Epic 11: Queen of Weed but i did it!

[KMad]

points first because otherwise i'll ramble and forget:

+8 points for the 260 AD stuff: i had a total of 4 cities (hey i'm a late starter *giggle*), and had built 4 libraries, 2 hindu temples, 2 confucian temples.
+5 points for the 1502 stuff: i had 5 universities and no cathedrals.
+0 points navy seal.
+9 points from wonders: i built the parthenon, eiffel, and hollywood without GEs
+25 points for culture victory in 1872. i'd not be surprised if that was the latest one of all, i was the queen of weed in this game but i had so much fun!!!
+24 points for 6 rival civs alive at the end. fred and hatty died, not my fault. saladin, 100% my fault. monty, i did all the killing but he did all the declaring. isabella, alex started it but i did most of the killing.

so that's 71 points.

i had WAY too much fun. i cannot tell you how much this surprised me. this game was going to be weird for me, i knew that going in. i don't touch that aggressive AI box. for me, axemen are barb protection, using them on AI cities without catapults is "huh? how the heck does that work?" hubby would say "overprepared to an extremely ridiculous degree". i have faith in my diplomacy skills (sometimes overly so, leading to my demise), and usually try political jedi mind tricks to avoid wars completely, or at least until i am prepared for them. i rely on that, i seriously truly do. yeah often it doesn't work and i die. often it helps me buy in other guys to help out with DoWs i didn't want, but that wouldn't be so easier here since agg AI makes them agg-ier only towards me, not each other. i was scared to open the save.

well of course i knew this "keep them my friends, let's all get along" approach would not work for epic 11, and that i would most like get completely obliterated, smooshed into the dust in the most painful way. i usually encourage the ones i want to trade with to get along with each other, to avoid "worst enemy" penalties, and expected that to be harder here. and i'd never tried cultural without the slider. i think that i muttered "why oh why isn't roosevelt spiritual" about 2050 times while playing this game. i have played an industrious leader maybe 3 times, i don't know how to estimate how useful it was, especially at prince. organized was great since i went a leeeeetle bit overboard on number of cities as you will see. i always play poorly on prince, i just have no sense of how quickly they'll research things and build wonders. i didn't want to miss statue of libery for example, but i didn't want to research demo too quickly and make it cheaper for them, since i wasn't sure how bad emanc unhappiness might get with only 20% slider and i wasn't about to change out of caste system. wellllllllll, i finished the statue in 1670 AD. in 1872 when i won, only 2 of the 6 living AIs knew democracy, one only because i'd given it to him. granted, having the statue early is in no way a bad thing. but this demonstrates that i'm just not a really good judge of how fast they're to research, and what direction they're going to research, at this level !

i never would have predicted it, but things actually worked out so that only izzy, monty, and HC didn't like me. well, hatty didn't like me terribly much, but she was far away, and she wasn't furious. she came by asking for OB about every 5 turns it seemed like, but she was worst enemy of the world so i didn't give them to her. monty and isabella, that's no different from normal games at all. HC, he was so far away that he never declared on me and i was not concerned. i denied ever demand from the guy. he was not an issue. ever.

the "OMG wow ... i never ever would have predicted in a zillion billion years!" thing...

the fact that they were extra-aggressive towards only me and not each other had been my biggest fear. it actually turned out to be a good thing. it meant i could trade resources and stuff without worrying about those "cancel trades with so-and-so" demands that are guaranteed lose/lose situations. if they'd started out liking each other less i'd have had trouble trading for my precious health resources. they kept their "warmonger respect" for each other, and with this set of guys, i guess enough didn't really care about religion enough to hate HC and Monty for them to be worst enemies. so i was able to trade freely, even with HC who was a heathen, and even with heathen monty when he was in the mood. for my "diplomacy is very important, and i benefit if they like each other in addition to liking me" style, with this set of opponents, aggressive AI was not a bad things at all. yay! nobody, and i mean nobody, except Monty declared on me. and he'd probably have declared even if the game had the "Always Peace" option, knowing him.

i tend to settle aggressively for resources and hope for diplomatic smoothing over of close border tensions regardless of victory condition, and i did that even here. i reached -4 close border tensions with peter, JC, and alex several times. checking saves, i'm at -3 with alex at 275 AD, i imagine i hit that earlier, -4 not long afterwards, and i don't think it ever dropped. none of them ever declared on me, so that was fine, yay!

note about screenshots: as always, i named my capital Peepsville, so expect to be confused by seeing a Washington that isn't the capital. additional confusion this time because i renamed cities late game, so they won't match screenshots i took early game. like, New York is one of the Legendaries, so i renamed it Hollywood, but not until like 1800something. but for the pictures i reloaded old saves for, i did rename it to be consistent. you will probably see some where it has the old name tho, just chalk it up to me being a complete oddball.

i didn't realize until writing this report that i stayed at just four cities from 745 BC until 530 AD. that's 86 turns, and the game has only lasted 202 turns at that point. that seems like forever. what a kook. looking at sulla's comments from the sponsor/shadow, he had five by 500 BC *giggle*. what's more, he already knew which 3 would be the legendaries! now granted, he'd done a cultural game based on wonders before. but still, i am the queen of weed and the idea of picking the big 3 based on how many hammers they could pump out did not occur to me until 2007 AD ... more specifically June 25, 2007 while reading his report, i kid you not. i got cultural victory anyway, and tons of giggles, and had a blast, so it's all good!

my world in 715 BC:

i had met everyone but not seen much of the map at all. i had founded hinduism, and oracled CoL to found conf but not picked a state religion so i had no holy vision. the shot has some spoilers of stuff i saw later that i added to help me remember when i writing another too-long version of the report. like the city alex put later by the western iron (i flipped it, naturally) and an izzy city i hadn't seen but i'd stolen ellies out of its cross (neener neener).

from the beginning my mantra was "okay i hope i live through this". i'm not quite sure at what point even figured out what cities besides peepsville would be the legendaries. i had his wacky plan that i should kill saladin. not sure when i came up with it but my notes say that in 700 BC i was busy building barracks to actually officially do that, i was going to make myself do it. i mean, he had marble, and he had wheat which i didn't have, that's a granary resource so it's +2 health, he had deer for +1 health, and health is good. and he wouldn't open me up to any new border clashes, my only new neighbor would be the ocean. i'm the world's WORST axe-rusher, so i knew this was a bad idea, and i know i'll put it off far too long, but i'm the queen of weed. izzy (who was the last one i met i think, even tho she was so close to me) was buddhist and so was monty, hatty and JC were jewish. slowly hinduism, which i'd founded, was spreading to the rest of the world (altho i stayed NSR for a long time to be safe, that's typical for me). i was hoping saladin would go conf so that i could DoW him without earning -you declared on our friend. well, saladin and alex went conf the same year, 280 BC. then in 85 BC, saladin went hindu but alex stayed conf. this makes most of the world like saladin more, and makes me picking hinduism a not-so-good idea since alex won't like that much; that was NOT the plan!!!!!! alex wouldn't open borders so i couldn't get him the right religion yet.

in 55 BC toku HEOOHRN. alex HEOOHRN. i freak out. 40 BC alex goes hindu. i'm like 'yeah sure NOW, after you've decided who to kill, now that i know monotheism and can use OR to speed up building the parthenon, you choose to use the state religion i'd like to use. at the point where me using it won't change your mind if i'm your target. thanks a LOT." but i changed anyway, the happiness didn't hurt and the building bonus was worth more than the extra culture from the one extra religion i had at that point i figured.

actual cut and paste from 35 BC notes: "OMG OMG war trumpets, alex declared on fred it wasn't me!!!!!!!! toku doesn't like fred either, should i push my luck for OR? nah, a few more troops first before libraries/CHs. and get sally to conf. nono, i'm gonna do it, i researched it, i'm gonna do it. wow, 7 hindu civs, 2 jewish, 3 buddhist." i think i sound happy there *giggle*. i was actually so happy that i joined in when alex asked me for help, to get MMS. i didn't actually help tho. going hindu revealed a lot of the map, it was fun. i got to see new cities every time it spread, i hadn't realized how far it had spread, i got so lucky with that! this is from 155 AD, religions. minimap and score shown too, i know so much about the world just through holy vision alone.



in 260 AD, monty declared war on me. i was not surprised by this, but i wasn't exactly pleased either. i had wonders to build, and missionaries of the faith that people weren't following to get the guy i wanted to kill to convert to, etc. i was too busy for a war with a psycho! i signed peace with fred pronto to discourage further dogpiling. at the time he declared, monty had 2 axemen that got stuck when isabella founded toledo to my north, on the coast. he had closed borders with her and with me, and they had nowhere to go. he brought them over to my horse pasture at new york/hollywood and attacked. his troops died, mine did not. that very year i popped a prophet. i'd been debating whether to pop theology or build the shrine. pasting from my notes: "crap a great prophet, just what i was hoping for! i was gonna pop theology and found christianity. but now i really need the money /cry. well, the shrine option will be there later, if i survive. the founding a religion option won't be. so i'll just do that. the little money it'd bring in during the war won't actually make the difference between living and dying i figure. let's make sure new york has the highest chance of holy citydom, since washington already is one, it needs another whip to be 1 less pop, they all have both religions already. here goes. oh oh and i could use theocracy right about now too!!!!!! and, let's even do the anarchy thing before the 2 units that would be done next turn finish, since neither is at new york. popping now. bingo! new york. no difference atm, since i'm hindu, but it'll count later on. and theocracy saves me money." i'm sure popping theology was the right call regardless of the war but the idea of using theocracy in a cultural game is so funny to me and seeing my thoughts at the time cracks me up. add in that i'd probably only ever used theocracy maybe twice in my civ4 life before that in any type of victory condition!

i had holy vision into Calixtlahuaca and i could see units coming in and out of it for years, but none ever did come down. he never sent any troops to my territory other than those 2 axemen. i didn't have OB with izzy of course, she was annoyed with me when we met, and furious from the instant i denied her demand for alphabet until the moment that she died. in 380 AD toku suddenly was no longer WHEOOH, he never did declare on anybody, i guess he changed his mind? someone on CFC said they sometimes say that when they're going to attack a barb city. i don't know whether that's really the case; i do know he took one barb city down south at some point (i don't know when), so maybe that's what was going on, but i don't think it took him as long to prepare for it as he was telling me he WEOOH.

in 500 AD i thought "maybe izzy is blocking monty from reaching me at all". i didn't have her map to be sure of the layout, but i did know that they didn't have OB. turns out that she was. he signed for peace in 545 and gave me 3 gpt, but wouldn't throw in his 20g. he's such a nutcase. he was the only AI to ever declare war on me the ENTIRE game! i still can't believe it! he did it twice. and i won both times.

check out how i got city #5 ... i got to neener neener a bunch of pixels on a screen! Pisae (the fifth city JC settled) was the first that culture-flipped to me, in 500 AD, and i really really wanted it to. this was before i knew drama or music, couldn't even use 20% so it took praying and effort in other ways but i did it, go me! i razed it and settled (with my waiting combat vulture settler) one tile NE so that i could, if culture worked out right, steal a banana tile from antium and a sugar tile from spain. the bananas were roman prior to the flip, and i didn't have any sugar at all, so of course i wanted some! i obsess over health resources, especially in culture games. even with slider only at 20% i expect my people will be quite happy, healthy's not so easy to find ways to fix tho. sugar is health with a grocer, and come on ... this is the Candyland Empire! our capital is Peepsville, named for the awesome sugar-coated marshmallow treats! we simply must have sugar! so, New Pisae was my 5th city. 500 AD was the exact year i learned feudalism (i was still at war with monty then, and figured a boost to my powergraph was not a bad idea), so it came with a free shiny longbowman--that made me giggle a lot!

here is the Candyland Empire in 545 AD:

Hollywood and New Pisae here ended up as legendaries 2 and 3. yes, a city i settled in 530 AD, so nothing in it ever had a chance to double, permanoob hahaha. it had a lot of food. of course it didn't have national epic, since i'm dumb and built that in Peepsville, which had way too many prophet points, but i won't mention that part. it ran a gazillion artists. i kept my workers busy landscaping and relandscaping often, especially at Hollywood and New Pisae. the vast majority of my workers were imported slaves by the end of the game actually, far more were captured than made, which is very unusual for me, but quite often the case for "normal" folks from what i hear *giggle*. i'd farm for artists, then watermill for hammers to make something since i didn't want to change artists to priests for hammers and mess up GPPs, and then farm again, etc. i had enough workers to do that *giggle*. heck post-biology i farmed over spare wine, and spice, and i workshopped a silk, workshopped oil before combustion and kept some that way even after combustion since i found out it's more hammers ... all kinds of bizarre things!

[KMad]

toku declared on fred in 620 AD (he went back to EOOH in 545 AD after his yes i do/no i don't earlier). in 650 AD, alex re-declared on fred. i discovered music and got the free GA. peter had music about 3 turns afterwards, so that was a close one, i got lucky there! did i do anything sane people would do with the music GA? no, of course not. i decided i wanted health resources, and i used him for that. see, peter had created a problem. he settled a city near the sheep that i had wanted saladin to claim, so that i would inherit them as spoils of war when i killed saladin (whenever i got around to it, which i hadn't yet). i couldn't ever kill peter of course, he's one of those scary warmonger-y dudes!! so, i settled a crappy town between peter's sheep city and his fish city. and with the GA from music, i set off a culture bomb in atlanta in 890 AD. got the sheep right away, the fish took quite a while longer.

i later found out that i got coal, steel, and oil down there too. i had so much oil that i left that one irrigated.they had their first revolts in different years (the one that was 25% russian revolted before the one that 0% russian, go figure), but both russian cities flipped in 1364. we'll revisit the troops in them the year of the victory ... they're interesting guys.

it's not a typical move, and it certainly might have slowed my ultimate victory, i don't know the math. i've done that type of thing before in monarch/emperor games on inland seas maps where the land-grab is so bad and i don't want to go to war ... in those cases my goal isn't to flip cities but to seal off the territory so that they can't their annoying settlers in. i don't do it often but i do it sometimes. and it worked out for me, in my weedy way . i had health problems enough even with my sheep and my fish, and nobody was willing to trade me any remember! atlanta was on the list of top 5 cities for a very long time, apparently that list is based heavily on the culture .

in 935 AD Freddy died. i mourned, not for score, but because that made me juicier on the target list. in 1055 huayna came by offering gems for my spare rice. i check out relations and realized that even tho he was jewish, with only hatty on his side, and monty/izzy/dead fred buddhists, all the rest of us hindu, nobody except izzy was less than pleased with Huayna. must be the invisible warmonger respect. that was great, that meant he wasn't anybody's worst enemy, so i could safely trade with him! then i thought to check monty, same deal, everybody liked him except for saladin, who i didn't care about, i wanted to kill sally, so i sold monty lit for upgrade money (hatty had built GLib already).

so by 1166, with researching feudalism and guilds and making myself build more troops than i ever do, and asking pleased/friendly (yes, alex was friendly even with -4 closed borders haha) people for gifts of gold to upgrade troops, i was #1 on power and saladin finally converted to confucian, without me asking. and he was the only conf guy on the map. BINGO. peter, JC, and genghis still liked him tho. peter liking him worried me, peter was my neighbor and he's scary, but what can ya do? after i declared, genghis and JC stayed pleased, Peter dropped to cautious.

1178 saladin, the weirdo, had upgraded to longbows in some cities, but not in Mecca (his capital), which i hadn't been able to see thru holy vision since Hindu hadn't spread there. that made me laugh and cheer from joy. there were 9 troops in there, none stronger than a horse archer, i was overprepared as hubby would say. i took it the turn the cats could start their attacks/bombardment, lost one cat and got one lucky withdrawal, and was now the proud owner of the mids and chichen itza. i knew i couldn't use the mids for a very long time, the +wise civics from HR was a big part of why diplomacy was going well, particularly with best buddy for life alex. but that was okay. better for me to own them than anybody else right? in 1202 i took mecca, lost 2 cats.

a paste from my notes that makes me giggle: "1244 saladin converts back to hinduism. fine by me, i've done the declaring buddy boy. peter adopts bureaucracy, i guess civil service is no longer a monopoly. it was for like 1000s of years, they sure take their sweet time on prince. i could maybe get future tech from liberalism feels like, this is so weird. oh hatty got it too. yay! a Candyland revolt has taken place in Yakutsk! oh wild--that's the one on the east, that i thought would NOT flip, it's the one that's at 25% not the one at 0%. that surprises me. 11 exp knight promoted to combat3, so now i can make heroic epic finally sheesh. ... 1256 ... phew 11 exp knight is now 13. but the war won't last long enough for him to see 17 for level 5, especially now that he's wounded. if i war this infrequently tho, who needs west point?"

which is rather true. i'd started planning this was in 700 BC. and now it was 1256 AD and i finally had a unit at 13 exp. and i'd probably lost maybe 3 or 4 non-catapult troops in the war? so it wasn't that the war was going at all badly . it was that i take that long to start a war hahahaha. so i am just not really a natural-born warmonger, does it show?

surprise surprise tho! in 1262, Saladin was no more. it was entirely my fault, i admit it. but he had deer. and sheep. and marble. and land i could reach without getting scary new neighbors like monty or toku. and i could get access to the coast. that's worth losing 4 points, especially for somebody like me who doesn't care about points! and i'm just cracking up that i killed somebody. i mean you see how bad i am at it. i started planning it in 700 ... BC. he died in 1262 AD. it takes me a loooooooooooong timei! but part of it was politics, ok? in 545 AD (the year i have open atm for some screenshot or another), literally everybody is pleased with him except for monty, hatty, fred and izzy. getting a permanent -1 with all of the others for declaring war on their friend would NOT have been choosing wisely. so i had to make missionaries while making the troops, it wasn't all weed and nervousness. just partly. and if hubby was awake he'd insist that i add "and a great big huge helping of overpreparedness!!!!"

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the "what made hubby laugh at me the most while he watched" section. and he did watch a lot! he got a kick out of how much fun i was having. he thanks you too, sulla, for the idea that i had so much fun with . this was the biggest suspense in the game ...
antium was the 2nd city JC ever founded, and it was quite close to New Pisae, the 5th city i settled, after i flipped his 5th city. this picture was taken in 1808. i watched it constantly to see if it would ever ever ever flip to me. i put signs up saying what the % roman culture was every 10 years so that i could track the changes. i was obsessed. a spy was permanently assigned there, trying to sweet-talk the defenders into taking vacations, you name it. i really really really really wanted to flip a city using a city that i was only able to settle in the first place because i'd flipped a city from the guy before.



it hovered at 7.06% chance for like the last 35ish turns. but when it got to 15 turns left, i gave up. i know the game only does a roll to see if it will even do a roll against that 7.06% once every 10 turns. so i figured no way. well, i cannot deny that i sat here and literally clapped my hands from joy like my 6-year-old niece does when she's excited when i got this on my screen!


1868! i had 4 turns to go! how close can you get? hubby was asleep when it flipped, and i was asleep when he left for work in the morning. when i woke up, the first thing i did was call him. i said "guess what guess what?" he said 'you won your game!" i said "no, you dork, i know i will, but i went to bed after something else that i wasn't sure of." i could hear him grin over the phone and he said "you got antium didn't you?" hahahahaha! the family that obsesses and neener neeners the AI together sticks together right? *gigglefest*. we may be silly, but i chose wisely when i picked my hubby

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that's for more than enough words for now isn't it? i do promise/threaten to add at least another post about the later isabella and monty war.

alex declared on isabella in 1604, i jumped in without him even asking, she had gems and incense and i did not, and i couldn't very well let him have all the good stuff could i? it turned out she had silver i hadn't noticed too (maybe she "popped another one". she died in 1643. i picked up Santiago, Seville, Cordoba, and Madrid (the Buddhist holy city) in the process, razing Toledo to resettle it directly on the incense and get coastal access. -4 points, +1 new religion, +1 holy city +1 shrine earning 16 gpt.

my notes from 1697 AD: "well well well. somebody just done earned himself -1 you declared war on our friend with everybody who matters on the map. that would be montezuma, for declaring on me. bring it buddy. he does have crabs clam and stone that i don't. but i don't have the troops atm to actually take all his cities. i have enough to take some, and hold them and what i have, and cities enough to make enough to get 'em all tho ... i think. sign peace with hatty so that nobody else dogpiles in. i think alex is coming for monty but he's too busy to be bribed into it [alex was at peace but WHEEOHRN, he'd been friendly with me forever so i knew he wasn't coming fo rme. alex would] probably take the cities i want, so stay away as long as i can handle it ok? thanks bud. this is monty, i'll let him wear himself out coming at me first, then go in after him once he's out of gas, and after i've brought some reinforcements in. why does genghis have too much on his hands? probably wants to finish off hatty. man, if i was spiritual i would SOOOOOOOOO switch to nationhood and theocracy and draft up some rifles, why are we stinking roosevelt lol. thanks for the worker monty."

Monty is a hoot. i'll give more details on that war later, and on my silly obsessions about how i had to raze some cities and resettle them one or two tiles over because his dot map irritated me. he tried reverse psychology worker-stealing tricks on me this game. Monty died in 1762.

and i have to describe my silly little after-party (the 7 "one-more-turns" after the win to see if i could do what i wanted to do, unrelated to the variant" but related to my insanity). hubby laughed at that one too, it was an "only KMad would bother" type thing, he understood it but i doubt any of you will. i sure did giggle and gloat tho! and i ought to put up a clearer map of my way-too-huge empire at the end i suppose. it would probably take 3 screenshots tho .

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i did win eventually, in 1872. between 1262 and 1872, i ummmmm, kinda went overboard. hatty was the world's punching bag, she died in 1734. i'll have to check but i think everybody except for Huayna went to war with her at least one time, i did twice but only phony ones. alex and toku were my best friends. toku stayed pleased even when he double changed to free religion/free market. i sat there and ranted at the screen. "TOKU! i gave you economics because i KNEW you wouldn't go free market you twerp!!!!!!!!!" but he did. oh well. well, toku wasn't exactly my best friend during the after party, it involved beating him up, but that's getting ahead of myself. izzy was furious almost her entire life, but she was lower in power almost her entire life, and she never declared, so i just ignored her (until i got opportunistic after alex started it).

i did kind of sort of end up with a few extra cities. i had a total of 32. when i discovered industrialism, i forget how many pop-ups i got about 'you have discovered a source of aluminum' there were. but there were 6 sources already mined, roaded and hooked up that very turn *giggle*. i want to count how many caths i had, i built several to push borders at greece and russia just because, you know, i could. i am quite certain i did not follow the most optimal min/max efficient approach. i might just have had the most fun tho .

looking at statistics in 1872, i built 3 stupas, 5 cathedrals, 5 conf academies, 5 mandirs, 3 mosques, and 5 pagodas. add in the fact that peepsville only got 3 caths, it didn't need the full 6. so ummm you can tell i kind of pushed up the close border tension with alex and peter a wee little bit. it was fun. hubby kept asking why. "well, to get more tiles that i don't need, so that i can neener neener him!"

this is the list of my cities on the turn of the win, sorted by culture.

there are 13 i think at influential (>7500 culture). and seville would hit that next turn. the length of the scrolldown bar you see on there, and the extent of blue on the minimap, might give you some idea of just how much the organized trait saved my candyass in my bizarre approach to this event !

Demographics from 1872:



if there were commas on Population, it would be clearer that my own is 151,150,000 and that the rival best is 16,460,000. yup, an order of magnitude. and land area is twice the size. that's not how i typically end up in cultural games . but i won

the best news ever for you, my dear reader ... i'm now going to read other reports (i've only read sulla's) before i add more to this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long one! so you get a break, if you did last this long, you poor thing! blame sulla, i just had too much fun and have been waiting and waiting to share!!!

[Berrie]

Cheerful girl, aren't you? 8)

Anyway, congrats on the win. It was a fine game in my eyes.

[Ruff_Hi]

One question and one observation ...

Observation: Are my eyes deceiving me because this looks like KMad going to war - I thought that was an oxymoron.

Question: How did you know where the Iron was in your first pic?

[KMad]

One question and one observation ...

Observation: Are my eyes deceiving me because this looks like KMad going to war - I thought that was an oxymoron.

Question: How did you know where the Iron was in your first pic?

yeah i went to war and i won!!!!!!

and quoting myself: "the shot has some spoilers of stuff i saw later that i added to help me remember when i writing another too-long version of the report. like the city alex put later by the western iron (i flipped it, naturally) and an izzy city i hadn't seen but i'd stolen ellies out of its cross (neener neener)."

i took the screenie today from an old save. the game was all over, i knew oil and uranium etc., and added the signs today before hitting printscreen. but then i pared down my report and didn't need to refer to that. see i did you guys a favor!!!!! *giggle* but then i was too lazy to take a new screenshot without the signs . i'd just been gonna say "yada yada alex went to XYZ later on and i almost settle one tile off where neapolis was but i decided not to and then JC took it" etc. see? and when JC settled neapolis i figured there must be iron there, since he settled on a tile i thought odd.

shorter version: ruff, read the words not just the pictures, silly hahaha!

[haphazard1]

Very nice game, KMad! I had fun reading your report, and you obviously had a lot of fun playing it.

Plenty of differences from my game, but some startling similarities too. I also eliminated Saladin myself, and in 1262 AD even. That one jumped out at me as I read. Izzy's silver wasn't there in my game, so it must have been a pop.

It's really fascinating to read the different outcomes, and try to figure out why the differences happened. This is my first completed RB Civ event, and I am learning a lot.

[Sullla]

KMad didn't just win the game, she stomped all over those nasty AIs. Take THAT, Montezuma!

Congratulations on the win, a rather nice one. Winning a game that you didn't expect to win is one of the best feelings in the world. I remember well getting my first Monarch and Deity wins on Civ3, back in the Game of the Month in early 2002. Your report's enthusiasm shone through the text and gave me that same feeling all over again.

1868! i had 4 turns to go! how close can you get? hubby was asleep when it flipped, and i was asleep when he left for work in the morning. when i woke up, the first thing i did was call him. i said "guess what guess what?" he said 'you won your game!" i said "no, you dork, i know i will, but i went to bed after something else that i wasn't sure of." i could hear him grin over the phone and he said "you got antium didn't you?" hahahahaha! the family that obsesses and neener neeners the AI together sticks together right? *gigglefest*

That's a great story right there. As much as I enjoy reading how experts like T-Hawk and Kylearan can work the scoring system for maximum points, I think I enjoy these kind of reports a little bit more. Striving to achieve new goals for the first time is what our community at Realms Beyond is all about, and I saw some of that reflected in this report. Reading these kind of stories validates the work that goes into these scenarios - thanks!

Any plans on what game is next for KMad and hubby?

[KMad]

That's a great story right there. As much as I enjoy reading how experts like T-Hawk and Kylearan can work the scoring system for maximum points, I think I enjoy these kind of reports a little bit more. Striving to achieve new goals for the first time is what our community at Realms Beyond is all about, and I saw some of that reflected in this report. Reading these kind of stories validates the work that goes into these scenarios - thanks!

Any plans on what game is next for KMad and hubby?

oh yay i made you grin, like your idea made me grin!!! i totally counted flipping Antium as a win of its own, that was a "hell f*ing yeah" thing, sailor language and 6-year-old hand clap at the same time. and then calling hubby, i just couldn't resist *giggle*. i'm not a score milker at all, i ignore Firaxis score in all cases (partly because i love the type of games that get low scores there, OCC, cultural, hippy-diplo thru peace and harmony not war). variants i play for fun and if the milking looks fun for me in one, then maybe i'll go for it, but otherwise, ya know, i do my thing. i'm glad it's there for those who like it tho, the more reports to read the better! as long as not everybody goes over-enthusiastic as me and keeps posting MORE and MORE about their game. i am still not done, oh dear! but i do give myself extra bonus giggle victory points for silly things like that in each and every game. wait til i get around to writing up the after-party!

hubby is an odd case. well, he'd have to be to choose to marry me. he introduced me to civ, i hadn't heard of it or sid meier until we met. he bought civ2, but not right when it first came out, since he'd liked the original. this was before we were married. he'd promised to watch the oscars with me, it's more fun to watch them with someone to make catty comments with of course. but the show was the day after he bought civ2 ... you can likely imagine how that turned out .

he wasn't using the civ2 manual. so i borrowed it, and looked through it during commercials. asked him about a zillion questions since it looked so complicated! he'd laugh and say "i'll show you later hon". but i was really truly furious about all that "one more turn" and "i'll be right there" ... the show was over and he was still playing!

so a few days later i tried civ2. it took me a while to pick things up, but i did really like it. i got more hooked on it than he was actually! we got civ3, we got CTP (didn't like that one), got SMAC (loved that one), got civ4. my father loves civ2-4. he's deathly afraid to mod anything, and for civ2 he'd call me with requests and i'd email him altered rules.txt files . one of my brothers is addicted too. actually, in civ2 i did totally all-out milk once. dad and i had a "who can go the highest" contest. since it was easy there, and when i was in that "i want something easy to do" mood that fit perfectly, it wasn't exactly challenging to work out how to do that *giggle*.

hubby likes civ4 when he plays it, but he kind of doesn't think to play it, his default is WoW or some war game you know? and when he does "play" civ, often he'd rather mod it than play. his project right now is a mod that gives each civ 3 UUs, one for each era, like early and then gunpowder and then tanky times. he's a history buff so they have to sort of make sense for that civ. it's all over my head. i think chaka khan not shaka zulu, cannon as a plural sounds bizarre to me, i have to look up which civilization half the leaders are, that sort of thing. i had bad history teachers in school and never got the bug, it's a shame really, i wish i had.

but when he does play, we more often play team coop than he plays solo. which is really fun! we started a game 2 days ago, both of us OCC, and we are out to conquer the inland seas map! he's set to noble, i'm set to monarch, and we actually have our science turned way down since we are out-teching the AI to a ridiculous extent and it's just unfair. which i told him would probably happen, but it's still fun. next one we'll go higher. and we're testing out his mod to see if the AI uses his new UUs how he thinks they're supposed to ... they are so far, yay! it's his first OCC, i'm addicted to them, he's learning a lot and he really likes it, i told him he would, they're quick and you get one heck of a city!

so far 3 guys are down. it'll be fun to get the ones far away, and he had no idea how quick the barbs would pop up once we got rid of our neighbors whose cities were fogbusting for us *giggle*.

i'll feel bad when it's alex's turn to die. he was so my bestest friend in epic 11 after all! we were buddies the whole game. he was friendly at the end and i owned a total of 39 tiles in various city crosses he could have been using, including 8 at sparta which i think is his 2nd ever city. and we had no +wise civics or +shared religion. we were true buds. i'm gonna feel some guilt, i'm so sappy.

yup, i'm the Queen of Weed and the Queen of answers waaaaaaay longer than you needed .

ps i am still a bit bitter about the whole oscar thing but i did marry him anyway and i do not regret it!

Plenty of differences from my game, but some startling similarities too. I also eliminated Saladin myself, and in 1262 AD even. That one jumped out at me as I read. Izzy's silver wasn't there in my game, so it must have been a pop.

It's really fascinating to read the different outcomes, and try to figure out why the differences happened. This is my first completed RB Civ event, and I am learning a lot.

this is only my third RB event, and only the second i finished. one i wimped out and left incomplete when some meanie named Stalin DoWd me when i was in a war already. did he not know i was busy???? i'm very much still in the honeymoon phase of "oh WOW look how different they all are" and "oh WOW look how many people settled exactly where i did" stage just like you *giggle*. too funny about saladin! lucky izzy about the pop, and lucky me, i didn't have any silver before that .

well, i've downloaded some of the old RB events and played them after the fact, because the ideas were cool. and some i made my own based on the ideas that the events were based on. but i didn't do them as events with reports, i was far too late.

besides izzy's, i did get two cases of "popped another one" myself.

Boston was already a heck of a hammer town.

and this one was just too silly

that's the very tiptop north of the map obviously, in former Montyville. i would never have bothered with his cities all the way up there if i hadn't gotten rid of izzy first. and one of the big reasons i jumped in on her was that Madrid had Buddhism, the Buddhist shrine, and gems, which i didn't have! a spare isn't a bad thing tho, *gigglefest* and now i'm looking at that picture going "did i not railroad that mine? what was i on???

[haphazard1]

this is only my third RB event, and only the second i finished. one i wimped out and left incomplete when some meanie named Stalin DoWd me when i was in a war already. did he not know i was busy???? i'm very much still in the honeymoon phase of "oh WOW look how different they all are" and "oh WOW look how many people settled exactly where i did" stage just like you *giggle*. too funny about saladin! lucky izzy about the pop, and lucky me, i didn't have any silver before that .

I am totally excited about reading all the reports and seeing how things went (both differently and the same) for others. Reading past reports has been great, and I've learned a lot, but it's just more intense and interesting for a game you played at the same time as everyone else, and checking back on reporting day.

besides izzy's, i did get two cases of "popped another one" myself.

What actually governs this? I've not seen this in my games, but I don't usually run all that many mines. Is it a set chance per turn, something that grows more likely over time or with more mined tiles, or what?

Thanks for the entertaining report and replies, and sharing stories about your husband.

[KMad]

for the "popped another one", you have to be working the mine for it to happen. so mining hills outside your city cross won't get you one, and you won't get one on a turn that you've got all your citizens on high food tiles or being specialists or whatever. but that's all i know, i don't know what the odds are, but they sure do seem rare to me. that was 2 in a 482 turn long game, in the meantime i flipped 7 cities by culture.

i do sometimes mine hills outside my crosses tho, or build random improvements on the edges of my empire, when my workers are bored waiting on bio/railroad/state property whatever. even useless improvement makes the AI think "ooooooh must pillage!!!" and can buy you time. particularly helpful in OCCs. *giggle*.