Welcome to a special Viking edition :viking: of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. I recently found myself assigned Ragnar of the Vikings as my random leader, and I also found myself so very lonely on my little continent. As it turned out, it was one of the most interesting games I've ever played. As you can see if you look at the LHC bullpen, I completely messed up my attempt to turn that game into a scenario. Lord help me, I'm just not that bright. But I did manage to create a brand new isolated start with all of the same things that I liked about the first one.

In other words, it has the same 6 other civs.
It has the Custom Continents (random #) map.
It has Choose Your Religion turned on (so don't panic if you see somebody found Islam in 3800 BC.)
And it has No Tech Brokering turned on.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

I will attempt to set this up as much like r_rolo1 does, since the format of the regular LHC games is pretty much perfect. In some cases, I'm just cutting and pasting the exact instructions and notes, which is probably the best way for me not to screw anything up for anybody.


For this special edition, our leader is Ragnar of the Vikings:

[imagine a picture here of a burly looking guy with horns on his shiny metal helmet]

Ragnar is actaully not a bad leader at all to get for your isolated start. He is aggressive and financial. The agressive isn't all that useful at the start, although the speed on the drydocks will be quite useful later in the game, and plays very nicely with his UU and UB. The financial trait is always useful, and is an especially good thing to have while you are teching all on your own for a couple thousand years.


His UU.

[Insert mental picture of a guy with a long beard, wearing a bearskin, a viking hat, a purple skirt, and holding gigantic axe in each hand.]

The Berserker is your basic maceman who just happens to start with the amphibious promotion. This promotion stays with them, should you have a whole bunch of city raider II Berserkers (who being Melee units, also start with combat 1 for this leader) and want to upgrade them to Grens or Rifles. VERY useful for an isolated start, should you want to expand a little when the time comes. It also plays very nicely with his UB...

His UB.

[Imagine a picture of some shacks built on some rocks sticking out into the bay.]


The Viking Trading Post is a Lighthouse that gives all ships built in that city a free Navigation promotion. Yep. Navigation to start for all ships. If you win the circumnavigation race, which you should, all of your ships will have two extra MPs right out of the box. Notice how this sort of thing would be very nice in conjunction with amphibious attackers and cheap drydocks.

All in all, it seems like the Vikings are an excellent candidate for taking an isloated start and making the rest of the world regret that they ever figured out the secrets of astronomy.


The start:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v98/JTMacc99/RangarStart0000.jpg It is on the coast, two lovely clams to the north and corn to the south. All they need is some sausage and some Old Bay Seasoning and they'll have a heck of a beach party/clam bake going on in the capital.

This is actaully a much better start than the one I got in the game that inspired this one. On the other hand, I had stone in the BFC that time. I think I'd rather have the clams and corn for the whipping.

The game is saved to be a scenario, with all of the same issues and comments as the normal LHC games. The save is zipped... you only have to unzip this to the worldbuilder saves or for the PublicMaps folder ( either one will do ) and load it from the scenarios.

And clipped directly from the last regular LHC game:

Again a small request ( not mandatory ) :

We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to ) post reports at this moments of the game:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).


The last words are to wish good luck to all . And let the games begin!

Hehe...looks like I have my hands full for a bit, which is nice ;).

Signing in on this, but first to do a round or two of my APG series and then split time between this and Immortal U!

barbarian incursion event, 2800 bc. *sigh*

Emperor/Epic

Part I - Through 10 AD with some practical cheating - on the Barb's part. I'm so frustrated I'm going to !@#$ about it both outside and inside spoilers. I've never had this kind of bad luck. Did someone make a doll of me and stick needles in it?!

Settled 1W to get a plains hill and retain all visible food. Allows possible eastern coastal expansion later also, though don't know if that's viable yet. This nets me a desert in the BFC :rolleyes:. Early advantage for later weakness. I'll take that any day.

I settled the city before grabbing hut, but still just 40 gold ;). Building a work boat while going mining ---> BW. Cookie cutter opening!

3875 BC - Popped the wheel from a hut!
3750 BC - Scout gets eaten by terrible barb luck
3275 BC - We have 2 workboats and a pop 3 city, going for a worker now.
2424 BC - Haven't met anyone yet...suspect isolation :rolleyes:. Found uppsala 1 E of pigs which nets lots of flood plains. COMMERCE.
1875 BC - After grabbing writing and AH (along with potter and all worker techs) straight beeline for monarchy - cottage game coming up!
1425 BC - I'm having terrible luck tonight. After losing a 99.3% battle earlier in my APG game, I now lose an archer attacking a barb warrior at 92.7% odds. What are the odds of this happening in one night? Really low. Just like last time though a warrior garrisoned in the city finishes the guy off.
1075 BC - Despite having archers and fogbusting barbs manage to pillage improvements a bit. I nevertheless have birka up now to claim fish - it's settled at the very tip of the eastern part of the island.
675 BC - ONCE AGAIN, the barbs blow past my fogbusting net and pillage the pigs. I'm really annoyed.
575 BC - Another warrior attacks another archer of mine. His combat odds are 2.6%. I lose.............................................. .............................
365 BC - Lost another 85% battle to barbs. Why not. Maybe the RNG is fair. In this game, the AI is cheating. I've never lost so many high % battles in so low a # of fights. If you look at my luck over the last 20 battles, I'm almost sure I have less than a .05% chance to lose all these. Maybe even lower than that.
350 BC - Bjergvin founded on flood plains to grab wheat and pig. Has 2 useless desert tiles, but mostly green or hills otherwise. Versatile city likely used for commerce as I don't need much production in a LHC till later.
10 AD - Founded 6th city at a site that grabs horses and pigs. This start was so gayly hampered by barbs it wasn't even funny. I didn't do anything wrong either...sometimes that's just how the game breaks. You could lose an entire stack of 10 CR rifles killing 2 longbows too. It's possible. That said, I have archers all over practically the entire island now. I'm in HR, and I'm researching CS. I'm getting 56 BPT which isn't bad for a 0 wonder CE. If only I wasn't gayed to death by barbs, I'd be REALLY strong at this point.
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/10ADempire0000.jpg

Emperor/Epic

Part II - Up to 1405 - Met other civs, lib race, disagreement on using tech brokering on a map like this :mischief:.

235 AD I discover that Conan the barbarian is leading the fray, and apparently he can incite regular archers to defeat combat III archers.
445 AD Completed CS tech and INSTANTLY convert to bureaucracy. Next tech to hit is optics...long path to it though. The civic switch allows 101 BPT at -6 GPT. Not great, far from awful.
760 AD The barbs had a city on a hill on the far west of my island. I had 5 CR I Cover (shield event) axes attack it. The first 3 all die at 56.7% odds (this isn't my night). The next 2 kill the archers at over 98% odds. I happened to be choking the barb city with an archer, which killed the final defender and RAZED the idiot placement. Will re-settle 1 SW to claim fish, crab, wheat, and incense. Power city! 126 BPT while gaining 11 gpt...not bad.
990 AD - Optics. Making caravels in 2 cities. Circumnavigation is 50/50 at this point.
1040 AD - Meet Korea and France (nappy). They're not advanced. This games has the makings of a blowout if I hit gunpowder first ;).
1060 AD - Met Sitting Bull. He doesn't have Alphabet :mischief:.
1140 AD - Nappy demands meditation...I comply :D
1230 AD - Met tokugawa. Oh my god. Is there anyone on this map that can actually tech? And with brokering off, this is going to get ugly fast.
1240 AD - Yes, one person can tech. Hannibal.
1305 AD - The final leader is...Shaka!
1315 AD - Nappy is fighting korea, now toku is going at shaka. Oh yes, this is one tech heavy game :crazyeye:.
1335 AD - Circumnavigation goes to me.
1375 AD - Won lib, took astro, instant revolt to FR and FS.
1385 AD - Come out of revolt to 308 BPT and +13 GPT at 60% science. This is a runaway game it seems...
1390 AD - Production city has galleons loop-queue'd. Teching for economics then military science. Why not rifles? We are going to do: Frigate bombard amphibious hits. That means we use galleons/frigates, and grenades are only a tech from there.
1405 AD - I am the 5th largest civ. This is thanks mostly to the fact that the northern part of my island is largely useless ice. I've founded 10 good cities though, so it's not like the island is unusable. In fact, I'll cut the part here!
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1405empireeast0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1405empirewest0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1405techs0000.jpg

Emperor/Epic

Part III Up to 1804 AD with victory committal and a drawn out conflict or two

Comment: Frigates actually ARE reduced by walls in terms of bombardment. What the hell? Why? If cannon's aren't, frigates shouldn't be? I am of the opinion that both should actually. Oh well.

1485 First to economics, free merchant. Settled. Revolt to FM. 406 BPT
1510 Nappy demands gold. He has astro so I comply. Then trade education and Col to him for Printing press and polytheism, and 165 of that gold back. Very important trade. 541 BPT now.
1600 AD Revolt to Vassalage. Seriously.
1700 AD Invasion force prepped for France. Initial strike force is 14 amphibious grenadiers (many built using aggressive c2 amphibious rather than upgrading). Also using 7 frigates to bombard. Will chain more units as needed. France doesn't have gunpowder, so I don't expect too much resistance.
1702 AD France DOES have physics :(. I blew through Tours with no casualties and left 3 grenadiers in garrison.
1704 AD Shaka was bribed to attack me? I hope so. That would mean it's a fake war, rather than I'm about to get 30 knights on my soil :(.
1706 AD Orleans is captured, most of the French navy is instantly destroyed.
1708 AD France capitulates
1712 AD Korea trades me replaceable parts for nationalism and gold.
1732 AD Shaka just teched gunpowder and has started on Rifling. Not wanting to let him have these without doing damage, I take a city from him.
1734 AD Another Zulu city falls
1738 AD Capture Ulundi
1744 AD Toku declares on Shaka...
1754 AD Unlikely war ally japan takes zulu city of goth.
1762 AD Japanese had retaken 1st captured city at great expense. I retake it again.
1764 AD Zulu retake Ulundi. It magically has culture d again, even though I'd bombarded it to 0 last time. Odd?
1768 AD Ulundi falls into my hands again
1776 AD Sitting Bull declares on Shaka. I'm going to be really pissed if he magically capitulates to someone else.
1792 AD Shaka capitulates to ME.
1804 AD Merchant starts a golden age
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1804ad0000.jpg

Emperor/Epic

Part IV - To the bitter end in 1946!

1840 Toku declares on Hannibal. Toku probably shouldn't be doing that, as we'll see shortly ;).
1844 :backstab: Hi toku! I notice you're backwards and pre-occupied! Have some lead!
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1844adstabtoku0000.jpg
1845 2 Japanese cities belong to the vikings already. We are using infantry off galleons...ownzor. Any aggressive leader can do this, not just the vikings!
1846 Wang declares on carthage. Oh yeah...I take another japanese city too.
1847 Another city...
1848 Another city...
1849 Another city...All toku is doing is hitting me with blimps and losing every unit I attack (infantry vs muskets or longbows...ugly)
1850 Toku blasts through an infantry city i'd captured with knights.
1851 I take that city back and take another one for good measure
1852 Finally running state property. Scary economic boost. Untouchable perhaps. Koreans take a city from hannibal.
1853 Cease fire with Toku. Not peace treaty. Just cease fire. Hopefully toku re-routes his SoD towards hannibal. Then I'll strike again.
1856 Toku and hannibal make peace.
1860 Revolt to police state...uh oh :devil:.
1864 Toku lands pushed shaka below 50% of my land...he can't break free no matter what now :).
1869 2nd golden age starts using GP
1874 2nd war on japan!
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/1874ad2ndwarjapan0000.jpg
1875 20 + units massacred while I lost one in amphibious invasion of goth. Injured troops press on and capture a 2nd city the same turn.
1878 Japanese capitulate :).
1896 Wang declares on hannibal. I decline joining...I'm going after sitting bull.
1898 Er...Sitting bull declares on hannibal. Cool. Problem is I don't have OIL, so I can't attack sitting bull...the idiot doesn't have education, but he has fighters :(. In order to deal with that, I need to upgrade my navy. Teching fission and very close. I DO have uranium. Splat. By the way, if SB capitulates I can vote myself UN winner. The game is getting tiresome already so I'll probably do it.
1908 Carthage asks for help against sitting bull. How convenient...I'd just gotten into strike range. I have a tech lead on him, and his next door neighbor, shaka (my vassal) does also :). Looks like amphibious infantry against rifles + fighters. Destroyers should do the fighters some damage though. Although, SB also has them :(.
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/DoWNativeamericans0000.jpg
1909 FOUR native american cities are mine. It's so nice to be immune to WW
1912 I have industrialism - the ultimate late game water map tech. No more combat 2 for amphibious...it's time for some scary marines!
1913 SB takes a city near the japanese that i'd minimally garrisoned. I order the japanese to take it.
1921 Rapidly taking cities but SB is HUGE. Working him down.
1925 Japan successfully recaptures the city I ordered from SB. Shaka did not enjoy the same success, but stalemated a sizeable native american force nonetheless in the north. I've swept all but 3 of SB's coastal cities, crippling his production and taking resources. Massed marines and no WW is overwhelming him. I have oil now, though I don't need it anymore :). SB capitulates! I have the world pop threshold for domination but not land. I'm just going to build the UN. I don't care if someone beats me to it, either way it's the fastest I can end this.
1929 Researched Mass Media 12 turns for UN. Toku is FINALLY below the thresholds to break free :p.
1941 AD UN built.
1942 I obviously win chair over Korea. Carthage reaches legendary culture :lol:. Too bad is 2nd culture city has about 10k culture.
1945 Korea completes apollo program.
1946 Call vote for diplo win
July 1946 Diplo win. All vassals vote for me!

Info Screen & Score:
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/infoscreen0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20II%20Washington/LHC%20Vikings/score0000.jpg


Note: Pictures are up.

especially in LHC games I agree, which is part of why I turn it on when I choose a map with random # of custom continents. It's like my hedge against being stuck on an ice/desert continent.

My ancestors demand that i play this round. But first, what does no tech brokering do?

A civ can only trade a tech it researched itself.

The results are: It slows down the AI's signficantly, but it also lowers your trade options. They also seem less likely to make technologies available to you after they've researched them. IF you have good land for research, you will probably have a good shot at being the tech leader at your normal difficulty level. If you have really bad land, and are isolated, it helps to keep the rest of the world from running away from you.

Lastly, it has a nice strategic value, in that you can trade techs to one civ which will in turn, prevent them from researching it and then trading it to another civ you DON'T want to get it. (You could, in theory, trade rifling to everybody but the guy you are at war with. Therfore, that guy has no option but to research it himself.)

If you don't want any of the options that JTMacc99 choosed, instead of clicking Play scenario, click custom scenario...... I've seen some players using OCC in some of my LHC ;)

BTW, I added this to my bullpen ..... as promissed ;)

My ancestors demand that i play this round. But first, what does no tech brokering do?

I believe it means that you can only trade techs that you research, not techs that you got in a trade from someone else.

Heh, I might play this one as well for the sake of my ancestors.

You know you've spelled Ragnar wrong in teh file name?

The vikings ought to have gotten a ship as their UU. No viking ships, no viking age as we know it.

Technically i guess their UB gives them better boats, but still... it doesnt let them sail on the open sea.

Technically every Viking boat becomes a UU if built in a city with the UB.

Technically every Viking boat becomes a UU if built in a city with the UU.

...with the UB? :mischief:

Yup.... I thought that I had corrected that :confused: ... Either way it is corrected now ;)

Bleh, i think my civ days are at an end for a while. My normal comp cant play it anymore for some random reason, my other comp doesnt have a good enough graphic card, and my laptop is a bit too slow to bother with it. Oh well.

Playing at Monarch/Normal Speed.

Keeping in mind that I know things, Checkpoint 1:

Founded in Place
Building a Work Boat
Decided to take advantage of early clam commerce and will attempt to grab an early religion. (Need it anyway to shoot for the Oracle Slingshot I plan to attempt.)
Popped hut for a map. (Not very useful for somebody who already vaguely remembers what the map looks like.)
After finishing Myst, switched both tiles over the clams to shorten research time on Poly.
Popped second hut for Masonry! Forget what I said about the first hut.
Third Hut: 31 Gold
Founded a religion! Decided to be Jewish because that's the easiest symbol to see under my cities on the map
Boat hits the clams, start on a worker.
Mining/Bronze working.
Popped hut for 89 gold.
Switched to slavery, decided to go for Animal Husbandry next. Not immediately useful, but will be for next city, and is on my Oracle path.
Scout is running for his life trying not to be eaten by one of many lions.
Popped a hut for a warrior, who immediately saves the day by surviving (barely) a lion attack.
Chopped out second work boat: Prepare for whipping speed!
Build a warrior while mining grassland hill.
Organized Religion next. (You'll see...)
Popped what I think is the last hut for another warrior. Had very good luck with the huts after the first one.
2080BC (kind of late, I guess) founded second city 5 tiles west of the capital. Should be a commerce powerhouse.
Founded Taoism. Still haven't adopted a formal religion. Set off to discover writing next.
Built a barracks in the capital to make a few turns for whipping the settler. Now going to build a warrior or two for Barb work.
Oops, after a few turns of writing, made a quick switch to Priesthood. Hard to do an Oracle slingshot with being able to build the Oracle, eh?
Scout survives a bear attack on a wooded hill. Now Woodsman II.
Black Pearls Discovered in one of the capital's clam tiles! +1 commerce
Work begins on the Oracle; will try to finish it soon after research on Monarchy is completed. Will switch over to Serfdom and start to REX powered by cottage spam. I may or may not adopt a religion once I have the ability to build Markets and Courthouses. We'll see how the economy is doing before we take the 25% building bonus.



barbarian incursion event, 2800 bc. *sigh*
That is almost exactly the same turn when one of the AI civs in my original version of this game was destroyed by the barbs. It gave a financial civ an entire continent to itself, and that civ ended up teching dangerously well for the rest of the game.


And a little more:
Built the Oracle and took Feudalism in 1000BC. Revolted into HR/Vassalage/Serfdom and set off to build some roads, a winery and many cottages. This, of course, required me to go back and finish researching things like roads and agriculture.
Just about when I had my improvements done and a couple settlers just about to pop, the barb archers started to show up.
I waited about 5 turns too long to revolt back into slavery and whip out some longbows. After some pillaging and a disasterous loss of a settler protected by two warriors, my Drill II longbows started to clean up this mess I created.
I finally got the next two cities in place and the slider dropped down to 70%.
Just then, a Great Prophet was born, and I sent him off to build the Taoist Shrine. I also had that city start to produce a couple missionaries, since the new cities could use the religion for the border pop, and the gold from the shrine will help pay for the expansion.
I'm going to research a couple more of the economy techs and then probably divert my attention towards finding out about the rest of the world.

Game finished immortal cultural win in 1905. No pictures unfortunately.

Finicial with clams. Let's go for the early monotheism gambit. We work the clams, build two workboats and tech mysticism->polytheism. It appears that we have few if any religious rivals in this game as we are the first to found a religion in 3320 BC (Christianity); a rival founds Islam in 3080 BC. Well, this is going to be easy mode for a cultural victory. In 2440 BC we finish Monotheism for Judaism.

Our scout discovers AH; yep this game is officially easy mode. We research mining-> bronze working while building a settler and worker in order to do a single swap to slavery/OR. Our scout discovers agriculture and a warrior. We settle Upsalla on the tile next to the pigs and diagonal to the hill wine. Nidaros chop builds the Oracle and the Pyramids. We didn't realize it at the time, but the Japanese bit the dust here.


We finish the Oracle in 1040 BC and found Confuscianism (with CoL) in Upsala. Upsalla finishes a settler which we use to found our third cultural city next to the southern pigs (yes no fresh water bonus). This later proves to be a bad choice; barb archers slip out of the fogbusting and a steady stream of barbs destroy our ability to maintain a warrior based fog busting network. We were debating skipping directly to the copper, which in retrospect would have worked much better. Other bad news include spawning a GE in Nidaros instead of the desired GP; we rush build the Temple of Artemis to get the next prophet before someone else nabs Theology (Toaism founded in Haithabu). We flip into representation. We tech Aescthetics -> Literature -> Mathematics -> Music.


Uppsala is SLOOOOOOWLY chop building the Great Library. We keep having to move our workers away from the ever advancing hordes of archers. We've opted to pull back the fog busters as we can't quickly block everything and fairly soon it will be barb axes or swords killing us. Hopefully the barbs will now found a nice city in the frozen north and quit hammering our borders. Nidaros finishes the Parthenon in hopes of getting a quick GS (Haithuba and Uppsala are running science specialists) to bulb Philosophy. We get the GS 2 turns too late; he founds an academy.

Haithuba finishes a settler who builds Birka on the hill next to the copper; time to kick some barb ass. We finish the Great Library and the Apostalic Palace (Nidaros) and tech Paper -> Divine Right -> Education -> Liberalism.

Birka gets some axes which quickly become cover, CR2. Then goes on to whip build workers, grainary, and a settler. We settle Bjorgvin on the tundra penninsula with two seafood in the west (this will be our Maori stat city when we get the tech). Bjorgvin whip builds two workboats, and a grain. In 1250 we research divine right (no helpful prophets to bulb it, we get a GE whom we send to Uppsala to speed build the Spiral Minaret) and found Hinduism.

A barb city finally founds in the southwest; we crush it for gold and having Birka send a settler to get the 4 food spot on the west coast (shares wheat with Bjorgvin). Sistine Chapel finishes in Nidaros (normally this would not be possible, but the AI is teching miserably) University of Sankore is finished in Haithabu, Versaille begun. We win liberalism having traded Education, Music, Divine Right, Paper, and some random old tech for pretty much all the backfil from Carthage and Korea. We are far enough up the tech ladder we don't need a DP. We take Nationalism as our bonus. We begin building our first golden age in Nidaros.

At this point this are pretty boring. We wait for the golden age and then swap in US and FS. We spawn a number of little crappy cities anywhere there is food or the potential for quick hammers. Our first three cities build culture buildings (including research drama finally) and then missionaries. We Research economics (getting the free GM) and then on to replacable parts, gunpowder, military tradition, chemistry, and military science. Once we have all the culture buildings we set our main cities to build missionaries and then culture. New cities whip build temples and a Christian monastaries. We prioritize Cathedral equivalents to Haithuba and then to Uppsala. Birka spams muskets and then grenadiers. Haithuba builds the Hermitage, Uppsala the Forbidden Palace. We burn a few GPs for 2 GAs and swap into caste system so we can starve Haithuba for massive culture.

The rest of the world finally gets around to noticing us, we don't care. There are several major wars of Moslems against Buddhists (mainly Wang Kong). We opt to help the Moslems and generally cravenly give everyone whatever they want except civic changes. Once our cap is assured of getting the final culture pop before Haithuba even with a free GA, we set it to hammer cash. We get great spy instead of the much hoped for GA, but it only affects the win date.

Many peaceful AI's, no one religious. The most difficult thing were all the barbs from having so much land to ourselves.

Mistakes made:
1. Somehow screwing up the fog busting. Life would have been MUCH easier with a constant rain of barb archers.
2. Settling a GA in Uppsala. I had already settled one in Haithuba, and the two cities looked like they were going to get culture parity, but the timing of cathedral equivalents made it superflous.
3. Chopping 1 too many forests in Haithuba, hoping for it to regrow, and not improving the tile as a result.

No tech brokering (my first time with it) seems to make LH games too easy. Also having no religious civs meant I could pound up the religious tech tree and also not have a lovefest amongst the AI (odds of having enough warmongers are very good if you have no religious AIs at all). With a slight bit more luck I might have been able to have the mighty 6 religion combo and been done in the mid 1800s. Religion, good tech huts, cottage spam, and culture made an easy win.

After playing this game, I'm tempted to try some cheesy crap like:

Deity, no tech brokering, marathon game speed, inca, 7 AIs, small pangaea.

Yes, that would be pretty legit ;).

Nah, actually I do understand the arguments favoring no tech brokering, honestly it was the first time I'd played with it which is why I left it on. It's a bit too restrictive for my tastes but it makes BPT a lot more relevant than it'd normally be (and LHC a bit more manageable, although few things are as fun as playing with it off and grenadier rushing the one AI that stupidly founded a rare religion and got shunned). I just forgot it was on initially and was dumbfounded by the AI performance with it on for a bit until I remembered!

Checkpoint 2:

Sailed the ocean, won the circumnavigation race, discovered that France and Korea are Confucian (and that Korea was under attack and eventually capitulated to France.) Also discovered that all the rest of them are Hindu, although Japan and Shaka declared on Sitting Bull. Hannibal and Nappy are the score leaders, and the former has teched very well and just beat me to Liberalism.

I am basically screwed at this point, having taken too long to settle my rock and get off of it. Classic error of isolation. I should have realized that when my economy never went down below 60% on the slider, I was probably going too slow with the expansion. Now I'm hanging around in third place with Sitting Bull. Nobody, other than Shaka and Hannibal, likes me very much. I guess my best bet will be to see if I can spam a buttload of units to keep France out of my pants, put together an invasion force with eyes on the Native Americans, and wait for the next time the world declares war on them. If I can manage to grab some of that land, I should be able to tech ahead and slap together a spaceship at the last minute.

Or, I just might go back a couple thousand years and see if I can't fix the errors of my ways. :) Heh. Who am I kidding? That's totally what I'm going to do. I'll probably go back to right after I grabbed Feudalism and start from there with a better plan. I think I'll put Theology high on the list and build the AP this time. The tricky part will be spreading Taoism to all of those cranky leaders while still making one of them such a good buddy that he votes for a Viking diplomatic victory.

I should point out that I mostly play Prince to account for my sloppy play on non-pangea games, but since I kind of knew what was going to happen in this game, I bumped it up a level. I always forget about the difference in happiness and barbarian activity between the two levels, and I totally wasted time and effort dealing with effects rather than planning properly for them in the first place.

I gather from all the Monarch/Emperor games that this was a Monarch-and-above save, with the extra Archers and tech. Any chance of a Prince-and-below save without? For us Noble-level wimps?

The file is a Noble save, so you're good to go. Frankly, I should have played at Prince, which I find more my speed.

The file is a Noble save, so you're good to go.Great! Now I just have to finish a few of those other games I have lying around!

Okay, Checkpoint 2 (again) and Checkpoint 3:

As I had mentioned earlier, I was displeased with my success so I decided to go back to right after I grabbed Feudalism from the Oracle and take a crack at an AP diplomatic victory. I'm not used to playing Monarch, so I don't feel bad about backtracking here.

Having already grabbed two religions on my Oracle slingshot path, I now got my hands on a third one as I rushed to build the AP. I also remembered to build/whip a few longbows right away this time, and the barbarian problem was much reduced, allowing me to expand into the nice city sites to the west a little quicker this time.

I moved along spreading Taoism as fast as I could to my new cities. I had revolted into Organized Religion as soon as possible, since the plan was to win an AP diplomatic victory, it didn't make sense for me to worry about religious differences when I met the rest of the world. It did, however, make sense for me to find the rest of the world as soon as possible and hopefully find somebody who didn't have a religion yet.

Sadly, it was not to be. Shaka, Tokagawa, Hannibal and Sitting Bull were all Hindu, Napoleon was Christian and Wang was Confucian. Damn. I should have hoarded at least one or two more religions for this strategy to work.

Oh well, I still managed to spread my religion to all six other nations, but nobody every voted for my victory. Sitting Bull, the crazy bastard, spread it to every single one of his cities.

Which, by the way, leads me to an interesting point: Since I popped three prophets I had three holy cities with three shrines on my little continent. The failed AP attempt had a unexpected side effect. I was swimming in gold. My slider moved up to 70% or 80% as I ripped through education, replacable parts, scientific method, and so on. This was very interesting.

I was, of course, trailing Hannibal and Sitting Bull who have very big empires, but I was starting to get a serious advantage over the Zulus and the Japanese. The French are also way behind, but he grabbed Rifles very early, so I'll get back to him if he doesn't get his ass kicked by somebody else in the meantime.

As you all know, I have NO COAL and NO OIL. Yikes! I've had Railroad for years, since I wanted to grab Mining Inc., which I did. I saw a couple of oil fields up the northern reaches of Native American and Zulu territory, so I set sail with a couple of rifles, a spy, a worker and a settler to see if I could drop a city down on one of them. SB beat me to the first one, and Shaka had just captured the second one with a cultural border. I decided to set down right outside his border to see if I could push my culture over the oil in a few years.

Heh. It took Shaka just about 0.3 seconds to send a gigantic stack of knights and maces up there and declare war on me. Oh well, I should have seen that coming, but it also gave me my opportunity to smack around the Zulus with my new rifles and cannons. NOTE: Going to war with Shaka is something I decided would be a good idea after reading what TheMeInTeam did, so thanks for the inspiration. I took the city sticking out on his east coast one tile away from the coal. I dropped a few rifles in there and a machine gun and hoped to hold it while I built up a decent invasion force. I took the second Zulu west coast city, but failed to adequately defend it against what was probably a stack of 40 assorted knights, maces, pikes, and crossbows. Oops.

On the other hand, my machine gunner and several CG and Combat III rifles suffered NO casualties against what was the remainder of that stack while defending the first city I took. As I normally play prince, I had never actually seen an AI stack like that before. My little machine gunner is two experience points away from being Drill V, which I've never had before. I'd hate to be a guy wearing a breastplate and carrying a metal club trying to get close enought to a machine gun nest to hit the gunner in the head. Yet, Shaka keeps trying to do exactly that.

At this point, I am sailing INFANTRY over to Zululand, and after I finish a short diversion in research to pick up Universal Sufferage (the home folks are pretty upset about not having that particular civic) I will drop the culture slider back down to zero and research artilery. This should be the end of the zulus in about 30 - 40 turns.

Now, I have made nice with Sitting Bull, and have even declared a phoney war on France at his request. This is part of my plan to be his neighbor for the rest of the game as I shoot for a space race victory. Shaka's neighbors are Sitting Bull and Japan to the south. I doubt Japan will DOW on me, but if he does, he's dead.

The big risk here is taking too long to finish off Shaka. If that happens, I will fall behind in the tech race to Hannibal and probably lose the space race. The other big risk is that Hannibal might DOW on me for some reason. That would be BAD. Maybe I should go talk to him...

On AP wins in isolation:

Isolation makes for one of the harder settings to win with the AP. I recommend only founding 1 religion actually, and building the AP in it. The reason for this is that you want to later run the religion of an AI for the diplo bonus to get then to friendly. This often involves some conquest so you have to manage tech along with founding a religion and building the AP.

Later on you can either just force capitulation from an AI and use it for the necessary votes, or try to get someone to friendly then spread it there :). Spreading it with good timing matters too - civs in FR or going for culture victories will tend to spread the religion to EVERY CITY, so wait to spread to these civs until last unless they're the friendly ones that will vote for you.

One final note: when considering intercontinental forays against backwards civs, once they leave the middle ages and/or aren't primarily using first-strike immune knights, the drill promotion can be very helpful. Of course, so can city garrison!

A couple of things. My beloved machine gun survived a bunch of rifle attacks (unscathed!), which is how I learned that there is no such thing as Drill V. I gave him Combat 1 for his fifth promotion. I was going to start building some combat 1/drill III infantry units as soon as the pentagon was finished, but something funny happened...

I see your point about the AP victory in isolation. It would have been a lot easier to pull it off if I had at least one religious buddy, and that certainly would have been easier to adopt a foreign one than try to convert somebody to mine. I will throw out, however, that in the Viking game that inspired this one, I actually managed to spread my religion to a backwards jungle dwelling nation before they had met anyone else or researched their own religion. Of course, I completely failed to realize that an AP victory was within my grasp that time. Ironically, it was my religious buddy last time who hooked me up again this time:


Religious Diplomatic Victory 1912AD

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v98/JTMacc99/CivIV/RagnarDiplomaticVictory0000.jpg

Heh. As I was floundering with my attempts to capture and hold Zulu cities, despite having more advanced troops, the AP vote came up. I voted for myself (being the only candidate) like I did the last 10 times and just ignored it. What I didn't realize was that my phony French war at Sitting Bull's request made him like me very much. He wouldn't trade almost anything he owned, so I just figured he was a lost cause.

As I had noted in my last post, I was trying to be nice to Sitting Bull, because I planned to be his neighbor once I was done with Shaka. This paid off in an absolutely crazy :crazyeye: way.

I've never seen a statistics board like this in a victory before. I remember being kind of stinky in a few categories in previous cultural wins, but never like this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v98/JTMacc99/CivIV/RagnarPathetic0000.jpg

Oh well, a win is a win. From this isolated start, I learned once again to be better prepared before going to war. I learned a little bit about going for the AP victory, and especially the value of a phony war. It is also the first time I ever remember being short of Coal AND Oil in the same game. That last one just reinforces the first one. If I had a ready to go stack of doom, I could have taken control of vital resources much earlier.

That's about it.

immortal,normal.
basically the land is too big, too good. Especially for a fin leader. Oracle-monarchy. GLH for good measure. Only minor excitement came when the warrior barb swarm (I think there's something about the starting tech thing and the barbs on these games) turned suddenly to axes. Still was trivial to deal with and with the resources and real estate here I don't think I'll play it out. Lib-nat.

JTMac- did you add in the AI units for the higher levels? The AI seems a little slow my game. Or maybe it was the no tech brokering--that might really crimp the AI as it will have little effect on you an obviously none in the early game.

No, I had no idea how to do that thing with the cranking up the levels. The no tech brokering is (and the particular group of other civs) is your bigest reason,