Round 9 (at last!): to 1472 AD
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack...
I started this round off by taking a gamble that I could finish researching Gunpowder
and Liberalism before Huayna. So I switched research targets to Gunpowder. The prize I was after was Chemistry, free from Liberalism, for Grenadiers.
Now you may remember (cast your mind back) that I had been building up several units in all my cities' build queues in anticipation of changing to the war civics, Vassalage and Theocracy. I did this on the first round:
After that, I started pumping out units like there was no tomorrow. Even when all the pre-built ones came out, I still kept building units. I didn't stop until after I finished researching Gunpowder and had produced a couple of 7 XP Musketmen. This helped my power rating tremendously:
Just before declaring war, I checked what the other civs had to offer. Huayna had been a busy boy and had finished researching Education. On the positive side, this meant that I could trade it, even to my erstwhile target:
Huayna was much less co-operative. Despite being "Friendly", he wouldn't cough up any free gold all round long.
A little while later, however, I at least managed to trade Music to him for Drama and most of the gold he refused to give me here.
With my army built and in position on Mongolia's doorstep, it was finally time for some action:
Huayna had declared war on Isabella (again) by this point, so he was busy elsewhere, allowing me to shift almost every unit I had to the northeast. The screenshot below will give you an idea as to the composition of my stack, and the opposition I was facing:
Despite the presence of 5 Accuracy Catapults, taking a city usually took 2 turns. Genghis had built walls in all his cities, so I had to use the Trebuchets to remove the city defenses as well, then wait until the next turn to use them in direct city attacks.
In addition to the city attacking stack above, I also piled a mix of Knights, Pikemen, and Catapults into Goth. This was the counter-counter-attack force. Once I captured Tiflis...
...I began taking Mongolian cities by moving the stack clockwise around the map. This allowed me to move my counter-counter forces into Tiflis and Old Serai to ward off Genghis' counter-attacks. The Catapults were essential; Genghis sent stacks of War Elephants, Knights, and Catapults against me; Knights or Pikemen alone would have gotten creamed.
Huayna was, as expected, beginning to run away from me in the research department. Despite my city captures I ran out of gold and endured a single turn in a strike; I acted quickly, shifting citizens and specialists around, and avoided losing any units. Still, I was floundering a little, so I felt obliged to make a tech trade with the only guy still talking to me:
This allowed me to switch economic civics to Mercantilism for the free specialist. Since neither Isabella nor Genghis were talking to me, and Huayna was running Mercantilism himself, the loss of the foreign trade routes barely registered.
Imperialistic started kicking in again. I earned my next (cheap) Great General a few turns into the war:
I used him and the next GG as military instructors in Beijing, the Heroic Epic city. This is an idea I came across on the board--it gives you the equivalent of West Point in your military city, often long before that national wonder is available. It also means that you don't have to stop producing units in the HE city in order to build West Point, which instead gets built in your second military city.
In 1280, I got some bad news: Huayna beat me to Liberalism and took as his free tech the same one I was after, Chemistry:
Well, so much for that. Probably if I was more effective at running a specialist economy I could have pulled it off. I kept researching Liberalism since I was so close anyway.
As it was, I soon got two Great Scientists, both of whom I used for lightbulbing. The first helped finish Printing Press, and the next one lightbulbed... Chemistry! So in a way, I got the tech nearly free anyway.
The other civs weren't sitting on their laurels. The two remaining mystery leaders finally showed up:
Notice how Frederick doesn't have Optics on me? Strange, no? This meant his continent must have been relatively close by. A few turns later I was able to trade world maps with Frederick (among other things--such as Optics and some gold for Philosophy). I found out that this theoretical proximity of the continents was indeed the case:
It looks like a combination of German and Spanish border pops allowed Frederick to reach my shores without Caravels. At any rate, both he and Ragnar are far behind and unlikely to be competitive in the game.
While all this was going on, my stack continued its clockwise run around Mongolia. (I guess I should also mention that in addition to capturing several cities, I also founded one--Tarsus, on the southeast coast, to work the crabs and iron.) By taking the Mongolian capital, I captured a very handy wonder, since war weariness was beginning to take a huge toll on my cities:
The +1 happy from Notre Dame was very welcome indeed. Other good news included Isabella
finally beginning to talk with me again. I traded an old tech (Paper) to her for a few shekels, and began trading iron to her again as well. I really think the AI needs to be improved in this regard; by having no access to metals, Isabella was hurting herself more than me by not trading a few GPT for iron. I can understand suspending diplomatic relations, but come on, if there's an advantage to be gained, history has shown that most nations are willing to dance with the devil.
I pushed a few units to the last Mongolian city, ahead of the main stack, in order to end the war and restore the economy to normalcy as soon as possible. in 1466, it was finally all over for Genghis in this game:
I know the research rate above looks dismal, but I played another turn or two so that the next post--showing the current state of the world--would more accurately reflect my civ's capabilities.
Stay tuned!
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. it's just that i so rarely have a chance to see that in action so i shared it. that, and i have to always be typing something.
