SGOTM 4 Mid-game Spoiler - 1000 AD and all Civs found or dead

This is your Spoiler thread for mid-game discussions between teams on your progress so far.

To qualify to READ in this thread your team must have played as far as 1000 AD, have contact with all the rivals in the game and have seen their borders so you know where they live, or else know of their demise.

You can determine that you have met or eliminated all your rivals by

(a) checking the Victory Conditions screen to see how many rivals you would need to eliminate for a Conquest victory, or

(b) watching for the messages that tell you how you are doing relative to the other civs. When the screen lists no Unknown civilizations you have found them all.

To qualify to POST in this thread a nominated scribe from your team must post a summary of your game up to the point defined above. Any member of the team is then free to add more information within the limits, and to discuss and comment on other team reports.

Your summary should include your early decisions on city placement, research, units and improvements, and the milestones in the development of your economy, civics, contacts and diplomatic relationships.

When posting, please do not discuss future events beyond the date you met the spoiler conditions.

How's it going? Any sign that Gandhi is interested in the stars?

Just a short story of the poor Viking empire, which has relied on subtlety and finesse as other empires drive the game.

We settled in place, researched all the workers techs and discover a nice neighbor in the south.
The land was poor, with some resources badly placed, and we had a debate for our 2nd and 3rd city.
Those cities were placed to grab gold, sharing pigs with Nidaros (2nd) and to grab jungle gems (3rd).
No debate for the 4th city, placed to grab the SW horses and sugar, nor for the 5th, placed to grab gold and corn right north of Karakorum.

Gandhi started early to threat our 2nd and 3rd cities, but we managed to push away his forces.
Few turns after our southern city was founded Gengis DoWed us, and some tactical mistake let him conquer that city, which auto-razed (it was still at size 1).

In the meantime our exploring work boat met Hannibal, Washington, Izzy, Mehmed and Brennnus, in this sequence, and gained us the circumnavigation bonus.

We signed OB with all those AIs, and we had some good tech trading with most of them.

Gandhi was never a serious threat, and luckily Gengis lacks metals, so he cannot benefit of his aggressive trait.

After the conquest of a city placed near marble and gems, and another right west of Karakorum, we sued for peace for techs and money, of course planning a revenge.

We founded a city in a good spot north, to grab Iron, sheeps and corn, and around the end of the first mongolian war we conquered a barb city in the east coast, near the iron.

We had problems of production and of maintenance costs. One half of our land was buried in the jungle, the only good production city was Nidaros and the northern city which had great potential but which was not yet fully manned.

Our research was painful, our army just a bit less, when Gengis decided to DoW us a second time.
I can't see why, he never seriously attacked, nor he owned a good army.

To make it short, our army was good enough to keep him at bay, and Berserkers were on route, so we kicked him off the continent, vassalising him with one city in the island between the 2 continents.

When we discovered Gandhi lands (right before settle our 2nd city), our initial plan was to develop a good economy, then find a new homeland and migrate, being possibly the tech leaders.

In the next spoiler, we can talk about how the migration worked out.

Some thoughts about this game and this map:
We all know that the scope of this game was tough, but we was definitely close to abandon it when Hannibal revolted to Free Market in 950 AD.
For sure he was in a favorable position, and probably the fact that in our game he never fought a war magnified his advantage. But we got some doubt about the balance of this map, especially given the scope of this SG.

It could be said that we were erring on the side of caution in the early game. That is, we had six pages of discussion and test games before we even settled Nidaros. Finally we founded our first city on the plains hill 2N of the settler's starting position.

The first turnsets went quietly, with exploring and basic research. The matter of the placement of the second city sparke lots of discussion. Finally we agreed on this site west of Nidaros.



At this time we were checking out Genghis' estates in the south and a most cunningly devious plan was starting to come into being. It consisted of kicking the Khan's behind while doing a GS-powered astronomy beeline. With the whole continent under our rule, we would take to the seas with our galleons bristling with berserkers and trebuchets, with a serious intention of kicking yet more backsides, leaving our old land defensless for Gandhi to capture.

Well, at that point it was still a long way to go and there were more immediate concerns. Like our next city. We decided to settle agressively towards Mongolia and so Haithabu was founded in the south.



We would capture Phyrgian later and so solidify our southern border.

Metal casting was researched pretty early, for forges and the Colossus. We built the latter in 5 AD in Birka, which was founded north between the clams and the iron. The Colossus was important for fueling our research in the classical and medieval times. We weren't big on cottages, because we were afraid that Gandhi would just pillage them upon invading, and so maturing them would be a waste of time.

Birka marked the end of our peaceful expansion. Here's a view of our lands from that time.



We got optics in 155 AD and headed out to the oceans to meet the world. Over the next centuries we met the other civs. (Brennus, Isabella, Washington, Mehmed and Hannibal, in that order.) Our early caravels really paid off in regards to trading. (Even though the same could have been achieved with a work boat.) We made good deals with everyone across the sea, except Washington, who we singled out as our target. He was disliked and fared badly in a war against Hannibal. Winning the circumnavigation prize was a nice bonus.

Our attention turned back home when Genghis declared war on us in 260 AD. At that point we weren't really ready for war. Fortunately his attack was quite pathetic and we soon gained the upper hand, capturing his cities in our back yard and marching towards Karakorum.

We made peace with him in 560 AD, our swords vs. his longbows just wasn't fun. Then he declared on us again in 770 AD. That war was still going strong by 1000 AD, though we were again dealing out more pain than we took.

The astronomy beeline was completed in 785 AD. From there it was to civil service for the vikings with two big axes. Our game was reaching a turning point.