Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter XXXIII : Louis XIV

I would have liked to do a culture run but have no clue how to proceed and probably have already made choices that eliminate this. Any ideas would be welcome. Also looks like GLH is out by not settling on coast.

Techs so far pottery->mining->bw->ah->writing->masonry as i want to run at pyramids
Got the seemingly for me frequent health random event early. My capital was at size one so did i even risk loosing pop as that would mean game over
North of the Island

I have been trying to think of this in terms similar to Mad's current Freddy RPC and practice my city specilaization.

I think the northern city looks like a production monster and maybe the single fish city can be a naval city. The two fish city i would like to be a science city but how will i build oxford here? Also do i chain irrigation through to support more scientists with farms and/or build some workshops or just cottage everything?
South of Island


Here southern city is GP farm SE eastern sheep/fish city is national park/espionage city? Southern pig Maoi statures and other pig a utility city maybe just put down 7 or so cottages and whip a bit of infra structure.
THat leaves copper/pig city for HE milatary city initially leave forests but later workshop/farm/watermill ???

So I just infantry spam everywhere, while teching Fascism and building Mount Rushmore. Once MR was done I loaded my transports with 60-70 infantry and 30-40 cannons, revolted to Police state/Nationhood/Emancipation/State Property/Theocracy and went to conquer the world. Sury is first resulting in:



Pacal is next, and:



Tokugawa next of course. The coward capitulated very easy, when he lost two cities and even with Peter as vassal.



Peter broke free, but I don't even need to fight him, because he is ready to capitulate:



Gilga capitulated after loosing just one city:



Kublai although was more brave and capitulated after loosing the half of his empire:



And:









Recap: Yes there is a great synergy with the french UB and industrious trait in isolation. This is probably one of the best UB in isolation, probably the second, after Dike. And Louis is very good leader for isolation. Cultural victory is easy, AP diplo too. Very nice group of backstabbers this time. The decision for military oriented victory was right.

Right, we start of by going for an early religion, I know, it sounds strange as we don't possess even Mystisism, but this is to be a cultural victory, no matter what... So yes, religions is somewhat important.

And what do we know:


And some time later the whole continent is explored.


Strategic resources may change the above placementplan, but I doubt it'll be by much as I cover most of the continent with this scheme. And early iron or horses is really not necessary in isolation as I do have copper with my second city.

Early buildorder was Warrior for a change (to grow a bit before workers), worker, worker, settler, GW. Research went up the religious line early, so an early worker would've little to do anyway.

Researchplan is the following.BW, Pottery and after that focus is to open Oracle, then TGL, then up the literature line and further to Music for Sistine chapel, after that open up Optics, next goal will be Civil service for Bureo and then Astro for the UB. Hopefully lib will be around next to grab that but it's not nr 1 priority.

So, we left of with a plan. Soon after we get our second religion


Next the wonderspam begins:





And we make our first prophet


The land at 40AD




We continue to spam wonders and cities, not worrying a bit about defense just yet, we are safe from Barbs with the GW and noone will likely invade us just yet.

We continue with some wonderspamming, all wonders focused to our 3 cultural cities, Paris, Orleans and Lyons.







We meet the competition, to spare you some pictures I will tell you it's Pacal, Sury, Peter, Toku, Gilga and Kublai Kahn. You never know with this bunch, if they can it'll be a backstabbing heaven on the outcast French, Pacal, Sury, Peter and Toku is in a Buddist lovefest (with the AP), Gilga has Schrewdon Paga so he's gone FR, Kublai is isolated himself and no real threat to anyone.

So, what next, ofc, we backfill techs by trading (lot's of boring tradepics in the spoiler if you want to see them...)


Techsituation after the trading festival


Noone is very found of us yet, but we don't care at this point:


And the land of the french by 1120AD



Next step, we'll continue to pursue a cultural which will likely be no problem. I probably should start improving powerrating to avoid any invasionattempts, but I'm not too worried about that. At this point and with the current techrating this game is most likely already won, but we'll know another day when the update arrives.

Wow, that's a lot wonders. And yes cultural victory is ridiculous easy

We left of pursuing wonders to right and left. This pretty much stopped after the last segment, the interesting wonders where mostly built. Now we just wanted the Broadways, Hollywoods and such.

In the last segment I got the circumnav bonus, I think I forgot to tell you that. Next goal was Astronomy and we got that one first. Then used some scientist to bulb Education and we got to Liberalism first. We took PP from Lib, perhaps not the best tech to take but for us at this point it meant some more income from all our Town and another tech to trade.

So we made some trades, I probably "lost" in the trades I made but I was falling behind, techrate at the large continent was pretty high at this point, with Peter in the lead. Lib and PP got me Nat, Constitution and Engineering + gold and maps which isn't really high value for the techs, but decent enough.

Then the dreaded situation arrives, Astro has been found on the other continent, it spreads like the wind, and

A mediocre stack gets unloaded


Pacals small force killed itself on my Lbow defenders, and my knights cleaned up the leftovers so it wasn't really threatening.

At this point I focus my research towards chemistry, I had intended to skip that line but now I need those frigates. I start to pump out Musketeers for defense, a minimum of 3 for each city.

I took a somewhat "expensive" peace with Pacal:


It turns out to be a good move, because my formerly pleased friend comes around...

He brings is vassal Toku into the fray, surprisingly, Toku is more advanced than Gilga!

I beat of that invasion force as well, I do have some frigates at this point so some galleons didn't even reach dropof. Some turns later, the backward wannabee of the world comes knocking.

Suiciding his whole force in an amphibious assault that didn't do any damage.

And shortly after, takes peace


The Gilga/Toku war went on for quite some time longer, he did refuse to take a decent peacetreaty. But he came around for about 200gold after many years of war (forgot to screenie that one though).

The wartimes are over.

I had been focused on my goal tech, reaching Electricity, Radio and Massmedia. With some lucky GEs I managed to claim.



Unfortunatley missed the other wonders I wanted (Eifeltower and Rock'n'Roll which Peter claimed (he was teching very strongly now).

After that, I quit researching, going as high as I could up the culture scale.

A worrying vote came up from the UN, but fortunately


I did trade around my techs where I could and got some backfill in for example Steampower, Railroad, Combustion.

Another worrying note comes up, I'm about ~30 turns from victory and someone wants nuclear weapons...


I was expecting a nuclear assault any minute during these final turns.

But, first city reaches legendary


And shortly after, Paris reaches the limit


And then some 15 turns later


Lyons joins the other 2 in legendary status



The techsituation 1 turn from the end


The French continent at the end, I never got around to build more than the needed 9 cities, I had room for another 3.



The VCs a turn from the end.


And some mandatory stat pictures






A lousy score, but it was in fact a fairly late cultural vic.

I did one major screwup in this one. I left Rep for US way to early and didn't switch back. I did it as I needed to rushbuy units but it hurt my researchrate alot, leaving me trailing the AIs. I'm no good playing in US, I'm more comfortable with an SE based economy so this one was a fairly uncommon game for me with all the cottages. With a cultural victory in mind, it would've been better going fullblown SE and gaining alot of science from all the artists.

But anyway, a victory is a victory. And it was probably one of my quicker games in history, only 4 and a half hour give or take a little.

victory in 1768, only got as far as Rifles, Artillery and Calvary.

No screen shots taken, I basically wonder spammed the GLH, pyramids, oracle, colossus, ToA, Hanging Gardens (7 cities gained benefit from ) no others, got cash for Chitizen Itza, (finally), cashed in on another..forget now. Uni of Sankore, cash only, bulbed Machinery with Great Engineer, got Astro first in 870 Slow...but others didn't get it untill mid 1500's.

War's..lots of war, it ended up a Buddhist Bloc V's hindu Block, with Buddhist Surry and Peter, winning out in end v's Hindu Gil & Pacal. With Toku building the Shwedagon pagoda.

till 900 ad, they were CONSTANTLY ALL declaring war on each other, GG's popping up like flies. It was all 5 involved as well.

I took down Kublai Khan, with Maces, Knights, trebs and cats, eliminated him by 1200 ad, BEFORE most of the other continent even has Optics. Not much trading available to do.

No one even got Chemistry till probably 1600, by that stage, I'd virtually eliminated Surry, Pacal was down to 1 city thanks to Surry and Peter. I wiped out surry, then took Pacal's one city, then declared on Peter. He sent his Stack of Offense to take a border city, and I eliminated his stack at my city wall's. From here on in, I attacked in 3 directions with one stack purely built in Ex-Mongolia, attacking from underneath, another stack built in France, Pushed into Russia, While a 3rd, mopped up and finished off Surry/Pacal, from the North.

Once I took Moscow, I got a Religious Diplomatic victory option, but fortunately, I had enough Hindu Cities, to give me a blocking stake,and Domination came up 4 turns later with a border pop or 6

Fun game, I massively out teched them until the later part of the game, where I was just going full on Military production and zero Science. Production ended up being 5 times the next best.

1st time I've used Communism, which I was able to take with Liberalism, and from there I never looked back, just workshops or watermills only. Towns were plundered and work shopped, easy win in end as I had 3 times nearest opponent army scoring.

I'd do a very detailed report, but I'm too lazy to do so. Pics with some comments will be all.





This one gets upgraded to unlock HE.





Dot-map:





Demographics:









I always forget to build the Globe. Not this time.



Unlocking Astro:



Techs in the world:


After trading:



Updated Demographics:

Sury and KK kept declaring on me over and over, which forced me to go to a military win. The Musketeers saved my skin because of the double movement.


























Peter gets an Engineer so I pay him to become Communist.








Time to go back to Free-Market:


Rushbuy Take 1:




Rushbuy Take 2:








It's a shame I didn't get this city earlier:


Rushbuy Take 3:





I only built Artilleries because Peter and Toku already had Advanced Flight, otherwise I'd have built none:


My siege: