Lonely Hearts Club, BTS Edition, Chapter IV: Charles De Gaulle

Like De Gaulle is Industrious, I choosed a strategy that I've seen in the Many Leaders Game: wonder whoring ( especially Henge + Oracle, to get a GP to bulb Theo ) + AP to a diplo win. First of all I moved the warrior, like I advised people to do:

Stone Just what the doctor prescribed...
A little work and:

The GW and the Oracle quickly followed it....

I took a while to explore the landscape because I noticed soon ( thanks to map from a hut) that there was land to the west, and I didn't prioritized the sea ( not much of seafood in the main island ). In 520 AD I completed this map:

By that time I already had founded Confu and Cristianity, and the AP became Confu....
Now I had the option of having a colony or to colonize that western landmass by myself... In spite of colonies vote for us, I really don't trust AI about maximizing things ( in this case maximizing the population), so I took the risk of having a serious maintenance problem if that bringed me a swifter win.
By the 1400 I started to find the AI: JC and Alex first, João and Peter following shortly... Wash and Asoka were harder to find. Had some problems in finding asoka's land, that caused me to delay by atleast 20 turns the AP victory 1st vote. By that time JC had astro ( a thing that made byte some nails ) and Wash got Lib, Natio and Taj in a row and I was sinking techwise. Alex vs Peter and Wash war had started shortly before the 1st vote:

And:

In this game I took a serious risk of not letting the western cities to be free....If I had not win the vote, I would probably sink techwise because of the increased maintenance costs. But I kind of liked this victory: no pain, no gain.... and it is always good to see a plan working

Wonderspam time...

So, checked out my continent and decided early that I was going to stay small at first and concentrate on building wonders. Obsolete's wonderspam strat is intriguing and I find it fun regardless of whether it works, and I figured with stone and industrious I had to try something similar to it. Also, my continent looked pretty small so I figured why not. I definitely did not implement it completely or as well as others on these forums have, as I built cottages and tried to get more GS after my first two priests. Also, salons kind of hurt the strat I think, as the free artist increases the chances of an artist showing up especially if you also build the nat'l epic.



Popping monarchy, pottery, AND currency from huts certainly didn't hurt either! Did I download the monarch save or the chieftan save?



My capital was coming along; by 400 AD I had two great priests, almost all the early wonders, and was on my way to building the Great Library. I was settling everyone except for bulbing philo and building (1) academy in Paris.



Few turns later I had it done:



Got optics and got the circumnavigation bonus, and along the way met some of my fellow earthlings:



My only trade was to Alexander, and it was philo for a bunch of backfill and construction and feudalism. I did this after I won the liberalism race (with a little help from a great artist inspired golden age) and took astro:



...And then went on to win the economics race. Settled the great merchant in Paris. Missed out on the Taj.

A few more turns and I had met everyone, all of whom were not that advanced.



I think I can get the SOL easily at this point, get some more towns going and build a bunch of military units for either defense or for invasion. Cultural may be an option but I had no religion until recently so it will be a late start on that. But, I know at least one city which will be legendary without much effort :



My feeble, feeble empire:



I got so excited that there was another continent next to me that I concentrated on settling that one before mine. It had some incense, which was nice. I need to fill up my continent and build up my defense at this point.

If not cultural, then space I think. Domination is always an option but right now I am really, really weak.

Asoka looked a little worrisome as he had the Jewish capital, but Peter and Alexander decided to gang up on him. I feel that Rome is going to be the one that invades me this game. Right now I am scrambling to build as many musketeers as I can for the inevitable invasion fleet which will probably come within the next 20 turns...

At first, an overview of the most advanced empire in 1400AD ( though I still haven't met anyone ):



And my buddy Napoleon, who took over my foreign territories a century ago:



Isolated meant basically that you had to learn fast to catch up AIs who WILL trade between each other.

Therefore, several wonders where just mandatory:
Great Wall - to limit unit supply cost and manage barbs
Oracle - free tech, no need to explain
Colossus - island = water, +1 commerce is just a must
Great Lighthouse - +1 trade route in coastal, I missed this one by a turn or so...
Pyramids - representation happy means bigger cities means more commerce
Great Library - 2 free scientists is a nice research boost

Also, religions were very important, because we needed any extra happy person to work out every beaker necessary.

Stone at Paris helped a lot, I must admit. Here is the city in 1400AD:



Just a bunch of wonders in fact

I founded Taoism in Rheims and Christianity in Tours. Tao is my state religion, and I'm cranking extra research from University of Sankoré and tao temples everywhere around. I have also landed Apostolic Palace.

My Apostolic city of Orleans ( with some more wonders ):



Basically what I would like to do is slingshot to Astronomy through Liberalism ( due in 7 ), get Tao Missionaries on Galleons, get Open Borders with everyone, implant each civ with a Tao Missionary and claim Apostolic win.

I'm pretty sure the Space is also an option, given the powerhouse the French island has become.

What will it become, we'll see pretty soon (as soon as I have more time to play anyway ).

Research order to begin with was AH, Mining, BW. Got some good luck by popping Pottery from a hut (this was pretty big).

Early strategy involved wonders, and lots of them, perhaps unsurprisingly. Grabbed Stonehenge in 2060BC, followed by Oracle in 1300 (took Metal Casting for cheap forges and the Colossus), Great Wall in 1220. One thing I did do to cope with my good production and ailing economy was use 'Build Research' - with the new 1:1 hammer/beaker ratio in BTS it really makes a big difference. I was able to add well over 50% to my beaker output just by having my leading 2 cities build research.

Wasn't sure about the Pyramids, but eventually succumbed to temptation, and had them completed by 400BC. Switched to Representation, and ran a couple of cities with a couple of +6 scientists for a while. I've been a horrendous wonder whore, grabbing, amongst others, the Great Library, Hanging Gardens, Angkor Wat, Sistine Chapel, etc.

First Great Person was a Great Spy but then popped a Prophet with which I bulbed Theology for Christianity in 100BC. Was amazed to get Confucianism in 200AD, then went for Philosophy and Taoism in 800AD. Very late dates; I'd only planned around getting Christianity really. After that I went down the Optics path, and then towards Liberalism.

Anyway, with 3 religions, and 9 cities, I plan on a cultural win for obvious reasons - just built the Sistine Chapel in 1050ish, and am 3 turns away from Education, and hence about 11 away from Liberalism at 1100AD. Plan is to take Astronomy from that, make as much money from the Christian shrine as possible, and make as much money from trading as possible. Defence shouldn't be a huge problem with the tech lead I have (I've just met Joao and Caesar - they're both significantly behind in pretty much all areas). I've never done a Monarch cultural win before, so it'll be fun to try at least.

I have a settler and a few workers on the way to esablish my presence on the neighbouring continent before it gets nabbed from the AI.

You can see I really went to town on the wonder spamming since were finally playing with my favourite trait
I also have national epic built there, plan on oxford. I built the Parthenon in another city to avoid GA pollution, and collossus somewhere else cause I had too much on the go in Paris.
I have 8 Great people settled there already + academy. (insteresting combo I got, 2 of each type settled cept artists).
That +14, +23, +57, +2 and +50% is really kicking ass right now.

I really dont get at all why people waste GP on lightbulbing, unless you know 100% it'll make or break the race to liberalism (but I don't even need to do this on deity to win liberalism), I can't fathom how lightbulbing > settling
(ok except rare conditions like to get a tech and then trade it to each AI, hence getting 5+ techs).
Also, I find shrines rather useless untill you have at least 13 cities with that religion, otherwise its a waste imo.

AP diplomatic victory in 1635! Several firsts for me in this game - first time I played an entire game in one sitting. First time I got AP win. First time I went really wonder crazy on Prince level on normal size map. I guess the map was designed to help but still I'll take it

I settled most great people in Paris, used two great merchants for trade missions, and used 3 for two golden ages. I got the Taj for a third golden age.

It was also the first time I had such a commanding tech lead that I could afford to delay Liberalism! However when I did get it, the best option I had to choose as my free tech was Corporation (?) - it was kind of wasted I guess. I never even got to build Oxford University because the game ended. It was going in Paris and boy that would have really skyrocketed my research.

No wars or even the threat of one - signed open borders with everyone and made friends. I only settled 8 cities even though I had plenty of land for more and maintenance was not a problem. My trade routes really shot up in the last 40 or 50 turns. Happiness was never a problem and health only midly so. All the extra ivory was great for trading.

I ran a hybrid economy with just 1-2 scientists under representation in most cities and some very developed cottages in Paris and a few other spots. I never hired any other type of specialist (maybe an engineer if the game assigned one without my knowing it, as it tends to do).

I did not have a chance to switch into some better civics because on my 2nd attempt at the AP vote, I won easily. I switched into Empancipation not that long before the end.

I think this was also my highest score ever in a game, or maybe my second highest. Sad considering some of the scores I see around here but anyway a really fun game.

Diplomatic victory in 1965, 1 turn away from domination.

Early strategy involved spamming cities while making sure I'd get the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus. In total I founded 12 cities on the initial continent, basically anything that could work 2 cottages and some sea tiles got founded. I also choose to make a colony on the nearby landmass as fast as possible, for the trade routes and some tech trading. Got Darius as a leader for the colony which was nice, he managed to tech quite nicely in the end.

I was able to keep pace with the other AI's techwise and got the circumnavigation bonus, mainly thanks to getting the worldmap almost for free from Darius . Since I had a bunch of cities I went with the Apostolic palace + University of Sankore + Spiral Minaret combo to boost the economy.

Went to war with Alexander with rifles and cannons (mainly to claim his oil...), made a colony of his cites and eventually vassalised him, then continued with Peter. Unfortunately I made some mistakes () so I wasn't able to create a neat colony out of the Russian/Greece lands and ended up keeping almost 2/3 of that continent. Next I went to war with India with tanks/bombers, wiped him out and kept the land. One more war then with America with modern armor and mech infantry.

Won diplomatic victory with 60% population and 59.56% land...

It feels like a cop-out but I'm gonna go space race again. (*yawn*.) AP win is long gone, I don't have the pop for a UN diplo win, and I didn't have any religion for 3/4 of the game so cultural is pretty much out. Looking back a culture win might have been feasible had I been paying closer attention to when religions were showing up in my cities, but I don't believe I even had three religions before I discovered scientific method, and I wasn't really up for switching to monotheism because I felt I could probably achieve space before cultural at that point anyway.

As for domination.... well, take a look-see:

My "military" (if you can call it that) circa 1785:



Ouch. My production capacity wasn't much better as I didn't have the towns to merit a switch to US until I had run emancipation for about 12 turns, and I really needed to concentrate on getting my beaker totals up. They were also hurting and were going to get worse once I switched to US: (Not sure if this SS is before or after the switch but its still bad):



Currently (1908) my military is a little better, but nothing compared to what I will need for domination;



We'll see. If the opportunity presents itself, maybe, but I don't see it as my highest score opportunity.


Regardless of my poor beaker situation, in 1785 I still had techs on the AI:



They had communism and physics on me, but I had pretty much everything past chemistry on them. I didn't want corporation as I wanted to keep the GL going as long as possible. Also in BtS I find myself trading less as the AI isn't as advanced early on, and I also have become convinced that heavy trading with the AI helps them more than it helps me. No thanks Alexander, I don't want feudalism and 100 gold for constitution. (Thats an extreme example but you get what I am talking about...)

I was still able to get to electricity and radio before anyone and build Broadway, CR, R&R, and the Eiffel Tower with little effort. I also had SOL. Even better, I managed to put all of them except the CR in my capital.

Jao and Peter declared war on me, but none of their stacks were very threatening. There was a very strange moment where I literally had no idea where Jao's stack came from:



??? They just showed up in the middle of the continent. No ships had appeared at all. The stack must have been coming from the barbarian city that was south of there, and needless to say his 12 or so backwards units were quickly dispatched by my cannons and riflemen.

Peter also tried his hand at me, and I was worried until I saw that most of the 12 galleons that showed up actually were carrying about 5 grenadiers.



His units were also quickly dispatched, this time with my shiny new artillery. (He did manage to actually nab, for one brief turn, one of my cities on the west side of the continent. It was defended by a chariot and he came in with one grenadier! It didn't do much but I had to rebuild several buildings in the city and lost about 40 to 50 beakers for a about 10 turns.)

(And BTW, in the above pics I tried to mouse-over the stacks when I took the SS, but I guess when you click shift-prnt scrn (or ctrl or whatever) it doesnt take the shot until after you click OK...)

I statrted the apollo program in 1858, and by 1908 it was long done and I was researching Superconductors for the laboratories. My economy was slowly coming along...



My goal is 100 beakers for every city.

Paris is lookin good:



Finally getting Oxford helped a bit. Still, I'd like my science city to be around 500 beakers, 330 is too low...

Also in that shot there are also about 12 great specialists condensed. I love that, it's like having two cities in one. A better wonderspam might have even given me more great specialists. I have 20/35 of the world wonders so far... the only ones I regret not getting are the Mausoleum, TOA, and Taj. Not getting the Pentagon kind of sucked but if I'm not going for domination it doesn't matter as much.

My Ironworks city:



I friggin love Levees...

And finally, my maoi city:



Thats on the other continent. I didn't give them up because a) I'm not used to the whole colony thing and didn't think of using it as a way to increase my tech pace by trading (as Seizer did, which is very interesting) and b) I am greedy with my cities. I think the hit to my research and production isn't worth the minimal gain I'd receive in maintenance. Plus, the oil is over there!

Interesting idea to colonize Darius for tech trading, I'd never thought of that. One of these games I'd like to do a domination or diplo win such as this, but in these games it always seems like I need to focus everything on getting my beaker count up and can't really get much production going until late in the game.