build Strategic Missile Defense? (4)

Yes__________ Did I build Globe Theater in my capital? (

No__________ Did I build Globe Theater at some other city that has gems?

Yes_________ Did I build a Laboratory at every Gems-controlling city on the planet? (5)

5___________ Number of Future Techs discovered (10)

10___________ Number of ICBMs that I control (not used) at game's end (max 10). (10)


For a score of 372 + any possible bonuses for fast gem connection.

[uberfish]

going to go through and add a few screenshots.

[Sullla]

Jesus Christ! 111 islands?!

I suspected that the two places people could outscore me would be through leaving the AIs alive with one city to reap the "customer" benefit for selling gems, and by deliberately settling only the smallest islands to milk that scoring goal for all it was worth. You performed admirably in both areas, and outscored me by about 20 points. Congratulations on a well played game.

Sullla - Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

[darrelljs]

Originally Posted by Sullla

Sullla - Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

Man, when I read his report I felt so bad for you...and I've never even met you

I felt good for uberfish though, he played a great game

Darrell

[Sirian]

Originally Posted by Sullla

Sullla - Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

If it's any consolation, during my approximately thirty month run on the Invitational Descent Ladder, I spent something like two months at the top of the ladder (across four different championship runs) and fifteen or sixteen months in the number two slot. ... Well, OK, that's probably NOT any consolation (since it wasn't zero time as champ), but I practically had my name on that number two slot there.

OK, nevermind. That wasn't very helpful, after all.

So how about this? Not all the reports are in yet. You may yet slip to number three or four in this game?

Hmm. That sounds like strike two.


I'm going to tiptoe out of here now. "Look! See that over there?"

*scrambles away*


- Sirian

[Zalson]

Argh! The worst laid plans of mice and men...

I figured that someone would beat my 1st gems time, but not so badly. Curses!

111 islands111 that's seriously a lot1

A very good game

[uberfish]

Ok, since the clarification about the 1 tile peak, guess I'm claiming 112 islands now then for 373 base... I haven't checked all the dates but I suspect Compromise is still winning anyway.

[Dark Savant]

Color me surprised about the ability to settle 2 tiles away diagonally -- I didn't think you could do that. Another 2-3 points lost there, oh well.

It took me a while to figure out the way culture spreads across water, but it works like this. You can culturally control a tile on an island you do not have a city on by way of one of three methods:

(0) Those bits of culture weirdness that occasionally appear after newly capturing a city. In my experience, these always resolve themselves once the cities captured go out of resistance.

(1) You can control tiles on water or other islands that are within big fat cross distance of any land tile of any island you have a city generating culture from. This applies only if you have a city that projects culture far enough.

(2) You can also control any tile that you have had previous cultural influence on (this allows you to exceed big fat cross distance). This also applies only if you have a city that projects culture far enough. Of course, this also applies only if you have lost the city that exerted control there before.

[Jabah]

You can even settle 2 squares away in any direction as long as you are on a different landmass.

After is a screenshot from my game showing it. (The chinese city even revolts to me after)



Jabah