Oh wow. I guess I have to register, and play this game. An Adventure? That doesn't happen every day.
Some background, by which I mean, may as well post my life story in case anyone's interested:
I grew up on the Civilization series, all the way back to II, which I played obsessively on our old Windows 95 machine long ago. I was 7 years old on the release date of III, and loved it, though I had no idea what was going on at the time and struggled on the easiest difficulty levels. Of course, Deity, Emperor, and even Monarch were forbidding dark worlds to my child's hindbrain, too remote to comprehend, too terrifyingly difficult to even consider playing. Yet I was hooked on the franchise, and played endless Chieftain and Warlord games that never reached the Modern Era, dreaming of something greater but never daring to leave my comfort zone. Upon IV's release, I played it irregularly until the middle of high school, again scarcely understanding even the most basic of mechanics, and BTS as well, for a time.
Somewhere along the line, I picked up a weird affinity for the Civ 3 Stories & Tales section over at CFC. I've got fond memories of staying up long into the night, procrastinating on 9th grade homework sets by reading classics like tr1cky's worst start ever game, handy9000's Sid AW game, and all sorts of others that have since faded into memory. I remember spending days reading The Vanguard, by BasketCase, from start to finish, with the sort of fascinated reverence typical of an early adolescent who'd just discovered their first space opera, bizarrely filtered through the lens of Civilization that my approximation to Star Wars was. I heard about the legendary Celtic Peacekeepers game, by Daftpanzer, which had briefly shone with unmatched brilliance for a few months in 2004 before being tragically cut down in its prime when the thread was derailed by flaming. Of course, that's not to say that, from my perspective, the death of that thread should have been at all unique save for my misplaced idealism -- these stories were all long gone, finished or abandoned years ago, and I was picking through the bleached bones of a forum devoted to a derelict game, populated by faces and names that had long since faded from the memories even of their owners. Such was their quality, though, that I yearned to see these phantoms rise up, and participate actively in the glory days of CFC, rather than as such a pallid spectator. Perhaps Vanadorn understood the appeal of this sort of romanticism -- his Pax Romana, perhaps the most famous story of them all, continued its irregular updating into 2011, and a few months ago I checked the CFC boards and was shocked to find its thread on the front page once again. The last post, by Anonymous2U: "Wow 10 years and I still come back to check for updates. I know V will finish this someday". Yes, and as do I.
For a long time, I forgot about this, and was content to allow the intimidating Deity difficulty level, my childhood dream, to remain forever out of reach. That lasted until V broke during my senior year of high school. I, like many RB community members, was disappointed, and found many of my nascent objections crystallized by Sullla's article on the subject, which I happened to stumble upon during my first visit to CFC in years a few days after release. One thing led to another, and I obsessively binge-read the entire contents of his website, in the process unconsciously advancing my non-existent IV proficiency dramatically without ever playing a game. When I ran out of material there, I jumped over to the suggested links, and found Kylearan's site, and, of course, yours, T-Hawk (I've wondered for a while now...is it after the Street Fighter character?), and devoured them all. I got hooked on reports harder than I had ever been on the game itself, and for good reason -- far from the mere entertainment I'd derived from unconsciously muddling with Civ in the past, the true pros played with style, with forethought and grand strategy, and dissected the game with an almost scientific rigor that was to my awakening mind at first incomprehensible, then spectacular, then...fascinating. I was in deep. And so it was only a matter of time before I found the Great Library.
I went through every Civ III report on Sirian's site over a period of years, again and again, to the point that I can still reconstruct the broad outlines of most of them from memory alone. Each was sublime, in its way, but I was most drawn to the Deity games. The liminally perfect Epic Four, without an ounce of fat on it anywhere under the insane 1.0.4 tech pace, with a Diplomatic victory in the 10th century (!). The desperate, defiant struggle against overwhelming odds and the creeping inexorability of Aztec domination victory of Epic Twelve. What I thought (until I discovered Sid Vicious) was Sirian's greatest game in Epic 30, won on a tech-steal coinflip with the entire country crashing and burning around him, narrowly managing to escape the planet with his life, and yet achieving a glorious victory. And Kobaiyashi Maru, with a start much worse than tr1cky's, which I don't think anyone could have salvaged. Not on Deity, at least. Deity was unforgiving.
When I inevitably returned to Civ III, I found that my studies had prepared me well, and I went from floundering on Warlord as a child to handily beating Emperor on my first game back. And so I trained, alone in isolation, playing III games irregularly during my scattershot spare time over more years, slowly working my way up the difficulty ladder. I beat Demigod by a hair and a miracle, burning down the Sumerian capital to barely beat them to the spaceship with nukes popping all around my homeland and the very ground burning and roiling beneath as the last Incan citizens escaped into the universe. I wasn't sure what I was working towards, a lonely ghost reliving the specter of Civ III long after the rest of the world had moved on. That is, until at last it loomed before me -- the forbidden setting. Deity level.
Deity beat me hard on my first attempt. I took a good thrashing. And then again, and again. I lost, and I lost, and I lost. I played one very promising game as the Japanese, and conquered my continent and made it to tanks, but this was the final build of CFC and so the other continent had a monster Agricultural super-AI established by the late middle ages that I had no chance to catch. And so I lost. The next start I rolled was as the Russians. I still remember the sinking in my heart when my initial scout found the Chinese capital before their borders expanded, six tiles due north from Moscow. I got very little from Exp, no techs as I recall, and certainly no magical free settlers. But I was able to grab 4 cities of good land through warrior blockades, and another 4 in the southern tundra, relying on the fact that the land down there was so bad, I could expect the AIs to leave it alone long enough to justify prioritizing other spots. Civs started collapsing around me in the late ancient age, and I built a few archers and grabbed the Celts' aggressive first-ring poach here, two Portuguese cities there. The Indians were rolling, and surprised me by reneging on our alliance vs Portugal to smack me to the tune of 3 cities -- ouch. But I somehow clawed back and got peace, and the Indian Shanghai, managing to sign as soon as they kicked off their GA with a WE. When India hit China, I followed their coattails with a handful of swords, including one army, and managed to steal 3 productive Chinese core cities from under their noses. India hit me again, knocked me back 3 cities again, but this time I was to Cossacks and barely kept my footing. Then across the sea I met the Maya, who as the Agricultural super-AI had long dominated their continent and were cruising to a culture win. I narrowly managed to beat them to tanks and crashed their shoreline when they were at 84k or so. I burned one city and set up a fort, and 250 1-movers took 15 minutes to move up next to the city. There was no way it could hold, my entire force was facing sure annihilation. But then, the revelation -- I could bomb out all the roads BEHIND the Mayan infantry, abandon my fort city, and outrun them back to their core with my 2-movement tanks! Once the Mayan threat was eliminated, I was to mechs, and India popped like a balloon, and I was through! What a watershed moment, I thought, that nobody else will ever know of, and yet which represented the culmination of such a broad arc of my prior life.
Imagine my surprise, then, to discover upon browsing the RB homepage that this community was still active, still chasing the rarefied optimization of a CivIV older now than III was when I first discovered CFC. Surely, there must be kindred spirits here. And so I've lurked for about a year, with my IV skills far outstripped by those of any forum member, unable to contribute meaningfully to discussion, but gloriously able to view the crepuscular glory days of the last bastion of competitive Civilization in real time.
For a Pitboss or PBEM game, I certainly don't have the time, or the skill level.
But an Adventure? I don't have the time, but I can't turn this down. Who knows how many years it will be before another one comes around.
(Oh, and I'll turn 21 on the closing date. Happy birthday to me
)
Great first post! And a belated congratulations on your first deity AI stomp. 
