PYL VIII: Ladies Night!

Haven't played a forum game in a long time, so I decided to play this.

Scout finds pig (and more river tiles) so I send the settler in that direction.



I settle between the corn and the pig. Plenty of food for quick GPP, plenty of river for commerce, and plenty of hills for production--great!

I find Brennus close. None one of his starting cities are on a hill and his capital has gems and irrigated corn--yummy!



Research went agriculture -> AH -> archery -> writing. No need for BW here (yet) with all the hills--and creative will net me an early library.

Get my first settler out turn 40. I decide to settle 1e of the gold.



At this point I decide to annoy someone with HAs. I'm stuck between Boudica and Brennus so I need defense anyway. It was tempting to get the Pyramids with the stone, but I felt it was too risky due to a possible early DoW. I have a lot of commerce to afford a big army.

Start on the GPP 2200 BC (yay creative!).



St. Petersburg blocks Boudica completely. She can't get a settler past me without either getting OB or going to war (yay creative!).



I get my GS 1480 BC (yay creative!)

Are you ready for this Brennus? (Boudica is pleased at this point thanks to religion and early OB)



I send my HA/chariot stack towards Tolosa and Vienna (his first two cities) while taunting/interfering with 2 archers on some jungle hills. They will mess with his logistics and hurt his units (maybe even get some kills).



I capture Tolosa easily 775 BC.

I get the flanking event 725 BC--nice!

Vienne falls 650 BC:

His start… wow. This will do just fine. Just settled in place trading fish for gems. Banana, Crabs, Irrigated Corn might just be enough.


Okay so the capital is so nice for a reason. Cathy is immediately to the west across a small jungle. Room to expand is almost nonexistent. The bouncing shall commence sooner than expected. Decide on a HA rush since the surrounding land just doesn’t look good for an axe rush soon enough. HA’s also are just simply better against archers and so far Cathy doesn’t seem to have any metals.



Also some good fortune along the way.


I had planned on gathering a slightly larger force, but after researching IW I saw I had a window. Cathy did not have any metals – yet.


Take out Rostov and manage to head off the Iron Mine by two turns.


This snowballs into a very successful war, though I may have gotten a bit overambitious.
Capture Novgorod:

Capture Moscow

Capture St. Petersburg - An axe she still has copper/iron somewhere

Burn Yeka-something

Capture Yarsolov and eliminate Cathy


No cottages up yet nor Libraries, though if I whip in some more Stables and take the free units from this guy-

I could maybe claim even more land and conquest gold. It would be dumb but HA’s are just amazing early game. With enough upgrades they don’t even melt against spears that badly. Of course this hinges on me remembering the reward properly. I think one is a small group of HA's.

Anywho the extra room in the club thanks to bouncing out Cathy.

The start:



No thinking, just settled in place, even though it’s production poor and has way too many plains tiles. Oh well. Off to scope out the lay of the land. Um, turn 1, my initial thought was...game over:



Ok, so that’s pretty overpowered...why yes, I’ll adopt slavery in 3975 BC. Tech AG and AH for the wheat and cows. And of course, I find no copper to the north…to the south? AH reveals this:



However, my plans to destroy the world super-early are ruined by the fact that by turn 50, I haven’t met anyone…is poor Lizzy being shunned by all the other ladies??? Surely we must have a catfight opponent somewhere? Alas, my joys of warmongering were thrown out the window. I angrily go back to TMIT's opening post to see if he warned me that Lizzie would be a lonely heart....he did not.

So I dropped down a level to bash some heads and apparently can't even do so until Astro. So she will try to deliver the wrath of redcoats on galleons then. Nottingham is obviously going to be heavily cottaged.



Finally meet this trannie who doesn’t even have the decency to meet in person – he/she sends a workboat. How gauche!


So hey, since I’m isolated on my landmass, figure this is a useful wonder:




I have marble, so the obvious next play is this:



I often go COL for Confucianism here, especially since I appear isolated, but the power of colossus and 4 commerce ocean tiles tempted me too much. Next up a settler to claim copper and attempt to build forge/colossus. Here’s my colossus city.



First great person was a spy – probably will mean a few stolen techs from Louis down the road. Tech COL manually and still get Confucianism.



Now really hoping for a prophet from London. And bingo!



This plus colossus will make for a ridiculous economy. And the other piece to the puzzle comes in:



Just been pumping out settlers and workers from London. My GP farm pops its first scientist in 65 BC, and Philo is mine. Only drawback is that pacifism doesn’t have great synergy with HR, so I decide to stay pagan for now. And here’s the story at 10 AD:





Tech looks good, and will be even better soon, as I realized sneaky Louis settled atop my island. That just won’t do…I have two spies being built to steal aesthetics when he finishes it in 10 turns, and also plan to take those cities out fast – he better have settled them well. That’s for the next round – tyhere’s only iron up there, and he just settled them, so no chance he has any meaningful defense up there. Also, some of my stupid cities got stuck on 1 pop for about 20 turns because I wasn’t paying attention to the artist I was running to pop the borders, so that was some serious waste. Thank goodness I am playing monarch – never would get away with that on emperor.

Obviously need to focus on getting CS, and Aesthetics/Lit for my key wonders and bureau, and should be generating another scientist soon. Looks ok for isolated, and I assume with the religious civs on the other side (Brennus and Izzy) there have to be some major wars happening over there.

A really boring round that will be known as "Training Workers: A Guide to Building Cottages and Plantations"


80BC – Palace moves to Moscow and gets Brennus out of the red.

85AD – Traded HBR for the rest of Alphabet and a minor tech to be named later from Isabella.

145AD – Divine Right is discovered by someone. Philosophy went in 50BCish. As I am caught between two religious cats in the midst of a fight and am unable to bounce either of them due to financial constraints, the thought that a Jewish love fest is going to drop tanks on my neck begins to fester in the back of my head.


160AD – Academy for Moscow. I hate settling scientists when I am not in rep and would one day curse myself for not dropping an academy in a large commerce city.

415AD – Random events have been kind.


475AD – Free “spiritual” diplomacy brownie points.


535AD – Academy for Vienne. Somewhere around here I also swap back to Hinduism.

790AD – Meet Hatty I think via cultural borders popping to the west as I never saw a ship. She founded Judaism and seems to be stuck on an island by herself. I can’t tell yet if she has outside contact, other than being a worst enemy of Boudica. I'll just add her to the list.

805AD – Economy is just about out of the trash heap, but is being artificially kept afloat via growth halting scientists and building a lot of wealth. Not a great long term fix. Trying to make friends with Boudica due to her superior army in both numbers and techs, but I’d really like to wipe out both of these quarreling pains in my rear. Despite being at war essentially since they met each other Isabella is keeping up in techs and Boudica is slightly behind, but has crossbows on us.


Thinking that a hard beeline to Lib/Steel and subsequent running over of this area is in order. Boudica and Isabella are just running troops back and forth across my cities fighting one another and if I try to tell either of them to stop they'll just turn around and have their way with me. It is time for Brennus to take them out back and teach them some manners.

I settled in place and decided against going for an early religion, since I figured one of the Celts would beat me to it. And I was right, Brennus got it before I would have. Anyway, I got gold and a very helpful map from the two huts that I got. The map showed a ton of land to the northeast, so my first priority was to block off of much of that as possible. Too make this task slightly more difficult, Cathy, the game's best REXer is the one I have to block off. The 2 Celts make up the rest of the continent, although I think there's another civ close. Cathy got alphabet first, but it was under can't trade, meaning she got it from someone who wasn't Boudica or Brennus.

I built SH after getting out 2 settlers, it really helps fighting the creative culture pressure from Cathy.

Anyway, I got my first two cities out quickly, one claiming the copper north of Cathy, and another one to the left of that. I stupidly settled these cities before hitting writing, so I had to take over 30 turns to get it, but 2 chopped libraries and my tech rate was right back up. I took a barb city to the east (guarded by warriors, so I guess I got the wrong save,) and settled another one on the eastern coast to complete the block. I made sure to send a small chariot stack around the north to raze all the barb cities. It's nice gold, and I don't want anyone settling behind me.

From there I just whipped/chopped libraries in all of the cities and ran scientists in all of them to tech towards aesthetics. From there I traded for alphabet, then teched off currency, CoL and bulbed philo.

Someone Oracled Christianity in 1500BC, and someone else got Confucianism before 1000BC, and the other 2 early religions weren't founded on this continent, so that leaves a big Buddhist lovefest. Shared religion means the Celts are no problem in this game. I figure I can use Cathy to my advantage. I can trade for monarchy and adopt HR to get her to friendly. From there I can bribe her to hit the other 2 as long as I have the techs to do it without fear of repercussions. I have Brennus up around +16 now from religion/civic/trade, what's bribing Cathy to war with him 5 times going to hurt?

Here's the land at 150AD:







I count 8-9 more cities to settle before fill ins. 15 cities peacefully should give me more than enough production to steamroll the continent with conquistadors. I just got CoL and currency, so I'll start churning out settlers. Moving the capital to Toledo should help finance some more expansion.



5 nothing tiles, but everything else is riverside grassland, flood plains and hills. A lot better than most capitals I get.

And techs:



I'm pretty far out in front. I'll get monarchy off of Boudica and I'll be set from there.

Barring a major military implosion, this game should be won simply by the amount of land I have.

Decided to go ahead and do round 2 while watching UNC dismantle the Spartans. I left off building a couple spies to steal techs from Louis before stealing his cities. Lizzie will not tolerate men in her personal space! So a few chariots go up to show Louis who is boss. Why not steal two of his workers to start:



Chariot rush in 250 AD - Awesome!



I’m keeping that city – not exactly where I would have placed it, but free settlers are always nice. Tech steals are fun too!



Lizzie takes peace for all his gold. He’s nothing but an annoyance to Lizzie at this point – she’ll flaunt her wealth in his face until she decides to end his inferior existence. And she steals polytheism just because. Funny, I was building this for the gold, but I guess I’ll take it.



Sure makes the lib-nationalism play even more appealing than usual. I’ve laid down so many cottages, I’m starting to think this might be a kremlin rush/buy game later on. Lizzie doesn’t want to learn to read on her own, so she enlists a spy to steal literature from Louis next. The power of a settled spy. And London starts wonderspamming – pretty late for some of these, like Parthenon and this:



So I’m confident there’s no lovefest on the other continent. I like to cut off 1 turn from liberalism, and that’s what I did here – here’s the state of the world:



Assume it’s my old standby - lib-nationalism-taj slingshot, and will attempt to get Louis off my island for good while doing so. Probably will try to go for back to back golden ages (15 turns each with MoM) to power tech my way through some sort of military advantage and kill the other continent with redcoats/cannons or something to that effect. I already have 10 towns, and appear to have at least 10 more coming in the next 50 turns, so free speech will be a ridiculously powerful civic - I'll surely switch to it as well as free religion right after taj.

I think I need to move up a level. I was very fortunate this time with my start. I teched Ag then BW and few techs before IW. Found copper in a good spot directly north so settled a second city and built SH in capital. Catherine is very close to the north, Brennus is not too far away to the East and has founded Buddhism. Izzy is up NW and didn't found a religion. I end up getting the Swordmen quest (seriously? Gallic warriors here we go). So I start pumping out GWs and a few axes to rush Cathy just in case she has a metal (which she doesn't). I easily take her capital and raze another city. I don't lose a single unit and my economy is going solid. So I head on over to Brennus. I raze 2 cities and take the capital with only losing 1 unit. At this point my GWs are Combat 1, Guerrilla 3, City raider 2. I just can't help myself and run up NW to see how Izzy is doing. She only has 1 city and apparently built the Oracle. It's defended by 3 archers and falls without me losing a unit.

790BC and I have 4 capitals and a ridiculous amount of land to expand. This game is over already.

Tech is a bit slow but I just finished CoL and whipping courthouses everywhere. Soon will be able to rex. Teching towards Optics so I can find some other civs and hopefully make some trades/go for a very early domination win if I can get enough land.

My first forum game. Really fun so far. I'm curious to see if anyone else plays Boudica on a higher difficulty.

I popped the wheel and BW from huts so I'm guessing a rather easy game. Since I got 2 free techs (on Immortal, too funny) I decided to delay Monarchy and head up Asthetics to grab some wonders, after which I went up Monarchy, then COL, CS, Liberalism beeline. I made a few trades, very few, and virtually researched everything myself because my tech rate was high enough that I didn't need to help the other AI's catch up.

I grew my capital to size 4 then expanded to a few cities till my slider hit 40%, improved tiles and every time I hit 50-60% expanded again - something I will continue to do until my miniature island is settled. Louie tried to settle on my Island 2X and I Immediately attacked his units both times before he ever got a chance so obviously he hates me, lol. I've had a little 5 man hit squad at the Northern tip of my Island since about 700 BC.

I don't have a lot of cities for 1000 AD for being on an Island by myself but I have been concentrating on fewer cities with vertical growth and maximizing cottages. After all, I'm all alone so there is no need to rush things - my main concern is to have a sweet economy to pursue space race. As it stands right now, I have a combination of 70 cottage, hamlet, village, and towns. With the exception of 2 cities even my hills have cottages. I only have 1 barracks, lol . I made 40+ Warriors for HR instead of barracks and it seemed to work out ok.

Actualy, conquest should be fairly straight forward for Vicky if you salve hard enough.

Really impressive game with Liz. I was playing a comfortable level for me, rather than testing myself more at emperor, and was feeling pretty good about hitting lib at 835 AD while being virtually isolated, and you hit it at basically the same number of turns (speed adjusted) on immortal. You also had Glib and Parthenon way way earlier than me (although I didn't tech aesthetics, I just stole it)

That was really strong to hit lib that early without having any tech trades on immortal (I assume Louis wouldn't trade with you, since he doesn't know any other civs). One thing I see from better players than me is more focus on quality over quantity in terms of cities early on. I tend to constantly build more and more cities, which often slows me down a bit in tech in the mid game, but makes me pretty tough to stop later on with all the land, but probably could do even better emphasizing quality until lib and then filling in the holes in between.

I was pretty sloppy too - had 3 cities stagnate at 1 for far too long because I forgot about the stupid artist specialist I was using to pop borders.

Anyway, just thought your game was pretty impressive. Seems like you and I both can use that tech advantage to take out Louis' island and get his wonder capital - no doubt Paris has to be loaded with wonders.