Round 3: 1675 BC to 275 BC (62 turns), Part 1
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
- Abraham Lincoln
I decided to persevere with our original decision to go after Huayna Capac. His land and cities are just too good to pass up, especially if I can generate a Great Prophet or two, which Philosophical should make relatively easy. He's the closest target nearby so his cities' maintenance won't be crippling. Besides, both cities are prime for cottages
or running specialists, rather than being marginal, so they'll pay for themselves before too long.
And experience has proven to me that the Incan is an opponent who's always worth attacking, if it's possible. I'm also looking upon him they way I often look upon barbarians and their cities: as XP farms. This round convinced me that war with Montezuma is, as usual, something that is inevitable and therefore it would be good to have a horde of promoted units ready when than conflict inevitably arises.
And after everyone saying how I always do what Validator tells me to, I was feeling contrary.
So there.
To that end, I decided to postpone Alphabet for a while and go after a couple of military techs, starting with Hunting for Spearmen.
In addition, it would be nice to have Scouts available, as my military units are going to be tied up for a while and there is a substantial amount of land to be scouted.
Hunting didn't take long.
In the meantime, I was whipping and chopping away. I whipped another Worker almost immediately in NY and whipped several Axes out of both my cities. Lincoln is probably turning over in his grave, but it's the only way to get a good-sized army built this early.
As I mentioned, I look upon barbarians as XP huts.
This is why I usually don't build the Great Wall.
The power rankings were as to be expected, but as you'll see, this changed by the end of the round.
Hatshepsut came by with a demand that fit right in with my plans, so I acceded:
And sure enough, there are other civs around.
I think Gilgamesh might be further east of Hammurabi, but at this point, of course, I can't be sure. And he wasn't the only other leader I met this round, as you'll see.
Meanwhile, I had a substantial stack of 8 Axemen on Incan borders, so it was time to declare war:
You can see that Huayna manged to get a third city plunked down next to the stone. He got beaten to that eastern copper by Hatty--so much the better for me.
Having this city here wasn't such a bad thing. Because of the way the map was set up, I think it provided me with a feint. Because my units moved next to it as part of the declaration of war, Huayna probably calculated that I would be attacking that city. In fact, I was using it as a pass-through point to get to the capital--specifically, to the forested hill 1S of Cuzco. If I'd marched from a location due west, I would have had four turns of travelling to do, because the closest tiles were all across a river from Cuzco. This way, I was able to fake Huayna out, then march three tiles to the capital.
A complication arose, however. On the very next turn, Montezuma declared war on me!
I think Huayna may have bribed him, because, much to my surprise, Monty did not show up suddenly the way he usually does, with an immense early-era stack. His war effort was, in fact, remarkably pathetic, which is why I didn't turn my stack around and run home.
My stack arrived at Cuzco and found it poorly defended. Hence, as I said, I think the map and location of Huayna's cities provided me with that feint opportunity, and I think it worked.
I attacked with my first few Axemen and, despite the flat terrain of the capital, I thoroughly expected them to die--which they did.
I lost three Axes in quick succession. But they did their job, weakening the defenders so their surviving compatriots had much better odds and weaker opposition to face.
Despite the mountain in the fat cross, Cuzco will be an excellent city, what with the gold, several riverside tiles, and adequate food from the clams. It's not the best capital I've ever captured, but it's pretty good. Should it be cottaged or farmed?
I finished my next tech:
And I continue to benefit from an unusually kind map generator this time around; iron appeared within Washington's fat cross, on the plains hill 2S1W of the capital--a hill which already had a mine. So I was able to start building Swordsmen immediately.
I was also able to start raising the happy cap, courtesy of my friendly neighbourhood Egyptian:
Isn't she sweet? I might let her live.
As I said, I think Monty must have been bribed into war, because he didn't seem ready for it. I kept expecting an Aztec stack to appear, but it never did. So I settled for picking off a few stray units like this Jaguar, stupidly standing around on flat terrain right next to a shock Axe.
Oh, well, I think we can all agree that as annoying as he is, Monty is always at least good for a few XPs. Thanks to Charismatic's reduced promotion level, this Axe earned Combat II, so I moved him north to help protect the new city I was about to found.
Before I did that, however, I first met another nearby civ.
Ah, Zara Yaqob, my old nemesis from the Saladin game... we meet again!
At least this time he's not nearby so his Creative border-popping can annoy me. (I have Hatty to fulfil that role in this game.) I'm pretty sure that Zara is, in fact, on another land mass separated by water from mine, probably to Monty's west and/or north. My trade route income is highest with Zara, which leads me to this conclusion, intercontinental trade routes always being the more lucrative ones.
Montezume continued to be stupid. He sent two Archers and a Settler (!) out into an area where I had two Axemen and a Spear on the way, since I planned to settle it myself.
And as if that wasn't idiotic enough, on the next turn he moved the entire stack, Settler included, away from the 25% defensive bonus (plus another 25% for each Archer) the hill provided down onto flat terrain, right in between my two Axemen.
Monty, you
do remember that you declared war on me, don't you?
Thanks for the free Worker, moron. I think we can consider this proof of what we already knew, that the AI does not, indeed, get smarter as you move up the difficulty levels.
To be continued...