Play With Me 2: Iroquois, Part 5. The Dark Empire returns.
After leaving this game alone for a while, and some gentle nudging from posters, I will now continue the story of the Iroquois path to world domination (real domination, not the cheesy domination victory).
For a bit of fun, and because I feel like it, I will emulate aimlessgun's styles by adding speech bubbles to some pics. Steady as she goes!
Turn 94
Osininka finishes a library. The patch has introduced a feature that is very useful for ICS: The "Avoid Growth" checkbox now actually means the city won't grow, even if it has food surplus. This allows you to micromanage your happiness a lot better.
Taking a good look at the game, I will try to get Metal Casting in 6 turns, and go to steel afterwards. I will get a few warriors, upgrade them to Mohawks, which in turn are upgraded to Longswordsmen while keeping the "good in wood" bonus upgrade.
Turn 95 - Finally a proper palace! All marble is hereby confiscated for royal use.
Well, one of our workers hooked up marble. I will put this to good use at some point, the royal bathroom needs some more stylish furniture. I am a bit concerned Montezuma insulted me, what with him being right next to Rome and all, so my horses go a-scouting a bit.
After the patch, I adopted a different stance towards selling strategic resources. Since the AI will only give you something for it if they really want the resource, I am now fine with it. I implement this by selling 5 iron to Harun for 220 gold.
Turn 96 - Insulting behaviour
As it turns out, insulting me is all the rage these days. Askia and Ram follow in Montezuma's footsteps and make meanie comments about my culture and economy, respectively.
I find Edinburgh who are at war with the big, bad, human-sacrificing Montezuma.
Turn 97
I forgot I already had marble. So I sell it to Montezuma to allow him to build a new sacrificial altar on his temple-pyramid for 200 gold.
Turn 98 - Monty foiled
Looks like Monty's jaguar warriors aren't doing so great against 20-defence Edinburgh. Serves him right, go Scotland! Interestingly, he's next to Greece, and Alex is bribable for something like 450 gold. I settle for a pact of secrecy right now because Monty is not a direct threat but if I have to win a bit of time to move my army, it's good to know that Alex is available.
I think the game hates me. I find another cultural and a militaristic city state to the north-east of Rome. No sign of Oslo, or any other maritime CS for that matter.
Turn 99 - almost a hundred! Way to go!
I liberate a worker from the barbarian camp. I think he will be put to good use as a slave in my darth empire.
Turn 100 - what, the party's over already? And I don't even have a proper hangover...
You can always count on Alex being hyper-aggressive. He asks me whether we want to declare war on Montezuma, and I agree that, on turn 110, we shall do so. This will keep Alex's aggro off me, and give my horsemen something to do. The next turn he will offer a pact of cooperation, too, which I eagerly sign.
Metal Casting is finished. I research archery in 1 turn before I get too much science waste. It turns out that Metal Casting (or the medieval era?) obsoletes warriors, didn't know that.
Turn 101 - Maritime 101
Hooray! Servants, let us enjoy a national holiday (unpaid and with drink at your own expense)! One of my scouts found Oslo! I will immediately dump 1000 gold into them. Which reveals...
Now I am poor. Anything to feed my people. And two luxuries, too. So bring on the settlers. Six settlers eat 18 happiness when settled, so I should be fine if I continue building colosseums afterwards. I think there must be some bug with my iron deposits because according to my count I have 6 hooked up but am selling 10.
Turn 102 - Askia sticks his sword into the ground
You know what that means, yes? It means war. There will be hell to pay, but the paying will all be done by Askia if I get my way.
Turn 103 - Siamese pre-lephants
Oh well, another one to join the fun. I switch Buffalo Creek to a Mohawk and move my old warrior south. I don't think this horse scout has good odds of survival after being surprised by Ram.
Turn 104 - I told you they were meanies
Well, this is some typical post-patch behaviour. If you take out two enemies or so, a lot of other blokes will gang up on you. The horseman that was surprised by Siam died, too.
One of the most annoying things in Civ5 is that you always have to calculate how much science waste you'd have and micro-manage your scientists accordingly (at least if you don't want a lot of wastage). I want overflow!
So this is where all the naval CS were hiding. If only I had found it earlier.
Turn 105 - Madness is spelled with two s
Turns out neither Songhai nor Siam could be bothered to wait for their war agreement. They declared on me again. Songhai brought Vienna in on their side, too. This suits me fine because I was planning to destroy that CS anyways (what with it being right in my projected territory) and I always hate it if I have to declare war on them.
Turn 106 - A pleasant surprise
Alex can't wait, either (like a child, the AI is quite impatient) and declares war on Montezuma. Not that I mind.
Askia wants to take Buffalo Creek so I upgrade my warrior and buy another Mohawk in the city. Next turn, neither of them will stay inside of it so if it falls I won't lose a unit at least. He has more units than I anticipated, however. This looks like bad news.
Siam is handled more easily, Berlin pings to death a warrior and one of my horses kills an archer.
Turn 107 - The pain, oh the exquisite pain
Turn 108
You remember those two Mohawks where at least one was doomed to die last turn? Let me update that picture for you.
In other news, note that in the .62 patch your puppets now focus on gold. This makes trade-posting them even more useful.
Turn 109
Im Westen nichts Neues.
Im Osten aber schon.
Turn 110 - Superstitious fools
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Ok, that's it for today folks. I hope you had fun and an instructive read, although it was once again more about war than about ICS. Sorry for that, but nothing much happened economically. I'll found a couple new cities soon, though.
Edit:
Part 6 is online