Well I have been playing a lot of AW as I find diplomacy frustrating compared to civ3 (which is good by the way). I think it is a much better system but my main complaint is transparency. Who is your worst enemy, what is your favorite civic, how much do you weight different things like religion who makes lots of demands or is likely to backstab etc.;how do I figure this out to make rational choices. I have some idea from experience but if this is laid out quantitatively somewhere I’d love to know. In any case, this will be a game where we play honorably, that is we may not declare war. If war is declared on us we can do as we please to the offending civ. We will need to manipulate civs to declare on us for expansion purposes but they will always get first strike. Will also need to cultivate friends to watch our back and avoid the dogpile.

Settings:
Civ: Open for discussion. Someone not played much.
Emperor
Map: Open but I was thinking Pangaea
Epic speed.


Mark
uberfish
Bezhukov
Woobi
Mutineer
Blid

I'd be interested in taking part. I haven't played any SGs before but have a good number of solo wins at Emp and Immortal.

If the intention is to deliberately provoke AIs into declaring war I'd suggest a Spiritual civ - Isabella maybe, she usually gets bad press. Or Asoka to grab territory early with Organized.

What exactly does honourable mean? Is bribing AIs to attack each other and so on allowed?

What exactly does honourable mean? Is bribing AIs to attack each other and so on allowed?


We will have to discuss that if we can get any players. ATM it only means we cannot declare outright. Haven't thought about being asked in but I lean against it.

Come on I know plenty of you can handle Emp.

I'd like to play. I'd suggest that we can accept invitations to war, we just can't declare ourselves.

I would be interested...

Epic speed is a bit slow, but I could live with it.
What about Continent map? More fun more variety in my book.
Any civ will do.

About me, I am playing on Empiror level, normal speed solo.
So I only unexpirience about slow speed games.

Would join if you take me as I'll be learning a lot from you guys
I won some monarch games on 1.52 but haven't won any emp game yet.

Panagea would be easier to provoke AI I think. Agree with uberfish on spiritual trait. I haven't seen much Monty games around, maybe we can have a tropical map to give jaguars more sense

Welcome:

uberfish
Bezhukov
Woobi
Mutineer
Blid

We have a team. I can't start this till Monday and we have a few things to discuss. So far the only rule is that we can;t declare war outright another issue is:

Can we accept war invitations?

I was leaning no but it can hurt/help relations so I could go either way.

Civ: I like creative for this kind of game. We must do an early land grab esp if we choose Pangaea and creative really helps with this and getting cities in optimal places. Also helps with fast expansions in early wars. I could see pairing this with industrious to try for the Pyramids and a specialist based economy or spiritual for quick civics/religion changes or aggressive for the free upgrade. So my votes would be for Louis or Hatty or Kublai Kahn.

Let me know your opinions and we can start Monday.

Also since it is 1.61 patch now I was thinking of normal speed since you don't get as much from Epic.

Amongst the three civs u mentioned, my preference go for Hatty and its spiritual trait. If we are playing honorable, accepting war invitations is Okay for me. Not sure though about bribing AI to declare war if we are not involved.

Hatshepsut would be my strong preference from those three as well. She gets spiritual for diplomacy and quick Pottery to finance early expansion. I think Aggressive is wasted if we can't declare war at will, and really dislike Louis since he has the two weakest late game traits and Industrious leaders can build Stonehenge quickly making creative unnecessary.

for war invitations I'd suggest (in keeping with the honourable theme):

We can only join in to help allies (civs that are Pleased or higher.)
We can only ask civs to declare war against our enemies (civs that are Annoyed or lower.)

Or we could choose to forego asking the AI to declare war altogether if it seems it would be too easy to go to war that way. Up to Mark1031 though as the variant was his idea.

We have a typical start with rice and not much else. Found in place. I see Egypt does not start with mysticism?? I thought spiritual did. Oh well. We start with Ag so start a worker and research to pottery. Went Pottery->AH and then popped it from a hut 2 turns in. Nice but our only nearby horses are on an island it appears. Researched mining and BW and luckily we have copper in our radius. Lots of Lux nearby. Spit out an early settler and grabbed a spot with spices and cows. Meet Cyrus,Ashok and Caesar who all appear to be in the west. Khan, Gengis that is is to the N. I am working on sailing to grab some of the nearby Islands particularly the one with horses. Tentative dotmap attached. I would say the yellow dot is top priority but we will need a couple of axes first as there are barb archers around.

Sorry for the brief write up but I have to get to work.

Oh and I like Uberfish’s rules for honorable with 1 modification.

We must join in to help allies if they ask(civs that are Pleased or higher.)
We can only ask civs to declare war against our enemies (civs that are Annoyed or lower.)

That seems quite honorable to me basically we are peaceful but don't cross us or our friends.

20 turns ea first round.

I think it would be best to grab the yellow dot and the banana/ivory site 4N 5W of Thebes (looks like an amazing commerce city) to the NW ASAP before the AIs take them. Since this is Pangaea the islands should stay unclaimed for a while and we can take them next.

I think given the abundance of calendar resources and since we will have sailing soon, it makes most sense to shoot for iron working and calendar next, then Literature. We will want a lot of workers, settlers, and axes and tempting as the Great Lighthouse is I don't think I will go for it on my turns.

I'm going to play it along those lines later tonight (GMT) unless anyone convinces me otherwise soon.


On honour - I would change 'must help allies' to Friendly civs only because I think it would be wrong to have to declare on a Friendly civ because a Pleased civ asked us to.

I think it would be best to grab the yellow dot and the banana/ivory site 4N 5W of Thebes (looks like an amazing commerce city) to the NW ASAP before the AIs take them. Since this is Pangaea the islands should stay unclaimed for a while and we can take them next.


The banana/ivory tile is already taken so yellow dot seems the best spot.
After yellow, should come violet SW of copper. Concur on islands being last priorities.


I think given the abundance of calendar resources and since we will have sailing soon, it makes most sense to shoot for iron working and calendar next, then Literature. We will want a lot of workers, settlers, and axes and tempting as the Great Lighthouse is I don't think I will go for it on my turns.


IW to get the gems and Calendar next to spam plantations around. Way to go :)

1920 - I was sending one of the warriors from Memphis over to watch yellow dot, but Barbarians spawned a city 1 west of yellow dot before it got there. Thebes will build axemen to deal with this.

1880 - Memphis reaches size 2, insert a worker into queue before the granary.

1840 - Sailing finishes and I proceed to Iron Working.

1760 - Cyrus founded Arbela stealing the cows by purple dot. Being honourable Egyptians we don't declare war. I am keeping the two warriors in Memphis because barbarian archers are wandering around nearby.

1400 - Memphis finishes its worker. I will let it complete the Granary so it can whip the next build.

1320 - Chopping one of the river forests near Thebes so we can build a cottage there.

1280 - Iron working done revealing some iron near Arbela. On to writing.

1240 - Barbarian city spawned a 3rd archer against our 4 axes. I estimate an 85% chance of taking the city so I am going to attack anyway. I go 2 for 2 against archers.

I apologise if this is against SG etiquette, but I am going to hand over a fraction of a turn early with the last two axes unmoved (one isn't promoted yet either) so the team can decide whether we want to keep Cuman to save a settler or raze it to found 1 square east on the original yellow dot which is better.

Either way we will have gems soon, and 3 good city sites which can do both hammers and commerce even though Cyrus has been stealing our territory. If we can diplomatically arrange a successful Medieval war against Cyrus, we should be in very good shape. The barbarian archers that were loitering around have suicided against Cyrus, so it should be safe to send one of the two warriors in Memphis out scouting now.

current screenshot and save:

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/8400/mm151240bc5mz.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Darn, half game gone when I was sleeping.

My opinion will be raise it. It is really in bad location, need to be shifted.
Can I suggest Farms on Grass in Thiebes?
Calendar will give as additional happiness boust.
Thiebes by the look of it do not have that mach excess food.
Farming river grassland + cottaging plains are more efficient is city managment and production and will let thiebes to grow full size.
In addition I would sugest keep 2 forests at thiebes.
Couple farms would not hurt Memphist to.

Looking good.

I don't think we need farms at Thebes right now. The city is happiness capped already, and we can both micro it to run +5 food surplus when it is time to grow, and use a combination of 1-2 mines and 1-2 specialists to halt growth at the cap.

Memphis will have a granary shortly and be able to cap its population quickly too. I see it as our strongest production city in the long term. However, we might decide that we need some short term commerce to get up the Alpha/Drama/Lit tech branch, in which case we should drop a couple of cottages there quickly.

The AI tends to get to calendar fairly quickly, we should probably research down the Alphabet line now and aim to trade for mathematics and calendar later.

Gems will give as enogth commerce to get by.
Thiebes may be do not need Farms right that moment, but we should not Cottage Triebess Grassland, as we would need to farm them anyway and Plain cottagess right now even better for city managment.

I had impression that with research of Iron working we commited ourself to Alphavit beelining, and I do not see why not. WE have a huge variety of alphavit resources and they are higth commerce one's.

Yes, IA tend to get them fast, but slower then if we beeline to them ourself.

I thought we could get to calendar off writing + sailing, but actually Maths is a prereq. Researching Iron was necessary to clear the jungles and get the gems hooked up, and writing (which we badly need for libraries too) is prereq for both Alpha and Maths so we are not committed to either path right now.

Well, we sort of are, because it is easy to trade Iron working then Calendar.

From my point of view we are commited, because otherwize we wasted time reseaching Iron Working and sailing.
Because of how rich on calendar resources we are we would really benefit form Calendar.
Math is cheaper tech then Alphavit.

Bezhukov is up.
Woobi On deck

ON strat I like going for Alphabet and trading around. Also I would like to get to cats and then provoke Cyrus to attack. We will need a goodly number of axes and spears. He would have to be #1. but to expand we will really need to take him on and get some iron for swords. I think we should try to do this before longbows.

Also would raise and replace barb city. We are cultural and hemmed in. We cant afford suboptimal cities.

I think Cyrus was the worst possible neighbour we could have had, with Expansive he goes for jungle sites early and Creative means we can't just use our own creative bonus to culture push him. He is also a relatively peaceful AI and provoking a war may be difficult as there has been no religious spread yet.

There is a different approach we could try that would does not involve war with Cyrus and that is cultural victory since we have 3 good city sites and 3 or so crappy ones right now. There's a handy desert buffer to our northeast so we won't have border tensions with more than 1 opponent, both our traits would support it and I think we have enough resources to make it a viable winning strategy. I think it would avoid a lot of the uncertainty in the 'provoke war with Cyrus' plan. If we want to go that route, then we would need to commit to it soon (around the time we finish researching Alphabet) because it would require a drastically different development plan.

The more I think about it the more I like it, since it would be more in keeping with the title of the SG than setting a trap for Cyrus to attack us so we can annex his cities. Let me know what you think.

Agree on razing barb city either way.

I could see trying for cultural but it is such a major commitment to a path early that it worries me a bit. You tend to fall behind in military tech later in the game and in Emp/Pangaea this worries me. I wouldn't mind cultural maybe after an early war with Cyrus to give us some room. We can make demands of him if and if he is not pleased this will drive up to -10 relation points to make him very annoyed. I think if we just go with what land is available to us here we won't have enough to make it research/production wise. And the land Cyrus grabbed is rather nice.

No word from Bezhukov. Let's do a skip

Woobi UP

K got it, will play tonight or tommorow...

To be true, I am really confused why we reseached Iron working and sayling if you are not beelining to Calendar.

We have cooper for defence and we can not declare war.
Befor wasening our relationship with cyrys we should explore the word. WE currently did very limited exploration.
It is actially better to be in a good term with him and go to war at request of other far away civ. If some other civ not to far away we can even go over him or join him.

Looks like Woobi is MIA. Let's do a skip to put

Mutineer UP.

Bild ON Deck.

Woobi and Bezukov could you check in an let us know your status.

OK, I played my turns and there are bad news.
First, 2 remaining axes fail to take barbarian city and die.
That give me a stop. after looking I come to conclusion that we still can take this city, but need reinforcments. I took bouth warriors from second city and send them to help, why fortifying 2 ramaining damaget by promoted axes.
2 turns later I attack with warriors and axes. They all die exept last axe finally taking barbarian city. I raise it.
In a mean time barbarian archer went to our second city, forcing me to whipe axe there.

That put pause of any expancion plan. I build city, but after thinking I took a bit probably contravercial decision.
I build city on Dyes.
My reasoning, we need to have 2 gems online ASAP in order to finance our rush to Calendar.
Only this position create coastal city that could work 2 gems and Rice providing food for working 2 gems. I believe it is a correct decision.

The rest of turns I was building axes and Setlers.

Setler is near intedded stone city site (picture provided)

I think it would be a disent city and it would claim stone and some coast and land.

Research wize I went to Calendar direction.
Writing-Math-Calendar.

I believe it is correct action, as calendar will give as instant commerce/happiness boust.

One more setler in build in order to claim down from capital silk site.
Workers connecting gems. We need a bit more workers.

Ok, got it

Here are some of my thoughts for the turnset. So feel free to point out :smoke: in decisions

- In Heliopolis, granray and growth are due same turn. So I will MM a bit to grow one turn after the granary. Then whip a workboat there for the northern city and then start a lib

- Berlin settler goes to silk spot. City starts spear while growing (3t) then begin worker

- Memphis goes axe->axe

- Northern city with fish and stone begins galley (pbly whipped when possible). Hope there's some iron on the esatern island

Mansa has 4 units on Cyrus iron. what the hell is he doing there ? Emp level = exploring with a pack of 4 ? :crazyeye:

I would not whipe anything in Heliopolis, as it is better it would work 2 gems, and 2 workers will hook up secong gem in no time. Just let it build fish boat naturally.

Turn 91 (600 BC)
Elephantine founded on the spot designated by Mutineer
Decide to go for a work boat.
Elephantine begins: Work Boat

Send axe to visit barb city north

IBT:

Turn 92 (575 BC)
Blid: Mine on gems done. Calendar goes from 14 to 12

IBT:

Turn 93 (550 BC)
Memphis finishes: Axeman

IBT:

Turn 94 (525 BC)
Memphis begins: Axeman

IBT:

Turn 95 (500 BC)
Thebes finishes: Settler
Send settler to silk spot south
Memphis's borders expand
Heliopolis finishes: Granary
Elephantine's borders expand

IBT:

Turn 96 (475 BC)
Thebes begins: Spearman
Heliopolis begins: Galley
Heliopolis grows: 4

IBT:
The barb city has 2 axes and an archer :mad:
While defending, Axeman defeats (2.30/5): Barbarian Axeman
While defending, Axeman loses to: Barbarian Archer (0.84/3)

Turn 97 (450 BC)
Alexandria founded
Alexandria begins: Granary
Memphis grows: 4
Memphis finishes: Axeman

IBT:

Turn 98 (425 BC)
Memphis begins: Axeman
Thebes finishes: Spearman

IBT:

Turn 99 (400 BC)
Thebes begins: Spearman
Thebes grows: 6
Heliopolis finishes: Galley

IBT:

Turn 100 (375 BC)
Heliopolis begins: Library
Memphis finishes: Axeman

IBT:

I had axes heading towards Assyrian but Cyrus was quicker and took it

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/Assyrian.jpg


Turn 101 (350 BC)
Memphis begins: Axeman
Thebes begins: Worker
Alexandria's borders expand

IBT:

Turn 102 (325 BC)
While attacking, Axeman defeats (2.75/5): Barbarian Archer
Axeman promoted: City Raider I
Axeman promoted: City Raider II
Blid: a barb archer passing by offers me the second promotion
Heliopolis grows: 4

IBT:

Turn 103 (300 BC)
Memphis finishes: Axeman
Elephantine finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 104 (275 BC)
Memphis begins: Library
Elephantine begins: Granary
Memphis begins: Settler
Elephantine grows: 2

IBT:
Confucianism founded in a distant land

Turn 105 (250 BC)
Blid: reject Catherine threats. It is the third one to ask for gems
Blid: Everybody is mad about the gems
Tech learned: Calendar
Thebes finishes: Worker

IBT:

Turn 106 (225 BC)
Start masonry to hook the stone
Research begun: Masonry
Thebes finishes: Spearman

IBT:

Turn 107 (200 BC)
Thebes begins: Axeman
Axeman promoted: City Raider I
There is another barb city north with 3 archers and I have 2 axes and a warrior there. A third axe is on his way but Mansa has a stack of 4 units that will arrive before my third axe. I decide to attack hoping to get the city in 2 turns
While attacking, Axeman defeats (3.10/5): Barbarian Archer
While attacking, Axeman defeats (3.30/5): Barbarian Archer
Blid: Very lucky combat. Axes didn't take much damage
Heliopolis grows: 5
Alexandria grows: 2

IBT:

Finally someone comes with a reasonable offer and I say yes

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/AsokaTrade.jpg

Turn 108 (175 BC)
Axeman promoted: City Raider II
While attacking, Axeman defeats (2.25/5): Barbarian Archer
Now, I win with 40% chance and realize it was a mistake. City was size 1 and got razed. It would have been razed by Mansa eventually. The positive thing is we got some promotions for the axes
Razed Saxon
Tech learned: Masonry

IBT:

Turn 109 (150 BC)
I go alphabet. Asoka had it for a while now

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/Asoka.jpg

Research begun: Alphabet
Thebes begins: Worker
Memphis finishes: Settler

We have a settler and 2 choices :

The former barb city with access to Iron :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/IronSpot.jpg

And a nice island where I think we'll be a settling on a resource again :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/citySpot.jpg

IBT:

Turn 110 (125 BC)
Memphis begins: Library
Axeman promoted: City Raider III

Gems were very popular. We had three demands : JC, Gengis Khan and Catherine. I think this goes against honorable code and say no. Gengis asked to stop trading with Asoka too, which I reject. He is not annoyed yet.

Religious and treasury situation. We are oscillating between 50% and 60% science :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/religions.jpg

And relations, I suggest a triangle with Mansa and Asoka :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet1/relations.jpg

There is an axe on queue in Thebes to delay cost (1 turn to finish)

Roster :

Mark -- UP
uberfish -- On deck
Bezhukov -- still missing
Woobi -- with Bezhukov ?
Mutineer --
Blid -- Just Played

We should take that island site now, space is running out on the continent and if we delay it any more the AI might sneak a boat over. I believe we can train Macemen with bronze, so foregoing the iron isn't too bad in the long term. That iron city site is really horrible and would just drain our economy anyway.

Overall we have had a slow start due to Cyrus apparently knowing about our variant rules and exploiting them to aggressively settle towards us (we would have smacked him down in a normal game), then the bad luck with barbarians at Heliopolis. But the discovery of that good island is a bonus and should see us into a healthy midgame.

Pre: Looks like we are in good expansion mode. One of our big problems is lack of religion. ATM I guess we can expand more although I fear Cyrus. We really need to beef up military esp spears as fast units can do a lot of damage.

100BC : Alexandria Granary->lighthouse
75BC: working moving settler.
50BC: Helio Library->Rax
25BC: Torn about settling new town on the sugars to pick up fish or adjacent to pick up plains hill. Go woth adjacent and found Pi-Ramesses. I always tend to favor production and the sugar will provide 4 food. So we can work the hill.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=125416&stc=1&d=1146510206

IT Cyrus wants open boarders. I say no mainly as I fear this may be a prelude to attack which we are not ready for.

1AD: Cyrus has a small stack. 2 swords and 2 immortals heading out of his territory. I wonder what he has in mind.

25AD: They are headed in our direction. Move some troops around and start spear in Helio. This could be ugly.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=125417&stc=1&d=1146510206

50AD: Cyrus maintains his trajectory at Helio. Open boarders with Khan and Cathrine.

75AD: Culture expansion at Helio pops Cy’s troops further away.

100AD: Cy seems to have lost interest in us. I am somewhat more relaxed but watch out. Getting attacked now by the big dog on Emp could be ugly. It would also be very bad timing for us as we cannot really afford to expand further ATM.

I feel a bit unfocused in this one. I am not experienced in culture wins but I do realize we need multiple religions for this approach. I fear if we try it w/o a war of expansion with Cy we will not be strong enough to make it. The one culture game I played had me constantly attacked. OTOH we will need cats for war so we have some time and we do not control the religion factor and just have to hope for spread. I realized I didn’t open boarders with Mansu. We should probably do this if we want the best chance for religion spread. I would even do it with Cy when we are more prepared for war. With some expansion we could do the default space race or more appropriate for this game maybe diplo. Well I guess at the moment we should focus on getting the economy up and running. We are in very good Lux shape and can expand quite a bit. Just as long as no one attacks too soon.

Uberfish -UP
Bezukov- On deck (are you still playing?)

PS could someone tell me how to get the pics in the text. I used to be able to do this but something has changed.

PS could someone tell me how to get the pics in the text. I used to be able to do this but something has changed.

Just put the url in [img] tags

Got it. Going to have a look at the save now.

100 AD - look around and I think we have enough to hold off Cyrus if he attacks. Our scouting is also lacking. Send warrior on an exploring mission to find out what the political landscape looks like, and galley to see what other resources are on the archipelago. I move the two axes onto the forest hill. Change Memphis build to worker, having too much unimproved terrain and no roads to Elephantine is a problem.

125 AD - Cyrus rejoined his stack and is skirting our borders North round Elephantine.

150 AD - Heliopolis Rax -> Axe. Cyrus troops milling around doing nothing.

175 AD - Alexandria Lighthouse -> Library. Need the culture. Heliopolis Axe -> Aqueduct. Troop maintenance is getting expensive, the city will need its health cap bumped once sugar is connected and we chopped the last two forests, and we may have a shot at Hanging Gardens with our stone. Cyrus troops leaving.

Confucianism spreads in Thebes.

200 AD - Caesar offers us clams for cows, I decline as we don't need the health imminently and we have clams on our islands. Which are really pretty good, it turns out.

275 AD - Alpha in. I tentatively set research to Drama. Everyone except Genghis has it Alphabet already, but Drama would be a monopoly for us, and there are border issues with Cyrus. Further bad news, Great Library built by Asoka. Taoism founded somewhere. I disbanded our warrior in the west as Cyrus founded a new city and it is now stuck.

Heliopolis reached its happy cap for now so I made it run 2 scientists which helps.

Genghis is backwards. He's also the only one who we have a tech lead over so we might as well get his old techs. Trade him Mathematics for Mysticism + archery.

I whipped the library in Alexandria, we only own 51% of the cow.

Taoism spreads in Elephantine.

300 AD - Catherine declares war on us (wtf?) and drops a massive stack on the cows next to Alexandria.

Ok I lied, it's 2 archers. For some reason the AI has been declaring war on me without actually having an attack force a lot recently. (see also game Acid01) Alexandria uses the leftover hammers from the whip on a work boat.

I kill the 2 archers with the axe and spear in the city, and the galley leaves.

Pick up meditation and polytheism from Genghis too, for Alphabet.

325 AD - Thebes, Library -> Galley.

350 AD - Not much happens. I put Alexandria on another work boat, next player feel free to veto this if you like.

Genghis still has priesthood to offer for calendar, I didn't do this; we could research it ourselves in 2 turns if we liked, and see if he has monarchy.

Drama due in 7, science rate up to 40%. I don't think we can afford any more military right now except for a galley or two to defend our island interests. No sign of any other troops from Cathy yet.

Our southern archipelago. These islands look like our saving grace as there are two nice slavery/GP farm locations. There are a couple more unscouted islands to the north which look less promising, but we ought to check out. Red dot (or 1 west of it) is close to our capital too. Settler will pop out next turn and there is a workboat ready already.

http://img428.imageshack.us/img428/6642/mm14islands1xx.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

North islands and where Cyrus' troops wandered off to.

http://img304.imageshack.us/img304/9928/mm14islandsnorth9fl.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Our current tech hole.

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/9302/mm14techhole6ju.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Yes, Technologically we are in big pile of ****.

I think we built a lot of bronze age military without being able to use it to take land from Cyrus while neglecting our economy too much, and are paying the price for that now.

Our best bet is probably to settle red dot and get some GP production going there, put up some cottages at Memphis, beeline to Music and try to trade that. Even if one of the AIs gets there first, it's unlikely that two of them will so we should be able to trade that.

Diplo win could be rather tricky as the current AI leaders are in the same religious bloc.

Culture is still an option, and we have two religions now. MM + Cyrus + Asoka as an allied bloc scare me in that they might be able to beat us with a space launch.

Space may be ok if we can get ourselves out of this tech hole.

Either way we need to sort our commerce out quickly.

Oh, our 2nd silk and spices just got connected and we can trade the silk for wine from Cyrus if we choose. There's also the possibility of trading our extra spices and cows for a little gpt from MM and Caesar.

Well Bezukov and Woobi have disappeared so I am taking them out of the roster. If you guys wnat back in just let us know.

We are down to 4 and need 1-2 more players. In any case let's keep it moving:

Mark
uberfish
Mutineer-UP
Blid-On Deck

I guess I might have built too much military but on Emp and our neighbor Cy the #1 in score I was nervous. I think we are OK for now expanding to Islands.

Yes, to mach time wasted in critical time.

The only hope for the game I see is to build all this finisng willagess and use them for GP farm and jump up the tech tree using gp.

I am building Garden, hire second scientist there when it finished. Use GS to discover philosofy and lets hope we can trade something good for it.
Research wize,
researched dramma prieshood and set on currency.

Traded drama for Masta for literature and gold, to help as with research.
Advice to not trade anything untill we get currency, as then we can finally ger something from Chengis.
Katherina want Dramma for peace. I refused.
She drop stack of 6 and did some pillage, forcing me to whipe an axe.
Our road system lucking, I am making more direct road.

Galey with worker and axe going to next city site, with setler near by.
Currency will give as a commerce bost.

Hopefully we can make some trades for philosofy.
Lots of confusion spread to our land, but only Cesar is confused, I would not switch. WE migth want to do it in future, to make use of Pacifism, but that a bit far away and we definatly want to make some trades first.

I think Cyrus' lands are too large, and too good, for us to win a space race against him unless he is cut down to size somehow. But we don't have any decent means to do that.

Diplo is maybe possible if we can somehow get Asoka and MM to like us more than they do Cyrus.

If we want cultural, this is about the last chance to make that decision before we start trying to spawn GS, as we'll need a good number of artists to make it in time.

Got it. I don't have experience with cultural wins, but I guess it starts with setting temples and theatres. Fishing villages stand for GP farms and Thebes, Heliopolis stand for candidate lengendary cities. Third one can be Memphis or Pi-Ramsess. I like the idea of targeting a cultural victory. If you're ok, I will get some reading before I play my turns

About the new city, I like the fishing village on Hills/Plains with crab and fish. I am confused though with the worker in galley with axe. I would send the settler first, the only thing worker can get is a mine on hill/grassland. Do we need to burn the forest already ?

Do you need worker or not depends on which cite you will choise.
Actially food ritch gp farm type of cities are best for culture win, because specialists produce more culture then towns.

But I am not sure we can pull cultural win, as we are in dificult to defend location.

About cultural plan:

If we convert to Buddhism when it spreads to us, and sign defensive pacts with Asoka/Mansa/Cyrus, we should be relatively safe.

I think the 3 cathedral cities would really have to be Thebes, Memphis, Heliopolis with the 2 fishing villages as great artist farms under Pacifism/Caste. As Mutineer says it's ideal if one of the 3 culture cities doubles as GP farm, but we seem too food poor to do that, so we are probably stuck with towns. A town actually produces more raw culture than an artist, so long as we have somewhere we can generate GPP (our fishing villages) it's ok to set up with Towns.


It's a risky plan, so if anyone has a better victory plan we can go with that instead.

Specialists produce 6 culture stright of, with representation add 3 research and + GP points, no town could beat that. Towns have a big disadvantage that they demand we set culture slider to 100%, why specilalists let as to have 3 cultural cities and still have normal income from other cities spending it on research or anythign else we like.

I am happy to try culture but I really don't know much about it so I will need to be taught. We do need multiple religions and cathedrals. Then if I understand correctly commerce can go to culture with the slider late in the game or just focus on specialists. So we need high food cities for our culture hubs?

The best are higth food cities. Multiply religions are nice, but not compalsory.

To be true, I am not sure how not to lose this game.

PS: even if we go cultural a first few GP need to go in direction of getting as out of research hole.

Artists normally produce 4 culture. You only get 6 culture if you own Sistine Chapel which gives +2 per specialist, and we are unfortunately too far behind on religion to have any chance of getting that. We would also need biology to do the pure artist approach and I think without Sistine or any floodplains to work with it can't keep up with towns anyway. (Because we have other cities that can spawn great artists.)

For the specific culture strat I had in mind, we would basically cottage up Thebes/Memphis/Helio, rush to liberalism for free speech, stop research either there or at Democracy and go all-in setting culture slider to maximum, and hope Cyrus plays honourable too. Build 2-3 cathedrals in each city for the +50% multiplier. I think it's our best chance.

Should I sign OB with Cyrus to start befriending him already or is it too early ?

Being completely covered by Cyrus on west side is nice if we can sign a defensive pact with him. OTOH, playing cultural would mean some border clash, especially at Memphis. Would a flipping city or two annoy him enough to attack ?

Mainly built culture buildings in the three (future) legendary cities. Put temples where possible. Started some courthouses too

Catherine shows with a 6 units stack. She has phants. I pay 70 gold for peace

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet2/CAthy.jpg


Later on, she made again 2 or 3 (unreasonable) demands that I refuse. I really start to hate her. I fear she might attack again. We need to restart caring about military

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet2/Cathydemands.jpg



I settled the fishing village with crab and fish

Traded techs like mad. JC is alreday afraid of us being too advanced, but the situation is better. Mainly due to philo like you pointed out.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet2/techSituation.jpg



I started to befriend Cyrus. Traded silk for Cyrus Wine. Stopped trading with Gengis when he asked to. T'was only open borders

I switched to bureaucracy and HR when available

We need to have a buddhist city tp push relations with Cyrus. Suggest to open border bith him.

Researching paper. Only Asoka has it for the moment. We need to have music soon

Shrinked Roster

Mark -- UP
uberfish -- On Deck
Mutineer
Blid

820; OK I see we are not using org religion. I guess we don't want to offend anyone but if bud doesn't spread soon we waste a lot of time. Also Sistine is available and we are not building it. I guess we probably won;t get it but is is worth a try. I see no revolt for 3 turns OK. Anyway put Thebes on forge then Sistine.

860: Islam founded by Mansu. Paper in and it gets us nothing. Turn research to 0 to see if we can get enough $$ to get it from Mansu.

900: Sistine is Built Far away, so much for that idea (no shields invested). Get Muzak for 180 gp+paper+WM. I also opened boarders with Cyrus. Research to Edu.

900-1000: Building stuff and hoping for Buddhism to spread so we can be friendly with Cyrus. It is a bit of a risk to be running Confucian as it upsets our big neighbor who now has maces. We could really use machinery for crossbow protection or we could just build some elephants.

I am really out of my element in this type of game. If I understand correctly if we get 3 temples for each religion we have then we can build 1 cathedral to go 50% culture increase. So we want as many as possible but mostly Buddhism for the friendly effect with Cyrus.

We are 3 turns from education at the end of my set but Asoka got liberalism first in 1050...

Trying hopefully for Notre Dame in Thebes instead. We don't need the happiness but we have stone and it's a 10 culture wonder, so can at least get some cash out of the deal if we don't get it. No Buddhism spread still.

Built cottages at Memphis. Left the current farms up so it can run on high growth for a bit. These should probably be converted into cottages eventually. Our health cap is too low to run a decent GP farm there and unusually no one has health resources to trade for our superfluous lux. Best bet is to use the islands for GA production. Any infrastructure at the 2 fishing villages can and should be whipped every 10 turns btw.

I didn't build any military. Still hoping for that elusive buddhism spread. I agree that Org Rel on Confucianism was a good call and worth the risk. We did get hinduism, we should spread the 3 religions we have around everywhere to all cities that already have a religion so we can build temples and so on leaving the last two open for now. We have a possible mediocre site for a ninth city or maybe we can flip Arbela later in the game. There is no hurry to found it, as all it would need to do is build temples and the 2 fishing villages don't have religion yet.

I'm not sure whether we should go up to Democracy or even further, it would take a while to get there with our research rate and I don't think there's much we can do to help with GPs... or stop at printing press and just go all in.

well, continue with culture build up, but I susect we are in serious trouble.
Cesar show up with stack some time ago, he did not declare yet.

Traded a few tech, Catherina was first to get oround the world.
Researhing Liberalism, but military we are in very risky situation.

There is barbarian galey, we really need to lift dark places.

AI setling islands.. I produced setler to settle 9th city. we need 9 cities for 3 cathedrals.

We're actually beginning to catch up in GNP now because Cyrus has no clue how to build terrain improvements properly, and have even passed MM in points because his lands are crap, but Asoka's tech rate is crazy right now probably due to GL and three shrines including the 2 leading world religions.

Cyrus is most likely the population leader, and he's only +8 and +9 with MM and Asoka, maybe we can try diplo if the team feels that culture will cause us a military loss in the long run. It seems we have not actually done anything that commits us to cultural path at this point, just built cheap cultural buildings that we needed anyway due to the border conflicts with Cyrus.

In any case I think we have little choice but to continue to build buildings and skimp on military in order to stand a chance of winning by any condition, its a risk we just have to accept in order to put our economy ahead. we need aqueducts and grocers too much.

Alexandria can work Village fogged by capital and not used instead of sea tile. It will mature to get worked by capital as town eventually

The barbarian galley kills our galley:sad: . Thebes finished lighthouse and starts a caravel

Heliopolis pops a source of gems. Must be RB epic 2 that got my machine RNG mad. City has now access to three gems

We got libearalism but I don't switch to free speech as we don't have enough towns and the infrastructure at capital should be more beneficial than +100% culture. Should switch about the time the essential infra is in
I give Cyrus Paper for 650 gold and world map :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet3/World.jpg


I couldn't find Gengis lands so I check diplo screen and see he has only capital and he was involved in no war that I know of. Check again and find his capital :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet3/Karakorum.jpg


Poor guy got hemmed in by Cathy, it seems.

We don't have enough gold to trade printing press from Mansa. Set Science to 0.
1 turn of treasury funding and now we can get printing press from MM for liberalism and a lump sum of gold.
Research path : banking->economics

The wounded barbarian galley suicides against a galley


On 1280 AD, Mansa musa runs a golden age and gets ahead in points. That is nice for us as we are no more "too advanced" and AI are willing to trade. Liberalism gives us :
engineering + 660 gold from JC
DR - 90 gold from Cathy. I take this one cuz it helps with researching nationlism faster

Next turn, new techs pull us ahead of Mansa and we become fearful again. On research, I think we need constitution (representation) before stopping.
This is Cyrus favourite civic and can help getting a defensive pact with him

Still no buddhism spread. Still no invasions. Started the first cathedral in Thebes (taoist pagoda)
The now mandatory :) tech situation

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet3/TechTrades.jpg

Well we already have WFYABTA with Asoka and Caesar. We are +8 with Jules so if we could get to friendly we would be in business. He favors representation and that is where we want to be anyway so we should get to friendly with him if he survives (He is 3 cities surrounded on all sides). Cyrus is scary and we are his second worst enemy. Khan is worst but he would have nothing to gain from Khan so I fear he will be coming for us soon and we are not prepared. Not sure why we are full tilt on econ as it Mansa who is the only tech whore who will trade with us has it. I realize we need it for free market so continue.

1320: Cathy wants OB fine. I am going to try to convert Cyrus. Since we are going the peace route it would be so nice to have him Confucian.

1340: Econ in and revolt to free market. Scientist born in Heliopolis and use him to build an academy there. Research to astronomy.

1350-1400: Building things and missionaries. I am quite worried about Cyrus. He will probably attack us soon. I hope we can convert him to Confucian. Keep an eye on his power and civic. If his power starts to shoot up you know something is coming somewhere. He has a stack of knight’s in Gordium and we need iron for pikes.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/knight's_a_plenty.JPG

Mark
uberfish-up
Mutineer-on deck
Blid

Shouldn't academy have been built in Thebes?

Anyway we got Astronomy. I traded Astronomy to Catherine for Gunpowder + loose change, then pulled a diplomatic coup with it:

Astronomy to Cyrus for 510 gold + world map
This made Cyrus happy (+4) with us for good trade relations
I then asked Cyrus nicely to convert to Confucianism, and he does!
Relations with Cyrus are now at +9 and only Asoka is still Buddhist so it's not important anymore. I don't think Cyrus will backstab us.

Built cottages and health improvements in Thebes Memphis Heliopolis.

I then researched Scientific Method since Diplo victory now looks feasible, everything else has no trade value, and it's difficult to justify why we researched astronomy otherwise :) It finished at the end of my turnset one turn earlier than expected, unfortunately breaking a couple of monastery builds. Catherine will offer us either Replaceable Parts or Chemistry + 120 gold for it, next player can choose which.

Sold our extra cow to Caesar for 4gpt, and some clams to Asoka for 6gpt.
We should sell stone to Catherine too after we built oxford, and if we give Caesar economics that should get him to Friendly.

We are up to #2 in both GNP, population and score and AI research will be slowing down as their GP production enters diminishing returns. Set research tentatively to physics as I can see diplo being a feasible win condition now too. Again next player can change that. (I think we would have to build spies and disconnect Cyrus' resources to disrupt his trading deals though, to win this way.)

We should really discuss about our next moves, our position actually looks pretty decent now with Cyrus invasion threat removed.

Shouldn't academy have been built in Thebes?
.


OOPs :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: I was sure Thebes already had one. Big mistake. sorry.

Analysis of the position.

We have gradually been improving our standing and demographics and are now ranked 2nd and we still have a lot of undeveloped potential in our cottages. AI's nice wonders like great library, parthenon and so on are also obsolete now. For the first time in a while, we are actually able to start research on a tech that no AI has discovered yet. Hopefully Physics would have decent trade value even if someone got it first though, and we can probably be at Friendly with Cyrus and Caesar for trading purposes.

Going up to mass media would probably make cultural win date later. But I think it is a pretty good choice in this game since we will be able to trade some of those techs off for military in future in case someone (probably Catherine if anyone) tries anything funny, and we have an actual good shot at diplo win now too.

For medium term defence I think our military should be a bunch of Globe Theatre drafted riflemen produced at the 2nd fishing village that isn't the national epic one and we should put heroic epic somewhere for normally trained troops (Memphis? It gives pretty good culture too.) The main medium term threat is possible cossacks so training anything lower than riflemen probably isn't worth bothering with at this point in time.

Got it. Befor I start my turns:
My analisys. We did improve our position, but we still in trouble.
I do not believe we can pull off diplomatic. If we build UN our opponent will be Cyrys. Asoka would not voite of as, as he is founder of buddism and I do not think he will change to free religion.
That leaves Space or cultural.
Space, after AI get Biology it's inefficency in city planing will dissapear and it will overtake as in tech. Bottom line, I do not think we can pull off space in our variant.
That leaves as back to cultural. Second option is to settle a new world. But I do not think it is a good idea.

I think cultural is still a good idea but do we have any idea how long it will take compared to a likely AI launch date?

Looking in the XML, Asoka's favourite civic is universal suffrage and Mansa's free market so I thought we might be able to swing their votes based on that.

Culture is really hard to estimate; I guess we could win on the right side of 1950. AI space? also hard to estimate. Worth noting is that we would be able to slow AI research down by forcing Cyrus out of representation if we chose to build UN, and we could further stick Cyrus with serious health/happy problems by sabotaging resource deals with spies on his end. (I guess it would be debatable whether spying is Honourable though.)

I think we are agreed on going for culture over space, so the question is where to stop tech. I think we want bio + demo + rifling at a minimum some of which can be traded for.

We can climb up the physics tree to mass media, or stop at electricity, or ignore it totally.

and maybe medicine/environmentalism is worth it too. Not sure about that.

Turn 0 Traded sci method for replaceble parts.
Research set to rifling (was a good decision as masta got physic well befor we were able to research it.

Othewize, did a lot of whipping in our fishing willagess.
Connected our thurd gem, which we can trade now, leve that to next person.

Traded sci to cyrys for chemistry.
I would suggest next person start to build defence, as I think we now finishing last buildings we need. Our religion magnets did not get any religion.
We need to spread the rest of religions to some of our land cities, as they do not have full collection yet.
whiped National, may be we should conside revolt to pacifism for GA generation when most of building will be finished.
Research set to biology.

I agree with Uberfish on mass media. Broadcast towers are a nice boost to culture. And UN would open path for diplo option. If asoka holds to Buddhism, we can just force free religion as a universal civic with a UN resolution.
The techs can be traded for constitution and democracy. We need to finish the game in emancipation for the happiness and the speeding of towns

Heroic epic in Memphis seems fine. Shouldn't it switch some of those mines to windmills ?

I'll see what I can get for gems. Probably some coins

Ah free extra gems at Heliopolis, bonus.

I think we still have a lot to build:

Thebes: Oxford + 2 more cathedrals
Memphis: Heroic Epic + Hermitage
Heliopolis: Forbidden Palace (for culture mainly)
2 Hindu missionaries, temples in Alexandria and Elephantine
2 Tao missionaries, temples in Alexandria and Pi-Ramesses

I think draft is the best way to get our defenders. I noticed Memphis Helio are hitting their health caps anyway, there are two ways to solve that, we can either research medicine or go for communism and use spies to disrupt AI health resource trading then trade them Hit XXX resources for their health ones.

I sold the gems for Mansa for 6 gold. Cathy had 8 but Asoka is annoyed with her, so I'd rather take the 6 and keep him happy
I ordered a harbor to deal with health in Pi-Ramsess

I see Al-Amarna is building a forge :crazyeye: I keep the building as I don't want to wreck someone's plan

Mansa adopts emancipation in 1570 AD

I also built a bunch of missionaries and had only one failure with a taoist missionary. Do we aim to have three cathedrals per city or 2 will be enough ? Some islands didn't have a single religion

Built the heroic epic in Memphis. Ordered a hindu missionary next but 0 hammers invested so you can switch to rifles instead
Start the forbidden palace in heliopolis.

After discovery of Biology, I set the slider to 0. In the last turn I had enough money to trade for physics and start researching electricity. I didn't take the trade so you can decide whom to get it from : It's either Cathy or Mansa. I would choose Cathy as Mansa sure would have something better to offer soon. OTOH, mansa is such a techwhore he would probably trade with Cathy the same turn. We can open path to constituion and try to trade bio the same turn to both AIs. Nationalism can be researched in 3 turns.

National epic is not used yet as city hires no specialists

I think 3 cathedral in Thebes + Broadway if we can get it, 2 cathedrals + hermitage in Memphis, 2 cathedral in Heliopolis will be ok, and we can use GAs to finish off.

I must say the diplomatic and tech trading side of this game is getting very interesting.

@Mark : are you aware you are up ?

Sorry got it. I got a bit busy lately.

OK I had some notes but lost them. I picked up physics and constitution and we are in representation. In addition, to being good for research it should give + modifiers with Caesar and Cy. Getting Caeser to friendly will provide another tech trading partner. Building culture buildings and also hired some artists. We had none hired for some reason. In the HE city we got an engineer for some reason although I only had 2 scientists and 2 artists hired. Unfortunately due to my weed move we need an academy in Thebes as I think we will run Buracracy throughout. After some whipping in the fishing villages we should probably go to Caste system and philosophy. We need to get the culture moving as we are quite far away yet,

Revolt into Nationalism for 5 turns, and draft riflemen, and train some. I then fired all our old axes and spears.

We got Electricity and it's a monopoly. I send our great engineer to rush Broadway in Thebes, then trade with Cath/Caesar/MM for Military Tradition, Corporation, Steel, Democracy and about 2000 gold. We are now up to friendly with Caesar and MM.

Sold hit musicals to Catherine for 5gpt and will send some confucian missionaries her way, if we convert her we should get her diplo vote.

Set helio to run 1 artist and 1 engineer, it's most likely to get an engineer which we would use to build UN. Once that GP is out convert it to artists please and run artists only. Fired all scientists, as we should stop research after mass media anyway and don't need them.

We are spiritual so I'm going to take advantage - Revolted again to USuf (For extra hammers, not wasting money on rush buying, we are done with research soon anyway), FreeSpeech, Emancipation (to grow cottages) and Pacifism.

Caesar converts to free religion (back down to pleased.) I give him military tradition for 50 gold to get +4 trading relations again so he won't cancel the pact. Cath and Cyrus will probably give defensive pact if we want too btw.

If we can convert Cath and get Cath MM Caesar votes we should have enough to win by diplo, but if we can't manage that we will get our Cultural sometime in the first half of the 20th century. We should turn research off after mass media, go to caste system when most cottages are done and make sure our GP production line is set up for artists only.

Note: Thebes is at 1 food surplus and set to avoid growth, so when it's not building anything we can switch the 2 mines to artist and be food stable.

Did not do anything, allmost.
Radio finished and Catherina come and ask it.
I give it to her.

Radio-mass media
Traded Uranium for Iron to Cyrys to speed up Tower.
GA was born, spend it for most of Elfe tower, as free broadcast tower is what we need.

Mass media finished,
Start to build UN.
Set research to 0

I would suggest gold rush elf tower, then UN and then go all culture, why trying to win diplomatically.

Ok see it,
game sleeps 4 days and then I am up in ... 7 hours :), just when I thought I had a night off

Ohh forgot to say.
I forgot to revolt to orgonised religion for rushing/building this last building we need.
Please do.

We didn't need Eiffel as we could just build broadcast towers, but at least it gives culture itself. I suggest we just build UN normally now and let Eiffel finish normally (there's no way AI will beat us to it since we were first to radio and used an engineer.) Since we don't have factories or Kremlin, gold rushing late wonders is extremely expensive, which is painful when we have already built up +300% or so culture multiplier.

Pre-check :
Switch engineer to artist in Heliopolis. Eiffel tower still due in 5 turns

There is already some money in the treasury and there is no consensus about rushing Eiffer tower and UN. Decide to go for another round of treasury funding, rush Eiffel tower for immediate culture boost in all cities and then max culture slider at positive income

Turn 1 : zzzzzzzzz

Turn 2 : I hire a third artist at fishing village when eiffel tower is finished. Mansa has mass media. I guess that Hollywood is lost

Turn 3 : Cathy finishes Rock'n Roll

Turn 4 : Cyrus adopts representation, emancipation, and free religion. fishing village grows and I hire 4th artist

Turn 5 : I hear the horn. Gives me a chill. That was cathy declaring on Gengis. This guy is finished, I think.

Turn 6 : Karakorum is down. Gengis is no more. That was fast for an AI/AI war

Turn 7 : JC drops devensive pact. It is now redded out

Turn 8 : Catherine goes free religion. And I had missionaries going her way. Arggghh

Turn 9 : great artist is merged in Memphis but the city is still last in cpt. Defnitely need another cathedral there

Turn 10 : zzzzzzzzz

When Memphis finished with UN, the grassland/hills mines should be turnd into windmills. More gold and with extra food, we can afford artists. Should also put some taoist temples to get a taoist pagoda in memphis. This city is lagging in culture points

do not merge artists, they will not produce anogth culture to justify that.

Memphis was generating 368 cpt and has 43 000 culture points to go. This means : 43 000/368 = 116 turns

Artist is 12 culture per turn. We have +300% modifier which means 48 cpt.

4000/48 = 83 turns to get the "chef d'oeuvre" equivalent

We should be windmilling mines and there is still a village to grow to town at Memphis but we also should get another +50% from cathedral there

Turn 6 : Karakorum is down. Gengis is no more. That was fast for an AI/AI war


Well, he had 1 city and was hopelessly behind in tech, lol. I'm surprised he hung around so long.

Blib, calculation is not correct, as using more of GA we will generate will shorten this time

OK I mostly had to just hit enter. Did switch to build 2 taoist temples. They should be rushed to complete when Memphis finishes the UN so it can then do the Pagoda. Artist born on the last turn. Save is 1822 but I haven't moved anything. There is not much to do. I would switch back to representation for the relations gain with Cy and Jules. We should probably switch to culture soon in the 3 cities.

Went to slavery temporarily to whip temples, 2 last cathedrals almost done. Then swapped back to emancipation (one unfinished cottage at Memphis) and representation as suggested. This increased relations with cyrus and JC but decreased them with Asoka.

Cyrus asked for electricity for free, didn't want to help him. Took -1 rep for that. Arbela tried to revolt to us, will probably flip before game's end.

We built UN and were duly voted in as SecGen, everyone voted for us except Asoka who voted for Cyrus. Unfortunately, we have only 379/655 votes and would need Asoka's vote for diplo win which I don't think we can get unless we can somehow convert him to Conf too.

Heliopolis spawned a merchant.

Sent the 2 missionaries we had to India and merchant to Rome which should fund 100% culture for the rest of the game. We also have a spy, we could sabotage some AI health resources if we wanted to trade for them ourselves but maybe the team will think it's not very honourable so I refrained from doing it on my turns.

Cathy and Mansa built Apollo, Cyrus 13 turns away. I estimate that we will get cultural victory in about 1925 and I can't see the AI launching before that, so I think this is a win for us anyway unless Cyrus decides to backstab us. I don't think he will as he will be in spacerace mode now. If he does attack, he will have Tanks and artillery and there's absolutely nothing we can do to stop it, so I didn't build any more military.

OK, Turn 1 , Cyrys city revolted to as.
I accept, it does contain Buddism.
Revolted to orgonised religion/US.
Start spread buddism and Hinduism. WE did not spread hinduism in 2 cities and as result were missing one Hindy cathedral.
Rigth now we are on the middle of spreading buddism and bulding hindy and budda temples. Ohh, and I run trade mission to Catty city, got 2100 insted of1900 it did run to.

Oh we got Buddhism... this is great news as everyone except Asoka is in free religion now so we can convert, gain his friendship and not lose any relations with other civs.

I think we have the diplo win now. If we go back to representation (to keep Caesar on our side), convert to Buddhism and spread it a bit more and cancel both current defensive pacts to avoid the -2 from other civs before voting time, we should get Asoka vote and the win.

Did what Uberfish said mainly. Revolt to buddhism when it spreads to the GP farm. Switch to pacifism and representation (missionaries and stupa are finished). Drop defensive pacts. And the game is like ... over :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet4/culturalVictory.jpg


unanimous vote for the cutie

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/turnSet4/Hatty.jpg


That was a dry one but educational nonetheless :)

Pretty good for a game we thought was dead lost back in medieval :)

Think those islands east saved us, really lucky to have them all. And Cyrus did behave himself

It's true, but we also had a very unfavourable start so it balances out. I must say it's very unusual to see this many islands on pangaea.

I would not say we had unfovarable starting position. I think it was ok.
But congrats for true diplomatic one. I did not think I ever go after one in my SP games.

Hey, could you post replay file and score? I am curious, it should not be to bad.

unanimous vote for the cutie

I think this is an SG first. I didn't think it was even possible to get all votes... :goodjob:

At work, don't have access to the files now. Will try to post them tonight if the autosaves were not erased

Replay file should be in your replay dirrectory.

Well the start would have been good if we could actually declare war on Cyrus!

But yeah, it's very cool to get a true nonviolent diplomatic victory at Emperor, I have never done that either.

My but we are popular. A very honorable and peaceful win. I am really surprised that Cy didn't ever pound the snot out of us. Good job all.

Here's the replay file (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/mm14_AD-1880_1.Civ4Replay)
And the caesar score :

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f191/blidblid/MM14/mm14-victoryscore.jpg