Will you win #3? An Icy Adventure (Emperor)

"cold" hmm,Im either going to catch one,or the tile turns to ice maybe???.It feels a bit like playing on Erebus in fall from heaven mod.Have gone fish>BW,as Tmit says the GLH should be good as we need sailing anyway,and with starting with myst it will making teching masonry cheaper.

My scout got killed early so I only met Shaka and Elisabeth for a long while so that might have been a key factor. Also, by the time I met all the others they hated me because of my trading with the English so they didnt want to trade with me for some time. Since trading is the only thing going for you that hurt. I got TGL which together with some harbours really brought in some nice commerce.

I also tried with an outpost on the mainland to the left but Shake declared on me and got it that same turn so that was a no go.

After I managed to win lib quite easily but since there are no horses this doesnt mean much. the idea was to lib rifling but Elisabeth was a beast teching wise and was able to research lib in 2 turns (!) I had to settle for economics as my free tech and then tried to self-tech my way to rifles. When I finally got there and built up a stack of rifles and trebs I went over to start some trouble with the Japanese. But about 10 turns into the war he got rifling too so then it was all over.

I think knowing the map it might be possible to steal of few islands from the Japanese if you go over there early enough. Or just go all out for settling the main land on the left.
It's very difficult to control the AI and since the English are untouchable they will always run away with things. Maybe a cultural victory might be feasible?

One more thing, I settled the silver adjacent to the water thinking I would be able to built a galley and go settle some of Elisabeth's lands but it didnt let me, anyone know why? Is the water not real water?

Things seem Ok at the moment,Managed to get the GLH,Collosus and Hanging gardens-after trading for the stone off Genghis.Was first to music so after I got CoL started a golden age while teching CS for the eventual civic swap into bueracracy.Ive had no usefull religion spread in my lands so organised religion is pointless at the moment.

Got a great engineer so I rush built the mids.So now its off to Lib,what to take with it though,weve no marble for the Taj,no horses-so MT and nationalism don't look appealing.Weve got iron so steel or rifling is a possibility.Im thinking I want to get replaceable parts soon for some lumbermills-my colossus coast tiles wont last forever.

Starting a war looks like a logistical nightmare with gallys,Galleons will be needed I think,Elizibeth will be the Target as most AIs hate her,and I reckon with her land I may be able to get to space,but im probably thinking too far ahead,Il see how the next 50 turns go.

game is soooo slow...took out Liz with Muskies/Grens/Cannons in like 1500...Libbed Steel. Rags and Shaka are Friends

that for trade routes with Lizzy you only need to scout rivers?
You can get globe circthingy for +1 ship movement early with good scouting?

I had 3 priorities at the start of this game. 1) get a galley in the water ASAP, 2) settle bridge city to the west, 3) build the GLH.

The capitol has almost no production at all, so the only way to build anything is via whips and chops. Tech order at the start of the game was Fishing > Mining > BW > Sailing > Archery > Masonry. In retrospect Archery probably could have been skipped, but my archers did kill a couple of barb archers before settling by the silvers and down by the copper. First settler went to the west as planned to gain access to that area. 2nd settler was whipped for max OF into GLH and was intended to settle that really nice fish + pigs + ivory + FP area to the west, but i met Shaka there instead (who was the first to Alpha!). With that site off the table i settled the cow + stone + wheat city over by Ragnar. I killed a fish in the process with my settling location, but it was still in the fog at the time so oh well! I settled this city to try for the Mids and... i missed them by a couple of turns. Granted it was a very late attempt, but Mongolia got them in 75 BC.


The GLH finished in 875 BC. Fortunately Emperor AI aren't fast with the wonders. I had some difficulties with tech trades early. I couldn't get Shaka to pleased while he lacked Math so i was never able to trade that to him for Alpha. I ended up having to tech AH myself for my stone city, but found horses in the process so that was a plus. Eventually when i finished teching Currency i was able to get Alpha from somebody - can't even remember who. I went for CoL next already thinking that it would be difficult to do anything in this game pre-Lib. CoL is also good trade bait in a game full of warmongers who don't bother to tech it.


Around 1 AD my stone city started getting me into trouble as i knew it would. We have a map full of warmongers here with one person that they all hate, but with one caveat - none of them can get to her. What does that leave for them to attack? My stone city of course. Ragnar was the first guy to really scare me, but i was able to gift him something to get him to pleased and then beg 1g.
He never showed any signs of coming for me after, but i saved my next beg just in case.


Then awhile later Shaka showed up with a stack that was definitely coming for me. That led to a very tense moment.


On the next turn i got Ragnar to friendly which was a big relief.


Shaka, on the other hand, still had his stack in my land right on the border where it looked like he was just waiting for the 10T of peace to expire. Which of course was exactly what he was doing. I started trying to scramble up some defenders with just a few turns left on the treaty. I built a spear, traded for Feudalism, upgraded my archer to a LB, whipped another LB, and had some more troops en route via galleys when he declared war. Fortunately i was already putting my galley chain in place so i was able to get some more defenders over pretty quickly. A few of his mounted units actually came straight in from 2 tiles away ahead of the rest of his stack which included some catapults. They all died leaving me in this situation:


Whip OF into 1T Dun to exploit the AI. I figured with catapults in his stack he would sit there and bombard my defenses all the way down giving me some more turns to boost my defenses. He didn't disappoint and by the time he was ready to attack he faced this:


After mopping up a few more units i gave him Philo for peace and continued on towards Lib while building some HAs to upgrade to Cuirs later with the GM i had been saving. I got to Lib in 1110 AD which was still comfortably ahead of these Emperor AI. I think the fact that the only competent techer on in this game is despised by everyone else probably helped too.


Once Lib was in the bag i traded Edu around for some nice gold and also bribed Shaka onto Genghis. By the following turn almost everyone was at war with Shaka. Awesome!


He was of course my first target, and i was 1-2 turns away from declaring when Genghis asked me to jump in. Why not, right? 2 cities down so far and between me killing his stack earlier and the 5 people at war with him right now i expect his resistance will be minimal.


Oh this is now my cities shook out:


Now for the things i did really poor at!

-I lost my spy before i could really explore anything to the west. I did scope out all of Lizzy's land, but i left my spy sitting in Viking territory for a few turns and of course he got caught. Yup, that was dumb.

-I forgot about circumnav. I don't know why it didn't cross my mind, but it obviously could have been hugely helpful on this map and there were several ways to reveal big chunks of the map and i didn't pursue them. Somebody else finally got it and that was when i had my "duh" moment.

With building the hanging gardens and getting that engineer to build the mids it had a snowball effect on the game.The next 2 GP were a scientist,and then another GE,whom I saved to build the Taj.All this helped me to Lib steel and DOW on Elizibeth.

View attachment The Woman in Pelts AD-1545 war with elizibeth.CivBeyondSwordSave

This was a Long drawn out war where I was facing only grenadiers at the start,which turned into cannons,machine guns then redcoats.I teched artillery/physics which kept me winning,although at a snails pace,I was reluctant to build a "blitz" army because I wanted to keep a good tech rate.

I missed the race to economics,communism and physics though.I went into state property,but as the war was ending I decided to switch into freemarket so I could build min inc with yet another GE that dropped.The plan here being to try for space.

BUT,with a look at the diplo situation an AP victory may be possible,Ive captured the Apostolic palace in buddism,its hardly spread to the AI,which are all in hindu-except shaka-a Christian.I need to send missionrys to 2 of the AI to force a diplo win vote,their all pleased atm.

Herein lies the problem,ive no buddist monastarys,so the only way to get missionarys is to switch into organised religion.By doing this its bound to cause some tension and possible DOW.Im just about to get assembly line so potentially I should be able to defend from an attack.

Going to continue the game in two days time,I need to re-negociate all my trades now for the min inc resources.