i debated and debated what to pick. emailed my choice to sulla, got my file, started the game and went YUCK at the map, grumbled to myself about taking useless tiles to get the cows, and settled in place. i ought to have moved, really, cows rock early on and the useless tiles don't matter til much later, but hey, it was 3 am. here's my capital before i renamed it in the traditional Candyland Empire manner:



i started initial research on gunpowder to completely wipe out the AIs, since i am about the worst at early rushes. seeing that gunpowder was going to take quite a while to research, i figured i might as well go with the oh-so-boring traditional bronzeworking instead. not obvious yet? i picked Education as my starting tech . it seemed fun, on the way to lib, and it's gunpowder's only prereq. yeah it skips mao's UU but i'm like totally not an early war type and for me early is like, pre-2040 AD some days. plus making my citizens smart is cool. i was leaning heavily towards constitution to have rep ultra-early, but decided that wouldn't be as new an experience for me, since i've done the rep thing before via pyramids.

of course as soon as i send the email the regrets began, well i'm only saving + fraction great scientists, it doesn't get me anything at all until i can make a library (and even then unis are a lot of hammers), blah blah. i rationalized ... at least this way, if i lose, i don't have the shame of knowing that i have something completely overpowered available on turn 1 and was defeated anyway *giggle*.

in 3640 i meet huayna, who founds buddhism in 3440. in 3360 i meet monty, he says "may the peace last 1000 years." that's only what, 40 turns or something? i need longer than that mr. psycho!!! 3320 whee i beat monty to a hut and popped a scout. 3200 doublebonusscore scout beats a wolf, and there's a hut on the forested hill he's gonna go on anyway to heal up. it crosses my mind to change my tech to poly, but with monty as a neighbor i figure picking any religion isn't gonna be a good idea, and i'm not spiritual to give in to demands, so i'll not go down that road. hinduism wasn't founded until 2640, 14 turns later, so i'd have gotten it and the world would have been very different, we will never know.

this was my thought process in 3040, when i had to pick my next tech. it was exactly 3 am and i was obviously delusional: "we can now put our shoulders to the wheel. and i don't know what to research next. i never do the axe rush thing. but there's a holy city RIGHT FREAKING THERE. so i really want to. but i'll mess it up. golly. archery will help vs. barbs, but not against HC. oh he's HquechaC in fact! fishing will let me work the lake, and his clams if i get 'em, but that's being over optimistic. AH will let me see horses, but i'm bitter about not being able to reach either cow tile. i dunno, hunting i suppose, i did see an elephant. oh right. it's a holy city. it's gonna get a lot of culture defense. ok, back to my usual 'let's all get along and i'll just get voted in by UN or whatever' thing." 2760 victoria strolls up. 2520 meet toku. he was me the other day, or vice versa. didn't end well for him, or me, or us. 2320 i met sally, hindu founder, and that was everybody.

2200ish i completely drove myself nuts where i'd marked my 2nd city down by the elephant. i'm not a fancy dotmapper, i look at the map and i just know where my cities will go. i put an x sign there, sometimes a ? sign, and then find the next one. not on this stinking map. "here a cow, there a cow, everywhere an unreachable cow, argh argh argh argh argh!" i actually moved settler #1 to my first x, then sat there for 10 minutes staring at the screen. i ultimately ended up moving him back up to another spot, between city sign x1 and city sign x2 and settling there. i never do that unless i can't settle my spot since an AI got there or nearby first. ever. anyway, Beijing was founded. Beijing because, of course, my capital was renamed Peepsville.

2120 HC has writing, therefore open borders. he and monty are pleased and have OB, i figure i won't get asked to cancel by my nearest threats so i sign up for them too. i OB with monty when i get writing myself too. i scout around and meet roosevelt and giggled hysterically for about 10 minutes. poor guy! in 2000 hinduism spreads to beijing. attn RNG: one serving of buddhism to Peepsville please? HC is closer, i dunno where sally lives.

1600ish. i settled city #3, over by the incense part of the floodplains. peepsville can pump out those settlers! again a case of not settling where i'd placed my x sign, so very odd for me. in 1480 monty founds judaism. oh boy, this is going to be a fun religious world. 1280 buddhism in peepsville yay! toku doesn't have copper either. wow -- only me, vicky, and HC do. interesting. i guess that means it's time to get myself in trouble by putting city #4 near that copper toku just settled near eh? and then i have to settle another city along the coast to trde route. hmmz. and study sailing. this is so complex. i wouldn't be able to see lack of iron, i don't have IW myself, almost done researching alphabet. i can see the HC has some, he's guarding a suspiciously mined flatlands plains tile.

1080 how do i hate this map? let me count the ways! crab/copper/toku-annoyance city has to of course skip cows or get 80 tundra tiles in my city cross. naturally! oh and sally says something about a vile aztec. i tell him to shove it, the aztec hasn't beaten me up yet so i ain't gonna push my luck.

in 1000 BC that "yeah he might actually be vile, come to think of it" aztec cancels OB, and i save the game to go to sleep. i never did end up playing it again. other games to play with better maps got priority, and i'd put off this adventure until deadline was almost here.

the candyland empire (aka dangit this map argh!) in 1160. i forgot about crab/copper/toku-annoyer city when taking this, but you can imagine where it is. notice how monty is trying to rack up those "our close borders cause tension" -s, thanks doll.



i love the concept, and i'll have hubby set up something similar for me, but on a map that doesn't drive me quite so crazy *giggle*. and i definitely look forward to reading the reports, especially the ones that chose more wisely than i did (my guess: everybody). i had a ton of fun deliberating techs, despite indecision and even without getting to utilize it.

others find it irresistible too. have you see the CFC thread? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=223138

2008 AD: i resolve to figure out how to write more interesting reports. all y'all's (why yes i do live in the south) are such fun!

For those of you who don't have Warlords or just want to play a Cultural game, Epic Eleven is now open. Good luck to all players!

http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/epic11.html

Boy, this one proved interesting and a learning experience in several aspects. I decided to go for gunpowder. I thought that rifling was kind of over-reaching - had not counted on my IN-experience and how much that would cost me... I'm a little wiser now, still feeling the pain. I might try the next one, but ...

Here's my report:

4000 BC the dawn of time...
Move Settlers 1 square N and get 35 gold from hut
Start exploring. Find stone.
3960 Bejing founded.
I can build musket men... Good... What I'd hoped for
But will take 40 turns. Elect to go for warrior @ 8 turns
Research Masonry.... Now I can use that stone?? [why did I select this?]
More exploring - found ocean...
3640 Huayna comes in from the S? Archers... Not good.
3560 - first warrior. Notice huts nearby to N and W... Will attempt to get.

Boy, there are a lotta cows around here.

3440-villagers give me a scout.

3280-Finished fishing;start bronze working;got warrior;city up to 3-go for worker
3120-Vicky shows up from south-

3080-Scouts see lions-AVOID them (successfully)
3040-Found Hauyna's lair to south
3000-Monty shows up - he must be exploring same area I am
2880-got my worker - go for settler;farm corn;scouts mauled by lion, but survive
2680-Bronze working done,I will wait before implementing slavery-little value now;research wheel;bronze is nearby
2560-Saladin walks by
2360-Got the wheel-start on pottery
2320-got settler-musketmen is only 11 turns-GO FOR IT
lost scout to barb warrior
2280-done for the day...
2080-lost warrior to barb archer
2040-Shanghi Founded-build Warrior
2000-Pottery comes in - now researching Animal Husbandry
1960-I ain't got NO culture, but Beijing expands
1880-Musketmen finished-build more
Musketmen go looking for barbs, but they vanish into the mist
1720-Kill off some barbs w./muskets
1280-Hunting finished, go for sailing
1200-Vicky wants open borders, why not?
baracks done, go for another settler
875-Monty wants open borders - why not?
sailing comes in-research archery
sent settler west, but toku grabbed my spot. Went south instead
feeling hemmed in. War soon.
775-Huayna wants open borders
barbs destroy my pasture
750-Saladin, too
Guangzhou founded
675-Archery comes in-go for writing
425-Rosy finds us
400-Writin done-go for math
1 AD Math done - go for iron working
200 - Rosy wants open borders
280-Iron Working done, now researching currency
done for the day.......
300 AD - tired of fooling around - it's time for WAR - w/Huayna
325 - Cori.... razed got 4 workers
425 - huamensa razed
- Machu Piccu taken
740 - Ollantaytambo taken
820 - Monty declares war on me
currency finished -
840 - Monty tries and fails to take Machu Piccu
880 - nanjing founded
1000 - nanjing lost
1010 peace with Huayna
1040 - code of laws completed
1130 - monty has worn me down
low on musketmen
monty tromping on all my improvements
goodbye cruel world

Tried a couple of shadow games. Still unsure of what I did on either to piss Monty off, but he attacked earlier on these two and just wiped me out.

I says to myself, what better choice for a first post than a report? Post something interesting, start on a high note. Eh?

So here it is.

This is my first report here on Realms Beyond so a little background on myself.

I'm a long-time player of the Civ series, ever since the first time I laid hands on Civ1 at my friend's house and proceeded to ignore him for the next 5 hours.

As the games have grown better (but more complicated), I've found managing the later parts to be a huge burden in non-peaceful games. Hence my non-participation in events here. However this latest variant was too good to pass up.

Since I'm new here I'll spare you the classier details of my in-game notes ("3400: meet Aztecs: annoyed I've met rapists who make better neighbours than Monty") and play it straight - this time.

I tend to play mostly peaceful games. I win @ Emperor probably over half the time and can just about hold my own at Immortal - but usually don't play it.

Basically, I'm your average player - I play for fun, I'm a builder at heart, I'll make 1 or 2 moves a game, and a good part of my Civ4 education has come from the amazing players in this community. Who by the way I'd like to thank for the time & effort they put into this site.



So, enough brown-nosing, onto the game: I did a lot of thinking (not worth putting down here as it echoes what others have put more eloquently) and decided Democracy was the way to go for the type of game I had in mind.

A virtually-guaranteed tech lead for the entirety of the game, a happiness penalty on other civs lowering the difficulty level, the ability to cash-rush in a pinch, and last (and probably least) the fact you're getting an expensive tech early made the choice an easy one. Plus how cool is it to have a town in 1000BC. That's right, pretty frikkin cool.

I planned to cottage everything in sight, hopefully finding some rivers sooner rather than later, and more or less beeline to Astronomy. You know what they say about the best-laid plans though...

onto the start of the game.

I have an idea for RB32, but I wanted to ask a few questions before starting it.

1. I'm not from RB, is it okay that I'm using the RB name for my SG?
   
2. Has this idea been done before?
   
3. Any of the RB crowd interested?

• Can never declare war, therefore can never sign DP or PA.
  
• Military units cannot leave our cultural borders. The only exception to this is when escorting a settler to its designated settle site.
  
• Must win through domination.

Hi again. It’s been a while since I last played a tournament game, but this variant sounded like being a lot of fun. Or at least I thought so….

I thought a while for different starting technologies and it will be interesting to read about what techs other players have chosen and why and how well the strategy based on the starting tech has been played out.

I chose Fiber Optics just because I have never built the Internet in a single game (or at least I can’t remember doing it). In my view it comes a bit late in the game and usually in that phase of the game I have a lot more important things to do than building this project.

Not to make it too easy though, I added a small variant to my game. Every technology that I discover on the internet, I will have to distribute (gift) to all other civs not aware of this technology at that exact moment of time. If the civ lacks a pre-required tech, then it’s too bad for them. Also if I am at war with another civ, I don’t have to share my findings with my enemy. The idea of this variant was to see how fast the tech tree could be ran through with the help of the internet.

The problem with the project is that it takes 2000 hammers to finish. If you start it too early, it will cripple you in the expansion phase. As Mao is not industrious we don’t get the double speed for world wonders. The project can not either be rushed by a Great Engineer, so no point in trying to use the philosophical trait and build the Pyramids for an early GE. The best strategy that I came up with, was to learn BW pretty early to locate copper (halves the production cost for the internet) and then found a city to grab that. Also the idea was to go for a rapid early settler expansion with focus on food and hammers, to get a decent amount of cities out there and then go for early metal casting to get a forge for the production multiplier. Only after this I would go for the internet.

With a lot of charity going to happen in this game, I thought that I would have a fare chance to go for a diplomatic victory. Knowing that the terra map includes a huge “empty” landmass, I thought that prioritizing astronomy would be important to get to the new continent first. By acquiring a big chunk of that continent, I would get more votes in the UN voting.

Game on:

I settle on the starting location. With three grassland hills, corn and fresh water it would be a decent capital. Set research for BW and start a worker for the corn farm. When BW comes in, I discover copper right outside the gates of Beijing. How convenient. Go for the Wheel to hook up the copper for Axes. No point in building too many warriors or to go for archery.

Meet Huayna Capac from south, Montezuma from west and Tokugawa from east. Later on Victoria, Saladin and Roosevelt come wandering from somewhere.

After the Wheel I go for pottery. I will need granaries and also some cottages, because I will have to research some techs after all. Then I go for mysticism for obelisks and hunting to hook up both ivory and fur for so much needed happiness.

I kept on building some settlers and was up to five cities when the land around me started to become a little crowded. This was around 300 AD and I decided it was time to start build the internet. I had a forge in Moscow and could finish the project in about 50 – 60 turns. Thought of doing some chopping and also putting some whip overflow from defenders, when the city grew unhappy.

This is where the game started to go on a sidetrack and the name of the sidetrack was war. I knew I had some lunatics as neighbours so I had tried to be nice to all of them. All of a sudden Toku still chooses unwisely and declares in 350 AD. The good part is that he is sending mostly Horse archers, as I have both spears and jumbos to counter. The bad part is that I am trying to build the spectacular internet at the same time in my best production city. Well, my promoted jumbos and some suicide cats start invading the Japanese lands and I take a couple of Toku’s aggressively placed cities, because I had the opportunity and I felt that the land initially should have been mine. In 900 AD we negotiate peace.

In the mean time Monte has been busy with Victoria, and declared war in 475 AD and ended it 1515 when he razed the last English city. He had asked both Toku and me to join the war. I agreed for some Mutual Military Struggle bonuses, but it was a phoney war by all means.

In 1370 AD I finally complete the miraculous wonder called the internet. I immediately discover Drama, Theology, Civil Service, Philosophy, Banking and Engineering. I gift these to everybody evenly. HC is the tech leader and he gets nothing, while the two warmongers Toku and Monte gets almost every tech. As those two have been concentrating more on building units and acquiring land, guess who gains the most.

I discover astronomy and start sending troops to the “new continent” to capture some barb cities. My caravels have been scouting the lands the best they could and I had spotted many mature cities, so why bother shipping settlers. I also had a couple of explorers on my caravels, but they did not survive more than the first turn after entering the barb continent. It was almost insane with the amount of barb units.

In 1665 AD I started my occupation of the new continent by capturing a barb city down south. I had four galleons shipping units overseas non-stop and this did apparently not go unnoticed by my neighbour Monte. After all these bribes and trying to score diplo points with him, he was at pleased, pretty close to friendly and then that dog bites me at my weak moment. In 1685 he declares and throws an endless stream of units at Guangzhou, and the city barely holds. Its rifles and knights against my defending rifles. After a while he starts to show up with grenadiers as well, but that is not a problem if you attack them with rifles.

In 1710 AD I capture another barb city and Toku declares on me at the same turn. This did not come a total surprise as I had tried to find allies against Monte a couple of turns earlier and Toku had enough on his hands. I had shuffled a couple of rifles to Edo, a city that a earlier had taken from Toku and suspected to be his primary target in the case I was his victim.

I had a quite strong army, but the problem was that I had three war fronts on the same time. So it was more turtling up against Monte and Toku and keep on pushing with existing forces against the barbs.

I took peace against Monte the first chance I got, checking it every turn. The funny part was that I never attacked a single unit on his territory, but he was still willing to pay for peace. This was in 1785 AD. I also decided to change my variant rules a bit, because I was so angry with these two fellows. Anybody who declares on me won’t ever get a single free tech from me again.

After this I took one city from Toku and we made peace. At this point I concentrated on capturing as much of the land on the new continent as possible. I would not get near domination, but had the biggest portion of land and most citizens. I was heading for Mass Media and the UN when this stubborn Monte declares again in 1923. Now I was getting really angry. I had checked the diplo situation quite often and already in 1914 he had enough on his hands. I assumed that I would be his prime target, but still the declaration made me angry.

So in the 10 turns when he was preparing, so did I. Built some modern navy units and started on flight to get bombers and gunships. He mainly attacked with artillery, SAMs, cavalry and infantry. It was not a problem to fight him of even though he had an insane amount of units to throw at me again. I sank at least four of his attempts to send units to the new continent and also took his cities there. After producing a sufficient amount of tanks and gunships I sent them to take some of his cities on the old continent. Backed up with bombers, it was not so hard to take some cities from him and I end up with seven of them before we make peace in 1961.

During the war I had finished the Apollo Program in 1928. I just wanted to have the space race as an option if the UN vote would fail. I did not start building any parts though, as I was too busy building units. I also build the UN in 1950. I was easily elected as the Secretary General, with Monte as my opponent. Toku and Saladin were backing me up. But the diplo victory vote did not work, as both of them abstained. At this point I thought I would just take Montes lands and take either backdoor domination or real domination. War weariness was increasing very rapidly so I just had to sue for peace after taking the before mentioned seven cities.

At this point I was quite tired on this game already as I don’t really like modern war fare. It just takes too long and war weariness is sick even if you have jails and Mt. Rushmore. So I set my course on space race and build the space elevator and many laboratories and finished the space ship in 2003.

My free tech was Fiber Optics. The idea was to get the internet up and running and then just enjoy being Santa Claus and gifting all new fancy techs to everyone. In the end I got 28 techs for free, but it did not feel like the Internet would have been a central thing in the game.

Thanks anyway to darreljs for setting up the game and to Sullla for taking time to e-mail separate starting files for everyone. I already have my eyes on epic eleven and will give it a shot.

I really wasn't sure how I wanted to play this game. I hadn't played a warlike game for some time so I made up my mind to be aggressive with other Civs.

However I also decided to pick Democracy to try and get Towns up fast and stunt the AI growth.

I think this was the first mistake.



I settle in place, to grab the Cows you need to grab tundra or desert tiles and thats not worth it. I go worker first and head towards the mostly useful worker tech in the wheel to start.

Settle Shanghai some way to the west to set up a commerce city and make a late run at the Oracle but it fails miserably.

Monty demands my spare Copper in 850 BC



Toku Demands my spare Copper in 825 BC



Toku is gearing up for war



Monty gets his declaration in first



Toku joins in while the barbs spill out from the north.



While mostly Chariots, the Aztecs pillage Shanghai completely and I lose all of my cottages. A combined Japanese/Aztec force arrives on my eastern border and I get defenders in place just in time.



Mahavira pops Theology and Christianity is founded in Nanjing, one of my border cities with Huayna which increases tensions.

In 250 BC I notice Huayna has 'enough on his hands right now'.

And next turn he declares...



He captures Nanjing for one turn, then my reinforcements take it back.



With Spears being sent west to Shanghai, east to Guangshou and axes south to Nanjing, my central capital is weakly defended and 2 Incan HA's sneak through before I have a chance to help.

He RAZES Beijing :mad:

And yes my entire defence on my capital consisted of the starting warrior...



And I no longer have metal...

In 75 AD I finally make peace with Toku

In 225 AD Huayna throws 60 gold into the peace deal.

In 500 AD I pay Monty 60 gold for peace and the war years are over.

Since I had to build units constantly to defend my cities on 3 fronts, I still only had 3 cities at 500 AD (since capital was razed) and I start settling ASAP starting with Peking on the old capitals ruins.



In 500 AD I notice Huayna has enough no his hands again, and its the same for Monty in 720 AD



Americans wiped out in 920 AD

Build Church of Nativity in 1280 AD and Shanghai has begun building SoL.

In 1540 AD Monty demands 140 gold I refuse.



So he throws a tantrum.



I figure I'll be ok since I'll only be fighting him and I don't see any units on my borders.

However next turn massive stacks of Knights/Elephants and Macemen swarm towards Shanghai (after looking at a couple of other reports I'm amazed how many units the AI attacked me with).

I immediately go all out on unit production but its already too late.

Shanghai falls swiftly, my ice city grabbing Iron to the north follows as do Peking, Nanjing and Xian, without Pikemen to oppose the Knights/Elephants, this is just a turkey shoot. In fact I reckon I killed maybe 2-3 units total in losing those 4 cities.

So it comes down to a final stand on Guangshou, I've massed all my Longbows in the city to face their Knights which have forged ahead.

At first it goes well



But then the catapults etc catch up and thats me out in 1660AD



Although I'd like to point out the heroic defense of Guangshou which killed maybe a dozen of the AI units which was far more than my other cities managed together.


So I got eliminated by a rival Civ for the first time in all my playing (got eliminated by Barbs in Epic 4 so it doesn't count!), and this was really sickening. I'd just completed Epic 10 before playing this and managed to avoid war all game and survive against massively powerful AI's. Losing at Monarch (the difficulty I normally play at) was really a kick in the teeth.

Ultimately being at war on 3 fronts absolutely crippled my expansion and when Monty came calling later on, I still didn't have Engineering. While I grabbed it halfway through the war, I was only able to build 1 or 2 Pikes before the metal was denied me.

Also before the game I totally committed myself to running Universal Suffrage and Emancipation which also meant no Hereditary Rule and no Slavery and that probably hurt a lot.

I'm not sure if the AI's were overly aggressive towards me because by running Emancipation I was causing them unhappiness or whatever, and I'd be interested in knowing if that had any kind of effect.

I guess you could label this game as one where I called the AI's bluff on multiple occasions when they weren't bluffing. Maybe I deserved it after being lucky with Epic 10

I wish I'd chosen a diff tech...

p.s. After this game I started my first non RB solo game in months and thoroughly stomped Monty as payback.

I won via domination in 1872, playing for 12 hours and 1 minute. I have a 14 hr flight to Korea this morning and will write up my game in more detail during the flight. Will post Tuesday night Korean time / Tuesday morning NY time.

Brief Summary

• grabbed the floodplains (thankyou for those - was hoping there would be some, but got a crazy number)
  
• fight with Monty and Elizabeth over some of them
  
• founded Judaism (converted Monty - took care of that problem)
  
• Brief fight with America (HA!) until I brought in Monty (he finally killed off America)
  
• Monty later attacked England - I poached some razed city sites (felt like one of the cultural pressure style games)
  
• I owned 100% of the new world - had a circuit of galleons doing an al-la 'Berlin after 2nd World War' shuttle
  
• took land off Japan and Arabia to reach domination
  

Hello, guys!

This report is better than the last epic's one.
For the short story:

• Picked constitution
  
• Diplomatic Victory
  
• 1896 AD