Round 9: 1525 AD to 1742 AD (55 turns)
On a related note (having to do with the finest fruits of civilization), I take it everyone has seen
the new Guinness ad? Bloody brilliant.
With a formidable Yankee stack approaching one of my cities, I put a bunch of defensive units into the build queues:
I didn't make peace with Washington right away, however. I wanted to see which of my cities was attracting his attention. I also thought I might have a slight chance to hold him off.
Turns out it's San Francisco that he wanted back:
Well, as you can see, Frisco had a decent defensive stack, but no castle, and all those catapults (eleven of the little beggars) would make short work of the defenses and defenders. So, without further ado...
Yup, I substituted New York for Buffalo and he agreed to it. It was certainly nice to obtain a city from an enemy with all the infrastructure intact for a change. There were additional benefits to getting the city so nice they named it twice. My cultural borders now claimed the silk tile next to Chicago for an additional happiness resource, and I figured the big apple would be Washington's primary focus for recapture when we renewed hostilities, since it sticks into his territory like the proverbial sore thumb. Even so, I left a good-sized defensive stack in San Francisco, just in case.
Besides building defensive units, I also built defenses. This resulted in a successful completion of the castle quest. I chose the diplomatic benefit.
The other options were +25 espionage points from the Great Wall or all melee units earning City Garrison I. The former was tempting, but I decided I needed the goodwill to stay alive more than the EPs.
I turned up the research slider to finish Astronomy to gain whatever benefit it offered for my economy, burning through my war booty in the process.
Since I'm trailing in technologies, I immediately went about trading it for whatever I could get.
Guilds would give me grocers to help with the economy and, of course, Knights to help fight Washington. Music would lead to Military Tradition and Cuirassiers. I also obtained Printing Press from Hannibal, and that gave me a big financial boost, allowing me to raise the science slider a notch.
In the meantime, I was building many, many units, including several catapults to throw at any stack Washington sent my way. Just when I was thinking it was time to renew hostilities, George beat me to the punch.
Great minds think alike and fools seldom differ, my mom used to say. Hmmm, same sour expression on his face as last time. Maybe his wooden teeth are giving him splinters?
This time, with several protective crossbows and longbows, walls, castles, and catapults in place, I felt that I was ready for him. As I expected, he attacked New York. His stack of catapults were poorly defended--the attack units, all Macemen, were trailing behind--so I was able to wipe them out. He hasn't mounted a significant threat to any of my cities since.
All this unit building has left me in 3rd place in power.
Yeah, Hannibal was taking a beating from Shaka. In some ways that raised my spirits, as it showed that being the tech leader does not guarantee that you'll win. Since I'm trailing badly in techs, but not too far behind Shaka, I found that heartening.
Speaking of our favourite Zulu, I was able to make a handy tech trade with him, too.
The infusion of gold was very nice. I did not change civics to mercantilism, however. First off, as we've discussed previously in the thread, I've changed civics way too many times in this game. Furthermore, only Shaka was running mercantilism by this point. I had trade routes to Persia, Carthage, and Native America. And I was still desperately hoping for Taoism to spread naturally to my cities along the foreign trade routes. So switching to mercantilism made no sense. I did start building several banks, however.
Once New York was no longer facing a significant threat, it was time to go back on the offensive. The first thing I did was capture Washington itself.
It's always a significant blow when you capture your enemy's capital. Though as capital sites go, Washington is not that great. It only has one food source, the cows, which it shares with New York. I can't help thinking that Washington may have moved the settler rather than settling in place. Or maybe George just got a crappy dice roll. In any case, Washington is now mine--and I mean that phrase in every sense.
I researched gunpowder next and, still in dire technical straits, immediately traded it away.
Obviously I wasn't going to benefit from Theology any time soon, but I did stop Cyrus from trading with Washington. I also shored up Persia's position on the other continent to be a counterweight to Zululand, which was rolling over Carthage.
Now that I'd traded Astronomy to practically everybody, I was getting worried about galleons stuffed with settlers showing up and claiming prime spots in my back yard. So despite the state of my economy, I started settling cities along the shoreline to seal off the continent as much as I could.
I have a few more sites inland that I could settle, but they'll wait until after the war when the economy is back on track. There's a spot between Nihru and Chicago on the west coast that I'm a little worried about, so I may settle it early in the next round.
I kept taking American cities, swinging back along the continent, moving to the east. I captured Portland, then Seattle.
Seattle was the new capital and contained a huge stack, so this was a tough fight, which is why a Pikeman captured the city. Too bad America still owns that silver tile they popped, but it will be mine once I capture Houston.
I also captured and razed Buffalo. I learned my lesson from last time, when I razed the previous city in that spot only to have the Yankees re-settle there. So I had a settler ready to go onto my preferred spot.
Now, for most of the round, Shaka was the only one running Mercantilism. Since he owns the holy city for Taoism, that reduced the chances of that religion spreading to me. I produced a great scientist and used him to research part of scientific method, but I held off on finishing it or trading for it because I still foresaw the need to build monasteries. I did have Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism spread to my cities, and built monasteries for all of them so I can spread them if and when needed. I adopted none of them as my state religion, however. I was holding out for Taoism so that I could get on Shaka's good side. You can imagine how frustrating it was to see all these religions spreading to my cities, but none of them were the one I wanted!
Finally, near the end of the round, my wish came true. That it took the whole round was frustrating, but it was, perhaps, all the more rewarding when it finally happened.
It spread to the capital. How convenient. So now I foresee a need to build missionaries and monasteries and spread the good word. America is almost finished--only four or five cities to go--but war weariness is starting to mount again. The other continent continues to tech ahead of me, though I feel like I'm slowly closing the gap.
However, Cyrus has settled a city in the far north, near the furs. So that's something we'll have to take into consideration as well. Not to mention the additional development that Hannibal is now Shaka's vassal. We know Shaka loves a good tussle. Will he go after Persia next, or cast his avaricious glance in my direction?
A state of the world post will follow.
actually i don't know. the pedia says "an unhappiness penalty in your cities with the AP religion" for defying an AP resolution, and that one is 5 
. for UN it says "a major unhappiness penalty in your cities". obviously it won't be limited to only cities with X religion, but i don't know whether the word major means it's more than 5 
why Dom? Conquest would not be better? ) in 19th launch, Jon Shaefer dixit... ([rant] 2 days after the BtS launch.... why people continue to say this ? [/rant])
) ) and the 
. i wasn't asking you to dig into .xml silly, just to give me the basic idea. so i can save myself from a terrible surprise!
... ( but with 2 ( and possibly 3 in the future ) vassals, he may try a UN stunt... )
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