Adventure 57 - Portuguese Imperialism

[Ceiliazul]

Adventure 57 Rules

This adventure comes with quite a scoring list! I love the concept: strike out at across the seas on a terra map expansion race. And the sponsors added "several dozen" barb cities?! Most barb cities don't spawn until after 1000BC, so these barbs will have an extra ~60t of growth compared to normal barb cities. These barb cities will have plenty of time build workers and improve tiles. I fear the barbs will have the largest and most populous empire in the world when carracks take to the waves... but they will still sport technologically backward defenders and no culture defense. Hammer time!

How do the scenario goals impact gameplay? Well, if I can get an efficient conquering campaign, the conquer gold from the large barb cities should be massive. And I’ll need it, because the maintenance will be massive as well. With Astronomy still a ways off at the time of carracks, resources and trade routes will be in short supply over there. Thank goodness the sponsors prevented colony maintenance by turning off 'vassal states'.

The other huge relief is the 'Monarch' difficulty setting. Not only will this help with maintenance costs, but it will allow me to gain a large tech advantage over the other civs. This means I can delay wonders by quite a bit and still land them. In particular, I intend to grab a civil-service slingshot with the Oracle here. I imagine bulbing Optics and embarking 15 maces on 5 carracks. While most terra maps require lots of settlers and workers, I expect there will be plenty of cities and barb workers to capture over there... all I need is military. Ironically, this makes Joao a less-than-best leader for this scenario.

Since the major scoring goals require speed, hitting the new world HARD will be key! If I can get capture gold flowing, it will power my economy through an otherwise HORRIBLE crash.

I used the flying camera a bit before I moved my starting warrior. The land runs out quickly to the West of my start... but just a bit further is another landmass. The New World is near! This is great to know: we're on the coast, and have clear directions to our goal. Much better than spawning across the world wrap from the other continent! Thank's T-Hawk. Settle in place is clearly the way to go. The Capital site doesn't look well suited for Oxford, nor for Ironworks, but has a good mix of mfg for the early game. Warrior scouts Southwest, capital builds worker first.

Starting techs: Agriculture - Animal Husbandry seems like the obvious start here. I thought about going straight to Bronze Working and clear-cutting the capital, but I did not go that route.

Starting builds: worker first to get that corn improved. Start a settler until the corn is done, then grow on a warrior until size 2. Finish the settler while working corn and cow... and it's off to the races. I went for a sprawling early game, cities farflung and small at first. On Monarch, crop/mfg is much more limiting than tech. Also, our start wasn't rich with luxuries... I had to reach for them early to get a reasonable happy cap.

Then I got the break of the game: Iron from a hut! And not only that, but a mine I had built while waiting for The Wheel to come in turned out to have the metal! It's not hooked yet, but it would be soon. Copper was far away, so this helped quite a bit.

My hut luck was really good, popping a scout from the first hut and then Iron Working on t40! The scout went on to meet all my opponents before being cut down by barbs much later. A work boat scouted the southern coast, defogging trade routes to Spain, Mongolia, Maya and Sumeria. This will be very, very important for my future plans.



In the shot above I've just finished Mysticism for Stonehenge. I'm way short on worker labor, but you can see I'm working to fix that here! In this shot I had 3 cities and 2 workers… but soon that would be seven and three. Most of the worker labor here went toward the Southern city, where I chopped Stonehenge. 'Henge was the 2nd most important wonder for me in this game, providing border expansions for my many, many cities.

The warrior queued in the Southern city was needed for sentry duty. The barbs are kicking my butt. I've been slowed significantly by the need to produce more sentries. Let’s check the settings screen: Oh, Raging Barbs. Didn't realize. Well, that should slow my AI opponents too, we'll see. Speaking of the AI, where are they all?? Terra maps are usually pretty cramped starts. I have only met 2 opponents so far! (I guess the raging barbs are eating people's scouts too.)



The extra warriors slowed expansion, but you can see here I’ve finally expanded my sentry net to (mostly) end the threat. Each unit’s 5x5 square is planned out to limit barb spawning. And just in time too: barb warriors were being replaced by archers, and soon we’d see axes. Around this time my scout bit the dust. With the new era of barb units, if I hadn’t gotten the frontier sealed off my warriors would have died quickly to upgraded barbs.

The barbs were really hammering the AI civs too. Not very often that you see this:



Already I'm destroying the AIs in everything that matters.

Justinian and Isabella had a TON of wilderness to their East. Normally Terra maps are pretty crowded so that there’s enough space left over for an empty continent. In this case, the far East civs were VERY crowded, but my nearest neighbors could see elk from their back porch for most of the game. That’s not actually a good thing when the elk are carrying axes and spears, and both my near neighbors were stunted all game. Around this time I scouted through Justin's capital and saw 3 barb archers camping in the unchopped forests there. Bad news bears!

The Great Wall didn’t even occur to me here… which is unfortunate because that wonder would have helped tremendously against the greater barbs in the fog. The raging barbs are also impacting AI scouting. Here in 1500BC I'm still finding huts... Hey look, Aesthetics! This was the last tech I learned from a hut (though I ended up popping MANY more here and in the new world). I got several hostile huts and maps… my luck overall wasn’t that great. What’s nice is that the good stuff was front loaded, where it matters. This hut also solved a big puzzle with my tech path: I've been wondering is whether a diversion to Literature before optics would be worth it. With marble in range and Heroic Epic unlocked, that decision is easy. Now with free Aesthetics, that decision is easy! Not yet though, the Civil-Service slingshot to must come first.



I said Stonehenge was the 2nd most important wonder, here’s the first. Terra maps usually feature a snaky new world with lots of shoreline. The Great Lighthouse is my answer to an intercontinental economy before Astronomy. Those nearby forests were a small price to pay for the wonder. I already had open borders with everyone except Hammurabi, and the lighthouse boosted my research rate by over 30bpt. Not sure I would have landed the CS slingshot without this.

I like that Portugal borders Spain, not sure if that was scenario design. With Byzantine nearby as well, I'm guessing it was random. And I REALLY like that Spain has no religion! Lizzie is a well known religious zealot. With the early religions gone, I'm really hoping she stays unchurched until I can spread the wisdom of Confucius to her. Here on Monarch I'm certain I'll found all the later religions, so she'd be a gamelong ally in that case.

Tech Path so far has been a pretty direct beeline toward the Slingshot:

• Worker Techs
  
• Mysticism
  
• Pottery to Math
  
• GLH techs (sailing and masonry)
  
• Poly to Priesthood, Code of Laws.

No distractions at all here, except for the GLH techs. And while sailing is expensive, the international trade routes have already recouped that cost.

Will the beeline be enough??

[Ceiliazul]

Part Two

The Civil Service slingshot hits the target! With it comes Bureaucracy, and look, THREE free Confu spreads within the first 4 turns. In the shot below, you can see the state of the empire. The scientists I’ve been running in Oporto for centuries finally paid off with a Great Scientist. I wasted 7 turns without a religion or Bureaucracy because of this… I could have done better in timing here.



Confucious arrived in my central city of Guimares. Although Lagos on the southern coast was a better commerce spot, I wasn’t able to grow It big enough in time to be a contender. I whipped everything else down because this was the city where I wanted the religion to spawn. Every city other than those two would be on military duty for a long time, those were really my only commerce cities in the old world.

Anyway, as soon as the Great Scientist was born, I started a golden age. I revolted to Bur on the first turn, and teched Monotheism/Monarchy during the Golden Age. This is a path I seem to take a lot: time my first GA with Bureaucracy and spend the GA enabling other civics. During this time I also finished Moai Statues in my Northern city of Oporto… taking the city from pretty lame to really good. The city had been incubating cottages for Lisbon, and the Moai timing worked out perfectly for giving those cottages back to the newly supercharged Capital.

The tech pace picked up with all this commerce, and my tech path maintained the strict beeline toward maces and carracks... with 2 exceptions. Currency was mandatory for my spreading empire, and thanks to that free Aeshetics tech, Literature was too good to pass up.

Religions really went my way in this game, Both my nearest neighbors would adopt Confu permanently, and with little effort from me. I also got multiple free spreads in my own empire, which saved hammers on missionaries. Also beneficial, Hammurabi adopted a religion different from everyone else, and made him the worst enemy of literally every civ on the planet.



Though I built the Oracle without the help of marble, I did finally settle the marble city about this time. The marble resource would help with Heroic Epic and Great Library now, and with optics inbound this city will also claim whales for the happy. The Great Library is to be the last wonder I want to build in the old world... I could delay it and build it in the new world, but it's just too powerful to delay.



I'm far enough ahead in tech that I could have built this in the new world for scoring... but it can't wait. The Great Library will eventually be paired with National Epic here. Once I steal the corn from Spain, this city will be the most food-rich city in my empire. With the Civil Service slingshot complete, we've got another slingshot to launch. For that, I'm going to need as many scientists as I can get!

With Literature in hand, it's back on the Imperialism beeline. I hit Metal Casting first to unlock lots of builds. Most cities in the empire started forges. The early machinery should allow my backlines cities to chop a couple quick maces with time for them to meet the departing carracks. I should have gone with MC before Literature just for forges everywhere. Machinery came in and the clock for Optics is now set:

Tech Path through this era:

• Mono/Monarch
  
• Currency
  
• Metal Casting (needed for early forges and upgradable triremes)
  
• Literature
  
• Machinery
  
• Compass/Optics

I really learned Machinery too late. I used prebuilt axes and lots of chopping to build a quick force, but it really cost me in city development. I chose Literature first to get my Heroic Epic running ASAP. Although the hammers wouldn’t pay off at the time of my first invasion fleet, they’d pay off nicely in the long run. Generally I hate putting that wonder in my capital, but I think it was the right choice here. Even with the Heroic Epic, only the Capital had enough hammers to build maces in 2t.

Note, The land T-hawk rolled for us really isn't very good. Limited rivers, few luxuries (and most of them required a reach!) and not much production. This provided a nice counterpoint to the relatively low difficulty.



So, how did the plans turn out?

• 18 maces
  
• 9 Triremes - upgrade to Carracks for 50g

This shot is the result of at least an hour of planning. We're talking pen and paper logistics to make sure the triremes were placed and the maces could make it to the right dock on time. It was a lot of fun, thanks Queeg! There are 9 triremes and 18 maces built (or building) in that shot. I’m sure I could have gotten optics faster, but I chose to go in force. There are speed goals for circumnav and first colony, but I’m not focusing on that. Why? Well, for one thing I expect the first landing to be a zombie shootout. Thousands of years of barbarian units will moan and shuffle toward me as soon as I land. For another, I’m hanging my whole game plan on capture gold. If I get over there without enough force to keep capturing cities, my colonial economy will collapse faster than Jamestown. Like they say, go big or go home!

At least I did plan ahead for one Carrack to go the opposite direction for circumnav. I lost a couple turns by going South instead of North, but I hadn’t scouted the north coast for ice, so I couldn’t be sure that way was clear.

Note that every city not needed for military was on wealth... or at least I swapped to wealth before ending turn! I would trade and beg for every dime the AI had this turn… and again next turn. Except Hammy, I demanded tribute from him. I fell a bit short of upgrading every trireme on the same turn, but did manage to get them all on the following turn.

Set Sail!

[Ceiliazul]

Part Three

I was loaded for bear, with 9 carrack loads about to ram the Barbarian Continent. I thought that would be enough for at least 3 cities. Well, the first contact crushed my hopes. 15 archers in it! With Promotions! Hmm, well, I came to play hardball.

Let's Play!




As it turned out, the first city I saw was also the closest to my starting empire. Perhaps the barb defenders gravitated that way. Regardless, most of the other barb cities had only 2 or 3 defenders. My shock of seeing that first city faded over time. In fact, the very next turn I would capture my first city:



Navajo would be a crucial city going forward. A beautiful city site, and a tactical lynchpin, this city would be my port of landing for an entire intercontinental army. That crazy fortified city nearby would be cut off and ignored for centuries, as it turned out to be a tactical red herring. Not only was every other city a MUCH easier target, capturing that city wouldn’t cut the transit time for my forces to the new world. A carrack leaving from 2W of Oporto could move straight diagonal and reach the tile 2E of Navajo in 2t. Many, many maces would sail into the Port of Navajo hungry for battle.

And battle they would get! In the first 6 turns of the invasion, 5 cities were conquered. And on every interturn, they got all they could handle. In the first 10 turns, my maces killed almost 50 archers. I lost a several, but the high base strength of maces paid off. Someone who skipped civil service for a super early Optics… might run into trouble.



And I quickly ran into an unexpected problem. No promotions! Normally hordes of low-strength attackers lead to very highly promoted defenders. Against the barbs, my units were capped at 10xp, and couldn’t heal with further promotions. I stupidly spent my early promotions on City Raider stuff, which didn't help future attacks. Here I was really lamenting the Great Wall… it fell pretty early in my game but I could have gotten it. With the wall, my forces could actually HEAL in the cities, instead of facing hordes of attackers.

Also, in the shot above the city of Mycenian was captured, this was one of two barb cities on the old world that I captured during the game. Queeg, I counted those for score, so let me know if that’s wrong.

In the shot above, the barbs actually took back a city from me. I believe I had to retake 4 cities in this way. But the piles of dead barb archers represented all the ‘wandering’ barbs. Soon the remaining barbs were holed up in their cities awaiting death. Still, these were some wild turns. In all this rush, I almost lost a city on the other continent due to inattention! :-D



I think I whipped an archer here, and it held easily. Would have been embarrassing though...

My conquering stalled for a bit, and not only because of the barb attackers. The strongest cities I captured so far were knocking out two important wonders: The Pyramids and The Colossus. Pyramids was overdue already, and The Colossus can only be built before Astronomy. Since Astronomy was an urgent need, I had to build it fast. I actually ferried over a settler to settle the Copper location south of Navajo to help with Colossus.

And I completed Magellan’s Voyage in 325AD:



By this time, I was conquering again. More maces (and some workers) were arriving as fast as the Carracks could shuttle them. Each city conquered in the mainland would build a granary, then either garrison forces or wealth. There is no long term payoff plan here. Imperialism, in this scenario, has nothing to do with improving the lives of the natives!

I had quickly knocked off construction and engineering, and began Astronomy. And presently, just in time for the Colossus to be built, I learned the secrets of the stars:



I had the new continent mostly defogged by now, thanks to two explorers who hopped on board the first invasion fleet. Because I had to wait a turn for the last triremes, I was able to push out these explorers, and they popped MANY huts. Mostly hostile and maps, but I had great luck earlier so I can't complain!



A note about the economy. I was selling old techs for whatever reasonable sums the other civs could gather. Also, by this time I had Old World core cities up to size 15, which triggered 3g trade routes in the new world. Every coastal city started with 4 trade routes for instant 12g influx. Maintenance was worse than the barb archers, but we'd tame that too, in due time.

And I finished the Pyramids in Nubian, thanks to another resource plant:



Note that the borders are getting pushed quite far. Now instead of one long battlefront, I’ve pushed to the coast in the West and the South. The barbs are getting stronger too, however. All over the new world, the barb cities had expanded borders, and many cities had walls. This stronghold city of Parthian sports barracks, walls and 5 defenders. My maces couldn’t get odds on these guys at all.



As I went along, I saw more and more barb swords and even a couple horse archers. The conquering would be much harder if I arrived a few centuries later.
Clearly, the barbs were going to lose, but they still had some fight left in them.

[Ceiliazul]

Part Four

My Capture gold had blasted me through Construction, Engineering and Astronomy for more conquering goodness, but my economy was in shambles. All these cities in the New World were getting charged CRAZY distance maintenance, and my break-even research rate was down to 20%. Here’s part of the solution:



The Great Library and National Epic had stolen corn from Spain. Even before Caste System, this city happily pumping out scientists. This scientist bulbed most of printing press, and I finished it the same turn. I knocked off philosophy and most of Liberalism by hand while waiting for my next Scientist. Also during this time I built the Forbidden Palace in Aryan to save 70gpt on maintenance. The city site is flat out amazing, and was just getting started:



My next Great Scientist bulbed most of Scientific Method, and that opened the awesomely powerful Communism slingshot. That distance maintenance in the shot above? How about we just get rid of that all together? Even awesomer, the Great Spy from Communism got together with the Great Artist from Music and got ready to trigger a golden age.



They would actually delay the Golden Age 1t while an army of workers in the West chopped out the Mausolleum. I intend to build all possible wonders in the New World for points. With so many unchopped forests, this one was easy.



I swapped to Free Speech, Caste System, State Property and kept Organized Religion.

The civics change alone was worth 400gnp instantly. Combined with the golden age, I could now do pretty much whatever I wanted. My captured or ferried workers were basically terraforming the land. Aryan and other good cities were getting an Extreme Production Makeover

With the New world mostly civilized, and a huge tech advantage, it's time to look at the end of this game. There's three main scoring components here: Domination Victory, wonders, and the "fastest to" milestones. The first is assured, the last cannot be known. The wonders are the only way to be sure to rack up points. Every world wonder built in the new world is worth 50 points, and that adds up quick. But every turn we delay domination costs us points in the score multiplier. At what point does building the next wonder stop increasing my score?



The colored lines represent base points. So how many points could I count on?

• 1800 points for circumnav and new world wonders
  
• 800 points for capturing and keeping 40ish barb cities
  
• 500 points for domination win
  
• 1400 points for speed milestones: circumnav (400), own first city (400), own all cities (600)

So a reasonable range of base points is at least 3000, I could follow the yellow line. Since it is now only t150, this means I must complete wonders every 14 turns to keep increasing my score. Peace of cake. I teched Democracy for the civics and the Statue of Liberty. Caste System allowed my GPP city to go nuts, and Einstein presently bulbed Physics… which gave me another scientist who bulbed Electricity. (I avoided gunpowder to make this line possible.)

I was knocking out wonders left and right, some in my hammer heavy improved cities, and some with worker help in cities with many trees. Also, domestic growth was progressing well. All cities in the New World were building either initial infrastructure or Wealth. I also completed a canal which allowed more efficient movement to the South coast.



Sadly, during this time I lost a mostly-completed Schwedagon Paya to Gilgamesh. I sold outdated techs to Isabella and Justinian to declare war on Pacal. Ginghis was his usual self, declaring on bad-boy Hammurabi multiple times. Gilgamesh was really the only AI who was left in peace... enabling him to swipe this wonder.

I also, stupidly, expected to build Statue of Zeus after Astronomy. Yeah, no. Otherwise I hit all my wonder goals for the new world.

I made a list of all the wonders I wanted to finish, and penciled in which cities could best build them in time. I had enough wonders to build that I could easily time my Domination win with the last of them. My army was a steamroller now, with over 40 maces on the continent and ever fewer cities.



And Parthian was the last real stronghold to fall. I completed my cleanup on t165. That first city I laid eyes on in the New World, the one next to Navajo, was the LAST city on the continent to fall. I very nearly forgot about it entirely!

My wonder plans were moving along nicely, and every other city was stuck on wealth to fund research. The cities below highlighted in yellow are my wonder cities. This continent was absolutely massive, equal to half of the world landmass, and drove my civ almost to the Dom limit peacefully! (Well, the barbs might not agree…)



Aryan went on to become a genuine hammer MONSTER. These cities pumped out wonders while everyone else built wealth:



With Democracy and now the finished Kremlin, and I could rush-buy anything I needed, mostlyrifles in the old world and settlers in the new. While the settlers filled in the larger holes in my New World culture, the rifles staged for war.

And about 5t before my last batch of wonders was scheduled to complete, I declared war on Justinian. Even during war, I was more tuned in to the wonder builds than the battle. Rifles vs. longbows, we all know how that goes. Meanwhile, my scientist farm had missed the mark and made an artist at some point… he came along and bombed the battlefield. Note that my old world barb cities ALMOST touched my culture after the artist bomb:




The war went even better than I had hoped, and I had so much cash I rush-bought the five wonders still under construction.



And the Domination victory.

[Ceiliazul]

Scoring

380 = 38 barb cities captured (including 2 old world)
380 = 38 barb cities kept
400 = build Versailles in the new world
100 = build Forbidden Palace in the New World
50 = build colossus (also counted in the next category, for a total of 100 points)
1100 = build 22 World Wonders in the new world (Pyramids, colossus, HG, Parth, MoM, AP, Angkor, Spiral, Chicken Itch, Taj, Sistine, Notre, Hagia, Sankore, Krem, SoL, Broadway, Eiffel, Rock n Roll, Cristo, UN, Hollywood)
150 = earn Circumnavigation
500 = Win by Domination
Total: 3620 base points

Competition Times:
Circumnavigation = 325AD
First City in the New World = 100BC
Own all New World Cities = 1050AD

Multiplier:
T187 = 1.626 multiplier on the base score

[NobleHelium]

Great Library image broken. Nice "skyward lights" composite screenshot.

[Qgqqqqq]

Wow that sounds epic!
[Yeah old world barb cities definitely count]

I really love some of those flying camera shots - the invasion one is paticularly awesome.

That snipped FP one made me think that that city was costing 150g for a moment

[timmy827]

Goddamn, that is impressive even with the tech pops. And here I was thinking I was going to win last night (only seeing my, Compromises, Ronald and Molach's).

Technically, you don't score 38 and 38 for cities, you mentioned some were lost for a bit so those are not 'held to end of game' in my understanding. So you will only wind up 900 points ahead of me, not 950

[Ichabod]

Awesome, Ceiliazul. We had almost the same dotmap in the old world, so i guess there was something I made right.

You build the Oyramids in the new world... The heck!

[Compromise]

And I thought trying to get Machinery from the Oracle was a risky gambit!

Really nicely done.

One thing that's really interesting is how much being quicker leads to even more quickness. I notice a lot of new world forests in your screenshots. I watched barbarian workers chop those down for cottages and lamented the fact that they weren't being used to make my own troops.

I like the description of the planning the details of getting the first wave of Maces on Carracks and how that took over an hour. I thoroughly enjoy these mini-games when playing, though I have to say that if that was all there was to do...I'd burn out pretty fast.

Also, your screenshots with the cut-pasted sections are quite nice. Lots of information packed in and presented in a concise package. I know that takes some time, and it is much appreciated.

Again, great game and well played!