The Immortal Alphabetical Game #9 - Casimir III

Pangea, Standard everything

If you settle the river/mtn/hill 1 NE of the start:
Washington - 30
Madrid - 28
Assur - 21
Thebes - 20
Amsterdam - 19
Copenhagen - 16
Jakarta - 9

1. Musicians guild is up, Artist guild was 2nd, Writers guild to follow, so that's ok
2. Couple Wings are up, Cannons next and I have one gifted Musket so that doesn't count
3. Didn't see this one at the time of post, so your call, either mulligan or decline this. For reference: When I opened Rationalism, I had full Tradition and 4 in Liberty, with Ratio opener and the followup Secularism 5 turns apart due to some lucky timing.
4. Not there yet but should be easy enough.
5. Will be a CV with a touch of violence, see below

The map is quite cramped, which kind of forced my hand, I had to take out Indonesia to make some breathing space Burned one city, took the cap with a help of a city state gifted Catapult which was the game changer, and a city state ally took their last city and burned it, clearing up some space. Now I have 4 decent cities, picked up a late HG since nobody went Tradition. Egypt invaded me but bounced right off, I'm going to assemble some Wings and Cannons and go knock on their door because they are jerks. Economy was a bit crap due to unusual number of units early but that's under control now. Managed to get Oracle, HG and Hagia (which ended up being useless as I planted the Prophet, beats founding since I have two strong religions from the flanks fighting for dominance), Sistine, currently doing Pisa, I missed out on Machu.

Fun concept but man, the map isn't on the easy side, you have to expand FAST or risk being boxed in

Also, it's going to take a while since we're not allowed to rush Internet

I had a CV in mind most of the way, especially after I somehow beat Egypt to so many early and mid wonders. For some reason Spain pissed me off, so I took her LV city and got another coastal in peace. That's when I came up with the distance rule...

I settled right in Indo's face and bought some tiles. He's been a non-factor all game, he lost all but his cap a long time ago, and I just kept him alive and did a little XP farming.

I attacked Assyria after he took a couple Egyptian cities, I will liberate one of Indo's after his cap finally falls. Assyria should take at least one CS soon. The big question is whether I want to go DomV - I can easily take Madrid, and since I'm already fighting Assyria the rule would make it doable to start keeping some cities of his. I went Freedom though, have grown like mad, Hospitals in every city, etc. USA has the GW, and those mountains suck. I just don't think I have the desire to war so much.

Big hat tip for anyone who is able to do the backwards DomV!

My faith game is strong, I took faith from wonders and passed culture from wonders. All 4 core cities have a wonder, so with full Aesthetics culture is crazy. Full Piety so gpt is crazy. Poland is just plain crazy!

Like ST said, kind of a cramped map. I did a 4 city tradition start, opening Trad, then Lib to the free settler, then back to Trad. The free settler allowed me to build ToA in the capital, and I later got HG as well. As soon as I hit civil service, I had like +40 food in the cap.

Been playing peacefully, then Indonesia attacked me with warriors, CBs and horses. I quickly wiped out his troops with xbows and he's already offering his nearest city for peace. I can't decide if I want to accept it in a peace deal, capture then raze it, or just leave him alone. Obviously if I want to pursue the reverse domination achievement, I can't take his cities.

I may go for SV as I have never played Poland before and for some reason I like getting the steam achievements.

I like the restrictions on social policies as it forces a deviation from the obvious rationalism. Trad + Lib gives some pretty darn strong cities- may capital is a serious powerhouse.

Oh Lord, Wings squished Egypt with ease. However, this is gonna take a while. George killed everyone except Spain and at this point I'm probably just gonna crank out units to fend him off. He already attacked once. God only knows when can we expect the Internet, the NVC and the other good stuff. Culture win may not be the best idea, Domination would have been much better

You're now in the ideal spot for a DomV and get the last 5-point achievement. If America, Spain and you are the only three civs left, you can now take any city you want. So my question is how did you manage to get in that position?

Went for SV as I felt like it, though pretty much any VC would have been fairly easy with Poland. Start was a little cramped, but nearest neighbor, Indonesia, isn't exactly all that dangerous.

Doing the SPs in a way that delayed rationalism was a nice change. I've never filled both Trad and Lib before. Delaying the guilds didn't feel like too much of a handicap, nor did having to build a Hussar, then cannon, then musket. The entry techs were a little odd, and I never developed that much faith because there weren't any really good faith pantheons. I took god king for my pantheon, and got the 5th religion, which is awfully late on immortal.

Played mostly peacefully. Later in the game Indonesia took one of luxes with a citadel, so I DOWd him, razed one city and took his capital for a response. I don't take kindly to people taking my land.

Turn 50
Still on one city, I opened Tradition then went for the fast settler from liberty, got a culture rune on turn 10 or something which was nice. The barb camps south and north became a serious paid as I didn't bother to get archery for a while. They delayed my upcoming settlers about 10 turns or so.I found La Venta first and got some nice faith from that and build an early shrine and grabbed the first or second pantheon, I ended up grabbing the culture from pastures as Krakow had a bunch and the rest of the cities had 1 or 2. I stole 1 worker from Jakarta and one from La Venta.



Turn 80
Finally got my Wroclaw down. I was happy with the 4 spots, Lodz was gonna be great because of all the extra luxuries that I could sell to bump the gpm up early game (love that early gpm for bribing wars). I was also happy with the spacing, enough room, with a smidge of overlap. Around this time I decided to not bother with the reverse domination and decided that my first target was going to be Jakarta as capitals seem to be good citys.



Turn 100
I finished the oracle and the cities were starting to develop I finished tradition in the next few turns and then filled out liberty. Egypt had already started to build some wonders and it seemed like they might turn into a cultural runaway. At this point I felt a bit behind, my early game was pretty messy and my 4 city tradition was really delayed I don't think I hit education until 120 and finished National College at 118.



Turn 150
I entered Renaissance with Astronomy and then took Acoustics. I rushed the Sistine chapel with the GE from liberty as Egypt was wonder-whoring like a fiend at this point. I had built up a decent army of Comp bows that would were waiting to become XB's to take Jakarta. I managed to get the third religion but didn't really do anything useful with it I ended up just letting my other cites change depending on who really felt like spamming me with missionaries and great profits.



Turn 175
That Jerk over in Egypt beat me to the LToP by 3 turns, at least I stole his pyramids early... at this point I decided to just take Thebes at some point, and then I felt ok because he was really just building wonders for me . Jakarta fell this turn and Medan a few turns later. Medan wasn't that good of a city, but it would provide some nice buffer and basically take Indonesia out of the game. I had bribed America and Egypt to fight Indonesia, attempting to lessen my warmonger penalties, it worked out as America stayed amiable offerming me fair value on trades while Spain and the Netherlands only hit me with the -1gpm for luxeries.



Turn 200
Cites continue to grow and I am about to hit dynamite. I was building up some Winged Hussars, but I timed things poorly. I had proposed the World Fair, and it ended up timing right as I was about to Pop an army. I switching all production to the worlds fair and putting my army on hold. That turned out to be a little over the top as I won the fair by over 1000 production. I was drooling at this point though as I realized my artillery was going to come at a nice time against Egypt, who was still wonder spamming like a madman. I had decided to send 2 food caravans to Jakarta to catch it up and the other three went to Warsaw.



Turn 250
So in a nice twist of fate while i was killing Jakarta and Medan, Egypt conquered Surabaya. I pushed into Egypt with my artillery with a slow forward push. I conquered and razed their city south of Surabaya as a it was small and gave me access to the Elephantine and so that I could take Surabaya as well. During this time the other remaining Indonesian city had been razed in the centre of the map by the Spanish thus eliminating them from the game. I took the opportunity to make a new besty and brought Indonesia back to life. I used him to buy a few excess luxes from me and was a back up for an earlier Diplo victory if I couldn't secure the culture.

It was also around this time that Ideologies started coming into play, Assyeria, Spain and Egypt all went order and America had gone Autocracy. I was late getting ideologies due to the backwards tech patterns and chose autocracy for 2 reasons: 1 - America was looking aggressive and I figured it would turn him from potential foe to malleable friend; and 2 - I was looking for extra happiness in order for my soon to be 9 city empire to keep up the good growth I was having. I was originally going to take thebes and leave memphis and heliopolis but I realized I had no costal city for Prora so I took memphis, only to lose it to america with 2 turns left. I took Thebes because "CULTURE" the city had 12 wonders including the Globe, Broadway and the Eiffel Tower. I sent 3-4 food caravans to thebes to grow that city fast as it had amazing tiles around it and it looked like it was likely to be better than my capital if I could get it to ~30 pop.



Turn 300
My biggest mistake was about turn 290, somehow before I took Heliopolis to wipe Egypt off the face of the earth (take that you LToP stealing jerk). Those commie bastards passed world ideology, Stupid America had proposed to repel a culture act and split his votes . This needless to say, on top of losing Prora put me in some happiness troubles until Thebes got out of unrest and I organized a themed a few wonders. After grabbing Thebes and Heliotropes (came with 7 great works...yummy) my culture jumped about +270/turn and i was able to get the rest of the happiness tennents and the tier three Autocracy which bumps tourism to civs who are in mutual wars. I grabbed this to help passively chew through America's sizeable culture while we killed Egypt, Assyria and at the end the Netherlands. At this point Culture victory looked pretty good, so I started to buy out the rest of the city states and take that warmonger America up on all his requests to go to war with other civs.

I got Lasers on turn 330 and had previously finished ecology for Sydney and then bulbed my 2 saved GS to get the Internet. I was feeling awesome as I had saved enough enough faith to purchase 3 GM, but then I realized I had filled out Commernce (which I needed the happiness from) rather than Aesthetics and so I couldn't buy them. In the end I just had to wait for the timers to tick down and in the final turns watched America and Spain rid the world of the Dutch.



Turn 343

I filled out Trad, Liberty and Commerce with 3/5 of rationalism and 5/4/2 Autocracy. Managed to get all the achievements. The tech pattern was the one that felt like it slowed the speed down the most. This was my first "bloody" culture victory in that I stole the wonders from the dead body of those thieving Egyptians and it was a lot of fun to play out the diplomatic angle by keeping Spain off my back and saddling up next to America.



If you bothered to read all this, thanks these are a hoot to write, ill have to do more of them.