Sisiutil
All Leader Challenger
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Game #18 - Spain/Isabella
Game #18 - Spain/Isabella
In the next ALC game, I'll be playing as Queen Isabella, leader of Spain. The purpose of this thread is to discuss, before the game, how to best exploit that particular leader's characteristics, which is the main feature and purpose of the ALC series. Just so we're clear, I'm playing with the Beyond the Sword expansion pack with its most recent official patch as well as Solver's unofficial but highly-recommended patch. The difficulty level will be Monarch, probably for the last time. The speed is Epic, the map will be Fractal this time around. Here's the fact sheet:
Traits: Expansive (+2 health per city, +25% production speed of Worker; double production speed of Granary and Harbour) and Spiritual (No anarchy from civics or state religion changes. Double production speed of Temples).
Starting Techs: Fishing and Mysticism
Unique Unit: Conquistador (Replaces Cuirassier; Strength: 12, Movement: 2, Cost: 100; Unique Characteristics: +50% versus Melee units)
Unique Building: Citadel (Replaces Castle; Cost: 100; Requires: Engineering and Walls; Unique Characteristics: New siege weapons get +5 experience points; -50% damage to city defenses from non-gunpowder bombardment)
Ah, Isabella. When she's an AI opponent, you either love her or hate her, more often the latter, since she's such a religious fanatic. In this game, I think it makes sense to "let Isabella be Isabella"--in other words, leverage the religious elements of the game all the way to victory.
First off, Isabella starts with Mysticism, and that puts her in a very good position to found at least one religion. If we're going to leverage the religious game and play Isabella as the AI plays her (only better), we want to found a religion. Since Isabella also starts with Fishing, I'm hoping we'll get a coastal or lakeside start so we can immediately take advantage of the commerce and put it towards research. So which early religious tech is better to pursue--Meditation or Polytheism?
By the way, I'm thinking of playing a Custom Game and enabling the "select religion when founded" option. I mean, Isabella should be Christian, not Buddhist, don't you think? Plus that setting, besides offering a little more fun and flavour, provides a slight additional challenge: we can't tell from the announcements of religions being founded exactly which techs have been researched.
Once we have a religion... actually, will one be enough, or should we play like the AI Isabella and try to found as many as possible? It may not seem optimal, but it does keep them out of the other Civs' hands. What I'm thinking, you see, is to leverage another new Beyond the Sword feature, the Apostolic Palace, and possibly pursue what I call the new "Religious Victory"--i.e. a diplomatic victory won via the AP.
How does this sound: I found a religion and spread it to myself and the neighbours (which makes Sailing an important follow-up to Fishing, as it will enable early trade routes on coasts and rivers). I found as many of the other religions as possible but keep them to myself. Bee-line to Theology (lightbulbed by a Great Prophet, perhaps?), build the AP, keep spreading the faith and see if we can't get voted an early diplomatic victory. Sound like a plan?
Let's explore Isabella's other characteristics and see how they might assist us in this strategy.
As I discovered long ago (thanks to several of you on this forum) and have emphasized since, the Expansive trait has great synergy with the Slavery civic--with whipping, essentially. It's the cheap granaries. You can have them in place quickly (probably whipping them in the first place), and then you can grow the population you've whipped away back that much faster (only to whip them again, of course). This can help us build an army to crush any infidels who beat us to a religion, and also help build up the infrastructure we need to pursue our holy mission. In anticipate spamming missionaries the way I do Praetorians in a Rome game. That means that both Bronze Working and Pottery would be early tech priorities. But aren't they always?
Another thing: I think it makes sense to run a Cottage Economy with Isabella, what with the absence of the Philosophical trait. The early run at Pottery will allow me to start laying down cottages with the Workers that Expansive makes cheaper to build.
Spiritual helps us in various ways. We can switch civics immediately. The Shwedagon Paya would be a very attractive wonder for this, as it enables all of the religious civics early on. If I have stone readily available, I'll consider a run at the Pyramids too, but that might be too much. I'd prefer to get two of the earliest Great Prophet-producing wonders, Stonehenge and the Oracle instead. I'll want a GP to build the Christian shrine, after all, and another one to lightbulb Theology for the Apostolic Palace.
To my mind, Spiritual is a very strong trait. It offers significant economic benefits in that you don't have to go through all those turns with no money accruing because of anarchy. It also is a benefit militarily, allowing you to switch to and from the "war civics" to produce high-XP units at a moment's notice. You can also leverage labour civics like Caste System and Serfdom and then switch to Slavery for a few turns when you need to whip something.
The unique unit, the Conquistador is problematic. The bonus versus melee units is nice, raising their survival rate against their sole contemporary counter, the Pikeman (and just about everything else the AI can throw at them). But the enabling tech, Military Tradition, comes very late, and Rifling isn't too far off, giving the Conquistador a short window of opportunity. I think this was a better unit in Vanilla and Warlords, where it replaced the Knight. However, I'm finding I do quite like the new Cuirassier unit, so maybe a bee-line would be worthwhile. Nationalism or even MT from Liberalism, perhaps?
Speaking of which... it seems to me that playing Isabella in this way means following a very different tech path than what I'm used to. I'll appreciate advice or insight into tech priorities for this strat and how to accelerate through them. I'm not sure how to snag Liberalism what with going after all the religious techs, for example.
The unique building, the Citadel, doesn't really light my fire. After all, I rarely build Castles, and I suspect few others do. However, Castles have acquired benefits to make them more attractive. In Warlords (or one of its patches, I can't exactly remember), they gained +1 trade route, which has synergy with another of Isabella's cheap buildings, the Harbour. And in Beyond the Sword, Castles now increase a city's espionage points by 25%. The Citadel also gives siege units built in the city a 2 XP bonus; to my mind, this is the Citadel's biggest benefit. Since siege weapons cannot kill other units anymore, they only get 1 XP if they survive a battle. The 2 additional XPs means that even without the war civics, Catapults and Trebuchets can start at level 3. That should increase their chances of survival significantly, as well as making them more effective. So Engineering looks like a higher-priority tech than it usually is for me.
Stone is valuable to Isabella in many ways, because it also accelerates many of the religious (Great Prophet producing) wonders. Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, the University of Sankore, the Spiral Minaret--all are built faster with stone. The latter two wonders would combine well with the Apostolic Palace, giving the +2 hammer, +2 commerce, and +2 research benefits for all state religion buildings. The Spiritual trait makes one of those buildings, temples, very cheap. Also, Citadels have to be proceeded by Walls and stone accelerates the building of both, so securing an early source of stone will be a priority.
So what do you think? Is this a viable strategy for Isabella? Or am I off my rocker? What has been the experience of others playing as our favourite Iberian religious wing-nut?