SGOTM 2 - First Spoiler: All your rivals are known or dead

This is your Spoiler thread for mid-game discussions between teams on your progress so far.

To qualify to READ in this thread your team must know all the rivals in the game, or know of their demise.

You can determine that you have met or eliminated all your rivals by

(a) checking the Victory Conditions screen to see how many rivals you would need to eliminate for a Conquest victory, or

(b) watching for the messages that tell you how you are doing relative to the other civs. When the screen lists no Unknown civilizations you have found them all.

To qualify to POST in this thread a nominated scribe from your team must post a summary of your game up to the point defined above.

Your summary should include your early decisions on city placement, research, units and improvements, and the milestones in the development of your economy, civics, contacts and diplomatic relationships.

When posting, please do not discuss future events beyond the date you met the spoiler condition. And remember that your viewing public will be looking out for literary flair, historical accuracy, humour, and strategic insight. Comments on the SGOTM experience so far will also be welcome.

So, how was it for you? Still alive and kicking? How did you deal with the management of two widely separated cities as you developed your empire?

Team background: Pioneer Knights

We started off as a new team with little succession game experience, but we had soon established some rules, a captain(me) and team name. All of us were anxious to get this game going and make a good start in this game style.

The vengeance of Tokugawa’s brother

We landed on a new continent and were determined to avenge the wife and only son of Tokugawa's brother. To achieve this goal we would need to settle new cities and build an army. As we had only supplies for one initial city we thought long and hard on where to settle. It was decided that the Settler would explore SW-NW and the Warrior would head E. On the next turn the warrior would hop to the next hill and the settler would go NE-E, to end up one tile North of the initial landing site and found Osaka. The wheels were set in motion but as the warrior hopped from hill to hill more fertile and commerce-driven land was discovered.

Tokugawa’s brother took the risk and settled only on the 5th turn between both gem mines, with also access to gold, sheep and rice. It later turned out to have iron as well. A great city site!



Initial decisions
Before Osaka was founded we had already gotten some maps from a hut and met a scout from our Spanish friend Isabelle. It seemed we had our first target for vengeance . As we had changed plans for the city site, science was changed from Pottery to Mining and as soon as it was discovered we mined both gems to overcome the steep maintenance fee. We decided we would rush Isabelle with Axes, so Bronze Working was next. We switched to slavery and luckily copper was not too far to the east.

Getting copper!
Meanwhile we wanted to head for writing but we decided to beeline for archery to deal with barbarian axes, while we hooked up copper. We had to deal with a lot of barbarians and we were able to fend them off well thanks to the archers. We sent a settler to snatch copper. And snatch it we did. Just as we approached Isabelle passed with her settler. One turn later and we would have been too late:



Kyoto's scientists
Meanwhile Kyoto spent its time building a warrior and several workboats. One workboat sailed around the islands, discovered by cultural expansion, and found some very useful resources. This would later be known as the Kyoto triangle. When we discovered writing, Kyoto rushed a library and set two scientists. The great scientist which resulted was used for an academy in Kyoto.

A different research path
After writing we discovered meditation and priesthood as we wanted Code of Laws which would give us Confucianism, caste system and courthouses. We founded Confucianism in Osaka and spread it to Tokyo. Our borders had already grown at this point thanks to Judaism spreading to both cities. With CoL we had two options, either build Forbidden Palace or normal Palace in Osaka. We decided to go with the former option, building 6 courthouses and conquering/founding 8 cities. We built Forbidden Palace in 665AD in Osaka. After CoL we went for Monarchy to get hereditary rule and solve happiness problems in Kyoto. From Monarchy we discovered Iron Working, Mathematics to go to Calendar.

War with Isabelle
After setting up two cities we started building axes to wage war against Isabelle, who had 4 cities above us and was setting up 2 cities below us. In 250BC we attacked and conquered Seville, 5AD Toledo, 170AD Barcelona and razed Cordoba in 350AD. Madrid was a tough nut to crack, but we found a window when her units were sent out and we captured Madrid in 515AD. We made one cease fire for some techs and finished Isabelle off 845AD keeping Santiago.

Kyoto Triangle
Meanwhile we set up two more cities in the Kyoto Triangle. We used another great scientist to get philosophy and found Taoism in Satsuma, one of the Kyoto Triangle cities, it spread to the other two giving instant culture to both new cities.

Meeting the opposition
After we got optics we started meeting opponents. We managed to use a great scientist to give us a big boost to astronomy which was in research at the moment we met all the opposition. This is as far as the story goes, for now.





Overall
A great game and fun challenge!

Pre-game plan.

To kill all the bad guys quickly we need to tech up to samurais (definitely) and astronomy (very likely), and to set up a nice production base. We decided to only discover techs that are absolutely necessary and hope to get others in trades. Also to shorten the path even further we decided to build the Oracle wonder and lightbulb as many techs as possible with GPs. All this means that we won't need that much research and can concentrate on expanding.

We have fog-gazed land to the north of Kyoto and we initially wanted to expand there, building 2 cores and the Forbidden Palace, in this case CoL would have been the Oracle tech for quick courthouses. (But once we learnt that the land there is just 2 tiny islands, we abandonned that idea and decided to move our main palace to the big continent and take more expensive MC for free instead.)

The key techs that can be lightbulbed with GSs are Compass, Optics and Astronomy. This requires that we don't have access to paper and philosphy. So prerequisites theology, CS and meditation remained forbidden knowledge in the Japanese Empire for centuries. We considered building the Great Library and National Epic to generate all those GSs, since we'll need Alphabet for trading and Literature is just one tech from there. (We abandonned that idea though when we found out that we don't have marble and Isabella is our only only neighbour.)

Opening turns.

We have wandered with our settler a bit and settled in the awesome spot to the east (I guess everybody settled there). Once we saw the beatifull start we even considered the infamous CS-slingshot, but after some thought we agreed that our initial plan was still better. We decided to gamble on founding hinduism this time. Normally going for an early religion is not worth the risk, but in this case the reward was much higher then usual: the border expansion (religion is always founded in the most recently settled city). It will allow us to work all the good tiles in the fat cross of Osaka and it will make defense against raging barbs easier. Our tests showed that we have about 60% chance, which is reasonable considering how much we gain in case of success and how little we loose in case of a failure. And we were lucky enough to get it. Another great boost was popping mining from a hut which allowed us to improve the gems sooner. We made another test that showed that with such settings barbs start spawning on turn 50. This meant that we still had time for a worker as the first build. Worker improved the gems, gold and sheep while Osaka produced 8 warriors for the defense against barbs that were fortified on the surrounding hills and forests. We have concetrated on worker techs and skipped archery: warriors are good enough untill axemen appear. Meanwhile Kyoto whipped a library and started generating GSs.

Early expansion.

4 cities are necessary to move the palace, so as soon as all the really good tiles in Osaka were occupied (sheep, 2 gems and gold), we started building settlers. Once we found out that we have iron on one of the hills, we let Osaka grow to size 5 to also work the iron mine. Worker chopped forests to speed the things up. We did not settle the 3rd city immidiately though, because we were not very confident that we'll be able to defend it. Faster science, however, made up for the lost production, since we learnt math earlier which allowed better chopping. As soon as the second settler was complete we settled both cities at once (910BC). At that time the barbs were already under control. We didn't go for bronze, since we knew that we had iron already. Instead we settled at the closest most productive spots: to the SE near the horses and sheep, and to the SW, near sheep and wheat. Everything up north was occupied by Spain and the great copper/fish/game city in the south was built by the barbs.

The early wars.
After settling those 2 cities we had enough production capacity to construct the big projects we planned while also pumping out swords to kill Isabella (who, of course, was guilty of murdering Tokugawa'a brother ). Osaka built the Oracle (880BC), then Palace (675BC). New cities produced barracks and swords. Edo has also built a library and became another GS-generator. The workers chopped most of the trees in our cultural borders to boost production. First we attacked the barb city in the south to promote our swords and captured it in 430BC. In 310BC we declared war on Spain and in 65AD they were gone. They didn't even connect copper near Madrid by that time and the war took only about 15 swords.

Research.
After researching the basic techs we decided to beeline to optics ignoring everything else completely. Alphabet was not needed because we only had one neighbour, CoL was not needed because we only had one distant city, and we didn't need any advanced military techs since we could kill Spain easily with swords. So we started a long and slow run on the very expensive machinery while Kyoto generated two GSs to lightbulb Compass and Optics, which was done in 130BC. After that we stopped research temporarily, to see what the AI civs have to offer before choosing the next research goal.

The Age of Discovery.
As soon as optics came in we poprushed caravells, one in Kyoto and one on the mainland. They quickly explored the shape of the other continent, meeting the last rival in 80AD. Unfortunately the AI still lack alphabet, so we need to rsearch it ourselves now to see what techs we can get in trades.

Here is a screenshot of our empire at the end of the first spoiler:

Well played and a good story to read!!
You really did a great job finishing Spain off well before us (Pioneer Knights), we really can learn something from the way Team CFR did this.

The hut only got us a map btw, a shame really

Team One Spoiler:

Our team is comprised of an even mix of vets from SGOTM1 and SG newbies. Onward towards our Golden Laurels!

After running a couple test games, we realized that there wasn't much useful to build in Kyoto after a couple WBs, a warrior and a library. We decided to try an Oracle slingshot especially after discovering that whipping WBs from scratch could help us with the build. We initially planned for a CS slingshot, but revised it to MC as we got into the flow of the game.

The main continent:

We decided to explore E before settling and discovered the pair of gem mines, gold mine and oasis . After determining that founding on the plains hill would be more lucrative than founding in between the gem mines, Tokagawa's brother marched his compatriots up the hill and claimed it for the nascent Japanese Empire.

Our wise men spent their days studying how we could extract the gems from the earth, while our citizens concentrated on pumping out a worker to use this newfangled knowledge. After the wise men had completed their mining studies, we had them research Mysticism and Bronze Working. Our citizens moved on to training warriors to defend ourselves from the barbarian hordes.

Our of fear of angering the local tribesmen (and assuring ourselves the wooden spoons), our warrior declined to enter the tribal village near Osaka. In hindsight, perhaps our warrior should have been a little more bold, based on the generosity of that tribe to other teams. Ah, well. Better safe than sorry, right?

A scout of "Isabella" of the "Spanish" showed up before we had even settled Osaka. From the moment we met this "Isabella", we could smell her guilt. "Her head will be a fine addition to our palace", we swore. But for now, we bided our time and feigned friendship with the treacherous wretch.

We decided early on to move our capital to the mainland instead of waiting to be able to build the FP. Bureaucracy would make a powerhouse out of Osaka. In 1360 BC, we founded Tokyo on the mainland in position to claim the copper for our greater glory.

Kyoto:

Meanwhile, in Kyoto, we built a couple WBs, a warrior and a library before starting the Oracle. We finished it with a 3-pop whip in 1240 BC and took MC. Since we suspected we would need Optics and Astronomy (in addition to Samurai) to complete our revenge, we decided to take MC. Also, we were concerned that another civ might beat us to it if we waited to finish researching CoL. After we completed the Oracle, we continued to use Kyoto to generate our GP.

Japan Finds Religion:

In 895 BC, the Japanese wisemen produced a new concept they called "Code of Laws". In doing so, they designated Tokyo the holy city of a new religion called "Confucianism" and spread their teachings to Osaka. Perhaps this new religion will heal some of the festering wounds that drive our people's thirst for revenge and teach them that peace and love is the way. Perhaps not .

A Japanese Prodigy Named Imhotep:

In 505 BC, Imhotep (GE) was born in Kyoto. Despite his slightly un-Japanese name, Imhotep contributed mightily to the early Empire by single-handedly discovering the secret to Machinery. Our wisemen were beside themselves in joy that they did not have to spend a thousand years studying that topic .

"Settling" Our 4th City:

To acquire our 4th city, we trained a bunch of axes and swords and declared war on Izzy in 310 BC. Spain was long on religion (being the founder of Buddhism, Judiasm and Christianity), but short on warriors. We razed two of her weak cities (the Jewish and Christian holy cities) and kept one of her good cities, leaving her with just Madrid. We made peace in 25 BC partly because we thought Madrid would be too costly in Japanese blood to take and partly because we hadn't built the new palace yet, so we had nowhere to put her head at the present time .

Civil Strife in Kyoto ("What we've got here is a failure to communicate..."):

Some of the folk in Kyoto looked longingly at the cow island to the N and wanted to settle it. After all, they were lonely, unhealthy and thought that might help make contact with other civs. Others in Kyoto disapproved of the cow colony, fearing that it would not be worth its cost, especially after moving the palace. Arrogantly, some of Kyoto's citizens packed their bags and prepared to move, without regard to the feelings of the majority. After a heated confrontation, tempers flared and when the dust settled, Kyoto's majority had won out. There was no sign of the settlers . (We built a settler hastily, THEN debated about whether the cow colony would be a net plus or net minus for our empire, decided it would be a net minus, dispanded the settler and its galley cause we were far from Astronomy and didn't want to pay the unit upkeep for them.)

Big Moving Day:

Our population in Osaka completed the new palace in Osaka in 35 AD, saving us ~24 gpt. In honor of the new palace, the citizens renamed Osaka to Red Cardinal. Once the palace was completed, we conquered a barb city in the SW and settled a couple more cities on the main continent. We discovered CS in 215 AD and swapped to Bureaucracy immediately.

Misc. (Tech, Religion and Contacts):

We researched through CS before we researched Math and Compass. Our second GP out of Kyoto came in 125 AD as a Great Scientist. We put him to sleep until after we finished Math and Compass and used him to get up Optics in 470 AD. We immediately rushed 2 caravels and sent them around the world to meet the rest of the civs and circumnavigate. By 575 AD, we had met all the civs, traded for many techs we'd skipped and assigned our wisemen to study the stars (Astronomy) . Islam was the only religion still up for graps, with Hinduism being founded in 2890 BC and Taoism in 350 AD.



Congrats to Team CFR on such a good start. You made the rest of us look bad.

The Legend of the Seven Headed Dragon

"Tell us the story again father," the children pleaded.

"Only if you promise to go to bed this time," their father scolded, trying to suppress a smile. The children knew that he enjoyed telling the story of the Seven Headed Dragon almost as much as they enjoyed listening. And so, the story began, again.

Once upon a time in a land far far away, there lived a man named Matsumoto, brother of Tokugawa. Tokugawa was the leader of the Japanese people. The Japanese lived on a lone isle in the middle of the sea, scarce in natural resources but plentiful in seafood. The Japanese had learned to harvest the food from the sea and were satisfied with their home. That is, until one horrible night when Matsumoto came home to find the infamous Seven Headed Dragon standing over the bodies of his lovely wife and newborn son. He dove at the dragon but the dragon was quick on his feet and flew into the night sky, bursting into seven separate dragons. The seven dragons fell from the sky, landing all around the earth. Matsumoto vowed that he would hunt down each and every one of the dragons. They would be destroyed and the earth would be cleansed of their evil.

The Cast
Our team was comprised of veterans from SGOTM01 and newcomers to the SGOTM competition.

Team VQ Black
bobrath
namliaM
Cosmichail
pigswill
LuvToBuild
eektor

The Beginning
Being the brilliant geniuses that we are (apparently we're not the only ones ) we chose to hold off on building a new settlement right away. We wanted to find a nice spot and indeed we did when we crossed the eastern hills to discover an excellent city site. The decision was made to settle here in 3910 BC. Research was switched from Hunting to Mining. We had been researching Hunting in order to obtain Archery quickly and prepare for the barb onslaught. In hindsight, we probably should have just gambled and went for Mining and BW right away.


The First Dragon Appears

Shortly after settling Osaka, Matsumoto met the descendents of the first dragon. She called herself Isabella and her people were the Spanish. He wanted to deal with her harshly but for now, he would appease her and prepare for the day of his revenge.

Our early research was based on getting to Archery quickly for defense against barbs, then Mysticism for building Stonehenge. We wanted BW for finding copper and slavery. Once we had discovered Mysticism, we set about building Stonehenge in Kyoto (completed in 1450 BC). We wanted to generate a GP to help us get CS as soon as possible. We knew early on that Bureaucracy would be powerful in Osaka once we managed to move the Palace. We debated over that for a while, especially after discovery of land to the north of Kyoto. We eventually decided to stick with moving the palace after finding nothing but two small isles north of Kyoto.

We revolted to slavery once BW was discovered. We expected that Kyoto's best chance for production would come from whipping. We also noticed the copper site east of Osaka but were not able to snag it before Isabella had plopped down Cordoba. After BW, we chose AH to work the sheep and Sailing for galleys and a lighthouse in Kyoto. We then saw the need to pick up Polytheism in order to steer the GP's tech choices towards CS. We discovered Priesthood and made a shortlived attempt at the Oracle. We then discovered Writing in order to build libraries. We picked up Meditation in order to keep the GP steered towards CS.

Hinduism spread to Osaka but we chose not to convert right away. When Isabella asked us to convert in 910 BC, we chose to do so in order to appease her while we still made preparations for war. Tokyo was founded near the horse and sheep southeast of Osaka. A Library and Lighthouse were built in Kyoto to take full advantage of the food bonanza.

Due to our focus on getting CS, our progress towards IW was a bit slow in hindsight. We finally discovered the iron in Osaka around 550 BC and started building swordsmen for Izzy's demise. We finally got a Great Prophet from Stonehenge in 265 BC. We finished researching CoL first, then used the GP to get us through most of CS. Once we discovered CS, we revolted to Bureaucracy. We were still working on moving the palace to Osaka but accomplished that task a few turns later.

We founded Edo on the isle with the cows in 145 BC. This was a hotly debated decision because some of us feared the increase in maintenance while others felt it could pay for itself and would be useful for whipping. in the end, Edo was founded and did prove to be useful.

At this point, we decided to go for Alphabet and Literature in order to make an attempt on The Great Library. We were successful and built TGL in Osaka around 575 AD. Satsuma was founded in 395 AD.

After Alphabet and Literature, we chose to go for Mathematics, Masonry, and Construction in order to further prepare for war against Isabella. As it turned out, Isabella converted to Confucianism and demanded Gems as tribute. We refused and she declared on us before we were prepared for an invasion. Unfortunately, we had made an unsuccessful attempt on a barb city to the south so some of our forces were wounded and away from the border. On the up side, Isabella didn't turn out to be any better prepared for war than we were at the time.

The Remaining Dragons Appear

The second dragon appeared from across the sea near Kyoto. Tokugawa was alarmed when he realized that this beast had been lurking in the darkness all of these years. His concern soon turned to rage. He had not forgotten his brother and the sorrow that had consumed him. He would feign friendship with this dragon and send his best men out to explore the dragon's land. Perhaps they would find the rest of the seven headed beast.

We met Bismarck in 485 AD when his borders finally pushed out far enough to see us. We had noticed some time earlier that culture appeared to be in the darkness southeast of Kyoto. We couldn't tell who it might be so we resigned ourselves to waiting until the civs borders pushed further out. When we finally met Bismarck, we acquired an OB agreement and sent two galleys and a scout into his lands. One galley went south along his coast while the other tranported a scout to his land and moved north along his coast. We wanted to meet all of our opponents as quickly as possible now that we had access to this new land. We soon met Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa, Kublai Khan, Huayna Cupac, and Mao Zedong.

Hokkaido and the Triangle

We designated the mainland as Hokkaido and the Kyoto area as the Triangle for ease of discussion. This was the state of our empire after finding the last of the seven dragons.

Team Short Straw History

Team Short Straw was founded at the beginning of the CIV4 SGOTM1. The original team was randomly assigned, but only 4 of the eight members showed up at first, prompting AlanH to remark "Your team seems to have drawn the shortest straw." The name stuck and we came to be known as 'Team Short Straw.' Going into SGOTM2, 7 of the 8 players from SGOTM1 have returned. Our player roster is:

ungy
Danthor
Lmtoops
Mushroomshirt
RobertTheBruce
Grogs
llib_rm

Before the Game

Several of our players were nice enough to set up practice games with the same settings and general layout of the SGOTM, so we were able to compare notes and see what worked and what didn't with this type of game. Two things became quite apparent to us, 1) The barbarians could be devastating once they started coming in and 2) The maintenance for our second city really ate into research. We came upon the following general starting strategy:

Move the settler around, possibly for as long as 10 turns, until we find a good city site, preferably on a plains hill for defense and extra production. Research hunting -> archery ASAP to stop the barbarian onslaught, then research Mining -> BW, found the 3rd city on copper, and build axes. Research Mysticism and build Stonehenge in Kyoto. Use the Great Prophet from SH to research Civil Service.

The Best Laid Plans...

While our practice games were invaluable, each game is different and requires a different strategy. The start of SGOTM02 was no exception. We set our initial research to hunting and moved the warrior E, then SE and found a breathtaking city site with 2 gems, gold, rice, etc. Actually, some of us were a little disappointed when we found the spot, not because it wasn't awesome (it was!) but because it was so awesome everyone would build the Osaka there.

We founded Osaka on the plains hill in 3850 BC. Because of the gold/gems, we altered our research path and researched Mining first. Our initial build in Osaka was a worker to work the gold mine. Our warrior continued to explore the continent and we left Osaka undefended for the time being, safe from animals and confident the AIs wouldn't attack this early. We met Isabella's scout in 3730 BC. After mining, we researched hunting -> archery -> mysticism -> BW. After Osaka finished the worker, it built a 2nd warrior, then began building archers. Kyoto built 2 workboats, a warrior, then began on Stonehenge.

Things begin to heat up

During the 2nd and 3rd millenia of the game, relations with the barbs got rather intense at times (see SS below.)



We focused most of our efforts on building up our defensive force, protecting our resources, and getting fogbusters out (in that order.) We did notice that barb archers didn't appear until much later than in our practice games, so that made the process easier. While the barbs remained a nuicance for quite some time, we pushed them back enough to found Tokyo on the copper east of Osaka in 715 BC. We also founded Edo on the cow island north of Kyoto in 505 BC and promptly got to work jumping the palace from Kyoto to Osaka.

We completed Stonehenge in Kyoto in 1420 BC and made a run at the Oracle since there was nothing useful to be built in Kyoto at the moment, but we got beaten and took the gold instead. We also decided to go ahead and research CoL during this time period, and, much to our surprise, we founded Confucianism in Osaka in 730 BC. Even more surprising was that Isabella had not founded a religion. The missionary was sent to Madrid, and Isabella converted to Confucianism in 370 BC.

Meet the Neighbors

Things remained fairly quiet for the next 1000 years. Moses was born in Kyoto in 160 BC and we finished Civil Service and switched to Bureaucracy in 70 BC. We also completed our palace jump to Osaka in 100 BC, so the palace jump and bureaucracy boosted our finances immensely. We also adopted Confucianism as our official state religion in 145 BC. In the meantime, Confucianism spread to most of Isabella's cities, letting us see what defenders she had.

We were content to expand peacefully and fill out the rest of the good city sites on the continent, founding Satsuma in 155 AD, Kagoshima in 380 AD, and Nara in 530 AD. We chose to leave Isabella alone for the time being since adding her cities to our empire would slow research and we weren't going anywhere until we discovered Astronomy, so there was no rush in our minds. Much to our surprise, even though we shared the same religion and had open borders, Isabella declared war on us in 230 AD. We didn't have a huge offensive force at that time but we had plenty of defenders, so we simply beat back her attacks with our axes and swords and made peace in 530 AD.

In 695 AD, Bismarck's culture expanded and touched Kyoto's culture and we were officially introduced to our first off-continent AI. We signed OB with Bismarck and sent a galley across to explore this new continent. We quickly discovered new AI's, getting OB's with each and sailing through to the next. In 905 AD, we met Mao ZeDong, the last off-continent AI.

Our main continent, just prior to meeting Mao:

SGOTM-2 began like any other game for team FUBAR, but quickly became a game of futility. Given the huge distance penalty that was intrinsic to the game set-up, we decided like many others to spend the first few turns scouting with the settler to find that ideal spot to found Osaka. We quickly met Isabella and then located the spot of our financial haven. Osaka was settled to take advantage of the wonderful gems, just like many other teams did.

Unfortunately, however, the celebrations in Osaka rapidly turned to fear as our wandering warrior located a "goody" hut and popped something far different:







So, in 3730 BC, Osaka was no more and Tokugawa's brother reunited with his wife and son. Now, the game turned towards Tokugawa seeking the killers of his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew.

After disaster struck, we decided to send out a workboat to scout the waters off Kyoto's coast in the hopes of locating fertile land nearby. But, as the name FUBAR suggests, we were left with 4 tiny squares of land.



Observing that the food and gold resources SE of Kyoto suggested land nearby, we pushed towards a 2nd culture border expansion to allow our troops to move over. However, FUBAR struck again as we were unaware that culture borders had coastal limitations. Therefore, We decided to settle the most extreme points on the islands, build obelisks and hope that our cultural border expansions would reveal neighboring land masses.



Cultural border pops quickly showed us that we were stuck on these four land squares for many years to come. Losing Osaka in less than 10 turns ruined this game.

We decided to press on by building libraries and using scientists to speed our research. We saved Great Scientists that spawned and focused on quickly researching Astronomy. At the same time, we hoped to gain access to Catapults to try to build a small catapult army to attack our nearest neighbor. Our hopes were to gain a quick foothold on land. Along the way, we founded and converted to Taoism for the happiness bonus.

In 875 AD, Bismarck makes contact with us. Then, in 905 AD, we researched Optics and spent 2 Great Scientists to learn Astronomy. We immediately made contact with Hatshepsut and Kublai Kahn and Bismarck declares war on Hatshepsut. In 935 AD, we contact Huayna Capac and Mansa Musa. Somewhere along the way, we also made contact with Mao Zedong.

So, that brings us to the spoiler conditions. We've met all AI civilations. Currently, our neighbors look too strong to attack with that small army of catapults we've whipped. If an attack fails, we've whipped our island cities so much that they'll be unhappy for centuries to come. Indeed, our team captain and a few other players have dropped from the forums for no apparent reason. As such, the remaining few of us have decided that the effort is too futile to continue. There is little doubt that we would fail in any attack attempt. So, we have resigned with AlanH and await SGOTM-3.

Good luck to all. We'll be reading your team threads to see how you all did without having to deal with angry barbs popped from the "goody" hut.

Memphis Blues's History of Japan, Part I


Beginnings

Tokugawa's brother, Elvis, lands on the shore of a distant land and sniffs the air. The aroma is earthy and foreign, nothing like the salty smell in his home island of Kyoto. Elvis suddenly wonders if he made a huge mistake sailing halfway around the world in his little fishing boat to avenge the death of his wife and son. He longs for the fresh tuna and mackeral sashimi, and the sublime Kobe beef that was brought to his table every night by his consort, Priscilla. But Elvis's fishing boat sits on the rocky shore little more than a pile of sticks, battered by the cruel winds of this strange land. So Elvis heads west in this new land, hoping to find a way to be closer to his beloved home. His trusty warrior escort heads east to scout the nearby hills for game. Elvis decides that he must learn the skills of Hunting and Archery, as the knowledge of fishing will be useless in feeding and protecting his small band in this god-forsaken wilderness.


A City Upon a Hill

Elvis soon realizes that it would be futile trying to get closer to Kyoto by marching west. Scouts in the east report finding a fertile river valley with riches beyond anything ever seen in the history of civilization (thanks Gyathaar). So Elvis declares, "We shall build a city upon a hill, for the eyes of all barbarians are upon us. We shall learn to mine the riches of this land, and bring wealth and knowledge to our great empire. Should we fail in this endeavor, we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world." Osaka is founded in 3820BC.



Osaka goes about training a work crew to build mines and roads and farms and pastures. The wealth of our new city spurs our wise men to discover hunting, archery, and bronze working, upon which copper deposits are discovered to the east and south. We build several archers to defend our hill town against the wild men of this land who would seek to snuff out the light of civilization, and make plans to found a new city to the east.




Kyoto Blues

Meanwhile, in Kyoto... The people of the capital mourned the loss of Elvis's wife and son, and feared greatly for the safety of Elvis himself. Nothing had been heard from Elvis since the day he impulsively set out in his fishing boat, and the worst was feared. But Tokugawa, great Shogun of Japan, had faith in his brother and said to his advisors, "We shall begin to work the bounty of the sea like never before. We shall found a new city, Tokyo, to the north to bring great quantities of succulent beef to our people, and watch them grow into strong warriors. We will learn how to build granaries and libraries and hire the best scientists from the kingdom to learn the secrets of the gear, the lens, and the astrolabe. I will find you brother!"




War! Huh! Good God!

What is it good for? Killing Isabella! After some confused scouting, we find Isabella's capital on a peninsula in the north, along with Barcelona and Seville on the west and east coasts. It's time to send out a settler to add copper to our resource list. Unfortunately, gold is too soft to make effective weapons. Suddenly, Isabella sets down another city near the copper in the east, not close enough to be worked right away, but within the fat cross. Rats. We wanted that spot. But wait, what's this? Our sages have discovered a new metal within the borders of Osaka, one even stronger than bronze. Elvis decrees, "We shall save our settler for a city in the west that will bring us the seafood that we so miss. Here, we shall build swords and hack our enemies into little bits. On to Barcelona!" Barcelona is added to our burgeoning empire in 430BC. Seville falls in 115BC. Madrid with its hill and culture will be a tough nut to crack. We declare a cease fire and bide our time until we can get catapults.




How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Osaka

With the Japanese empire holding several cities on the new continent, Elvis declares that his people should build a new palace for him to more effectively administer his new continent. As there is no good stone or marble around, the palace will be built out of wood. As the palace is completed in Osaka in 160BC, a great trembling begins in Kyoto, and the old palace falls to the ground. Luckily, Tokugawa was on the palace grounds at the time, admiring the newly blossoming cherry trees, and suffered no more than a sprained ankle. But in the aftermath of the great earthquake, lawlessness ensued. Tokugawa quelled the rioters and ordered the construction of courthouses by slave labor.


A German, an Egyptian, and an Incan walk into a bar...

In the year 85BC, a man named Bismark makes a surprise visit to Kyoto. We had heard legends about this man, but most people in Kyoto believed that we were the only civilization in the world, nay, in the universe. Open borders allow our galley to pass into this brave new world, and we begin to meet other civilizations, with great wealth, power, and territory. We are beginning to feel much smaller, much less powerful, as if we were surrounded by a much larger more dangerous world that could crush us like a bug...




Techs up until ca. 95AD when last civ was met

And the cities founded/captured

HOT AIR

We were young. We were clever. We were confident. This mission of conquest was to be the stuff of legend. Or so we thought.

Our pregame discussions were...uh...many. And there were lots of them. And people just kept posting. We had something like 80+ posts before anybody saw the starting savegame. Sheesh. Our first screenshot from the actual game came on post #108. Whatta buncha yakkers.

And of course, what it boiled down to was we'd do exactly what everybody else did: look around with our Settler and Warrior to find a decent spot to settle. (Uh, everybody but Team FUBAR, it would appear. Man, that hurt just reading about it! We even avoided that hut you see here for fear of the possibility of popping barbs.)



Once we saw the city site that no map script would ever generate, we switched our research to Mysticism so we could build an obelisk and enjoy all the wonderful amenities of the site. (This pic is from post #146 on page 8.) Ah, those were the days. The days of musing. The days of hope.

EARLY DECISIONS

With such a great site, we decide that Bronze is just the thing our warriors need to look spiffy. With not quivers, but swords will they be equipped.

But copper was discovered outside the bountiful lands of Osaka. Sigh. What kind of cruel trick was that. More hot air was expelled and thought we had but men with sticks to defend our continental holdings, we planted our coppergrabber city on the coast.

Above you can see one stickwielder in the city, one on a hill busting fog, and another just a little bun in the oven. Our worker busied himself with making a road after building a few raging-barb shelters (err...magnets) on the nearby gems and hill.

For reasons that still elude our scholars, we didn't research archery immediately after finding Osaka lacking in copper. Things got...dicey:



But at the cost of some mines, we survived. Those were nailbiter turns, I assure you. Especially after our starting warrior had become bear food not too long before.

We did get that coppergrabbing city founded. And we did eventually get some axes built.

ABOUT RELIGION

Conveniently, we'd met Isabella, and one of her subjects achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. We lost all interest in founding our own religion. This is due largely to the fact that she isn't nice enough to ever invite us to see the sweetness that is Madrid's surroundings. Man that was a tough city to take. But I'm getting ahead of myself and spoiling the spoiler.

MEANWHILE, ON THE ISLANDS

Back in the capital archipelago, we settled three cities. While we initially thought of moving the capital over to the mainland, we decided to build or capture a bunch of cities and build the Forbidden Palace there instead. With ruthless efficiency, we used Kyoto to convert seafood to great scientists. And then we convert those smelly braniacs to techs, every single one of them. Ptah turned into Mathematics, for example. Food surpluses are fun.

THE RAMPAGE

In 580BC, Isabella has the audacity to parade an undefended worker and a lightly defended settler past our twitching axemen on the same turn. We pounce and the battle is joined.

Generally, things go well. We're taking her cities like candy from a baby. But all such fun must end. In 145BC, we decide that it would be cool to extort tech from her for peace. (Actually, we got a look at Madrid and its hill-location and its many defenders and decide that we'd better build some siege engines before trying to take that city.) But we don't have alphabet. So, we burn another great scientist on alphabet and learn how to milk cows and stack bricks. As a bonus, Isabella found Christianity in Barcelona a few turns before we install a new management team there. We begin to have faith, but not officially.

As it turns out, our soldiers don't like peace much, so by 400AD we've demanded cash from that B...uh...uddhist Isabella and are on the move to take Madrid off her hands. It takes longer than we'd hoped, but that's because we wanted St. John to be born in Madrid in 740AD (yeah, that's why). Sadly for the hopeful Spaniards, Madrid was forcibly converted to Japanese rule that very year.

THE CIRCLE GANG

Right around the time we were working to cover up all remaining traces of the Spanish civilization, German borders popped and revealed to us a cultural bridge from which we could travel from our tri-island capital and meet the rest of the world. Quickly thereafter, we met everybody else. Because the whole rest of the world is in bed with each other for thousands of years before we meet them, they think we're an underdeveloped, uncivilized and generally backward people. They're pretty much right. But we've got a nice little continent all to ourselves, and no one knows that this wasn't always the case....

OUR PLAN



With no more Spaniards, we have big plans for our eastern continent. But, we're pretty far behind the rest of the world in tech, so we have an uphill battle ahead of us. As you might be able to see in the screenshot/dotmap, it's taken us 5000 years, but we're finally implementing our maintenance-saving plan of building the Forbidden Palace in Osaka.

Looking long-term, our goal is conquest. So soon, our well-promoted swords are gonna make mincemeat out of all those AI...uh...macemen? and knights?! Hmmm. We'll have to see about that.