BTS Roleplaying Challenge: Churchill

Sounds like 007 might have some work to do in this one.
Without Library+ there is not much choice in terms of economy... Viable options might be SSE and Priest Economy... But with no Multipliers... And SSE with all those industrious leaders... Could be not much of fun...

You can alway try a blunt force cottage aproach... with the english UB it can work. A 007 aproach looks a good idea though....

Thanks for your interest! Just on the intent behind the game set up and strategic thinking;

There are other options for the game: I can think on a merchant SE ( doable... just check PH 11 ( in spite of we could run caste ) ) or even a FE game ( depending of the map layout. The conditions you posed are not that restringent.....

Those Kings can be really annoying at times. (With all due respect of course ). Expecting us to stand the test of time, while They sit in they comfy palace, sip tea, make strange rules and - best off all - claim that those strange rules we self-imposed on our selfes.

Oh, well...

Turn 0: We let our Warrior climb up a hill, he reveals nothing of interest and so we settle in place as it looks quite ok there. A little bit food pressed for the moment.
The Chieftain of a nearbye village has pity with us, as we tell him about our "Self-Imposed"-rules, and gives us some gold.

Now what shall we build in our new city... We shall not build Libraries. Pffft! What are we supposed tu build instead ? What's a library anyway ? Let's start a Worker forn now - cant go terrible wrong with that.


We should ask our wise man, on occasion, maybe they know. For now our wise man will be thinking about how to harvest those Animals with big slappy ears we have around London.

Hunting -> Agriculture -> AH -> BW -> Masonry->Oracle
Worker->Warrior->Worker->Settler->GW->Settler->Settler... Till no land is left.
A Second or Third city will try to chop Oracle for CoL.

Somewhat risky postponing masonry, but i think it will be soon enought to chop the Wall with 2 Workers.

The overall idea is to grab all the land possible. Economy does not matter, as we plan to steal techs. CoL from Oracle should come in time to prevent the worst economic collapse.

Turn 2: Another Chieftain gives us a Scout.

Turn 7: We meet the Americans. Aren't they supposed to be our colony ? And judging from the score they seem to have popped a tech or two from a hut. Oh Well, we will have to rectify that at some point...

Turn 8: We meet Bismark.
We also snag a hut right under the nose of our American friends for another scout.

Turn 16: A lot of wild animals around. Our Scout fights of a lion but got himself eaten by a panther. Glad we popped 2.

Turn 34: We got BW. Have Copper nearbye - even twice.

Turn 35: Bismark dumps a City...


Turn 45: We dump our second city. It's not pretty but it gives us Copper and Gold. 2 Flood Plains should be enought to feed it. It is also going to be the one to Chop Oracle, to make sure we hold those copper against Mao.


Turn 54: Got ourself a might big grat wall. Right on time to bump out a Barb Archer who was heading for the Warrior-Defended London.
Not only will it give us GS, we also can postpone the military build-up a bit.

Turn 77: York Chopped a Oracle for CoL and Culture (And bacame Confucianism holy) London had some time to recover from Whipping and will start a new Settler next turn. There is still some land to rex.

Turn 85: Oracle Pops Yorks Boarders taking a redily mining Copper from Mao.

Turn 87: Meet last AI - the Spiritual, very Buddhistic and highly backward Ghandy.

turn 104: London popped our first Great Spy -> Scotland Yard.

Its 1 AD and where do we stand ?

We got Oracle and GW against 4 IND AI's. While at the same time Expanding to 6 cities. This of course left some stain on our economy, but we should be able to recover.
Have 6 cities - 5 Courthouses running 4 Spys (York is running Priest for a Shrine).
36/Turn is at the moment enought to outspy everyone. I distribute evenly for the time beeing - must get some basic espionage towards everyone to see how they are doing.
We do suck big time in Military - but this will improve fast - not much to do in term of buildings, so after the Courthouses all cities went Barracks->Axe/Sword.
Roosewelt seems to be without metals right now...
Alphabet in ~10 Turns.
My eastern boarder is tight with Bismark/Mao - both are Confucian Brothers. To the West is Roosewelt and some Barbs. Taking him out should give me all the land i need. As soon as ABC is in and i got some troops, america will return into the Empire.

Edit: Oh man, jumbos in the BFC. Wonder what we'll be going for early here...Looks like I will be going Oracle to try to get the requisite alphabet tech out of the way, or maybe self research it after pulling something else like construction. I've never done an alphabet slingshot before! Maybe I can trade it for currency so that I can stay afloat while pounding on things.

In addition to Cam_H RP rules, I've added three more:

1)Research restriction:
Can only research the "first two columns of techs" - {meditation, polytheism} + {Bronze, Iron Working,Writing,Alpha}

2)After knowledge of Alphabet is obtained:
Research slider must go to 0%, and remain there for the rest of the game.

3)No Slavery:
Churchill may ask for the ultimate sacrifice to save his nation - but even he is not willing to become a slaver.

I've never tried an EE before, so this should be fun. In fact I don't think I've built a single Security Bureau or Espionage Center since my second BtS game

The starting position looks very strong and versatile -- this should provide for some interesting early decisions

Settler -> 1N onto the 'phants.

Find stone, but it's in a poor location.

Churchill decides to make a play for the Great Wall of England (Hadrian' Wall? ), but only after getting a settler out.

Techpath:
Ag->AH->BW->Masonry

England before the completion of the GW:



The completion of the GW means only one thing -- stoogie time

While building up towards alpha most of our hammers go towards peaceful expansion and barracks.

Empire overview after alpha is discovered:



At this point I'm thinking of heading into Bismark's land and taking a couple cities. His capital recently complete the GLH. Unfortunately, there are very few techs worth stealing -- but that should soon change.

It's 1960 BC, and I've scouted around. Bad news! We're completely surrounded. Met Mao, Stalin (don't know where mother russia is just yet), roosy, and bismark. I'm fogbusting with archers, looking to expand and wall off SOME territory. The juiciest location is east, between corn and sheep. That area has a couple hills, but that city will eventually become a powerful commerce city. Goldmine with iffy forest land north (and stone, if I could be bothered to build stone wonders). South is horsies. We're going to lock up the horsies and the east commerce city because of its 2 food resources. Hopefully there'll be some room to backfill between both cities later. When you're surrounded, it's hard to seriously wall everyone off...!

Tech path was: Hunting --> Archery --> Agriculture --> Animal Husbandry --> Bronze Working --> Mysticism

I'm going for priesthood now, to slingshot Alphabet. Not much of a slingshot, but it does nerf the AI out of the oracle =P. It also opens up currency. If I'm really lucky, one of these fools will have horseback riding or other juicy things for alphabet. That is, perhaps, the only benefit to doing this. If I can get any kind of decent army, Bismark then Mao are going to die. Normally, I'd be afraid of Cho Ko Nus, but I'm planning to use HA's here, and if I can keep him mostly on defense they are nothing special. Plus, I hope to DoW both of them before anybody has machinery....!

Mild change of plan. 1st target will be score leader Mao (who actually is only 15 points higher than me! Wewt), whom everyone I care about seems to dislike (I was asked to cancel deals with him, and did so). I have four cities, and am getting 43 beakers per turn at 70% research. Early alphabet has allowed me to be a trade whore, and actually seems very well suited to a map like this. I don't remember what I researched and what I traded for already, but I have iron working, horseback riding, math, alphabet, currency, monarchy, and code of laws. I actually FOUNDED confucianism...something I'm not used to. I'm currently researching construction, because elephants promoted wisely out of the stable will allow me to skip maces and keep splattering AI's. Still, the first wave is horse archers, and I have 8 of those...almost ready to hit Mao.



My four cities are the capital, york (located 1W of horses on the coast, pop 8), Nottingham (located right between the sheep and corn to the east, pop 7), and Hastings (located 1E of gold mine, pop 3). I feel I'm in a good position here, though much remains to go awry, especially on pangaea.

I really should have updated before this, but I tend to get carried away. The HA rush on Mao was a success. I decided I was going to try to leverage these as much as possible, so I vassalized Mao and looked for a 2nd victim. Out of Bismark, Degaulle, and roosy, degaulle would hurt international relations the least, and he didn't have feudalism. I quickly took 2 cities of his with my HA's...and he capitulated that fast! He had 30 some % of my land and people though, so I have to keep moving so I don't lose him. I am teching to knights, and looking around. Between roosy and bismark...WHAT? Bismark still doesn't have feudalism?! As of 1020 AD, I have berlin...but I noticed that bismark has elephants . Flank HA are semi ok attacking them when they're defending cities, but they suck utterly otherwise against the elephants (interestingly despite ivory I decided not to use elephants, relying entirely on the speed and ridiculous withdrawals that HA's get).

I had city capture money, but it's dropping fast. All captured cities are building wealth. I am getting 148 beakers/turn at 70% research, and this costs me 85 gpt! I have to lower the slider to 20% to see a profit. However, that's not ALL bad. It's not 0% loss! Lol. My trump card is that China's capital's ToA popped me a Great Merchant. I'm thinking of using him for a golden age after bismark, which would allow me to mass courthouses in every single city. I'm 6 turns from guilds, and don't give a !@#$ about liberalism. If I have knights and 3 vassals (with a score well over 2x any AI, and more power), and can keep out of the red, I can probably just end the game with masses of units. This has been an amazing game for me, as I'd just eeked out a cultural victory on Monarch the other day, and it beat out a launched ship by a couple turns at that! No spaceships in this game!

As per the rules, no libraries and no caste...not that caste would help me much here. Civics are HR and Serfdom. As of this time, I've not yet switched to vassalage (anarchy would interrupt my chaining of HA's out of my base 4 cities, while all others build wealth), and don't have theo yet. I also converted to judaism to avoid pissing off roosy more than I have to.


Just before taking Berlin



Pretty generic for a capital, but it's getting the job done. Note that only the first 4 cities, which I built, are making HA's, and minus the Oracle they all look exactly like this. Because I'm basically overexpanding, all captured cities have to build wealth. Note the happiness. Between monarchy, 3 vassals, and a ton of resources, you can get pretty high caps even when warring all day .

Ok, last update before victory. Bismark's elephants gave me trouble, but I had so many HA's that I could flank 3 or so on each elephant then kill it. I captured 4 of his cities, and degaulle actually got the other one. Bismark capitulated with only a random barb city somewhere. Clearly, going for domination here. I'd just gotten knights after bismark capitulated, but wait...what's this?! Idiot ghandi doesn't have feudalism either!!!!!! What kind of monarch game is this? I guess my tactics really stunted the AI's development in general here, the only people with feudalism are the vassals I gave it to, roosy, and stalin. Well, with knights against axes and archers, the result is pretty obvious. I took 2 of ghandi's cities, including delhi, and he capitulated too. Fast war. I now have 4 vassals. I popped a great prophet, and finally took the opportunity to start a golden age. I hit alt, clicked on all cities, and queued courthouse and stock exchange! That's how I spent my golden age, lol. Pretty effective actually. I can now run the slider at 60%, getting 376 beakers per turn at 1500AD, and get 96 gold per turn. Considering I've done nothing but fighting, that's livable. Stalin beat me to liberalism in 1460 AD . That's ok though. He's surrounded by my vassals, and I have 5 cities making knights and have them waypointed into ghandi's city right next to him. I'm going to try to cap him too. Hopefully, that gives me enough land for domination (already have the pop). If it doesn't, could this game end in conquest?!)


Oh noes! Massed Knights! The lone remaining HA is obviously my medic, but he's only medic II. Oh well.

Oh yeah, civics are HR, vassalage, serfdom, merc (isn't it cool to be in merc and still trade normally?), and theocracy. No forge in any city I built. What an odd game.

Note that I'm automating workers like hell and have been since I took china. Score is 3605, next is roosy at 1557. This kind of thing is really rare for me...I'm pretty happy.

OK, it was obvious to the espionage route. I directed all eps towards the first AI we met, Roosevelt. Otherwise a normal game. Situation is rather cosy. TEchpath early went hunting/AH (ponies off tundra border)/archery/BW (available after second border pop)/agriculture/sailing (river trade route)/wheel


Decided on 4 cities, and got the ones I wanted, you can see us building the Great Wall but we lost out to China which is OK because the gold helped alot.




Beelined alphabet for spies rather than being eager about killing my neighbors. After alphabet we ran 30% ep slider. Waited to adopt a religion until Buddhism was the religion of the monthe. We stole IW off of Roosevelt, polytheism off of Bismark. Made alot of trades. Teched HBR after math.

Got a DoW request from DeGaulle to attack Mao who had a few cities along our trade river. We agreed, and bribed Stalin, roosevelt to join. Bismark/Gandhi went after Stalin.

Early we captured Shanghai, regrouped with HAs and using sowrds/HSa and spies took Bejing which had 1 settled Prophet, 1 settled GG, the Great Wall and the Temple of Artmetis. We saved here. Top in tech except for Gandhi whi is not so far ahead.

Building Jumbos and planning to go after Roosevelt to solidify our eastern border.

Libraries? Bah who needs then. Eps are enough to keep up in tech lost out to not running scientists.

Well, there is no need to relive WWII if we can preempt the action a little, eh?

So into Germany we go:



A few turns later and the British army is as the gates of Berlin:



I lost a couple swords taking Berlin, and a few more razing the rest of the German empire. Bismark is no more

A while earlier the GW gave me a spy. I wasn't sure whether to infiltrate/settle/or build the yard. Since I don't have a clear espionage target yet infiltrate is out. Settling is probably the smart short-term thing to do, but I built Scotland Yard in London.

Despite several spies failing their missions, by the turn of the millennium I had picked up {math, poly, monarchy, and priesthood}. So far so good

The Empire in 25ad:



Spies running to Mao and De Gaulle:



Tech position:



Next set will be focused on fixing the tanking economy.

The years 0-500ad were a period of stagnation. The espionage slider was stuck between 10-20% and none of the AI's seemed particularly interested in researching either Code of Laws or Currency. Stalin was teching reasonably well so most of our spies were focused on the Russian.

Finally in 560ad the first major improvement in our situation:



At the same time Churchill decided that FDR's land might provide the plunder necessary to carry us forward, so:



Two American chariots sneak behind our lines and capture York, our main military city The no slavery restriction hurt a little here ... We take our city back:



Soon Washington is in range of our Cats:



The rest of America quickly falls. FDR did manage to get some longbows fielded by the end, so our casualties were higher than ideal.

The British EE is gaining some momentum. The tech position in 1000ad:



Our American aquisitions:



The first civic uprising in England occurs (1010ad):

Domination win. Stalin capped after I took all of his major cities (france picked one off too...wow.) I still had to attack roosy, but I dominated probably a turn or two before I'd have gotten him to cap. I took 4 cities on the first 2 turns of that war! Burned my 2nd golden age to massively upgrade all of my mounted troops (pretty much all I made since the early archers) to cavalry. Roosy was still using longbows, and trying to defend against 15 or so cavalry hitting in multiple areas. Can't last long like that.


End game situation. Clicking end turn here gives the domination! I had over 70% of the pop, but this just BARELY put me over 64% land, haha. I kind of wanted to cap Roosy, the conquest win has a cooler ending. Just for comedic effect, every single city during this GA was pumping cavalry, in addition to me upgrading every single unit of mine to cavalry or redcoats. I never attacked with a redcoat .

The end game stats are pretty funny. I made tons of HA's, at least 30 knights, and about that much in Cavalry. Other than that...I made archers :/.