Adventure 18 - Vaugula's report

[vaugula]

I must apologise for my reporting style, I have been trying to improve my game report writing but haven't quite nailed it yet.

My strategy with this game is to play a peaceful game and win through peaceful means. I will go for a Space Race win but will have a crack at a diplomatic win to see if I can win earlier. My strategy for reaching Tycoon status is to run a profit all the time and to never spend any money on upgrades or rushing. As I don’t plan on fighting many wars I won’t have experienced troops to upgrade and can just rebuild them and disband the old ones.

The start looks tricky as the only improvements I will have access to before currency finishes are mines, roads and cottages. The only military I will have access to is warriors.

I found in place because I don’t see any compelling reason to move. I start a warrior with the intention of switching to a workboat after Fishing is finished.

Working the flood plains Timbuktu reaches its happy cap quickly so I micro manage it to maximise hammers and halt growth to finish the workboat. After the workboat completes I then build a worker. The worker builds cottages on all the floodplains.

I build 3 warriors for fogbusting duty and start pumping out settlers. Here is my dot map for the first 3 cities:

I found cities on all those spots and build up some more before expanding further.
Djenne:

Kumbi Saleh:

Gao:


I meet the Inca and Washington and negotiate open borders with both of them. NC has founded Hinduism while Washington has founded Buddhism(my guess is he got lucky with huts?)

After Currency is finished in 1560 BC I research Bronze. After Bronze is finished I notice that Code of Laws can be researched from here and Confucianism hasn’t been founded yet. I set research for Mysticism -> Code of Laws and manage to found Conf in Gao.

I then build infrastructure and tech up quietly. Once I research Monotheism I convert to conf and revolt to OR. This immediately annoys my neighbours but they can’t really do much about it other than cancel OBs. I manage to keep a Corn for Gold deal with the Inca even though they don’t like me enough to have OBs. Washington asks me to cancel my deals with the Inca but I decline because he already hates me and the Inca is more powerful than we are. In this time I build theGreat Library, the Hanging Gardens and the Colossus in Timbuktu but miss out on the Great Lighthouse, with all my cities costal I think the last 2 of these wonders would have been great.

After a 1000 year moratorium on further settlement I start building more cities. I found Walata:

Niani:


The barbarians have built the of city Sakae which is in the way of my expansion so I capture it and keep it:

As can be seen from the screenshot the Incans were pretty keen on knocking it over too.

I found my final city on my home continent, Awdaghost:

That Incan stack to the west has a settler in it, I think they had designs on that spot too.

With my home expansion wrapped up I start exploring the world and find Qin to the NE. He doesn’t have any religion so I will start sending missionaries to convert his cities, hopefully giving me an ally.

I build Notre Dame in Timbuktu. I meet Catherine and Victoria. I complete Liberalism in 1130 AD and select Nationalism as my tech. I thought about Astronomy but didn’t want to obsolete the Colossus. I still haven’t produced a Great Prophet for my shrine so I switch to Pacifism (and Free Speech, of course) to hurry along my Prophet points in Gao (I have 3 priests assigned). Timbuktu keeps producing Scientists while Gao hasn’t managed to produce anything yet.

I meet Elizabeth, Qin converts to Conf and the Incans and Americans go to war. I get the circumnavigation bonus. I build the Taj Mahal in Timbuktu. I finish economics and revolt to Free Market. I send my free Great Merchant off to Moscow and get 1500 gold for my trade mission.

One important resource I am missing is Iron. Catherine has some but wants pretty expensive terms to trade it with me. There is an island in the middle of the ocean that has a source of Iron on it so I send off a Galleon with a settler to claim the island for the Mali. Tadmekka is founded:

I generate a GM from Timbuktu who is also sent off on a trade mission to Moscow, this one earns 1700 gold.

Once Democracy is finished, I revolt to Universal Suffrage. I am still laying down critical infrastructure with my labour civic set to Serfdom so I hold off on Emancipation for now. Another war breaks out between the Incans and the Americans. HC asks for my help and I agree although I don’t ever send any troops or participate in the war in any material way. In 1660 AD I finally got a Great Prophet, build my shrine. Timbuktu is close to popping another great person so I hold off revolting to Free Religion until that happens. I build the Statue of Liberty in Timbuktu.

With all my crucial railroad done I revolt to Emancipation. I build the Ironworks in Timbuktu and Wall Street in Gao. I notice there is a barbarian city of Libyan on a large island that has the world’s supply of Wine on it. I figure I may as well go and liberate it so I land some troops and take it:

It is badly sited but I keep it anyway. There are colonies of other powers (notably the 2 English Queens) on this island but this city is far more developed than their cities. I find out a few turns later that there is an aluminium deposit just outside the fat cross on this city so I assign 2 artists to push the borders out to stop the other colonies from taking it away from me.

At this point in the game I basically run out of stuff to build in my cities so I build Broadway, the Pentagon, Rock n Roll, Eiffel Tower, Hollywood and the UN (a mistake in the context of this game I think – see below). I bee line for Robotics before Rocketry so I can build the Space Elevator to help with building the space ship parts. I have to build it in Djenne though as Timbuktu is slightly too far north.

The first S-G election goes my way with the English Queens backing me and Qin and HC backing Cathy. I have a crack at a diplomatic win which results in Qin and HC voting for Cathy and no one voting for me so I won’t try that again. I pass single currency (The Mali dollar, surely) and open markets.

I trigger off a golden age to help with the last parts of the ship. I lose the next S-G election to Catherine by 18 votes. I have a horrible sinking feeling that she is going to do something I am not going to like. The first proposal is Global Emancipation, while annoying for a Spiritual civ, it isn’t the end of the world so I vote for this one and it gets passed. The next proposal is one I really don’t like – Global Environmentalism. I search around the diplomatic screen for the “Vote no on the next resolution” option but I can’t find one (is there one?). I vote no and my cronies, the English Queens, also vote no but it still gets up by 17 votes. No one was even in Environmentalism! I don’t think they even had the tech! Don’t these people know what is good for them! I am tempted to reduce the population of the other voting block but I figure I have made it this far without any real wars (I did sink some ships one time but that hardly counts). The final proposal was for Global Free Speech which I support. At the end of the game there was to be another election between me and HC which would have been interesting and maybe a chance to repeal that stupid Global Environmentalism Civic but I didn’t make it that far.

I launched my ship in 1951:

With over 10,000 gold I believe that makes me a Tycoon

[sooooo]

Well done! Welcome to RB.

I must apologise for my reporting style, I have been trying to improve my game report writing but haven't quite nailed it yet.

No need to apologise at all! It was excellent. You didn't waffle or go overboard on screenshots showing combat with barbarians, but instead wrote a clear, concise report which explained your thought processes.

[Atlas]

Congrats, nice win.

No need to apologise at all! It was excellent. You didn't waffle or go overboard on screenshots showing combat with barbarians, but instead wrote a clear, concise report which explained your thought processes.

Agreed

[Ruff_Hi]

Well done. That looks like a nice game and a good report. Your city placements were a little different from mine, but we both agreed on that hammer city!

[scooter]

Was that war with washington that I see a phony one to boost relations with Huayna, because it looks like it was Huayna taking the territory (judging by the minimap) but it says you were in a war? Anyways, great game and congrats on the win.

[Clovis]

I also put Djenne in that spot. Some people went for the three-gold site first, if I had thought of it I probably would have.

Capac also asked me to declare war on washington, which I did, but I only sent one unit in his direction the entire war. Huayna did all the fighting, I got bonus diplomacy points!

[Clovis]

I just noticed that in the victory screenshot one of your tech options is horseback riding? Is this a glitch or did you really not ever research horseback riding?

[vaugula]

Thanks for your nice comments guys, you give me confidence in my report writing abilities. Now if I can just get good at this game

we both agreed on that hammer city!

That was a great site. This game was the game where I spent the most effort working out my city placement for my hammer city and I think it paid off nicely. Just to go completely overboard with the city specialisation I layed down as many workshops (and farms to support them) on the flat lands as I could - from Metal Casting onwards!

Was that war with washington that I see a phony one to boost relations with Huayna, because it looks like it was Huayna taking the territory (judging by the minimap) but it says you were in a war?

I was involved in 2 or 3 wars with Washington in the game. They were all instigated by other people (HC and Victoria) and I accepted for the relations boost. Washington ended up getting smashed by HC and then Victoria and was relegated to Z tier pretty quickly. The most warring I did with him was to sink some ships that came to pillage my nets, It was Frigates vs Destroyers and Battleships so it was hardly worth writing about.

I just noticed that in the victory screenshot one of your tech options is horseback riding? Is this a glitch or did you really not ever research horseback riding?

Heh, that cracked me up everytime the tech screen came up in the late game - we can launch a ship to Alpha Centari but we have no idea what a stirrup is! I just didn't see the need to research HBR and so didn't waste time doing so, by the time I had enough spare hammers to build a mobile reserve I had tanks already.