Adventure 59 - Justinian Unwraps His Presents

[pindicator]

Dear Santa,

I know I asked for a lot of things this year, and while the presents that I got were ... different ... they weren't quite the Free-Kremlin-In-The-Capital that I was looking for. Still, mother says that I should be thankful for what I got, even if I had to fight off some of my spoiled neighbors who thought every gift out there was there's. Clearly they were all intended for me, I just had to get to them first. I wish I could tell you that I was able to unwrap, or at least chop down, all of the wrapping paper, but the greedy fingers of Hatty, Mansa, Asoka, and Izzy just could not be satisfied with what they were given.

Anyway, here are all the presents I got, and thankful I am for every one of them:

Present #1 helped me get my first worker out earlier. Awesome gift, Santa!



Present #2 helped me build Stonehenge, The Great Wall, and Pyramids!



Present #3 was my very own pony, just like I've always wanted.



Present #4 was very shiny and paid for the distant expansion it took to reach it.



Present #5 I snatched right from the greedy hands of Mansa



Present #6 smelled very nice!



Present #7 was in a lake. That was a very sneaky present, Santa!



Present #8 I got right as we reached 1AD



Here's my whole empire at 1AD. We're just barely able to tech, thanks to Pyramids. I expanded as fast as I could to grab all the presents, but it wasn't fast enough to get them all



I had to save Present #9 from the hands of barbarians!





It was getting harder to find presents, but I did find the gift of Drama in Present #10



Present #11 was here, but I couldn't find any elves in this workshop



Presents #12 and #13 helped me build more wonders!





Present #14 also had to be saved from Barbarians!



Present #15 was a very cold place



Like so many others, I was too slow to get this treasure in time



Present #16 was on a lonely island



Did this count as Present #17?




That's all I got, Santa. I'm sure others got more, but I'm happy with what I have. Thank you for all the presents!!!

[Old Harry]

Nice work, looks like the best haul I've seen so far. You must have been very good...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Another Byzantine player! Yay!!

I like your dotmap alot better than the one I made. I moved the capital away from the coast, 3E/1S, though I did settle a city where your capital is.

I missed your nos. 5 (though I did capture it later) , 7 in the lake (nice get, that one), 12 (I settled on the marble for fast wonders, invalidating that tree per the rules), 13 (Spain got there first), 15 (India got there).

I also counted your #17, the mountain forest.

It appears your AIs didn't fight quite as much as mine did. Mali carved out a little space where Egypt should have expanded. In my game, since Egypt just built me missionaries, I got that southwestern region too but I don't think there were any more trees there. It was good, however, for a Forbidden Palace and lots of commerce and hammers.

It looks like the only one that I got that you could see and did not get was the forested coal on the tundra island shared with your Barbarian Gaul city.




Unknown to either of us while playing, your Hun city was previously a tree before the barbs settled. It was a forest coal. Bah! They took that one away from me too. Also, there were actually another couple of small islands in the north that you had not unfogged. One had forest whales! (I got that one).




I wonder, did anyone get this little gem?




Sadly, in a game where nukes were allowed, the world did not last long enough to burn in a nuclear inferno.

Thanks for the report, Pindicator.

[T-hawk]

Yes, the forested mountain counted, as would the coal and uranium if anyone had gotten them. Full list coming shortly in the sponsor thread.

Yup, great haul Pindicator, and thanks for the report!

[RefSteel]

Oh ... WOW! Seventeen as Byzantium?! Even granting that IMP was terrific here with peaceful AIs who took a long time to start really expanding, that is seriously impressive. And I loved the letter-to-Santa report. (Already buttering the right side of the bread for next year, I see....)

[pindicator]

Yeah, I emphasized grabbing the treasure locations over everything else. And having stone at the second city made it so much easier: without Pyramids and Great Wall I'm not sure I could have grabbed as many. Most of the game I was teetering between 0% - 20% on the slider. From a game standpoint I did okay: I was ahead in tech for most of the game, but Mansa was starting to overtake me when I quit, around turn 200. I'm not sure how I would have finished it, maybe tried for space and stayed peaceful.

And at missing those two northern islands. I could have had 19!