Apologies for the belated report, I was being very disorganised and untidy!

The short version - a conquest victory in 1230AD.

Now in a little more detail:

The peaceful early years

Started by considering a move inland to pad space to allow a second city near the start. The scout move showed me the koreans, so decided to settle in place.

My initial tech path was animal husbandry (yummy cows!), fishing, mining, bronze working, then pottery.

Having seen the horses and lack of copper, I decided to head for archery and then horseback riding. My thinking was that the variant rules made chariots really unattractive as they would not upgrade to HA's, also really needed the extra punch to make up for the lack of Copper - a big investment, but one I ended up happy with!

I used the research time to build a couple of home defense archers, then rushed out a stables and 4 HAs via a chop/whip combo.

I explored somewhat, meeting a whole bunch of neighbours - there were lots of them! At this point, Justinian was concerning, he had a holy city and was the strongest of my neighbours. He also had a ready source of Copper.

1880BC, I managed to trade half of alphabet from Isabella. Used this to extract sailing from De Gaulle for writing, but beyond that there were not many early trading opportunites...

Early warmongering!

I DoW'd Justinian in 1800BC. Here's the picture on turn 2 of the war.



Far too tough to crack. I use a warrior to pillage his copper and the road, then severed the roads in the forest. Left him to stew whilst I built more HAs... just kept building and whipping.

I decided to turn south and attack wanger, who had a trio of archers. He must have been psychic as in 1600BC...



Losing an archer on a warrior. Poor fella. I put him out of his misery... Went in with 6 HAs, kill 3 of his archers, losing one of my HAs... Korea is no more!

I turn the army around and with 7HAs head after Justinian. He moves his axe out of the city and I kill it. The attack goes off in 1360BC. I lose 3 HAs, one as expected to his spear, then two at ~70% odds on archers, but I'd built enough.



Babylons culture immediately envelopes my new copper, which was a pain in the neck. I traded alphabet to De Gaulle for Iron Working, but I lacked Iron as well...

Then I spotted a golden opportunity.



Stalin had the worlds biggest army at this point... and it was all sat on the border defending a couple of workers. Moved my now quite experienced HA's into position and then 1 turn later insta slamdunked his capital, which only had a couple of archers in it. A really easy kill!

From here, the game was pretty much in the bag.

The Endgame Cleanup - Tidy Tidy Tidy!

I devoured the french (825BC), babylonian (750BC) and spanish (550BC) capitals. All 1-2 turn wars.

Pacal was a problem as he beelined feudalism. To answer him, I delayed a while and went in with Catapults and a sizable stack of Vultures. He fell down in 225AD, there was a delay as boudica attacked me and took me a while to clean up her units and force peace.

After that, India (680AD), Persia (560AD) and the Aztecs (? Bad notes!) all got curb stomped. Sitting Bull had spread down his peninsula to 4 cities...

I've had nightmares with sitting bull in other games, but he just seemed to roll up and die without too much effort in this game. Although it did take a while to bomb his cities, he fell over in 1010AD.

I'd researched optics, circumnavigating in 600AD and discovering the second continent - I ended up running 2 trade missions there, one before Sitting Bull to mass upgrade my Vulture army into maces. Another to fuel a big defecit research to liberalism (used to secure Astronomy in 920AD). I then set several coastal cities to chain building galleons. I wanted to be ready for the invasion of the other continent, but had a use for them first!

In 1050AD, my army had marched back from smushing sitting bull and was in place for an assault on the Celts.



Galleon assisted landings and she was dead in 1090AD. It was a bloody fight, but maces, catapults and muskets just plough through her defenses.

After this, I invaded the far continent, I had them outteched, an army 4 times the size of any of theirs and the result was about as expected.

The final viking city fell in 1220AD for a 1230AD victory.



Here was my final army:



On an economic note, built the MoM and most of my GPs were used to trigger golden ages, I used 4 + Taj Mahal by the end of the game. As every city was of capital city quality, this just allowed for a silly research rate. A lot of the late medieval techs were 1-2 turns. Maintenance costs were high, but the cities themselves were so good that they half powered through this. Also captured the great lighthouse from France, which really helped.

Failed to get my 'bonus points' as I messed up when the capital grew and completed a forge on the same turn - which is annoying! However, in the sitting bull war he poisoned one of my cities, so I'd have lost the points that way instead! I did try to keep unhealthiness a non factor and mostly succeded.

This game was really over when Russia fell, but I had a huge amount of fun finishing it! The variant rule on one type of unit was interesting and it did cause some problems - I got stuck with catapults for a very long time and needed to use great merchant missions to afford the upgrades for my army. I had some uncomfortable feelings about sending in large stacks with no spear/pike cover. It also encouraged me to make more use of HAs than I ever have before!

I even learned a fair bit about Mr Hart, who is a fascinating person! Strangely I heard a program about him on BBC Radio 4 whilst playing this game, an odd coincidence.

Thanks very much to the sponsor!



And for a final giggle:

Cruel Iron'y - A tale of not knowing some things as well as you think you do!

I did head towards guilds, 980AD being the arrival date. It was only then that I noticed my lack of Iron for knights - failure of basic observation! Never mind, I thought, I'll build some curassiers, they only need gunpowder, military tradition and some horsies. Tech project duly completed in 1090AD, it was only then I discovered the little gits also need Iron. The game was well in the bag, so I just laughed at myself a bit... soon afterwards:



By then my existing HAs were on a boat to the second continent, so I had to wait another couple of turns to start building my new unit as I had to upgrade all my HAs first.

Popping iron was exceedingly lucky - curassiers really powered up my endgame, think there should be an option to turn off or limit pops of resources, as I'm sure this wasn't what the sponsor intended!

Shows I really need to observe and think things through a little more, however!

The game is now open, but saves will be sent out by email.

Edit - Not sure what it means that I almost accidentally renamed this one Hannibal's Revenge.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=358697

Always War, custom mirrored map, 8 players.

1 space left.

Figured now that the game looks like its running, I might as well Get my thread going.

So after taking a quick look at the map I think I'll go Expansion with the nice U rock right next to my home.....



Fooled anyone....? Probably not, but it does get me some filler for all you misclickers out there. :neenernee

Or: The Shadow of Mista Hart

Apologies in advance: This is mainly a placeholder post because I'm not at my home PC so I don't have access to my notes and screen shots. I probably won't be able to write a full report until tomorrow night, so I don't want to miss any reporting deadlines.

That said, let's begin. This is my first report and the first RB event I've completed (though I've started several others).

I think that my game accidentally became a Shadow Game. I tried to keep track of all my units, but I think that on three separate occasions I accidentally had different units in the same category (I know I had Catapults and Trebuchets at the same time before I fixed it, and I had a couple Galleys floating around when I built Caravels). I corrected the problems as soon as I noticed them, but I did fail to stay wholly within the rules.

Anyway, I've played this kind of variant (sans the unit limitations) fairly often, so I kind of knew what to do (even though my results were not as good as others'). When I found Horses in my BFC, I knew that they had to be added, because I have never seen horses pop in this game setting.

I had given myself a few extra variants (that I generally failed to succeed at).

1--Conquest victory: Make things neat and clean. (Check).
2--Research Monotheism first: One god. Very neat. (missed by a turn!)
2a--Failing that, capture the Jewish holy city ASAP. (took me a long time)
3-- ??? (can't remember, but I probably failed)

I think I also missed the Oracle by a turn. I recall a lot of that happening in the early game.

I started off by taking out Stalin with Archers. It was very close because I was short by an Archer or two, but I got a couple of lucky rolls and took Moscow. Unfortunately, it was squashed by holy Justinian and Isabella for quite some time.

I think I spent some time farting around with Not Units and I ended up declaring war on Justinian without sufficient force, so that became a very long and protracted war. Korea also joined forces against me.

Eventually, I conquered my little corner and started to gain a tech lead. Having seen ruff's comments, I see that he originally removed Iron from the map, but I think that an AI popped some, because I know that I built Cannon at some point, as well as a few Knights.

I didn't do it very efficiently, but I ended up conquering my continent, then rolling over the other one with Tanks. The other guys never got their act together, unfortunately. No one ever united the place.

More details later. I think I won in the 1800s or something, so a very late conquest victory. Shame, shame.

Just a place holder for now for my shadow incomplete game!

I didn't have time to complete the game but found myself with a spare coupls of hours last night and decided to play the game after reading a couple of reports.

I read The Reverends report in which he pulled off a CS slingshot and I wanted to give it a go. Some of the timing was simply amazing I couldn't have planned it any better popping a GS the turn I revolted to CS and rocketing my research rate.

I then happily teched to rifles and crushed a lot of people who still had longbows and maces... The end was obvious and I wanted to go and watch some snooker so I gave up. I have some screenshots on my home PC I will post sometime soon - something else perfectly timed happened and I cannot remember what it was now...

Sorry, was not able to finish the report, hopefully tomorrow. Conquest in 700AD.

Okay, my first ever adventure report. But before I tell the sad tale of Gilgamashed, Helpless Hand of the Sumarily Sucky, a few caveats:

-- It's only my second game on BtS.
-- I've never played Emperor level, and I've never won beyond Prince.
-- I don't micromanage cities (I usually screw it up), and most of the time, twenty or so turns in, I automate workers.
-- A vulture? WTF is a vulture?
-- Espionage? Like... spies and stuff?
-- Did I mention it's only my second game on BTS?

I also got confused about the "rules" and didn't realize I could have a cavalry (mounted) and a rifleman (gunpowder) at the same time; I'd assumed since cavalry required the gunpowder tech that they were a gunpowder unit. By the time I got clarification, I was pretty much toast.

On with the fun.

Eighteen civs, tiny map, so strategy going in was to build, build, build units and not stop attacking. Turn 0, I zoom out (I always zoom out to kind of get a lay of the land), pop a hut, and OOOOH is that Korea's settler right next to me? What luck! No sense in waiting, so I declare war right away and OH HOLY CRAP that's not a settler!



A settler, two scouts and TWO ARCHERS? Okay, is this because of the difficulty level, the map build, or a BtS thing?

Okay, so, I'm going to lose this game on turn ZERO. Well, I could restart, but, meh, I'm in the forest, so maybe I'll survive. I set my city to build a warrior, and you won't believe what happens next....

Filled the old webhost, so had to set up a new one.

Compromise's Adventure 44 writeup is now online.

This was fun, Ruff. It was a little trickier than I'd anticipated, but I had a great time with it.

Hey guys,

I don't know about anyone else, but I was wondering if maybe a few people said they fancied one, could we have a new Gentle Adventure on Noble/Prince?

I love so many of the ideas that have come up for the adventures, I am just scared off by the difficulty levels and was wondering if others feel the same?

If not, could some people recommend some decent game settings to get some more challenging noble or relatively manageable prince games under my belt?

Cheers