Epic One: Garath's Report

[Garath]

ALERT: Shadow game only. I failed to re-read (and re-read, and re-read) the Honourable Ruleset, and therefore adopted Vassalage and Theocracy in a later war. Entirely my bad.

Oh well. Report follows anyway.


Initial thoughts (direct paste of what I wrote at the time)

Louis XIV is Industrious and Creative. Creative makes for a strong land-grab, which is likely to be important on this sparsely populated map (one fewer than default civs, and low sea level), and Industrious is of course perfect for building wonders. Coupled with the Stone right next to the initial start, this could be very powerful for a wonder/cultural game. Assuming I can keep up in tech, it should be possible to build quite a few wonders. The lands are tropical, which should lead to commerce powerhouse cities with lots of grassland and possibly flood plains, once all the jungle is cleared. It certainly will for the AIs, so I should make sure I have at least some cities with lots of cottages, to keep up.

Scoring is fastest finish per victory condition, and I think I've got enough practice with the game to at least *try* to do reasonably well, so I shall try to aim for a cultural victory, since I haven't had enough of those yet. Space will of course hopefully be a backup plan if things go completely pear-shaped. It may depend on whether there's a location for a decent specialist city, there's no point in setting things in stone at this stage.

Louis starts with the Wheel and Agriculture, which is an interesting pair. It can free you up to tech for something other than worker techs since you will definitely have something for the first worker to do, but on the other hand it gives you no assistance along either the religious path or the militaristic one. I'll be wanting Masonry fairly early to get some wonders to help my cultural victory attempt along, and that should fit nicely into a religious push to try to get at least one early one, also to that end. A detour to Animal Husbandry will of course be in order at some point to get those cows, of course. The map's a Pangaea, which makes relations with the AIs fairly important so as to be able to pursue a cultural victory without having to build too much military, so an early religion seems even more important, to attempt to spread it to them. The Honourable Rules themselves also speak slightly against military, or at least against military efficiency, without Vassalage or Theocracy, so I'm inclined to indulge my natural tendency to run low military and just do my best to compensate with diplomacy instead.


Beginning of Game:



As to the initial city location, fog-gazing before moving the warrior suggests that there's water to the north beyond those hils, and possibly north-west as well. I move the warrior onto the hill to his NW to get a better picture on that. Yep, I'm not wrong there, and I get to see a wheat over in the NE to go with the silks there. The water is salt, so one tentative plan that I had that it might be interesting to settle actually on the stone to speed up Stonehenge doesn't look nearly so promising, and nowhere else nearby looks worth losing a turn on the city to get to, so I settle in place on the hill. The capital should still have some reasonable shields from two other hills, the stone and the plains cows.

(Ed: reading the other reports where most people moved, I can only think that I hadn't twigged that I could get the wheat with the same city as the cows and stone. Can't think of any other reason I wouldn't have moved.)

Nothing interesting is revealed in the fog westwards once Paris is founded, but all the numbers look wrong since most of the games I've played have been on Normal so far. There are a couple of things for him to do straight away, and I anticipate having Masonry not long after getting him anyway, so despite the fact that there aren't enough forests around to make an early chop strategy appear beneficial I start on a worker immediately, due in 23, of course. I select Mysticism in 12 for my first tech, despite being slightly low on commerce compared to the field since I have no tiles with any on to work, to go for the aforementioned religion if possible. The success of this may depend on which AIs are in the game, since Isabella and/or Saladin will definitely make this much harder, but here we go.

Well, I seem to have finally run out of things to do, so I hit End Turn.

I decide to send the warrior east to look at the potential city locations around that wheat rather than to the goody hut to the west, though I may circle round and get it later it won't be *all* that long before my borders pop it anyway, being Creative. Nothing much happens all that immediately afterwards, though the Mongols show up a mere 5 turns after the start, in 3800BC, though they have a scout, so could have come a reasonable distance by then. After another turn I've scouted the area around that wheat, finding the pigs. Two food resources there seems quite nice, a potential location for a specialist city. In aid of fitting a city in on the lake 3 east of Paris, I decide to put the city in the region on the hill NE of the wheat (blue dot), rather than the forest S or it, since the silks can be taken by this other city instead (purple dot).



I sweep the scouting warrior back down around the edge of my sight radius, finding the corner of the Mongol territory somewhat closer than I was hoping, and the rice and bananas that it would appear he's going to get to before I have a hope of doing so. I'll need to keep an eye on him to see what order I need to build my cities in, and possibly how aggressive he's going to be. When the tech choice comes due, I go for Masonry to get the stone connected as quickly as possible, since after starting without Mysticism I don't expect to get Hinduism anyway, at this point I'm aiming for Judaism, and Masonry is still on the way to that. Buddhism being founded a mere turn later is a good indicator of that, and gives me proof that there's at least one mysticism-starting civ around somewhere.

A hut popped in 3440 gives me a much-appreciated scout, I send it off to scout around the Mongols, so I can keep the warrior closer to home, for when I need him back to be MP. He continues around the edge of the sight range from Paris. 3660 sees me finding that the scout cannot get around the south of Karakorum, which does not bode well for him expanding away from me and leaving me in peace. He seems to be on the east edge of the landmass. I send the scout back around to the north again to check this. (Ed: Boy, was I wrong there)



In 3320 I find my first wild animal, one of the rare (and dangerous) panthers. I move the warrior onto the jungle to give him a 3-to-2 advantage, so he ought to win, but in doing so he also sees a lion south of him. Oh well, that's probably that for him then.



Scratch that, he's barely scratched. A full 1.7/2 left, after some luck. I decide to promote him to Woodsman I and then heal, since it should only take one turn. To borrow a phrase, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

A couple of turns later I meet Washington, a scout to Genghis' north. No idea where he is yet, but he seems friendly enough. Or at least he says so... Alexander, also, in another couple of turns, but I still haven't found whoever founded Buddhism. It's starting to look like the lands over there might be a bit larger than I thought, hopefully Genghis was just in a little dent on the coast, rather than on the far edge of the landmass.

Further exploration in the south reveals another nice city site, with rice, cows and clams all in range of one city should I want them. Admittedly Tropical produces lots of nice lands, but that's still a rather nice one. (Ed: one of the best I've seen, still, I think)



The hut next to it gives another warrior, which I send home, albeit with a slight detour. This gives me a significant bonus, since I'd expected to need to build another warrior after the worker, but since I have another already, I can get straight onto Stonehenge! I send the worker to road the stone, which will take 3 turns. Masonry comes in in 4 turns, so I can get on that soon.

Having finally explored my area of the continent, in 2840 I decided to take a big shot and think about a dotmap:



Well, there you go. A couple of general observations first: It is immediately obvious that, despite the huge jungle everywhere else, neither Paris nor Karakorum (borders in orange and black respectively) have any jungle in their fat cross. Sirian, you wrote the map script, is that forced? Second, far from the Mongols being pushed back against the east side, there's no-one to my west, leaving a big wodge of space that should stand me in good stead if I can manage to fill all of it.

As to the dots themselves, Red looks like a decent site for production with a few hills, though perhaps a workshop or two may also be in order, and more importantly it, with the border expansion from being creative, will lock off the entire east of the continent from all the AIs, assuming I don't open borders while that's an issue. It will therefore be my first or second city, depending on how hard I think I'm likely to get pushed. Probably first.

For the rest, the green dots are extremely high food locations, with 3 food bonuses each, for use as specialist farms, and the pink and blue each have two. Blue will probably be an early city if I can get to it, since the AIs will be coming that way, and the more land west I can grab, the better the empire I'll have in the long run. The yellow and the grey dots are mostly filler space, not grabbing so many interesting things, so they may well wait until my economy has stabilised somewhat. The white dot would be similar, but since I don't know all of the terrain there, but I do already know there's a cow, the details will wait until I can divert one of my scouts back that way (I have a second of those as well now, as well as the warrior from the hut), and see whether there's even *more* to recommend it.

The only thing left to think about is the location of the purple dot. Quite apart from the fact that the entire discussion may be moot due to the Mongols expanding this way before I can do anything anyway, there's a definite uncertainty as to where I might want that city. The defensive location to the west, being the one I was suggesting before, only really has the fresh water to recommend it now that I'm intending to build red dot as well, so probably isn't all that good. The next one out gets the bananas, but that really isn't all that exciting since both Genghis and I also have another source, and there's still significant overlap with Red. The farthest gets both bananas and rice, for another decent food city (not that those are few on tropical maps, as we see), but leaves some wasted space between it and Paris, and is also far the most likely to get pressured by Karakorum, or blocked by another city Genghis founds. I do want to put a city somewhere in there though, and probably sooner rather than later, since if I don't Genghis is almost certain to, which might be a mess even with significant cultural strength in my cities. So overall I'll leave the jury out on purple dot. Let the game unfold, see what happens. It's barely begun yet, after all.

As to the cultural victory, Paris picks itself as one of the cultural cities, as ever, and Red Dot, with some hills and early placement, for another, most probably. The third doesn't seem so obvious to me, perhaps one of the specialist cities with their artist culture will do.

So, after something of a pause there, back to the game once again:

Nothing much happens for a while though, of course. Scouts beat up on a few more animals, discover the fish down by White Dot to go with those cows, making it another decent site, and Gandhi turns up as the Buddhist. Well, no surprise there then. Better watch out for him over there on presumably the other side of the continent, his traits make him one of the most powerful AIs in a peaceful game, and I have no particular intention of making this anything other, for my part.

Paris grows to 2 and I start working the stone, retaining one food for a small amount of growth but getting Stonehenge finished in a mere 8 turns, after which I'll probably go straight to a settler, the second hut warrior should be able to provide the escort.

A rather nice bonus a few turns later again when I discover Polytheism and discover that no-one else has it yet, so I get Hinduism! I abort the plan to get Monotheism and head for Animal Husbandry to connect my cows for the nice bonus to yields. I have no reason to switch to Hinduism right now, though, since it'll only cost me a turn on Stonehenge (just 2 away) and hurt my relations with Gandhi, I don't need the happy at the moment. Stonehenge coming in is of course next, nice to actually have hold of it even though there was no way anyway was going to beat me to it, I pushed that really rather early. I do indeed start on a settler, for Red Dot.

Again a large period of not much occurs: I lose a scout to a lion, meet Montezuma (on 2 cities already) with the other, get Animal Husbandry and start Hunting to head towards some archers to defend my intended expansion, but nothing that really requires any actual thought from me. Monty is first to adopt Slavery, and adopts Buddhism at much the same time, which will make my hope of a peaceful monoreligious neighbourhood that much harder to achieve. That's a very early natural religion spread, over what I suspect must be a fair distance, so somewhat lucky for Gandhi there.

Barracks after the settler, which is sent off to Red Dot with a warrior escort, and I reconfigure Paris for full growth, switching the citizen from the stone onto a farm by the lake that I put in whilst waiting for Animal Husbandry, that's 4 food and 4 shields once the pasture finishes next turn. Orleans starts a warrior that I'll probably send to check on Genghis' expansion, before probably using it as another settler escort if I can't get the archers in time.

Well, I had a State of the Union shot here, but it seems to have been lost somewhere. Ah well.

Only a couple or turns later do I realise I've got Orleans on the wrong hill with respect to the Red Dot on my dotmap. What a muppet I am! Well, I guess that makes purple somewhat more important in one form or another, and relegates white to later status despite the two food resources. At least Orleans still blocks the AIs. Oh well, the city site considered for itself is still fairly decent, so I can play with it.

In 1100BC a barbarian archer appears out of the fog to the west of Paris. Thankfully I've just started my own archer that should appear just in time, but I was hoping to have a little more time before those, since I'd only seen the first such warrior a few turns ago with my remaining scout, who's pressing on to try to find Gandhi's lands in the short time he has left before one catches him.

Since that archer hasn't come in, though, I decide to risk starting another settler after it, rather than any more archers, I'm building a barracks in Orleans so hopefully that'll be able to take over the military duties, since I want to build the pyramids in Paris shortly after the settler, to push the stone advantage whilst I have it. I'm on the Mining -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working line for military and the ability to chop the massive jungle, but since I have NO tiles with any commerce whatsoever in the radius of either city, I also really need Pottery to get some cottages started early.



Genghis finally founded his second city in 940 just NW of his rice, nicely nixing my plans for any of the purple dots, though leaving me my plan for blue intact. I might be able to get a New Purple Dot in down between the bananas and the dyes, though, if I get a decent amount of culture in it it'll be OK, but if I get it wrong it'll be horribly pressured by Karakorum. Also in that year I notice a barbarian city founded out to my southwest, on a plot between the big load of dyes and some horses, which I forgot to look for when I got Animal Husbandry, not being used to that change in the patch yet. The city site isn't inherently bad, but it loses the fish to the west from my original dot between the sugar and the rice, which were cropped from my original screenshot. It'd also cause even more conflict with the central grey dot I had, but it would pick up the horses, which wouldn't be in any city radius on my map. So not too bad if I end up capturing it, but probably worth razing, objectively.



(ED: I did recall that the Honourable Rules don't allow razing of cities, including barbarian ones, in plenty of time, making that decision for me. I decided that didn't really change the rest of the dotmap, just some priorities)

Bronze Working in 620 (shortly after founding Lyons on what I checked was actually Blue Dot this time) shows me that the only copper I can actually see is over in Mongolian territory. Genghis' placement of Turfan is looking pretty good now, given that he know the copper was there at the time, and I didn't. He probably wasn't to know I was going to steal those pigs off him with a border expansion from Lyons, which wasn't even founded at the time. It even fits perfectly with Karakorum.





Here we see my lone archer getting ready to defend Paris from a forested hill immediately outside it , against the two barbarian archers that have finally mustered up enough courage to come and have a go. I've given him Combat I as well, so he should have odds of better than 2:1 on defense, which ought to be good enough to take them both out. Let's hope it is...



(Ed: bah, that picture didn't come out very well. I'll have to work on the timing for combat shots)

Nooooo! Now I have to hope my warrior and his fortification and city defence bonuses are enough to beat that archer, on 1.4/3 health. Hopefully it won't attack just yet, and the reinforcements I'm sending will be enough... I can't send the warrior from Orleans, though, as there's another archer coming in there, and the archer I'm building there won't finish for another three turns. I really should revolt to Slavery for situations such as this, but if I do so now, that archer will hit before mine is built, so I'll have to wait till afterwards...



Phew! I can continue building the pyramids in peace. Possibly after that I shall be needing a bit more military, though.

(Ed: Again, you were meant to be able to see the dead barbarian archer there, but it didn't work out.)

Amusingly, that archer that I thought was going to attack Orleans has trekked all the way through my territory, and all the way past Turfan, without actually attacking anything. I can only hypothesise he's going to defend another barbarian city in a completely different part of the map.

Washington founds Judaism, and chooses to switch to Organised Religion before switching to the religion itself.
Couple turns later I get my prophet that's been building from the GPP points from Stonehenge all this time, who I use to found the Kashi Vishwanath, since I won't be getting enough of the other religious techs in time for him to found another religion anytime soon as I've just started a long run on Iron Working. Ideally I won't get any more prophets anyway, artists and engineers will be much more useful. To further which end:



I decide to solve my soon-to-be happiness woes with Representation, rather than with the religion, which doesn't currently seem all that necessary; I have plenty of culture in all my cities from Creative and from Stonehenge, and I don't need the diplomacy penalty with the now 4 civs with different religions.



Irritatingly, as you see, Genghis has founded Ning-hsia right up against the cultural borders of Orleans. Now not only does this stop me founding even New Purple Dot (though the leftmost of the original purple dots may still be worth it, it really has been reduced to a spacefiller grey), but he's already losing tiles to Orleans, so our relations will suffer due to close borders. War with Genghis really is going to be inevitable, I suspect.

Gandhi asks for Open Borders in 20BC (Ed: Screenshot of this didn't take), and I decide that Gandhi is far enough away that I can afford to sign for the diplo bonus. I'm starting to fill my land anyway and that should only speed up as I get more cities. Hopefully the religion will be enough to keep the economy stable until I get markets/courthouses, even with the rapid expansion push.

Iron Working shows that, thankfully, I have Iron near Paris, though irritatingly I've already farmed the tile, so I'll have to go back over it. There's another down in the south by that old White Dot, which is looking better and better. I'd be settling it fairly soon if it wasn't rather going to impinge on Orleans since I misplaced it. The iron'll be much appreciated, though, a few swords should be able to take out that barb city and then provide a bit of a deterrent for Genghis. I decide to go for Writing -> Alphabet next, I should be able to fill in the rest of the first couple of ranks of tech by trading by the time I get it.

(Ed: Bah. I really wish screens worked in diplomacy windows. It's just not the same without the war declaration shot here)

Oh. Uh... That really wasn't the plan. I'm not *ready*, dammit! Two axemen have just wandered into my territory, capturing the worker trying to connect the pigs at Lyons, and I've got all of an archer and a warrior there. The archer might hold one, since it's on a hill, and I have slavery in place now, so there's still a chance I can hold it. Production changed from settler to archer, to be whipped next turn, just in time (I hope). The iron will be connected in 2, so I'll hopefully be able to get enough production online quickly enough to hold, but it might take some more whipping. I send the archer from Paris up that way as well, but hold the one in Orleans against a possible attack from his other cities.

In fact, this seems like a decent time for a state update:



The fact that a Combat I archer on either a forest or hill is 4.8 against an axeman's 5 is somewhat irritating right now... I fortify one on a hill a couple of spaces away from the advancing axes (which seem more intent on pillaging than on attacking Lyons, which I whip anyway), in the hope that the fortification bonus will build high enough before they actually get there. I also start an axeman after my granary finishes in Paris, very well timed with both the iron mine and a previously-planned forest chop on the hill NW of Paris finishing in the middle of the turn, so the axe is due next turn. Not that that will have more than a 50% chance against Genghis' axes anyway, but he's the best I can do right now, I don't have any horses in range yet.



Strangely enough, those axes seem perfectly happy to sit still after pillaging my roads and the farm on the wheat, so I'm taking my own axe round the side of them to reinforce the defences in Lyons, rather than attack at a completely flat 5.5 against 5.5. Hopefully with more axes coming in a few turns I'll actually be able to fight them back. My one pillager is finally in place too, they don't seem too interested in doing anything about him yet.

Yay! Immediately after saying that they were sitting still (obviously) they both attacked Lyons, both dying to archers on defense... I send the axeman in to try pillaging his copper as well, and expect to stop building military again roughly after the two axes I've got going at the moment finish, since Genghis hasn't shown any sign of having any more disposable troops.

Success! Copper pillaged after my axe beats another one in a straight fight attacking him out of Turfan. Pity about the chariot the next turn, really. That makes two, both of which head straight into my lands on pillaging missions (Blast! One of them got to my cows and pillaged that, though it died for it), and they're irritatingly hard to catch with an axeman. I start building a spear in Paris, and watch Genghis' link on the scores for signs that he might be willing to talk peace, I'd quite like to get back to expanding, really.
Of course, it's quite difficult to sign a peace deal before you can trade either techs or gold, really, as the AIs just *love* to ask for your cities instead.

Thankfully, killing the second chariot with my newly healed axe is enough to make him see sense and take peace at even, but Genghis then has the gall to tell *ME* that *I* have "chosen wisely"! He will pay for that, should he ever declare war on me again. He will have Chosen Unwisely! (Methinks a certain group of people might have had a little influence on quite a lot of areas of the game, with this line showing up here :D )

Back to the real game here, I start 2 settlers as projects finish, in the belief that I have enough escorts for them after that military push. The other leaders keep asking for things, mostly Open Borders which I'm happy to sign now that I'll have my lands near enough locked up after those two settlers, but also Alexander asks that I stop trading with Washington, the lone Jew in a world of Buddhists. I'd love to join that big bloc myself, but I need Buddhism in one of my cities before I can do that, and the owner of the Mahabodhi, the only one really likely to spread it to, is way on the other side of the continent. I'm rather hoping I'll get it spreading naturally into a city with no religion, both for that reason and so I can get more cathedrals in my culture cities once I really set in on that road, so I have no intention of spreading Hinduism very actively for a while yet.

...

Which lasts all of half a dozen turns or so, until Alexander, in last place, on the other side of the world, decides to declare war on me. With a chariot and a warrior. Now I assure you, my military isn't so weak that I can't fend that off, and I'm rather surprised that he ever thought it was weak enough to make it worth it, even as opportunistic as he is. I'm a bit worried about what those two Jaguars are doing there as well, though, so I make some effort to defend. The re-pillaging of the pigs was irritating, too.



(Ed: apologies that this report completely changes tense here, but I realised that it made much more sense to write in the past even when writing during the game as I did, I'd just already written too much for it to be worth going back and changing what I'd already done)

Well, there really weren't any teeth to that attack. I never saw any more troops, and indeed nothing further of interest happened until I got a Great Engineer on about a 1/3 chance a full 100 years later, who I used to rush the Parthenon. I hadn't been intending to build that, since of course I had no marble, but the bonus is nice, and I'm hardly complaining about that! Otherwise it was back to infrastructure. I desperately needed more workers to make a dent in all that jungle, more settlers to fill out the empire, more culture(of course), and so on. In the same turn I also finally realised what those Jaguars had been up to all that time ago when they reached the other side of my empire and razed Scythian, the barbarian city that I'd been just about to go and capture. I wasn't really complaining, since that meant I could found my own city out on the coast in the original dotmap location.

(Ed: Yes, yes, I know *now* that I was still desperately short on military. I'm still having problems training myself away from Civ 3 defense mentalities)

Alphabet (590AD) was worth most of the missing techs, notably including Fishing so I could connect those Clams in the south and fish in the north (Ed: really should have researched that earlier, but I would appear not to have been paying attention), Priesthood and Meditation for the temples and monasteries. Hinduism kept spreading in my cities, which was great for my economy, except that what I really wanted was at least one of the other religions, so I'd be able to spread it around for cathedrals. Preferably Buddhism, so I could adopt it and get friendly with most of the world. Monty getting Code of Laws and adopting Confucianism made that seem *slightly* less important, but...

Of course, with a true sense of irony, Buddhism spread to Rheims, my last non-Hindu city at the time, immediately after I typed the previous paragraph. I converted immediately for the relationship boosts, planning to switch to Organised Religion once I had free time to build missionaries from the city.

Nothing interesting... Nothing interesting... Working on the Hanging Gardens... Nothing interesting...

(Ed: Genghis declares war again, 910AD. No shot.)

You Have Chosen Unwisely! I decided not to rest, not to take peace with that pathetic warmonger, until he was wiped from the face of the planet, as specified before. Despite that I knew full well that this would make me fall behind Gandhi (even more) in tech, there was just no escaping the fact that such a monster must be removed, for the sake of all free people!

(Ed: The best (and worst) laid plans...)

Unfortunately, since he was technically of the True Faith, nobody else both liked me enough and disliked him enough to join me in the quest. Very well, then! This was my time! *My* Crusade! My shining glory! The fact that I had two axes, a sword, a spear and a scattering of archers and warriors would not come into it! Genghis would pay for his crimes!

So, I immediately mobilised everything that I could legitimately call a military, and got it moving to the places of greatest need. For starters, I wasn't going to lose those pigs again!



That axe was hurt due to just having killed a sword. There was a keshik raiding in the south, so I diverted the spear that way, with the sword, and upgraded a couple of warriors with money from selling techs to people. No need to stop building the Hanging Gardens though, right, even though he's got a galley with a keshik/archer pair heading off round my far-too-unprotected south coast? I found a couple of cities that I probably *could* spare, and set them to units, ready to as and when necessary. Now, does everybody remember that Keshiks have no terrain movement penalty, and that therefore leaving a worker two spaces away with a forest between is a bad idea? Good, because I didn't. :weed: Still, he didn't kill the worker, and it left the keshik adjacent to a spear, and being a jungle doesn't save a keshik since it doesn't get defensive bonuses *either*... so maybe it was all to the good.

In order to better prosecute the war I had, I actually paid Montezuma when he came demanding iron, something I would do in very few situations to very few AIs. But because it's him, and Jaguars don't take Iron anyway, it doesn't really gain him anything. But it might keep him out of this war, which if he joined against me could... get... ugly. It turned out that right at the start of the war defending against Genghis was about all I could manage, as after the first probe that I easily repulsed he simultaneously sent in three pairs of units, somewhat stretching my defensive capabilities.



(Ed: It's a real pity to have to cut this down from the original resolution, it seems barely visible now)

I love this game! This could never have happened in Civ 3: The Mongols were at war here, (albeit probably only a Limited War, as those don't look aimed as city-killing stacks) but they've sent three simultaneous assaults, for which I've had to scramble three completely different sets of defense, whilst trying to do anything I can to slow him down with my own pillage, before even starting to think about my own personal vendetta against him... it's just beautiful. I, for one, can never go back.

Meanwhile, back to the actual game:



I was keeping sources of GPP that weren't engineer points away from Paris, for the most part, in an attempt to get another Great Engineer.

The rest did not go so well, though. The attack at Rheims did not materialise, the two swordsmen in the north continued next to Lyons, forcing me to pull back off the pigs to defend it, the galley in the south that dropped off the troops efficiently pillaged the fish there, I noticed that the galley that used to just be scouting round the coast was going to pillage the other fish shortly also, and another Keshik made a pillaging strike down at Orleans. I was likely to lose the cows there before I could heal a spear enough to take him out. Even once I did work out that there was only one unit I could actually afford to kill, being the Keshik down at Rheims (it split from the archer), my spearman lost to him, with 4.4 to 3.1 odds. Bah!

And I noticed that Gandhi had beaten me, by some distance, to Music, and its free Great Artist.

Couple of turns later, after I had beaten back the two sword at Lyons but had them replaced by pillaging keshiks, which had taken out the wheat and the pigs, the city was in forced starvation



I decided that the variant rules should not require me to switch to the Aqueduct since I could not finish that in time to save the city, but that my only chance of avoiding actual population-loss starvation was to finish out the sword, bring in some other units, and try to kill the keshiks quickly enough to replace the tile improvements.

(Ed: Seems like I managed to get both the spirit and the letter of that rule right, for a wonder)

Long story short, it took me another 4 turns or so to actually clear out my lands of pillagers, one turn short of them getting to my stone, and that only because of a lucky unpromoted sword vs combat 1 keshik victory. More were coming, but at least I had a slightly more stable situation. My two pillagers were still alive, having destroyed a plantation and three mines, giving me a few more turns of 70% research on Code of Laws before I had to drop back. Yup, I'd significantly overexpanded, and was having trouble catching my economy up to speed, especially with this second round of pillaging going on. This whole plan to not rest until the Mongols are dead was really quite a silly thing to do, but at least I knew that, right?

Once my pitiful pillaging force got killed, taking a couple of spearmen with them, I was forced to drop right back to 30% science, though I then (Ed: FINALLY) realised that Organised Religion was costing me far too much, so I switched away from it, putting research back up to (nearly) 50%. Still horrifically low, of course. I desperately needed to get hold of Code of Laws and get some courthouses built, but it was still 16 turns away, so I thought the best chance I actually had of getting there was to try to capture a city for the money. Turfan, specifically, the one founded by the rice and copper northwest of Karakorum. I assembled a small force and set off:



Against that, I had a spearman for keshik defense, two swords, and three axes, one with 14xp already! Hmmm, this already wasn't looking so good...

Meanwhile, Alexander declared war on Gandhi, with no prompting whatsoever (who says there are no AI-AI wars in Civ 4?), and I got a Great Prophet in the same turn. Pity that, I was hoping for an Engineer, what with having the Gardens and the Pyramids both. (Ed: So much for keeping non-engineer sources away. That was solely from the shrine) Oh well, I could make good use of him as a super specialist, the gold would be very useful, and the research beakers since I was running Representation for the happiness could hardly hurt. In fact, in the final reckoning he managed to generate enough additional commerce to drop my remaining research time from 14 to 9 turns, by himself!

Back to the war, which was apparently still going on. :crazyeyes: I decided that I just didn't have enough strength to take that city. There were 7 units in it by the time I could attack, and not a single one of my 6 had odds in their favour. So a-pillaging we went!

(Ed: Apparently I had a shot of a typo in Genghis' peace offer here. Ah well.)

That might be a small error, there. Ah well. You may be offering concessions, Genghis, but You Have Chosen Unwisely! No deal!

In other news, I'm sure spearmen shouldn't lose to Keshiks without doing any damage to them. Nor is that same keshik then supposed to be able to take out my (only) archer defending Lyons, at 7.2 vs 8.55 according to the combat log. Genghis seems to have been having altogether too much luck with his keshiks, that day. To add insult to injury, he razed it to the ground! That Was Not Honourable! He was already going to pay, but now... Now I was mad.


Gandhi requested help against Alex, but for some strange reason I thought I had a bit much on my plate already. I'm sorry, my friend, but I already had a Righteous War on my hands, I really couldn't afford to help you, despite that Alex, too, isn't playing nice.



That's more like it! I think my pillagers had moved too close to Karakorum, so he pulled out some of the spare defence to go there instead, defending his capital. Unfortunately for him, my pillagers were *also* just in position to recombine into a single force just between those archers (two, with city garrison I apiece), so he couldn't get back to reinforce Turfan. You also see in that shot that I'd just researched Code of Laws and started the tech I'd need to really get somewhere against Genghis, running deficit research fuelled by the pillaging I'd done. Right at that moment, the immediate gold from the villages around Turfan was worth more than leaving them in place, especially since I hadn't expected to take the city anytime soon, though I think I would have made the same decision even with foreknowledge.

(Ed: A shot of the capture of Turfan appears to have failed to take here, which surprises me more. Ah well.)

Yay! Note also that in doing that I'd managed to get a 17xp axeman already. That might come in handy...



Well, wasn't that just an annoying place for him to build that city?! I was desperately hoping it worked like Civ 3, and get a force to destroy it quickly enough that it neither grew nor expanded borders. Hopefully, that would cause it to autoraze, since if I got the choice, I had to keep it, and that would just not be kosher, destroying my city and then refounding one nearby in a worse spot that I had to capture. However, I'd diverted half the offensive force off to the south to try to take Ning-hsia, while that was still also lightly defended by only an axe and an archer. Not that that worked, since a combat II axe fortified behind walls in a city with any sort of culture isn't really something one can take out with swords and axes, but it was a nice thought.



Fortunately, I still had enough forces on the spot to do the job. There also you see Turfan was starving, however there are visibly no 2-food tiles around it until my Creative trait expands the borders. (Ed: If I hadn't mistakenly cropped that shot so tightly you would have, anyway)

Various fighting continued over the next few decades, with nothing especially interesting happening, though I lost a couple of workers to an unexpected amphibious keshik attack from a boat I couldn't even see the turn before, and I did manage to take Ning-hsia in 1160, when I saw the uber-axe had moved out, so I came in with two swords and my own 20xp axe. I rolled out a few catapults, and sent a galley on a mission to see what Karakorum looked like.



Ah. Longbows. However, all was not lost, as I had 3 catapults, and a couple of city raider III swords that might be able to beat down even that horrible mess, given a bit of time. The Siege of Karakorum was begun!

(Ed: Blast! I had a shot here of the combat. Oh well.)

Noooo! That was my 20xp axe, with combat III, on a hill, losing to a mere barrage catapult. My luck was not in at all in this game! And then they slaughtered the entire stack, bar two catapults, in one turn. The catapult from last turn, which I hadn't noticed retreating, attacked again, doing more collateral damage, and then their axe took out one of my swords, and the longbows that I thought were fixed in the AIs mind as defenders took out the others, and one of my catapults. Serious kudos to the AI for pulling that off, but at the same time... bah! Bit of a pathetic Siege of Karakorum, wot?

With no offensive force left, and wishing to save my catapults, I agonised for ages, and then chose to sign peace with him for some gold. Disappointed as I was to not wipe him out for Choosing Unwisely, I'd taken a couple of cities, lost most of my useful military (you don't want to *know* how weak everything behind the front lines was during that war. So bad, I thought it was Civ 3 all over again!), and pragmatically I would beat my head against that wall for another couple of centuries, fruitlessly, if I kept trying. In the end, I preferred to win the game than keep my roleplaying going. So sue me! I took the peace, but assured myself that I would not complete the game with Genghis still alive. He had still Chosen Unwisely, after all!

So, the state of the world as of 1210 AD, the end of the Second Mongol War:

(large shot, with dots, 1210)

My lands were significant, the largest of all according to the advisor screen, but I was still suffering under a significant weight of upkeep, with most of my cities still building courthouses. There were still 4 more cities I intended to found in my own lands, as shown by the dots, but they would have to wait a little longer yet. I hoped to be able to found them in another century or so, though.
My science was at least stably back up to 70%, so the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to show itself. I was finally beginning to make some decent headway with all that jungle, too, and Civil Service (due in 6) was intended mostly for use in chaining irrigation down all the way past Orleans and out to the west side, as well, although I fully intended to change to Bureaucracy as well.

The Aztec culture down in the southwest of my lands confuses me slightly, since while they took a barbarian city there in ages past, they razed it rather than keeping it, so I wouldn't have thought they would ever have gained any culture from it. I'd really like to know the precise mechanics for applying culture to individual squares.



Gandhi was running away with the tech lead, despite only being third in the scores now, due to his earlier war with Alex. He captured Delphi in that war, but still actually lost points as well as position, he was in the lead before it. On the other hand... those were only the techs I could see. I was pretty sure that there were more I was missing, by that stage. I was still actually ahead of Alex and Genghis, but the one had nothing to trade, and the other wouldn't trade anything (no surprise there).

(Ed: a little later) I was happily able to trade Civil Service for Feudalism from Genghis of all people, who seemed to care more than I'd expected about the fact that we share a religion (but I know what a twisted snake he really is. His time will come!), and for both Drama and Compass from Gandhi, getting me a better headstart on the road back to tech parity than I had expected.

Who says AIs don't declare war on each other?





And who says they don't take cities? (Neatly reducing the current leader in the process, may I add. I think there were more of these, but I missed them. One I didn't know whether it was still a barbarian city or one of theirs)



(Ed: future references to this later in the report were removed in favour of a big discussion at the end. Let it simply be said that from pretty much this point onwards, the following was a typical diplomacy screen.)



Paper went for Metal Casting, and for Theology, and all of a sudden there I was, almost caught up in tech.

Score! Great Engineer! (And a larger empire shot for anyone that actually cares)



I used him to rush the Sistine Chapel in Orleans, since Paris had almost finished Notre Dame anyway. Those artist-producing wonders under my belt, I went to another round of military/settlers as cities finished their courthouses.

Massive building push through the next couple of centuries, very few notes from the era. I switched to Caste System and Organised Religion when the economy was closer to stable in 1510, though it cost me significantly in upkeep. I'd noticed that my high-food cities had been running some specialists for a while, though, and that they were not artists, which clearly was bad. I really wish there was a no-specialists-in-this-city button.

The upshot of which was



though this was hardly a total loss, as he built an Academy in Paris, a fairly solid science city

Amusingly, two sources of Iron appeared in my territory in a dozen turns, near Besancon and Chartres, a mere three tiles apart.

I finally built my last city, Dijon, in 1635, and finished clearing the World Jungle round about then, too.

I was pulling ahead on score



but was still worried about my military





Ah, now that was more like it. I decided it was probably late enough to be better just to keep him for culture bombing later, rather than specialist or bomb in possibly the wrong place then. I knew by this point that I'd been highly inefficient in pursuing my culture victory, not building temples until far too late, so the Stupa and Mandir in Paris were only just being built, not spreading the Christianity round quickly enough from Ning-hsia to get those temples built as well...

One notable and irritating point was this:



FOUR TIMES I had taken out scientists from this city and left it as you see it, with four artists. Why were they not staying there?

Washington had taken, and was easily retaining, a significant tech lead



But I was notably ahead of a couple others, including Genghis as you see in that shot. I began to consider pushing out towards Military Tradition, to try to make gains off him with cavalry before he got Riflemen.
(Ed: Yes, yes, no declarations of war and all that. I had temporary lapses of memory, but none that I actually acted on incorrectly)



Eep!

I mass-upgraded spears to pikes since his major force was knights, and started another major troop migration to the front. The second move of the musketeers, of which I'd built half a dozen or so, came in *really* handy here. I also swapped to Theocracy and Vassalage, since this war was quite likely to lead straight into a Mongolian one, so I might as well prosecute them properly.



Blast! Couldn't get the reinforcements into place quickly enough, so the half-dozen knights I *hadn't* already seen were quite enough to take out the musket/pike/archer/longbow that were defending Turfan went down quickly enough. They took a few with them, but they still died.



And that wouldn't have happened if I'd thought to check that they didn't have open Borders with Genghis, rather than assuming since they had different religions. What a muppet I am at times!

I switched from building pikes to building Grenadiers, since I currently had no way whatsoever of stopping the knight/crossbow teams that Monty had, since the knights were better promoted than mine were, and nothing else could fight the crossbows.
I also switched to Nationhood as soon as Nationalism comes in, to draft off a round (or two!) of defenders and get some breathing space. I set research to Military Tradition in the hope of having something to fight with if this dragged on and on.



That's after I drafted (ouch! I didn't know the happiness hit was that big!) another musketeer: I had had more units there, but his knights had had a couple of lucky rounds and killed one and the Garrison longbow, and he'd just brought Grenadiers along, before I could get any. I kept drafting, though, since most cities had enough happiness cushion (on 10% culture) to support it.



And there you have it. Two catapults for collateral damage, knights beat pike, knight beat musket, grenadier beat musket, grenadier beat archer. I didn't kill anything except the catapults, and Avignon was gone.

I swallowed my pride and paid him an expensive tech for peace (Education, I believe). All in all, the AI successfully prosecuted an almost Civ3-style war against me! He went to war with what was frankly fairly overwhelming force, spread it out beautifully against a civ with underdefended cities, destroyed a couple, and then took tech for peace. Amazing!

Now all I had to do was shore up my defences somewhat, or he'd be back, just like Civ3...

I kept drafting for a couple of rounds more, and kept training Grenadiers, although not quickly. The National Epic finished in Tours, the city with the four artists that kept turning into scientists (which I now think was because I had Emphasise GPP on, though it seems a fairly dodgy thing for that to do), but that was still only 26 GPP, I certainly couldn't afford Pacifism again at that point.

Some muppetry ensued when I tried to put both Heroic Epic and West Point in Besancon, my Forbidden Palace city, without thinking. Ditto when, on revolting back to Pacifism, I also went to Bureaucracy, forgetting all about Free Speech for some time. This has got to have been the scrappiest cultural game ever.

Somewhat surprisingly given Washington's tech lead, I got to Physics on the same turn as him. However, he was the one that got the Great Scientist

I decided since I'd got to that point, apparently already past the end tech of most cultural games (not that there was any real reason to go for culture anymore except sheer bloody-mindedness, but I had enough of that!), I decided to research through to Radio, and go for the wonders there before I turned off research. Hopefully that would also give me enough trade currency to trade up to factories, railroads and infantry.



Gandhi is dead. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. (Ed: That's 1863, by the way. I know I've skipped quite a lot of time, but frankly nothing much happened other me actually getting a decent military). The other AIs repeatedly and maliciously waged war against him, with no apparent mercy, to his complete elimination. How's that for a peaceful game? The same thing has happened to Asoka in a private game I've been playing. In fact, I barely *met* him: he was down to his last city when I did, and dead 20 turns later. I truly don't see how people are playing games without a war declared, I really don't.



On another note, Yay! That basically topped out the culture income of my cities:



You see that Paris was *massively* outculturing everything else, and would clearly attain Legendary Status long before I could get the others there, since I was only sitting on 5 Great Artists at that point. The Great Person about to come in from Paris (at 1800 GPP) had only about a 1/3 chance of being one. The culture rates weren't quite finished, you see Rock N Roll and a Hindu Mandir unfinished there in my second and third culture cities, but they were nearly there. I was preparing for the long wait to get those two up to enough culture that I could bomb them to completion, and hoping that would be fast enough to beat any potential AI spaceship.



Got the artist. Ought to shave a couple of turns off the win date, I thought.

I was still building units from a couple of cities, in the hope of not actually being attacked again.

Well, I managed to trade up to Railroad with Radio from the Greeks. So I would be able to get some more production from the mines and lumbermills, both of which I have a fair few of. If I had any coal. Oh well.

(Ed: Genghis offered me some. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if I'd remembered which shots don't take, wouldn't it? Oh well.)

Ah. Excellent! His offer, by the way, not mine.



Methinks Paris may have been a little too far ahead of everywhere else. The other two cities were on 15k +300cpt and 19k +420cpt, including all available buildings and being set to culture. I had seven Great Artists only. So I waited.

There were wars:



Cities fell:






Two more, no shots.


That one was in the next round of wars, a couple of them had signed peace in the meantime. It relegated Washington to his island holdout of Portland, in the north above my lands. Genghis promptly signed peace with him though




No more tech lead for him!



That's the first apollo program built.
Too late. It's time.



I have 9 Great Artists. Tours is 34000 or so off, and needs 6. Rheims is a mere 18168 off, so will be done with three and its own 500 culture growth this turn.

Bomb

Bomb

Bomb

Bomb!

Bomb!!

BOMB

BOMB!

BOMB!!

BOMB!!! (in red, if doable)

(Ed: I really wish Great Works produced something I could take a picture of, to insert between each of those. Oh well.)

Victory!

(Ed: And the shot of that didn't even take. Story of this report, really. Oh well.)

1978. Wow, that's dire, even if it is my first completed cultural victory.



Post-game thoughts:

1) Build More Military! I've already resolved to do this a couple of times, I just find myself completely lacking when war does come every time, somehow without noticing that I haven't been building military.

2) Oh Good Grief how warlike was that game? Counting from the replay, there were:

Twenty-One AI declarations of war (including four on me)
Thirty-Three cities captured/razed (including four of mine) (and the Greeks also had a city revolt to the Americans.)
1 (and a half) civs destroyed, both the current leader in tech and points at the time

A (not-quite) typical screen from the replay.



The final map, with Gandhi dead and Washington reduced to his island holdout.



3) Stick with your plan! I would probably have had even more fun had I stuck out the war with Genghis, even though I might well have lost due to doing so.

3a) Genghis must get some! I'm going back to this game once I have the time (I wanted to have it for this report, but simply ran out of time ) to see his head on a stick! It won't be easy, though, since I cut off tech and they didn't. Might take a while.

4) I need to learn how to play a cultural game better. Great Artists, all the way.

5) I should probably make sure to play a game where I actually play around with the diplomacy more at some point. I didn't really do anything except tech trading, and probably lost out for it. I'm still playing significant parts of this game on autopilot, and some of those are still the Civ3 autopilot! Not Good!

6) I think I had SIX 'Popped another one!' moments in this game. How cool is that?

7) I had a blast playing this. Here's to the team that conceived and produced the Epics!

8) So, when's the next one? :D

--Garath, signing off.

[Sullla]

Starting on a worker right away wasn't necessarily a bad plan, but if you were going to found on the starting tile (and not have the wheat in play), why didn't go ressearch Animal Husbandry first? And the going for Masonry next was interesting. It may have been a stronger move to get those cows hooked up sooner and start growing at a faster rate. I think you may have just been caught off guard at how long it takes to research anything on Epic speed!

I'm not Sirian, but I think it's fair to say that the map generator forces some things on the generation of the start points. Your observation appears to be correct.

Getting to Polytheism first was very nice, but I'm still shocked you went there before Animal Husbandry! I liked you dotmaps, good coverage of the land, but you missed the first dot with your city placement? Uh oh! This is why it's nice to be able to draw on the ground in Civ4!

Wow, those barb archers coming after your capital early - tough stuff. If you're going to have your archer defend on a hill like that though, don't give him Combat I - try Guerilla I instead! Bigger bonus (20% instead of 10%). Like many of our players, you may have been running a bit light on military in the early game.

Just saw that Orleans placement for the first time... interesting. I know you founded in the wrong spot, but with no resources in range, that was surely not the best spot. Very unique though!

Temujin's war declaration was entirely predictable, but you had some nice defenses up and ready to deal with it. Archers in all the forward cities - a number of players didn't! For city defense, City Garrison promotions are MUCH more effective than Combat ones, keep in mind. Pillaging the copper was a slick move, to be sure.

Indeed, you need much more defense in Civ4 than Civ3. We designed it so that you wouldn't be able to run a fake military in this game - the AI will call your bluff.

Temujin came after you the second time at almost the same date that he attacked me the first time. You certainly had a large front to defend there, which makes things tough. Not to mention boat landings in your back lines! (As you surmised, you were not in violation of the starvation rule at Lyons. That was not your fault.) Without cats, it would have been almost impossible to take Turfan once it had walls up... Bad luck outside Lyons, very bad luck. I'm sad to see the city get razed. Fortunately you recovered and inflicted some pain on Temujin in return. As frustrating as it is to lose your stack, isn't it cool to see the AI use cats intelligently against stacks? I always like seeing that.

Wow, Gandhi certainly jumped out to a tech lead, but then got messed up a bit by the aggressive AI civs. That must have been a nice boost! And you were also fortunate in that Washington remained at war instead of getting time to build up peacefully. The tech pace was enormously slower in your game than in mine, due to all the warring.

And then Monty attacked. Yikes! Your defenses weren't bad at Turfan, but he just brought more toys to the party. That's a LOT of knights there. Drafting was clearly the move you needed to do to survive, as Monty's stacks were razing cities left and right. He got through your entire first line of cities! Nasty stuff there.

Gandhi got roughed up and killed? Tough world out there indeed. Then Washington gets sent into a OCC exile. Not a continent for the peaceniks. Also, how did you get to have the best relations with Alex, of all people? Was that due to shared religions? Very unusual stuff. That warring obviously helped enormously with giving you enough time to win by culture. But hey, you did a great job to make the most of a tough situation!

Congratulations on your win, Garath!

[Garath]

I think that when I was starting this game, my aim of taking the early worker and connecting the Stone up post haste was mostly intentional, to see whether something different would work. I have to say, though, now it mostly looks like

I probably should have made use of the in-game dotmap effect, since I believe I had a session break even that early on, and so just didn't remember well enough.

I'm fairly convinced by my observation about the jungle. I was just wondering whether Sirian would be allowed to actually confirm it.

I think Hinduism was worth the delay on the cows, personally. I got a lot of use out of the shrine, even though it was only my own lands and a few others as I could get to them. I was hoping to get some people to join me in Hinduism, but in the end it was more important to keep them happy, so I joined the Buddhist sect (all but the two northern AIs). Hence my good relations with Alex, and for that matter Genghis for much of the game. I had better with Gandhi before he died, of course.

Don't know what I was smoking with all the Combat I archers. I definitely knew better than that long before today, though.

I know my military was Just Enough: after all, I survived, didn't I? I sure didn't expect it to have been *more* than so many others were running, though. I had tough enough times with what I had, and thought (and still think) that I didn't really have nearly enough.

As to the wars themselves, mostly I just remember thinking they were cool. That picture of Genghis' three-pronged assault, and the scrambling defence I was doing, still creates a really good feeling when I see it
Similarly, once I got over the death of my dreams for Mongolian destruction, I was really quite impressed by Genghis' counterstrike on my attack force. It speaks volumes about the ability this game will have to keep going in months and years to come. Well done, all of you who had an input in that!

The final war with Monty was just scary. I simply didn't have the strength to stand. I was drafting to the maximum as soon as I could, and I still lost three cities! I'm still not sure whether it was for him to accept my desperate peace offer, since I'm not sure whether I could have survived at all if he'd pressed the attack! Go AI! On the other hand, I could have definitely survived the war I did have (if even more raggedly) without Vassalage and Theocracy, so I continue to be really irritated with myself that I used them without realising, and lost my scoring of a rarely-taken cultural path. :mad:

Both Gandhi and Washington had significant tech leads at the times of their deaths. Would you have any idea whether they were targetted because of that, or did they just lose out because they were too peaceful and didn't build enough military either?

Thanks for the comments. While I'm here, if there's any comment anyone'd like to make about the report style itself (more pictures here, more detail there) I'd be interested in constructive criticism so the next one can be better.

--Garath

[Maniac Marshall]

Wow, finally annother game where the AI wever very agressive against India and America, like they were in mine.

Congrats on having your stratedgy work out, even if you found ways you could have done it better.

I also went for Hinduisim straight away, and agree if you were going to try at all, you had to do it right away.

I think the thing with america and India getting targeted was just luck (meaning thats who the other AI's hated, luckily for you)

- Maniac