Final Round: 1878AD - 1925AD
Wait. Don't scroll to the end of the update. Like everything in life, it's the journey and not the end that truly matters. Especially if we lose in the end
Just to recall, we were following this research path towards space victory:
Physics -> Biology -> Electricity -> Industrialism -> Railroads -> Combustion -> Flight (traded for Artillery) -> Rocketry -> Plastics -> Radio -> Computers -> Robotics -> Satelites
That would be followed by:
Fission -> Fiber Optics -> Fusion -> Refrigeration -> Genetics -> Environmentalism
Anyway, in the last update it was revealed that we could already win by diplomacy, thanks to Gandhi. However, that doesn't show us the merits of the religion strategy we were pursuing. Achieving a space victory despite the apparent odds would. So I loaded the game on the turn we could choose what to vote for and put Single Currency as the item on the UN agenda instead.
Proceeding from that point...
We completed a rather valuable wonder in our Ironworks city on the very next turn:
Who said that Industrious sucks in the higher difficulties?
The coal plants in some of our bigger cities have served us well, but they were giving us a hefty health penalty. And that's without laboratories. Building the Three Gorges' Dam allowed our cities to hit the maximum size they could be with those labs and before supermarkets and recycling centres.
And we made this trade:
Seems like another lopsided trade? Mehmed was clearly getting out-teched so he was no threat, and we could certainly use Communism. Yes, we got the tech quite late, so we started building spies quite late too. You might be worried there, but I think spies really only come into play when all the required techs have been researched and you can afford to save up some cash for massive sabotage work.
Now, some of you might be expecting us to switch to State Property. But we didn't. We ran Mercantilism
for the whole game. Why? Because it's huge when combined with Representation (which, in turn, sped up research and allowed our 5 largest cities to grow larger than they could under US). One free specialist for every city, no matter how large, meant at least 3 free beakers each. And - this is something I haven't mentioned - we also had the Sistine Chapel (built by the Incas in the Colossus city) so we were enjoying some free culture too. No wonder the cities Gandhi and Mehmed planted on our continent weren't able to resist even the culture of our newest cities.
Well, we did switch to US for a while:
I thought we'd humour the old guy a little bit. I completely forgot that Gandhi doesn't mind even if you refuse. Well, speeding up the construction of our Apollo Program a little couldn't hurt. And I siezed the opportunity to rush buy a thing or two (can't remember what). We did run into happiness problems in our largest cities, though, so we switched back to Representation when we could.
The happiness issue recurred when, thanks to the UN, we switched from Nationalism (which I had forgotten to switch out of) to Free Speech. But I think trading for Hit Movies and Singles solved it.
At this point our cities were already growing very slowly as there were no more tiles to work and new populations were becoming specialists (had a lot of those around, mainly merchants). We were pretty much reaching the peak since the newer cities didn't have time to contribute much with their growth and development.
Anyway, when we completed the Apollo Program, we were in the midst of building the Space Elevator (which, by the way, requires Satelites in Warlords - I was rather bewildered for a while when I couldn't build it after getting Robotics
). We were also building the SS Docking Bay, which is the most expensive part. I decided the time was ripe for a Golden Age:
Well, how much more can I say about building and more building?
A few interesting things did happen along the way. The first:
Culturally overwhelmed indeed
And then Mehmed went to war with Mao (didn't ask for our help this time, though; I think it was tanks vs cavalry) and the latter sent a large expeditionary stack to capture Mehmed's original city on our continent:
Great work! You'd soon lose that city, Mao.
Then we got our next GP:
Multiple GPP-producing cities might actually be a good idea, contrary to the conventional GP farm concept. We still had one unused prophet. Now, if we got the free GE from Fusion (and it seemed we could), we would be able to start another GA
Is victory really beyond our grasp?
[to be continued in the next post...]
And we certainly didn't need to have a large artillery and cavalry stack landing next to a city of ours when we're having such a good time playing builder.
) with a high rate of success. I avoided guarded strategic resources as they are not worth trying on. Still, all our spies were eventually caught and it was too tedious to send another batch over (we needed transports for another purpose anyway). But they'd done some damage.
