Adv37 - Seven Tribes of Switzerland

[Swiss Pauli]

The Plan: another cultural victory. Quelle surprise! But with tech trading off, and a large map, Space will be pretty tedious & time consuming, as well as opening up the door to a cultural defeat.






Starting dilemma: grab the third clam, or keep the rice in the BFC and waste the clams? Seeing as we have Agri as a starting tech, not Fishing, I’ll keep the rice and settle in place. Pigs revealed, so it’s AH and worker first. An early map reveals lots of FPs, rice & stone to my west. Looks good for a couple of cities. Meet Ragnar on T12: at least aggressive AI isn’t on, but he can be a pain, and he could be really close. Hmmmm. Wonder who else is out there?

Went Fishing-Mining-BW after AH (no ponies), and got a Settler out on T42, having discovered truffles in Thebes BFC the previous turn (1f, 1c). Nice.




Not great production, by the stone and plains forests will do, seeing as we’ve got a lot of food and plenty commerce potential. My worker was gamely employed roading up to Memphis in advance of my settler (seeing as Thebes was all forest). BW failed to reveal copper. Off to archery then, but we’re ok for fogbusters, so Mysticism is squeezed in beforehand. Whipped Stonehenge at Thebes in 1800BC.

Founded Heliopolis for the rest of the FPs (two wasted), and barbs were becoming a bit of a hassle by the time I wanted to found by 4th city (marked as 5 on the map):




I made the mistake of going straight to IW when it would have been better to get Pottery first: to give my workers something to do, and for the commerce boost. Got a useless Classic Literature quest (9 Libraries) and met the Buddhist Carolus Magnus and Capac in BC475 thanks to an exploring WB.






4 picks up Iron, 6 is for copper (stupas) but mainly to be my Artist farm. Seeing as Ragnar is settling towards Thebes, 7 will be for iron, clams, and rice to the capital southeast. Vicky the pagan met in BC 100: she is worst enemy of Ragnar, which is good news for me. Buddhism spread to Memphis and I adopted immediately, as I had too much food for my happy cap. Vicky founded Chrsitianity in 1AD (heh!) and I met Sitting Bull a couple of turns later. I get my first GS in 150AD (lame!) and found an academy in Thebes.

Meet Monty (200) and Hannibal (250). Agree to the latter’s request to dogpile the struggling SB in 450. Next turn, Raggy goes after Vicky. I would also dogpile her at Raggy’s request. Both were phony wars, save for me losing my exploring WB. (I would eventually buy peace for cash with each of them.)Much to my surprise, Capac asked me to dogpile our fellow Buddhist, Charlie. This war was to rage forever, and their constant requests for military assistance were a PITA.

I used a GS to found Taoism in 1075, and built Angkor Wat in Memphis for culture and hard-as-nails priests. Went to Music belatedly, but some pre-chopping helped me get Sistene in a jiffy:




Those priests got me a prophet for Dai Miao. Then it was off towards Liberalism, picking up Sankore on the way. Nationalism claimed, Free Speech was adopted, and Hermitage built in Memphis. I decided to gamble on an early tech shutdown, even though my culture push would be fairly lame (only two religions and seven cities): the AI was rather weak as well thanks to no tech trading, and the wars weren’t helping them in that regard either. I took Gunpowder for (limited) peace of mind, and started to work the culture slider around 1500AD.


Raggy had another go at Vicky, and started laying on some smackdown, and he kindly gave me a chance for some MMS points (I was also ‘at war’ with Monty on Hannibal’s request). The Vikings would eliminate Vicky (1710) , and I finally met Huang in 1705AD

I got the Food Stores event in 1804 which gave me +3 with Ragnar, but I was not amused to see this…






…when the hairy bugger went in WHEOOH in 1834. Was I going to perish a handful of turns short of victory?





Nope. And he asked me dogpile as well, the sweetheart. Thebes went Legendary in 1848, Memphis in 1858, and Heliopolis in 1860. Helio would have got its last bomb a turn sooner if I had researched Engineering


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[timmy827]

Nicely played, I especially liked the near-instant Sistine. Were you the first to Music, and if not could you tell which AI's had it? (In my game they all researched alphabet late so I was really in the dark as far as wonder races went.)

[Swiss Pauli]

No, I was pretty late down the Music path as (IIRC) none of the AIs had marble, and I needed to get CS to make the most of Thebes. I was rather late to Alpha myself: my attempt to bulb Philo was delayed as I hadn't researched it by 1000AD!