Round 6: 1220 AD to 1565 AD (66 turns)
Not too much happened for the first few turns of the round. I finished up a few civilian builds, spread Islam to all my cities with missionaries, and then began queue-loading military units: Trebuchets first, followed by Pikemen to ward off mounted attacks, Macemen to storm cities, and in the more productive cities, a mix of Crossbows and Longbows. I teched through Guilds and began adding Knights to the mix. A random event gave me some flasks towards Printing Press from some city ruins.
Then Hammurabi finished building the Apostolic Palace.
Fortunately, that turned out well.
And now Hammy was willing to trade Theology, which would allow me to run Theocracy for a few turns to churn out promoted units, as I'd planned.
However, in a certain way, this trade would come back to haunt me.
And then, without any effort on my behalf, our diplomatic plans came to fruition. Serendipitous, to say the least.
However, the downside was that I earned some diplomatic demerits with others for not getting involved in this war. I actually used the AP to shut it down for a while to avoid such complications.
When I saw that the hammers alloted to the oldest units in my cities' build queues were starting to deteriorate, I decided it was time to change civics to churn out the promoted units.
I ran Vassalage and Theocracy for a total of 10 turns. I know several of you use these civics differently, but this is a favourite trick of mine. I get a bunch of highly-promoted units but I get to switch back to economically more favourable civics quickly. I suppose I could have saved the GS I used for the earlier Golden Age for this to avoid the anarchy, but I didn't. I'm reasonably confident that I'll be able to make up for the lost turns.
Besides, I love seeing this in the power chart:
I then had to move the units into position, ready to attack America's east from my west. It was time to declare war:
First up, I razed St. Louis, which was stealing tiles from Tiwanaku.
Though I was reluctant to trade with Hammurabi--who is, strangely, the tech leader--he kept dropping by offering me these great deals.
"Come on down to Hammy's used tech lot! We got steals on deals and balloons for the kids! Check out this beauty: Nationalism, only ever used by a little old lady to get to the Taj Mahal on Sundays..."
Another day, another razed American city:
You guys are right, Washington has some lousy land. It was easier to raze these food-poor cities than to try to hold them.
By this point I had researched Liberalism to within one turn of completion, but now that Hammy had all of its pre-requisites, I was getting nervous. I realized I needed intelligence. I had a large, strong army, so I throttled back research for a few turns in favour of espionage.
Besides adjusting the slider, I also switched to running spy specialists in many of my cities. Once I had visibility into Hammurabi's research, I kept swapping espionage targets until I had the same insight for all the other civs. Very handy.
As much as I like Vancouver's real-life sister city of Seattle, I razed it too.
Ah well, the Kingdome is falling apart anyway, isn't it? So think of it as a rather intense and complete form of urban renewal. And maybe in this world every city won't end up with a freakin' Starbucks on every single street corner.
My foray into intelligence gathering paid off. I soon saw that Hammurabi had begun to research Liberalism, so it was time to switch myself and claim the free tech.
Since I hadn't finished Gunpowder yet, I couldn't grab Chemistry. That's the price I paid for trading both Paper
and Education to Hammurabi, who I will have to remember is an unlikely but accomplished tech fiend. However, thanks to getting Nationalism from the Babylonian, I was able to choose what I think will prove to be a very useful tech:
I think Shaka would approve.
I finally captured an American city I decided to keep:
At least this one has pigs to feed itself.
Meanwhile, I chose an un-Shaka tech next to balance out my Liberalism choice and managed to beat everyone to Economics.
So, how to use the free Great Merchant? As you can see, he'll partially lightbulb Constitution; Jails could prove handy, and Representation is a very handy civic when you're running a SE, even a hybrid version like I am. Or I could save him to use with another GP for a golden age. A trade mission seems unnecessary with well over 2000 gold in the bank, and the best I'll do is 1950 gold in return. Though that would all me to boost research to 100% for a few turns. Thoughts?
Meanwhile, checking in with Washington, he's already prepared to buckle under to Zulu might:
That's what you get for keeping slaves, George. (Seriously, would it not have been cool if Shaka and his Impis had somehow come over to America and kicked some plantation owners' pasty white rumps? Well now history has been rewritten, courtesy of Civ IV!)
So should I take George on as a slave, I mean vassal, or should I capture some more American cities first? Chicago and New York had topped the list of suggestions, and I don't have either one yet. Then again, George is at war with Hammurabi
and Peter, and I'd rather not give techs to my two main rivals to get them to accept peace. Finishing up with American now would also allow me to join the growing dog-pile on Korea...
Decisions, decisions. As always. A state-of-the-world post will follow.
, perhaps that also prevents quests/random events?
