Adv 61, Timmy never finishes anymore

[timmy827]

So, between a late start, and family visiting over closing weekend, I didn't make time to finish even the abbreviated win condition, or write a good report, or even dotmap “properly”. Here is the plan:

“protect rice” and “4” are actually the two most important/best. 2 is also really good but not next to visible borders (giant dice roll - where do Brennus and Zara send first settlers in all games? I had no idea if they had good sites in other directions). Capital plan was very vanilla - worker first, camp/camp/mine, grow to 3 then start settler.

NUTS. Zara also founded a city invalidating “protect rice” this same turn. Nearly stopped playing here. Wonder if doing just one warrior at cap and settler at size 2 would be better. I also screwed up by researching Wheel-Fishing-Pottery before Bronze Working. Had thoughts of doing granary whips for most settlers, which was mistake; that’s best for pumping them out really quick after ~turn 45 but not for immediate results. Having BW earlier would have maybe allowed one chop; the worker had tasks of dubious value for about 5 turns with my BW delay.
So, moved my first two sites one tile each





Tried to rush a library in Novgorod - a creative civ might just be able to swipe the pigs despite my 2nd ring/his 1st ring - but

yeah fast monument (he build stonehenge) meant that wasn’t going to happen.
I did get my original “2” and “3” in the north though with some delay

whipped the other settler for Rostov (under the interface at turn 59, those sites were a good distance from Mongolia. But this

meant my two interior cities were invalidated until I could spare military to take the barb city, and that would be a while. Settled city #6 as the crab/deer fishing village instead.

Wonders seemed to last long, and with lack of a cottage/Bureau capital, obvious play was to use the stone, Math and all of Moscow’s forests to get the pyramids, done t97. Did not actually use too many Rep specialists - the happiness as a whip buffer may have actually been more useful! - but considered that a “way to tech in the back pocket, now let’s war like mad to get this over with”. Burnt the barb city t105, and settled #7/8. (moved one 2e from my original dotmap “fill”, to get the wheat). Next research to Construction, and start whipping swords, cats, and axes.

Diplomatically, Kublai’s Judaism became dominant and he helpfully went into missionary mode. I adopted, along with an OR detour, and so did Zara + Napoleon. Brennus was buddhist. Originally I planned to conquer Celts and leave my religious friends alone, but eventually changed due to the huge amount of empty land the Celts had available - Zara had 5 cities, Kublai 4, Nappy 3, and Brennus had room for 15. Conquering celts was recipe for neverending war as they kept filling the gap. I was confident that if I left them alone, Brennus would crash economy with bad cities and I could get 5 techs ahead for the new victory condition. Also Zara started plotting (he can at Pleased) and I was likely target. So started war t119 with Zara.

This report is rushed but there’s not much we haven’t all seen before:

-as far as cities, I designated Rostov (gems/corn/gold/banana/horse) as the new cottage city, and eventually moved Palace there (anticpated Bureacracy but didn’t get to civil service ever). The two late ones that waited for the barb city clear got a few cottages to pay bills. Rest were mostly specials/farm/mine and whip.
-after construction went currency->MC->CoL mostly fueled by plunder cash. research low as I kept whipping units instead of turning food into scientists, and actually delayed HBR for this reason. Didn’t need elephants to smush Zara.

That was plenty. New discovery: Brennus asked me to cutoff trade with Zara a few turns earlier and I did since I was planning war. Apparently since we had recently inked the deer sugar trade it lasted thru the embargo until actual hostilities. Never knew that.
Also compared to other games I played, I got more use out of bombard defenses. Usually I prefer to just throw catapults and not let the AI whip more units instead of waiting, but this game I had more catapults and AI had fewer cities with walls so bombard made more sense.

Zara made the war easy, threw his stack across a river and up a hill

Keep tech moving forward via courthouses. (building wealth with hammers is usually better, except you can’t whip and chop wealth).
Once Ethiopia out of resistance, the Palace move to Rostov was probably saving me cash from being more centered at least.
Also did a late Great Lighthouse (350AD) and Colossus (560AD) in Moscow with remaining forests and whip overflow).
Next order was Calendar (whip overload, need happy fix) and HBR for elephants finally.
Zara dead 475AD, leading to this amusement

Brennus declared on me, but was super lame

That’s literally all he sent in 9 turns of a war he started. Snore. Guess all his cities mean he has no free units for actually attacking.

Napoleon had several horse archers, so paused war a bit to heal, merge my main stack, and add a couple elephants/spears. During this time his horse archers ran around my territory, I guess heading towards a barb city in the far east. So that made things easy, when I declared his forces were scattered around my borders in 2’s and 3’s instead of concentrated in a stack, and easily cleaned up; no group of HA’s at home that could flank my stack.

That cost a grand total of 1 catapult. I had a scout with open borders before declaring, and know Napoleon has no substantial units left; will roll right over him.


So called it a game here due to lack of time. Not achieved our new win condition yet, but close. I’m already up 5 techs on Brennus (priesthood, CoL, HBR, Alpha, MC), he’s up Monarchy on me but I should zoom past with plunder gold. not 50% ahead of him in score yet but would get there with French + Mongol land I think, and I’m well in the outright lead on soldiers.

[T-hawk]

Your images are broken, since they're links to Photobucket .html pages and not actual images. Photobucket is pretty scummy these days with ads, imgur is the best service.

Glad you got to play, and yeah sounds like you're on the verge of claiming the alternative victory.

[timmy827]

Your images are broken, since they're links to Photobucket .html pages and not actual images. Photobucket is pretty scummy these days with ads, imgur is the best service.

Glad you got to play, and yeah sounds like you're on the verge of claiming the alternative victory.

Sorry - thought the embedded link looked different, but it rendered for me (firefox/windows). Converted to just IMG, hopefully better now. Thanks for the pointer, I'll look at imgur after work tonight if still not showing right.

Unless you meant "broken" = "no pink in your dotmap"