Epic 7 Mano y Mano

Domination Victory: 1994


From the opening my objective was survival to Astronomy and then a push to Domination or Score Victory. Either objective requires maximum population so the secondary objective was to secure the resources and buildings to ensure health and happiness. The next objective was developing the land and using the resources, the population and buildings to maintain a strong research capability.

I could see the village NW of the settler and a nice plains hill on the coast to the west. The warrior went north just to see what he could see and the settler went west to get a scout from the villagers.

The scout climbed the hill and the stone appeared so the settler decided that the hill would make a great spot for a capitol. Lake and coast for early commerce, stone for the Pyramids and grass hills for mines and grasslands for irrigation along the lake and river. Not a fast growing site but a good mix of early commerce and hammers.



Thebes is built in 3940, research set to Fishing and the town starts building a barracks while waiting for growth.

The scout heads north from Thebes and the warrior wanders southeast.

By 3910 I find what I think will make a prime second town with fish, wheat, silver, floodplains and forest.



I will come to regret that choice in the future when Alex sends his boats to wreck the fishing nets, and I don't have access to the Eastern Ocean. What I didn't know was that there were more fish resources in a safer location farther north and that the island stretched from ice cap to ice cap but the biggest problem was missing the pigs. Nonetheless Memphis when it is finally founded will become a strong production and commerce town, despite suffering frequent disruptions of its fishing industry.

In 3730 the scouts gets a gift of gold from some generous villagers and by 3490 I have a view of the whole island.



With Fishing in hand the race for a religion begins in earnest and by 3220BC (T26) Buddhism goes to Alex, but in 3100BC (T30) the Egyptians learn Hinduism and immediately convert.

With that happiness in hand it is time to learn Mining and train the first worker. And go on from there to Masonry, Bronze Working and the institution of Slavery, and the establishment of Judaism and the adoption of Organized Religion.

In 2440BC the first barbarian warrior appears from the north.



Thebes is still working on its worker and the scout was killed some time back by a marauding lion. There is a single warrior guarding the approaches to the cultural border in the far north.

The warrior survives his battle and promotes to Combat 1.

When the worker finishes Thebes begins work on the Pyramids. There are a few more moments when work on the Pyramids has to stop while some hammers are added to a warrior to protect the realm but barbarians are little more than speed bumps on the road to the Pyramids as they never enter the cultural borders from the south.

At 970BC (T102) the Pyramids are finished with the help of forest chops and a culminating whip.

Representation is immediately adopted and the warrior which had been in queue for what seemed like forever receives his club and is sent to to the east to clear the path for the settlement of Memphis. At this point I still had only the one warrior on barb watch in the far north as every time a barbarian wandered close he wandered away again without ever crossing into the borders.

By 5AD the Egpytians are well on the way to meeting their objectives of survival and prosperity.




There are only two small cities but both are a long way from the health and happiness caps. Thebes is building a library and researching Literature and accumulating Great Engineer points for finishing the Great Library. Memphis is building Stonhenge to counterbalance the Engineers at Thebes by producing a Propet for the shrine

I make the acquaintance of the neighbor in 110AD when he plants a city on the elephants. That is going to require a little change in plans.




But not immediately.

Stonehenge is built in 165AD in the barbarian city of Thracian to the west of Egypt and south of Greece. Memphis immediately starts on a settler to claim the central part of the home island.

The Great Library goes up in 185AD with the help of the first Engineer from the Pyramids



and Thebes builds another long delayed warrior and starts on a galley to build the iron colony.

Two of the three legs of the stool are now in place with the Pyramids for happiness and the Representation scientific boost to citizen specialists and the Great Library for more science. So the course is set to build the Hanging Gardens for health, then colonize the iron island for military, remove the Greek from the homeland, expand across the rest of the home island, then begin the gradual conquest of the outlying Greek colonies.

However I was in no hurry. In an effort to culture bomb Knossos I headed to Music but lost Homer to the Greek by only eight turns (365AD T191) just before the iron colony of Elephantine was founded in 530AD (T202).

And since Knossos effectively blocked northward expansion at home Thebes started Notre Dame (it's only +1 happiness but every little bit helps. Besides what else was I going to do train a military? )

Alexander did absolutely nothing with Knossos so the town grew very slowly and the culture of Helioplis gradually encroached upon it. So I waited.

And waited and waited some more.

Some hundreds of years later here is the state of the empire





And did I say something about military, this is the MilAd report in 740AD



So I guess I'll wait some more.

It was in 745AD however when Alexander put an end to the waiting.....


-30-

I'd rather be playing epic 8 than writing a report for epic 7. Nevertheless, I achieved domination in 1902. My opening was to found Thebes on the spot. This popped a scout, so I went worker first, and researched mining, then Bronze Working. My 2nd build is a settler. With a scout and a warrior for fog busting it seemed I could move my settler unescorted and found Memphis where I could work the stone, fish and banana. (This is the red dot on Sooooo's screenshot in his report). While this is true, it has the drawback of leaving the new city undefended, and ultimately a barb warrior came wandering by. I moved my scout north as bait to give me time to get a warrior in the city, but after killing my scout the barb withdrew anyway. Meanwhile, I had forgotten to get a religion and was only reminded when I heard the sound of buddhism founded. Luckily, I was able to in 1720 BC found Hinduism in Memphis. Alex got all the other religions.

I found 4 cities on the main island. The capital on the spot as mentioned, red dot, and blue dot. My 4th city was on the spot where the bear is between yellow and pink dots. Here is my screenshot:

[trying to figure out how to upload it]


In 655 BC Alex declares war and lands a chariot and an archer near Memphis. I rush an archer, and it defeats the chariot without taking any damage, Alex's archer moves to pillage the quarry, but my archer defeats it. It was a 50-50 chance and I won the toss. End of invasion. I take advantage of the war to move my work boat through Alex's territory.

In 535 BC I complete the pyramids in Memphis.

In 400 BC I earn the circumnavigate the globe bonus.

I get beat to Collossus, but I pop a GE and build Great Library in my capital.

Now there is a long, long gap in my notes. In fact the next note is for 1832! This happens a lot to me. I just keep playing without taking notes or screenshots.

The 2nd Greek war was started by Alex in 800 AD. He landed 4 units near Memphis again and once again I scramble to organize a defense. However, in just a few turns the offending units are eliminated, but not before pillaging many of the improvements. This war culminates in 1238 when I capture Corinth which is on the island between my home continent and the Greek home continent. (See sooooo's screenshot. Corinth is in the exact same place.) This city would rebel 3 times before my culture grew sufficiently to block such attempts. I didn't do anything each time so my force of about 8 units must have been adequate to control the mob. At this point I made an interesting move. For some reason, I wanted iron, but did not want to settle the tundra island to the south to grab it. There was a nice island, reachable only by galleon, that had iron, though. I wanted this island anyway for domination, so I decided to research astronomy now rather then tech toward liberalism and grab astronomy for free. I was worried that if I failed to get astronomy for free, Alex might beat me to that island. As it turned out, after researching astronomy, I still was able to get to liberalism first. I guess, the game is in the bag, because Alex only has 3 cities on his home continent.

1832 Third War
Once again Greece launched a surprise attack killing 2 galleons conviently lined up outside of Heliopolis. Another fleet with 2 cavalry, a rifleman, and 3 cannon are prepared to disembark at Corinth. I immediately drop science to zero to raise cash, and I revolt to Universal Suffrage, Nationhood and State Property, this alone drops civic costs from 92 to 66. Total expenses before govt change was 257 and this dropped to 162. I draft 1 infantry in Corinth and upgrade a unit to infantry and fan out my remaining units to protect my towns from pillaging. I leave the sugar square open hoping the AI lands there Where I hope to wipe him out.

1833 Alex falls for the trap, and lands 1 cav 1 rifle and 1 cannon, but the other galleon loaded with units returns to mainland Greece! And that's that. Those 3 units are killed easily in the Battle of Sugar Plantation at the price of 2 catapults, which were on hand since 1238.

1837 Against the odds a Great Prophet was born in Corinth to celebrate the great victory of Egyptian troops, so the Hindu shrine gets built in 1845! By far the latest date I ever built my 1st shrine.

1838 I have so many towns that it's cheaper civics-wise to revolt to free speech, instead of back to bureaucracy.

1882 This was the year I completed conquest of the island south of mainland Greece. I just needed a few more squares for my domination win, so the game ends up similar to epic 2 where I rush settlers to grab every scrap of ice.

Conclusion: I could have won much sooner if I had turned off science when I had destroyers, transports, infantry and artillery. I could then use the gold to rushbuy and upgrade units. BTW, I compeleted epic 8 and I have a whole month to write a report and produce my own screenshots!

Warning: If you don't like cliffhangers, please wait until Wednesday to read my report. I won't get a chance to finish the report--or do much of anything with a computer, let alone CIV--until then. The game is finished, but the report isn't.

Warning about the warning: The preceding warning has expired. The report is now complete.


I decided to see if Sirian was right about Domination being (perhaps) the easiest victory condition. My report is here .

My report can be read here.

I've already scanned through many people's reports. I was actually surprised by the lack of losses. After my Cultural Victory, I went back to see how I'd do if I tried a military approach. Lets just say that I didn't last very long

Here we go... This is the link to the site, which is set up for other links, but I haven't finished the reports yet! Or you can just jump to the report here I hope you enjoy it

Here it is:

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/epic7/

Coincidentally, I played this epic with a CS slingshot and reported in detail on the opening moves, then the debate on whether Oracle-CS is overpowered came up. So as a bonus I shadowed myself with Pyramids-Representation afterwards to compare the two economies. But the report on the first page is the real game.


Read the report here - http://uberfish.atspace.com

You can find my report for epic 7 here
Hope you enjoy the trip like I did

here is my report...

Rat's epic 7 report

I will have a more detailed report up, once I have access to all my screenshots.

Summary: I only had two afternoons to play that game, which meant rushing through a lot. In the spirit of the game I never attempted any open borders or other trades with Alex. And we quickly became enemies with different religions and Alex trying to settle on my northern territories. My scouting to the east came very late and so I settled the poor spot on the south island to grab iron in 355BC (IIRC). After fighting off some invasions from Alex I retaliated by capturing Corinth pretty early (905AD) and never gave it up again. Alex and me fought a few wars, in which he managed to always pillage all the fish nets. He also landed respectable invasion forces on various islands and locations. Being behind in tech, fighting them off was bloody and inflicetd heavy losses. Alex also managed to capture the Egypt settlement on the Astronomy island to the east.
I had to wait for infantry, a sizable navy to protect my transports and an air force before I turned the tide. Invading all greek colonies and bombing Greek mainlands ensured me domination victory in 1969AD.

It was a fun game despite rushing through it in less than 6 hours with lots of warfaring in it. Alex did not behave very stupid, but then I never employed any "unconventional" strategies.