With the FfH PBEM & Getting distracted by modding, I've not actually finished my game yet! Excuse me a moment while I go fix that...

Before I emailed T-Hawk for a save file I thought about what my goals for this game were.
1st. Have fun, of course.
2nd. Provide an entertaining report. I figured if nothing else I'd get destroyed by the Immortal AIs I'd never faced and there's nothing better than reading about a devastating loss.
3rd. Pick a unique combination of wonders! (Success!)

While I probably should have picked a more powerful combo, this being the first game of not fall from heaven Civ I'd fired up since my first Emperor win in Adv 44, I valued having a unique experience and tried to think of some wonders that wouldn't be as popular but would still be fun.
Cristo Redentor I chose because if I ever build it it's too late to have a lot of fun with, and Hagia Sophia because I thought some double-speed workers chopping and laying down cottages just might keep me in the game with the Immortal AI. A tiny bit of synergy lay in the fact that both provided Engineer points, and even a settle GE is a great thing to have 20 turns into the game!


This group of recent hunter-gatherers sure have a nice view!

My opening was worker (an irrigated corn is just too good to waste time building work boats first), workboat, 2 warriors, workboat, settler (slaved)
Technologies went Hunting (from that hut), Agriculture, Bronze, Animal Husbandry, etc...


An unforseen consequence of the muse, that's the 3rd ring border pop before I research my first tech!

I sent the warrior we started with exploring East and met Ramses fairly early. A few turns later and what do I see leaving his borders but a settler and two archers!


This was turn 23.... I'm thinking twice right about now about signing up for this Immortal game!

I revolt to slavery about the same time we meet our Egyptian neighbors to the East. By revolt I mean switch I guess, had already forgotten about the Wonders back in my capital. The 1st GE is born on turn 25 and settled for a big early game boost of 3 beakers and hammers!

Five turns later Louis shows up to my west, and I'm definitely not happy about having a creative pushy neighbor! Although it turns out he just walked by Mansa who was actually next to us over there.... didn't meet him for another 25 or so turns till I sent a scout that way.

The same turn I meet Louis the first barb archer is spotted! Better hurry up and connect those horses. My second city goes on that small isthmus that grabs horse, fish, and pigs. My third goes probably more east than I could afford to cut off Ramses' expansion my way with plans to backfill later. And iron ends up being right under the city!


What is it they say about luck around here?

As this photo shows... I built a lot of monuments this game. Even after Ramses spread Hinduism and Judaism my way, the extra happiness from a monument meant it was still worth squeezing in some times. Or maybe it was a complete waste? Who knows. I don't have much experience playing charismatic leaders... and I certainly didn't leverage the trait for experience.

So I build one more city between the cap and Hadremantum to the east and my economy crashes spectacularly!



30% science with 4 cities!? I was not expecting this. I had just Oracled metal casting and was limping my way to monarchy when I had some serious thinking to do. How exactly did I plan to win this thing? I'm not sure trying to tackle one of my neighbors and their ancient, strong UUs is in the cards, and I'm a bit stifled by these Immortal maintenance costs. So what's left? Hey... Culture only needs a few cities for a victory!

And so, despite choosing wonders that didn't really aid it all (except by virture of providing great engineers for wonders) I made plans to go for a culture victory. Luckily Ramses had spread his two religions my way, so at nearly the 1AD mark I decided it was temple whipping time!

I rushed colossus to boost the coffers and bit and beelined for Music to get the artist and build the Sistine Chapel.


Here's the state of my empire in 450 AD. Out to seven cities with plans for a tiny whipping village by the northwest clams and another on the island with banana and stone for the magic number of 9. The filler city with wheat/seafood/and 9 cottages would become cuture city 2 while number 3 went to the sheep/seafood/gems city out west with plenty of grassland itself.

I caught a break when Mansa spread buddhism to on of the border cities, now I was in business! So the plan (as boring as it is) for the rest of the game is to keep my head down, cave to any demands, and hope no AI running out of room sees me quietly building absolutely no military and gets an idea.

I slow built the Taj Mahal and was beaten to Liberalism during the golden age by Mansa by 2 turns! Getting there first would have been quite a coup on Immortal.

Once knights burst onto the scene the war horns started blaring and I shuddered a little each turn when I'd hear one before I could read the little note assuring me I wasn't involved.

When Ramses came around offering this it was a no brainer...

Years of resource trades, unbalanced tech deals, and general sucking up finallly pays off!

My choice of Hagia Sophia wasn't really paying me back here, my workers had actually run out of things to do! Cristo Redentor, however, was awesome. I wasn't sure I'd be able to leverage its powers, but switching to slavery for a single turn every 10 was an awesome way to get temples built when I really wanted to be in emancipation for the cottage growth.

I think this screen pretty much shows the exact situation you want to be in going for a cultural victory. Everybody except myself and Ramses with whom I had a defensive pact was at war! Hopefully they'd continue to leave me alone!


I did run into trouble when a privateer showed up at my Astronomy-less borders poised to cause trouble. Luckily, as I've noticed when I built my own before, it seems the AI is programmed to take out privateers at all costs, regardless of whether it's bothering them or not. And because of this I offer this picture as a memorial to Julius' boat that mercifully saved about four of my seafood resources.


I tried to use some of what I've learned around here and resisted the urge to keep teching too far into the tree, those mass media and electricity wonders aren't really worth all those turns of not running culture right? I really didn't have a GP farm so didn't need biology and so I shut research down after printing press and steel. I set pretty much every city that was done with temples to build cannon or muskets for some semblance of defense. Although I still ended the game staring down sam infantry and destroyers.

I was incredibly lucky with great people in this game. I got 5 (including the free one at music) great artists, 3 scientists, and 5 engineers. No ugly priests or spies mucking up the works. And just enough scientists for academies in my big 3.


I cruised to a really not all that early 1790AD culture victory... and yes I was definitely defending with axes and triremes.

As proof any of the AIs could have sneezed and blown me off the map, here is the final power graph. I was even behind just been in a two-front war and was now vassalized Alex.



So did I meet my goals? I definitely had fun. I was on the edge of my seat from 1000AD till the end, just knowing each trumpet signaling war would be my downfall.
I chose a unique pair of wonders but I'm not sure I got full use out of them. Oh well, they guided me home to my first Immortal victory!

Thanks a lot to T-Hawk for the cool idea and his sponsor comments.
I'm sorry I didn't notice the Mediterranean theme.

And since I didn't know where else to stick this amusing picture... here it is.

What caused this barb worker to wander into my territory I'll never know... but it certainly was a wonderful gift

What wonders to take is the first question one has to ponder in this game.
Several combinations spring to my mind:
First the super-science combi of Great Lib and Oxford. This combi will provide enough beaker-power to be the first to techs for a long time enabling a lot of other wonders. Especially if the pyramids get added to the mix but in the end the advantage this combi gives has to be levereaged into a winning position and this beeing my first Immortalgame I’m doubtfull I can manage that.

The second combination is the military Pentagon+West Point combi giving 3 promotional Units. But continuous warfare takes a lot of time and time is in short supply.

Another interesting combi presenting itself to the carthagians is Great Lighthouse + Colossus but again this only gives an economic advantage without leading itself to a win.
So I’m doubtfull I can achieve a military or space-win despite the help of the kind muse. That leaves 2 possible path to victory: Diplo and Culture. Now Diplo is hard to manage and taking the UN at start is a dangerous thing. Who knows for whom the AI will vote before any history of contact and religions is established and if not for you how to defend against such things as emancipation voted in?

That leaves culture and that leads directly to 2 wonders which each for it alone wouldn’t be great at the start but together they are powerfull: Eiffel Tower providing a building which gives +50% to culture and a place for an artist specialist which conveniently gets filled by the Statue of Liberty. Making it that every city starts with 6cpt


Start research of BW and after BW (thanks to hut-popped Hunting) Archery as there is no copper near by. Build order is worker – warrior + a chopped WB. The first great Person is Enrico Dandolo (GM) which is nice as the gold and food he provides after settling are quite usefull and the capital is in no dire need of culture anyway.

The starting warrior explores the east meeting Ramses the second one starts to the west (meeting Mansa ) while the capital is busy building Archers and Settlers to fulfill my aim of 9 cities.

The starting culture any city makes means I can easily seal my borders. On the other hand I don’t want to have my legendaries at the border as this means unneccessary risks of invasion and an aggressive settlement might provoke an attack. So first the border-cities then the would be legendaries even though this means victory will come later but as long as it comes I’m happy.

So in 2240BC I found Easternborder my city towards Rameses east of the rice with silk and dyes in the BFC and just 14 turns later the westborder1 which locaton was forced by the barbcity Hurrian. A little later westborder2 located SE of the pigs just north of crabs sealed my western border ( and flipped Hurrian only 30 turns later)

west:


east:


With my borders sealed I start to settle the 2 cities which shall complete the magic 3. First Utica in 750 BC and then Hadrumetum in 50 AD(!) . Part of the delay was an Barbarian uprising in 200 BC consisting of several Swords which made Axes a priority. Funny enough the same time those Barbs start to plunder civilazation the Barbcity of Hurrian joins it freely
techsituation in 50AD




But this barbuprising was also the last military action any of my units saw. The rest was trading, complying to demands and watching the AI fight. Carthage built 2 wonders of its own The Great Lib in 225AD and the Sistine Chapel with a Great Engineer (375AD).
Overview of the Empire and the 3 legendaries tobe at 1010 AD:







The Taj was 3 turns from completion when Rameses popped an Engineer and rushed it.
I teched to Steel and traded for Rifling in 1590 AD With that I felled secure enough (especially with those neighbours) so I set the cultureslider to 90 or 100 % (depending on money) and hit enter several times
During the 17th century the threadlvl increases as Alex gobbles through Rameses and vasalizes him in 1690AD.
Carthage close to the finishing line:



Luckily Justinian declares vs Alex in 1770AD just after Carthage has reach legendary status and JC joins his fellow Roman. Those two make short work with Ales and Justinian has then both Alex and Rameses as vassals (1818AD).
In 1824 AD just 165 turns after founding Hadrumetum is my 3rd city to reach legendary status earning me my first immortal victory and my 3rd cultural victory.






Military facts: lost 1 warrior killed 13 Units and at the end I had 40 military-Units

Current rules that we should discuss, with the aim of finding improvements that all teams can agree to:

Poll 15: Dividing Wartime Turn Splits -
*Attacker's choice (attacker chooses when to declare, defender get opposite half of the turn)

Poll 28: Double-move Rule -
(a) - All settler moves that result in ending a turn in neutral territory must occur 12 hours (in-game) after the last movement of that settler, if applicable.
(b) - REMOVED
© - REMOVED
(d) - When in doubt, act in good faith.
(e) - Upon declaring war, no unit may be moved until 12 hours (in-game) have passed from the unit's last movement AND the attacker has to have (secretly) followed the turn split rule the turn before the declaration of war if they wish to be able to move first during the war.
(f) - (a) is waived for the initial settler

I have a nasty habit of skimming the rules instead of reading the rules. It has bitten me before, and it bit me not once but twice this game. First, I didn't realize I could select a national wonder. Second, I found this out by discussing my selection with another player . I went with the Pyramids and The Great Library. I decided to go for a power combo and in my opinion the earlier you get the help the better. The better choice would have been Oxford and The Statue of Liberty. Even with one less specialist you are still ahead on beakers out the gate and you avoid a turn of anarchy. Anarchy actually turned out to be a good thing:



You can see I stuck with Worker first. Irrigated Corn is 6F, it would be silly to build a Work Boat for the 4F Clam tile first. My general plan is to beeline Mathematics and turn all those forests into Workers and Settlers. On turn 6 I meet Ramesses' Scout from the east, so he can't be that far way. Turn 7 and Mansa Musa's Scout shows up from the west . Doesn't look like we have much space to grow into. I was hoping for a nice fast space game but I guess not. On turn 10 my Scout pops a hut for 37 gold that Mansa somehow missed. On turn 11, I get really lucky:



Wow, a Great Engineer at 20% odds . I'm settling the first great person either way, and I'll gladly trade 3 beakers for 2 hammers. Worker is now due 2 turns earlier. After Bronze Working comes in and the Worker completes I revlot to Slavery. Next techs are The Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing -> Mathematics. On turn 17 my Scout (who is heading north) finds Louis. I'm past the point where I worry about exploiting the AI:



Back at Carthage, I had used one forest to chop my way into a Granary whip at size 3 (didn't make sense to wait for Mathematics on that one). I whipped another Worker, two Work Boats and two fog busting Warriors with no concern for the happiness cap. The Workers pre-chopped forests while waiting for Mathematics to come in. On turn 32 a Great Scientist was born who went to an Academy and Mathematics comes in on turn 34. Here is Carthage one turn later:



I chop out a Settler and then Stonehenge (with a triple pop whip of a second Settler). Tech path was Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Archery -> HBR and I build a pair of Numidian Calvalry. This map is nice in that I can really guard my borders with just a few units. Here I am at turn 60:



That Great Scientist is settled. You can see the forests are gone. You can also see in the mini-map that I'm up to five cities . I don't believe I've ever hit five cities that fast, but all those chops and whips have given me a ton of early hammers. The poblem is I only have four Workers. I whip a few more with overflow going into the Great Lighthouse. My brave scout makes one more discovery beforing biting the dust:



I think that's the last leader in the game. On turn 69 I complete the Great Library. The extra income and the new Workers mean its time for some more Settlers to grab some land to the west (Ramesses already settled up to my eastern border). Mansa unfortunately takes a barbarian city right between our respecitve borders. The good news is his unit is red lined in the process:



I raze the city, and the little wuss makes peace one turn later. I have a seal opportunity so I send my next Settler right up to his border. On turn 89, I get really lucky :



I had founded Confucianism on my way to Civil Service (holy city was on the border with Egypt) and at slight odds I get a Great Prophet! That's fantastic news, I go ahead and pick up Monotheism after Civil Service and double revolt into Organized Religion and Bureaucracy. Carthage churns Missionaries (it go the free one), still finding time to build the Mausoleum of Maussollos. Here is an overview shot from 1 A.D.:



Carthage is kicking it



I plan on whipping a round of Confucian Temples the turn before the Apostolic Palace comes in. I'm up to 14 total cities, with one more planned for the little island that borders Egypt (picks up Silk and two seafood). I am teching towards Education for Oxford in Carthage, with a plan to sling Democracy. I have a lot of immature and yet to be built Cottages. Tech wise, the AIs are just sad :



Early game I only picked up Buddhism, Priesthood and Monarchy via trade. The pace quickened as I was able to trade for Aesthetics, Construction, Feudalism, Machinery and Optics by 660 A.D. I discover Liberalism in 720 A.D. and take Democracy. I build the Taj Mahal to fire off a Golden Age to let Carthage speed up the Statue of Liberty (and burn half a Great Engineer). I also revolt to Free Speech/Emancipation, and by the end of the Golden Age Universal Suffrage/Free Market. Tech wise after Democracy its a fast beeline for Astronomy. I had troops, Settlers, Missionaries and Workers all ready to go (as well as 3 Galleys to cash upgrade to Galleons). I nailed every single city spot in the middle islands before the AIs even had Astronomy . After Astronomy I go for Medicine to found Sid's, then Railroad to found Mining, Inc. Both of these obviously went in my Dong Miao city, where I cash rushed Wall Strett. I'm cash rushing like crazy, I love the speed it gives me.

It was at this point I noticed I lacked Coal. Both my neighbors had it, but both were vassals. I decided to go for Mansa since his cities were poorly garrisoned. I use a Great Engineer to rush Ironworks in Carthage, use a Great Scientist to fire off anotehr Golden Age, spend some time in Nationalism to draft a bunch of Rilfes while building Cannon in Carthage. Mali fell quickly:



I then flip a few outdated techs (by my standards) to Rome for peace. Its mop up now. I spend a lot of time spreading my corporations arounds. Its sick how fast the island cities become productive. Build wonders, tech space techs, fend off an attack from France, build spaceship, launch in 1720 A.D.:



Win in 1770 A.D.:



Final replay screenshot:



Other than the Coal war, it was a nice fast game. Carthage was sick:



Final wonder list:



All those little island cities were getting +20F and +14H to start with. Of course, the flip side is the corporate expenses add up fast:



My cash city almost pays for the inflation:



Darrell

FINAL REPORT IS DONE!

First, about my Civ experience:
My experience is usually only with Duel games, where I can defeat Immortal AIs 1v1 (but not Deity).
I've only ever played 1 Standard sized map on Noble and I didn't even finish it!
As a result, i'm really poor in diplomatic dealings and tech trading when there are several AI; I was not very confident of being able to pull through.

I picked Cristo Redentor and Great Library.
Cristo Redentor was chosen because I wanted to have a Spiritual trait of sorts, and I wanted to play around with some civic swapping, which I had never done before.
The other thing about this wonder is that it allows you to easily swap to Slavery only when you absolutely need it - knowing Random Events was on, this would effectively minimise the risk of Slave Revolts.
Also, I was swapping between Serfdom and Slavery once I obtained Feudalism to effectively use both traits in any given turn.
Later, alternated between Emancipation and Serfdom to get the benefits of Emancipation every other turn while getting the Serfdom benefit every turn.
Great Library was chosen so I could pump out Great People quickly at the initial stage of the game.

My second choice would've been Eiffel Tower/Great Library.
Eiffel Tower is more or less like a Creative trait; since it provides Broadcast Towers (+50% culture) and allows you to hire Artist specialists, I could get very easy border pops for my early cities by assigning my first citizen to be an Artist till i get the fat cross.
In the end I decided I preferred to being Spiritual over being Creative.

I was considering HE/WP/Pentagon, but decided not to, as I was worried i'd be outteched so badly that even high promotion units wouldn't cut it against more advanced units.

By the way, nice Mediterranean theme; I noticed it.

For those of you who want a very brief summary till I have time to provide a longer report:

SUMMARY
Settled first GP (Scientist) at t10, built academy at t30 when I spawned a 2nd Scientist.
Opening was CS Slingshot with Oracle. Unfortunately to do this I only had 2 cities at the time (I was behind on expansion).
As a result, got crammed up in a small piece of land, was either last or 2nd last in power.
I did, however, manage to grab the Iron by Egypt, which was much needed for my Cannons later.
Politically, I was allied to Ramesses (he founded Hinduism and 4 other religions) because I converted to Hinduism and was running Org. Rel. for most of the game. The Buddhist bloc consisted of Caesar, Justinian (founder), Alex. The rest (Mansa & Louis) were pariahs.
In the midgame, I was starting to stagnate, and that was not good.
I failed to colonise the central islands, being the last to Astronomy.
Managed to Liberalise Democracy, and was going to immediately swap to it, but then when I counted how many Towns I had to see how many hammers i'd get, I decided not to. Should've liberalised Steel instead.

I decided to hit Mansa Musa with Riflemen and Cannon ASAP because I found out I didn't have coal!
When I was half done knocking him out, Justinian the #1 power (more than double mine, IIRC) said he 'had enough on his hands'.
Byzantium declared, but just as he was about to deal enough damage (to Egypt, who was my Vassal), managed to secure AP (which was Buddhist) peace. More on this later.
So, invaded France - I planned to stop after that to go for Space Victory, but halfway through Caesar (#2 power) and Alex (Caesar's vassal) declared war on me because Louis vassalised to him - wasn't prepared for it; i'd lost virtually no units before the Romans joined in. Halfway through the war with Caesar, he vassalised to Justinian, who then declared war on me! He was still #1 in Power and had more advanced units than I did! It was 2v4, the Allies (Rome, France, Greece, Byzantium) vs the Axis (Carthage, Egypt).

Outcome in the end:
Domination Victory in 1876AD (T308). I'm most definitely not in contention for the Quickest Domination Victory.
I had generated 10 GGs in the game (including the free Fascism one) - this is far more than i've ever obtained!), and 13 GPs (at least first 10 of them from Carthage!) if i'm not mistaken.

By the way, I need to work on playing faster - spent 45 hours, 5 minutes.
To be fair, I was writing my report as I was playing my turns (alt-tabbing a lot). As a result, my game crashed a few times now and then . Luckily I had those autosaves every turn!

Images and Full Report below; hope my full report won't bore anyone - reads almost like a turn log.

Pregame:

This is a shadow game since I discussed which wonders to pick with another player (who was playing a game) whilst I had at the time no intention of playing. Later in the month I had some spare time and I'd been kicking a couple of ideas around in the back of my mind that I wanted to try out. Basically I had two ideas, both revolving around the fact that the capital had a heap of food available. Food means two things to me in civ. One, it means a Great Person farm and two it means whipping.I typically struggle to get a Great Person farm set up in my games, usually because the locations that seem best for it are also usually pretty good for commerce cities, which I typically lack. Setting one up in the capital isn't something I pursue very often as early game I like to get a couple of cottages up when I can, rather than farms. This is usually because of the happy cap in the early game being so low, that farming means I grow into unhappyness even earlier than normal. The other thing I think of when I see food is production in the form of the whip. Again this causes a few problems early game due to low happy caps. Whipping can be counter productive, anyone who's whipped their capital down to a sustainable happyness of 1 in the early game can probably agree with that So we've got a common theme here, happyness. it makes sense then to take a wonder whih lets me deal with this, and the obvous one is the Globe Theatre. I suspect this will be a very popular wonder in this game. Having picked the Globe then we can see what synergises with it. I thought about the Hagia Sophia as an interesting choice (and a wonder I've never built), but in the end decided to play around with the Kremlin instead, mostly because it's massively expensive and I rarely get to use it to much effect. Well it's going to get plenty of use here.

Ok so the basic game plan is:
a) get food
b) Get bronze working
c)
d) profit

Implications of this are that my capital is going to be pretty small for most of this game. It's also going to be running predominantly food tiles, so Bureaucracy is pretty pointless (this is probably my first high level game where I won't be running Bureaucracy at all!) I'll therefore need to get some commerce sites up pretty quickly to help me keep pace. Chances are I'll get a Great Spy early in the game which I'll need to settle, if I pop another one then I can use it on a Scotland yard, so I won't need to worry aobut espionage (not that I do usually anyway). If I get a Great Artist then I can think about using him on a Golden age once I want to change civics.

Ok so onto the start!

Here you can see my capital in all it's glory, Note the happy faces There's no unhappyness in Stockwhip!



Early builds: Workboat, workboat(interrupted), worker(whipped), workboat(completed), worker(whipped), Stonehenge(whipped), Settler, then I stopped taking notes. I'd guess granary next.

Early Tech: Bronze Working, Agriculture, Mysticism, Wheel, Pottery, Writing, Sailing, stopped taking notes.


You can see I went for stonehenge early, mostly as I like free border pops and I'd managed to just whip everything that I wanted in my capital. Also being Charismatic, makes Stonehenge even more tempting. I sent 4 chops into it and still whipped it out, was it worth it? Hard to tell. Maybe I should have focused more on settlers, but it seems like if I whipped out Stonehenge then my other cities would have one less whip needed in the early game. It did stop me getting my other cities up quite as quickly, but Economically I couldn't afford then anyway, especially not with where I wanted cities #3 and #5!

So by 1Ad things weren't looking so hot for me. I'm only up to five cities (I did have six but a barbarian uprising event took one out. I'm almost in place to replace it). As you can see from the overview I've expanded quite a long way away from my capital, hoping to reserve some space for myself.





I know the AI on high difficulty levels likes to expand faster and harder than I can manage, even with my supercharged whip. I've got an army of workers out roading me to my outer locations and I've had my meagre army fogbusting for all it's worth. I've not bothered to get Horseback Riding, probably a mistake, but I've always needed for other techs, mostly to stop my economy from stalling since I built so far away frm my centre. Critically I managed to get Currency ahead of most of the AI so I traded that around for a lot of lower tier tech and enough gold to get to Code of Laws in a reasonable length of time (5 turns, not too shabby). I was hoping that would let me trade up to parity, but Rome and France aren't having a bar of it.



Grr, I could really use Metal Casting, and Monarchy would probably be pretty handy right now too, although happyness isn't a huge problem at the moment, with quite a few calendar resources underneath all the jungle at Wall (my border city with Rameses).

Internationally Rome is a juggernaut, Caesar's up to 12(!) cities already and showing no signs of stopping. I really need more cities. Religion wise I've got Judaism and Hinduism spread to most of my cities, thanks to my good friend Rameses. He's been very diligent with his missionaries I've still not adopted either since Mansa my other neighbour is Jewish and Rameses is Hindu. I hope Manse swings around to Hinduism, that'd make me feel a whole lot safer, since my army is made of paper, actually it's really made of papyrus. I haven't invented paper yet. I am winning the ESP battle with a settled Great spy doing wonders for my espionage. I have research sight on most of my opponents for most of the game.





In 350AD Mansa Musa agreed to become a vassal of Julius Caesar, cementing Caesars position of guy with biggest stick. Later (500AD) he went to war with Louis, bringing in his lap dog Mansa Musa. I was soon asked to join in and I couldn't pass up the free diplo bonus especially with Mansa Musa between me and any stack of doom. I didn't realise it at the time but this was pretty massive in my game, slowing Mansa's tech pace at a pretty critical juncture. As Louis dug into Mansa Musa's territory whilst Rome hollowed him out from the top. I on the other hand used this time to tech Philosophy which I traded around for Machinery and Civil Service. I also used this opportunity to trigger my golden age with my long serving Great Artist, revolting into Vassalage, Hereditary Rule and Organised Religion. Hereditary rule seemed the obvious choice (since I had no other options to choose from). Bureaucracy my usual go to civic would be a bit pointless this game since I already get such a big bonus on my whips, the actual increase due to Bureaucracy would be far less than the 50% advertised, whilst with Vassalge I could actually get a few promotions on my whipped units now. Organised Religion just meant whipping infrastructure everywhere else became so much nicer, particularly with universities on the way soon. I also became Hindu as all the cool kids were doing it. Well, Rameses and Mansa were anyway and if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. The Golden Age let me polish off Paper and most of Education, leaving me with a wide open shot at Liberalism.





Just before teching Liberalism I traded around Education for Nationalism and a few other minor techs, taking Constitution as my free tech, I just didn't have enough of the bottom half of the tree researched to get anything interesting there (I don't have Guilds!). 1140AD saw Louis Capitulate to Rome, giving Rome a commanding score on the leaderboard, but behind technologically. He remains in this position for most of the game. 1260AD sees me revolt to Free Religion, FRee Markets and Free Speech. I'm still in slavery though At least my slaves are free to worship whomever they like, say what they like and buy whatever they want with the money I'm not paying them... Hmm, not quite sure how this all works... Anyway around now I'm starting to think about how to end them game. Culture looks doable, although I should have probably started that some time ago. I don't really have the time (or ability) to head down a military path, I've not really been playing a solid diplo game, although a few lucky random events have left me on good terms with both my neighbours. I guess I'll just tech to space. I've not done that on Immortal before, usually some wacky AI cultures before I get there (or more likely Monty/Alexander/Genghis sees me as an easy target and takes me out). I start queuing up cultural buildings in three of my cities as a back up plan, but decide to head for the stars.



By 1500AD I'm starting to be in trouble again, the AIs are really teching like crazy. Particularly Mansa Musa and Justinian. I trigger my second GA to play some catch up, revolting to Emancipation and Universal Suffrage. After nearly 5500 years of the , it's time has drawn to a close.



I've also been rushing to get some cities up on the central islands, I didn't even think there was anything there really too later. I managed to take three barb cities with some whipped knights who were just lounging around after I whipped up some galleons, but by the time I got settler up and ready, Mansa Musa and Rameses had their spare settlers building cities. Justinian got the lions share of the islands by dint of teching Astronomy first. As my GA draws to a close I need to choose whether I want to move into State Property or not. Having missed a lot of the island settlements and not having warred with the AI, I feel I don't really have a large enough land mass to make State Property necessary. Instead I decide to stay in Free Market and found Sids Sushi (making my Communism beeline a bit pointless) in 1545AD.







After that not heaps to talk about, Alexander declared on me, but just suicided a small stack of two movers into Wall. Later he accepted peace for a nominal fee. I found (like I have a few times before, but always surprises me) that running binary science and Free Speech let you leverage the Kremlin something crazy. Particularly with a corporation through your cities which seemed to make my surpluses and deficits really huge (not affecting my breakeven much though). It just meant even after a turn or two of cash saving I had piles and piles of cash which I could use to buy stuff cheap thanks to the Kremlin. I bought the Eiffel tower, Rock n Roll and The Three Gorges Dam whilst beelining Computers for the Internet and tech labs. Stupidly forgetting that The Kremlin gets obsoleted by it . By then though I'd managed to buy Tech labs in the cities that mattered. and I started progress on building the Apollo Program. My beeline for the Space Elevator hit a small snag as the city I wanted to build it in failed to meet the 30 degree requirement and I had to build it in one of my island cities.

Is there a way to check in game before it's teched whether a city can build it? I find this really annoying.

In any case to bolster my shot at winning the space race (although a recent war between Justinian and Alexander really sealed the deal there), I triggered a third and fourth golden ages with the plethora of Great Persons I'd been getting.

I revolted to Pacifism and hinduism to try and accelerate a great Engineer to get my Space Elevator up in time, but managed to pop a low percentage Great Prophet instead at Wall. So I didn't end up building the Space Elevator until 1882AD, The same year I finished all space parts and launched. Pointless. I also revolted to State Property and Bureaucracy to shave a few turns off the build time. Turning off Sids Sushi had a slightly detrimental effect on my cities Two words. Food. Deficit.





After launch I revolted back to my earlier civics and tried to tech out Future Tech, but missed it by a couple of turns. I would have teched it if it weren't for that meddling Space Ship. I'll tech Future Tech one day Space Ship victory in 1902AD. One thing I've never seen the Welcome to Alpha Centauri screen before, I guess I've never clicked on "View Spaceship" once I've won.




Post Game thoughts: This was a pretty powerful combination. It worked really well together, giving me plenty of production power in the early/mid game. Early on I had settlers and workers on hand whenever I needed them and mid-game military was also heavily whipped out. At the end of the game I could still rush things everywhere without really having to plan for it. Heading for Sids Sushi helped me leverage the Kremlin more than I had anticipated before I played. I still think the Globe Theatre is THE wonder you want to start the game with pretty much regardless of the strategy, since having no limit on happyness in one city early on is huge. My biggest issue with this setup was my mid game economy, I didn't really get my feet on the ground until about 1000AD, which is pretty late. Not having a Bureaucracy boosted capital made it a bit difficult around then for me and I got lucky with my trading I think (Having tech sight on a lot of the AI around that time also helped me choose wise techs to research). WFYABTA was a slight issue, but not as bad as it could have been (thanks Mansa Musa!).

If I was to play again, I think I might go with the Great Library/Statue of Liberty combined with the Pyramids (although this is a pretty typical style of game), and I still think Hagia Sophia would be a good choice too, mostly as I think the bonus it gives is good, but it just comes too late in the game and obsoltes quite quickly, whereas getting it from turn 0 could give you quite a boost early game since you wouldn't need as many workers and it'd last for quite a long time then. but I can't see another good wonder to link it with. I can't think of too many other wonders which seem useful but rarely built, maybe West Point since it's a difficult one to unlock and uber expensive to build. Notre Dame helps with the happies too I guess. Anyway Cheers T-Hawk for this, I'm sure I didn't make the most original choice of Wonders but it was good fun

Had my first adventure earlier this month Thx for the sponsor for finally luring me in! I had alot of fun for as long as it lasted lol. I didn't take any notes so this might be a bit vague report in details, but I did take a hundred screenshots atleast.

I went for a cultural approach, something I've never done in Civilization before. I picked The Eiffel Tower for it's free broadcast tower on all cities (+50% culture) and a happy face from the charismatic trait. The second wonder I picked was Sistine Chapel, which gives +2 culture from specialists and +5 culture from all state religion buildings. I thought that research boosting wonders will probably be better overall, even when going for a cultural win, but I wanted to go all out on culture and concentrate on that. Another decision I made was to play this as 3-city-challenge, again to focus on the culture (not a good decision competition-wise!).

I built some workboats first and had a slow start. My second city was founded on turn 44 and third on turn 60. I had alot of trouble with barbarians because I didn't have any metals, however Utica was founded on a horses resource to help me out.


Mild barbarian trouble.

I went with a specialist economy, hiring many on Carthage and Utica, but I cottaged Hadrumetum because I couldn't farm those lands until CS. Carthage was a huge scientist pump and I generated alot scientists throughout the game. Utica in the other hand was generating artists to settle (and bomb near the end). Hadrumetum really had to play catch-up on infrastructure for most of the game.


Hadrumentum early on, and one of the many war declarations to come. I popped whales one tile west of the clams soon after this screenshot.


The Main Event Mafia on 760 AD. Suffering from some health problems, soon to be removed after harbors and some trades kick in.

After I had researched the culture techs I thought I needed the most, I turned down the other glider and turned up the culture glider on full power. My scientists were still creating a good amount of beakers so I was able to achieve more techs just at the right pace so that I rarely had nothing useful to build.


Carthagian scientists and a weird Great Person pool. See, health problems gone!

I started to fall behind in pretty quickly as the Immortal AI's got their machines oiled. I had a pretty good diplomatic situation, no close neighbours thanks to my underexpansion, but some nice religious blocks to slide myself into. I did favours for the AI's, traded with them and agreed to their demands. This got me some very good positive modifiers with most of the people (IIRC Alexander was the one everyone hated, so he was the only one I wasn't really friendly with). There was some tension with Mali as they refused to talk to me for some hundred turns because I canceled trades with them. That actually got me very nervous, but the other modifiers and my (early) strength kept them off me.


Demos somewhere between T233-237. Justinian's power beats me by... over 1000%!


T241, this is what, World War XII?

It was then a nail-baiting race to legendary culture. There must have been some fifty wars declared during this game! My heart skipped a beat every time I heard the declaration sound, but over and over again it was someone else getting the short end of the stick. Not just that, but for pretty much the whole game I had a barbarian archer stuck on a beach surrounded by my culture, so I had the 'hostile enemies are near' sound every turn.


Muskets versus Rifles, who would have won? We'll never know! He walked through my lands to Mali. Must have really hated that Mansa Musa guy!
[SIZE="5"]
* Drum rolls *[/SIZE]


They all hit legendary culture in the range of 1 turn.

Against all odds, at 1822AD (turn 281), I achieved my first cultural victory!
Again, thank you for setting up the game! It was great fun! I really went into the game to just wet my feet in the ocean that is Epics and Adventures, so it was really a big surprise that I actually beat it. On immortal. Whoa! Maybe next time I'll pay more attention to details and remember to take notes.


Final screenshots on the cities before victory.


Here are some random / funny / weird screenshots!:


Alexander's reaction when he realises I have three cities by 1100AD.


Oh shit oh shit! Panic! He was already piling rifles on the border. A quick swap to Judaism and then Justinian/Louis dogpiling him got me off the hook.


Justinian feels so bad for me that he gifts me a tech! Never had that happen before! Little did he know that I would soon win the game right under his nose..


15 tanks, 5 anti-tanks, 22 infantry, 4 SAM infantry, 8 mobile SAM, 14 marines, 14 cavalry, 5 artilleries next door. I had a couple of muskets and some longbows.


Time spent: 2 hours, 13 minutes.

Getting this up early this time, since it includes the part that everybody wants to see. Lots and lots of comments from the sponsor precede the game report.

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/adv45/

Adventure 45 Hannibal's Muse - is now open for reporting. Please post reports in the Tournament Discussions subforum. You have until the end of Monday to finish playing for an officially scored game. Reporting extended to end of Wednesday for the holiday weekend in the US.