Mindcheater Adv 24

[mindcheater]

Pre Game Thoughts:
The most important thing will be to found a seaborne city early on. Otherwise any AI which starts on the coast will built the Great Lighthouse. So my second city was founded on the coast.
Another hard wonder will be the Apostolic Palace because you'll have to found a religion or at least adopt one to build it. More on that later.
The last fairly hard wonder will be the Pentagon or those culture boosting wonders which depends on your "beeline". Basically this cancels out all late game beelines by the player because you'll have to follow the AI to get all those wonders. In my game especially there where two main research AI. The first one, Justinian choose the Pentagon path where Willem took the Broadway path and Sury with the Kremlin path, but that didn't matter as much.

So now to the game.

I started with Warrior-> Worker -> Stonehenge -> Settler
and researched Mysticism, the Bronze Working line and Masonry

The first wonder was Stonehenge (2650 BC)


And shortly later i founded my second city Orleans on the coast (2000 BC):

and promptly started it on a Lighthouse to enable TGLighthouse.

Quickly followed by the Great Wall (1900 BC)


In 1440 BC i founded my third city on a formidable floodplain production spot:


And a few years later Paris finished it's third wonder the ToA:


TBC

[Muaziz]

Cultural Victory, what else...

Didn't seem like there were too many cultural victories, as compared to Space Victories.

As for myself, Paris built the lion's share of Wonders clocking in 22 out of the 32 Wonders I managed to build. The other 10 were fairly evenly split between 3 other cities. And since I didn't do any religion spreading, a Cultural Victory was out of the question.

I am curious as to how you got all Wonders and still won with Cultural since in "most" Cultural Victories you turn off the Research slider much much earlier. Here you need to Research all the way to Space Elevator which is very far down. Interesting...

[mindcheater]

In 950 BC Paris, my eager beaver finished the next one:

I choose Metal Casting to prepare for my 2nd seaborne wonder.

Meanwhile in 650 BC Orleans finally built TGL:

and started on a forge.

Now, in 550 BC it was again Paris turn to complete:

and as often i forgot to switch to representation... until ~10 turns later.

Way later (100 BC) Orlaons was due to pop the Colossus:


50 years later it was again Paris:


Inbetween i founded Reims in 725 BC right below Lyons, another income heavy floodplain spot. It had to culture battle a bit, but i wasn't afraid with this variant and Mansa Musa as a neighbour.

TBC

[mindcheater]

Having chalked up all ancient woders there was a nail biting time to follow. You know what i said earlier about the AP. So i founded Christianity in 50 BC in my 100 years earlier founded Tours:


The free missionary went to Paris in the anarchy phase of adopting Christianity. You might ask why Christianity. Just because i hate the AP and their resolutions so i had to choose a "dead" Religion for the AP. Knowing about another wonder in the pipes i was looking on ~10 Turns of religeous hatred, which pretty immediatly was developed by Justinian...

But right before a pretty annoying thing happened. In 150 BC Pacal completed the Statue of Zeus, which i simply forgot was there... After deciding not to throw my computer away I moved on.

In 350 AD:


together with Lyons third wonder


After that it seems like i didn't stick to my plan and adopted Buddism, i guess it was because the "wonder in the pipe" took some more turns due to another more important wonder. This era pretty much each of my five cities was on perma wonder construction and i even had to set priorities ignoring monopoly wonders to don't miss one.
The next one in line was:


followed by a more "disputed" wonder (Justinian also wanted the AP and so did follow me to Theology),

in Orleans.

TBC

[mindcheater]

The same turn i built:

but wasn't able to adopt free religion due to other important wonders... or didn't i want to...

namely:
(700 AD)

(900 AD)

(1020 AD)

(1120 AD)


Those wonders were pretty much uncontested, but i found getting the next ones pretty hard. Hadn't I a settled spy and couldn't see the progress of the other Civs, i think i would have lost at least two... but see for yourself...

TBC

[mindcheater]

The first disputed wonder was (1120 AD)

because I was barely second to this tech. This was because I found out in a test game that you have to go pretty early to Engineering (maybe because of AI engineers from forges...) to don't miss Notre Dame so this was very high on my priority list.
Which was the next on (1150 AD)


After this I went straight to Devine Right and beat Pacal by 2 turns (he immeadiately switched techs afterwards and came back 5 turns later to frighten me)
Most cities wherer occupied by now so i had to build Versailles in a city where it would take 40 (!) turns to complete...

1230 AD, this one came in:


followed by (1270 AD):


As you see I didn't pursue Liberalism because there are no wonders on this route and I think i would have lost at least one wonder doing so.

It was Justinian who got Liberalism first and took Astronomy and so became my biggest threat later on...

The Golden age helped pretty much in wonder building, so that 40 turns for Versailles where more like 20 using the whip...
(1300 AD)


TBC

[mindcheater]

The next years where a bit more relaxed, because new wonders are a way of and i know i will be first to democracy by a wide margin.

The only frightening thing was that it became apparent that Willem and Justinian choose fairly different routes in research as I said in my Pre Game Analysis. And now Pacal started to become a nuisance by starting some wars. Of course i was spared until pretty much later but you'll see...

So in 1535 AD i built:


By the way, i really hadn't time to build military as you can see. Paris and all other non frontline cities are defended by a lone Warrior. Those three border cities just had 3-4 units which I tried to upgrade regularily (Which was a wise choice).

Research wise i first followed Justinian until Electricity and the Willem to Assembly Line helping me with a Golden Age.

In 1690 AD i snagged:

and in 1710 Ad:


A hundred years later I snagged the Pentagon from under Willems nose using an engineer and the whip.


And in 1824 AD,how appropriate:


TBC

[LKendter]

I hate to rain on your parade, but it looks like this game is a shadow.

Looking at the screen shots it looks like you may have used an unapproved mod. The faces, and other info in the bottom corner don't look normal.

[Dawn]

Looks like BUG mod.

[mindcheater]

I hate to rain on your parade, but it looks like this game is a shadow.

Looking at the screen shots it looks like you may have used an unapproved mod. The faces, and other info in the bottom corner don't look normal.

I know, but this doesn't change neither my enthusiasm nor gameplay. I'll let the game stay as it is. I play for fun. Btw if i had used the Mod appropriately i would have won way earlier, but back to that later.

The most interesting part is still to come.


Just another thing i noted during the game, are those missing culture or espionage numbers belonging to buildings a Bts or a Bug feature ? This was pretty annoying as i really can't tell those numbers from my mind...

Anyway, this was fun, apart from the waiting for report day