ALC Game 31: Greece/Pericles

We have just finished conquering Mongolia. Our expenses are high as we try to hold together a far flung empire, we are a quite a few techs behind our neighbors, and our alliances with these neighbors are far from strong. It is out from this mess that we are trying to emerge. (Looks like the Greeks haven't made it very far, ).

The round did not start well.



Stalin discovered Liberalism the second turn of the round, which was disappointing. Even though I wasn't really expecting that we could get it, it was still sad. But Athens would never surrender. I decided that teching to Education was still a good idea since our capital was just begging for Oxford.

Failure gold is a good way to crawl out of a hole. We were not able to complete the University of Sankore, but did get 420 gold for our efforts.



Sankore was a great wonder in this regard since we have stone, which means we earn 150% on our hammers, as opposed to the 100% we would have gotten through building wealth.

Also helpful in digging out of a hole are great people. We got our first great person of this turnset in the form of Lavoisier, who unfortunately would not be bulbing biology or chemistry, but education. I'm sure he would approve.





We weren't going to have enough money to finish in two more turns without building wealth. So that's what I did. I was then able to trade with Isabella for some techs that would get us ships on the seas.



Our next great scientist emerged very soon after.



He would bulb Liberalism, which would have been nice had Stalin just been 15 turns slower. I didn't want to hold on to him until Printing Press since I had another Scientist on the way. Settling him didn't give me the jump start I was looking for. So I used him for a Golden Age. I wanted to switch into Organized Religion and I had 15 cities that were getting to a good size and were working lots of tiles. So a Golden Age it was.

We meet our next AI. Or rather, he meets us.



He wouldn't trade very much for Education since he was almost done with it himself. And I don't like trading with new neighbors like this since he will invariably be somebody's worst enemy.

After Machinery came Printing Press, with some help from a bulb.



Stalin went into WHEOOHRN mode, which always freaks me out.



It's very annoying that I'm still at cautious with him. I guess he doesn't care enough about religion and we haven't had opened borders for a very long time. And we can't get fair trade since I'm too far behind him technologically. So I'm hoping he's targeting somebody else, but just to be safe I build a few maces and catapults and move them up to the northwest.

I also gift him some silk.



Gifting him a resource will give him another +1 modifier towards us. I'm not suing BULL at the moment, but Stalin I think has a coded in -1 modifier towards us. And we need +5 overall to get him to pleased. So we need +2 more in modifiers.

With Printing Press in, I start on a beeline for Biology.



Biology is a great tech for several reasons. The first is that we have a lot of farms and we're running Caste. This will allow us to grow as big as our happy caps very quickly and then run lots of specialists. Biology is also a tech that the AIs do not seem to research themselves but value for highly. This makes it a great trade chip.

I turned the slider down all the way since I was getting close to finishing Oxford in Athens and I wanted to keep that gold for when my multipliers were highest. To add to that stockpile I sent my first Great Merchant to Spain.



After the cities had produced their Great Scientists I switched them over to Merchants. I love merchants at this time in the game when scientists only bulb about 3 turns of research, but Merchants can get enough gold on trade missions for ten turns of research at a 100% slider, even in big empires like this one.

With Oxford finished and the slider now able to comfortably run at full throttle our capital looks like this.



It's producing just over half the entire empire's beakers. That is what a Bureaucracy capital looks like and what the better players can achieve about 1000 years before this one. The city still has surplus food. So as health resources and infrastructure allow I'll run more and more scientist specialists who also get their beakers run through all of the multipliers.

Sparta got turned off of army duty and put on Great Engineer duty. I think it's unlikely I will even get one since I forgot about this trick and will thus probably never accrue enough GP points to pop an engineer.



The idea is that you find some city that is not running any specialists and give it one engineer, preferably as soon as a forge is built. It will not produce fast enough to keep up with the good Caste cities who can produce great people every 15 turns or faster. But then at the end of the game you can build a factory and then run 3 engineers and the city will have enough accumulated engineer points that it can then give a Great Engineer at 100% odds which can be used to found Mining Inc.

I meet the second to last AI.



I'm still not sure about worst enemies. And she won't give up Astro, so I don't make any deals right away. Soon after I meet the last AI.



I now know everybody and know that Qin isn't a worst enemy and I've got a tech on him! So I take advantage.

I send my next Merchant to Beijing for a trade mission.



My gold situation is now very nice indeed. Especially since I have yet another Merchant in transit. We'll be researching at 100% slider for the rest of the game. And as I get more specialists and adopt representation our beaker rate is going to be decent enough I think.

I ended the round by finishing Biology.



There we go. I think we are almost officially dug out of the whole. I'll trade with the bottom civs first. Remember that some civs have techs like Banking that need Guilds first. And since I don't have Guilds I can't trade for Banking. But if I trade for those techs this turn. Next turn I can come back and trade Biology again for the next techs along the same line, which is exactly what I plan to do.

Next up on the tech list is Constitution for Representation and better specialists. Then a beeline to Corporations to get our Wall Street built. And then we're off to Medicine for for some Sid's Sushi action. (My fish might not actually be that decent, but I have a lot of duplicate resources and the other continent has a lot of fish. So I should be able to work something out).

The current empire looks like this.



The cities are nicely sized and growing up to the happy caps. At that point I will convert them over to specialists who will become really good when we adopt representation.

Isabella's empire.



It's true that she founded Buddhism. But all in all I'd rather have my empire.

The other continent looks like this.



Fairly even land distribution. Pacal is going to be a problem though. He has four religions in all of his cities that count. And one of his smaller cities recently founded Islam which is a fifth religion he can spread. Luckily for us he's got a lot of coastal cities which will make taking him over a lot easier than beating back Wang was in the last ALC.

The diplo situation is very neutral.



There are a few friendly civs, but not too many. There's also not much hating going on. I may have to stir up some trouble, .

I'm doing pretty well in terms of stats.





I actually have more land than I thought I did. If I can get up in tech I may just go for a quick military romp. We'll see what kind of mood I'm in I guess ... only time will tell.

After some thought, I've decided to pursue a domination or conquest victory, as opposed to a space colony as I had been considering. I make this decision since I'm just kind of a war monger at heart, . But also because Pacal is going to get close to culture and I don't want to have to try and beat him, since this is immortal and I'm worried I'd lose. So instead of racing him, I'm just going to go take him out. And if I'm taking him out, I may as well take everybody else out as well. .

With Constitution in, I immediately made some civic changes.



The happiness from Representation is nice, but more important is the beaker boost. I also went ahead and switched out of Bureaucracy and into Vassalage for the quickly approaching military build-up. It's been a few days since I've played this round, but it looks like I also switched into Organized Religion since I'll be building factories and power plants soon as well as all the health buildings I can get my hands on.

Quite a bit of trading happened this round. I didn't take screenshots of all of them, but here's one.



A good rule to follow is to accept gold, but not to trade it away. We're better at specializing our cities and therefore can use our gold more effectively through multipliers so it's better for everyone if the humans have the gold, especially us humans. Also, on the higher levels the AIs get lots of gold so take it as convenient.

The round started out pretty uneventfully.



Here's a general idea of what's going on. I'm building health buildings and beaker multipliers. I'm not expansive and the industrial era really packs on the unhealth, so I like getting some health infrastructure in place before then. It might be better to build wealth until factories and power plants, and then use your super hammer capacity to bang out the health buildings. Something to consider.

And I said that the round started uneventfully.



This was not at all unexpected. It was still going to be a pain in the butt. But nothing I couldn't handle. My army was too small, but they're called magic rifles for a reason. Stalin landed an embarassingly small force at first, but he had more on the way.



I built some wealth and research so that I got to Rifling quickly.



Then I upgraded all of my maces to City Raider 2.



And then to Rifles.



Problem solved.





With that little hiccup over with. I set up this tech path.



Democracy for Emancipation. Although this was a mistake as I never did, and don't plan to, revolt. Combustion to start on a navy, Flight to start on carriers and fighters, and then Industrialism to start on marines.

Here's the hammer economy getting started.



My top three hammer cities had finished the current infrastructure and were building lots of wealth. Argor was a mistake and was fixed.

Unhealth and Unhappiness were both becoming quite bad.



I inserted hospitals and super markets into the build queue. I will be able to deal with unhappiness by turning up the slider when Theatres will give an extra happy for ten percent culture slider and Odeons will give another happy for every 20% slider. So at a 20% culture slider I'll get another 3 happy faces and I can turn it up higher as needed.

Unfortunately the UN was built.



And Pacal won.





And emancipated us all. I was pretty sure it was going to pass and didn't think the unhappiness from defying was worth it. Pacal will get his soon enough.

I ended the round soon after with us about twenty turns from game end technologies.



The state of the world is pretty much the same as it was last time. Except a little more advanced. I think I should be able to build a large fleet of troops and take over the other continent fairly easily. I think they all have enough coastal cities that I'll be able to capitulate them all without having to go inland. We'll deal with Izzy later.

The final round started with a fairly standard few dozen turns. I was finishing up the techs I needed - Combustion, Flight, and Industrialism - and building factories, power plants, and assorted health buildings in my cities. I also built shipyards in cities that would build my navy and airports in cities that would build my fighters. Other than that cities were building wealth to get us to game end techs as quickly as possible.

Pacal was having some fun with the UN, but wasn't really getting anything done. Pacal gets points for real life accuracy in this respect.





I voted no because I was planning on running some Theocracy for the experience points and didn't want free religion. It turns out I needn't have voted no.

The way the vote works, for both the UN and the AP is this:
i) If there are enough yes votes the resolution passes unless somebody defies the resolution. If even just one person with one just one vote defies, the resolution fails. There are two possible outcomes for the person who defied
ii) If the vote had enough yes votes to pass, the defier gets unhappiness in her cities.
iii) But if the vote would have failed anyway - not enough yes votes - the defier faces no penalty.

So, I should have, in fact, voted yes. This would have meant Izzy would be faced with option ii. Then I could have still run Theocracy and Izzy would have had to deal with unhappiness. Will Isabella, or any of the other religious crazies, always defy this resolution?

Seventeen turns after the round began and we're all good to wrap this game up.



Also helping in the cause was this.



I am really not a fan of late game warfare. My laptop gets a little grumpy and then I get a little grumpy. So if I can find a way to go faster at the end I'll take it. hint hint, .

I saved one merchant and then starved out another great person.



Note that I'm being careful to not get another Merchant. There was a six percent chance of one being born, and if that had happened I would have been very annoyed. But it was all good in the end.



A golden age was started and a massive 4 civic anarchy-free revolution took place. Ideally I could also have stayed in Caste for the hammer boost, but Emancipation was acceptable since I was able to finish the whole game with almost no unhappy faces.

Oh goody.



Here's the empire in a completely militaristic mindset.



How am I doing on time?



Pacal is getting a little close for comfort. Is there perchance anything we can do to slow him down?



. Yeah, anarchy and some useless civics should do the trick. My first force set sail soon after.



I wanted a second stack to allow for the taking of several cities at once. Anything I can do to buy me some more time?



Tee hee hee.

This little guy is woefully under protecting one of his legendary cities.



I was able to take that city right away, but I decided to just hang out there and wait for my second fleet to arrive as I still had some time.



The second fleet arrived and the war horns sounded.





Burn baby burn! I'm not taking any chances with this guy. His fourth place city was at 100+ turns. Crisis averted.

Three turns and 4 captured and 3 razed cities later Pacal will bow his head.



He doesn't look too thrilled about it, but that's alright with me.

In the meantime Isabella had been having some fun of her own. And worried that I might have to declare war on her later I paid her to stop being mean so that she couldn't capitulate China.



China was a big boy and probably could have taken care of itself. But maybe not.



Because Isabella had a new toy!

Alright, let's see how close I am.





Ooh, that's very close. I just needed one more AI. My army was far superior to everybody except Izzy. And while taking on a weaker Victoria would probably have meant a faster victory, I had a score to settle.



Yeah, you saw that Stalin. I just took your capital. Boom, roasted. Actually not quite. Stalin was a real pain in the butt. He took the city back several times and was just generally annoying. My numbers were eventually overwhelming though, and the guy still didn't have flight, which meant easy pickings for my fighters. And in the end I got what I came for.



Alright. Isabella is still at friendly and my new vassal has to vote for me, so let's try this again.



Note that Pacal built the UN. When I first captured him I was unsure what to do. I didn't want to capture the UN since that would make me owner of it which would mean that the largest civ other than the owner would be Izzy, who was voting for me. So I let Pacal keep it. It also turns out that Pacal can vote for himself even though he's my vassal. But with a friendly Izzy and a vassaled Stalin I had enough votes.



And there ya go. An immortal diplomation victory.





That was an alright little end game romp. After taking out Genghis this game was pretty much in the bag. Pacal gave me some trouble, but his very low unit prob and his having a legendary city on the coast meant that I was able to put him away without too much trouble. The rest, as they say, is history.

Look forward to Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire sometime soon!

Everybody loves graphs!



My GNP was never really up there with the big dogs in this game. But it didn't have to be. I got a lot of my techs through bulbing and trading. On the higher levels I've found it harder to keep up in GNP with the AIs. That means that other things, like bulbing and trading, become significantly more important. In this game I used Biology as a major trade chip getting nearly a dozen techs with it. It's this kind of move - getting techs the AIs don't have and trading them - that can keep the human in the game.

MFG is something the human can do better. The AI, in all of its innocence, just can't specialize a city. And late game, it's incredibly easy to put down a forge, factory, and power plant and workshop the whole fat cross. This can put any reasonably sized city at 100 hammers a turn. And with a 15 city empire, that's a lot of hammers. You can see exactly where this took place in the MFG graph when I laid down a bunch of workshops to jump to number 1 in MFG.

Crop Yield is high for me for two reasons. One, I was not running a lot of cottages, but mostly farms and specialists. Two, my empire was large. The graph has two awesome features. The first is the jump when I get Biology. And the second is the collapse when I workshop over all the farms. . This allows me to have the same crop yield, but a lot more hammers, or a higher hammer to food ratio.

In the other graphs I particular like the rapid increase of my power when I started on the military build-up. I also like the subsequent collapse of Pacal's culture when I razed Chichen Itza. Espionage was a non-factor in this game.

Numbers and game end-rankings.



And some other stats.



TMIT and I had very similar games. And even though he left his game running and went 50 years later, he was still faster than I was. . I laughed out loud when he said in his video that "I just left that game running, so that's disappointing". I think he takes his speed civving as a matter of pride.

My kill to death ratio was about 2.5 to 1. The early war with the Phalanxes was expensive. And late game I was sloppily throwing marines at pretty much whatever. So it definitely could have been better. But they got the job done.

Unique Unit: The phalanx unit was alright. It was a decent axe replacement, but it's nothing to write home about. They did see a lot of use with me in this game though. They did a respectable job by themselves when crippling Genghis in the first war. And they were great with the elephants both as stack defenders against the spears and as cheap mop-up troops.

Unique Building: I really like the Odeon. I've never built so many coliseums before, but the Odeon makes it worth it. It is worth noting that the Pericles version is significantly better than the Alex version since Pericles is creative which makes his UB very cheap indeed.

Traits: Philosophical remains one of my favorite traits. It really shone in this game when it allowed us to bulb our way out of a tech whole in a timely fashion. After the war with Genghis I got paper, education, and printing press all bulbed for me in quick succession. The creative trait also got some usage. It's main goal was securing copper for us without making us settle a lame city. It's creative's ability to allow for the capturing of resources and blocking off of land without sacrificing city potential that makes it such a potent trait.

Pericles: This leader might be my new favorite. His uniques and traits have such a nice synergy and they all really came out in this game. We were able to war with the phalanxes because of being creative and could then beeline construction for a follow-up war to continue using the phalanxes and build a great happiness building which we got on sale because of that same creative trait. After the war we were able to bulb ourselves out of a tech deficit because of our other trait philosophical. Rock on Pericles!