Epic 17: Benno does Darius

[Benno]

Firstly, I'm playing Darius, as financial and organised are my favourite traits. I'll be heading for the stars as that is the best use of those two traits I think. I'll be looking at as large an empire as I can manage. Immortals can be used to acquire a neighbour if anyone is close enough.

Well let's look at the starting position.



I've got two food sources where I am but there does look to be floodplains further north. I send the scout NE and then SE.



Settling in place gives me 1 floodplain, corn, sheep, oasis, 1 plains hill and 7 grass hills. If I move 1N I keep corn, sheep and plains hill but lose oasis and 2 grass hills, as a bonus I pick up 3 floodplains. It's actually a tough choice but in the end I move north as I wouldn't be able to cottage everything staying in place (giving up my advantage of financial).

So Persepolis founded on turn 2. (As a completely irrelevant aside, my avatar at CFC is actually a picture I took when I visited Persepolis in 2000).



Warrior first, then worker. Research is for The Wheel, then Pottery.

Wow, already found city #2 site.



A potentially annoying neighbour. Meet Kublai. Creative and mentally unstable aren't a good combination in our closest neighbour.

I have terrible luck with huts, pop 8 for 167 gold from 4, 2 maps of the ocean and 2 lots of xp for my scout.

Monty, JC and Alex turn up.

9th times the charm. That's a pretty good score.



I find horsies here. Think I'm going to try and Immortal rush Kublai.



Mansu and Hannibal complete the show. It is an interesting AI set-up. The psychos and back stabbers are close by and the tech whores far away. Causes problems for all victory conditions.

I found my second city by the horsies to try the immortal rush.



Time to rumble.



Beshbalik is defended by 1 archer. That's easy pickings. My immortals already have over 50% chance of victory. I still lose 1 though :mad: .

Spearman is difficult but we'll see. Kublai was kind enough to build Great Wall here as well.



Withdraw Immortals are a charm here.



Kublai is destroyed. I thought about keeping him around instead of autorazing his last city but I can always settle the area later.



This leaves me with plenty of growing area, which I can try and fill as quickly as possible. The tech rate will drop but that'll pick up as the cities become useful.

We found Confucianism.

A CS slingshot is achieved in 485BC, just built Oracle on the off chance really as I noticed it hadn't been built. It ended up being less than a 10 turn build.



A large RL time gap appears and I forget where we are. So a quick 160AD recap is required. I'm the proud owner of 10 cities, some kindly donated by the barbarians.



I'm killing the AI tech wise (currently researching Paper).



My research rate is just 50% and I need to expand some more so I need to get a handle on the economy but lets keep going. Essentially, if I don't drop the ball with the military I should win. I'm not going to build a great number of troops but will have 2-3 a city (with an extra 1 in the border cities) but will make sure they are upgraded where possible (this looks much better on a power graph to Monty).

A GS is born. I have to decide between bulbing Education and building an Academy. The Academy wins.

I build Mausoleum of Maussollos and use the free GA from Music for a Golden Age.

Found Taosim.

In hoping for a Prophet, I pop an Engineer. Decide to build Angkor Wat with him and then employ more priests.



At 1000AD, I'm 1 turn from Chemistry and now have 14 cities. Positive at 60% as well. Still own the AI in terms of research.

I finally pick up my shrine as well.



The free GM from Economics goes for a trade mission as well.

Pick up Steam Power from Liberalism.



Its then a run to Democracy, building Taj Mahal to revolt to Free Speech, Religion and Emanciaption.

I decided with all the forests around the capital to make it my National Park city, with all the wonders I built, National Epic goes as well.

At 1500AD, things are going very well indeed. 20 cities now, that will be all thanks. Researching Electricity and +66gpt at 80%.



I'm headed straight for Laboratories and then Industrialism and then Rocketry.

The Ai isn't doing as well.



Labs are going up and we have Aluminium. Was saving a GS in case I needed it. As I now don't I go for another GA.



Still not sure about uses of corps in BTS. Think I'll try for Mining Inc.

I realise that I'm going to have to tech everything myself, so divert research to Railroad to improve production with railroads and Mining Inc.

Which is founded in my Wall Street city.



I'm also still not sure about the best order in which to build all the parts. As health is an issue (and I'm racking in the big dollars out of Free Trade so don't want to go Environmentalism) I head straight for Genetics.

Rome is destroyed by Hannibal. I might get a couple flips out of this.



In any case I launch in 1782AD and press enter 15 times to win in 1812AD.





Quite happy with this time actually. Not sure its good enough to be the fastest Space win but it will be up there.

The key was having 20 cities, all over size 10. You can plough through those late game techs really quickly and can assign space parts to all corners of the empire to leave the powerhouse cities to build the big parts as well as late wonders.



In replay...









All in all a fun game. Let's have a look and see how everyone else did...

[Ruff_Hi]

I see that you didn't let Khan build the pyramid for you. Guess you had to build it yourself. Looks like a nice game.

[Sullla]

Great game! The Immortal rush looked to be well executed, and you coasted from there to a dominant victory. I can never figure out the Oracle in Beyond the Sword; it either goes super-early (like 1200BC) or sticks around until very late. You were able to clean up Civil Service from it, a nice grab. Surprised also to see Caesar get wiped out. He was one of the powers in my game, although he also founded Judaism and managed to get four other civs to convert to his religion to major shrine income and diplo boosts.

Apologies for these comments coming so late, it wasn't until today that I was able to start going through all of the reports.