In an attempt to look competent, I decide to try to take this one semi seriously. I start by generating a few tilted axis maps to see what I am up against. Tilted axis proves to be extremely predictable. Assuming that the starting location has not been heavily edited (not a completely safe assumption), I can pin down more or less exactly where I start out, relative to the rest of the world. At any rate, the rest of the world looks to be off to the west at this point. Of course, I'm not sure which of the two more or less identical continents I start on, but does it really matter?

From the above, obviously a run westward with my settler would be in order, except that somebody seems to have settled me in place. Ohwell, at least the start doesn't actually look that bad. I mean, we've got 2 kinds of happy resources (no religion necessary) and 2 kinds of food/health resources. The 2 furs can serve as cheap cottages for extra research.

Initial plans are to go animal husbandry (sheep, maybe horses for our sucky UU) -> mining(in direction of metal detection), while the scout swings south then west and our city starts on worker->scout. Let's see how long this plan lasts...

3940 BC: We get agriculture from a hut. More silver and game spotted. Um, yay.
3880 BC: Cows and marble spotted. Cows just too far away to be able to use to work silver...darn.
3760 BC: We get pottery from a hut. I already feel I have an unfair advantage with these 2 tech pops. Maybe group events should have fixed hut contents? We also meet Slappy, the Inca leader.
3580 BC: Asoka shows up, having just founded Buddhism.
3340 BC: We get archery from a hut. With 3 tech pops, I will now be embarrassed to lose.
3310 BC: Mr. Worker comes in, I start a scout. Inca found hinduism.
[B}3190 BC:[/b] Tech plan continues with bronze working. No horses seen so far. Why do I get the feeling they were edited away? Not that I care, horse archers are worthless. Let's see, we need an expensive dead-end tech for a unit that doesn't get either cover or city raider promotions for city attacks and if it goes out without escort, it will get slaughtered by spearmen, negating it's mobility advantage. Yup, we've got a real winner here.
2710 BC: We've got an archer. Now I am probably safe from sudden end of game. Building archers is a bit of an unusual move for me, as I'm usually trying for some other technology and don't want to pause for archery. But having guys who can stand up to enemy archers could be handy. I ponder a granary? We can grow to size 6 right now, but won't finish gran before size 3...um, so we maybe get 40-50 food for 45 hammer. Nope. another archer, then settler.
2590 BC: Bronze working in. We've got some nearby, but the settlement would have no food resources unless we're willing to stretch a bit. Mysticism to stretch for those food resources.
2560 BC: Spot some horses and a hut with gold. Horses are of course on a pennensula only accessible to Asoka.
2470: With barbs spotted and city growing nicely, I decide to build a 3rd archer before settler, to protect my improvements.
2290 BC: We are almost cut off from the fertile west by Indian and Inca settlement. Therefore, we must try for a polar cultural victory. Erm, actually, we must kill them both. Start on writing.
2230 BC: Archer defending in forest killed by !@#$ Barb archer. Forget that bit about being able to take on barb archers. I now need a 4th archer before my settler.
2050 BC: Tilted axis this may be, but looks like we've lost a piece of our continent. Normally, the land should stretch all the way across, or at least almost all. It's nowhere near. I begin to suspect editing.
1990 BC: Inca are cheating, they adopt slavery! Karakorum at size 5. Start to chop settler...
1900 BC: I have a choice: Ironworking (better rush), beeline COL(upkeep?), or Alphabet(pointy stick research?) I decide alphabet on grounds that Iron is not certain, but prying tech out of the AI is.
1720 BC: I build my first settler. Choices now are settler/archer for third city, library for more research, or barracks for attacking AI. Asoka and Slappy seem to have grabbed all the good land, so I decide to prepare for war.
1660 BC: found Beshabik 1 space away from copper. Could have built it on the copper, but then the city would have no food resources, or could have built 2 spaces away and gotten 2nd food resource. I decide I want copper sooner rather than later and so I compromise.
1540 BC: Asoka and Inca both ask for Open Borders. I accpt on the ground that they've seen all my land but I haven't seen all theirs.
1270 BC: Stockpiling archers while copper hooked up. :P
1120 BC: Asoka has a ridiculous flood plain capital and he hasn't even farmed or cottaged them yet. This looks far better then the fractal map Emperor game where I rushed Hatty and found that she had 6 size 10-15 floodplain cities.
1060 BC: Alphabet comes in, now on to mathematics.
970 BC: I send a couple of archers out to follow around Asoka's workers. Someday I'm gonna manage to get this worker steal thing to work.
925 BC: Copper hooked up. Start chopping barracks in Beshabik.
595 BC: Math discovered. Start masonry for construction. Asoka's workers aren't kindly standing next to borders. Oh well, I will pillage that horse on a pennensula with one archer when the war starts. I start on another worker. I should have done earlier instead of that archer stockpiling.
580 BC: Sell math to asoka for masonry.
565 BC: I declare war on Asoka after the greedy !@#%$ asks that I give up Alphabet for free. Go straight for his Jewish holy city .
550 BC: Take Bombay, the Jewish holy city. Pathetic axes fail to perform as expected so I have to finish the job with archers.
385 BC: Inca have enough on their hands...hopefully it is Asoka, because they don't like each other very much.
220 BC: Asoka has 5 archers in Delhi. Too many for me to take at the moment, but I have my axes run all over, pillaging.
100 BC: Learn construction, let's build a catapult! Yay. Asoka sends me a free settler...er, worker.
55 BC: Inca Declare war on Indians. Oh joy. Now Asoka's capital garrison will be better trained when I attack.
110 AD: Asoka completes the Mahabodhi. I love it when the AIs build free stuff for me!
185 AD: Catapults demonstrate their awesomeness by being the only things lost in siege of Delhi. We make peace w/ Asoka for meditation and sailing. Inca can finish him off if they like, or maybe he'll sell us a tech or two if he manages to survive. We get ready to deal with our other neighbor.
260 AD: Scouts reveal that Inca have lots of horse archers. I start deploying lots of spearmen.
290 AD: Alternative to whipping away unhappiness in delhi: assign everybody to priest till they starve. HC gives me 100 gold when I ask. Now I will feel bad when I crush him.
390 AD: I declare on HC. I feel bad.
470-485 AD: I take Tiwanku. Inca retake with their horse archers. Time to bomb again...
500-515 AD: I take Tiwanku again, advance towards Cuzco.
575 AD: HC upgrades his capital garrison to longbows. :P Bah.
605 AD: Fall of Cuzco takes care of some budget problems, but still trying to research COL.
620 AD: I make peace with Inca.
635 AD: A barbarian city up north is being annoying. Conveniently, my soldiers have nothing better to do than go take it.
770 AD: Code of laws discovered, cue up some courthouses.
935 AD: We declare war on the Inca again. Readjust economy to keep almost positive cash flow with merchant specialists from captured markets. Now, if we ever get currency researched, we'll be good to go. I decide to move my capital to Bombay, a more central location.
1040 AD: We get a great prophet in Cuzco. Send him to build the Jewish shrine.
1112 AD: Moving the Palace doesn't seem to have helped much, but at least it should help later on. Currency still not researched.
1142 AD: We take new Inca capital and a whole bunch of workers.
1154 AD: Germans show up in a caravel and wave to us.
1172 AD: HC foolishly gives up monarchy for peace. I'll be back soon. He's down to 2 cities. Let's see if I can get rid of Asoka, or at least pry all of his tech out of him... In fact, he gives me literature when I demand it, so I'll let him live. Set research to drama in hopes of trade possibilities.
1194 AD: Frederick founds Islam.
1234 AD: Alex shows up too.
1238 AD: Asoka asks me to convert to Buddism. Since I've got a "+1 you gave me tribute" and a "+1 I stomped you into the ground and you still like me" for him, I do.
1250 AD: We have "-1 You refused to give us tribute" and "-4 We fear we have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" towards HC, so we invade him like any good AI would. Start National Epic in Delhi, now, if we can get HC's marble, that would be handy.
1256 AD: I build the Hindu shrine with another prophet. We now have 4 holy cities, 2 each from Asoka and HC... 3 shrines now built.
1280 AD: Ponder Cuzco or Karakorum for Heroic Epic. Cuzco has plenty of hills food, but Karakorum has more hills and forests. Hmm. Decide Cuzco. With watermills, a bit more potential. Delhi chosen for National Epic. HC has founded a !@#$ island city so I can't kill him just yet. What a pain.
1340 AD: Make peace with HC for Calendar. Try to fix economy with courthouses and missionaries.
1346 AD: Frederick opens up trade. Looks like he's already got astronomy.
1358 AD: Cyrus shows up. He hates us on sight for trading with somebody who he doesn't like.
1364 AD: Order lots of out of way forests to be chopped to speed up well, whatever. There's a whole bunch of tundra forest that's never going to get used, so why not?
1370 AD: Mansa Musa shows and waves hello.
1466 AD: Mansa Musa waves goodbye as he is removed from the game. Easy come, easy go. La La La. I still have no economy .
1484 AD: Taj built by Frederick. Economy still at 30% sci.
1514 AD: Frederick beats me to Liberalism...by 20 techs or something .
1535 AD: We switch to Pacifism. Asoka is outteching us with 1 city .
1544 AD: Get prophet for 4th shrine. Yay economy.
1595 AD: Get machinery, giving my bored workers something to do: windmill remote hills that will never be worked and watermills on glacial rivers. Trade to Asoka for civil service. Revolt to bureaucracy.
1631 AD: Guilds arrives, we'll go for banking to help the economy. Trade guilds to Asoka for optics. He's still keeping up with me with his OCC. :P Meanwhile, I plot to culturally exterminate HC on his island.
1634 AD: Hmm, lets go send missionaries to other islands and spread buddism.
1652 AD: Learn banking, trade to Asoka for paper. Too bad there aren't two of him, we'd catch up the the rest of the world in no time.
1661 AD: Calvary and riflemen spotted on other continent. Woo.
1670 AD: I get a great Merchant. Let's see how much money I can get from him with an inland capital.
1673 AD: Alex declares war on Asoka. I LIKE my super OCC partner and don't want him to die just yet. I start sending obsolete units over. I can't upgrade, but Asoka cheats, so he can.
1688 AD: Alex's Calvalry have been handed their heads on a platter by a bunch of former Mongol axemen upgraded to macemen and whatnot.
1700 AD: Alex asks for help against the Indians. Since I am backing the Indians, that would be like declaring war on myself. Um, no thanks. I'm enjoying this loophole in the variant rules that allows Asoka to upgrade stuff for me.
1721 AD: Wow, Frederick has infantry and I don't even have gunpowder !
1764 AD: We've got rifling now, so we are catching up.
1768 AD: I send a great artist over to help nail the Inca island.
1788 AD: With liberalism, I switch to free speech and free religion. I am still giving lots of stuff to Asoka to fend off Alex. Alex discovers that Asoka has somehow acquired rifling and enough money to upgrade his troops. Wonder how that happened...?
1798 AD: Alex gives up on Asoka. Aww, come on Alex, you can take m...er him.
1813 AD: We are the first to democracy. Fred's been teching, but without friends to fill in the blanks, He's missing stuff and I am catching up.

Pause for strategic thinking: Okay, what kind of victory do I want? A cultural victory is something that has been at the back of my mind, but I probably should have started a bit sooner if I wanted it. Still, with 4 religions, I could easily go nuts with the cathedrals and culture slider. Diplomatic is always an option, although the other fellas don't seem to love me so much that I can gurantee votes. I really don't feel like military action till I get factories in, but conquest/dominiation could be an option after that. Frederick is winning the tech game by a good margin, but with him not having a bunch of other AIs to help him keep ahead in the tech game and me being able to trade with Cyrus and Alex (Asoka is sort of out now, with all the pillaging he's taken.) Add in several merchants and having 4 holy cities and monastaries for 3-4 religions in each city is probably helping my tech a lot too. I've been avoiding scientific method like the plague and am rapidly catching up. Space race might be sort of cool because it would be beating the AIs at their own game. We'll see how it plays out for the moment. If I can get some military, I'll go stomp on somebody. Otherwise, space race probably.

1825 AD: Frederick completes 3 gorges dam. No apollo program yet though...
1827 AD: Railroads arrives just in time, as my workers have paved just about everything. Now for assembly line.
1831 AD: Alex has enough on his hands right now. I better hurry with those railroads, just in case.
1834 AD: Frederick completes Apollo program.
1835 AD: Alex declares war on Cyrus for some more intercontinental AI mayhem.
1836 AD: Assembly line arrives. Queue up factories. Trade to Cyrus for scientific method. Sowwy Alex, now you have to fight infantry. Germans have a panzer wandering around my contient for some reason. Start on communism
1841 AD: Communism. WFYABTA all around. Will revolt to state propery after statue of liberty is done.
1849 AD: We build the statue of liberty. Switch to universal sufferage (only rush available), emancipation, and state property.
1856 AD: Cyrus and Alex make peace.
1860 AD: Cyrus DEMANDS combustion. Um...no.
1864 AD: Frederick declares war on and wipes out the Inca. Now I can't culture crush them. Way to spoil my fun Fred.
1869 AD: Alex gives us his 800 gold and declares war on Frederick, just because he's a nice guy. We give him divine right, fascism and communism, just cause we're nice guys too. Could be interesting as Alex is the Warmonger, but fred has mechanized infantry. I make plans to give alex my surplus troops .
1871 AD: Alex loses a couple of cities.
1874 AD: First load of donated troops arrives for Alex to upgrade, ensuring no further losses.
1876 AD: We learn industrialism, trade to Cyrus for Artillery
1879 AD: Alex asks me to declare war on Frederick. I think he's better off with my secret aid. I think I'm better off staying out of open combat too.
1883 AD: We wanna join the motherland whineyness in Delhi becoming a problem. Trouble is, Asoka SCARES me after all the troops I gave him.
1886 AD: Alex and Frederick make peace
1903 AD: Declare war on Frederick. Bribe Alex to join us.
1904 AD: Over the course of 2 turns, we destroy frederick's wandering tank and calvalry on our continent, take and return 2 greek cities (attacking from Greek territory), and take and raze a 3rd city via marine assault. Between them, the three cities have the majority of Frederick's mobile forces and almost all of his fleet, so he has no way to retaliate. I think the Greeks can handle what is left of Frederick's mobile forces while I go back for more troops. We are now at 20% culture slider to combat war weariness and loss of luxury resource trade.
1909 AD: We pillage Frederick's only oil. Looks like Cyrus has no oil either. That should make him easy.
1914 AD: Frederick offers peace for 2400 gold. I'm not going to let him finish his spaceship, so no deal.
1917 AD: With all ports knocked out and greek gunships running amok all over his land, Fred is doomed.
1927 AD: We discover robotics, now that fred is toast and we no longer need it.
1929 AD: We take last of fred's cities on continent, only to discover that he has a junky 1 space island ice city near persia. I've grown tired of Asoka's continuous whining about breaking deals with Alex. I have spare forces, so...
1933 AD: Buhbye Asoka. Too bad you got whiney.
1935 AD: We finally get Frederick. Goodbye war weariness and 40% culture slider.
1936 AD: How can a peaceful people like Indians name a city Bang-Galore? Still several percentage points below domination. Cyrus should be getting really nervous about now, especially as he has no oil . Wooden ships and infantry against tanks, mechs, bombers, battleships? Hahahahahahahahahaha.
1939 AD: Another hopefully effective battle plan: One squadron of my warships will clean up their fleet and blockade one of their two naval ports. We'll actually let transports out, just that we'll sink them . The rest of my ships will launch an Amphibious assault on Cyrus' other port, hopefully eliminating all his ships and a large chunk of his mobile forces. That junk ice city that we got from Germany is actually possibly useful as it is within bomber range of persian mainland (it will turn out to not be able to hit anything useful however).
1941 AD: We declare war, take Pasagarde. It is promptly retaken by lots of artillery. This is no surprise. Now we just have to take it again and kill the artillery.
1946 AD: Our tactics are as effective as anything would be, however it takes time to wear down the massive Persian army, which has been stockpiling all game. We finally take Persopolis.
1947 AD: Alex asks us to adopt hereditary rule. We like him and all, but 2+ turns? Sorry bud. Home contintent is officially paved, improved worked, polished, scrubbed chopped, lopped, and bopped. There is nothing for our workers anywhere, including those icy squares that will never ever be anywhere near a city. 57/58% population, 58/64% land area. We are nearing domination limit.
1948 AD: We begin widespread airlift of troops to Munich to keep the place from revolting to the greeks.
1953 AD: Persians defeated. Now, when their cities come out of revolt...
1956 AD: I set culture slider to 40% to speed city area growth when they come out of revolt.
1958 AD: Domination victory. 21718 Augustus Ceasar. Alex has a "-4 you have traded with our worst enemies." for me. But Alex, doesn't having wiped them out make up for this?

Thoughts:
This was hands down the easiest Emperor game I've ever played. So what if the start only had room for my fairly good capital and sort of okay copper city. I usually only build 1 or 2 cities before I head over and start taking someone else's. There were no horses convenient (I wonder if this was deliberate), but that's okay, because the mongol UU is a waste of time. Frankly, if I had nothing but horses, I'd still probably not build them and instead beeline longbows or something .

I didn't find this one to be very extreme, so I home some of the less experienced players gave it a shot. Anyway, I had a lot of fun: this is exactly the sort of game that should be played at epic speed.

A couple of saves attached. No screen shots. Not one. Don't worry, I took lots for the Sky Gods. Now if only I can finish it.

Attached Files

  DerangedDuck Epic 12.zip (Size: 529.98 KB / Downloads: 225)

Hi. I finally have a CIV capable computer, so I was able to participate in this event.

I haven't played CIV since last fall, so I was a little worried about jumping straight into a "difficult" Epic. I've played FfH2 mod over the past couple of weeks, losing several games on Immortal, but that experience doesn't translate well into this scenario. (Somehow I doubt summoning Infernals to get a fresh start will be an option here. ) But enough of these preliminaries, and on to the game, which can be summarized in three sentences:

I need about half a dozen cities for a comfortable spaceship launch. Our start was bad in the long term, but had great short-term commerce and production, with Copper nearby. Asoka settled very fertile lands, but had neither metals nor horses to defend himself with.

So I've expanded to 6 cities using axes and cats, filled in two more cities later, and then played a typical peaceful space race, launching in 1895. And now the details:

The usual way out of a bad start is to attack a neighbor with good lands and the scenario description heavily implied that it would be our only option here. So my research went into Animal Husbandry (pasture and horses). When horses turned out to be too far, I went for Mining->Bronze Working. If that hadn't revealed accessible copper, I would have gone all the way to Iron. However, after finding Copper in acceptable location, I switched to economic research of Mysticism (border pop for copper city), Agriculture -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alpha... Never mind. Alphabet wouldn't be very useful in a situation with only two trading partners, one of whom I am about to attack, so I went for Math->Masonry->Construction instead. Which takes us up to the start of Indian war in 565BC.

Meanwhile, my production went into: Worker->Warrior->Warrior->Warrior->Barracks(partial) The 3 warriors and Barracks allowed the city to grow to size 4 before starting to train settler, so I was able to work both furs nearly all the time, making me the leader in GNP.

My second city was founded in 1870BC, and started work on Obelisk, which it build naturally, because my workers were too busy building roads and improving the capital to dirty their hands with forestry. Meanwhile, the capital finished its barracks, trained a scout, and put some production into infrastructure (perhaps a library), waiting for the copper to become available.

Note that I didn't care about the barbs, because after FfH2, where any unit straying outside your cultural borders gets devoured in a couple turn, I was very underwhelmed by regular CIV's Barb threat. Once I had to recall a couple scouting warriors to protect empty capital from an archer that popped out of the fog to the south. I even started training another warrior due to pop out when archer arrives, but the archer turned back and I stopped warrior training. Another time I lost an axe guarding copper to a barb axe, so I had to divert a catapult heading to the front to finish it off. There were one or two more barb incidents, but I mostly allowed AIs to do the barb watch for me.

Why did I found Beshbalik in such a way that it would require a border pop to connect the copper? Let me give you a preview from the endgame:

This "copper town" turned out to be my highest production city, building two largest spaceship parts, as well as my entire modern military of ... a single musketman. But more on that later. For now, let's go back to the situation on the Indian border, that looked like this in 565BC:

I had only 4 axes in position at the time, but declared war anyway, because I couldn't miss this nice bait (there is a settler under one of the archers that are walking past my stack):

(The picture is called "Asoka asking for trouble" ) And the 2-archer stack highlighted in this picture? That's all the defenders of Delhi.

However, the AI turned out to be not completely incompetent and while my stack waited for reinforcements under the walls of Delhi, Asoka produced an archer every couple of turns, so I had to turn north to Bangalore, while waiting for the newly-built Cats to get there. Bangalore, by the way, later became my GP farm.

Once the catapults entered the scene, however, there was nothing Asoka's archers could do. Delhi fell with minimal losses, as did the city to its south-east, that later became a hybrid production-research city. I then swung north-west to capture the city next to the elephants. At that point my GNP dropped to 0, I began running out of units, war weariness got up to 1 or 2 (a big deal for happy cap of 5), and I discovered Alphabet. So this was a good time to make peace. Here is a strategic view at the time (40BC) :

Note that Alex' first war against Mali, which started at about the same time as my attack on India, also ended at this time.

I later founded a filler city Between Beshbalik, Delhi, and the southern former Indian city, and a fishing villaged next to horses in north-west corner of our continent, for the total of 8 cities, half of which were quite weak.

During that peace negotiation I made one of the first major mistakes: I forgot that I'll need to chose a religion to befriend HC, so I decided to go my usual atheist route and ignore Polytheism to avoid WFYABTA limit. After sleeping on it, I remembered that common religion is the key to befriending HC, and that Organized Religion is a great builder civic, so I had to buy Polytheism from HC, along with a bunch of other basic techs. I sold my Alphabet, because I had no intention of going for Great Library. My economy was in too bad of a shape to go wonder chasing. In fact, I ignored all early to mid game wonders (none of which I was in a position to attempt) except Hanging Gardens, that I missed by 8 turns in 1130AD.

However, Asoka turned out to be even more of a pushover than expected, and was willing to trade with me despite a recent war, so I bought Monotheism from him and switched to OrgRel right away, but didn't chose a religion until my religion of choice was well-spread. (HC switched from Judaism to Hinduism, so I had to spread around the second religion before I could switch.)

After this, things went along the typical pacifist space race blueprint: I've picked up Currency (Markets for cash and happiness), then Metal Casting (forges for production and happiness), then went on the CoL->CS->Paper->Education->Philosophy->Liberalism beeline, researching or trading for all the Astronomy prerequisites. So I was able to take Astronomy from Liberalism in 1340.

I met the first off-continent AI, Fred, in 1130. He was angry at me for trading with HC, but that anger dissipated quickly, probably because Alex became his biggest enemy.

Meanwhile, HC attacked Asoka in 1220 and took two of his last 4 cities. I was hoping to steal one of them from under HC's nose, but got my stack of millennium-old veterans in place too late, so I ended up not joining the war. Alex also started plenty of wars with Fred and Mansa, which I couldn't see directly, because I never made contact with Mali, and met Alex himself only in 1571. (I never built ships, so I met AIs only when their caravels reached me.)

Hopelessly backwards Cyrus sailed by in 1328, but trading with me helped him keep up with the tech leaders, so in the end Alex was the only AI who was more than an age behind. The technological backwardness didn't stop Alex from being the power leader, with double the power of most other AIs.

Meanwhile, I built only infrastructure in my cities, because the other continent had its own wars to worry about, and HC was kept Friendly or Pleased by shared religion, shared civics, and later just the bonuses from trade, OB, resource deals, giving in to demands, etc. Asoka hated me, but was far too weak to do anything about it.

After Liberalism, I researched towards Economics, missing the Great Merchant because switching to Free Religion caused HC to drop to Pleased and refuse to sell Guilds. I then researched Printing Press (cash) -> Replaceable Parts (lumbermills) -> Gunpowder -> Chemistry -> Steam Power (on path to Assembly Line and Factories) I also got Nationalism -> Constitution -> Corporation somewhere in there for more income boost.

While researching Steam Power, I remembered about the Statue of Liberty. Doing a couple quick calculations showed that the wonder is well worth the effort, so I diverted my research towards Democracy and then, with two forest chops and a Great Engineer to cut the production time in half, I constructed the Statue of Liberty in the capital in 1712AD. Of course it then took me several dozen turns to remember to switch to Representation to take full advantage of new specialists.

I was delaying Scientific Method as much as I could, because I inherited Asoka's 3 religions, which meant that I had 3 monasteries in all research cities. However, in 1625 I saw that HC has Scientific Method, so I bought it, abusing his Friendly status, and outraced him to Physics. (It turned out that he was researching Biology, rather than Physics, so I wasn't really racing him, but I didn't know that at the time.)

After that, I went back to research Assembly Line, and then continued up Electricity line to Computers (labs), picking up Broadway, Rock'n'Roll, and Eiffel Tower on the way. Then I beelined to Robotics (Space Elevator). I was able to start the Space Elevator only in my GP farm, where it was expected to take 50 turns (a time decreased slightly by a Golden Age). Then I proceeded along the usual paths towards Satellites, then Fusion, then Genetics, finishing with Environmentalism. I traded for anything I could buy, but I was a tech leader for most of the mid-late game, so there were few trade opportunities in Industrial age and almost none after that.

HC completed his Apollo Program in 1811, but his research rate was too slow, and Cyrus overtook him in the end.

My own Apollo Program was started in 1838, and completed in 1854, thanks to four forest chops. I didn't chop any forests in the early game, saving them for emergencies. So I used up some of the extra forests during the space race, speeding up Apollo Program and the final two parts.

A few years after completing Apollo I decided that it was time to switch into max production mode by replacing Representation with Universal Suffrage and starting a Golden Age using Artist and Prophet from my GP city. (My other GPs were used to found 5 Academies and rush Statue of Liberty. The Fusion Engineer cut a turn off Ecology research, and last two GPs were a useless Artist and a last moment Engineer.)

HC completed the UN in 1886, but I didn't care, because I was just two turns away from finishing Ecology research. After that, my 6 workers chopped some of the forests I've been saving whole game, to allow my capital and second city to finish the final two parts in 1895.


Spaceship victory in 1895.

Here is the final world map:


And the final demographics:

Not bad for 8 cities, 3 of which are stuck at size 12-13 due to lack of food or health, while the largest ones are size 17.

My Report

Diplomatic loss to Mansa in 1838. He was on fire this game, well on the way to space or culture victory (3 cities at 40k, and Apollo + parts built).

Fun game that I enjoyed playing, even on the losing side.
________
COLORADO DISPENSARIES

I wish I put more detail into my report, alas I ran out of time to write it. I hope it suffices.

Here it is!

Summary: Space Race Victory 1945AD

I'm a long standing guy from [Fail], and I've got a few complaints about how this alliance is being run.

Granted, I've been gone for a couple of months for personal reasons (involving family fights and funerals). You may remember me as the guy who was pushing hard for Fail to join ZoS's alliance and all that, or you might not.

Here's what I think:

1) I just asked on alliance chat what the alliance forum was. No one from our guild or Arch knew what it was. I was getting ready to set one up when Jude mentioned this place.

2) Total lack of new guilds. The alliance has been open for over a month, and, other than a steady stream of people leaving, we have nothing to show for it. Our guild takes responsibility for some of the losses, but quite a few have been people who left for a more active alliance.

3) Total lack of interest in doing things as an alliance. Jude only started a thread on alliance events when I threw a fit that nothing had been done for such a long time.

I don't have a real problem with people trying to set up an egalitarian wonderland of funk. I do have a problem with saying that that is your motive, and then disenfranchising two thirds of the alliance by default. If not even my guild leader knows about your forum being the alliance HQ, if no one from Arch knows either, something is wrong. Z trusted you guys to pull something together, and followed you out of an alliance that we worked pretty hard to get into, because he believed that you guys would do better and that we'd get some results.

Instead we've lost a ton of members and we're considering our options elsewhere. Do we want to make it work? Sure. But this gig was your idea, and the ball has been in your court for a good month now, and we've yet to see any real gains.

Here are my suggestions:

1) An independent forum for the alliance. I don't care who runs it, but I don't like that it is a subsidiary of your guild's website. If you do decide to pull out, we lose our only communication structure. Plus, I'm pretty sure you guys have the controlling interest in Oink as well, so we'd be looking at dissolution as well. The other issue with regards to the forum is that it is where all the decision making is occurring. You claim that we don't participate, and then make all the decisions. The reality is that no one outside your guild is even aware that "we" had a forum. Fail and Arch both have our own forums, and the same charge about lack of participation can be made there about RB. Where are the posts from you guys on Fail's forum?

An independent forum would solve these problems. And there are plenty of sites that will host forums for free (invisionfree.com for one), so cost and inheritance is not an issue. The perception matters a great deal. I straight up do not like seeing King of Pain listed as the poster under almost every single topic in this forum. He might or might not be a nice guy (I don't know him), but I DO know that a single individual doing everything is bad if your goal is democracy.

And if you guys don't think who hosts it is a big deal, then why not let us over at Fail host it? We've got a nice domain and we can set up an alliance section too.


2) Get some more allies. I'm sure that a principled stand and waiting on "serendestiny" sound nice, but they don't add to the cart. I'm talking active recruiting policy, and post haste. No one finds anything when they aren't looking, and we aren't looking. This issue (and the lack of discernible leadership) has directly resulted in unacceptable losses in our member pool; people that we will be hard pressed to replace.

I'd like to make sure that everyone understands that I am not asking that we fast track in some shit guilds. What I am asking for is that we actively seek some new people, and we do it now. Frankly, a four guild alliance where one guild is a ghost sounds like a joke to me (and something I'd be well out of), but I'm sticking around out of loyalty to my leader.

3) Some scheduled and promoted events for the entire alliance. I don't care what they are or who runs the program, but it has to be stuff that more than just members of RB take part in. If you lot deem it necessary, I'll take that on.

Why? because right now we might as well be a solo guild with a couple of people on friend's list. I've kept up with some of the crew, and they've pointedly mentioned the lack of interest in doing anything as a unit. When I came back and looked around for people to group with, I generally got the same response. Everyone is either hitting up their guild mates or doing some heroway, and that is definitely a bad thing.




If you want a democracy, cool. I can dig it and work with it. But you are off to a lousy start if your goal is to include the alliance, rather than just your guild.

edit: By the way, thanks for reppin us pigs.

This was one of the most entertaining Vanilla games I've ever played. You can find the report here.

Had fun with this one .

http://www.erudita.com/darrell/EpicXII/d...art_1.html

Darrell

Epic 12 – The Gauntlet

No Slavery, no Drafting, a dodgy looking capital, and Emperor to boot: what’s not to like about this challenge? My play for the most part, but I’ll come to that later. Unusually for me, I played a couple of test games under similar conditions, with mixed results: one squeezed by creative AIs, one Domination win, and one start where Liz was running away with the game. From my successful game, the plan is to grab a couple of good city sites, suck up to my nearest neighbour then backstab. Viciously. Move the capital to a better location (maybe an AI’s ex-capital) then snowball to Victory. That’s the plan, now on to the real thing!

Standard AH/Worker opening, but have some bad luck early on when my scout gets eaten by a bear. Not being one for rushing (I’ve never rushed anyone, ever), I found Beshbalik at marble/deer/cows:




Not long afterwards, things start to go wrong:




Annoying though the loss of my archer was, my bigger problem is that Asoka and HC are now religious chums. I had hoped that Capac would found one of Hinduism and Judaism (neither fell that early), and that he and Asoka would be at each others throats. Now, however, there’s a good chance they’ll be at mine, as there’s now way forward without fighting, so poor are our native lands.




Even Gibbon would have rushed, methinks…

I found two more cities, one for copper/deer/rice, the other for fish/horse. I go Buddhist and snag Maths, IW, and 100g for Alphabet. Then I cynically extort cash from my friend Asoka and backstab the next turn.

In which after commenting that the start isn't actually hard, I crash my economy below zero and then lose Karakorum.

http://uberfish.atspace.com/ep12.html

Add after reading other reports: I did NOT do any early chop rushing because I despise it, I only removed forests when clearing space for other improvements

Okay lets go. Couldn't be bothered with the website this time so it's forumspace.

First tech = Animal Husbandry
Build = Worker

That should be the standard opening, I'd think.




The first neighbor I meet is Asoka the Girly Princess of India. I can see why this game is called the Gauntlet! The Girly Princess founds Buddhism a little later. No doubt he is going to preach compassion and forgiveness while I ruthlessly kill him and take his cities.

I also meet Huayna Capac the Ratman when his scout turns up at my borders.

Okay *time out*.

Call a game “The Gauntlet” then for the neighbors, the second most pacifist leader in the game (with a “Kick me” sign stuck to his back, and a “Rush me” sign stuck to his front), and one of the most wonder-obsessed leaders in the game? Oooookay.

Expansion time. Choosing the second city site WAS a challenge. Being non-creative it's necessary to carefully weigh the pros and cons of placing a city in a spot with no immediately accessible resources. However in the end I decide to do just that, mainly due to the poor quality terrain.



After a bunch of turns religion spreads to the city (I'd made some roads for that purpose).

Anyway I didn't care that much about copper, because I concluded that with the river and furs it'd be no difficulty whatsoever teching to catapults. I would've rathered use some Keshiks, but no horses nearby.

Construction comes along soon enough and I'm prepared.



Chop chop! Turning off slavery was meant to make this some kind of difficult, but with a huge abundance of useless forest on this kind of map the real abuse is in chopping... so very quickly some catapults are rolling off the assembly lines, meeting up with a large horde of Axes I'd been dribbling out of the cities.

The tech after construction is Alphabet so I can do some tech trading and by trading I mean offer to stop beating on the girly princess in exchange for some of his tech. This is often known as extortion.

Ratman comes bugging me with some diplomacy



Yes, religious wars can be unpleasant. Since I was planning on some unpleasentries vs the buddhists anyway I accept this request to adopt hindhusim.

I then note that Ratman has some Ivory for sale. As I said I'd pumped out a whole load of axes, I had more than I really wanted (due to upkeeps) so I trade away my 1 source of Copper to get Ivory, which is definitely an awesome deal. Elephants are a better use of upkeep than spears, and I get the happy from the Ivory. Cheers ratman.



Asoka screams like a girl as my stack rolls into his territory. Or maybe he sat and meditated while Delhi was being sacked. I don't know.



You know, with a name like “The Gauntlet”, I was not expecting to be beating up girls and nerds.

My army continues to liberate the Indian cities with the gold being used to finance alphabet research. While this is going on Ratman helpfully helps out my war effort by spreading Hinduism into the Buddhist Indian cities, for additional culture and happiness. Cheers Ratman, and keep building up your own cities too!

I take an Indian city which had built the Oracle, useful only for some prophet points, which actually will be useful.

In a case of patent ridiculousness an incan settler party wanders through my territory and....



Founds a city and Jesusism the very next turn. Oookay.

My rampaging stacks wipe out a rubbish indian city in tundra and it's time to make the Indian Fairy Princess pay for his... well, pay.

Read the log backwards to figure out what happens...



Basically, extort a bunch of tech in exchange for 10 turns of existence.



The Indian Fairy Princess is found huddling in a snowy little scumhole. He is executed and the Indian People Rejoice, welcoming their new Mongol Overlord who is neither a fairy nor a princess.

The first great person is born and he is one of those brainiacs, building an Academy in Delhi since in the long run it'll be a better city than the capital.

My workers are still chopping feverishly, wiping out the tundra forests, and pretty much all forests, producing mainly elephants.

After not long at all I declare war on Ratman, with the first target being the City of Jesus


My armies make a beeline for the jumbos, then for the Pyramids, which the wonder crazy ratman has naturally built:



With these in my hands I switch to Representation.

The rule of no slavery brings with it various downsides, such as the inability to rush defenders in an emergency. However again this variant fails in practise, as this happens:



Yup! A very handy palace jump! To Delhi which along with being far more central is also my Commercial Powerhouse and has an Academy and is that Civil Service being researched, yuppers!

So just pretend that in my infinite brilliance it was all part of my plan and totally not a matter of not defending my capital properly against Incan horse archers. (ignore that I'm far too honest to actually do something like that deliberately, but it was a very profitable event)

Karak is of course taken right back by some random Elephant.