Adventure 48 - SevenSpirits' Many Hammers

[SevenSpirits]

I hadn't played out a space race or an OCC since forever, so I didn't really know what to do. But I was pretty sure it would be fun, so off I went!

The good tiles are obviously Corn/Wheat, Copper/Iron, and Gold. (Well, and lake fish, which I didn't know was possible.) In the first two cases you get 7 food + hammers (after Bio/Railroads... 6 before), depending on the underlying terrain. In the last case you get 4 food + hammers and 7 extra commerce - a 3 for 7 trade. I though that was probably a poor deal, and went for a mix of food and hammers, though with Stone/Marble, and one each of Gold/Gems/Silver for a quick start.



As it turns out I gave myself a few too many hammers, and not enough food/commerce. Additionally, my mistake was compounded by a bug that was introduced since I last played a OCC, namely that overflow hammers above the allowed limit just... disappear. Oops.

I actually planned out the first few turns pretty carefully - I think it worked well. I started off with a workboat for the fish off 6 hammers a turn, then grew to size 2, then built two workers who made a farm and then mined all the luxuries.



Then I built just about every wonder except the Temple of Artemis, which I sadly missed by two turns. I took Civil Service with the Oracle on turn 59. I made an academy and settled tons of great people. I built the Globe Theater around turn 80. It was sadly delayed several turns as I had to prepare for war against Suryavarman. However, he surprisingly declared on Isabella instead.



I got Education on turn 101, Optics on 106 (grabbing Music first), and then beelined up to Liberalism->Biology which fell on turn 127.



The AIs on the other continent were all best Hindu buddies, which was pretty unfortunate - they were doing QUITE well, especially Hannibal. To solve this problem, I teched up to nukes, built Manhattan on turn 177, and nuked the crap out of his flood plains towns over the next few decades, while being careful not to damage his actual cities. I also harassed the other continent with Privateers. Later, I nuked Cyrus too when he declared on me.




Eventually, I won a space race on turn 305. I had forgotten how many stupid techs there are in the industrial and modern eras so I started bulbing too early, and as mentioned before prioritized production too much over food/science. But I got there eventually. I had 12 techs on my opponents and they had 1 on me (Hannibal had Flight), so my score is 11.


A bit more golden age than necessary?


Starving from Global Warming and because I mined over my hill farm




Who needs population when you could have science instead?

[Bruindane]

Oh nukes, what a brilliant idea, never occurred to me. I am really curious where the line between settling and bulbing in this occ would be, I just settled everybody just to get to the techs I targeted faster instead of all of them generally quicker.

[SevenSpirits]

Speaking of brilliant ideas...

My first idea was actually to simply eliminate the last AI on the last turn before victory. This would give me a point for every tech I have, minus thirty. Luckily, T-Hawk decided that this was not in the spirit of the rules, and the last living opponent's techs would count.

Of course, it leaves open the possibility of completely crippling one AI early and killing the rest. But I'm not that interested in wasting that much time on war, so I didn't pursue that.

I also asked about nukes, and the verdict was that if their 1-tile radius didn't touch any cities, no points would be subtracted. Hence the fiery death rained down upon my enemies in a thoughtful pattern.

[regoarrarr]

Hence the fiery death rained down upon my enemies in a thoughtful pattern.

Nice work - in one of my test games I similarly rained fiery death - but a) I didn't find that it slowed the AIs down a whole lot and b) it really really REALLY caused them to hate me and send a buncha units my way

[SevenSpirits]

and send a buncha units my way

Sounds good to me.

There was absolutely no way I could get them to war with each other. So, since they are pretty awful at naval invasions it seemed like getting them to try to attack me would be a decent substitute.

The harassment definitely slowed hannibal down - he was teching stupidly fast before, and losing half your built up improvements, use of half your important tiles, and most of your flood plains does hurt. But, I shouldn't have been in a position of having that many spare hammers in the first place (uh... 13 nukes' worth).

[T-hawk]

My first idea was actually to simply eliminate the last AI on the last turn before victory. This would give me a point for every tech I have, minus thirty. Luckily, T-Hawk decided that this was not in the spirit of the rules, and the last living opponent's techs would count.

Yeah, there's my loophole sniffer.

I was hoping somebody would reach and try out nukes after that ruling. Wow, you got to them with over 100 turns before the launch, with the hammers to build them too. Do you have the GNP graph, how much did Hannibal's drop? Looks like the pure research speed to space scored higher, but I bet you had more fun than regoarrarr.

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah, there's my loophole sniffer.

I was hoping somebody would reach and try out nukes after that ruling. Wow, you got to them with over 100 turns before the launch, with the hammers to build them too. Do you have the GNP graph, how much did Hannibal's drop?

Unfortunately, no. I don't think I ever had Hannibal's graphs in-game, and I didn't keep any saves to check with Ctrl-Z later.