Many Leaders Game 3 - Prince Domination

Turn 0: Settler party heads out to found the copper city. I think I will go for a coastal location, the plan is to have as many coastal cities as possible for added trade routes and to be able to work those commerce rich coastal tiles.

Turn 1: We are most uncultured.

Turn 4: Priesthood -> Fishing. Susa founded, starts a worker.

Turn 8: Fishing -> Sailing. Confu FIADL. Oracle BIAFAL. You have to get up early to get out of bed in this game, it seems.

Turn 16: Sailing -> Writing.

Turn 17: First Immortals are galloping towards Zululand. I have three good production cities now and the rest can come courtesy of my aggressive friend.

Turn 22: Writing -> CoL.

Turn 30: Might as well have a little chat with Shaka and agree OB. Time to scout Zululand.

Turn 32: Isabella also gets OB.

Turn 34: Shaka has weak defenses in Bulawao but a small stack in uMungudulovu.

Turn 37: A wedding collapses between Persia and Zulu. This means WAR!



Turn 40: Cancel OB, declare war on Shaka. I have a stack of 6 axemen and 6 Immortals with backups arriving in a few turns.



IBT: Shaka attempts to counterattack my stack. My army wins 5-0 the ensuing melee. Now uMungudulovu is nearly empty, only one archer and three axes. Shaka is craaaazyyyyy.

Turn 41: First two axemen die, the rest is a slaughter. The city is taken with 100 gold and renamed Rhagae. Tech rate upped to 100%. Silly Shaka wasted all of his army in the first round of combat, I now have clearly the upper hand.



Turn 96: CoL -> Alphabet. Ulundi has two axes, one impi and one archer. I take heavy losses but it does fall in the end.

Turn 98: Shaka attacks Ulundi and kills an Immortal.

Turn 99: The axeman that attaked Ulundi is killed, which triggers the birth of my first GG.



Shaka is close to collapse, but has an annoying veteran Impi in Bula that I can't immediately kill. Once I take Shaka's three remaining cities I will start to build my economy and use it to conquer Izzy with maces and cats. After that it's time to find new lands to conquer.

Mr. "Oracle Slingshot" Ozbenno stymied by his own choice of AIs.

I wonder (pun intended) who grabbed Oracle on Prince before 1200 BC? I played a practice game with the same basic setup before we started and got MM on a separate continent. He built every single early game wonder, when I captured Timbuktu it had 16 wonders in it.

It's pretty clear everyone is after Shaka or has plans to be so. I'm intrigued how Kodii and pawelo go with no Izzy as well. Complete isolated position vs at least one trading partner in a race to Astronomy. We shall see.

Oh and Ad Hoc, get some cottages going before you go broke

I'm more peeved because I wasn't intending to go this but talked myself around in the week between rounds.

As for who beat me to it, I've got a pretty good idea who I'll be sending my galleons too

@ Oz

Broke, i'm the mongol horde i don't need money....... well perhaps just a little......

Well in the first turnset my progress was similar to al lot of others but around here I expected it to start to diverge. I wanted to use Pacal’s financial charachtertistic to grow my economy and not just follow nthe well trodden “wipe Shaka outt a.s.a.p” path. In fact I decided I was going to try and keep him as my friend and pet attack dog for as long as possible so how did things progress.

Well I had settled Gold cityt last set and nearly completed the settler destined for the copper and the city was sooin founded. It was founded not on the hill so that it could mine both and become along term unti pump only slipping in happiness buildings (temple and ball court as required)



Meanwhile I was using the hammers freed up by non-military focus to secure the Oracle COL slingshot in 1320 BC in gold town (working the two gold mines made it quite good in hammer terms.)



Now I had been working on Shaka, firstly opening borders and the sending the free Confucian missionary to him. This let him demand I switch to Confucianism which got me an extra +1 relationship from him.



By the end of thee turnset he was up to pleased and I could relax a bit.

.

The other advantage of not putting hammers into Axmene was I won the race to the clam , deer horse site (just)



Of course I was meanwhile teching along very nicely, picking up in the 50 turns
Writing, Alphabet, Col (slingshot), Aesthetics, Literature, Fishing & hinting (Shaka trade for writing), Mathematics and construction (Ball courts and Catapults).

Towards the en dof the set we started serious Axemen production + catapults to take down Isabella next set. So how’s the economy



Tech looks very healthy



The Empire



Plan for next set is destroy Isabella, build Great Library, and get seaborne exploration going. (Shaka’s fate will be decide by if there are other AI’s we can conquer before Astronomy, otherwise he may have to go!)

Land Area for Ozbenno's benefit is 10.37%

Izzy was a piece of cake in this game, even without Praets. Shaka is a real pain...
Anyway, with 8 cities, I will have to cottage pretty everything and work out any gold I find until Astro... Will be hard, I shouldn't have kept Barca and Gaul in my game - and since we can't raze...
I hope there is no Mansa on the other island, otherwise I'm doomed

Recap: Playing as Gilgamesh. Plan is to Vulture rush Shaka.

I continue building up my army. Shaka has copper so that will be my 1st target. I hurry some barracks improved vultures to pillage the copper, and on
turn 69



Turn 72: Shaka's copper pillaged

Turn 80: Ulundi falls



Shaka tries to reconnect copper but it gets pillaged again



Turn 81: Pay 20g to refill granary



Turn 84: Obamba razed, Shaka down to 2 cities



Turn 85: Umungundunu or something is razed, didn't take a picture (too excited)
The inhabitants take up clubs to give the invaders more experience (I love it when a razed city spits out warriors)

Turn 87: Calendar in, research Meditation for priesthood for Ziggurats
Bulawayo razed, Shaka is no more



Turn 92: Kish founded



Once priesthood was in I researched Iron Working, to found a jungle city to block off Isabella

Turn 100: Jungle city founded. Izzy has a settling party that will get through before the borders pop (settling party looks like it's fortified on the dye)



Demographics if you can't load the save:



Victory Conditions: