I am not a very good Civ player. I usually play at Prince level, and win most of the time, but Monarch is a bit above my capabilities. Desert Domination seemed just about right for me, so I decided to try it. I did manage to win the game, under the specified conditions, with a Domination victory in 1927. That is rather late (I would not be surprised to get the consolation prize for the latest finisher), but I am content that I at least managed to finish.

I decided to follow the scenario's suggestion to build a monk economy. My initial goal was to found three cities, and get a religion for each of them. These cities should be my economic power houses, and the rest of the civilization should rest on them.

I founded Mecca two tiles to the west of the initial position, to get rid of the two mountains, and immediately set research to Meditation. I also started on a settler from the get-go, for the second city. My warrior started exploring to find a nice site for the second city, and the first hut that popped was a scout, who got the same duty. Several more huts provided basic income, some barbarians, and the Masonry tech. Mecca founded Buddhism.

I decided to found the second city, Medina, pretty far to the south, on the eastern border of the river, catching the gold and the cows, and one oasis. Normally I try to place my initial cities a bit closer together, but I did not want to lose the gold in this game, and I could not really waste a lot of money on several small cities close together. Medina became the holy city for Hinduism. I founded Damascus to the east of Mecca, in between the two rivers. Judaism went to Medina again, but Damascus got Confucianism. My three holy cities were in place.

In the meantime I had met my opponents, and the first enemy was clear: Napoleon. Not only because he tends to be an enemy in every game, but also because Hinduism spread to him, while I had decided on Confucianism as my religion, and spread that to Catherine, Washington, and Frederick. I made Open Borders pacts with my three friends, and traded lots of stuff with them, but I ignored all pleas from Napoleon to do the same with him.

While I had my eye on my first enemy, I decided not to attack early in the game, out of fear that I would grow my empire too big too quick, and that I would not be able to raise the cash needed to support all the conquered cities, thereby losing the game after France had been eradicated. Perhaps I was too cautious in this respect (out of a lack of experience with early wars): I expect that other players will go for an early war and thus win the game much quicker.

I captured Parthian from the barbarians, west of Medina, south of Mecca, in the mountain area. I founded Baghdad to the east of Damascus, right of the river along the coast, and Narjan south of Baghdad, to squeeze the French. For some reason, when I founded Taoism and Christianity, both went to Medina again, but Islam went to Parthian. Now I had four holy cities, and controlled all religions. It had not been my intention to get all religions, but somehow it worked out that way.

By 1500 AD, the land was more or less divided, the north-east part of the map was mine, I was great friends with the Russians, Americans, and Germans, and had my economy going strong. I did not suffer much from the lack of courthouses, although I made sure that I got Versailles in Medina (close to the map's centre, could be important later), founded all holy buildings, and spread almost all religions to many cities. Now I had to think about getting that Domination victory. Obviously, the first target was France. I declared on Napoleon in 1520.

The fight against the French was fairly easy, me using mainly Cavalry and Catapults against French melee troops. Frederick joined the fun, which was actually not what I wanted, out of fear that he would become too big. Clearly, he would be my second target. By 1620 AD, the French empire was destroyed, and I controlled most of the east of the map, apart from the far south-east corner where the Russians had a base. I had razed two or three of Napoleon's cities, because I thought they were too close together, and I did not want to waste money on supporting them.

While Napoleon had been behind in tech, Frederick was fairly equal to me, so I decided to first build some more troops and wait for attacking him until I was close to building tanks. In 1802 I felt ready, and declared on Frederick. I captured Dusseldorf quickly, but after that I could not really make any progress. The Russians joined in, making Frederick fight on two fronts, which helped a little. It was not until 1858, however, when I had half-a-dozen tanks available, that I started to make progress again, and by 1882 Germany was gone. I had razed some of Frederick's cities too, but still controlled most of former Germany. Unfortunately, Catherine had also profited from this war by capturing Essen and Dortmund. While I was close to a Domination victory, I still needed to capture a few more cities.

Since I had a Defensive pact with Catherine, and since the power of the Americans was clearly less than the Russians (even though they were ahead in score), I decided first to bribe Catherine to attack Washington (fairly cheap too, I just needed to give her Radio), and after George had moved some of his troops, I declared in 1888 on the Americans (requested by Catherine).

I needed to build bombers and artillery to mow down American defenses and some Infantry to hold cities, but besides those I almost exclusively built tanks. By 1927, I gained a Domination victory, having reduced the Americans to one city (San Francisco - which I had just visited the week before, so I was a bit averse to attacking it). By this time, Catherine had built her first spaceship part, but was still far from a spaceship victory. Final score: 21125.

Surprisingly, despite the complete lack of Courthouses, and the limits on Markets, Banks, and Grocers, money was not an issue during this game. I had research at 100% for almost the whole game. I switched to 90% for a short while during the time I was at war, to raise cash to upgrade some units. After the war with the Germans I set it to 50%, while culture was set to 40%, to make conquered cities grow faster to reach the required land mass size. By that time I did not need research anymore, but cash flow was still no problem.

I had played a few of the adventures before, but never finished them, either because I lacked the time, or because I did not care for the direction in which the game was going. I liked Desert Domination for several reasons. First, it was a pretty short game; I needed about eight hours of gameplay. Second, it required me to do something I am usually not going for, namely turn a well-oiled economic and scientific powerhouse into a warmongering state; in games like these I normally go for a spaceship or cultural victory. Third, I thought the restrictions of the scenario where interesting, but not overly limiting; that obviously makes Desert Domination gentle as an adventure, and frankly, that is about where my capabilities end.

I exploited the rules of this game worse than an American megacorporation discovering a population of starving fourth world children willing to work 18 hours/day to earn pennies making shoes and t-shirts. So, it seems unconscionable for me to post my report. It's really not the same event.

That being the case, I would like to say that I enjoyed playing this event quite a bit. Even if you're exploiting something, you are subject to the rules of the event. To play well requires attention to the game, meaningful decisions, and likely will lead to an increase in the quality of your play. To me, especially with the prospect of comparing your efforts with others', that's fun.

Having more than one scoring category as per Sullla's suggestion in Ruff_hi's thread, perhaps even self-nominated as Ruff suggested, does make things a bit more awkward, but it might work.

I don't know the solution. I have no interest whatsoever in playing an easy game just to beat the scores of less experienced players. I also don't want to see things go the way of CFC's HoF/GotM games and have all games become hard-core competitive rule-benders (though I myself appear to be a big part of the problem by playing the events the way I do).

I like the variants. I like the competition. I like having players with differing experience and backgrounds play te events.

Maybe instead of a listed score for a gentle (and maybe medium?) event, a veteran player can write a 1- or 2-sentence description of their game that would be listed in the Results under a "What our veterans did with this variant" section.

Relevant to this event, I did discover one more way to make money during this event. If you partially build a missionary, then remove it from the queue. Then, you built your entire quota of that religion's missionaries, your partially built missionary will be refunded to you just like a lost wonder. It would take a lot of micromanaging to make this profitable, but I thought I'd point it out in case anyone was interested.

Woot! I finally finished a game and report! Its only been what.... two years since my last one?!?

My plan for this game was to establish as many different holy cities as possible. The rules state that only holy cities can build Market/Grocers/Banks, to multiply the cash generated by their shrines. I’m not sure if putting these improvements in cities where I have no intention of building a shine is strictly in the spirit of the variant, but I need 5 banks to build Wall Street so I think that it should be fine.

My religion plans are this: Buddhism and Hinduism would be founded in the capital. After Bronze Working and a whipped settler I will found Judaism in my second city, Oracle to CoL for Conf city three, and a prophet lightbulb Christianity for city four. By the time I would get around to Divine Right or Philosophy I would have some more cities under my yolk to accept the faith. I would make one of the capital religions the one true faith and spread it as much as possible, with the second spread when convenient. In order to secure the needed GPs for this endeavor I would do the unthinkable, I would build Stonehenge in my capital. I normally HATE Stonehenge, but since this game didn’t have many Calendar resources it wasn’t too bad to hold off researching it. Along with the Oracle and some hired holy men, I got all of the early prophets I needed for lightbulbs (Theology, Civil Service, part of Divine Right, and Paper), two shrines, and half of a GA.

On the war front, Axes, Spears, and Swords would be the weapon of choice for my first opponent – Catherine. Unfortunately, as I was ready to roll a stack of about 15 units (including Archers for garrisons) into Russia, Nappy decides he wants to be first in the ass kicking parade and declares on 75AD. I start to move my stack over to oblige him, but a few turns later Cathy gets a little jealous and declares in 150AD. Some emergency whipping and a little troop diversion took care of the French situation to my south (luckily they were never able to disconnect my Iron down there) and I sent my stack back over to Russia to give Cathy the attention she craved.

The early melee units went through her outlying cities like butter, and Construction allowed me to send in some Cats to help take out her core. At the end of the first Russian War (640AD), Cathy was left with two meager cities and a permanently crippled empire. Since she declared war, I was able to make peace and had no residual diplomatic effects from the struggle. Meanwhile I was able to hold off the French until they were finally ready to make nice.

With Cathy crippled, Nappy on the other side of the map, and Washington the most advanced AI, I turned my attention to Fredrick. Thanks to a lightbulbed CS and a hasty detour to Machinery, I upgraded some key CR3 units to Macemen and headed towards Germany. I was able to steal two cities away from Freddie, but I soon began to run out of steam against his entrenched forces and had to call the war short (1270AD). Cathy had settled an annoying city right in a clear zone of her former territory and was dropping culture bombs in there to squeeze out her former holdings. Since she was still so weak I wheeled my stacks back around to finally snuff out the Russians once and for all (1535AD).

After the second Russian war, I focused on building up my economy, including spreading Bud/Hind, chopping Versailles in former Russian territory, building Markets, Grocers, and Banks in qualifying cities, and building the Spiral Minaret and Wall Street in Mecca. By the end of the game Mecca was pumping out 177g a turn, which I don’t think included the Minaret money (can anyone confirm this? It didn’t look like it was counted towards the total for the city, which means it didn’t get multiplied by the improvements… what a gyp!). Liberalism was used to grab Economics for a Great Merchant to generate some trade mission income. I built the Taj in Mecca, the golden age was then used to help accelerate to Chemistry and a second Golden Age facilitated construction of a swarm of Grenadiers.

Being backwards technologically and harboring a good chunk of land, I turned my attention to the French, and with great speed obliterated Nappy (1680AD). After a while to solidify my borders and rebuild my forces, I rolled through Germany. With the fall of Berlin my pent up border culture put me over the top for Domination victory in 1824.

Wonders built:
Mecca – Stonehenge, Oracle, Spiral Minaret, Taj Mahal, Kremlin, Statue of Liberty, Bud Shrine, Hind Shrine, Ironworks, Wall Street

Damascus – Great Library, Oxford University

Medina – Great Lighthouse, Globe Theater

Rostov – Versailles

I didn’t build either Epic, I think because I didn’t want to pollute the GP pools where they would have been most beneficial. For some reason I can’t get a total on my GPs, but I had a crap load of Prophets, about four of Scientists (one from Physics and another coming on the last turn), and an Artist and Merchant from techs.

Overall I think I did pretty well. I’m not a warmonger by nature, usually I take just enough to secure my core and develop enough of an economy to win by Space. My religion plan worked perfectly, and I only really felt the pinch financially when I started running culture to combat WW and enforce my borders. Aside from the double team in the beginning, the AIs played nice and rolled over as expected. I was able to stay just enough ahead in techs to out gun the enemy, but not so far ahead that it was uninteresting (except the French… who would of thought it :P).

Adv 20 - Desert Domination

Well, my PC won’t handle Epic 11’s large map, so let’s have a romp around the sand dunes. Warlords 3 has got me in the mood for religion gathering, so in this Adventure I’m going to try for seven holy cities, and, if practical, not to train a single missionary. It’s Noble, so it should be possible because we know we’re up against non-Spiritual civs.

Now seven holy cities looks sweet at first glance as we can only building commerce multipliers in holy cities, but unique holy cities of later religions are probably less beneficial: the late religions won’t spread so easily, so - unless lots of Prophets are spawned - there won’t be much commerce to multiply. The most efficient approach, financially speaking, would be two or three cities with two or three well-spread religions. However, I’m as interested as in using my holy cities to dominate culturally as to drive my economy (so I’ll be pagan, then a Free Religionist).


We go settler first, a common move when pursuing a religion, and very necessary if I want to get a religion into city 2.



There’s one for Mecca. By the time I meet Cathy in 3240BC, I’ve found a nice site for my second city with fish and marble. The latter will be handy for an Oracle grab (CoL in all probability). Tech-wise, I’ve delayed Polytheism research to time with Medina’s founding:



Disco! If I were to have lost a religion, this may have been the one: if an AI hutted Mysticism then Poly would have fallen much earlier. I meet Fred and George and research towards Monotheism, plonking down Damascus on the floodplains to the south of Mecca.



I’m being slow in my settlement because I don’t want my new territories to pick up an existing religion. I’m also consciously settling out toward the AI, as I want to dominate culturally as much as possible. This means I’ve been putting some hammers towards Stonehenge, which is done in 975BC. Wasn’t a top priority, but the GPP in Mecca is welcome (and the cash refund would have been handy had I not got it).

More of a effort goes into the Oracle, which is completed in BC800, with CoL being selected and Confucianism goes to Baghdad. I don’t have a screenie of it’s founding, but the eagle-eyed may spy it on my cultural overview.




As you can see, Boney is south of Damascus and we’re already clashing borders, thanks to his choice of spot for Rheims. This will end badly, my Little Corporal, but you can certainly have Monotheism, if it’ll bring a smile to those chubby cheeks.

Hi,

This time only a short report. It's not possible for me to post a complete report on report-day, so I'll stick to this post, no screenshot this time though. I had great fun on this easy going - war game.

Before starting the game I looked up what an oasis map meant. The map should contain two fertile regions, one to the north and one to the south, seperated by desert, that should contain a lot of resources. The northern region contains the happy resources and the southern region the health resources. Knowing Sulla for his infamous map-tweaks I wasn't to sure this would be the case here, but as I couldn't possibly predict what those would be, I would take it as it comes. From the screenshot posted It looks like we start in the happy, though unhealty north.

As we were not allowed to build cash generating buildings, my plan was to get ALL religions. So I could build the cash enhancers in as many cities possilbe, and generate a lot of missionary cash. I would prefer to get each religion in a different city. But the first few would fall quickly. I started on buddism. For my first build I build a settler. I needed that second city quickly otherwise I researched the religions before I got a new city. This plan worked quite well, though not perfect. I managed to get the first four religions by myself, but only had two cities at that time. So Mecca and Medina ended up with two religions each. The last three religions were established in three new cities. So 7 religions in 5 cities. Not bad.

The other part of the plan was to spread a different religion to each of the AI's. There was one in the north with me, and three in the southern part. Somehow Cathy and Nappy got to share the same faith as hinduism spread on it's own to both of them and I couldn't get enough missionaries there before they chose theocracy or closed borders, which prevented me spreading more religion. Frederick got Judaism and Washington buddism. I stayed out of religion all game. This way I would be able to chose the civs to attack without getting negatives with any AI. Exept the hinduism block.

I needed some health resources so Napoleon was the first target. As he probably expected this He declared on me in 450 AD. I was prepared, so I fended of the assault and took two cities. I asked Frederick to join as soon as Catherine was probably asked by Nappy to join in. So in 1120 AD it was peace again (That was longer than I thought) But now I it was time to get the warmachine going. I got to camel archers so I build a lot of the, together with catapults. In 1420 AD I declared on Nappy again to quickly eliminate him. Little of one hundred years later he was no more. I needed some time to get my economy going again as all the new cities were a drag. I had purposly spaced my cities out very wide so I would lower the number of cities maintenance. If I would get to communism I would adopt state property to get rid of the distance maintanence as well. Never got there though.

In 1705 I bribed Frederick into a war with Cathy. I would join in a couple of turns later, but then they could slaughter each other in the mean time. In In 1735 I joined Frederick in the war and in 1804 Cathy was now more. I gathered I would need freddy's territory as well, so I attacked him soon afterwards and in 1858 AD I got a domination victory.

In the end I generated around 180 gold per turn from religions, I only managed to get five shrines up, which allowed me to research at around 40% in the end.

I had a great time with this one and would like to thank the sponsor for this event.

I started this event late due to Epic 11, but it looked very interesting and I wanted to give it a try. With a small map at normal speed, I hoped I would be able to finish in time.

The scenario Sulla set up had three aspects which pointed to a strategy very different from my normal style of play:

-- Early religion(s) would be key for early shrines for income and influence
-- Limits on financial buildings (no courthouses anywhere, markets/grocers/banks only in holy cities)
-- Philosophical leader

As I have never gone for an early religion, tend to play with a heavy emphasis on the financial buildings, and have never played a Philosophical leader (and am far from expert on the use of specialists), this scenario would be a great chance to try a different sort of game. And being on Noble difficulty, I should be able to make a fair go of it despite playing well outside my comfort zone.

My initial plan is to grab Buddhism (no other spiritual civs, so this should be a lock), and then go for Hinduism. If I can claim both, I will establish a strong religious base for myself and limit the AI civs' early access to religion. Longer term, I should be able to grab at least one or two more religions if I can keep my tech rate strong. By spreading all my religions widely within my own empire and to other civs where possible, and building holy shrines for multiple religions, I should end up with very large shrine income to offset the lack of financial buildings.

Now to see if I can turn this plan into results - on to the game!

Where to found the capital? I don't like those mountains in my capital radius, but I definitely want both the sheep and the wheat. The starting tile (on both the river and the coast) looks good, but let's send the warrior SW to the hill and see if anything else is visible. Nothing exciting appears, so I found on the starting tile.



I set research to Meditation to start grabbing religions, and start building a worker. I need to improve those two food resources as soon as possible, and should be able to sneak in a worker tech or two when needed.

My warrior heads for the hut visible to the south, and I get a HUGE break:



Agriculture! My worker will be able to improve that wheat, and I can keep working on religious techs. Very big stroke of luck.

In 3720 AD, the first part of my plan comes through as expected:



I convert - why not, I'm spiritual, and can always change later without penalty. I love playing spiritual civs.

Early exploration is looking good -- there are cows, wine, and fish at a nice site to the west, and another hut provides a map showing still more good land further west. Looks like my first settler will be heading towards the setting sun.

3400 BC - Mecca finishes the worker, who starts on the wheat. Start a warrior for more scouting and protection.

The following turn my scouting warrior pops a hut, and the villagers are hostile! With a lion also nearby, well...it's been nice knowing you, brave warrior!



The following millenia or so is mostly quiet, with Mecca growing in size and producing a series of warriors to replace scouts eaten by lions and bears -- my luck with barbs was HORRIBLE throughout the game, with multiple defenders losing to attackers with < 20% odds. Notable dates are 3280 BC:



And 2480 BC:



My plans have borne fruit, and the dreaded hydra BudHinJewism has grown in Mecca!

I have been exploring -- with several losses to barb animals -- and have found additional good city sites to the south along the river, and to the east where I have found a source of marble. As a philosophical leader, I want those marble-boosted wonders to spawn many great people! I have also met emissaries from Catherine, Napoleon, and Frederick -- an interesting and somewhat worrisome group of rivals. Research has proceeded through Hunting to Animal Husbandry; my religion-mongering has slowed my development and I need worker techs.

2120 BC - Mecca finishes my first settler, and I send him west to the cows/fish/wine site on the coast. My worker has been building a road to speed things along and network the cities, and it is only a couple of turns before Medina is founded:



The spacing from the capital is a bit more than I usually like for the second city, but I wanted the resources as my scouting had found relatively few specials on the map so far. (I believe this is normal for the oasis map script.) Also, due to the financial building limitations of the variant, I was going to need to space my cities out a little more to reach domination without going bankrupt. I could always found a fill-in city if necessary -- there were some decent tiles between the cities.

A couple turns later I finished Animal Husbandry, and discover horses in range of Medina! Excellent luck indeed, and there is a second source to the east near the marble. That looks like the best site for my third city. I start Mining (en route to Bronze Working), and hope to have as good of luck with copper. I need better units, with barbs (animal and human) on the prowl. Not to mention my rivals....

Exploring the southeast, I find stone! But it is very close to French territory, and will almost certainly be claimed by Napoleon. I also find an incredible site, a plains hill with desert corn and _11_ flood plains - DROOL!!! Not much else there, but with that much food and commerce, who cares?

1600 BC - I meet the fourth AI leader, Washington. Fred is top scorer, and overall I'm not stacking up too well:



Trailing in every meaningful category, and dead last by a large margin in soldiers. Lots of work to be done.

My second settler is built and heads east for the marble site, but is delayed a few turns by a barb warrior. In the interval, I complete Bronze Working and find copper at Mecca - big sigh of relief! I will be able to start building stronger units shortly. I revolt and double swap to Slavery and Organized Religion to speed production.

Damascus is finally founded in 1440 BC:



With marble, horses, fish, and lots of hills, Damascus will become a strong hammer city and produce many troops throughout the game.

Research continues moving forward with Archery (for defense), Priesthood (cheap temples, and priest specialists to generate a great prophet or two for shrines), and Pottery (for granaries, and cottages for that flood plains site). Things continue to be quiet, although Napoleon builds a city along the river to the south of Mecca. Annoying, and poor siting as well; I had tentatively dot-mapped two cities in the same area, although I did not expect to get the more southern site; now there will only be one mediocre city.

On a much more positive note, in 1160 BC Napoleon converts to Hinduism! Since I have the hydra, and nothing has spread to my other cities yet anyway, I convert to Hinduism as well. Our French brothers and sisters of the faith will become allies in this harsh land! In fact, Napoleon and I would both remain Hindu (with one short break due to on my part) for the rest of the game, and it would help the diplomatic situation greatly.

850 BC - Stonehenge is BIFAL (turns out to be Napoleon). I never considered going for it, planning to rely on religion for culture instead.

The same turn, I produce my first (!) archer. My military is truly pathetic -- the demo screen shows me with 1/3 the soldiers of the weakest AI! I MUST build more units soon, but I finally got copper hooked up a couple turns ago, so I will have some better units shortly. I also look at the score -- it is sort of depressing to be dead last on Noble.

A couple turns later I finish Writing, and negotiate open borders with everyone for the diplo boost. I start Fishing to be able to use my coastal tiles and resources; I'm still cleaning up basic techs, no wonder I'm in last.

750 BC - My third settler reaches that plains hill surrounded by flood plains, and Baghdad is founded:



Baghdad would become by far my best commcerce city, with all 11 flood plains cottaged. It would also be whipped repeatedly for infrastructure of every kind -- I don't even know how many times, but I recall the city having a +8 "cruel oppression" penalty at one point. I say it, it good!

It can be found at the typical spot - www.kendter.com

Note I also have finally put my LK series SG history on the site.


I suspect I took far to long to get aggresive, but we shall see.

Here is my report for Adv20. You might note that I have changed web hosting (from freewebs to atspace). Any comments on the game and feedback on my new website greatly appreciated.

This game was a lot of fun.

Cheers,

Ruff

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