Adventure 5 - Veovim's Report

[Veovim]

The patch arrived too soon for me to finish on time, so this will have to be a shadow game. Regardless, I enjoyed the game (thanks to Sirian for putting it on) and wanted to try writing a report for it.

Seeing the variety of resources in the immediate vicinity, plus fresh water, I settled in place. Seeing three stones nearby, I wondered what I was missing in their place.


I researched agriculture and animal husbandry first, then researched towards bronze working, hoping to find any copper. Obviously, that didn't work out. After that, I picked up a couple techs like pottery and archery, and set course for literature. My initial game plan was to generate a bunch of great scientists for academies. I went for the Great Library because between two scientist specialists, the points from the library, and the philosophical trait, it seemed like a good way to get a whole bunch of scientists in short order. I settled my second city (Hamburg) to get marble.


I met Saladin pretty early, and settled cities 3 (Munich) and 4 (Cologne) to wall him off.


Saladin founded both Hinduism and Judaism and built the shrines for them, and I originally planned to invade him for the land and shrine income when I reached catapults and longbows, but that didn't survive the planning stage (more on that later).

Taoism is founded in 475 BC (I believe it was by Isabella). Someone reaching Philosophy that early had me worried about my Great Library plans for a while, but I eventually got it in 25 BC.


Way back around 1000 BC a barb city got founded way off to my east. Around 400 AD, I started to get a fair bit of barb harassment, but didn't quite have the economy to support that city yet. In 620, I noticed that it expanded its borders culturally. I didn't know they could do that. Around 1070, a barb archer went on a rampage and killed a few of mine. Things could have gotten dicey if my longbows hadn't appeared a few turns later. I finally captured the city in 1230.


I finally began meeting the other civs in 1160.


They were ahead of me in tech to varying degrees, and that led me to wimp out of my plans to invade Saladin. In retrospect, I should have gone ahead with it anyway. Louis was the least advanced of the other civs, and I managed to trade with him and reach parity with everyone but HC in relatively short order.

Catching up with HC was a little harder. In order to do that, I spent a fair bit of time emphasizing peaceful techs, so I missed out on my chance to invade Saladin with grenadiers. I did get the Statue of Liberty in 1802 with the help of a great engineer, and rushed to biology after democracy to try to get the most out of representation as soon as possible. This also led to the city governors running a lot of engineers once I got factories up.


Between 1719 and 1834 there was a "war" between Isabella and Saladin (and his ally, HC), but no cities changed hands. That was the only combat in my game. The overall tech pace was pretty slow for so much peace, and I'm not sure why.

As I started getting my engineers, I used one to rush Broadway (in 1852) for a little cultural relief against Saladin and a little more happiness.

Of the modern age techs, I went for laboratories first, which pushed my research rate well over HC's. It did, however, delay my getting Rocketry for 15 or 20 turns, so HC completed the Apollo program well before me. I wasn't overly concerned because he lacked the techs to actually build the parts, but I made a point of trading for communism and getting Scotland Yard built just in case. This turned out to be a blessing, as HC and Louis had both popped a source of aluminum.

I went for the free great engineer from fusion, and used him and another one that was stored up to rush the Three Gorges Dam all the way from scratch in 1935. That was just as I finished the Apollo program, so I finally had lots of production just in time for my spaceship parts.


I finished researching all the spaceship techs shortly thereafter, and shut off research to have lots of money for sabotaging HC and Louis (Mao, Izzy, and Saladin never got beyond a couple casings completed). I launched in 1974.

In summary, I didn't realize the power of trade, and calling off my invasion of Saladin's lands slowed down my teching because I didn't have enough land. I also feel like I should have taken better advantage of the available stone and marble to build more early game wonders, but that turned out to be unnecessary in the end. I am, however, happy that I was able to pull off the rushing of the Statue of Liberty and Three Gorges Dam, and that I recognized the need for spies early enough to do something about slowing down HC (and later Louis). Finally, here's a picture of my empire at the end of the game.