NC XXII: Suleiman

Turn 0 Thoughts:

Lots of grass. Let’s get Pottery. Settle in Place. Emphasis for capital will be food/commerce. Jungle to the South; Iron Working will be a priority.

Turn 2:

Two Bananas and a Rice! I think I’ve found a GP Farm.



Turn 5:

Pigs, Fish, and Sugar. Nice spot for a Luau, I think. The three locations will be packed close together but will likely make for a good early game economy, but will be hammer light. Bad news for no-slavery boy.



Turn 8:

Frederick and Wang Kon as neighbors . . . I think they’re peaceful, but I’m going to have some issues keeping up with them in tech. Wang will likely found a religion and spread it, so I’m not going to worry too much about religion unless Frederick gets a different one.

Turn 9: AND Darius? I’m going to be dead in tech – unless Frederick’s on a peninsula, in which case I can hem him in and wipe him out at leisure.

Turn 11: Frederick has Elephants. Maybe I won’t be able to wipe him out at leisure.

Turn 15: First worker automated, he’s farming the corn. I’ve researched Pottery and will be going Bronze Working/Iron Working and thence to Calendar to get that Jungle spot up and running. I’m privately hoping for tension between Darius and Wang, but I can’t count on it – I want to crimp Frederick from expanding too close to me and being near my capitol.

Turn 16: It looks like Berlin IS on a peninsula – I settle toward Frederick and pray I can build a better military. Elephants are no fun.

Turn 22: Istanbul is size 2; Warrior in 4. One more Warrior and then a Settler.

Turn 25: Automated worker is now cottaging the dye.

Turn 30: BRONZE IN THE CAPITOL BFC. I’m sidetracking to Animal Husbandry so that the forthcoming Luau town can work the pigs before the Jungle is chopped. I need a Hammer city eventually, but Luau town will likely preserve GP Farm as a town, too.

Turn 33: First Settler will be built in 12. Possibly sooner, if my automated worker hooks up the Bronze. And . . . hey, there’s Elephants to my West! Maybe I can have them too!


Turn 48: I’ve nabbed Luau Town – Frederick will not have a lot to work with. I’m going to need culture to expand the borders, but Luau town is just building a worker for now. I also have an axemen headed to the closest elephants; I’m going to settle a city right there if I can beat Wang to it.



Turn 53: Finished Iron Working. Going for Mysticism for culture. Will delay Calendar in favor Horse Back Riding/Construction and wipe out Frederick with Elephants.



Turn 55: With my Second Settler on its way to Elephant Land, my capitol will build another couple of workers, and I’ll see what happens.

Turn 58: Wang will be Protective and have stone – I’ll be friendly with him. Looks like Frederick founded his second city – not sure if I’m going to keep it or not. Indeed, I’m not even sure if I’m going to be able to take it or not. I tend to make mistakes.

Turn 70: Four workers, three cities, and Istanbul is building a Barracks. Horseback Riding in 5 turns, then it’s to Construction and hopefully Elephants will coincide with Istanbul finishing Stables.

Turn 72: Darius demanded Masonry. I refused and Traded him for Archery, but he does already have Alphabet. Oh, well. I’ve chosen a military path. I’ll have to catch up later.

Turn 75: And it’s 1000 BC. Hopefully I’ll be able to play more tomorrow.

Here's what my fledgling empire looks like.



The Western city will provide some good hammers once its borders expand (I've built a monument there) and Wiping out Frederick, should that come to pass, will give me relatively defensible territory if need be. I'm still worried that Darius and Wang will run away in tech, but hopefully I'll make up for it with slightly more land than they have.

If not, I'll have to really hope Imperialistic gives me lots of Great Generals.

Settings are Monarch, Marathon.

I haven't really played seriously in a long time so I stepped it down to Monarch.

I have no idea what the game settings are, I have no idea if barbs are on or off, random events are on or off, tech trading is on or off, and I know I can find out all of this by going into the F8 screen, but I'm going to have some fun and just play it as is.

Lets start this game off by taking a risk!



I see the coast and rush out to settle on it, hoping to get some seafood.



No seafood! Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you gamble. At least I can work the forested Silk while building my worker for the extra 1 commerce. Anyways, there's no turning back now, lets get exploring!

Turn 4 I meet this guy.



Wait Turn 4? He must be close! His Scout came from the east. After a few turns of exploration I find this:



2 Coastal Clams and 2 Grassland Ivory? All the while I'm stuck with this crappy non-irrigated Corn and Silk start. Bah! What rubbish. Anyways, I get to work on exploring more.



We meet Darius.



And Wang.

continued...

While exploring to the west we find the Korean lands.



And we investigate. However while beelining to my rivals to check them out I neglected to do my normal "explore in a circle around my first city" style exploring. When I researched Animal Husbandry I was peeved to find out I had no Horses nearby!



Oops, yes I did! Because I was racing to scope out my enemy's lands (so come BW/IW I can know if they have metal or not) I forgot to search close to home. Anyways, we have horses! WOOHOO!



To the southwest we find the Persian lands.

And if you notice Freddy has founded Buddhism and Wang Hinduism. ...and I'm the athiest in the middle. Who to side with, who to side with? Decisions decisions...



We meet up with JC who offers us some green food. We politely decline but explore his lands. Upon exploring JC's lands we spy a Work Boat that seems to identify itself as Native American.



That means we have at least Darius, Wang, Freddy, and JC on my continent, and Sitting Bull on a nearby island.



A partially built Stonehenge nets me enough money to run at 100% Science for a few techs. I'll take it!

I push towards Horseback Riding, a fairly expensive early tech, and a dead-end one at that, but that's okay, Horse Archers pay off in usefulness quite well.

Continued...

This is with only 3 or 4 HAs built.

When I learned BW I had Copper in my BFC, but not on a mountain...instead on a Grassland. I would have rather had it on a mountian, but I'll take the Grassland Copper.

Ironically my Capitol has a Barracks and a Stable and is building nothing but Horse Archers while my 2nd city has the Horses and only a Barracks, so is only building Axemen.

Anyways, I get my army together and storm poor Freddy the Hopeless.



Along the way the Barbarians had built a city to the east, and it was in a nice spot...well, it would be if it wasn't for the jungle, which is why I was teching into Iron Working.



And the Germans are no-more.

Now I have all these bored Horse Archers, and we have another holy city to our west. So I did the only thing that came to mind!



Korea falls to the Ottoman's might!

Now my economy is truly in trouble. I took only the Korean capitol city because of this. However, I still have a strong army left:



Nice Horse Archers left. And in the mean time Darius has founded Judea...Hmm, a 3rd Holy City? I'm just not sure I can afford this, however. Here's a snapshot of my Financial Advisor:



I'm tempted to charge him with my army and cause some damage before he gets too powerful, and try to get some money back by pillaging. Perhaps I can raze a few of his cities for money, too. I need to get some any way possible as I don't have Pottery yet.

Although the Koreans did build the ToA for me. This will pop a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet very shortly due to Sulliman's Philosophical trait. Either one will help me stabalize my failing economy. So if I can survive until then...

I haven't switched to Slavery yet. I hadn't felt that any city had enough Food to warrant the change, so this is all pure production. Perhaps I'll need to swap to Slavery now just to whip my cities down to size. Smaller cities mean less maintenance. Alternatively, I could also swap nearly all my cities to work coastal tiles, as those provide me with 2C each. That may help me out until my Priest or Merchant shows up.

I should probably not tech to Priesthood (what I was trying to do at the save) and focus on Pottery instead. Cottages will eventually get me out of this mess...

Anyways, the save is attached if anyone wants to take a look and/or play from this mess I've started. Advice is welcomed and encouraged!

Settled in place, suspected there may be bronze or iron. i was right, as we were blocking freddie from meeting the rest of the AI a axe rush was in order. Axe rushed and held, Freddies dead lets hope he doesn't come back Kruger stylee.

Tech path was Min-BW-Myst-Med-Priest-Writing-CoL (oracle)-Hunting-Pot - Fish - Sailing (couple turns in Asth before Hunting) Hunting was required for elleys, +1 is always good.

Took a barb city, single warrior garrison - guess as it was a noble save.

REX is the order of the day, lots of land, 10 cities in total planned, gonna turtle.

SShots to follow.

TMiT says it gonna be a surprize map so Im not 100% sure how it gonna go since strange maps can pretty much whomp me :/

But I settled in place and started a worker and teched mining then bw.

Meet freddie coming in from east and run into wang in west. So ppl are VERY close by. But after bw gets done there is copper in bfc so I am thinking axe rushing

But I am not all THAT good at rushing. I actually tech out masonry and chop GW first then it braacks then rest of forrests chop combined with whipping to get a stack of axes going (along with one spear JUST in case nebody building chariots by now.

My starting warrior only got ONE flippin hut. Good news was it was potery so that helped but bad news is NO goodie hut gold to put in bank so ALREADY I am in hole as my stack moves off.

They go after wang first hoping he doesnt have THAT many archers:



Turns out he didnt build ANY. He spent so much time building stonehenge he didnt bother to resarch archery hehe. And it turns out he still just has one city but its a holy city

So wang gets voted off the island and stack all intact still. That both good and bad. BAd in that I WAS kinda counting on losing some axes to help lower mainataince costs after taking out wang but that didnt happen. Good is that:



My guys can scoot on down to say hi to dari. He must have been expecting me cuz he made me a worker

I was a little worried cuz I saw dari had horses hooked up and immortals could have been a pain. I had my starter warrior scoot in and he managed to pillage the horses but it turns out I didnt have to do that. I guess dari hadnt teched wheel yet cuz he just had archers and warriors.

The archer was a bit of a pain but we manage to take daris cap then we take and raze his one other city and now he out of the game.

Since my stack is still pretty decent size and actually a little better now cuz a cpl of the axes getting nice promotions. AFter they heal up and archer gets whipped in daris cap they scoot on up to visit JC.

Now JC a TEENSY bit tuffer. He has more cities out AND he has copper. So I lose quite a few axes taking rome. But after that the axes I still have left manage to to handle Julies troops ok. ALthough I MAY have done a MAJOR mistake :/



Antium IS a holy. BUT it in a kinda sucky location, it doesnt have a shrine and already I have more cities than I can afford so I raze it. Now I KNOW razing a holy city is a MAJORLY DUMB move but it SEEMED like a good idea at time. I was just hoping that holy city in seoul will end up makign up for it.

Anyways I just kept rome and razed all his other cities and at that point he was gone too. And so were MOST of my axes. Luckily though the ones that were left were now HIGHLY promoted at this point. With no cats to suicide I tend to suicide lowest promted units FIRST which lets higher promoted units live longer, get more experience and get even higher promotions.

Itanbul not REALLY doing anything at this point. It just built a granary then spent most of its time pretending to build 'mids since nothing better to do. As what left of my stack start marching home I take it off of mids and have it start whipping xtra axes. By this time a GG has spawned already so they are CR2 axes out the box

By time my old axes get home they join up with the new ones and instanbul go back to busy work by just putting hammers into 'mids while trying to recover from mass whip session.

And then:



It's Freddies turn and like dari he was nice enough to build some workers for me

Freedie even a lil more scarier than Julie cuz he has IW at this point and I dont but for some reason he hasnt built ANY barracks all his new units have NO promotions. Meanwhile I have one combat1 cr3 axe, a cpl of other cr3 axes and the rest all cr2 so melee garrisons whithout protomtions on flat cities really NOT that big deal for em. I march through the east razing cities till I get to berlin and take it and keep it. Freddie have one city left at that point but it in nice location and close to cap so when I take that one I keep it too. And now Im all alone on my contient. While all the fighting was going on SB and Sury should up so I guess they off on another landmass closeby.

SO now at this point Im alone on my contient, but my economy in SERIOUS need of bailout. Sailing gets teched which helps a little. Not just with trade routes but alos cuz it hooks up Freddies ellies which help cities recover happiness.

So rest of time is spent TRYING to build up economy. I get all the cities hooked up. Since I REALLY cant afford to make new cities all the new cities spend time wonderwhoring a bit. Dari's cap builds Oracle and I take MC as free tech. Seul gets GLH done. Rome gets Collosus done and getting those two shinies up and running make HUGE diff in economy. And Istanbul actually DOES get 'mids done. Once happy resources hook up and whip sad faces start to fade it actually gets enough pop to work some mines and puts btter hammers to 'mids and gets it done. which means I can get rep which help happiness and tech even more.

So now that where I am at. Still trying to build up economy and get tech going. There was a barbie citie in a nice location so my axes went and took it as soon as it got to pop 2. No more new shinies. Perse TRIED to get ToA but got beat to it but it DID get a TON of xtra gold for losing it so that helping to keep slider up a notch higher.

This is what empire looks like at this point:


Looks like I have LOTS of room to expand and even better:



LOTS of resources INCLUDING squirrels yay!!

here are my cities:

My Cap:



And see I DO build cottages sometimes hehe . it just probably whats gonna happen is I am gonna focus most on working the mines and any spare for a secialist or two and by time I get to CS I havent worked those cottages at ALL so I will say heck with it and farm em over. BUT I still DID make cottages so hehe. And it had a settled gg and gspy which are helping tech a lil thanks to rep.

Berlin:



I managed to tech CoL first and Berlin ended up being holy city so I even tho I razed one holycity I still have two now at least.

Seul:



Seaul has a shrine now, I just need to start getting missionaries out but I dont have OR or med yet so no way to do that yet. It also have a second GG I havent done anything with him yet though.

Persepolis:



I am probably gonna whip the courthouse then have this city do some settler spam while the other cities do their own courthouses and then things like libraries and some trirmes to proect seafood and to go exploring.

Rome:



This look like a good city for Maui statues and then it will start getting some triemes out.

If after looking through all that youre thinking seul actaully looks like it doing better than istanbul:



Youre right istanbul only ranked number 3

Here are graphs:



Still kinda early to learn much from graphs. Unfortunately though:



According to dmos I am DEAD LAST in power . So I am NOT out of woods yet. I need to recover my econmy, try to get a tech rate up and get more cities out WITHOUT crashing my economy even worse AND get my power up to handle SB and Sury and whoever else might still be out there.

So I am not out of woods left. But I think if I can recover my econmy and if I can spread out to grab all the empty land on my continent, and if I dont fall too far behind AI's who are left and IF I can get my power up I have good chance I think. Just still a WHOLE bunch of If's to work through so wish me luck

Ok I pick up where I left off. Mostly pretty uneventful with only one minor lil incident. I build some triemes and start scouting around. SB's borders already blocking me so I go down my caost a lil and:



I'm like Nuh uh you did NOT just build a city on a MY contient. I gathered up the axes and they went to go explain things to surry.

After that city got razed sury was pretty miffed for awhile but eventually we made up:



After that it was all quiet again. Atilla the hun had a barbie uprisng but it wasnt on my continent so I dont know what came of it--yeah I played a cstom game so I could trun the events back on--I know tmit dont like em but I do they add spice to game I think

So basically from then on I am just building stuff, founding cities devloping terrain. Building some wonders. Judaism eventually spreads to one of my cities so I switch to it for diplo purposes. GP start spawning on semi regular basis now that some shinys have gotten built. A great prophet techs theo and I get AP done and spread judaism out enough that get elected resident.

I keep playing keep building, my tech still pretty low but it all starting to come together, guilds get bulbed by a GM, banking pretty close so it ONLY a few turns before I can run merc for some much better beakers then by time grocers and banks all get done I will be rdy to make a good shot a lib race since both paper and philo already been bulbed by gp's

I have it all planned win lib race, pick astronomy then tech nat, hopefuly SOME kind of gp will spawn during that time and I can get a MoM boosted GA then build taj during GA for back to back GA's by that time gunpowder will be teched and then galleons full of janisaries will swarm all over SB and sury and game will be won. Lot of is in that plan but still is WAS a plan and that usually more than my usual game hehe

But before I could even barely get started on my plan TOTALLY out of nowhere:


Huh?? Wha??? But??? <--pretty much quotes when that came up. I mean ok it IS a win but I WASNT FINISHED PLAYING YET!!!!!!. Darn it I StTILLhave TONS of land my workers need to make pretty, Im in middle of library quest and I havent got to work on my grand plan for conquest. I dont even get to gunpoweder much less get to build a janisary :: pouts ::.

Anyways here is what final demos looked like:



Really not much of anykind of economy going yet. Cuz dumb game ended BEFORE I could fix it grrrrr.


Basically pretty much whole game I had slider VERY low and just living off what my captured capitols could provide until all the other cities I spammed since then could get going. But before any of em could the game ended grrrr.

My final empire:



As you can see it pretty much those 5 good cities with TONS of rinky dink ones. Poor cities they NEVER got a chance to get finished

Final score:



Ok I know i KNOW it a nice score. But dang it I still had TONS and TONS to do. I didnt even get to the map race done and my caraval was THIS close to stealing it from sury even tho he teched optics like 6 turns ahead of me.

Oh well it IS a win and one of my best scores ever. and that IS nice. I just wish game would have let me at least pretty up my land a lil bit more before it decided to end it on me ::sigh::

Oh well least I didnt get whomped hehe which is always good I guess I just need to pay attention to vic conditions more so things like that wont sneak up on me hehe.

Anyways thanks for the game and see y'all next one

That's one of the dangers of marathon -- military action becomes so easy that you can accidentally win before you know it.

That needs to go. MASS DOUBLE AXE RUSH.



Shrine whoring like teh beginnerz.



Whoops, strike!



Haha! not! I shift back to my cottages.



Let's get some trade bait:



Trouble brews...I'm on JC's side so i cancel deals with darius pre-emptively, but don't declare. 1/2 the diplo penalty!



More roman aggression...jeez.



My turn!





The AP gets JC out of this war



And...JC switches to christianity. This puts me at serious backstab risk. So...



I use TWO medieval beatdown stacks on JC, and produce a 3rd quickly. Yes, he has grenadiers. No, they don't mean much to treb/jan/pinchknight.



Or this kind of power pre-war:



And just to spite, I smear Rome off the map and take the AP. I have too much of the AP religion though hahaha.



From here I screw around, trying to manipulate AP. Doesn't work. I start heading for space, teching wildly with all these cities. This is a hammer economy if ever there were one - hammers/workshops EVERYWHERE except b. cap...although i used my rush targets as GP farm for much of the game.

Anyway I capture a few barb island cities which trips





Some kind of 88k score. Boring. But, given that I went all medieval, lost lib to darius and circumnavigation to sury, and just spammed troops from caste/guild (later chem) workshops, it worked out pretty well. You'd think on normal speed this would be a problem, but the sheer volume of units I could churn thanks to lots of cities from early rushing let me bury the AI easily. Even a tech deficit had no meaning, although I was blowing them out at the end to the tune of "sury doesn't even have infantry yet" when I won.

I moved the warrior and saw that I wasn't losing anything other than dye, so I settled the capital 1 NE to be coastal. I got some gold and a second warrior from huts. I explored the immediate surroundings and found Fred on a peninsula to the east, and WK to the west. There's no zealots in this game, WK founded Buddhism on turn 25-30, and Darius of all people founded Hindu very late.

I quickly decided that Fred was going to die. The peninsula is covered by jungle, but that just means that it's excellent land once you clear it all. I finished researching BW, and find copper in the BFC, that settles it. I settled to the west to keep WK off of me, getting elephants and pigs, and I built up some axes to take out Fred. Finally I'm ready to declare:



I don't know what it is about Fred that makes him suck as an AI. 2 cities, one defended by 1 archer, and his capital defended by 2 archers. I razed his first city to resettle it 1S later, and moved onto his capital. He didn't even whip another archer to help defend it. It isn't like I brought an unstoppable force. Either way, Fred is gone quickly.



I teched sailing and started building a lighthouse and the GLH in the capital. After that I just started spamming settlers out of the capital, and workers out of Berlin. Darius declared on WK, no one took a city, but hopefully that slows Darius down some, as he already shrined the well spread Hindu faith. Then the game just started throwing me freebies. I popped gold on one of the hills south of the capital, and a few turns later I pop gems on the other. Nothing else of consequence has happened yet besides settling out the peninsula. Here are my western cities:



I built the SoZ in Erdine for help on culture as it borders WK's capital. It took 15 turns with ivory, plus now I won't have to face it in a war, so why not? Just took Olmec from the barbs, that gets me horses for later. I have to start building cottages, haven't had the time with all that jungle to chop. And the east:



Ankara is a ridiculous GP farm. 5 food resources, 3 hills, and everything else is grasslands. If I actually get the GLib up there (wonder pace is weird, TGW in ~2400BC, oracle in 50BC,) who knows how many great scientists I'll get. 2 more fill in cities to settle later. All those grasslands need to be worked, who cares if all the cities overlap a lot.

From here I'll finish teching currency, then get calendar and CoL to get my economy rolling. I'll take WK out with jumbos and cats. Maybe I'll take steel off of lib to steamroll some others. Hopefully I pick up Hinduism eventually to make JC and Darius happy, Buddhism has spread to most of my cities, but no reason to convert. WK is going to die soon, and happy cap is no problem.

Didn't stop at any checkpoints and didn't take any screenshots until the end - wasn't planning on finishing this but since i abandoned the MS IX game so quick i figured i'd play this one out.

I axe rushed Wang - so easy when they don't start with archery. I probably could have also eliminated fred but i figured -1 AI was good enough. I only built 5 of them and it was plenty. Fred expanded all the way up to my capital - he was everyone's enemy since we were all Jewish except him. The capital i captured from wang was the holy city for buddhism and hinduism - very strange he managed to get both. I never spread either or built either shrine so they were basically taken out of the game.

I took out Fred next with war elephants and catapults. That gave me the conf and tao holy cities (both shrined already) and a nice production city - munich where i put ironworks. Seoul would have been a nice GP city, but i built moai/herioc epic there and just used it for production - never built the national epic in this game. Never used caste so it wasn't too important - i got more than enough GP's cause of the phil. trait.

Darius, JC and Sury were pleased/friendly with me. Bribed JC to war with Darius, then i DOW'd on Darius a few turns later with rifles/cannons. He eventually capitulated to JC with only 2 cities remaining. Then finally i DOW'd on JC with rifles/artillery, soon to be infantry (he had them already) and eventually eliminated both of them and won domination. I was really close to winning the AP victory vote a couple times - i was up against Sury and JC alternated who he voted for. When he voted for me i was 620/640 needed to win or something like that. After i took out Darius, and before the war vs JC there was a vote where i would have won with his votes, but he was friendly with Sury and only pleased with me at the time.

One of Darius' cities had the jewish shrine in it which was up around 40 gpt - would have been a great wall st city but i didn't have time to get it up.

Was at war most of the game - it was nice to go back to using lots of siege instead of mounted units and spies. I love fighting 2 movement wars, but i always fall short on the espionage points i need to keep going - siege is just so strong. Fred's army was about the size of mine, but just having 6 or 7 trebs let me take him out and hardly lost any units - maybe a couple. I also killed 50 infantry in the later wars, while only losing 5.



Tech really didn't matter - i was trading everything away to Sury since we were friendly and i knew only Daruis and JC mattered for domination victory. I always had those barb islands to put cities on if i was a little short, but since i eliminated them instead of capitulating them there was more than enough land there to win with.

Round Two –

Turn 156: Frederick destroyed; the elephants did it. So did pillaging his iron. Hooray!

Turn 162: Got the free Artist from Music. I’m not sure I want to go after Wang next, since he’s wandering around with Crossbows. Caesar’s at war with Darius, so maybe I’ll go pick on Darius. Not being able to whip courthouses is inconvenient.

Scratch that, my economy's in the hole. I'll have to recover or I'm dead.

Incidentally, Darius discovered Liberalism at Prince difficulty 1250 AD. That’s before turn 190. Heck, that’s before anybody built the Great Library.

Turn 190: Darius has capitulated to Caesar. Wang became a voluntary vassal of Caesar. If I declare on any of them, I’ll have all three breathing down on me. Ugh.

I eventually found out that there was no industrious civs at all (right around the time that the pyramids went at 800AD.) So I started wonder spamming. I got the Hanging Gardens, the Parthenon, the Taj, and some other stuff. As it turned out, WK was the only other person building them, so I didn't bother as much as I could have, since someone else will build them for me.

Everything went pretty much as planned. I finished settling out the continent and recovering the economy. I decided against a medieval war on WK, as he got longbows pretty early. Instead I teched off music and nationalism manually, and bulbed up the lib path with the GS's coming every 6 or 7 turns. I built up some spies, and then:



I used my next GS on a golden age to speed up the war preparations. WK only has 4 cities, so he won't put up much of a fight. He offered to be my vassal a few turns before I declared. I almost accepted, but unfortunately for him, he has all my wonders. Eventually I'm ready to declare. I gave him education and nationalism for all of his techs, money and map, not like he's going to have time to use them:



I had spies ready in Seoul and P'Yonyang for my curraisers, and a stack of medieval junk to take a city that my culture had pressed back to his city. I bombarded the defenses first turn of war, but ran into some very bad luck, and had to wait an extra turn to suicide some cats first. The curraiser side went a lot better. I moved them in first turn, took Seoul second turn, and split them up and took his other 2 cities next turn. Not much chance for WK, gone in 3 turns. As expected, Seoul was worth the effort:



The AP almost slowed me down. Right after I declared, the stop the war resolution popped up. I defied it, willing to accept the unhappiness, but for the first time I've seen, an AI (JC) voted against it, and it failed. The wonders are nice, all religious buildings I build now are offering a ton of rewards. Somehow WK didn't build the pyramids. He had stone, and they didn't go until 800AD. And the rest of his land:



A few good cities, but the southern 2 are going to be swamped by Darius' culture.

Darius is the next to go, we were buddies, but he had to build the SPaya and switch to free religion. I'm a few turns away from rifling, so few turns at 100% gold and a few turns with the EP slider should be all I need to run over Darius in a few turns. I'm the dominating tech leader, I might not have to go past cavs to win this game:



Seems like a nice and easy break after that monarch student game.

As expected, this segment was full of war. I teched off rifling, and started building cavalry preparing to war with Darius. Sury declared on me out of nowhere in here. He landed a stack of knights and took Berlin (defended by 1 warrior) and another city (defended by an axeman) before I got my stack of cavalry over there to take him out. After that I just kept preparing for war. He eventually landed 3 trebs next to Seoul where I had all of my cavalry stationed. I killed those 3 and he went from refusing to talk to giving me 50 gold for peace.

A few turns later, Sitting Bull decided that looked like so much fun, he had to try it too. He landed his stack at Seoul. He suicided his 2 maces into the city, and landed 8 or 9 cats on the hill next to it. Again, kill all of those and take gold for peace.

After those distractions, I was ready to declare on Darius. I split my ~40 cavs into two stacks, one with my super medic to take the eastern cities all 40% defense. And another one to take Darius' big cities, aided by spies. JC was at war with him as well to weaken him some. Cavs against longbows and muskets is a pretty easy fight. JC had his SoD outside of one of Darius' big cities. I should have bribed him to peace earlier, but I took a chance. He bombarded the defenses to 0, and suicided his stack, leaving a weakened knight and some cats. Safe to say I took that pretty easily. Eventually I got to Darius' last city:



Nothing too special, I got the MoM in his double holy city, and a few of his cities are filled with towns.

From there I started preparations on JC. I wanted to declare on one of the other backwards idiots that declared on me, but it was just to convenient to take out JC. My western cities were cranking out cavs, while my peninsula cities were making spies constantly. Unfortunately JC has rifles and is teching MT, so we're going to be at tech parity.

I split my stacks again this time 65-35, with the main one to take JC's main land in the north. I had spies to help the main stack, but left the southern stack to itself. After needing my entire stack to take a city guarded by 5 rifles, I decided that wouldn't work. It wasn't a huge loss though, his SoD went south to one of Darius' old cities, and those cavs were needed for reinforcements. Suiciding his SoD against the SoZ left the rest of his cities unhappy for the rest of the game.

The northern front went a lot better, if not extremely slowly. Just walk up to the city, throw it into revolt, and take out the rifles. Since so many withdraw you need to take 2 or 3 turns to heal per city though. I ran into everyone's worst nightmare in a cav/spy war too. Going up to his second or third biggest city, I had 6 straight spies fail to send it into revolt, all at 68-75% chances. After this I abandoned my 6 spies in each city approach, and just sent all ~30 of my spies into the city I was attacking at the time, who needs the -50%, I was running the EP slider at 20 or 30% for awhile to quickly build up EP on JC. Once I took out his 4 northern cities he was pretty much done. I marched on his last 4 cities, and eventually:



And his lands:




Nothing of interest really, not even a wonder. I looked at the victory conditions after killing JC, and I was at 59% needing 64%. I figured his last 3 cities coming out of revolt wouldn't be enough, so I teched off astronomy and started preparing to go barb busting on the islands. To my surprise, a few border pops in his cities put me just over the limit:



Statistics:



Lots of cavs and lots of spies.

And the score, my best so far:



Fun game, if not a little easy. Everyone is going to rush Fred, and everyone will have a ton of green land to cottage.

The tech path of mining, BW, masonry, AH, writing, hunting, IW, pottery seemed fine except perhaps for masonry. Equally odd was the decision to send the warrior into the south - this is BTS, not BTJ which may have been fine except I'd rather decided on worker/worker instead of my normal warrior/worker. There was no strategy to be smashed but between 3840 and 3640 Frederick, Wang Kon and Darius show-up. Quick. City building and troop development become the priorities.

Erdine was built 1 SW of the westrern pig, ignoring the the blue circle, largely to deny the second elephant to the Koreans and this turned out to be fortuitous as iron was later discovered on an adjoining tile. Ankara was founded on the southern rice/pig/fish area as a potential science/GP operation centre. The fourth city is scheduled very soon for the northern horse/clam zone. Oh, and Julius Caesar stopped by in 1960.

The Ottoman high command has a pair of problems. The decision to not explore early resulted in a serious lack of geographical intelligence (and only one hut). The early opposition discovery rather dictates at least one early war. Frederick may be on his own in the east; he has the lowest score. Looks like a target.