Epic 17: Brainnus in Space

[Deceptus]

YEAH! I did win a Monarch game! And it was not a cheesy biting nails while awaiting for a Diplo victory, but a full-blown Space Race! Double thanks to Sullla for the scenario

Pre-game:

Stevens: Tell Baker that I told him all that I know already. Tell him I want to live in peace, understand? That it's no use to go on tormenting me! - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

Why is this quote fitting? Because I was preparing myself very bad to win this Epic. After all, I missed my chance at Something Fishy, and Surprise Yourself was beyond my skills. And the ticking clock "End of the Epic is NEAR!" was also tormenting me.

When I mailed Sullla, I thought a bit who to take, and I decided to go with Brennus. He was a fine Civilization, and I really wanted to play that with Spiritual. Charismatic was still new to me, but I didn't need to play my strategy around that trait, at least - the happy bonus can still be just good. Gallic Warriors aren't all that bad, Guerilla III is a fine promotion, and they don't need essentially Iron, they can fare with Copper (the other thing was that there wasn't no copper nearby), and I already like resourceless Jaguars. UB was quite useless, but hey... at least starting techs were fine with me. I didn't have a need to wait idly with my worker until he finds a tech to do something, and religion was helpful.

Before I went to play that game, I played some games earlier to practice and turned off them in disgust on how I suck. I toyed around with StarCraft, and delayed the Epic.

Well, clock was ringing soon, so I finally went to play this game. What did I achieve - is below...

Strategy:

Man With No Name: Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money. We're gonna have to earn it. - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

I also discovered something called "Risk", and amazingly the strategies I read out of boredom were highly applicable to Civilization. I learned that if I will go for my goals directly, find many solutions to one petty problem and have a plan, and will look at how the situation looks on the whole map, I will WIN Monarch.

So, the plan was quite simple, but effective. As I read some of the reports on the way, it sounds like my gameplay is very similar to that of Sullla.

A) To take advantage of Mysticism, I went after Hinduism.
B) After I poked a bit with a Warrior, I ultimately decided to try to take one of my opponents out (Mongolia).
C) Get my first cities by conquest. And thus, I settled only one city before I proceeded to conquer Mongolia.
D) Conquer Mongols.
E) Get a lot of cities and cottage them - essentially, a REX. We had a lot of good land.
F) Out-tech the AIs and win.

Now, the planned victory was meant to be a Space Race. Why? Because I didn't feel confident enough to take Domination, Conquest, and I was bored of Cultural. Besides, it won't be hard with quite versatile Brennus. Space Race or Diplomatic were my goals.

The opening: Founding a religion and other matters.

Tuco: God is on our side because he hates the Yanks. - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

I moved a settler 1N after I saw all the flood plains on the north. Since the point was a Space Race, a good bureaucratic capital would pump my science to go ahead. Techwise, it was Polytheism -> Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working (after I noticed no copper) -> The Wheel.

Another city:

Man With No Name: It was the grave marked "Unknown", right beside Arch Stanton. - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly... look, all the quotes will have the same source, until I say otherwise! :P

Hicoola-doola! We have Iron nearby! What a coup, my plan isn't out of the wiiindow! I mine it already.

The second city went directly to the east. I spotted this powerhouse city with three gold hills and couldn't pass it up to vile Mongolians! (especially when I think what kind of butchering they'd do, like settling it in the wrong place... ugh!) Luckily, Mongolians decided to go for another site. Nice, more plunder for us.

Early rush:

Man With No Name: I've never seen so many men wasted so badly.

Now, for the Gallic Swordsman rush. For comparative purposes, I think that I went a bit better than Sullla did... In 1000 BC, he had 6 swordsmen. In 1000 BC, I had THIS:



Pretty hot, ain't them? I immediately declared WAR and went after Karakorum. Ah, for the "miasto" indicator, it's just Polish for a "city". Just BTW.

I lost 4 Gallics in an assault, but the rest were able to take the Mongolian capital smoothly. I found out that even in 1% chances, the units are still able to deal damage. Heheh. After Karakorum I went for Turfan - and there striked a minor weed, because I lost Karakorum after a bad dice roll. :mad: No use complaining about it, though. I retaked it anyway - with Great Wall to the boot! :D That was good, because attacks from barbs were inevitable, and it was just irritating to have them on my turf. Not groundbreaking, but irritating.

After Turfan, I went Beshbalik. Hahaha! Easy as hell. Although Kublai had catapults, they were no match for my swarming forces. Think "rinse&repeat". I could easily finish him off, but I couldn't pass this up:



Woohoo! Thanks, Kublai, you have 10 turns of freedom. Spend it carefully. :D

Oh, and for the record, I somehow managed to get Stonehenge before Iron went on. I just wanted that wonder for cash infusion at last, and in case I couldn't rush. Well, I sneaked the last turns between Gallic Warriors and voila. Nice prize, and Hindu shrine will be built. Although I made a bit of mistake, Hindu shrine at the end of the game was dominant only in 10 cities. Blah, but that's still some cash to fund the expansion...

I finished Mongolia later, kept their cities, and proceeded to REX, because I planned also to bulb Alphabet with a scientist (or trade for it, simply, because Rome had it already) and go away with Code of Laws. That part of the plan worked.

Recover:

Tuco: If you save your breath I feel a man like you can manage it. And if you don't manage it, you'll die. Only slowly, very slowly old friend.

Recovery was quite simple. Bibracte, the capital, was a fine-tuned Cottage/production hybrid. Vienne, the second city beside the gold, provided much of cash to feed the economic hole. Beshbalik and Karakorum were production powerhouses (in Karakorum, I went with Heroic Epic, unlike Sullla - I just didn't find the need to have a biggest army in the world and conquer someone). Turfan was a cottage beauty... 8) This very fertile land was clearly a "green light" to go settler, settler, settler. I had my land filled in no time! Tolosa was built in the north to cut off Aztecs and provide Dyes, Ivory and more Cows, plus it hugged the coast, so more trade came in. I also claimed some barbarian cities and made them metropolises, for some good reason - Cuman became a very good addition to my scientific empire. (See, that's why I "misspelled" Brennus! ). The other city I razed to plant the other one 1 tile east, because the former location was one tile off the coast.

Iron Working was also very good. Although I had some trouble with getting those workers going after jungle, I quickly made my cities powerful.

Wonders and Diplomacy:

Tuco: I'm innocent! I'm just a simple farmer!

Two cities in my Celtia were greatly customized to build wonders. So, since it was a peaceful game, I went after some of them! AI simply sucked at building wonders... You see, I was shocked to see that I built PYRAMIDS in 600 AD, going after Representation. An eyebrow for this game, even Mansa refused to build it. Parthenon also was built in Karakorum. Mausoleum of Mausollos, Taj Mahal, I dominated the wonder field.

The problems were the aggressive AIs as my neighbors. The whole game I was itching that Monty won't attack me - I was weak at the moment, and for quite a long period of time he was the highest in power (but lacked technologically and soon was absorbed by Rome).

Rome. Yeah, my good friend Rome. I could kill them and take their stuff, but... I didn't. Yeah, very appropriate for the Celts? :P But it was very good with my strategy. You see, Risk taught me that the more borders - the more problems. Having several cities along the border with Rome and Aztec would be costly to manage with Longbows. Thus, just after I formed a trade route with Rome, I GIFTED him Pigs, started to feed with techs, and even went for a phony war. Interesting is the fact that Julius founded a religion that was later on the most dominant one in the game - Taoism. Monty was a heathen. I happily stopped to go after Taoism, abandoning my Hindu ways. That may mean that it sucked to go after Hinduism... but well, early on that religion and Charismatic gave me a biiig population boom, making my cities pretty productive. I just need to stop neglecting Missionaries...

As for Azteca? After I reinforced my borders at the cost of the south ones (because I was 95% sure that Rome won't attack me at Pleased), he didn't dare to attack my Longbowmen positions. Caesar was also good because we were both the most powerful and big civs in the world.

Defense:

Man With No Name: Tut, tut. Such ingratitude after all the times I saved your life.

No, I never did anything to please Hannibal, and we thought: "The other one is a heathen!". By the way, go now and watch "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" if you didn't already. Great stuff.

Hannibal attacked when Mongolia still was in the game, crippled. He never did anything to actually kill me - he was bombing my Karakorum to no end, and after he dropped defense to 0%, he had to face a lot of Axemen and Gallics. No such luck here, Hanni. Hannibal bribed Mongolia to attack, so I went after their cities and just swept through. I didn't even get penalties, and Hannibal did - to research and relations with Rome!

Swimming to Space Race:

Man With No Name: You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

After all those, the game went on, and on... I didn't go to any wars... until Rome asked me to attack Alexander again. I did so, because he was a weak pushover. I didn't even realize when he was reduced to puny Knossos on the South Pole. I finished him off later with a Transport filled with Tanks.

The war with Aztecs against Rome was more serious. I was really feared, because Rome threatened to win an UN Victory, and Carthage, to win AP Victory. I snagged a bit of Azteca and Rome finished them off. No chance for domination, though, they loved Hannibal too much. I just bribed Caesar to attack Musa, so Caesar won't get a vote. Mansa was Annoyed with him. Hah!

And thus, after this long struggle, I outraced the other AIs - they didn't have much to compete. My ship started it's building (it was SS Life Support, if I remember correctly) at 1794 AD.

Do you guess when it landed on Alpha Centauri? In 1907 AD!!!

Thanks to Sullla again for a great scenario!

Tuco: One bastard goes in, another one comes out.

[Deceptus]

Hm, sounds like my report isn't too interesting... so some screenshots for compare purposes, please



Here's my empire years after I conquered Mongolia and established enough cities to conquer West. Look at Alexander - he was quickly pummeled by Hannibal and Caesar. Interestingly, in my game Mansa was a father of Judaism and spreaded it to Hannibal, so he was pretty safe from attacks. This isolationist position could give him a lot of potential, methinks... But no, when I first met him, I exchanged two techs and he hardly ever surpassed me in tech. First lesson for me - more cities, the merrier.



This is pretty much the situation that lasted until the end of the game. Caesar steamrolled through Azteca, and I took the opportunity to dogpile and took two little cities (too late to let them be significant). The only change was when I bribed AIs to attack Musa to spoil their relationships, and computer conquered Kumbi Saleh (and then I bought peace to Mansa).
"Montezuma adopts Pacifism" amuses me. :D



My capital. Pretty unimpressive, isn't it? 358 beakers is low. If I remember, I even didn't bother to build a Courthouse after I founded Mining Inc. However, I did pop two Iron resources, and that's why I went an Ironworks/Oxford University combo.



On this screen, you can see that I don't micromanage and spend time on strategy well (a piddle 4 hours, how lame is that?), and that I control a really huge amount of Workers for me (you know, I sometimes just... don't build them. Yeah, probably bad). Ignore Versailles, I built it mainly for culture in Karakorum - FP was in Beshbalik.

[Atlas]

NIce game. 10 Workers , you probably needed at least 20.

4 hours ain't bad though, maybe you should take up MP Civ

[Deceptus]

I just didn't feel the need for much of them. Sure, after I secured Mongolian lands, I did pump more workers, but that was it. I play like "Time the growth of the city with the next improvement" - which means that pretty much one worker per city is "it". However, I had to bring more of workers to clear of jungle such locations as Tolosa (on the northern coast, which secured Dyes, Ivory and Cows).

I sometimes play MP Civ, having some little successes in 1v1 sparrings on Polish community of Civilization.org.pl, and some FFAs there as well, but that's pretty much it - I find MP enjoyable, although I hate the lack of culture in most of the players there. (I mean lobby, not that Polish community)
I really could use a bit of "slowness" - just compare the 1907 AD to most dates - although I feel quite proud that without Financial nor Organized I managed to win faster than Rowain... (No ticks against you, Rowain )

[Compromise]

Holy cow: 3:46 playing time! I probably spend that long dotmapping after my starting warrior explores the local area and my starting worker starts improving the capital!

Congratulations on your fine Monarch victory!

[Deceptus]

Yeah, as I said, I think that I am too much into click-click-clickity. Sometimes, when I play through CIV, and I find myself in a situation where my mind is completely blocked and I just click, I know that it would be wiser to stop playing :P

My longest time ever to play was as Suryavarman II with the Khmer, where I won a Domination Victory - it was quite amazing, because the Carthaginian empire, second biggest to mine, just *poof!* vanished after I rolled over them :D (time was 5:06 or something like that).

Argh, I must place more thought into strategy. This game could get a lot smoother. For example, I'd win faster, I would have more comments, I would enjoy that game quite more (it became a bit tedious to click those spaceship parts, although in the middle I was pretty worried if Monty will kill me!) Notify that I was hurrying to get the game done in time, also.

"Mama, take this micromanagent off of me
I can't take it anymore.
It's gettin' tedious, too complicated for me to have sense
I feel like I'm knockin' on the ENTER's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door

Mama, put my turns in the ground
I can't play them anymore.
That long stack o' workers is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on ENTER's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on ENTER's door"

Apologies to Bob Dylan.



Besides, it's hard to me to conclude all this in my head. :P