SGOTM6 - Spoiler 1 Discovery of Gunpowder and ALL contacts

SGOTM6 - Spoiler 1 Discovery of Gunpowder and ALL contacts.

Rules for Posting in and Viewing this thread

1. Your team must have learned Gunpowder.
2. You must have contact with all rival Civilizations.
3. Full world map is not necessary, around 90% of available land must be known. (Use your judgement).
3. A nominated team member must have posted a summary of the teams game to the limit of this spoiler.
5. Discussion is permitted up to and including the advent of Cavalry.
6. No discussion of the Industrial Age is permitted. Particularly, discussions about the location of coal and any government changes will be frowned upon.

REMEMBER: Wait until your teams' summary has been posted before reading or posting in this thread yourself.

Discussion points of interest to me include:-
1. Which Civs were strongest and how will it affect the game later.
2. Which wonders are most important and any attempts to own them.
3. Overall Strategy to win the game.

Do not read any of the posts below this one if you do not meet the entry criteria.

EDIT: Having re-read a PM by tao who raised a good point I have increased the map knowledge requirement. Sorry for any inconvenience.

FWIW: By design, Japan, France and Babylon were "engineered" to be the strongest Civs, and I hope that is the case for all games. Mongolia and China were weakened, which I again hope is the same for everyone.

Partly this was due to making the late game interesting, and partly it was an attempt to ensure that the important wonders went to the same place for everyone (unless you built them yourselves)- Either Babylon or France.

The Ultra-high food start was required because of the variant, and the high domination limit for the same reason.

If you are interested in doing so, then you can discuss these points here.

The two remaining team members from SGOTM5 welcomed four new members for this game (tao, Furiey, Keath, Renata, Sabre, Tone).

From the very beginning, our focus was on expansion first, culture second. Expansion of course would not be peaceful. This led to the team agreement to acquire techs by force in peace deals, not by doing lots of research ourselves.

We pursued pottery full speed to build granaries for Entremont and the settler factory near the wheat, then continued with min research on iron working to get swords. No more research afterwards. We were lucky to learn mysticsm and alphabet from goody huts and could trade for bronze working and masonry.

The first three thousand years were spent in war preparations and the QSC table of military strength nicely shows us to be second to no other team. At least.



The archers were built to kill barbs, but conveniently this was done by the AIs. Our troops were in position and we declared war on China 775BC. This of course started our Golden Age. China fell easily to our swords and 490BC the time for peace had come. We bought writing for 192g and could extort math, philosophy, code of law, literature, map making, polytheism, and horseback riding from China in the peace deal. 250AD we got currency and construction from Carthage for an alliance vs. the remote Iroquois and entered the Middle Ages; same turn feudalism came in a peace re-negotiation from China.

We felt strong. Very strong. Very very strong. And hybris led us to declaring war on the Mongols in the west and the Japanese in the east in 390BC. We thought we could handle them at the same time but soon had to learn that this did not result in fast campaigns.



We pushed the Mongols slowly back with our superior units, could remove their horses, and thus prevent them building their UU. But the fighting continued till 310AD, when they were reduced to 5 cities and gave us engineering and chivalry in the peace deal.

We wanted to attend to Japan early, because they had nice lands close to our Palace. And we wanted to do it before they got their UU samurai, which is no real fun to deal with. Regrettably, we were a little bit late. The samurais showed up 290BC and we had to fight them with our swords until we learned chivalry 310AD and upgraded 10 horsemen to knights.



The rest of the Middle Ages will be reported in a second post.

Edit/add: I forgot to list the contacts:
3100BC: Japan
2950BC: Mongols, China
1990BC: Carthage
490BC: Iroquois, Vikings, America
190BC: England, France, India, Babylon, some TMs
350AD: WM from Mongols for WM, invention, some gold

mad-bax said:

FWIW: By design, Japan, France and Babylon were "engineered" to be the strongest Civs, and I hope that is the case for all games. Mongolia and China were weakened, which I again hope is the same for everyone.

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All of that was true for our game. I'm the only one on our team, I think, that didn't have to fight any samurai. Everybody else shared in the joy.

The tech pace was insanely fast, especially considering that we were doing absolutely nothing to help it along, only trading two techs that were already well-known. I'll be interested to see if this was common amongst the PTW/vanilla teams, and whether the C3C teams found things any different due to the lack of contact trading.

Partly this was due to making the late game interesting

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It is. And that's all I'll say about it now.

, and partly it was an attempt to ensure that the important wonders went to the same place for everyone (unless you built them yourselves)- Either Babylon or France.

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This wasn't the case for us. France and Babylon between them only came up with Leo's, I think, out of all the decently-useful wonders.

Tao forgot to mention that the Great Wall went to the Mongols, which made them a much more difficult target than they'd have been otherwise. Hanging Gardens were built by China, which gave us a slight happiness edge when we captured it. Both the Pyramids -- biggest wonder in the game by far -- and Sun Tzu's went to the Iroquois; Bach's went to Carthage, and the Vikings got Smith's and I think Sistine's.

We didn't even try to build any wonders ourselves -- it was all military all the way. Tao's report doesn't fully emphasize how much we delayed everything else in favor of expansion. I don't think we built our first temple until the China war was already over, when I pop-rushed a couple in captured towns. That'd be about 300-400 BC.

The Ultra-high food start was required because of the variant, and the high domination limit for the same reason.

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I'm not so sure that such a high-food start was truly necessary, although it certainly helped our expansion and warmongering. We rarely pop-rushed in our core towns, anyway. The high domination limit -- hard to say. How many domination tiles would there have been on a comparable standard size map? I could compare that to our current position.

The one bit of map manipulation that unequivocally did help us was the lack of saltpeter. No guns for quite a few civs, most of them in our reach, as tao will surely mention in his next post.

Renata

There are 9 sources of saltpetre. 3 each for Japan, France and Babylon. This was to allow human player expansion (no muskets) and to reward taking on the big three (Cavalry).

I meant to add this info to post 2, but forgot. T

In despotism, corruption runs rampant. And we needed a lot of money to pay maintenance for all our cultural buildings. Thus we needed two productive cores in our empire.

To prepare for the Palace move, we hand-built the Forbidden Palace in Lugdunum, a ring-1 city west of Entremont. It was completed 350BC and the Japanese lands looked like a good place for our new Palace. Following the advice in the War Academy, we decided to abandon Entremont for the move. New Richborough was founded in the formerly Japanese countries in the east, workers were joined, surrounding cities were conquered. 420AD units piled into the city, Entremont was abandoned, and we had 2 "productive" cores, to the extent this is possible in despotism. Another agreement in the team was to NOT pop-rush in our core cities (neither old nor new), but to let them grow to achieve production and commerce.

The money was needed also for the acquisition of technology (we were still doing no research):
Regrettably selling iron to Japan a couple of turns later proved "fatal", because Carthage conquered the Japanese capital, broke our trade lines, and ruined our reputation. Thus we no longer could pay gpt or sell resources for lump sums unless special methods (peace deals) were applied.

Three turns after moving the Palace, the next major reason to rejoice was the capture of Salamanca with both The Pyramids and Sun Tzu's. These two "universal" Wonders tremendeously eased our future game progress. Our knights crushed the remaining Iroquois forces, trashed the Indians, and destroyed China. Upgraded to cavalry, they entered the war against Carthage, which lasted well into the Industrial Age.

Contrary to our core cities, we liberally rushed culture (temples, libraries, cathedrals) in the conquered territories and our culture began to rise lately but strongly.



The 750AD minimap shows the recent pummeling of the Iroquois and the reduction of India to some jungle towns. (Note that half of our units were workers!)



Japan, Babylon, France, and England were strong civs (Vikings and Carthage second level). Japan we took care off, the other three were mostly peacefull (we did not sign alliances with them) and drove research forward towards the techs considered crucial to our 100k success: steam (railroads) and communism.

The Oracle, Newton's, and Shakespeare's were built by Babylon, Sistine's, Magellan's, and Smith's by the Vikings, Great Library and Leonardo's by the French, Bach's by Carthage, Copernicus' and Newton's were built in London.

The Team
A couple of Xteam players opted out of this one, probably very wisely, and we were privileged to welcome some new members. Having demonstrated our previous inability to grasp or spell the advanced Civilisation concept known as Kulcher, we were delighted to discover that our new colleagues had seen it before and knew something about it. So our line-up for this game is:

Gyathaar - 100K HoF exponent
WillowBrook - GOTM culture victory
Tomoyo - all-round good egg with cool avatars
plus DJMGator13, leif erikson and AlanH - old Xteam warmongers eager to learn.

What's culture, anyway?
During initial team briefings Gyathaar pointed out that our strategy would start by taking over large tracts of land from our local Civs by raping, pillaging and burning and putting innocents to the sword. We would then build an indecent number of towns on the acquired territory, and finally we would work large numbers of our innocent citizens to death building temples, libraries, cathedrals and universities. This quickly destroyed any lofty thoughts of the high moral ground, dreaming spires and cultural castles in the clouds (see I already know how to spell it), but the first phase made the Xteam regulars feel really at home - we know how to fight dirty.

The Goals
We decided we needed to pursue the following primary goals:

- FP in our first core as soon as possible
- horses, or iron then horses, to expand
- a Palace Jump to create a second core
- Military Tradition + saltpeter so that we can conquer the parts of the world we need.
- the Pyramids so that we can build population quickly
- Steam to enable us to get more food out of irrigated tiles
- Communism to remove the Despot penalty on food tiles

Starting Moves
We settled one tile west of the start, set up shop and planned out a tight build at RCP 3 and 5 where we'd be able to build an eventual FP core. We staarted research on Mysticism at minimum, and we had an early cash flow problem when a barb walked into Entremont on turn 5 and stole all our gold We traded for Pottery from China to allow a granary build. Entremont built warrior, archer (to go after the barbs), warrior, granary, 6-turn warriors/settlers forever. We contacted the southern civs one at a time, then in 1575 BC Mapmaking appeared on the trading screens and we traded for most of the map, all of the contacts, and close to tech parity. We traded our way into the Middle Ages in 1000 BC.

Territorial Expansion
We had lots of discussion about the costs of our UU, which at 50 shields seemed excessive, and was going to cost 80 gold each to upgrade from a warrior. However, as we rolled back the fog it seemed we were going to have to use them to get us some horses from China. When we found out where our iron was relative to our RCP radius-3 ring we decided resource disconnection was going to be awkward because it would also disconnect our silks. So we deferred connecting our iron and built towns and workers and barracks and warriors as fast as we could.

We prepared to go to war against China first. We wanted their horses, and we worked out the city plan for a second core around Beijing. However, before that could happen we needed some Euroswords, so in 550 BC we declared war on Babylon to get out of a rather expensive gpt deal so that we could afford warrior upgrades, and Babylon bought the Mongols in against us to make life interesting. in 470 BC we completed the iron road and started upgrading warriors to Euroswords. In 410 BC Carthage joined in with Babylon, and a Mongol death in 390 BC started our Golden Age. In 310 BC we finally declared war on China, our prime target. By 90 BC we had negotiated peace with everyone again, we'd acquired a city or two from Mongolia, and, most important, we now owned all of mainland China. In 10 AD our Golden Age neded, and in 30 AD we completed our FP and jumped our Palace to Beijing.

By this time Japan was public enemy #1, with a major dogpile developing, and we had started to build knights. In 110 AD we did some sharp deals for techs, learnt gunpowder and established that M-B had carefully put saltpeter out of reach of the children .

Our Minimap at 110 AD:


Territorial Expansion to be continued ...

M-B's questions:

Below are the histographs at 110 AD. We are the strongest civ. France are next, then America and Babylon. Babylon's culture is massive. Effect on the later game? France is a target, primarily for her Pyramids, so we have to develop a strong cavalry force to take them from her.

All the wonders have been too far away to help us up until now. The only one we'll want to take time and effort to grab will be the Pyramids, and maybe Smiths to pay for harbours.

Our strategy remains the same. We'll grow our territory by acquisition using knights and cavalry, build cities like crazy, research to Steam, rail and irrigate everything we can, switch to Communism as soon as poossible, feed the population and kill 'em with kindness (aka culture).

Team Bede:
mabellino
Tubby Rower
MinuteMan
eldar
Pied Piper
Bede

C3C


Settled Entremont on the spot and built five warriors for scouting duty and barbarian control.

Given the restrictions on government we needed land, cities and population and for that we need military and settlers more than anything. Initial efforts were spent building the five core cities that would provide those two latter items to produce the former three.

Our exploration efforts paid off (built two curraghs as soon as we knew Alphabet) and we met the Mongols, Chinese and Carthaginians by 2550BC (T30); Japan, Iroquois and Indians by 1250BC (T70) and the rest of the world by 50AD.

In 1000BC we had completed our core towns, set them up with temples and barracks and were taking a run at the Statue of Zeus. We had won the Philosophy race and taken Currency and had a nice inventory of knowledge to sell but the other nations lacked cash to buy them



It became obvious early that Japan had the nicest, closest ground, they were growing quickly and represented a serious threat to our cultural domination. So in 1000BC opened embassies with everbody, declared war on Japan after buying Ploytheism from them for Currency, and made alliances with Mongols and Iroquois. We had no intentions of fighting them ourselves of course, the purpose was to keep them busy while we blooded our Gallic Swords on the Chinese.

The only meaningful result of the first phase of the Japanese war is that the Iroquois started their Golden Age, Japan's economy diverged to military production so that by 550BC our culture growth was greater than theirs, and the Japanese and Iroquois traded a couple of Iroquois cities back and forth. The Japanese never entered Celtic lands while we prepared for war with the Chinese.

What we didn't know was hidden in the fog were the two real powerhouses, France and Babylon. France became a known factor when they built the Statue of Zeus in 800BC and followed that up with the Temple of Artemis in 710BC. Both of these wonders were on our list, the Statue for the mounted attackers to supplement our Gallics and the Temple for the free temples in newly founded or captured cities once our army was unleashed. At that point we didn't even know where they were to mount an offensive even if we had had the troops to do so.

It took some time to prepare the Chinese Expedition but by 470BC (T104) we were ready to roll with Gallics, cats and archers. And by 370BC (T109) the war was done and we gained five more cities and some more territory to fill with Celtic towns and temples and our Golden Age begun just in time to research those expensive Middle Ages technologies, Monotheism first.



In 310BC we began to prosecute the Japanese war in earnest with a landing in force on the spur northeast of Matsayuma and a Recon force at Yokohama.



It is a long and bloody haul across Japan, with many incidents along the way, though our forces are generally victorious. Former allies declare war on us because we have been neglecting them, or they make alliances with our enemy because we have been slighting them. Cities are captured from Japan, then lost to India, then re-captured, then lost to some third party, then recaptured.

Babylon, Mongolia and Carthage all at one point or another in the campaign declare on us or ally against us. More than once we are at war with the entire map, though only Carthage, the Mongols and Babylon are any real threats to our territorial ambitions.

We learn Gunpowder in 450AD and have a full world map in 850AD.

Finally in 790AD Japan is no more and we are ready for a short breather to consolidate our gains and plan our next invasion.





There are still the Mongols to be dealt with but they are a small threat as we have crippled their economy with a pillaging mission with our Gallic swords, so it should be a matter of mopping up.

Then, in 890AD Babylon attacks our weakly defended lands in old Japan.....

More to come, but that would be telling....

Our objectives right now are to hold on to what we have, claw our way into the Industrial Age with cash, resources and extortion, finish the Chinese, and the Mongols and Carthage, and Babylon and America and Scandanavia.....all the while painting our conquests green and converting the world to our religion.

early expansion
capital - settled NW/NW it was a dedicated settler factory for a long long time
focused on expansion first than culture
A lot of barbs activety. most of them handled by the AI.
In 2110BC the capital produce first settler
We had few workers at the start, but as the game progressed we put some more importance on it.
We set up 3/6 RCP rings
While our core cities produced settlers/military our corrupted cities pop rushed culture buildings.

Research
Started minimum on mysticism
Bought pottery for handful of gold from Mongols and sell it to China
In 2070BC civ_steve produce magnificent trading round that gave us alphabet, masonry, bronze working, the wheel + contact with iroq.
Full speed on math but we lost the math gambit everybody already had it by the time we learnt it.
Another wonderful trading session by civ_steve resulted in the entire world map, 6 new techs (IrW, Writing and HBackRide, and also MapMaking, Code-of-Laws and Philosophy), contact with Babylon with the negligible cost of 12gpt.
Start full speed on lit.
Gain all AA techs in peace deals
0 research from that point. all the gained techs made at gun point.

Contacts
* 3150BC china. up 1 tech
* 3050BC Mongols. up 5 techs.
* 2150CB our contact was sold to India and Carthage
* 2070BC Iroquois
* 1910 Japan (already took Delhi from India at this point)
* 1475 all the rest

1000BC status:
10 cities, 23 pop
Knows all AI civs. 5 techs left in AA (3 required).
1 settler, 9 workers, 17 warriors, 1 archer, 1 eqWorker.
3 granaries, 3 barracks, 1 temple.
150 culture.
618g

Warfare
We started gathering cash and producing warriors for future upgrade to Gallic swordsmen.
in 710BC we upgraded 12 warriors to GS
in 670BC we declare war on China, capture a city and our golden age started.
we continued to connect/disconnect the iron to produce warriors for a long long time.
In the middle of the war with China Japan declared on us and allied the Mongols against us.
In 470BC we sign peace with China and get all the techs we need to advance to a new age.
The first war was very successful we got several cities by force and few more in peace deal. afterwards china was crippled (2 cities).
after few more turns we sign peace with the Mongols and start focusing our forces against Japan.
In 390BC we land 4 GS near the closest city of Japan to take that city in 370BC.
12 more SG joined them in 350BC.
In 330BC Carthage decided to declare war on us without any reason.
our war in Japan progressed nicely during the golden age, and slowed down a bit afterwards.
We signed peace with both Carthage and Japan in 310BC
We took from Japan 7 cities + 1 in peace deal. we got another city in peace deal from Carthage.
Our forces from the war with Japan rolled over to fight in iroq land.

from that point we alternated our wars between our neighbors pushing our borders further and further, gaining many cities in the process.

On 310AD we decided that France is too strong and getting stronger. We declared war on them, establish embassies in London and Babylon and ally them against France.
France allied some of our neighbors against us which fuelled the war fire.
the war in France slowed the tech race way down. they even moved from democracy to republic.
France however got the better of her neighbors and reduced England to 1 remote city.

In our local wars we capture Carthage's capital which held the great library. we immediately gifted the city to England (to use TGL later on).
Later on that city flipped back to cartage but since we were at war with Carthage at the same time we captured it and gave it back to England.

We are now in control of most of the southern hemisphere (our team captain should be pleased at that)

regarding culture flips - we had only 1 Viking city flipping to us!



AA Wonders (we did not built any wonders ourselves)
1375BC - Oracle - Babylon
1200BC - Pyramids - France
1175BC - Colossus - France
950BC - Lighthouse - England
825BC - Wall - France
510BC - TGL - Carthage
510BC - HG - America

To answer mad-bax questions:

1. Which Civs were strongest and how will it affect the game later.

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by far the strongest civ was France. we handled Japan early on so they were not such a big threat to us.

2. Which wonders are most important and any attempts to own them.

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The most important wonder (the pyramids) was built by France, so there were no way to get it.
The great library which is also very important to us was built by Carthage. we now have it stored by the lovely English people to be used later on.

3. Overall Strategy to win the game.

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expansion was the first consideration. we need plenty of room to hold all of our cities.
we first expanded nicely and then by force. we connected/disconnected the iron to produce GS faster.
all of corrupted cities was used to breed in order to rush culture buildings.

Of and Concerning the plots and machinations of the Keltoi Genteel Builders.

Chapter One : Of and Concerning the ruling of the KGB
The KGB has had a tumultuous ruling history. Six main factions have been vying for power since the dawn of time. The alliances and plotting have been such that these factions have obtained roughly equals amounts of time in which they have controlled the KGB.

Unlike many other cultures and governments where such machinations endure, the six factions have several traits in common.

1. They all share a love of creating new towns where they can hide when another faction comes to power.
2. They are all obsessed with building monuments and statues of themselves.
3. The basically agree that most other cultures are unworthy to share the world and should be subsumed into the KGB.
4. They all share a fundamental contempt for the KGB population and will force them to do their bidding at any cost, including lives.
5. A complete refusal to consider trying any other form of rule that would not form them into a true community.

Because of these fundamental agreements, this narative will not concern itself with the individual factions, but rather will treat the six factions as a single unit.

Chapter Two : Of and Concerning the Foundations of the KGB Hegemony
Awash on the shores of a landmass that was rumored to be massive and monolithic, the initial tribe of the KGB was faced with the task of selecting a place from which to orchestrate the KGB Hegemony.

Knowing that the six factions would never agree to any more enlightened way of rule, the KGB decided to attempt to found as many river settlements as possible. In pursuit of this goal, quick access to a plentiful source of food was paramount.

Consequently the town of Entremont was founded on the river Aedui just 100 miles southwest of an expansive grassland where there were expansive fields of grain available for transport to the city.

All early focus was on growth as the various factions attempted to found places where they could hatch plots out from under the eyes of whichever faction currently controlled the KGB. Because of the urgency of these plots the new towns were founded quite close to Entremont. It would not be till much later that any cities would be founded far away.

All KGB efforts at this point were focused on creating roads and exploiting as many of the rivers and food sources as could be located.

Chapter Three : Of and Concerning the Early Foreign Policy of the KGB
In 2950 BC the KGB first encountered another culture in the form of the Mogols led by the rat Temujin. Due to internal struggles, the KGB would not take care of this issue for a while, but instead continued their goal of continued expansion.

By 2550 BC the KGB was aware of another tribe to the east across the Kattegat Straits, but despite the rumors contact was not made for 500 more years. At that time the tribe was revealed as Japan.

In 2110 BC a travelling warrior named Conan encountered the Chinese people to the north-west. Not much would occur for a while.

In 1830 BC Conan's brother Thor encountered the nation of Carthage to the west of the Mongols. Not much else would be encountered before the next great age of the KGB.

In 1575 BC A curragh commanded by Eric met the Indians. Ghandi was an upstanding man and would turn out to be a close friend of the KGB for a long time.

In 1125 BC contact was made with the Iroquois. A backward people who would never amount to much in to world.

Chapter Four : Regrouping and building a new plan
The KGB was attempting to build many small cities. They planned to take maximum advantate of a temple to a heathen Greek Goddess. (Though noone in the world could figure out where the concept of this Artremis had come from since no known culture would admit to worshiping her.)

Word came from afar that a people called Babylonians had build a complex of stone buildings called Pyramids in which they could store massive amounts of grain. The next few years were dominated by information that the French had built a statue of another unknown god named Zeus.

The news kept on pouring in as a far off mysterious culture of Scandinavia continued to build a city unparalleled in the world. They Built a Giant Bronze Statue to straddle their harbor, A giant stone tower to guide thier ships and followed it on by building a temple to the very goddess that the KGB had decided to honor.

Meanwhile the welcome new arrived that the nation of China had build a large building in which to store books, stolen from the other nations.

The KGB was forced to abandon the plan of getting the Temple and began building temples to their own gods in every town. Many citizens perished in the haste to complete such projects.

Chapter Five : Of and Concerning the age of the Sword



By 1000 BC the KGB Hegemony had swollen to 16 Towns and was starting to run out of room to build. They had also amassed a large treasury in preparations for outfitting their warriors with swords.

In 590 BC a large force of Gallic Swordsmen marched into China, sweeping everything out their way. After liberating much of China (including the Book Repository) the force, along with a new force of Swordsmen from the area around Entremont decended upon the Mongols. As these forces finished off the Mongols, Entremont and the surrounding cities built a large force of
Swords to invade the Eastern Empire of Japan.

Japan had been at war with the Iroquois for several hundred years, so it was expected that their backside would be vulnerable. Unfortunately, Japan was able to provide far more resistance than the KGB had hoped.

After rushing through the Mongols the Western force regrouped and proceeded to stomp into the lands of Carthage, turning north into the Carthaginian penninsula.

Soon the entire south was covered in Green, a sight that was beautiful to the KGB. Temples and Libraries were hastilly constructed in all new territories. The intent was to fill them in, with many closely built towns, but the empahsis on Soldiers was such that production of Town building crews was curtailed.

Chapter Six : Of and Concerning the Age of the Knight
The end of the Quest to dig the Carthaginian rats out of their lairs was finished after the advent of Chivalry and thus was performed by powerful soldiers who were nominated at the whim of the KGB.

After that the KGB ordered troops to Destroy the Iroquois. After a short and rather painless war the Iroquois were reduced to two cities. Only one of which was known to the KGB. Thus they made peace. A Right of Passage was signed with India so they could pursue war with the Vikings, but by the time the KGB arrived, France and India had pretty much destroyed Ragnar. The KGB was, however able to capture Trondheim with its bevy of Wonders.

After this a short war was fought against America. During this time the KGB regained some focus and started concentrating on filling in all availiable space with towns. In each one of these temples and libraries are being rushed at the time of this narrative.



Chapter Seven : Of and Concerning the foreign Governements

China: Weak and wiped early. They still exist as a 1 tile island.

Mongolia: Not much better. A fairly easy conquest.

Japan: A tough egg to crack, but not really hard. We made sure to take them before they could build Samurai, but they lasted a lot longer and put up a better fight than expected.

Carthage: A pesky tribe, too concentrated on defense to pose an offensive threat, but but certainly painful to dig out of their positions.

India: A powerful nation. Ghandi has been our friend for a long time. He may continue in this role. (Or maybe not)

Iroquois: They were gassed by the time the KGB troops finished with Carthage. War with India had reduced them to easy fodder for a force of Gallic Swordsmen and Knights.

Babylon: Powerful start, but they fell to mediocrity under the combined forces of most of the rest of the world. Strange that they should incite fury in so many other nations.

France: Big and powerful. They were the only nation that had a chance to get to 50K culture before the KGB hit 100K. Strangely absent from the wonder building races though.

Vikings: An Early power. Trondheim eventually had Colossus, Great Lighthouse, Sun Tsu's Art of War, Leonardo's Workshop and the Temple of Artremis. In the late Middle ages they were virtually wiped out by a the combined might of France, India and America.

America: They stood tall and looked like a power. Their research capability kept pace with the rest of the world. For some reason though they never seemed scary.

England: Very little contact has existed between Elizabeth and the KGB. They seem to be content to leave each other alone.

After reading the other teams' posts, I thought it appropriate to add some more pictures and explanations to our team reports. Please read again. Thank you.

We carry out start of the game without good plan and made typical mistake for those who play culture game first time. We built temples first and settlers and military next. As a result for 3000 years we were weakest, technologically backward and had smallest land.
We decided to have 4-7-10 rings City placement. Unfortunately during harsh discussion we lost Yamomoto from our team.
We met Mongols, Chinise , Chinise Japan and Cartage around 2000 BC. We trade the rest of contacts at 1350-1325 BC and 1200 BC.
We manage to build Settler factory at Capital at 1250 BC. We close it at 390 BC.
At 1125 BC we trade everybody WMs and virtually got technological parity. (With literature but without Construction and Currency). We have chosen 40 turn Construction gambit.
At 1100 BC Americans, English and Cartage enter MA.
We caved to Japan, India and Babylon (strongest Civs) to avoid conflicts.
At 1375 BC "Paris build Pyramid and we set our military goal to capture Paris" [Cite from SGTOM 2]. {Very ambitious plans, taking into account distance to Paris and the fact, that it was strongest Civ}. Anyhow, we knew, that we have to do it before GP. For poprush purposes Pyramid is most important wonder, but we had no chance to build it. At 690 BC York built TGL, and we had small discussion about possibility to capture York. . At 410 BC we start war with China and finish it at 190 BC with lot of trophies. Most important was Lighthouse in Shanghai. This year we have got Tech parity again. (Theology, Feudalism, Engineering).

This year we also declare war to French via MA with English who paid to us 27 gpt.
At 110 AD our small SoD capture first French city Grenoble. We capture Paris at 320 AD
GP come to some civs at 330, but we got it at 430 AD. We control French saltpeter already and Babylon kill French at 510 AD.

Team Offa
Roster: klarius, WackenOpenAir, Xevious, Offa, Gozpel (currently missing), Northern Pike

The initial strategy was standard.
Expand, first peacefully then military.
Then build cities on every suitable location and get culture.

We also tried to hand-build the only really useful wonder for 100k - the pyramids.
For that we set aside a city early and hampered our growth a little.

So in 1750BC our empire looked like:


We had only contact with China and Mongols at that time, but already noted that the AIs had an unusual fast development.
So we did fear for the pyramid build already.

1350BC Babylon built the pyramids with 9 turns to go on our build.
So Babylon will be high on our hit-list as soon as we would find them.
But currently we were still on the expansion course.
Rather then waiting for Temple of Artemis, we just dumped the shields into the Lighthouse when MM could be traded.
In hindsight ToA would have been pretty useful, but at that time we still thought that there would be a decent tech pace, so that ToA would get obsolete before there would be enough cities to really benefit.

We stayed peaceful all the time until 550BC. We had traded our way into MA already and stopped research after literature.
The initial strike force consisted of 29 gallic swordsmen, more to come soon in our GA.
So China was reduced to 1 city within a few turns and we looked for other targets.

We had found Babylon in the meantime, but it was quite far away.
So we delayed the punishment of the pyramid thieves a little to get some more territory first.

The situation after the chinese war:


The japanese land looked like a nice addition to our empire, so the gallics shipped there.
MAs with Iroquois and India split their forces, so we could quite easily reach the japanese core.
We took most of Japan and Iroquois finally finished them off in 150AD. There would never be a Samurai in this game .
There was also a little skirmish with the Mongols in that timeframe, just to get incense.

All the time we were discussing how to get to Babylon, but still we settled for an easier target first - India.
The indian campaign went quickly and while we were at it we hit 100 towns in 260AD.

We had already established a nice dogpile on Babylon and taken one town, but the real campaign started only in 290AD.
In 420AD we captured the city of Babylon. The pyramids are ours and the real pop-rush madness can start.
We reduced Babylon to 3 towns before making peace and had to save them from extermination by gifting them a safe city, because England was still working on them.

We set our target on Trondheim now, because it had Great Library and ToA. We didn't research at all in the MA and wanted to catch up in tech a little.
In 590AD we took Trondheim, but the tech pace had slowed down extremely. No education or gunpowder.
We did get chivalry at that time. All wars noted above were done with gallics.

We kept Trondheim until two civs had education and still didn't get gunpowder. So we gifted it to Babylon (740AD) for a future recapture.

After Scandinavia was out, we warred a little with America. We got most of their territory and are still quite far from domination limit.
The latest war is against England. This one is only for wool, we don't really need more land.

Finally in 930AD two civs had gunpowder. We captured Trondheim again and got education, astronomy and gunpowder.
But the game is essentially over already, we have less than 30 turns to go for 100k, nearly 300 towns producing over 1500 cpt.


Well, a bit discussion about the questions:
Early it looked like Japan was quite strong, but then we could make short work of them together with our allies.
Babylon, the pyramid thieves, were probably a factor early. But when we really went after them (again together with some allies), they couldn't stand long.
France and Iroquois are the major forces, but they are at war with each other since very early. This war happens mainly on our land there is not much territory gain.

Pyramids is the only important wonder. We wanted to build it, but failed. But then we concentrated on capturing it.
We also captured Great Library and ToA, which saved some money.
We captured the Great Wall, but didn't have many attacks on our towns.
We also captured Sun Tsu, useful, but most of our units are coming from the core anyways.
We did build the Great Lighthouse, because we had the shields stored. That turned out pretty useful for transporting units to Babylon.

Well, the overall strategy for 100k is simple. Get big first, then rush culture.
Initially we thought the game would reach IA for rails and maybe communism, for a really strong culture push in the end.
But the slow tech pace, because of the huge tech rate setting and everybody being at war all the time (probably we had to do a little with that ) prevented that.
With the amount of dirt around and the agricultural trait, we were then doing fine anyways.

Early on we took a kindler, gentler approach than your basic “Build swords and kill people” routine that seems so in vogue these days.

Our chronology:

3000B- Meet Japan
2950B- Meet Mongols
2430B- TimBentley trades for 5 techs to help us get edu-ma-cated.
1700B- Tokugawa sends us an invoice for 26 gold. Tell him to stick it, and it’s party time.

1625B- Vikes complete Colossus
1350B- Paris finishes Pyramids
1300B- London finishes Oracle
1275B- Japan brings Mongols in against us
1125B- Peace with Japan. Do some tech deals as part of peace negotiations.
1075B- Mongols finish Mausoleum of Marsallis. Winston or Branford, I don’t recall. Whatever.

1025B- Peace with Mongolia
900B- Washington finishes Great Library
875B- France finishes Zeus
775B- Meet Hannibal Lector of Carthage
690B- Meet the Iroquois
610B- Trondheim finishes ToA
590B- Meet India
450B- Iroquois finish Lite-haus
India builds Great Wall. Great Scott! Who was that anyway?
350B- Japan finishes Hanging Home and Gardens
290B- Meet America
250B- Meet England
170B- Meet France and Scandanavia
150B- tomasjj takes it to the Chinese heathens.
230A- M60 boots China off the continent. Not much of a fight.
270A- ChunkyMonkey makes peace w/ China, now 0CC
390A- Wonder time- Japan gets Suns, Babylon gets Leos and Vikes get Sistines.
460A- Barbslinger decides the Mongols should get “The China Treatment”
600A- Washington builds Knights Templar
640A- Scandanavia declares on us. Swine.
660A- M60 does the “Carthage in Ten Turns” vacation plan, bringing a lot of swords along. Japan puts the Mongols out of their misery.
690A- Hey we got a wonder!!! Copernicus. It’s not a bad little wonder.
780A- Ragnar goes for Chinese take-out, and takes out the Chinese.
800A- Trondheim finishes Bachs
830A- Peace with Carthage, now a 1CC.
860A- Peace with Scandanavia, then Babylon sneak attacks us.
900A- Attack India as we need a salt fix. We now have many cavalry.

Who has been the strongest rival? Well we can probably discount China and Mongolia, mainly because they’re dead. Yes, I think it’s safe to say that they were not the strongest. Ragnar has been busy building wonders, but no zerks and America has been dogpiled to where a comeback is a very unlikely event. Hannibal is exiled to Alcatraz one-tile Island, so we can probably eliminate him from contention. We’ve let Japan get too big for their britches, but at the moment we have this India thing to take care of first.

France and Babylon are strong, I suppose. Haven’t really been affected too much by them yet. We’re really focused on keeping the armies moving and growing our borders.

Wonder strategy- Didn’t really develop one, Copernicus just seemed within reach, but it won’t contribute significantly to the outcome.

Overall strategy- Kill all the other people of the world so they stop annoying us. Then build culture so the rest of the world who will admire and be in awe of our achievements. At least that’s what the cultural advisor keeps telling us. She hasn’t told us how dead people are capable of being in awe of anything.

Maybe we learn that secret in the industrial age.

Sorry, no pictures at the moment, as I don’t keep my crayons in the office. Will try to come up with some.

Klarius, thanks for detailing our game. We have done pretty well considering we had a mania for building the Pyramids in the qsc. This was perhaps optimistic, but had we suceeded we really would have had an awesome game. Our Pyramid attempt did set our initial expansion back, but we seem to have recovered well.

Like other teams we realized the need to expand aggressively, then whip for culture. Babylon building the Pyramids was a blow and it took us quite a while to get them back, while we diverted ourselves with campaigns in Japan and India. We did wonder if we should have gone for Babylon straight after China.

Our expansion phase seems to have been less troubled than some of the other teams. Like many things this may be multifactorial, but we did choose relatively soft targets, at least early on, and didn't waste time v Mongolia or Carthage. We did appreciate the low upgrade cost to Gallic Warriors and used these very extensively, with a peak force of >100GWs by the time of the Babylonian and Viking campaigns.

We made very little effort with science as we were confident of eventually taking the Library, and for a long time we avoided learning feudalism as we wanted to continue making GWs. We did in fact manage to go >50 turns at one point without gaining a tech, as we were too focused on expansion and whipping to spare a single scientist.

We need to avoid a horrid AI dogpile now: so there is still some hope for you other teams .

Yeah, right!

Looking at the culture graph, Team Offa really takes off right after capturing the Pyramids, and is ahead of everybody before ToA is captured (so that wonder would seem to be more like icing on the cake!) In our game, Pyramids were in Paris. Your team had quite the GW force; would it have been enough to push through to France and capture Paris if the Pyramids were there? (After closer reading of Spoilers, Team Jeffelammer also featured Pyramids built by Babylon - and captured by India?, Team Ivan plans to take them from France, as does the XTeam, and Team Tao benefitted from a close by Iroqouis built Pyramids, so there's been a wide range of Pyramid focused activity.)

Yes, Babylon built the Pyramids, and then due to a little mixup we ended up making peace with the Babylonians before getting Babylon, with the result being a Babylon controlled by India.

Oops, forgot to mention, I am a member of the KGB.