Noble's Club II - Ramses II

Ok so with out much of an intro I won a Domination victory!

I started the tech by losing the Lib race to an AI i hadn't met. The last tech I got - I think - was Advanced Flight. In between is along listI can't be bothered to write out! I did a fair amount of tech trading when I started to meet the AIs from the other coninent.

Ok on to the game!

I meet Joao and make some trades


I meet Asoka - I bet it was him who got Lib!

The Russian front. Thats rhyming slang by the way....


After a bit of a war with Willem I pick up my first Vassel


The statue of Liberty! Horray! I love free specialists.


Joao froms a colony


Some good late game wonders




I get Asoka to DoW on Stalin. Next turn I declared.


While I'm warring a couple more key wonders come in




Stalin caves in after I take 3 cities and raze 1


The UN. I control it. The world is mine!!! I could have taken the diplo victory with my vassels but I wanted to stick it out.


This is a great wonder to combat late war unhappyness


Espessially when combined with...


So I control all three late game happness resourses? Oh yer baby!

Guess were I'm heading...


More war ends in my third vassel


This left me less than half of one percent short of dom! Hahahaha!


So...


Asoka declared on me - must have dropped to cautious when I wasn't paying attention. Luckily I had a couple of nice suprises for him!!


SB capitulates, so eventually...


Oh yer!

Info screens to follow.

The info sreens

My score. It seems pretty low after all th efrot I've been too!


These graphs really tell the true story of my victory. Later losers!




Demo screen


My capital - I was using it as my espionage city


My late wonder city - Zara old capital. It had the Iron works and the Maori dodads.


My main military city. I founded his late and it got HE and Westpoint.


And finally what the world thought of me at the win.


They don't like me much do they!

Ok so the key points for me where:
1. Early war with Zaras - should have held off as it slowed me down loads.
2. KatieKat pointing out my worker problems. This really helped and was the turning point in my game. See the Noble club idea is working!
3. Tech trading when I met the second coninent - I was pretty backward before this.
4. Quike wars so I could move on to the next victim.

By the end my empire was pretty messy but I just wanted that strange pink fire of the dom screen to come up!

You wonder whore, you!

So I finally met everyone. I just realized I had not taken any religion in the game. I tried to get Willelm's religion at first, because my only possible war was going to be Hinduist Ethiopia... But it never happened. So when I got Shwedagon Paya, I switched to Free Religion to get more beakers. Now that I'm in contact with the rest of the world though, I'm thinking of adopting the dominant religion to get in good diplomatic relationship with Stalin and Joao, who are both buddhist and are waging war on Jewish Asoka and Sitting Bull (they've been quite beaten down...).

Anyway... let's see my screenshots.

I only waged war for a bit longer in order to take the Ethiopian capital, dang, his cities have a lot of culture...



Then it was peace. I really don't feel like going for domination, and I feel like I have all the land necessary for a space race victory, I'm already quite ahead in technology... In my opinion, space race is the way the game is kind of meant to be ended, it seems like the most natural way to win. It seems you get to see all aspects of the game with it. It's the easiest one for me, and for my first game on Prince, why not...

First to Liberalism... I didn't really want to take anything on the Astronomy path. I'm running mercantilism, I have loads of specialists, I'm still in caste system, and currently building the Statue of Liberty in 1712... Anyway, I was trying not to obsolete my Stonehenge/Obelisk combo, but with caste system I guess it's not important anymore. Anyway, my pick from liberalism... Oh and I didn't pick printing press because i already had half of it researched by a bulbed prophet (I must have produced 12 of these by now)



I built the Taj Mahal, I have enough production cities popping up units anyway.

Anyway, in 1712, I seem to have a commanding tech lead



My empire

So I was aiming for that Space Race victory uh? Of course, no aluminum on our huge continents except on the other side of the very edge of a very solid border I have with Ethiopia... Muh... So I was thinking of beelining to Space Elevator when a break in diplomacy allowed me to war again on Ethiopia...



I ended up taking Lalibela too, but somehow Ethiopia had a lot of culture...

I let someone else built the UN because, while I was #1 in pop, my biggest ally (Stalin) was number 2... Willelm did, yay. I was very close to a diplomatic victory, however, Sitting Bull abstained all the time, and Joao didn`t like me anymore. I wanted to take the side of Stalin and Joao, but in the end, they hated each other and Stalin changed religion. So seeing as war was right out.. I did this as the head of the UN



No one will nuke me. Especially since nobody had nukes yet.

I built many wonders in this game, including the Statue of Liberty, which I love. But I also managed this one, yay.



Usually someone beat me to this.

I was building all space ship parts in 6-10 turns, Willelm got the Apollo program before me, but that was it.

So yeah, my ship reached Alpha Centauri in 1959. This is what the map looked like. I had founded cities in between my earlier cities. Even if they only had 10-15 squares to work, some of them ended up being my best production sites! I'll remember that later... When you have a strong economy, it`s okay to found cities later on to fill up good land that ended up in gaps... Of course, not to be overdone.



Thebes and its wonder whoring. I also had a 26 pop city on the shore where I was mass producing Battleships and Mining Inc. executives to be sent to poor meaningless civs (Asoka and Sitting Bull).



The production chart shows that no one could reach me. Production is by far the most important thing in this game.



Power; I always managed to divert armies away from me. Nobody dared...



Demographics, dominating.



Here is the amount of units built. I put this up because of the INSANE amount of great prophets I built (14). There were so many of them in this game that at the end they didn't even have names. I noticed at the end my great prophet was called "Great Prophet", I never saw that before. Anyway, I built as many Great Prophets as I did axemen basically! I settled about 2/3 of them early on and they boosted my economy a lot. And with things that boost their production, yay. I loved specialists in this game, but I was mostly cottaged again.



Score. Again, eyes closed...



And finally, a collection of Egyptian units!

Lack of food AND on a hill; I won't be settling in place. Warrior can't learn anything in one turn going north, so he moves SW. Settler goes 2N in one turn, finds nothing juicier than riverside. With UB a Monument replacement, SH will be a big priority, as will horses for War Chariot UU. Initial research likely to be AH, Mine, BW, Pot, Hunt, Write

Found Zara to the north around turn 15. Seven (!) huts, gained two scouts, two maps, 164g, and ... AH 3 turns before I discover it myself. Thebes goes worker, warrior, barracks for one turn to pop 3, settler. Lost both scouts to animals. Worker pastures pig and starts road S to horses.
T41 BW in, near enough to capital to culture it. Slavery in. Decide to go pot/write. Lose Wood2 Warrior IN THE WOODS to a bear. WTH
T51-64 Whip out settler, worker 2 starts. Found Memphis, build barracks. Writing in, OB w/ Zara, who is "pleased". Hmm. Always have a tough choice at this point; do I finish the barracks in Thebes or immediately chop SH? I take a chance and finish the barracks. Taking a stab at founding Judaism (Myst, Poly, Mason, Mono)
T65-80 Barracks in Memphis, chariots begun. Stonehenge in 2025 BC; so nice having your UB automatically in every city. Worker 2 goes to hook up copper.
So it is 1700BC. I'm about to found Judaism (one hopes) and have some choices to make.

Red dot looks like the only likely marble city; there is not much food to be had nearby. The plains on the river north of the two elephants looks nice, but when you work it out you'll only be able to work two of them until Biology. Yuck.



Things look better to the north; yellow dot is likely the next city for some more early wonders that need stone as well as building towards the only "enemy" I have at the moment. Blue dot needs to be on that river; I'll have to look more closely at that one. The grasslands E of the horse will make a nice science city in the not too distant future also.



South is also problematic; white dot should be a great spot, pink will depend on whether those two river tiles are flood plains.



Without a clearer idea of who/where we're up against, tough to choose a victory condition, though a couple religions and wiping out Zara would probably yield nine cities for a cultural. We shall see. I'm a little stuck on short-term research goal also; going to sleep on it. Immediate builds should be another 5 chariots, a settler, and a couple archers/axes for defense. Until next time, Yoda .... OUT!