Orion's Home School: Winning at Noble

I just finished taking out Ragnar and I'm on my way to take out to Toku. Right now I have a stack of 5 trebs, 6 cats, 5 maces (CR2-3),2 knights. And I have more maces and cats on their way. What size of the stack, should I have to take out Toku capital?. I'm 10 turns away from liberalism, which tech should I pop with that?

I really like how everything is organized, I have been playing for about six months and am now at a point where I just get the hang of it. Thanks for starting this thread.
Cripp

ROUND 5 (805 AD - 1090 AD)

This round will be all out war. I don't plan on stopping the war until all of my enemies are off of the continent, but that may not be entirely practical. I may have to stop and regroup. We'll see.

Turn 228: All of those troops in Ragnar's territory have forced me to drop the science slider down a notch. No worries, it shouldn't affect me too much. It only takes 2 of my Accuracy Catapults to knock Haithabu's defenses down to 0%. The CR II Treb attacks with a ridiculous 99.5% success rate and damages the defenders. 3 Macemen attack and all 3 succeed in defeating the 2 Archers and 1 Catapult defending:



It was razed because of its close proximity to Varanasi. I may rebuild it in the desert for less overlap. I have a couple of Workers connect the road through to Ragnar so I don't have to slow down. The remaining troops speed off towards Ragnar's capital.

My Great Scientist appears in Bombay. He heads to Delhi to build an Academy.

Turn 229: I send a small task force to Ragnar's city just south of the one I razed. Two Macemen, Axeman and Treb should be enough to take it out. I don't want to divert anyone from my main force. The injured units from my main force hang back with the healer Warrior while the rest continue on. There's still more than enough in the main force to take Ragnar's capital.

Ragnar surprises me by launching a Golden Age! I check back and don't see when he popped a Great Person. Could be possibly have been holding his Great Prophet back for millenia for this moment?

Paper is in and I go to Drama. Both the culture slider and Theaters will help me combat war weariness. I've already made a trade with Joao for Dye so the Theater will be doubly useful.

Ragnar, Toku, Stalin and Napolean won't give up their world maps, but I make trades for Joao's and Gilgamesh's and raise a little bit of cash. Wow, Gilgamesh's territory sucks.

Turn 231: A fire rages through the Forge in Delhi and I pay 56 gold to keep it. Good thing I had some spare cash. My SoD encounters Ragnar's SoD: 3 Axemen (2 with Shock), 2 Spearmen and a Catapult. I suicide one of my Catapults so my Macemen will have better odds. My Macemen win with no losses, but many of them are seriously wounded and Ragnar has another decent-sized stack guarding his capital (4 Axemen, 2 Archers and a Spearman). I'll have to wait a few turns until all of my troops arrive to attack.

My smaller task force has better success at Jelling:



Even though the city is poorly placed (1 tile from the coast) I decide to keep it. Razing cities and rebuilding them is a waste of hammers I can't afford right now. The city will still get me Cows and Bananas.

Drama is in and I go for Philosophy.

Turn 232: To my great sadness, the Golden Age ends. I snag 3 of Ragnar's Workers that were improving a Winery outside of his capital. I can use them to improve the area around Jelling. My Catapults start the bombardment of the capital.

Turn 233: War weariness already rears its ugly head in Delhi, and I'm forced to start a Theater there. I trade my only Wine to Joao for some Spices. I'm building a second Winery, so that should help me out soon.

A War Elephant appears in Nidaros. Ack. That will complicate things. I'll order up a Pikeman or two.

Turn 234: The bombardment is done in Nidaros, but my City Raider Trebs aren't there yet. I decide to attack anyway. My CR II Maceman attacks his Elephant at 78.9% odds and wins easily. The other Macemen attack at 95%+ odds and again I have no losses:



Nidaros comes complete with Stonehenge and the Pyramids. The Pyramids allow me to make a small but potentially important civics change into Police State. Police state should let me war for a pretty long time without empire-crippling war weariness.

The last fight to take Nidaros has given me my first Great General. Almost always, the first GG is used to create a Medic III Chariot unit, and this time will be no exception. Will the Medic III Chariot work in conjuction with my Woodsman III Warrior? I don't know, but it would be awesome if he does. If not, then I'll still have 2 really nice medical units in case my stack has to split up.

Turn 236: It turns out that the 2 healers won't work together. Oh, well. The Warrior heals units in Nidaros, while Sargon the Medic Chariot will go with my SoD.

I need to make sure that all of my cities have Courthouses, so I queue them up in the core cities that don't have one yet. Most of my stack is healed and moves up the thin land bridge to Ragnar's 3 remaining cities.

Turn 237: Philosophy is done, giving me my 4th religion:



Next will be Feudalism, so I can continue on to Guilds and Knights. A Great Scientist will appear in Bombay in 10 turns, but I'll use him for an Academy in Bombay instead of lightbulbing Education. He wouldn't give me all of it anyway.

Turn 239: I actually think I have enough troops. Delhi and Bombay will build some Monasteries, while Patal makes me a couple of Spies. Because I'm the runaway tech leader, I think the other civs have their espionage sliders bumped up. I can't even see what any of them are researching yet. A few more Courthouses will help, but I want some Spies in case I need to run a few missions against Japan or Russia. In any case, they can scout ahead to see what I'll be up against.

My stack reaches the next city of Uppsala. Three quick catapults remove the defense, and a couple of Trebs make the defenders a walkover:



I keep it and move on to Ragnar's last 2 cities.

I set up a few trades, selling Cows to Napolean and Gold to Gilgamesh for 3 gpt each. I'm not planning on attacking them anytime soon, so I'll take whatever gold I can. Joao doesn't seem to have a worst enemy, so I'm not earning any negatives with him by trading stuff around.

Turn 241: Someone builds the Statue of Zeus. That could be a problem later on. My troops split up to take on Ragnar's last 2 cities. The first one:



This was razed so I could build it 1N from its original position to take advantage of some Fish up there. It doesn't have any other food source except the Oasis and would be a terrible city without the Fish. *Edit*: Yeah, I didn't see the Clams right smack in the middle of the screenshot. Tough. It will have 2 seafood now.

Turn 242: Feudalism is in and I go for Guilds. It doesn't look like Stalin has it yet. Gilgamesh switches to Vassalage, so he has Feudalism too. Ragnar's last city:



Arrrrrggghhh! One tile off of the coast again! But I'll keep it becuase it controls 4 important resources, including Stone. Delhi queues up Notre Dame for a nice happiness boost. With Ragnar destroyed, the war weariness I've accumulated will disappear and start anew when I declare on Toku. I'm going to heal my troops for a turn or 2 before that happens.

Turn 245: Toku is moving a Settler party towards the empty space where I razed Ragnar's city. Sorry, but I can't allow you to do that...

It's WAR!!! (I had a screenshot, but lost it. Oh, well)

I kill off his Settler party and move in. My stack is slightly better this time:



I has a few more Trebs and Macemen in the area that will move in next turn. Again, I'm only facing Axemen and Archers, but Toku's Protective Archer's are a lot better than Ragnar's. I have a Spy mapping out Toku's realm, but not a lot of info yet. I'll head straight for Kyoto first, and figure the rest out later.

Turn 247: My next Great Scientist appears in Bombay and finishes the Academy there. I take off the specialists so I can grow the city out a bit more. It starts on the University of Sankore. I'll get Stone soon, so it won't take that long. Vijay starts the Hagia Sophia. Shiny wonders...

Turn 248: Kyoto has an Axe, a Sword, a Spear and 5 Archers. Not really a fair fight:



Kyoto has its own Academy and The Parthenon. Nice.

Turn 250: Guilds is in and I go for Education. I've been cutting some of the forests down around Patal and Delhi for some more cottages. I'll also be building some Markets and Grocers in those science cities to keep my economy going. I'm losing 33 gpt at 60% science and while I have a decent gold reserve right now, I don't want to end up bankrupt.

Turn 252: Osaka had no chance either:



I'll keep this one, Tokyo and Satsuma, but I'll get rid of Kagoshima. There's a Japanese border coming from an island to the NE of Birka so he's not done yet. When I kick him off of the continent, I'll end the war against him. I don't have a navy, so I can't shuttle troops to different islands to wipe him off of the map completely. Apparently Stalin is on a different landmass as well. You can see his Russian borders in the last screenshot. So I guess all of the warring will be done soon.

Turn 253: Tokyo falls. My troops move into position for the final assaults.

Turn 254: Kagoshime is burned to the ground. Yeah, I'm tired of posting a screenshot of each city as it falls.

Satsuma falls as well and Japan is no longer on my continent. I make peace with Toku but I don't accept his capulation. I don't want him as my vassal. He'll be useless for the rest of the game with only 3 island cities left. My Japanese cities will have some unhappiness because they want to join the Motherland, but they would have had that anyway.

I'm going to stop now because the war is over. I'll need to have a bit of economic recovery, but it won't be as bad as I thought it would be. Kyoto is a decent option for the Forbidden Palace, which will reduce my maintenance quite a bit. I need to spread Hinduism to all of my new cities so I can reap the benefits of my Shrine. I make a civics change and go into Representation and Organized Religion.

Here's the save. It's late here so I'll post some summary screens tomorrow night for people that can't see the save.

View attachment Gandhi AD-1090.CivBeyondSwordSave

Wow, you took out 1 3/4 civs in less than 30 moves??? (It sometimes takes me that long to get all my troops to wander over to the city I want to attack.) You kept alot more cities than I would have thought--I'm assuming that you left them basically undefended (otherwise your stack would have been a lot more depleted by the end) since they aren't any immediate threats? Science still at 60%, plus a good pile of cash. Very nice!

I'll grab the save game and take a look at it tonight. Thanks! Now if only I could actually implement some of these things myself...

*nods* Reading about them is one thing, implementing them is quite another. Great read though!

Today, instead of going through another round, I'm going to display a lot of the advisor and summary screens and give some explainations on how I use them.

First is <F1>, the Domestic Advisor:



I don't often use this screen, but it does carry a lot of helpful info. You can see from the and columns that most of my cities have a lot of room to grow health and happiness-wise. I'll use this screen to see which city is my best hammer producer so I can build a key wonder quickly. I can do the same for science output, so I can see who needs an Academy or Oxford University. I like that they added the Great People Points column so you can see where the next Great Person is coming from. Delhi will produce my next Great Person in only 6 more turns and it will most likely be a Great Prophet. Well, I don't know what I'll do with a Prophet yet, but I'd better figure it out soon.

Next is <F2>, the Financial Advisor:



This one is pretty straightforward, telling you your total Science, Culture, Espionage and Gold output. That info is also on the main screen, next to the sliders themselves - very helpful addition. I mainly use this screen for the column on the right. As you can see in the Expenses column, I'm spending 10 gpt for Unit Cost and 5 gpt on Unit Supply. Holding the mouse over Unit Cost reveals that I have 42 units and the first 21 are free. Each additional unit over 21 should cost me 1 gpt, but since this is only Noble, that gets cut roughly in half. If I were to switch to Vassalage, I would get an additional 17 free units, so only 4 of them would be costing me money. Likewise, I have 11 units outside of my territory and I can only have 4 for free. The other 7 units are costing me the additional 5 gpt. Also you can see the dreaded inflation amount. Mousing over this reveals an inflation rate of 23% - an amount that steadily increases as the game goes on.

So if I deleted 21 of my units and moved the rest inside my territory, I would save 15 gpt plus inflation. I'm not going to do that, but if I was desperate to save money, I'd have to consider it.

I'm not going to show the civics screen since it's self explanitory. Next is <F4>, the Foreign Advisor.

The Foreign Advisor has many screens, but I'll focus on the 2 I use the most, Resources and Techs:



This shows every civ you know and all of the resources available for trade or sale. As you can see, I have many trades in force right now. Without Corporations, multiples of resources don't do you any good, so you might as well trade them away. I try to make as many trades as I possibly can. You have to be careful because if you trade with your friend's enemies, then you risk diplomatic penalties. Plus, they'll come at you constantly, whining for you to stop trading with civ "X". Refusal means another penalty. I'm pretty lucky right now because my friend Joao doesn't seem to have a worst enemy. So I'm free to trade with anyone. Notice that you can also sell resources off for gold. I'm currently earing 17 gpt in trade (I made a trade with Joao not on the last save). That's not too shabby. As the other civ's economies improve, they'll have more gold for trade. I can always break a trade after 10 turns and renegotiate it for a higher price. Be careful, sometimes when you break a lucrative trade, the civ will decide they want to keep the money and you won't get as good of a price. But that rarely happens and I think the risk is worth the extra gold potential.

Here's the Tech Trade window:



Obviously I'm the runaway leader in tech. Nobody has a tech that I don't have. In your games, it's a good idea to constantly go back to this screen to see if potential tech trades are available. On levels like Emperor or Immortal I find that I come here nearly every turn. If you're behind in techs, then you can see what everybody has and if they're willing to make a trade. If they are, then it certainly benefits you to try and research a tech that no one else has. That way you can trade it to multiple civs at once and make an enormous profit. Remember, this screen will only show techs that are immediately available and not ones further on down the line. If you look at the screen you can see that Joao wants Civil Service. But he also needs Paper, which has Civil Service as a requirement. Similiarly, if a civ you know had Guilds, he may also have Banking, the tech next it line. You won't be able to tell until you get Guilds yourself. If you get a prerequesite like Guilds in a trade, you won't be able to trade for Banking until the next turn. Banking will then show up in the "Can't Trade" column, meaning that you have to wait.

Next is <F5>, the Military Advisor:



Another one that I don't use very often. You can see how many of each unit you have, and even drill down to show where each of them are. The screen is currently showing the location of my 2 Spys (Osaka and Tokyo). You can click on another leader and it will show you the location of all of their units that you can see. Remember, this is only units that you can see, not all of their units. It's handy if you know that someone is in your territory, but you just can't find where.

At the bottom of the screen it will show you how many more XP you need to get another Great General.

<F6>, the Science Advisor is again pretty easy to navigate so I'll skip it.

<F7> is the Religious Advisor:



As you can see, I've switched to Judaism. I did it because Stalin asked me to. But also becuase my new cities coming out of revolt are Jewish and not Hindu. They'll get the 25% Organized Religion bonus to make whipping Courthouses, Granaries and Forges easier. I plan on a massive campaign to convert all of these cities to Hindu and then I'll switch back.

When I get my next Great Prophet, I can use him to build another Shrine. Looking at this screen, I can see that the other 3 religions that I own are not doing very well. So maybe the Shrine isn't a great idea. I can settle him in Delhi instead.

Let's look at <F8>, the Victory Conditions:



This is useful to see how close you are to the Domination Threshholds. Yeah, not very close. I need almost 3.5 times my current land area. Well, my Japanese cities aren't out of revolt yet, so that will help. But I don't think that I'll be able to pull off a Domination Victory in this game. The Big and Small map lends to Conquest before Domination. I'm not ruling out Conquest in this game.

Another thing to watch out for is a Cultural Victory. Now that the AI us programmed to persue it, I see at least one of them try in almost every game. Keep watching this screen and if you see the cultural numbers jump then you can be reasonably certain that a civ is trying to win a Cultural Victory. This screen should be able to warn you of this long before you'd find out any other way. If you find out by seeing "Thebes has achieved Legendary Status!", then you're probably too late.

<F9> is the Info Screens. I won't go into the Graphs because they're pretty easy. I think they're less powerful to look at now, because you need sufficient Espionage Points to be able to see them on the graph. Espionage doesn't affect the Demographics Screen though:



The excellent article Demo Screen Explained tells you how all of the fields are calculated. I'm #1 in every important category. The most important here is Soldiers. If you're dropping into the lower half of the civs in power, then you are definitely inviting some sort of attack. So don't do it.

Next is the Wonders/Cities screen:



This will tell you if that city you're about to burn to the ground has any wonders in it. A handy piece of information to have. The top 5 city list can be useful if you send a Great Merchant out on a trade route. Cities far away from your capital give you more money, but so do powerful cities and this list shows you the most powerful.

Last, but not least is the Espionage Screen:



This screen looks completely different in 3.13, but it shows the same info. You divide up your EP's by assigning weights to each civ. Notice that I have no EP's going to Toku or Napolean. I pretty much don't care what they do. Toku is a non-entity at this point and Napolean is backwards to near uselessness as well. At the beginning of the game, you only get 4 EP's from your Palace to divide up. I tend to consentrate on only 2 civs, either my close neighbor, someone I'll attack soon, or a tech leader. You can't get the passive effects on the right until you accumulate enough points. Right now I can only see the research of Joao.

OK, that's it for right now. My next round will be a bit of recovery and infrastructure building. I'll get Education and Liberalism and build a bunch of Markets, Grocers, Universities and Courthouses. I'll need a thriving economy again before I decide on a victory condition.

Orion071 said:

Normally, I don't trade for such small techs. Every Civ has a number of techs they will trade you before saying "We Fear You Are Becoming To Advanced" or WFYABTA for short. This number isn't the techs you get from him, it's the number of techs you get in trade from ANYONE. The number is different for everyone, so most people don't like to waste them on garbage techs you can research in a few turns anyway. I'm making the trade for a couple of reasons - 1) I really want Sailing so I need Fishing first 2) These guys don't have a lot for me to trade for anyway.

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Could you explain this in more detail please ? I never herad of it before and it sucks because this does not make any sense. (Which is of course not your fault and also not the point of discussion here). I got the "We fear you are becoming to advanced" sometimes. I was thinking it is refering to how adwanced i actually am compared to him (like he want to hold back a tech for a wonder or units or something...) and that it will change over time.

From what You say, i gather that once i got there, there is no point in trying trading a tech with the 'offender' ever again ? Is this correct ? Or does the "fear" of me being to advanced degrade over time ?

Also a estimate on how many techs you can get, before this starting to kick in would be nice.

Thanks

Just wanted to report in that, thanks to this thread, I'm having my first seriously awesome conquest/domination-based game on noble level:

Started random leaders/fractal/normal and got Mansa Musa (spiritual and financial). Okay location on river, great place for second city at the mouth of the river with seafood and stone. First hut popped a scout, and I soon found that I shared a smallish continent with Hatsheput. Opened borders and scouted her territory. Wow! Thebes had: 3 clams, 1 corn, 3 gold in the fat cross, and to top it off, a fourth gold just outside the fat cross. Okay, greed inspired me. This has to be a military game.

Now for the seriously lucky break. I was building the oracle, and researching code of laws, and just before the oracle was built, popped metal casting from a hut! So the oracle gave me machinery on the same turn I founded confucianism! Then I built toward Hatsheput on the only source of horses on the continent, and she doesn't get her UU! She's history by 1000 AD! (Just met Justinian and Huayna--I'm several hundred points ahead of Justinian and even further ahead of Huayna. Time to send out some caravels and meet the rest.)

So I'm thinking that either I've learned alot from this thread, or maybe I just got seriously lucky so far in this game!

Thanks Orion71!

Refar said:

Could you explain this in more detail please ? I never herad of it before and it sucks because this does not make any sense. (Which is of course not your fault and also not the point of discussion here). I got the "We fear you are becoming to advanced" sometimes. I was thinking it is refering to how adwanced i actually am compared to him (like he want to hold back a tech for a wonder or units or something...) and that it will change over time.

From what You say, i gather that once i got there, there is no point in trying trading a tech with the 'offender' ever again ? Is this correct ? Or does the "fear" of me being to advanced degrade over time ?

Also a estimate on how many techs you can get, before this starting to kick in would be nice.

Thanks

Click to expand...

No, I won't explain it further, because I'd rather let VoiceOfUnreason's article do it for me.

OK, basically it has nothing to do with how advanced you are, just how many techs you've received from other civs. It may expire over time, but slowly and not very much.

It's strictly a game balance thing, because in earlier civ games you could tech-whore your way to the top without putting any beakers into research yourself.

Orion071 said:

No, I won't explain it further, because I'd rather let VoiceOfUnreason's article do it for me.

Click to expand...

Pointing to where it is explained is good too, Thanks

Orion071 said:

No, I won't explain it further, because I'd rather let VoiceOfUnreason's article do it for me.

OK, basically it has nothing to do with how advanced you are, just how many techs you've received from other civs. It may expire over time, but slowly and not very much.

It's strictly a game balance thing, because in earlier civ games you could tech-whore your way to the top without putting any beakers into research yourself.

Click to expand...

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I'm pretty sure that the AI doesn't factor in techs that you manage to steal though. I stole 4 techs in a row from an advanced civ (using a great spy followed by a raft of regular spies) and still managed to trade techs without getting the "too advanced" message.

(I just read over in the BTS forum that some people consider using a great wall/great spy/tech stealing to be borderline cheating, or an exploit... I guess I have no shame!)

Yes, I would just like to point out that I too am learning TONS from this game, so thanks very much! Traditionally, I've been trying to go for military-oriented victories on Noble, but seem to find myself with a quick start and then getting out-teched more toward mid-game. I know this sounds horrible, but just learning the importance of cottages has helped a ton in terms of research. Also, I never did too much whipping and totally see the benefit now. The dot map is great, too! I'm playing a game now that I'm fairly confident I can turn into a domination victory and I really feel as though the dot map is part of the reason; it's given me a very coherent vision for expansion. Keep up the good work, I check the thread every day!

This is a great read, and very educational. Thanks Orion!!

Orion71: I downloaded your save and looked it over. It occurred to me that, with the vast majority of your remaining opponents practicing judaism, and its holy city, Moscow, being in your sights, one possibility might be not to change back to hinduism but to stick with judaism and try to take the holy city, which also would significantly weaken Stalin, who may be your most meaningful opponent at this point. With a shrine, Moscow would bring in bundles of gold. Of course, with your current lead, you probably can easily win a peaceful game from here on out...

(I'd really like to see how an overseas war. I've only ever done them successfully in the mordern era.)

Hey, I took a look at the save and have a question or two.

Did you ever think of settling a city up north where those 6 furs and 1 whale are? I know it wouldn't be very productive and wouldn't even be able to work most of the tiles, but it'd make +4 happiness in your market cities if you controlled the two resources and you could sell/trade the excess fur for an awful long time since it only obsoletes with plastics...

Another question - do you ever play the terra map, and do you think it's possible to dominate on that one like you have been in this game thus far?

Great work Orion

Orion071 said:

A lot of people say you should keep your units unpromoted until you're ready to use them. That way you can tailor those promotions to what the unit is going to do. Facing an Axeman in the open field? Give him Combat I and Shock. Attacking a city? Give him City Raider I and II. I think this is a good idea. You should do it this way. Why did I promote everyone already? Well, I can't stand looking at that stupid blue glow all of the time. Yeah, I can turn it off, but I don't want to. I guess I have a little KMadCandy goofiness in me. (or should I say *giggle*) Do as I say, kids, not as I do.

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OMG i'm notorious! i didn't open this thread until today and i find myself in it

that really cracks me up, because hubby hates that blue glow too. he says he keeps looking for lightsabers, since my armies look like blue glowing jedi. i read this part of your post to him just to be sure that you're not actually him in disguise .

Orion071 said:

Ragnar surprises me by launching a Golden Age! I check back and don't see when he popped a Great Person. Could be possibly have been holding his Great Prophet back for millenia for this moment?

Click to expand...

There's a random event in BtS which has a chance of triggering a golden age when a civ is attacked.

I think random events are usually anounced, if they affect a civ you have contact with.

eewallace said:

Orion71: I downloaded your save and looked it over. It occurred to me that, with the vast majority of your remaining opponents practicing judaism, and its holy city, Moscow, being in your sights, one possibility might be not to change back to hinduism but to stick with judaism and try to take the holy city, which also would significantly weaken Stalin, who may be your most meaningful opponent at this point. With a shrine, Moscow would bring in bundles of gold. Of course, with your current lead, you probably can easily win a peaceful game from here on out...

(I'd really like to see how an overseas war. I've only ever done them successfully in the mordern era.)

Click to expand...

Considering that my "fleet" consists of 1 ship right now, I'm not planning on attacking Stalin anytime soon. Once I get Optics and some Caravels around exploring, then I may end up trying for a Conquest Victory. We'll have to see.

Nickzilla said:

Hey, I took a look at the save and have a question or two.

Did you ever think of settling a city up north where those 6 furs and 1 whale are? I know it wouldn't be very productive and wouldn't even be able to work most of the tiles, but it'd make +4 happiness in your market cities if you controlled the two resources and you could sell/trade the excess fur for an awful long time since it only obsoletes with plastics...

Another question - do you ever play the terra map, and do you think it's possible to dominate on that one like you have been in this game thus far?

Click to expand...

Yes, I have considered putting a city there. I probably will soon. I can't get the Whales until Optics, but those Furs would be a nice happiness boost.

As for a Terra map, I think it's even easier to dominate one of those since everyone starts packed together in the New World. If this was a Terra map then I'd be working towards a Conquest Victory before anyone even got Astronomy to settle the New World. I don't like Terra maps for that reason.

KMadCandy said:

OMG i'm notorious! i didn't open this thread until today and i find myself in it

that really cracks me up, because hubby hates that blue glow too. he says he keeps looking for lightsabers, since my armies look like blue glowing jedi. i read this part of your post to him just to be sure that you're not actually him in disguise .

Click to expand...

You haven't been reading my thread?!? You can use it to shed your "Perman00b" status. Don't worry, you've still got my support for Diplomatic Victory of the forum whenever you decide to call the vote.

MrCynical said:

There's a random event in BtS which has a chance of triggering a golden age when a civ is attacked.

Click to expand...

This is probably what happened. There easily could have been an annoucement during that turn and I missed it. Ragnar used his Great Prophet as a super-specialist in Uppsala, so he must have received the "Marathon Event".

New round coming today!