Epic One: Carbon's Report

[Carbon Copy]

Executive summary: Spaceship LOSS 1927 AD

Extremely brief rundown: After fighting some wars with Mongolia and Mexico in the classic and medieval eras, rampant peace breaks out and I can only sit by and watch helplessly as Gandhi (with a slightly larger empire than mine) runs ahead of me in tech in the late Industrial and launches his ship ten turns before I could. In all likelihood this would have been a victory if I weren't bound by the honorable variant, but as it was, I couldn't control when I went to war, so when Gandhi (with whom I had extremely good relations the entire game) starts a Golden Age at the same time he begins building ship parts, my hands were tied.

Highlights of the game include me starving Tenochtitlan from size 11 to size 1 due to being unable to work ANY of the city's 20 tiles the entire time I controlled the city, Paris reaching legendary culture with fewer than ten turns of culture slider adjustments and no culture bombs, and me giving Mongolia two ages' worth of tech for free AND railroading his entire civ for him, but Genghis still would neither declare war on India NOR vote for me in the UN elections.

While I was part of the RBCiv crew nearly from the start, I never really took on many of the Epics. Or rather, I took a spin on roughly half of the early Epics, but never finished them and never wrote reports for the incomplete games. My hard drive has since been wiped and reformatted since those olden days, so I can't say for certain which ones I tried and which ones I didn't, but I know didn't stick out an Epic till the bitter end until the Always War Epic 14 (where I got the fastest Domination victory because all the good players went for Conquest, and ended up finishing middle-of-the-road on points standings). Maybe things will change with Civ 4. Maybe not. We'll see.



First things first - I Begin with some bookkeeping moves - Grid on (CTRL - T), Resource markers on (CTRL - R, discover a silk resource I had overlooked in the northeast corner of the visible map, which is why I always turn the resource markers on), since I opened this game from the file instead of opening it from inside the game, the leader name defaults to my CIV online handle "CarbonCopy". Since having five hundred different saves that all begin with "CarbonCopy" doesn't make for a very clear filing system, I change leader name to "Epic 1 Louis XIV" (I don't know what the name Sirian gave the French Leader originally, that opening from a file thing really bugs me). If anybody can tell me how to always start the game with the grid and resource markers on, I'd truly appreciate it.

I begin by building Warrior-Warrior-Warrior-Worker-Settler in Paris, and founding Orleans to the northeast in 1700 BC to claim the silk, wheat, and pigs.

My third city, Lyons, was built in 580 BC, to the northwest, taking another pig, rice, and a whole lotta coastal tiles.

My fourth city, Rhiems, was built in a horrible location due to the existence of not one, but TWO TABCs, Harrapan, and Kassite. It claimed the banana tile for later, but was surrounded by SO MUCH JUNGLE that it was unhealthy at size ONE and coudn't grow until I built a road to it.



After the first settler, Paris goes straight into the Pyramids. Complete them in 740 BC



And then after the Pyramids, I figure what the heck, let's do Stonehenge in there, too. Complete those in 580 BC



My early science builds were kind of unfocused. I start Animal Husbandry (to farm my animals), Fishing (to work the lake tiles by Paris), Mining (on the way to Masonry, I believe), Masonry, Mysticism (trying to found Judaism), Meditation ( move, since I didn't realize until I finished researching it that it didn't lead to Monotheism, and then gave up on Judaism), Bronze Working (Copper/Slavery/Forest Chop), Iron Working. And then I enter the Classical Era...only to start working on Pottery.

I run as little military as I think I can get away with, and try to stay on the good sides of Montezuma and Khan by not building close to any of their current cities, but they go ahead and build close to mine, then get upset when my creative trait, Stonehenge, and libraries start to overpower the culture of their heathen burgs. The third ring of culture from Orleans cuts into the territories of both Texcoco and Ning-Hsia in Mexico and Mongolia, respectively.

On the early religious front, Gandhi founds Buddhism in 3480 BC.

Hinduism wasn't founded until 2120 BC, by Genghis Khan, of all people. I figured that if Gandhi wasn't going to try for the sweep, Montezuma, the other Spiritual civ in this game, would have taken a stab at it. But I was wrong, and the Mongolians are the second civ on the religious scene.

Judaism was founded in 840 BC in America.

Diplomatically, it was clear early on that the AIs were lining up into two distinct blocs: The Sane Folks, comprising of India and America, and the Nutjob Alliance, consisting of Mexico, Mongolia, and Greece. In a somewhat disastrous move, when Alexander asks me to cancel deals with India in 120 AD, I decide to side with the Nutjobs and agree. I do this largely out of fear of the Aztecs and the Mongols being right on my doorstep, while America and India are both quite distant, and unlikely to fight me if they don't like how I act. My die cast, I sign the Three Stooges each to Open Borders.

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!



Who was the one who chose unwisely here?

The date that this happens: 160 AD. My alliance with the Nutjobs lasts for all of TWO TURNS before I got sneak attacked. Anyhow, I had nothing but cardboard cutouts for defense (most of my better units off raiding Barbarian cities at the time), so I just sit my units in Orleans, kill his units at a 2:1 ratio, and in 260 AD, force Khan into adopting Paganism as the only peace concession I can wring out of his hide. At least I'll make him waste some turns to anarchy if he wants to change back.

I do manage to capture one of the TABCs during this war. Harrapan falls to me in 180 AD.

And then, the turn I come to peace with Mongolia, GREECE sneak-attacks me in 260 AD. What gives? Alex is all the way across the world. I agreed to his demand to stop dealing with the Indians. I signed him and his crazy friends up to Open Borders. What does he have against me, and how'd he move a stack of five chariots and some warriors all the way over here from Greece? Like Khan, I just kill his invading stack, then six or seven turns of phony war occur where Alex refuses to talk to me but doesn't send a second stack of units to follow up the first. Eventually he gets over it and agrees to peace.

Incidentally, after cutting off trade deals with him, Gandhi refuses to talk to me for nearly 400 years.

Well, since he had so much fun the last time we did this, in 530 AD, I spot a couple axes and a chariot walking suspiciously close to the Franco-Mongolian border, and figure Genghis has come back for seconds.



The next turn, my fears are confirmed, and since I was hoping for one last round of infrastructure to get completed before we tried this again, once again I'm left with my pants down to this somewhat underwhelming invading force.




I have to switch to and whip military in a lot of my core cities to get troops in place to fight his.

The funny thing is that, while Ning-Hsia is the cause of most of these border disputes (being culturally dominated by Orleans), the Khan never bothered to defend it with anything better than an archer and a spearman. After six or seven turns or so of fighting back and forth, I am able to muster a force capable of striking back and bloodying Genghis's nose.

And in 710 AD, I get to the heart of the problem and capture the offending border city, Ning-Hsia.



Now, when I've fought against the AI before, they'll often refuse to grant peace for anything less than the return of their newly captured cities. But in Khan's case, he was fine with me keeping Ning-Hsia, and once and for all, I sign peace with Genghis Khan for a civic swap (again, the only concessions I could wring from him). I suppose his aggressive placement of Ning-Hsia was the only thing driving him to war, since once I took it from him, Khan and I became the best of buddies.

Now, I've mentioned forcing Genghis to switch into horrendous civics like Paganism. That's because, after my attempt to grab Judaism was foiled by my inability to read the tech tree, no religion has come my way yet. Not even Ning-Hsia, which I stole from Khan, had a religion in it. This would continue to be the case for another 360 years.

The turn after making peace with Mongolia, I finally arrive at the tech trading party by discovering Alphabet. In three turns or so, I catch up with the rest of the world in technology by trading and finally get access to Calendar to hook up my bananas, silk, sugar, and dyes.

And shortly after that, I conquer the second TABC, Kassite, giving me control over the entire sub-continent.

I never wrote down when I founded it, but I did found one more mainland city, Tours, on the coast to the west of Rhiems. It didn't have a bonus food in its area, so it never really amounted to much in the way of shield production and never got very large, but it did okay in the commerce department.

In the late religion department, I didn't write down who got Christianity or when (It was founded "in a faraway land", and I suspect the Indians got it, but it was never anybody's state religion). The Aztecs got Confuscianism in 320 AD. I didn't write down when it was discovered, but Taoism was founded by the Mongolians in New Sarai, an isolated city stuck in those islands to the north.



And as for Islam, I managed to found it in Lyons in 1125 AD, a handful of turns after Hinduism spread on its own to Ning-Hsia and prompted me to make it my state religion. I wasn't about to revolt a second time, so I just stuck with Hinduism the rest of the game.

Anyhow, speaking of Hinduism, like I mentioned before, it spread to my empire in 1070 AD via Ning-Hsia (the former Mongol city), and since I finally got a religion somewhere in my empire, I made it my state religion and changed civics to Organized Religion. A few turns later, it managed to spread on its own to Paris, just ahead of the incoming Islamic missionaries. When I made the revolt to Hinduism, it drastically changed the relations with my neighbors. Montezuma and Alexander immediately canceled their deals with me and became Annoyed, while Genghis Khan, not too far removed from his second war with me, went from Annoyed to Cautious, and a few turns later suggested Open Borders. My relations with Washington and Gandhi didn't really change, though the attitude breakdown both had them as disapproving of my heathen religion.

I used a Great Engineer that I popped out of Paris eons previously to rush the Hanging Gardens in Orleans as soon as I built an Aqueduct, which marks the first wonder I built since Stonehenge. As for the other wonders in between, India got the Colossus, and both the Parthenon and the Oracle were built "in a distant land" and I never bothered to check back on who got them. Once I had some building construction bonuses with forges and Organized Religion, I began to pick up speed on the late Classical and Medieval wonder race, completing the Great Library (Paris, 1130 AD), the Spiral Minaret (Paris, 1240 AD), Chichen Itza (Orleans, 1355), Sistine Chapel (Paris, 1360), Ankgor Wat (Paris, didn't write down when), Versailles (Rhiems, 1365, with help from a Great Engineer), and the Taj Mahal (Paris 1510, with help from an Engineer).

That isn't to say it was all peaceful building during that time. Hardly. The Aztecs, upset by our religious differences (now that I actually had a religion), declared war on me for the first time in 1180 AD. The war started out kind of slow for Monty: a horse archer here, a horse archer there, and I was able to take advantage of spearmen to pick them off before they did too much damage.



Then, in 1220 AD, his stack of Doom showed up, nine Horse Archers, a jag, and a spearmanr, headed straight for Orleans.



At this point, I decide that perhaps I need some friendly assistance. None of the AIs were willing to consider declaring on Montezuma, though I was able to get my new best buddy Genghis Khan to embargo the Aztecs and keep them from attacking me via Mongolian territory (that was quite irksome the first few times Monty did that). Interestingly enough, by the end of the game, convincing the Khan to cancel his deals with Montezuma ranked as one of the single largest strikes against me in our relations (on par with "You declared war on me!". Luckily for me, the AI has trouble executing a plan and I'm able to talk Monty into peace the turn his stack is in position to assault Orleans. I took 10g in peace negotiations (due to a very favorable unit kill ratio), and Orleans is spared from seeing whether a Combat II swordsman, a City Garrison I longbow, and a Combat I spearman could stand up to 8-10 attacking horse archers and a random Jag and archer.

Unfortunately, Monty took his toll by pillaging everything north and east of Orleans and Ning-hsia, causing a few cities to riot or grow unhealthy as I got a pig, copper, and wheat disconnected. I don't have the date I signed peace, but it was prior to 1240 AD.

Later, on the tail end of my Taj Mahal Golden age, war breaks out between India and Mexico. Eager to take Texcoco (and possibly more) and itching for an honorable route to more war with the Aztecs, I agree to Gandhi's request for assistance in 1535 and enter the war on India's side.



After 10 turns of fighting, I manage to catapult down the defenses and capture Texcoco in 1585, only to have it captured back the next turn by a horde of Aztec Knights that jumped into the city from the fog. And then Gandhi makes peace with Montezuma, so I'm obligated to stop fighting as soon as Monty wants to stop without extorting me. But I don't even wait that long. With all my units out of place, my Golden Age finished, war weariness ratcheting up, and all my work on Texcoco undone, I gave Montezuma Drama for peace in 1595.

But I didn't need to call the Psychic Friends Network to know that Montezuma wasn't going to leave things at that. It may be interesting to note that when India made peace with Mexico, one Indian knight got teleported into my territory. With the path east blocked off by Mongolia and Mexico (India's two worst enemies), the Knight had nowhere to go and wandered around my territory for the rest of the game.



In 1676, Montezuma doesn't disappoint, and declares war on me, marking the third time we fought. His initial attack was three Knights, two Horse Archers, a crossbow, and a catapult, which get summarily piked and shot upon their arrival at Orleans. I then braced myself for the bigger, meaner, better-organized second wave of attackers, only to realize a few turns later that they weren't going to come. He had the better part of a century to build up an offensive force, and six attackers and one siege engine was the best he could do. By now, I had a break in the wonder building and had cranked out quite a few catapults and Musketeers for this inevitability, and after bombing the defenses of the Texcoco down to 4%, I lose only my first two attackers in taking (retaking?) the city in 1700.



Now, at this point, I had a choice to make, and I think I chose unwisely (and it perhaps cost me the game in the process). With Texcoco under my control, Military Tradition newly discovered, Montezuma gassed, and plenty of units in place, it was a no-brainer to continue the campaign against the Aztecs. I had two options: either continue up the western coast and capture those cities way up in the ice, or send an expeditionary force directly into the (as yet still unknown) Aztec heartland. I probably should have decided to grab those coastal cities, but instead I struck out with the greater part of my healthy army into the center of Mexico. Not too far in, I uncover the location of Tenochtitlan (while my world map was ridiculously outdated for the better part of the game, none of the other AIs had the lands immediately surrounding Tenochtitlan on their maps, either), and discover it to be not heavily defended. While it would have been better to avoid the capital and grab some other cities (like the Confuscian holy city, Tlateloco, Teotihuacan along the Mongolian border, or swing back and grab those ice cities), I decide to try to decapitate Montezuma's empire by striking immediately at the capital. And I succeed in taking Tenochtitlan in 1708, but at the cost of a significant number of units. With war weariness getting to the point that I had to run up to 40% culture to keep my core cities from revolting (the only time I ever adjusted the culture slider above 0%), and a complete lack of healthy units to press my advantage, I decided to stop fighting and get 460g in a lump sum, 6gpt, and the Mexican world map in the negotiations.

Now, while I controlled Tenochtitlan, I only controlled the city square, the other 20 tiles belonged to Montezuma. Tenochtitlan started off at size 12, all twelve citizens being Artists or Resistors. For a while there, it was producing some pretty impressive culture for a city that had no culture-producing buildings (59 per turn!). But from the time it came out of resistance, it lost a population point every turn until it shrank to size 1, and I never did control any of the adjacent tiles to let it grow back.



For a while after signing peace with Montezuma, I built up quite a reserve of cavalry, thinking that Montezuma would surely want to settle the score at least one more time. But Montezuma was already starting to lag in tech the last time we went to war, and he was never really able to cope with losing Texcoco and his capital. While he was somewhere between Furious and Annoyed with me for the rest of the game, he never had the nerve to attack again.

Thinking that it was only a matter of time before I got dragged into another war, I start cranking out the cavalry. However, I never got to use them, because after that war, global peace broke out, and Gandhi started pulling away from me technologically in the late Industrial and Modern ages. In order to get some tech trades going, I had used an extremely weird route through the Industrial age which didn't give me factories or coal plants until very late in the era. And while I was able to complete Broadway the Eiffel Tower, and the U.N., Gandhi took the Statue of Liberty, Rock and Roll, the Kremlin, and Hollywood. I might have been able to keep up if it hadn't been for Washington refusing to trade me any technology whatsoever that wasn't already a dozen turns out of date.

Anyhow, while I controlled the UN, I wasn't able to come anywhere close to a Diplo victory, and with no way to control when I went to war, all I could do was sit and watch while Gandhi kicks off a golden age right as he starts completing SS parts. I made a good show of it, catching up in tech by building the Internet and then cash-rushing the Space Elevator and laboratories in my part-building cities, but he was still able to blast off in 1927, ten turns before my last round of ship parts would have completed. My buddy Khan was no help, either, choosing to spark a late war against the Aztecs (who were a full age behind everybody else) instead of tripping up the Indians. Nevertheless, I decided to help the Khan out by gifting him up to modern tech, donating all those cavalry I had built up against the possibility of a fourth Franco-Mexican war, and then sold him my only oil so he could build Modern Armor.



Then, he got ticked off enough by my "refusal to help him in war" that the next time I called for a diplo victory vote, he abstained! How ungrateful can you be?

Anyhow, here's a shot of the city placement in the western region of the pangea. This one dates to 540 AD and doesn't include any of the island cities, but it does show the location of all the mainland cities I came to control.

[Jester]

"...giving Mongolia two ages' worth of tech for free AND railroading his entire civ for him, but Genghis still would neither declare war on India NOR vote for me in the UN elections."

Ungrateful wretch. You shoulda nuked him into the stone age, honourable or no.

Good game, well played! Sure is tough when you're up against a runaway AI and you don't have the option to hose them. A turn here or there and my game would have gone the same way.

-Jester

[Smegged]

Peace, PEACE, what on earth is peace.

*looks it up*

You mean there was a time where there wasn't any wars going on in the world. Phht I don't believe it. Ridiculous I say. The world was an honourable bloodbath. I don't think I saw more than about 5 turns of world peace from about 1000BC onwards!

[Carbon Copy]

Yeah. I'm still working on the proper writeup (I suppose it will be done tomorrow), but the big problem I had was that I kept getting war declared on me when I was least able to handle it, so I was often forced to end the conflict as soon as they'd talk. Finally, I got myself to a point right around where I discovered Military Tradition that I had about a million cavalry sitting around waiting for me to be attacked by somebody, but that moment never came. About fifteen turns before Gandhi blasted off, Genghis declared war on Montezuma, marking the first armed conflict in several centuries, and I marched my legions of cavalry over and gifted them to Mongolia so I'd be rid of them. At least they got to see some action.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I got myself to a point right around where I discovered Military Tradition that I had about a million cavalry sitting around waiting for me to be attacked by somebody, but that moment never came.

Well, I know I wouldn't declare war on someone who has a million cavalry sitting around waiting for just that to happen...

The AIs respect power, it seems.

-Kylearan

[Sirian]

Well, I know I wouldn't declare war on someone who has a million cavalry sitting around waiting for just that to happen...

The AIs respect power, it seems.

Indeed they do! So that is going to make life interesting for the Honorable variant, since when you are loaded for bear, all you'll hear is the sound of crickets chirping. And when you are not prepared for it, that is when they will come after you. ... So the trick will be to be prepared without being overprepared.

GIFTING the Cavalry away! Now that's amusing.


- Sirian

[Carbon Copy]

writeup updated, though I don't have time to insert the pictures.

Also, after I finished the game, I went back to an 1875 save (just prior to building the UN) and decided to see if I could win the game with one dishonorable move. I paid Genghis Khan to declare war on India for a bunch of techs, and I did the cavalry gifting move so he could cause more mischief. I also switched some cities over to building tanks, gifting them to Mongolia whenever I built them. I also sent workers into Mongolian territory, and rebuilt railroads wherever Indian units pillaged them, slowing down India's progress as a lot of units stuck around near the Indian/Mongolian border and kept re-pillaging the stuff I repaired instead of moving forward and attacking.

This proxy war was a complete success. And by success, I mean India captured or razed all but one Mongolian city, but spent so much time and effort on it that he didn't complete any ship parts, and I was able to blast off in 1939. And the best part? I was able to keep "pleased" relations with India the entire time, suffering only a -1 reputation hit for hiring the Mongols to fight him. Not long after gifting away the bulk of my military, Montezuma decided to try his luck against me one more time, only to have me insta-upgrade a lot of units to Mech Infantry (which you may be surprised to learn defeats cavalry very easily) and bring in the Americans (who had just completed their own Apollo Program, and needed something else to focus on) on my side. With whatever spare production I had aside from building ship parts, plus upgrading all sorts of obsolete units into Mech Infantry (including a spearman and a Warrior), I was able to march through Mexico and conquer all of it except for one city that was taken by America.

[Bede]

The loss you got should have been mine.

[Carbon Copy]

Pictures added, along with some minor edits.