Adventure Two: Ranamar's (eventual) report

[Ranamar]

Victory T291 when Carl Sagan insta-launched a rocket in the middle of the turn.

I killed Norway, and could have played a tighter game.  I'll have a report out with a few pictures sometime, but I have on the order of a thousand lines of notes, and I'm pretty sure that should be broken up into multiple posts.

[Sullla]

A thousand lines of notes?! Sounds like a good report - looking forward to reading it.

[Ranamar]

A thousand lines of notes?! Sounds like a good report - looking forward to reading it.

Unfortunately, the notes are generally of the form of the kind you saw in the succession game... that comes out to about three or four lines per turn, however.  The challenge is finding the interesting essays in the middle of all the "X built Y".

Edit: Let's get this started... first 100 turns!  (Apparently, this is lines 1-198 in my text editor, but a lot of those wrap a bunch.  Being about 1/4 of the way checks out in my text editor, though.)

Since I rolled Arabia in Adventure 1, this is my second time playing it.  Given that I'm not feeling my way around the game, I think I can do a lot better this time.  I've got a better handle on when to expand (early!) and how many builders to build.  I'm probably still too complacent about military because of the way the succession game I'm in is going, but I think I can handle what the barbs throw at me.

Strategically, this is a tech race, so campuses are going to be key.  We're going to want a couple of holy sites, of course, but I don't think we're going to want more than one or two: just enough to keep our lands converted to our religion.  Well-placed campuses will generate faith from the Madrassas, and that will get us a fair amount without having to muck around with a type of district which doesn't generate us GPP later on.  It's true that you can get 10-15 faith per turn from a holy site, but you can also get a really solid amount of faith from good adjacencies at campuses, and you can get particularly much of it if we manage to befriend some scientific city-states, since their campus bonus apparently gets rolled into the adjacency bonus value that the Madrassa looks at.  Also, based on the starting save, we've got a bunch of mountains to work with.

So basically, the plan is to do the usual industrial beeline, but goose our tech rate extra because we need to get all the way to the end of the tree in time to build a bunch of fabulously-expensive buildings.

Anyway, I decided to settle 1SW from where our settler started because, while it moves the wheat (a nice tile) out of the first ring, it moves the horses into the second ring, giving us a little more potential for the city to start with.  Besides, our starting site was a flood plain, and that's also a pretty nice farming target... and founding a city on it does not keep the 3 food.  (Also, we can build various wonders only on FP, although they're restricted from a lot of them.)  First tech is mining, because we really want to get to the pyramids.  First build is a builder because it's always nice to have one early.

Our second turn, our exploring warrior found Hong Kong to the southeast.  Woah!  They want us to trigger a boost for Irrigation.  I am very okay with farming a wheat early.  (It's also our first natural border pop, according to the tile purchase interface.)

Interturn, however, we meet a Scythian warrior, which explains why we didn't get a free envoy.  They were even closer than we were!  We agree to trading capital locations, and it turns out they're 9 tiles SSW of us.  That's going to get lively, given how oriented towards early aggression one expects the scythians to be.  I'm going to have to be careful to have an adequate military, it seems.  (I still want the Pyramids asap, though.)

A barbarian scout pops out of the fog and then runs off.  Looks like we're going to have to brace for barbarians early.

T6 or so, I remember that Cairo is growing like a weed and force one citizen onto a hill for production.  Slowing growth by 2 turns from 3 more to 5 more is worth it: we have no other production-oriented tiles other than flatland plains, at the moment.

T9: My exploring warrior finds a Viking warrior, which has taken damage.  The Viking capital is 9 tiles west of us.  I think I need to turn my warrior around and find out what is north and east of us, given that!  Also, the vikings settle a second city (I can just see its borders) after I meet them but before my T10.

T12: My builder completes.  I start a scout to help with exploration.  Next build after that is probably going to be a slinger or two (or three) for local defense.  I move the builder to mine our one hill, because we need production.

T14: Code of Laws comes in.  I start on Craftsmanship, next, as well as taking the +5 vs. barbs and faith/gold civics.

T15: I farm the wheat, giving us an envoy with Hong Kong.  For now, it does nothing, because we aren't building buildings.  (Also, it boosts Irrigation, which we're going to want sometime.)

T17: I purchase the stone tile and quarry it.  I'm not certain this was the best use of my stuff, because I could have been researching animal husbandry and then put a pasture on horse, but it gets me access to the pyramids.  (I'll probably put off building it a little bit, though.)  This also boosts Craftsmanship, as the third tile I have improved.  Interestingly, my warrior walked into a goody hut and got a boost for Foreign Trade, too.  That's nice, because I'll want to study it soon, and I haven't found a second continent yet.  (editor's note: Our entire landmass turns out to be a single continent.)

T18: Cairo grows to size 4, and I realize that we have a slight problem: the extreme fertility of the land here does not play well with the lack of local luxuries.  There is marble and diamonds to the northwest, and marble to the southwest (towards the Scythians), but that's all I've found so far.  Meanwhile, I'm size 4 and 7 turns to size 5, at which point I will be beyond my happy cap.  I need to build a settler soon, but I also need more security.  I'm going to build a slinger and then a settler, and hopefully snipe the marble spot right in Tomyris's face.

T19: I have Masonry, which means I can start the pyramids when I'm not feeling population pressure.  Time to backfill our techs with stuff like AH and Pottery->Irrigation.  Also, auto-expand put us onto the horses, so our crazy growth has slowed a little.  It's still going to be tight: we'll probably overgrow for a turn or two.

Exploring east, I found Preslav, which wants a holy site, and Germany (which, for some reason, I was convinced was the Holy Roman Empire for a large portion of this game), which is, this time, 8 tiles away.  I expect Friedrich to be super pissy with me, because I like my city-states.  Maybe I should either war with him or provoke him into a war.  He's the only one I want out of the way, because of his bonus to conquering city-states.  Also, he got first-ring diamonds.

T20: Oh, ffs; a barbarian encampment spawned just barely into the fog to my north.  At least the scout didn't spawn in sight range of the city?  We're going to have barbs incoming soon.  Worst case, we buy a second slinger outright, next turn.  At least the barbs didn't spawn in the direction I want to send my settler!

T22: our slinger finishes, and I start on a settler.  A quick check determines that we can halt growth altogether if we switch the wheat onto a plains tile.  I think I'll do that when the food box is almost full.  It only needs to stall for a couple turns.

T24: That barbarian encampment near me?  I dunno where the scout went, but my slinger managed to kill the guarding spear (boosting archery) and my warrior cleared it.  He's going to finally promote now, from the exp that was gained from a hut a little while ago.

Also, I got a pantheon this turn.  This land is pretty fertile, and I'm not a huge fan of the "ancient and classical only" or "bonus to one particular improvement" pantheons most of the time, so we're going for Religious Settlements.  Faster border expansion is always good.  Fertility Rites is also tempting, but there's so much food on this map already.  I can swap civics, too, so I swap out the faith one for +1 production.  Adding 10% production is big.  We don't really need the trickle of faith at this moment.

T28: I missed the growth moment, so Cairo actually grew to size 5.  We're completing the settler next turn, though, and I bought a plains forest that I'm locking in, so we'll drop back down and then stay at 4 until we get a Marble online, with decent production.

T29: Tomyris completes Stonehenge.  Fredrick was working on it too; I hope he got some sort of compensation...

T31: I drop Hattin, 3 tiles from Scythia's capital.  I hope Tomyris doesn't mind.
Construction there starts on a builder.  We need more of them, after all, and Cairo is about to finish a second slinger for us.  Also, I want to start the pyramids as soon as that completes, and we're going to be chopping the forest into it, possibly, to shave the last couple turns off it.

As it turns out, the vikings aren't happy either.  I probably should have ignored that request, because I suspect I'm going to accidentally break it with them.  The Scythians, though, well, I'm not actually planning on planting any other cities over there.

T32: I start on the Pyramids.  It's going to be faster than originally estimated by 2 turns because of the boost from Hong Kong and building it in the capital.  (Why can't they get these things right the first time?)  At the rate things are going, I'm going to intentionally delay building that builder in Hattin.  Probably, it will be for a trader.  However, Tomyris has units near Hattin, so I'm worried I may need to repel an attack soon.  Fortunately, I can rush-buy a slinger in 2 turns or a warrior in 6.  That should hopefully buy enough time to walk my army over, though I'm starting that now.

T33: on seeing that it's 20 turns to Early Empire, I re-micro Hattin to grow sooner, rather than later, to get the boost for that.  It will slow the arrival of the civic, too, until we grow back onto the marble.  The aforementioned trader will take 12 turns, though, and a builder says 16 right now.  16 delays it past the pyramids, we'll roll with that.

T34: Irrigation comes in; starting on Bronze Working to see where the resource is.  We're going to want to settle again when the pyramids complete.

By T36, Islam is founded by the Scythians.  

T37: Harald of the Vikings has two warriors running between my cities.  Oddly, one has the "barbarian spotted your city" mark over it.  Just something weird.  Might as well move to secure my cities, though.

T38: I find Vilnius, which boosts Political Philosophy for meeting lots of city-states.  Unfortunately, I haven't found what I'm really looking for, which is a natural wonder.  I'll keep looking, but I've resigned myself to the idea that I won't find one.  I'm tired of waiting to have one for Astrology.

T40: Hattin grows, boosting Early Empire... and whoops!  The worker is once again going to complete before the Pyramids.  I switch it over to a warrior while we wait.

Exploring, I notice that Norway is going to settle a site near the diamonds.  That's... actually a pretty big problem.  Clearly, I should have been building a settler instead of the pyramids, after all.  Live and learn, I guess.  Checking the score page, I'm dead last in empire score, and I have 7 turns to go on the pyramids.

T44: I was going to buy a trader this turn, but it looks like trader cost scales with tech.  It's now 5 gold more than it was last I checked.  I should have started building the trader to lock in the price, I guess!  The trader is relatively weak right now anyway, and there are a bunch of viking warriors afoot.  Hopefully they're just wandering, not planning to attack me.  He doesn't like Tomyris, either, so maybe that's it?

Oh, also, a couple turns ago, Bronze Working came in, and we found Iron NE of Cairo.  Our next settler, which will build as soon as we complete the pyramids, will move to claim that.

T47: Success!  We have the Pyramids.  I'm nervous about all these viking warriors, but we also need a settler.  I'm going to build a slinger (our third), and then the settler.  Hattin finishes a warrior, so I switch to a builder in case there's no cause for alarm after all.  However, I switch tech off from Astrology to Archery.  If my slingers make it through the next 5 turns, I can upgrade them to archers when I urgently need them.

T49: Pericles, who I met in the south last turn while exploring, invites me to joint war against Tomyris.  I really can't afford that right now, so I decline.  The paltry stipend wouldn't even cover the units I'd need, I expect.  Also, I discover I've been an idiot: Citrus, which has been under my nose the whole time, is a luxury good.  Apparently, I didn't spot the luxury background to it, either.

T51: I find Brussels, which wants me to boost Sailing.  Also, Archery comes in, so I can upgrade my slingers at my leisure to crazy killing machines.  Upgrading is 30g, and it costs 1gpt to maintain them.  That would cut my per-turn gold income in half, unfortunately.  Over to Writing, because I'm guaranteed a prophet, after all, and I'm feeling insecure about my tech rate.  I'll build a campus after this settler finishes.

T52: I finally find Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Well, it saves the last quarter of Astrology's time, at least...  Still teching writing.  State Workforce is past 50%... it's also 5 turns, and I really want Political philosophy asap.  If I weren't already building a settler, I'd consider switching off it.

T53: my worker in Hattin finishes.  I'm still nervous about all these warriors in the middle of my empire, so I'm building an archer unit.  I've got the +50% unit build civic in.  I really need to look into a trader at some point (although having hostile warriors along its path is less than enticing...)

T55: Writing completes.  Apprenticeship is past currency and HBR, the latter of which is boosted.  We'll do that one first to reduce the required amount of micromanagement and attention to detail.

T57: State Workforce completes, and I pop the reduced maintenance civic in.  We're upgrading archers, now.  Next up is political philosophy and finally having access to governments...

T58: Cairo completes a settler.  Next build is a trader (4T) and then probably a builder after that (4T again).  Incidentally, upgrading our slingers has gotten us the boost to Machinery.

T59: Hattin completes its archer.  I need to decide what to do next.  The advisor is suggesting a stettler and is probably right... or at least right that we need more settlers.  Hattin's growth has stalled at 3, however, due to lack of high-food tiles.  I pay 110 gold for a wheat  tile so I can farm it and break us out of that.  Meanwhile, we're also near our housing cap, so it'll be a granary first.  This should improve things significantly.

I also make a deal with Norway (who I was calling Vikings) trading open borders and getting 1gpt for the favor.  Here's hoping that standing army decides to go somewhere else, like to fight Tomyris.  I also suddenly remember that I can and should lock in district costs, so I drop a campus and a holy site near Cairo.    We'll be at 7 pop soon enough to do the industrial when we need it.

T60: I make a similar deal with Tomyris as I did Harald.  She's fighting a war with Periclese, but here's hoping she's more interested in fighting Harald than me, too.

T61: I found Damietta 4 tiles NNE of Cairo (so, minimum spacing) on a hilll next to a citrus grove.  It's a frustrating site: I wasted a hill forest for a city, since we can't chop outside borders anymore.  However, it's the only place I could put together which was near the iron and marble up there and was in aqueduct range of water.  It should be good for a solid industrial zone and a decent campus, though.  It's just that, for now, it's going to be a mess.  I start it on a granary, which will take forever (15 turns) to complete.  The tile being worked is the now-ignored stone from cairo, and the city will grow in 17 turns.  Not amazing.

Interturn, I learn that I have broken my promise to Harald but kept my promise to Tomyris.  Harald and Fredrick complain about my new site, and I ignore both of them.  Perhaps I should have been conciliatory with Fredrick, as I probably won't settle toward him next.

T62: Cairo completes its trader and starts on a builder.  After that, we'll do some districts.  the city-state Vilnius wants a trade route and we can reach it.  I decide it's not the worst idea, and send it.  We'll get a bunch more culture output, which is always handy.  I'm going to need some science soon, though.  Pericles is feeling protective about it, unfortunately.  Also, with our culture rate now above our science rate, this is an indication that I need to do something to my science rate.  I think it's campus then holy site for Cairo.

Interturn, Norway denounces me for settling their land.  Looks like we'll have a fight on our hands soon... maybe.  Probably?  This is about the time frame people talk about.  (note: As you will see, I end up getting tired of waiting and go to war with him, instead.)

T63: Horseback Riding completes.  I'm starting on the wheel, but I need to remember to take it off while I run a worker up to my iron source to the north, as that will boost the other half of it.

T65: We have governments now!  Of course, we also have no idea whether Norway is actually going to attack, which is sort of bothersome where choosing a government is concerned.  I think the answer is probably to go for the classical republic for economic policies and switch to oligarchy on a future civic switch, if we get attacked.  I'll have iron soon and will be able to upgrade my warriors into swordsmen if I have to, so there will very quickly be nasty surprises for any attackers who show up, and I can use the wildcard policy to keep maintenance down in the meantime.

So here's the actual plan: I'm taking the republic for now.  If I get declared on, I can study Military Tradition or Mysticism to change goverments: it will be 3 turns tops for either of those.  In the meantime, we're doing Drama and Poetry, because it's boosted.

T73: We get an envoy, which is the first to Brussels, for another +2 to production on buildings and districts there.  I had a scare a few turns back that Norway would drop a city in the one tile in between us and them that was a valid city site.  He didn't, and I walked a warrior onto the spot, so he's never going to be able to do it in the future.  I need to build a pair of settlers for there and another marginal location on the coast.

T74: I've hooked up a second citrus, so I trade with Pericles for 50 gold, 2gpt, and open borders.  That will let me run my scout through his territory and around a barb camp.  Also, cairo finishes a campus for a 20% boost (of 2) in science.  I'm definitely falling behind here.  Next up is the holy site to finally use the pity prophet I got a couple turns back.  Also, Damieta has gotten a tile next to 2 mountains, so it's laying down a campus there.  I was planning to buy the tile, and then we grew onto it naturally.

T75: Hattin finished a water mill, boosting Construction, and I need settlers, so it's building a settler.  After construction finishes in 5 turns, I need to really get moving and do the commercial and industrial districts.  In the meantime, we speed it by 2 turns chopping a jungle.  That was less than I was hoping for, and it doesn't seem to have hugely filled the food box, either.

Cairo really doesn't need its wheat, IMO, so I shuffle tiles around again and buy a connecting tile so I can flip Cairo's wheat to Damietta.  This gives it another housing (from a plantation and a farm together) and means our growth isn't quite as stifled anymore, but it definitely needs more soon... and that means I need to actually research the tech for aqueducts.

T77: apparently, swapping that farm dropped our housing in Cairo so we're 50% slowed.  I finally farm the floodplains for the housing... and because it's a decent tile, if I ever feel a need to grow a lot again.  Damietta finishes its granary finally, too, so that's gonna grow fast for a bit, but I really don't see a good reason to switch the wheat back to Cairo.  Damietta starts on the campus... which is listed at 35 turns, but that's mostly because it hasn't started growing yet, I think.  It has several good or at least adequate production tiles.

T79: Construction completes.  Games and Recreation is next turn.  I buy a couple of tiles because I have the tile purchase civic in.  Next tech is Currency, which is looking like 4 turns, now.

T80: With Games and Recreation completed, I switch to the settler-building civic.  I've got one in build already, and I'll be pushing a second one out from somewhere soon.  I start on Defensive Tactics to put some culture into it for some turns, but we're going to need to get Madrassas as soon as we can spare time to build libraries.

T81: Cairo completes its holy site.  Let's see if we can found a religion yet.  (I'm going to have to be immediately very careful to defend it, as currently the city is someone else's religion.  It looks like I can do it.  I'm not going to do it yet, though, actually.  I'm the last one, so I can take my time, and I want to hit the timing on the nose for being able to start on something to train apostles before I do it.

T82: Settler completes in Hattin.  This turn we put a turn into walls; next turn, that's going to switch to a commercial hub.  The settler and an archer escort are going to start walking to my city site.  This would be incredibly transparent to a human, but the AI is almost certainly oblivious to what I'm doing, given that it walked a settler right past the location.

T83: We got an envoy, but there's nothing good to use him for, for now, so he's sitting.  Also, Apprenticeship is 10 turns out, but I'm taking one more detour: Iron Working.  I'm sorely tempted to take advantage of Harald's denunciation to go to war with him with "light" warmonger penalties and swipe a couple cities, and that means I need to do it before apprenticeship.  If I do that, I'm going to upgrade my warriors to swordsmen first, and that means I need swordsmen.  Incidentally, Vilnius now wants an inspiration for Military Training, which is to say build an encampment.  Hattin is growing swiftly, so I'm going to drop one there, now.  The commercial hub is taking unfortunately long.

T84: Cairo finishes a shrine and starts a granary for housing.  I forward-settle Medina into Harald's face, and immediately buy the one tile I absolutely need to expand onto: a plains wheat.  I also have a worker ready, which creates a pasture.

Amazingly, settling what I thought was in Norway's face results in complaints from the HRE and Scythians, too.  I guess they consider anything within 7 tiles to be "too close".  This is a brutally compact set of settlements for me, because I have nowhere else to go except trackless wastes and other marginal spots.  I tell Scythia that I'm not going to settle near her and ignore the rest.  I thought about telling Norway to piss off.  I'm not sure he'd attack even if I did that, and I didn't feel ready this turn.  I think I'm going to declare war on him in a few turns, though.  I just need to push him into the sea, or at least pick one of his cities (that I wanted to settle!) off him.

T86: Farming the wheat near Medina apparently finished boosting Feudalism  That's handy.

Interturn, Norway complains about the troops I have sneaking a peek at Bergen.  I ignore it, but, he's right: I am that hungry for war!  I just want to wait a couple turns.  

T87: Theology will complete next turn, so I found my religion this turn to make it happen.  I'm torn between Zen Meditation and Work Ethic.  I seem to be growing fairly tall, and being over on amenities only grants +5% increased yields, so I go for Work Ethic.  +1% per follower production could be handy with tall cities in the late game doing space race stuff.  Astonishingly, the Mosque is still available, so I pick that, since it means I can do more with my faith units.  The other one I considered was the Wat, for the extra science, but I've already planned to put out campuses in many of my cities.  Someone already took Islam, so I go for the crab logo and call it Church of Bob.  (It's an inside joke from another game I play.)

I don't even quite have enough faith for a missionary, so I'm going to have to be careful not to lose my holy site to some random apostle.

T88: Our earlier trade route completes.  It's time to use it to bootstrap somewhere.  I think our most pressing matter is that Hattin hasn't quite finished its commercial district.  I, uh, also just noticed that Damietta had grown to size 4 and lay down a commercial district.

Also, it's 4 turns until Harald's denunciation expires.  I think I'll declare war in 2; I'm still getting troops closer.

T89: I, uh, need faith and gold (and culture) more than 3 food, right now, in Hattin, so the trade route goes to Aachen, which gives faith and culture and gold and production.  There was another potential city, but it seems to have disappeared off my list when moving to Hattin.  The old route must have been boosting the range.

I upgrade my two warriors to swordsmen this turn.  Next turn, I'll declare war.

T90: Actually, I'll wait one more turn.  1UPT means I want to push my units around more before fighting.

T92: I may have forgotten just how many warriors Norway had.  I think we'll be fine, though.  They're only warriors, and I think I can have swords tank while bows pick the warriors apart.  Bergen, my target city, is completely empty, so it's just a question of how long I take burning it down before capturing it.  Admittedly, I had missed that it was on a hill and therefore harder to attack.

T93: Cairo finishes a temple and we buy a Mosque.  It now produces 10 faith instead of, well, less.  In 2-3 turns, we should have enough for a missionary and can start converting our cities back.  Cairo is also size 7, so we're laying down a commercial district... but then starting a builder.  We desperately need more builders.  I'm going to need to figure out how to grow this to size 10, too, for the industrial zone, even though it looks like an underwhelming one.  We're at exactly 10 housing, so it's not out of the question, but it'll be rough.  A Madrassa will give us one more, though.

We're also now at 3 envoys lying around, and none of them will do us any good at the moment.  Actually, Brussels has diamonds, so that could matter if we get suzerainty (which we can) for a bit until we capture Bergen from Norway.  (Brussels declares war on Harald which is, well, heh.  It's on the other side of the map.)

Interturn, I learn that both Pericles and Fredrick disapprove.  Pericles also denounces me.  He's really unhappy, but he's on the other side of Scythia, so he really can't do much.

T94: I'm slowly wiping out Harald's army.

Interturn, Fredrick denounces me, too.

T95: Apprenticeship comes in, although I mostly can't build industrial zones because I've been too busy starting other districts.  Next tech, at least to start, is Engineering.

Harald finally manages to reinforce Bergen.  He can move units over water, unlike me, which was not something I had planned on.  There's a warrior in bergen now, but I have to say the defense rating didn't go up from the new garrison.

Cairo finishes a Builder; next build is a library; we're going to get some of this madrassa faith production online.  The builder goes to improve tiles near Damietta, since it needs another good production tile.  I think I'll also chop out the campus there.

Over the interturn, Norway suicided a chariot into one of my archers.  I'm quite confused, as there had to have been better moves than an amphibious attack against an archer.

T96: Hattin completes a commerce hub.  Its production is much improved now, and the next build is a trader: only 3 turns, this time!

Interturn, Norway does it again!  This time with a warrior that doesn't die in the attempt.

T98: Bergen finally falls.  It feels like a long time, but it turns out ot have only been 6 turns of bombarding it with a couple archers and whacking it with a swordsman.  (I did rotate out the swordsman once, however.)  Bizarrely, this apparently satisfies Sailing's requirement to build a coastal city, since I now have one.  It has spare population, so I lay down an industrial district.  (I want a commercial one, too, sometime, but the tile I want it on is forested, so I'll be chopping it first.)

The question now is how much I want to push my luck with the other AIs and my warmongering.  (Fredrick can shove it; if he declares war, I'm taking a city or two off him, too.)  Stavinger appears to have a holy site, albeit one placed abutting the fog, 

T99: Stavinger has walls now.  I'm going to sue for peace when I get a chance.  As much fun as it might be to take another city off Norway, it's not worth the trouble right now. (note: I will regret this later, but I still don't think I had the siege ability to take it without tooling up a bunch more military.)

Cairo completed a library, so next is the Madrassa.  Hattin completed a trader, and I need walls to accelerate a certain tech I want, so we're spending 4 turns on that before building another trader.

My "low-faith" plan doesn't feel so clever when I'm slightly behind on everything except tactical expertise.  I start up another trade rote from Hattin to somewhere that gives gold, a culture, and a faith.  Hopefully, by the time they complete, I'll be feeling more secure.  Besides, being foreign trade routes, maybe it will butter up the AIs a bit...

T100: I lose suzerainty over Brussels... which is fine by me: I have my own source of diamonds now.  Also, it's T100, so I should do a status overview at the end of the turn.  I finished a tech this turn, so we're starting on Stirrups.  I'll probably switch off halfway through since we're close to Feudalism to finish it, but that should at least seal the deal with regards to military might.  I can't make peace with Norway, so I'm pulling back to heal my troops... and probably build some catapults.

T100 status report:
The first thing to note is that these cities are packed in like sardines.  Hattin is the only city which isn't minimum distance from my other cities.  As it turns out, this doesn't end up mattering for industrial zone packing, but it could have.

Religious pressure is something fierce this game.  Many of my cities got converted to Islam before I even founded my religion.  (In fact, founding in cairo removed a bunch of converts.)  On the other hand, I'm also applying pressure all the way across the continent with basically just my holy city.  If I'm lucky, I might be able to use that to my advantage to expand it, and, especially, to shore up the fact that even my holy city is already being converted again.

The holy cities for Islam and Church of Bob must be no more than 11 or 12 squares apart.  Thankfully, I don't have an overwhelming wave of missionaries coming at me.

Here's the state of my cities:


I seem to have plenty of amenities, for now.  If I switch governments, everything will drop by one amenity.

Comparing against my last game as Arabia, I've definitely got more output of everything except for gold this time around.  I think that's because I've been focusing more on non-trade districts.  Compared to this game, tech-wise, I've nearly caught up with the AIs.  Norway is ahead in tech age, while Scythia and Greece are ahead in civic age.

Finally, this picture is from T102, because I forgot to take the picture on T100:

[Ranamar]

T101-201, wherein we sit around and outbuild our tech rate and don't go to war:
Apologies for the lack of pictures... there's a T200 report at the end, at least.

T101: I burn my last missionary charge in Bergen to convert the city.  I hope somewhere else not getting converted doesn't make me regret this.  It should, hopefully, give me a back like of religous pressure to defend against the pressure coming from the south.  It's 6 or 7 turns before I can even recruit another missionary, with my current faith output.

T102: Damietta completes a campus, boosting Recorded History.  Next up are library and Madrassa, one of which I'm going to chop out.

Bergen finishes fixing its granary, which I just realized doesn't do anything right now.  Next up, we'll fix the monument (3 turns and then get started on an industrial zone (long).

A bunch of my units have finally healed back up, so I'm looking into moving them to attack Stavanger.

T103: Walls in Hattin complete, boosting Engineering.  We'll finish that in 2 turns and be able to build catapults.  I start on a trader there.  Interestingly, neither of my units that I thought were in range of Stavanger last turn were attacked.  I'm guessing it's because this mountain provided cover for both.  (If I check, however, I discover that I can walk my archer out, potentially shoot the city, and then walk back behind the mountain because this is a poor choice without the rest of my army marshalled.)

T104: Defensive Tactics completes.  Next civic is Feudalism.  I'm not building any builders right now, so the builder card comes out for the trade route gold one.  Medina completes its campus and starts on a library.

Interturn, Norway offers peace for the city I took and all his gold.  While I was tempted to try to take another, I have to concede that I hit a bit of a wall and achieved my primary objective, which was getting Bergen.  Anything more was mostly seeing how much I could get.

T105: Engineering comes in, and I can finally solve Damietta's dire housing problem by building an aqueduct.  It's 17 turns, but we're definitely going to do everything we can to make it go faster.  The production situation is dire, but the flat land will come in handy if we can just grow fast enough.  This map feels flat enough I'm inclined to mill every river-adjacent forest that I don't want to chop for the specific land.

T106: chopping a forest gets us a third of the way closer to an aqueduct in Damietta.  Done.  The only other news is that a suspicous amoutn of units are building up near Bremen, including, amusingly, a settler.  I may need to find a way for the settler to not go settle in the one remaining place I think looks interesting, unfortunately.

T107: A trader is built in Hattin.  I transfer it to Damietta.  The next build is to finish the encampment we started once upon a time.

The German settler fortunately looks pretty confused.  It and its escort are sitting in a forest, doing nothing.  (Fredrick declared war on Hong Kong, though.)

T108: Cairo completes a Madrassa.  Next up is the commercial hub we started at some point.  Our trade route in Damietta goes to bergen because it is the only way to get +2 production.  Otherwise, I'd consider going to Aachen for a whole mess of stuff.

I buy a hill near Hattin to prevent Bremen from having any chance of growing onto it.  Hills are that scarce around here.

Interturn, Harald completes The Oracle.

T109: Machinery comes in.  I lumbermill a nearby forest.  With that out of the way, it's time to consider beelining Industrialization.  The only thing unboosted along the way is Education, which wants a GSci.  It's 10 turns otherwise.  Well, that, and I haven't built my 3 workshops yet.  I'm working on it...

I also decide to sell some spare luxuries.  Norway gets marble, while Scythia gets citrus.  That nets me about 10gpt between the two of them.

T110: Feudalism comes in.  We're going to start putting culture into Medieval Faires.  Medina completes a library and has grown a size.  As usual, I need everything, all the time.  I swap out the unit maintenance card for the +2 builder action card, and build a builder in Medina.  I also lay down a commercial hub, since it has grown.  Finally, I spend 100 gold to buy a forest on Norway's border, and another 150 gold for a hill on the same border.

T111: Hattin grew to size 7, so I lay down an industrial district.  It's only 4 turns to complete the encampment, though, so I'm starting with that.  The trader moves to Medina, which has a more dire need of production.

T112: Mathematics comes in.  Our next tech is Education.  We're getting a GSci in about 5 turns, so we'll delay for that once we get to 50%.  Medina does its trade route to Hattin, because we really want production there right now, and that may soon give us +3 production, once the encampment finishes.

Interturn, an unmet player, probably a city state, was defeated.

T113: our Aqueduct in Damietta completes, suddenly letting us grow again.  A library is 3 turns, so we'll finish that to get the bonus going, and then go for the commercial hub, which will take 12 turns at the current rate.

Interturn, Norway denounces me for having attacked him previously.

T114: Another conga line of missionaries from Scythia is going for my cities.  This is really annoying.  I had slowed accumulating faith for an apostle to declare an inquisition, or defend my stuff or something because I thought we were done with this, but now they're back.  I need more Madrassas, and possibly (sigh) another holy site.  Scythia has a whole ton of unique improvements that give faith, so that's probably actually a huge amount of output.  (As it turns out, this ends up only happening occasionally, and I put a stop to it permanently, later.)

Anyway, Medina finished a worker, while Hattin finished an encampment.  We can change civics, so I switch the reduced-maintenance civic back in for the worker one.  Cairo finished its commercial hub, too, so I put it on a trader to go with it.

T116: Damietta finished its library.  We're building a commercial hub for trade route production, and then a madrassa for faith and science.

Education is almost done, so we're going for Military Engineering while we wait for the scientist, who comes in next turn.

T117: recruited gsci Omar Khayyam, who gives some boosts to techs: Naval tradition, Metal Casting, Banking.  That's sort of unfortunate, because we would have ignored those techs or gotten those boosts, anyway, with the possible exception of Metal Casting.

T118: Education comes in; starting on Shipbuilding, which I forgot I needed, and is not boosted but is 4 turns.

Cairo finishes a trader and starts on a market.  In 2 turns, we'll lay down an industrial district.  In the meantime, we trade with Aachen for the lots of bonuses.

Bergen finished its industrial district.  On to a workshop.

T121: Cairo grows to size 10.  Laid down an industrial zone, but kept the market on to finish in 2 turns.

T122: Medina is low on housing, so I buy a granary for 260 gold.

T123: Cairo completes the market and starts on the industrial district.  Hattin completes its industrial district and starts on a workshop.  Hattin's other trade route ends, and we transfer that trader to Medina.

T124: Fredrick moved a really alarming number of units up to my border, but his denunciation is about to end.  I think he just doesn't know what to do with them.  (or so I hope; I'll give him a fight if he attacks, though.)

T125: I need more everything.  I switch civic research back to Recorded History.  In 2 turns, I'll use it to switch civics, and we might be able to accelerate Mercenaries with the time that buys.

T127: I forgot to buy a trader last turn, so I buy one this turn.  We swap in +50% to ancient cav because that's cheaper than the other stuff, for the maintenance civic when recorded history comes in.  Next civic, for now, is Civil Service.  Once we get 2 more units, we'll go back to getting to merchant republic.

T128: Mass Production comes in.  We go up an era.  Industrialization is next.  15 turns, so 7 to finish my 3 workshops.

T129: 2 units produced, boosting Mercenaries.  Next turn is a civic change.  Cairo completes an IZ; starts on a workshop.  Hattin starts on a Barracks.  Medina does its Madrassa.  Damietta an IZ.

T130: Mercenaries comes in.  Building efficiency is out.  +2 builder actions is in.  We need more builders, as usual.

T131: Hattin completes barracks; starts on builder.

T132: Bergen completes a trader; it goes to Athens.  Next build is a builder.

Interturn, my iron mine got pillaged by barbarians.  Annoying.

T133: I dispatch those barbarians.

T134: My third workshop (Cairo) completes, boosting Industrialization.  We'll have it next turn.  Crank out a quick builder before switching over.  Hattin finished its builder; we're building a marketplace now to get that gold income up and running.

I also remember I have the faith for an apostle and get one.  Next time Scythia's missionaries come knocking, they're in for a hammering.

It might not happen ever, though, because a knock-down drag-out brawl appears to have started between Tomyris, Pericles, Harald, and their respective vassals.  I hope it stalemates, because I don't want to lose those industrial city-state bonuses.

T135: Welcome to the Industrial Era!  Next tech is Military Engineering.  I'm going to want an Armory soon.

Our apostle takes Indulgence Vendor.  I think I can achieve that on Stavanger.

T136: Bergen completes a worker and our first factory gets started.

Medina is having growth problems, so I buy a water mill.  Suddenly, it isn't anymore, with 2 wheat in range.

Interturn, Germany wants open borders.  I'm not sure I'm keen on that, actually.  Next time.

T137: Cairo completes a builder and starts on a factory.  Hattin also starts on one.

I successfully indulgence Stavanger.  That will improve things a bit as far as religious pressure goes.

T139: Damietta finishes its IZ and starts on the workshop.  Medina finished its Madrassa, so we're starting on a market, althoug a builder is tempting, too.

T141: a barbarian caravel pillaged my harbor.  That's super annoying.  I'm going to see if I can shoot it with archers.  Also, I think this means I need a navy...  I switch tech to Celestial Navigation.  Without it, I can't fix my harbor.  The city goes to work on walls to have some innate defense.

T144: I pass on Isidore of Miletus; I'm not really building wonders, and someone will get to it soon, anyway.  (... he says and then tries to figure out what to build in Cairo, which doesn't have much left to build.)  Cairo builds a settler in 4 turns.  I do have one last settlement location in mind, so that's not too bad.  Medina is in the same boat for 2 turns, and so will put them into a catapult.

T145: Celestial Navigation and Exploration come in.  We get a new government, and lots of policies!  Also, we start researching Cartography and go back to Civil Service.  Bergen can finally repair its harbor, and will.  Changing governments did make a few of our cities unhappy, though.  Fortunately, I can get the garrison card in a couple turns.

We also recruit Isaac Newton.  This likely requires one more Campus, because he builds a campus set for free, and all our current ones have at least a library.  I think it's going to be at Bergen, but there are alternatives.

T147: Cairo completes a settler.  We're slightly under trade routes after switching, so the next build is a trader.  Also, after new civics, we're no longer housing crunched.

T150: My builder unit repairing a pillaged fishing boats was temporarily captured, but I shot the unit that captured it and got it back.

T151: The tooltip about needing to have 2 charges to launch an inquisition is now a total lie.  I'm pretty sure it's actually that you must have maximum charges, so the next time I can afford an apostle, we're launching an inquisition, unless it has one of the really good promotions.

T153: Cartography comes in.  Next is Gunpowder.  Then, I'll send my settler out once I know if that affects my considerations.  Cairo needs to build more, and I set it on a monument to keep it busy because we're low on culture.  We already have a ton of builders.  Hattin is in the same boat, so I do the same.

T154: those builds are already done.  Cairo goes for Holy Site Prayers because we could use a little extra faith, while Hattin builds a builder.

T155: Bergen reaches size 7 and lays down a campus.  In 2T, the lighthouse will finish, and then we'll build it.  We also switch to Banking, which was 1T out to give Hattin something to build next turn.

Interturn, we met Russia.

T156: Banking comes in.  Hattin starts on a bank.  Bergen finishes a lighthouse and starts on a campus.  Tech is Gunpowder to reveal Niter.  Medina finishes an IZ and starts on a workshop.

I have my apostle launch an inquisition.  It is time to actually make my entire empire followers of Bob.

Interturn T157-8, Peter of Russia wants me to go to war with Tomyris.  I'm sure it'd be interesting, but I'm a little busy atm, and I probably have enough cities.  He does offer new luxuries, though, which I'll trade for.

T158: It turns out that, as usual, I have paved over my late-game strategic resources.  I think the Niter was under my aqueduct, but I'm not sure.  At least I have one if I want to build or upgrade.  Next tech is Printing.  If nobody has snagged the Forbidden City, I'm building it.

T159: I buy an Inquisitor in Cairo.  Next build is a bank.

T161: Medina finishes the workshop and starts on a factory.  Our inquisitor removes heresy in Bergen.  Next up will be Medina, and we'll just work our way south.

T162: Damietta starts a bank.  Found Sana'a in the frozen north and start a harbor.  I continue to wonder if I should have waited a turn to settle 1E, as I just notice a bonus resource that would have been third ring and now aren't.

Fredrick is not happy about my settling to his north.  I tell him I won't do it again.

T163: Hattin starts on the Forbidden City.  20 turns.  Medina is put to the question.

T164: There are no heretics in Hattin.  Cairo still has nothing I want to to build, so I build another builder.  I get another inquisitor to clear out my backlines.

T165: Bergen completes its campus; we GPP-build its buildings.  It starts on a caravel so we can actually explore the rest of the map.

T166: I've decided I need a new way of stalling in Cairo.  I'm building the Ruhr over a lumbermill nearby.  I'm not even chopping it because I'm feeling impatient and it was going to be at least 2 more turns to do, otherwise.  That will take up 30-some turns, at least.  I can't build it in any of my other cities.

Interturn, Germany wants me to go to war with Scythia.  Yes, I could use my production on it, but... no.

T167: Medina finishes a factory; starts bank.

Interturn, a German spy blew himself up in Cairo's industrial district.

T168: Damietta is size 10, and, uh, I guess I'll build a theater district to help with my lagging culture.

T170: a barbarian camp spawned in our backlines, so I upgrade a sword to a musket to get a small boost on square rigging.  Also, we got James Watt, who will matter whenever it is that I get an industrial zone down in Sana'a... but that's going to be district #2.

T171: Scientific Theory also came in, and next is Metal Casting -> Economics.

Medina starts on a spy, but we're going to harvest a wheat in order to build Oxford University there.

Bergen starts on the great lighthouse for fun.  Awhile back, I had bought a shipyard because I was feeling rich, although I admit I am now wishing I still had it as a thing to put hammers into.

T172: Last turn, Germany declared a surprise war on me.  He's in for a surprise, I'd say.  (He did whack a couple units on the way, though.)  First, in 2 turns, I'm going to switch civics and put the upgrade cost reduction one in.  Meanwhile, I'm going to start building units.  Unless he takes things in that time, I should be able to roll him as far back as I want.  I also used 2 envoys I'd been accumulating to take Preslav out of the fight.  It's not just no longer on his side, it's on my side, although I don't think it declares war on him since the fight already started.

T175: Naval Tradition came in and I grabbed the upgrade card.  After upgrading a ton of stuff, I also bought a bombard, so we can actually take cities with walls.  I only have one niter, so I had to get it in Hattin, where I'm trying to finish the Forbidden city as fast as I can.

Interturn, Harald denounces me for holding one of his cities... again.  Maybe we'll have to fight a 2-front war.  *shrug*

T179: Exploring with a Caravel, we find France.  The war goes apace.  We have almost captured Bremen despite the walls.  Mamluks are very good.  I have had to pour some envoys into keeping 

T181: Bremen falls.  I need to rest a bit to recover, but then we can keep going, and this time I don't think throwing up a will will stop me.

Interturn, Catherine of France denounces me because I fought back in a war, as does Pericles.  (Harald already says nasty things about me.)

T182: Next civic is The Enlightenment.  This will be nice for the amenity it provides.

Cairo completed an arena.  We've got enough units now, I think (I'm starting to feel the maintenance), so Cairo is going back to building the Ruhr.  Damietta and Bergen build traders, since we have increased our capacity and probably lost one or two.

T183: I take back my comment about walls not slowing me down.  Both Aachen and Cologne are on the other side of a river and have fairly high strengths.  I'll see what I can bomb down, but that'll be the most I do, unless it makes a big difference.

T184: I pass on Charles Darwin because there aren't any natural wonders nearby.  The next one is Albert Einstein, and I definitely want that one.

I inquisit Bremen.  I'm going to have to work on cleaning up some of the backlines, too, but this will keep giving me a forward foothold.

T186: Sanitation comes in.  Hattin builds a medic.  Next tech is Square Rigging.

T187: The Enlightenment comes in; we shuffle things around a bunch and should mostly solve the amenity problems we're having.

T188: There was a near miss or two with my units.  Also, we're pretty stalemated.  I sent most of the mamluks I built back to garrison for happiness.

T190: Before this turn, Fredrick offers quite the generous deal: 2 pieces of art, 2 luxuries I don't need, and a bunch of money, as well as the city I took, for peace.  I take it.  Peter, on the other hand, denounced me for being a warmonger, as did Tomyris.  The turn itself is uneventful; I re-establish some foreign trade routes.

T191 is similarly uneventful.  We're going back into super builder mode.

Interturn, Norway demands a luxury, and I decide to oblige.

T192: I buy a shipyard in Sana'a to get us a second one.  This boosts steam power.

T193: Steam Power comes in.  Next is Economics (1 turn) and then Electricity.  I have no coal.  There's coal one tile over the border into Norway.  Awkward.

T194: I bought an apostle at some point which got the Proseletizer promotin.  This is a perfect time to finally do the conversion quest for Hong Kong.  Also, if I can find the holy city for Islam, wiping that out is a classic.

T195: Colonialism comes in.  5 turns to Natural History and the ability to build a non-wonder AOE happiness building.

T197: recruited Ada Lovelace.  I need to decide where to use her.  Sana'a finishes its industrial zone and I Watt it up to a factory.  I start it on a sewer, and hope I remember to switch it when it grows a couple turns earlier.  NO huge loss if I don't, but it'd be nice if I did.

T198: I proseletize-erase the holy city for islam.  Satisfying, after all the trouble I had gone through.  Tomyris complains and I ignore it.  (I probably could have agreed, though)

T199: Medina starts on Big Ben.  Hattin starts on a stock exchange.

Interturn, Fredrick denounces me, while Harald complains I don't have a strong navy.

T200: Naturalism comes in; next is Civil Engineering.  Bremen finishes a Temple, buys a Mosque, and starts on a bank.  I dig up a builder to move over and chop a forest for an industrial zone there.

Interturn, Fredrick wants a gift.  I can afford it.

Barbarians are killing my traders in his land, though.
(It looks like these were probably a rebellion due to low happiness.  Germany was chronically short on happiness resources, from what I could tell.)

T201 checkin because I neglected to do one last turn...

bleeding edge of techs (plus 15 turns of techs to the left to get to Steel/Combustion):


The one that got away:

I have no coal.  I'm seriously considering going to war with Norway again to get coal.  I have no causus belli, though, and warmonger penalties are getting rough.  Once I get to the modern era, I might be able to do a colonial war, but that's at least 14 turns of civic research out, because my civics research is ... not great.  On the other hand, that might be how long it takes me to build power plants everywhere, which I intend to do.
The alternative is to go after scythia, which is a harder target because I'd be hitting their capital.  Also, I'd have to redevelop that land, because it's full of their unique improvement, which will vanish:

Scorewise, I seem to be second, after Russia, which apparently dominated the other continent:

Both of us are carried to our leads by our significant advantage in empire points, although we're starting to pull ahead on tech.

As accidental win conditions go, Greece, Russia, and Scythia are busy guaranteeing that we won't have to worry about any culture victories... and we've somehow accumulated 4 from a couple wonders and one great writer's worth of books that Germany gave me for peace.

For happiness and growth, we're bumping into housing caps a bit (and building sewers almost everywhere), but we have enough amenities that everyone is 1-2 amenities into "happy".  I think we're good, for now.

[Ranamar]

T201 onward: conquering Norway and the final push... it's amazing how much got done in the last third of the game by turns.  (It's half my notes)

T202: Cairo completes the Ruhr.  Electricity comes in.  Welcome to the Modern Era!  The next tech is Chemistry, so we can get going on those Research Labs that I actually think I might want to build for a change.

We also met Amsterdam, which means we can finally get the money train really going, since I've spammed out commercial districts like a good player.

Cairo gets a power plant.  I also shuffle some tiles around to maximize the Ruhr's +1 to mines and quarries.  I get ... four ... of those.  This map is rather flat, unfortunately... but all the other options were worse.  It's still cranking out something like 85 production per turn, enough to put a power plant out in 6 turns despite being 500+ production, even with no outgoing trade routes.

Medina was building Big Ben, so I decide to take a short break to build a power plant there as well.  It will slow our completion by a few turns, given that it only had 18 turns remaining, but the power plant is worth a lot.  It's about a 7% production boost for Medina and each of the surrounding cities.

Sana'a didn't need anything else just yet, so it has been working on a sewer.  Also, it's out of range of factory boosting anything unless I lay down another city, because I built the industrial district on the wrong side of the city in a moment of paying attention to the wrong things.  We're going to switch off the sewer for a seaport, which I should have remembered exists and gives some gold income, some food income, and one housing (instead of the 2 from the sewer).  Actually, we're going to put 4 turns into it and then lay down the commercial district it hasn't built yet, when it grows to size 7.

The other cities have critical buildings finishing in the next couple turns, so we're finishing those first.

T203: Nothing of note happened.  I moved a trader from Hattin to Cairo, in order to make it an even crazier production city.

Interturn, Peter is disappointed by my science and culture output... probably mostly the culture output, but he is ahead of me in science.

T204: I purchase a trader in Sana'a.  I'm several below limit right now, and I want to accelerate building even ones up there faster.

Hattin finished a bank and starts on a power plant.  Bergen finished a sewer and started on a power plant.  Bremen finished a bank and ... umm ... started on an industrial zone.  15 turns.

T205: Civil Engineering comes in.  I actually don't do anything with it, so maybe I should have switched to Nationalism earlier, come to think of it.  Well... that will be coming in another 10 turns.

By now, exploring has also found Buenos Aires and Kabul.  Also, I have proseletized all three of the closest holy sites in Scythia, so I don't think Islam will ever spread again.

Damascus completed a sewer and starts on its own power plant.  This one seems to be slower than the others, at 10 turns.

Sana'a switches to a commercial hub, which will complete in 7 turns.  It also turns out that Sana'a is pretty much good on production, so I send another route to Aachen and hope that the barbarians (which it now occurs to me were probably a revolt) have been suppressed.

T207: I cleaned up a barbarian camp.  Nothing else happened.

Interturn, Harald renewed his denunciation of me for being a warmonger.

T208: Cairo finishes the first of the power plants.  It appears to have shaved one turn off of Damietta's power plant build, and a couple off Bremen's industrial zone build.  The next build is a sewer so we can start growing properly again.

Also, apparently a trade route was the only thing keeping Hattin growing.  I restart the route between hattin and somewhere, sending it to Cairo (which is my only city to give +4 food).

T209: I pay for delaying Big Ben as much as I did: Peter finished it this past turn.  On the other hand, Medina is only just finishing its power plant this turn, so there really was no chance that I'd have finished it in time, short of maybe stacking trade routes more than I knew I would need to.

Since Medina just finished the power plant, I think I'll finally fill my trade routes back up: a trader or builder apparently builds in 1 turn.  I'm going to need to put the new builder card in sometime to drop out a few more builders sometime... and then probably research Divine right to pop us right back out again.

T210: We got another great person, Alan Turing.  So... we appear to have gotten both of the "boost computers" great people.  I'm going to use this one, because he boosts something else, too.  Passing him up for Alfred Nobel might have been better.

Anyway, I use him and he boosts chemistry, which I was 3/4 done with.  Whoops!  I need to roll up the part of the tech tree that I had ignored, and I plan to see if I can still get Oxford soon, so I set our cheap techs next.  We'll roll up castles and stuff at about 2 turns per tech, because they're all boosted.

I transfer the trader that was just finished to Bremen.  A research lab in Medina where it was finished is 7 turns.  I buy a trader in Damietta, because it's most hurting for production of the cities that we're going to build labs in.

T212: I start a bunch of research labs.  Bergen is the one most direly in need of production, and Sana'a just finished its commercial hub, so Hattin, which doesn't have a campus, builds a trader to send there.  Next turn, Cairo or Medina, probably Cairo, will start on Oxford, however.

Interturn, a bunch of AIs renew their denunciations of me.  Scythia demands a luxury from me (again?), and this time I decline.  I don't need any of these suckers, at this point.  I could probably brawl them all at the same time!

Also, apparently, I can now declare holy war on Pericles, which baffles me: if he's converting someone, it's Scythia.

T213: Hattin literally has nothing to build now except units, projects, or a new district, when I have been planning to save the 10-pop district for a spaceport.  I guess it's time to do industrial zone logistics to get the next GE faster, who is Robert Goddard.  Goddard boosts rocketry, which is nice, and gives a 20% increase to spaceport projects, which is critical.  I'll backfill some other techs while I do that.

Vilnius wants a trade route for a quest, so Hattin sends a route there.  The city isn't amazingly helpful for us, and the route is 8g2c1f after cards, but I like covering these things.

Interturn, Catherine taunts me about politics.  Big Time Operators think they're so precious.

T214: We get a GMerchant who is completely useless: Sarah Breedlove increases tourism and nothing else.  Unfortunately, Peter got the last one, which I should have tried to snipe from him: John Rockefeller is a lot better.  Russia will get it in 30 turns, and I think I can live with that.  Pass.

Damietta finished something and starts on a research lab.  Bergen starts a trade route to accelerate growth and its research lab.  Bremen finishes its industrial zone and starts on a workshop.

Also, I set my tech to Ballistics.  It's 6 turns, and I want to upgrade my crossbows to field cannons.  Then, I'm going to see if I can get coal from Norway... by taking Stavanger from him.

T215: Nationalism comes in.  We can create corps, and I'm going to clean up some of the mamluk spam that I did awhile back: one of them has no experience at all.  Also, I can now at any time begin Operation Viking Freedom, I mean, a war for coal.

I've been playing a dangerous game, not building Oxford yet.  However, I've finally decided on a location for it.  It involves removing a wheat farm I have which is actually sandwiched between two campuses, near Cairo.  This turn, I removed the farm.  Next turn, the research centers complete, and I harvest the wheat to one of them, at which point I'll lay down Oxford, probably in Cairo, because of its monster production... and the fact that the palace gives +2 science.  The wheat will go to Cairo to see if we can hit 15 population fast enough.  I swap a couple farms over for the turn to get the housing up so it's not constrained.  Next turn, they go back to Damietta.  5 turns to Ballistics.

T216: Harvesting the wheat boosts Urbanization; it gets here in 4 turns.  I kick myself for having not put the wonder card in as I lay down Oxford.  11 turns, as it is.

We also appear to be happiness-crunched, so I suspect a deal just ran out.  I go trawling for luxury deals.  Nobody likes me because I'm a warmonger, sooo... citrus and 32 gpt for sugar.  I think that's manageable, although it's not amazing.  I need to get a zoo online... rushbuying it would cost almost as much as I just paid, but I don't have the money on hand right now.  Unfortunately, the other continent is the only way to get new luxury sources, and I may have possibly overgrown my cities.  After Oxford, it's definitely the zoo.  Also, Hattin has 13 housing, so we're going to build an entertainment district there and grow for the spaceport.  It ends up being literally 2 tiles from my other entertainment district, where I could very well have dropped it from the other one.  (I got better adjacency bonuses putting it in the other spot...)

It turns out that I need another musketman to bonus replaceable parts, so Medina builds that.

Interturn, Pericles is impressed with my culture.  (Thanks!  I worked hard to get that up...)

T217: nothing much appened.

Interturn, Tomyris built the Great Library.  (bit late...)

T218: Bremen finishes a workshop and starts on a factory.  I chop a forest into it. and order the citizen who was working the forest to work in the workshop.  (The food surplus in Bremen is astronomical.)

T219: Medina finishes the musketman, boosting Replaceable Parts, and starts on a sewer, because it's housing crunched.

Bremen finishes its Research Lab and starts on a seaport.

Urbanization (civic swap) and Ballistics (field cannon upgrade) in 1 turn.  Harald denounced me 15 turns ago or something, so we'll go a'conquering next turn.

Harald knows something is up, though.  He asks me why I've massed my troops by his border.  (A couple of them are right on the border.)  I ignore it, because I don't want to declare war just yet.

T220: Urbanization comes in.  We don't want to stay in the upgrade civic long, so I put Divine Right as the next one: it completes in one turn.  The next tech is Flight.  I had forgotten we needed radio, which requires flight, for rocketry.  (Radio requiring Flight is distinctly weird to me.  Rocketry requiring Flight is not.)

For civics, I take the +culture for districts and double campus adjacency bonuses out for +wonder production and the unit upgrade discount.  We've got 1868 faith right now, and we aren't using it for anything (although I might possibly go for a naturalist... maybe... for the Radio boost.  Gold and faith from trade routes stays in, though, because we aren't running much of a surplus at the moment.
Civics this turn:


Having completed its entertainment district, Hattin starts on an arena.

I upgrade a bunch of crossbows to field cannons.  Norway's berserkers are going to be toast.

Interturn, Tomyris renews her denunciation of me as a warmonger.  To be fair, they're not wrong.  Every so often, I see land I want and I take it.  (Looking at the relationship chart, she's pretty pissed that I converted her holy city, which is about half again as much as the minus for warmongering.  I really don't begrudge her hating me.  Furthermore, looking at this, it becomes evident that refusing to make a promise is, while not as bad as breaking one, still bad for your relationship.)

T221: The arena in Hattin completes.  They start on a zoo.  Dropping the culture civic apparently slowed my culture rate enough that Divine Right was 2 turns.  Oh well.

Damietta finished its research lab and starts on an archaeologist.  There's one tech that needs it for a boost.

Also, it's T-turn.  Time to get colonial on Norway.  The first trike goes off without a hitch.

Interturn, it turns out there are even more berserkers hiding than I thought.  They don't do a whole lot against stuff 1-2 ages beyond them.  Also, Peter denounces me for being a warmonger.  Guilty as charged.

T222: Divine Right finally finishes.  The next civic is Mobilization, which boosts if I get 3 corps in my military.  I swap the upgrade civic out for the culture card I had taken out.  It turns out it was important; who knew?

Medina finishes its sewer and starts on a Mamluk.  We're going to see how much exp new-build units get with a Stable and an Armory, to calibrate what's worth keeping, rather than putting into a corps.

Sana'a finishes a seaport and starts on a bank.

Bremen finished a factory and starts on a monument.  It's 1 turn, and then we're going for the power plant.  I considered laying down a theater square for +3, but I don't really want to build the extra stuff onto it and it's still not more efficient.

On the war front, I've almost captured Stavanger, and it's been pretty much a stomp, but the lack of perfection is annoying.  I might even lose some units.

T223: Flight completes.  3T to Oxford.  Also, it's 3T to Military Science, so I queue that up.  Hopefully, that means it won't get selected as a tech to get for free.

Bremen finished its monument and starts on a power plant.

I have envoys to send.  One goes to Buenos Aires for the production boost in the capital.  The other, I'm sitting on.

On the war front, Stavanger falls.  I get its harbor and holy site, but the unfinished commercial district vanishes, probably because it dropped down to 6 population.  We got a new trade route, so I buy a trader in Bremen.

Interturn, my bombards get mauled some more.  They're going to need to spend awhile recovering before I can take more cities, sadly.

T224: We recruit Robert Goddard.  I use him as soon as I get him, in Cairo.  I hope his effect is global, but, if it isn't, at least we'll have absurd output in one place.

On the war front, my bombards have taken a pretty serious beating, and I can't take more cities until I have siege weapons again.  My field cannons won't really cut it.

Interturn, greece demands citrus.  Go away.

T225: We recruit Rani Lakshmibai.  He enhances our ... uh, actually, just our field cannons.  Our combat tech is too backwards.  Whoops!  He does turn into a cavalry when he retires, though.

It turns out that, even with a Stables, we don't get any extra exp on our newly-produced units.  However, I think I have too many for maintenance reasons, so I'm going to start merging ones without promotions.  I now have 3 Mamluk corps with at least one promotion each, and one random who just barely doesn't have enough experience for even one promotion and doesn't have a buddy.  Maybe I'll turn him into an army with one later.  The third corps boosted Mobilization, so maybe soon I'll be able to get my maintenance under control.  (probably not actually until we get more red slots, though...)

Medina starts on an observation balloon since the Mamluk completed.  Shooting artillery from outside of city range sounds great to me.

T226: Oxford completes.  This turn, Military Science, Replaceable Parts, and Rifling complete this turn.  The next tech is Steel for the lumber mill boost.  After that, we're probably going to suck it up and just do Radio without the boost.  I was hoping to boost Radio at some point because it was a quest for a city state, but Conservation is just too expensive, and I can't wait for it.  (Well, that, and the Conservation boost is a neighborhood, which I don't really want to build...)

Cairo's next build is a zoo.  Soon, we will have two of them and pretty thoroughly solve the amenity problem, at least for awhile.  Bremen starts on a bank.

T227: Hattin finishes its zoo and starts on a military academy.  Medina starts one too.  Sana'a finishes a bank and starts on a stock exchange.

Damietta finishes the Archaeologist it was working on, and I decide to take a run at the Radio boost after all.  It's 6 turns to finish a neighborhood there, or actually 5 once I put it in.  It's 11 turns to Conservation right now.  Once we finish Steel, we can get Radio close, switch to Combustion while we line the rest of it up, and then switch back, to maximize the output.  Actually, on second examination of the land, I want to research Combustion ASAP so I can find out if I need to conquer all of Norway for oil.  There's a desert area in his backfill, and I don't have any likely oil spots, myself.

Our siege engines are healed back up, so it's back to conquering Norway for us, this time with 3 range.

T228: I miscounted and Cairo needs one more population to drop a spaceport without using Ada Lovelace.  I steal a bunch of farms to get us food and housing to grow in 6 turns.  I will need to switch these back when I reach that.  It builds a stock exchange for 4 turns, in the meantime.

Also, from the theme of miscounting, I chopped my last worker charge into Stavanger, which didn't really need it, but I was going to to mine the tile and now I can't.

On the war front, I'm being reminded that, actually, you can get some pretty serious damage out of field cannons bombarding cities, especially when half of them have the bombardment promotion.

T229: Bergen has massive war weariness due to being norwegian.  It's a -6, and 0/5 actual.  All my other cities are at +1 or +2 happy, so I don't know why the amenity distributor isn't doing anything.  Maybe it gave up on it.

Steel came in, and we're going for Combustion to find out how far I need to go against Norway.  I'm strongly considering just rolling the whole thing up anyway, though.

A massed barrage from field cannons followed by some cavalry corps gets us Nidaros.  We steal a worker in the bargain, which I'm going to use to first repair a farm I pillaged, and then mine something, probably the niter nearby.  Unfortunately, it only has one charge left.  We're going to have to switch to the worker civic at some point.

Conquering Nidaros also got us the Colossus as well as a commercial district and a harbor (ironicaly not adjacent to each other.  I'd buy some traders, but several of my cities are going to need things to build real soon, so I'll defer it to that.  (Besides, I'm about to have access to all the modern units, and it would be time for an upgrade spree if I didn't have overwhelming force already.)

T230: Stavanger starts on a trader.  It's 10 turns, but I don't like the other options.  Units reposition, because it's time to move on to the next city.

Interturn, Germany denounces me for being a wormonger.  (Well, yes... "Victory in Space by Victory on Earth" should be my motto, it seems.)

T231: Cairo builds a trader, as does Hattin.  I now deeply regret setting Stavanger to build one, as I have run out of useful things to build in Damietta... where I discover that my neighborhood did not have Breathtaking appeal, as it is merely charming.  (This should have been obvious.)  I start Damietta on the Eiffel Tower because why not.  It will do the boost for me, but 16 turns is way too late.  I swap a Quarry from Cairo just because, but it will still be too slow.  I set Mobilization back as my civic to get us a civic swap sooner rather than later.  Medina queues up a monument, because it won't cost us anything later.

Interturn, Norway will cede the two cities and pay me a ton for peace.  At the moment, I don't actually want to do that, so I decline.

Also interturn, someone sabotages Medina's industrial district.  It's a thing to do with that city's production, I guess.

T232: Given the recent sabotage, it seems like a good time to build a spy in Hattin, so I do.  Probably, I'll just have them run counter-espionage.  Actually, later this turn we conquered another city with a harbor, so it's building a trader instead.

Bergen is now down to -1/5 amenities.  We may very well get barbs soon.

Bremen, on the other hand, is happy and low on housing, so it starts a sewer.

On the war front, Skien falls, and apparently loses not one but two population.  Yeah, I think I'm going to see how fast I can wipe out Norway, so I never have to wonder about it again.  I might gift one really shitty city to Scythia, though.

T233: Combustion comes in. ... I can't find any oil near me.  There isn't even any in the water.  The closest I've got is one in the water between Brussels and Athens:


Well, nothing for it... the next tech is going to be Radio either way, and the next civic Mass Media.  Radio comes in in 6 turns unboosted, and Mass Media in 10, so it will be 5 turns, one to do something else, and then a boost.

It will cost me a turn on the Eiffel Tower (which is more for vanity than anything), but I take the wonder production card out for Levee en Masse, to get my unit maintenance under control.  It's worth about 10 or 15 gold.

Hamar falls to a massed field cannon bombardment.  The city is probably worthless at this point in the game, having not even a harbor, but I keep it anyway.  It has approximately no production, but it has 3 seafood, so it's good for a bunch of gold, at least.  We can try mining some desert hills.

I consider making peace with Norway at this point, but I decide it's probably better to just wipe it out, rather than leaving them on life support.  This will be a good chance to find out how much the last city costs in warmongering.  I'm at -40, at this point.

... Wow, that last city was worth -30 warmongering.  That's steep.  Well, I made my bed.  I'll have to lie in it.  Bergen still has massive WW.  (ed: In retrospect, I should have set out to conquer either Germany or Scythia at this point, warmonger penalties be damned.  I still had warmonger denunciations from everyone when the game ended.  Unlike Civ 4, you cannot crash your economy by conquering too many cities, even if they don't produce much for whatever reason.)

Interturn, France demands luxuries.  So does Russia.  Go away.  I'm going to space, now.

T234: I decide to gift Alesund to Scythia.  It's a pretty bad city, but it feels like it makes more sense as part of their territory than mine.  If we ever go to war, I can always get it back, right?  Also, it looks like Bergen is finally no longer war weary.  We have almost all our cities up to happy again, and all of them at least content.

I build a bunch of district projects in my cities that need work, since they don't have much to build.

Also, sometime around now I get my third artifact.  I'm fascinated by the fact that I felt I could really use the culture from acquiring them.  It's about 10% of my total culture output, even now that I have many more cities.

T236: It's time to renew those projects.

T237: Bremen starts on a bank; Stavanger grows.  I lay down a commercial hub and then go back to finishing the trader.  It's apparently housing crunched, but that doesn't really matter right now.

T238: Radio comes in.  Next tech is Rocketry (boosted: 3 turns to complete).  It's time for the push to the end.

Interturn, Peter is impressed by my arts and sciences.

T239: Mass Media completes.  The happiness for garrison card is obsoleted.  I need builders, so I throw the builder card in.  When the next batch of projects ends, I'll crank out a set of builders.  We do have a slight amenity problem now, though.

Our next tech path is Ideology to Class Struggle.  In 9 turns, we'll be Communists and work together on getting off this rock.  I'm pretty sure that 10% production on everything (notably, this should work on projects) beats having an extra wildcard slot.  We'll find something for the military slots.  I hear Integrated Space Cell is good for the space race.

We also recruit a great admiral: Joaquim Marques Lisboa can reduce war weariness, if we need, or he can boost our nonexistent navy.  He's going to sleep in bergen either way.

Interturn, I notice that the AIs have gotten bored and are sending missionaries and apostles my way.  Looks like it's time to use some of that faith I had been saving for a national park...

T240: I buy something like 2000 faith worth of apostles and inquisitors to fight the invading heretics, because I've acquired several holy sites.  I also bought a tile for 290 gold near Sana'a in the north because I have Rocketry coming in next turn and it is likely to raise the cost.  (It's the last tile I actually care about near that city.  I'll need to get a worker back over there when the two I have building complete next turn.)

Interturn, peter builds Cristo Redentor.

Also, one of my apostles is in a slightly exposed position and got whacked a bunch.

T241: Rocketry comes in.  Welcome to the atomic era!

To get off this planet, we need to do the following things:
First, we need to launch a satellite, to make sure our rockets don't blow up on the launchpad.  That requires a Spaceport (2000 production) and the project (1500 production).  Total cost is 3500 production.
Then, we need to land on the Moon to make sure we can move people around.  We'll already have a spaceport, but the project costs 2500 production.  This requires the Satellites tech, which we will have long before we finish a spaceport, at the rate things are going.
Finally, we need to launch three modules to Mars: Habitation, Reactor, and Hydroponics.  Each of these are 3000 production.  We can parallelize it if we build two more spaceports, which will not be the long pole for building.  Also, later down the line, Integrated Space cell will give us a 15% production boost on the projects if we have a maxed out encampment or harbor.

In order to do this efficiently, we want to stack our enormous pile of trade routes onto the three cities we're using for this.  Let's see what we have in the way of production-before-trade-routes.
* Cairo has 117.9 production (and we can steal another tile to get that higher), of which a little over 5 (4+20%+15%) are from trade routes.  Let's score that as 112.5 base.  We can also steal a tile from Damietta and/or Medina.
* Medina has 91.8, with 3+12% from trade routes.  Let's call it 89.  We can also take another 8 production (+12%) from Stavanger and/or Bergen, which would get us to close to 100.
* Hattin has 74.8, with only 1 of those coming from trade routes because it's a foreign trade route for other stuff.  It's also 18 turns from having the population for a the spaceport unless we use Ada Lovelace there.
* Damietta is at 105.1 production right now, while working on the Eiffel Tower (because what else should I build?).  Unfortunately, 14 (+13%) of that is from trade routes, so the actual score is closer to 90.  However, that still beats Hattin by a sizeable margin.  (With the current trade route distribution, Damietta could finish the Eiffel Tower and still build a spaceport before Hattin finished its spaceport.)  Damietta doesn't ahve an encampment, though.

Everyone other than those four has less production and no real chance of catching up.  The heartland is the heartland and all that.  Hattin and Medina are going to get a production boost as Nidaros brings its factory and power plant online, but that's going to take some significant time.  So, the plan is that Cairo and Medina get spaceports, and we figure the third one out later.  We don't need it for a bit, anyway.

Cairo has exactly one spot it can place a spaceport without paving over an existing tile, so it goes there.  As the urgent primary spaceport, we take the horses from Medina for more production, although it doesn't look like it speeds things up any.  Spaceport completion expected in 14 turns.  Medina also starts a spaceport; estimated copletion time 20 turns.

Hattin isn't building a spaceport for now, so it starts on a spy.  We're going to put spies to cover all our spaceports (and as many industrial zones as we can cover at the same time) in case somebody gets any funny ideas.

We have 2 trade routes that just finished, so we're transferring them to Cairo to see if we can shave another turn off its spaceport build.  Spaceports appear to not have cost scaling like everything else: they're base cost 2000 actual cost 2000 for me right now.

We're going to have to research a bunch of the tech tree, so I set my next tech to Plastics.  It will give our various seafood +1 food, which doesn't matter for our core but might be nice in the periphery.  After that, we'll reassess based on how fast things are building and researching.  I think I need to sprint for satellites next after that.

T242: It's a giant brawl out here where religious units are concerned, out here.  I pick off several which weakened each other.  I also buy another inquisitor in case my current one bites the dust on patrol duty.  (unlikely, but I have the faith...)

Bergen finished a builder and can 1-turn them.  We'll do another of those and then switch out the builder card next turn.

Another trader is up for renewal, so I trasnfer it to Cairo.  Before activating that one, we're now up to 150 production in Cairo, which is fantastic.  That's 10 turns or less for the satellite, once we have the launchpad.

T243: Ideology comes in.  Next stop, Communism and even more production!  Time to swap civic cards.  Worker bonuses are out.  Industrial Zone Adjacency is in.  We just got another spy slot, so Bergen starts on it.

I decide it's finally time to get another religious bonus.  I evangelize with an injured apostle who has a completely useless promotion.  I haven't been trying very hard to proseletize outside my own lands except for a surgical strike into Scythia, but the Church of Bob appears to have quite the following in Germany as well.  I briefly consider World Church for the extra culture, but it's only +10 culture, and I've gotten my culture up to 150 per turn by now.  On the other hand, my cities are all enormous and mostly entirely converted, so tithe gets me around 12 gold from that as well as about 2-3 gold for almost every city I have.  I'm also netting less gold than my culture per turn right now.

Bremen needs to build something and can build an airport or a theater district.  The theater district would give +3 culture for 6 turns of building... but we've only got about 100 turns of civic research left in the tree.  On the other hand, we also aren't going to last 100 turns longer.  Actually, we might... I'm seeing similar numbers for the tech tree, which is a perfect coincidence.  If I spend all my gold, I can just barely build an aerodrome in time to buy 2 biplanes with all my gold, but I can't quite get enough to buy three of them, and they cost a bunch of maintenance.  Whatever: I'm kind of just screwing around at this point anyway.  I drop an aerodrome to see if I can pull it off.  It's the quest for Amsterdam, too.

I've got another trader finishing up, but I think I'll send one to Bremen for a change, to possibly speed up that aerodrome slightly.  Cairo is just about maxed out on trade routes.

Interturn, Catherine re-ups her denunciation for warmongering, as does Pericles.

T244: Sana'a has nothing useful to build, so we're going to build commercial investment for gold.  Bremen sends its trade route to Nidaros, which somehow has +5 production to every other city in my empire's +4.  I guess it's got an encampment and a harbor.

T245: Hamar reached size 4, so it lays down a commercial hub.  It will probably never be finished, but it exists if we ever get through the harbor.

T246: Hattin finishes its spy and also goes in for investment.  Counterspy mode engaged on its industrial district, which should shield the spaceport next door as well.

Bergen has a trade route to re-up and, for now, I'm sending it to Aachen for the extra gold.  I could send it locally for extra production, but I don't think that will matter, since I'm planning to buy all my biplanes, rather than build them, unless the build ends up looking really good.

Also, my gold went way up while I suddenly hit an amenity crisis.  It looks like an amenity deal just ended... and when I grow Bremen again in 5 turns, it's definitely oging to need to drop an entertainment district.  I'm not willing to pay half my gpt to get a single amenity.  (and I'm quite sad I didn't manage to get the GP that gives amenities for bonus resources... I've got a few of those lying around...)

T247: Skien, one of the Norwegian port city conquests finishes a granary.  Lacking a better plan while we wait for it to grow to size 4 (though I did swap it another food tile), we start a lighthouse.

The break-even for a lumber mill on this tundra forest near Damietta is 50-75 turns.  I think that's "ignore it and come back to chop it into a mars thing" territory.

T248: Plastics comes in.  Fish are now pretty good sources of food.  Next tech is Advanced flight.

Communism also comes in.  Next civic is Suffrage, because I need the happy/housing from New Deal, and I can offset the gold loss by doubling gold output of commercial hub buildings with the card that does that.  The rest of the space race/globalization techs are less than 60 turns, and we're going to get several of the boosts for them, too.

Bremen completes its aerodrome... it's 1355 gold per biplane before we switch to communism, or 6 turns to build.  I'm 1 turn short of being able to buy all three this turn.  (Ouch)  We're barrelling through the tech tree, though, so I'm setting the tech to Combined Arms and slow-building the last one.  I switch techs to Advanced Ballistics because that's already boosted and also required for nuclear fission.

Now that we've bought the units we want to buy, we're switching to Communism.  This puts us over our trade routes by 2.  It also causes a precipitous drop in gold per turn.  We lose a wildcard slot and gain an economic slot, as well as two military slots and the 10% production bonus.  The industrial zone adjacency card also obsoletes... for one which bonuses campuses as well.  I slot that in.  The second military card is Logistics for extra worker movement, and finally Military Research.  It's not worth much, but I don't see any cards for bonusing air unit production.  (After a quick check, it appears that the air unit card is on Suffrage.)
These are our civics cards now:


T249: Skien grows to size 4.  I think about putting the commercial hub for max adjacency, but that's a hill, and the area really needs more production.  Instead, it gets dropped somewhere with no adjacency, but it's in the desert, where there's no loss from putting it there.  At 48 turns, it's probably not getting anywhere anyway.

Hattin completed its commercial investment, and I decide to build a military engineer.  I'll put an airstrip somewhere out of the way, and use it to boost Combined Arms.  Damietta completes the Eiffel Tower and drops a spaceport in the tundra next to the Eiffel Tower.  Building it will complete in 17 turns, only 5 turns after Medina finishes its spaceport.

We got a great person.  It's Helene Rubenstein, who gives us two Cosmetics luxuries.  That's a huge help!  We're not going to get the next one, which is Levi Strauss, who does the same thing with Jeans.  Sana'a finished its commercial investment this turn, but there still isn't really anything else to do there, so I set it for more of that.

Interturn, Catherine demands lipstick.  Go away.  Everyone else except Peter does too.  Same answer.

T250: Nidaros finishes its factory.  Next build is a power plant.  Nothing else of interest happens.  I note that the next great merchant is Estee Lauder, who makes Perfume.  Perfume works on 6, rather than 4, cities.  There's basically no competition for it, but it will take some time to get there.

T251: Hattin finishes its military engineer.  Back to the investment zone, I guess.  Bergen goes for research, instead.

I decide to take one of my apostles and burn it to evangelize a final belief.  I choose +30% spread range, because I have a solid core and want to see if I can push out a bit, passively.

Interturn, Tomyris re-ups her denunciation.

T252: I build an airstrip with my military engineer to boost Combined Arms.  Advanced Flight says 6 turns, so I set it to research: Bremen will finish Biplane #3 in 2 turns.

Interturn, Peter re-ups his denunciation.

T253: Cairo completes a spaceport.  Our satellite project is good to go!  9 turns to completion.

Also, suffrage comes in.  New civics:

New Deal neatly solves our happiness and housing problems, while doubling commercial district building output actually increases or income compared to before.  Our next civic is to get started on Cold war.  After that, we'll switch over to Professional Sports until we get to fission.  (ed: In retrospect, even with a buffer of only 2k gold in the late game here, I should have put the science card in instead.)

Stavanger finished its commercial hub.  Next up is a market.

Interturn, Peter finally comes asking for lipstick.  Again, no.

T253: Our third biplane completes, boosting Advanced Flight.  It completes next turn.  This also gets us an envoy with Amsterdam, our second.  I put our spare envoy in to get bonus gold at all our commercial hubs.
Hattin starts on more commercial hub investment.  I'm not sure what I'll use all this gold on, but it's nice to have the buffer.

Bremen starts on an entertainment complex, now that it's done with the biplane.  There's no reason not to go from a little short on amenities to a crazy pile of them.

I've also come up with a harebrained plan to get some more boosts: There's oil on the other continent, and it's just sitting on the coast for the taking.  I'm going to build a settler and send some builders with it.  Hopefully, I can get oil and also some more luxuries, since that continent has different luxuries.  I'm sending a Mamluk to scout first, because I won't finish the satellite fast enough to have it do the scouting for me, but I already know there's oil on the coast.

T255: Advanced flight comes in, and it turns out that I already have a source of aluminium mined.  IN fact, I have a second one, and I dodged a bullet in where I placed my commercial hub at Skien there were two flat desert tiles, and I happened to pick the one that wasn't aluminium.  For all we know, it will turn out to have Uranium under it, though...


We also got a great engineer: Jane Drew.  Perhaps I should have passed over her for the next one, Joseph Paxton, who increases AOE on one city's districts by 3.  However, it's more expensive to get to, so we might get him anyway.  Russia is a little over halfway there, and we've got about twice his GPP per turn.  Sana'a needs to do something, so it's time for industrial zone projects.  Jane herself spends some time improving Cairo.  Other than some marginal cities we took off of Norway, it's the only city which is slowed.

T256: We get Erwin Schroedinger, once again comically sniping something away from Russia to show them another more-expensive-than-before great person.  The next great scientist, though, is Stephanie Kwolek, who gives double speed to space race projects.  We want this.  We might also finish the space race before we can get there.

Bergen starts on a settler for the terrestrial colony project.  It will take all of three turns to build.  Stavanger starts on a bank.

Schroedinger goes to a campus and boosts three techs... including Composites, which was the main reason I wanted to go get oil.  In fact, not a single one of the techs he boosted said "Boost through Great Scientist or Spy."  I'm a little displeased by that.  (I was really hoping I'd roll my current tech, Satellites, if I'm completely honest.)  I put the colony project on hold and instead have Bergen work on a research project for gsci points.  We're going exploring anyway, to see if we can find anything else useful to us.

Since we don't need the spaceport in Medina yet, Medina starts a research project in the meantime.  If we're lucky, we might be able to shave a turn off Satellites.  Same with Damietta.

T257: Hattin finishes its investment and gets started on a round of industrial zone logistics.

The mamluk we sent to go exploring spots a scout and goes to kill it.  It turns out it was right next to a brand new barbarian camp... defended by an AT crew!  We'll see if our brave knights survive a bazooka, but it's going to be dicey no matter what.

T258: My knights lived!  The AT crew ignored them for some reason.  I don't understand the barbarian guardians' logic on when to leave the camp or not.  Time to run, anyway.

It also looks like stacking up a bunch of extra science has managed to edge satellites down in completion time by a turn, so it will now coincide with the launch of my satellite.

Bremen completed an entertainment district, so it's now time to fill it out.  We're right on the edge in happiness again, anyway.

Interturn, Preslav has rebels because it has lots of food and no amenities.  Fortunately, they're as low-tech as my own obsolete army.  I'm going to need to clean some up, though.

T260: Hattin finally reached 13 population.  Lacking anything better to do, I drop an aerodromeon top of the airstrip I had built.  It's poetic, the airstrip has outlived its usefulness, and it gives adjacency bonuses to Nidaros's industrial zone.  Also, that flatland tile is frankly useless.

Also, I just noticed that I had gotten more than 50% of the way through Cold War.  I switch civics research to Professional Sports.

Interturn, Frederick demands citrus and pocket change.  I decide to oblige him.

T261: I launch a satellite.  The satellites tech comes in.  Welcome to the Information age!
The next tech target is nuclear fission, which will be ... a few of turns.  Somewhere between 5 and 8, depending on overflow.  There are two almost-completed prerequisites and then the final one.

Cairo starts on a moon landing.  14 turns.  Then, we're going to need to figure out how to get some of the final projects in the pipeline.  From here, it looks like one is 7 turns to research, one is 10 turns to research, and one is 13 turns after nuclear fission.  Y'know, I'm not sure we actually need the extra +100% to space race project building, but it will probably shave around 10 turns off of our win.  We should put the slowest of the three launchpads going first, followed by the others, anyway.  I'm not even certain we will recruit another GP before everything finishes off, in fact.

T262: Combined Arms comes in.  Also, apparently I am now far enough ahead of France that I can declare colonial wars on them.

Interturn, Tomyris demands citrus and a small amount of money from me.  Sure, why not?

T263: Advanced Ballistics comes in.  5 turns to Nuclear Fission.

I re-up some trade routes in the periphery to make sure they get modern roads.  They're building trade route capacity, and it's never going to pay for itself, but I don't really care right now.

T264: Hattin finishes a project and starts on a hangar.  Bremen does the same.  We're going to make the run for airports with our aerodromes, including the one I have barely started in Sana'a.

T265: We're using Ada Lovelace in Medina so it can build an entertainment complex.  It's 3 turns and will finish up most of Professional Sports.  Civic research is swapped to Capitalism for the moment.

T266: One of Bremen's trade routes finishes up.  It gets transferred to Damietta.

T267: It turns out that Sana'a is feeding people largely from trade routes at this point.  One finished, and now it's time to turn the food pipeline back on.  It's only -1, so we're going to maximize other output and send it to Nidaros.  On further investigation, some tiles I thought Sana'a owned were owned by another city despite being out of working range.  I flip those and it improves things further.  It's not growing quickly, though.

Damietta has some trade routes, and they're mostly maxed out.  One trader gets transferred to Medina.

Interturn, Peter is impressed with my arts and sciences.

T268: Nuclear fission gets us the rest of the way to the cold war.  Through some irony of timing order, we don't get a civic swap from the civic completion.  It's 1 turn to professional sports because we boosted it this past turn, so that goes in next.

It's 6 turns to go to the moon, so we're going to get going on our shortest path to a mars module, so we can start on the first one.  Tech path is Computers -> Robotics; 7 turns.

We found Uranium, and it's even somewhere convenient!  It's under a jungle I've been putting off clearing.  We'll move some workers in to mine that.  There's also one near Sana'a, and paying 320 gold for the tile is basically nothing for us at this point.

Damietta has room for another district (and has for some time; it's size 17 and growing strong due to the suburb... oops)  We drop an encampment next to the spaceport.  It might not max all the way out, but it might, so we're trying it!

Interturn, Peter completes the Sydney Opera House.  Good for him!

T269: We've got some new cards, and Professional Sports just completed.  Merchant Confederation is out for Containment, because basically any envoys I'd send now would qualify: all the other civs are democracies.  Also, Levee en Masse is out for +30% encampment construction.  I'm building a new one and also want to finish another one up to the academy.  We'll take it back out later, probably when we get Integrated Space Cell.

I use a worker to mine Uranium in a rainforest.  Apparently, it doesn't destroy the rainforest.  I'll take it!

Interturn, Peter completes Broadway.  He sure is going for the cultural victory.

Also, barbarian battleships sink my Caravel.  It saves me the maintenance, at least...

T270: Skien managed to finish its trade hub.  We get another trade route.  There's an idle one in Damietta from when we left the merchant republic.  Destination Sana'a: only one food, compared to the two of many of them, but +4 production, which is the important part.

Stavanger finished a thing and is housing crunched, so it starts on a sewer.

T271: Hamar finishes its harbor and starts on its commercial hub  (24T means it's basically a nonentity, though).  I buy it a lighthouse, because 390 is plenty cheap.  Damietta is barrelling through the buildings for an encampment at an astonishing rate.  I haven't built a fully-stacked district, with a production bonus and massive industrial effort before.

Interturn, Peter offers me a luxury for the return of his captured spy, which I literally just captured.  Looks like counterespionage efforts are working, but I think this also means I need to dump some envoys and shuffle stuff into a spy-reducing civic because I'm actively being attacked.  I'll take the luxury, though.

Also interturn, Pericles built  the Alhambra.  I hadn't noticed it was still in the air... but I also have mined every hill in my area of control, so it would have been somewhat of a loss to build it somewhere.

T272: Shakira got a promotion for catching the spy, which was trying to sabotage production.  I give her a promotion that makes her counterespionage even better.

I dump some envoy points into various places.  Ironically, Buenos Aires didn't have a suzerain, so I don't get the doubling bonus.  However, I had the envoys to just get it, so now my bonus resources act like 1/4 of a luxury resource.

T273: Cairo shoots off a really big rocket.  We choose to go to the moon!  The culture boost gets us all the way through Space Race.  I'm not sure if there's overflow for it; if there isn't, that was a massive waste, because I could have gotten 2.6k culture out of it.  We're going to drive on for Globalization now.

Cairo, being the highest-production of the lot, and we just got a new trade route, so it 1-turns a trader.  Next is a stadium.  Damietta won't have anything in queue starting next turn, so it's going to get the first mars module.  Veterancy (+30% to encampments) comes out for Integrated Space cell (+15% to space race if there's a military academy or seaport).  (oops, I forgot the antispy one; oh well)

T274: Robotics comes in.  Next tech path is Synthetic Materials -> composites -> Nanotech.

Damietta starts on the Mars Habitation project.  ETA 18 turns.  It's entirely likely this will finish before we have the third one researched, even with the way I'm cranking research up in all my cities with campuses.

Robotics apparently obsoleted Military Research, so let's put Levee En Masse back in.  Extra gold never hurts.

Apparently, I can mine Uranium in forest, too, so I do.

France re-ups their warmonger denunciation, as does Greece.  I check, and I'm still at -49 warmongering penalty.  Well, then.

T275: Medina finished its stadium, so it starts on a spy.  We need to cover Damietta.  Skien finished whatever it was building and starts on a market.

T276: Bremen starts on a spy.  I'd built a stadium, but it's overkill: all my cities are at ecstatic, now.  We're going to ignore the Great Engineer who increases AOE range, as we thoroughly don't need it.

Trade routes need re-upping, too, and I'm going to start a phase transition: with Capitalism and Globalization, we get civics that give bonuses for foreign trade routes.  Also, we need research more than production at the moment, so we're going to go for whatever gets us the most culture and science.  Bonus points for them not having trading posts, to expand our trade network.  I'm also going to swap our civic research to Capitalism.  In 2 turns, we can start getting this stuff.  It'll be a gold hit initially, probably, but we have 8000+ of that right now.

T277: Whoops; I should have saved Cairo for the spy.  Failing that, however, Cairo can do research grants to speed up our research rate.  Hattin has even less to do: it's going to do some industrial zone logistics.  Sana'a finishes a hangar and starts on an airport.

T278: Time for the communist market economy!  Triangle trade is out, and Market Economy is in.  On the other hand, for the moment, Free Market is out for Rationalism.  This doubles science building output instead of marketplace building output.  I expect my gold income to drop a lot but for it to not really matter.  I finally remember to put Cryptography in, for good measure.  Civic research goes back to Rapid Deployment.

Nidaros overwrites a farm with the Great Zimbabwe broadly for the hell of it.  It will give us another trade route in 14 turns, assuming that even matters.  (It won't...)

T279: Several trade routes get shifted to the new regime of going to places that give culture and science.

Interturn, Greece re-ups its demand for citrus and pocket change.  Apparently, this qualifies as trade?

T281: I get offered the area-increase-and-amenity guy, and I pass.  The next engineer is Werner Von Braun, who also doubles space race stuff.  I think I'll pass on the scientist and hope that there's one that boosts techs behind, instead.

T282: Nanotechnology comes in.  With that, we can start the second space race project.

I wasn't looking closely and missed that someone else got the gsci for space race doubling.  However, the next gsci is Carl Sagan.  He just flat-out completes one space race project.  We'll keep him around for the last one.

The last remaining research is Lasers and Nuclear Fusion.  Our research rate exploded when I put some more cards in to do research, and the rest of the necessary techs will now arrive in 7 turns.  I faith-recruit Werner Von Braun to double our build rate on one of the next projects.  Cairo starts on Mars Hydroponics.  Right now, it says 16 turns, so that's our long pole.  Cairo needs production support in any way possible, unlike the others.  Even with a boost, there's no way Globalization will arrive before we even build it, so it's internal trade routes for that.

Interturn, Scythia re-ups its denunciation.

T283: I move a trader to Cairo from Medina, since Medina will never need to produce anything ever again.  Oh, and I used Werner Von Braun, so now it's only 9 turns to the long pole of production.

Interturn, France demands luxuries and pocket change.  (sure, why not!)  Russia re-ups their denunciation.

T284: Trade route from Cairo to Nidaros (+5 production), move some stuff around; improve spy coverage.  It doesn't really matter.  Seven turns to hydroponics completion and 6 turns to research for the reactor.  Four for the habitation module.

T285: Nuclear Fusion seems to have gone up to 6 turns (but will probably go back down to 5 next turn), so I'm not exactly sure when we'll complete everything, but it will be in 6-7 turns.  I spend 500 faith to get perfumes a little early.  A few of my cities aren't ecstatic.

T286: Lasers comes in.  Nuclear Fusion says 5 turns.  Rapid Deployment also came in.  Globalization (boosted from my airports) says 6 turns.  I'm betting it won't even get here before we win.

Interturn, Germany demands perfumes and some change.  I decide to decline.  Russia actually offers stuff.  Still meh.  Scythia demands.

T287: Nuclear fusion in 4 turns; Globalization in 5; Hydroponics in 4.  (Great Zimbabwe in 4)

T288: Damietta launches habitation to Mars.  I steal every loose production tile for Cairo, but it doesn't speed it up any.  This is not a surprise, but it feels good.  3 turns.

T289: 2 turns.

T290: Somehow, I got the Hydroponics off a turn earlier than I thought I would... that, or I lost some research somewhere.  Anyway, Hydroponics launched this turn.  Nuclear Fusion comes in next turn.  I transfer Carl Sagan back to Cairo because why not build the last thing in the single highest-production city in the empire, even if we're insta-completing it?

One last round of setting projects before we get ready to win...

[Ranamar]

T291: The final turn and final thoughts

Nuclear Fusion comes in with a quote from Carl Sagan.  How fitting.  Cairo starts the reactor, and Sagan finishes it.  It launches instantly, giving me victory achievement scroll.  (Oh, and the Great Zimbabwe completed as well, if you're wondering.)

There's a nice video to watch about colonizing space.

Nero?  Okay, fine.  I didn't grub for wonders and stuff while doing it.

So, I thought I played a relatively warlike game, right?  Check out this "Wars declared" graph:

Greece declared more wars than me.

Now check out who was actually successful at waging war:

France conquered a city-state, and that was it.

This graph summarizes what I could have done better, IMO:

When my treasury started increasing uncontrollably again after buying the biplanes, I should have immediately put the research card in.  I didn't actually need that rainy-day fund, and I should have known it at the time.  Also, 4 maxed out campuses is a lot of extra research that could have been had with that card.

This game was fun!  I have to admit, I haven't gotten around to playing many games which weren't organized by this forum, but I like the challenges that get put out here.

In retrospect, I should have been more warlike.  Aside from Bergen, and I guess Stavanger and Nidaros, Norway had pretty bad land.  Germany, on the other hand, was the gateway to the whole east of the continent, and I think I missed them having oil somewhere, too.  I had to fight them for Niter (which was there or deep in Norway's territory) anyway.  I think I also chickened out too fast against walls in Stavanger when Norway offered peace.  I could have bombarded it down with my archers and some rotating out of damaged units to Medina, which was not more than 2 turns' travel from the front.  Certainly, Germany managed to turn Aachen into a pretty good city, rivaled by few AI cities.

I think I was generally too risk- and penalty-averse in this game.  I think I could have done fine killing off rival civs one at a time, but I wanted flawless conquests with relatively low warmongering penalties... which wasn't going to happen.  It also ended up turning out that siege artillery was less important than I thought: massed ranged units bombards a city down just fine, especially if a few of them take Garrison/Incendiaries instead of the unit combat oriented promotions.  The unit combat ones admittedly helped when I was slaughtering berserkers, though.

I appear to have run into the same production-outstripping-tech problem of various other people, but I think I could have fixed that through more intelligent tech choices.  Researching Chemistry earlier and immediately throwing the research card in when I did would have been good.  (As it was, the bonus to campus adjacency did not hugely contribute to my faith production, either, but I certainly loved the part where it got bolted onto the industrial district adjacency bonus.

Happiness was sort of weird.  I'd swing between moments of being happiness crunched and moments of swimming in it.  The first downturn happened a little before I got zoos, and the second downturn happened a little before I got Professional Sports, but I think I'd actually had it managed by building the extra zoos.  Sticking 4 entertainment districts in the core of my empire was a little hokey, from a thematic standpoint, but it made each of them more effective than a luxury resource, and then more effective than three luxury resources when stadiums unlocked.

(Okay, I'm done with my report now )