The Celts conquer the world! [RFC Celts]

Since St. Patrick's day is coming up, I thought it would be fun to try out the new(ish) modmod of RFC by antaine:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=354996
[And no, I'm not Irish in any sense]

Just in case you don't know, doing conquest or domination in RFC is no easy feat in monarch mode, because of the stability system and various civs spawning so close to the Celts. I've done with most of the "major" civs before, but haven't done it recently (i.e. without squatting or multiple golden ages and other sundry tricks that have been declared contraband by Rhye), so this should be a challenge.

We need to get at least AND at most 2 UHV criteria (to get the golden age but not to win the UHV), which are
1. Control Rome by 450 AD (very tough and probably not worthwhile due to the fact that controlling Rome will probably mean sending most of our army towards Rome early on; it should be enough to just capture Milan and hem the Romans in; there's also a marble near Milan which would help a lot for wonders)
2. Control 4 cities on the British Isles, 2 in Gaul and 1 in Galicia before 500 AD (very easy and we probably don't plan to keep all those cities in Gaul--all you need is England and Spain)
3. Never lose a city to Rome, England or Vikings (piece of cake if England is played correctly)

A couple observations on the altered map and our starting position:
1. No copper around which means we need iron working ASAP. The Romans are fair game to exchange techs with if we're at peace.
2. No monarchy which means we need to trade it somewhere for happiness, probably the Babylonians
3. Lots of food around Ireland (have you ever seen so much seafood in your life!?) so growth is not an issue, but production is lacking. Wales and Scotland on the other hand have plenty of production so we need to get them cranking ASAP.
4. We cannot afford to be settler-happy since the more cities you have, the less your stability. So all of our cities need to have as little overlap as possible, and sometimes that will mean founding on forested hills and resources.
5. The only spawn-free zone on Continental Europe is the tiny sliver of land just north of Macedonia, so getting Milan early on will be crucial if we're to get the oil and copper there. Also, without Hungary/Austria and Frankfurt, Germany will be significantly nerfed (and she's our only major opponent in world domination since the US will all be Irish).

We start out in Ireland with a decent army, some boats already preloaded with settlers (2 to be exact) and we already are the most advanced civ in tech in the world (since we know the techs to build no less than 4 wonders)!
Instead of settling on site, and as much as I hate settling on a resource, I decide to move our capital to 2W to the forested stone hill (due to various indy cities spawning in the future in Ireland and less overlap with Cardiff which will flip to us in 2 turns), and send 1 of our lucky settlers for a Continental Tour: Madrid (for the production).
Having stone to start means we can build the Moai Statues (a World Wonder in this mod) before anybody else which is important as Ireland sorely needs production.

We can always have Paris later on (in fact 4 French cities will spawn as before the Classical Age is over: Lyons, Bordeaux, Rennes and Paris). Our army goes abroad, leaving just a skeleton crew in Ireland.

More to come...

Looks Good, the mod is an interesting one.

You really will have only a few places to settle. I suppose Iceland should be there. What do you mean by the comment that all America will be Welsh? Does this version of RFC not have the americans spawning? Or are you hoping that you will win before they DO spawn?

Ravus_Sol said:

Looks Good, the mod is an interesting one.

You really will have only a few places to settle. I suppose Iceland should be there. What do you mean by the comment that all America will be Welsh? Does this version of RFC not have the americans spawning? Or are you hoping that you will win before they DO spawn?

Click to expand...

America spawns there, but the only cities they inherit are in the Thirteen Colonies. So you can safely settle in Canada, the Mid-West, the Pacific coast and the "West South Central" states (what a mouthful).

I've always wanted to see Ireland take over the planet

I found the take Rome uhv easy,but i had to raze it and get peace first,so the Romans dont capture it,ruining the last goal,then rebuild it a tile to the east to get it to count after Milan's culture overlapped the tile Rome should be on.

And how do you plan a domination victory with rfc? The Stability ruins much chance of that happening.Sometimes I can barely hold the Byzantine Empire stable sometimes,though that may have been my colonies where Inca was.

There are conquest and domination threads in the RFC forum.
The situation after we found our major cities (the Madrid settler is still enroute). Note that Inverness will need some culture so we start a monument. We got some cash from the hut south of Inverness. I'm torn between the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus for Cardiff, but since our cities are still small and we're working land tiles mostly, the GL makes more sense. We need to ferry all our troops towards Milan soon.

We got word that the Indian civ was destroyed, which hints that barb pressure is high in that part of Asia.
We found Toletum on one of the horses (the reasons being that Spain, when it spawns, cannot be allowed to hook up any resources, and Portugal needs to be eliminated completely to avoid a respawn, and also more rivers are enclosed by this position).
We espy Roman land and a Carthaginian outpost (they cannot be contacted since they are a minor civ in this mod-mod).

We're at "auto-war" with the Romans (which is only appropriate). Just defending, we kill a renegade Gallic Warrior that flipped to the Romans. Since our unique power is cheaper mercenaries, we hire some chariots which will arrive in our capital next turn.

Well, the gods are smiling on the bravery of our warriors and grants us a Hero of the Sword (which is great because none of our gallic warriors can dislodge a fortified praetorian until we get catapults). We subsequently kill a praet with a lucky strike and I hire some more mercs to deprive Rome of them. We also declare war on Hannibal due to the need to contact Egypt and Babylon (for agriculture and monarchy respectively).

With the loss of 2 mercs and a gallic warrior, we capture Milan.

We meet Egypt and it appears Rome had auto-declared on them too, so we OB and I trade them horseback riding for monotheism and agriculture. Greece is limited to just Athens...hm, that is fortunate.

I make peace with Rome and hope that he'll trade us iron working for horseback riding in the future.

We got our Gallician city (barbarian Xixon) by lucky strikes against 2 warriors.
Athens looks rather weak, once we have some catapults it's probably a good target.

We meet Babylonia and he's driving a hard bargain for monarchy--he wants metal casting and unfortunately we probably need to give it to him since Cardiff is unhappy. We OB with Babylonia and hope for some Judaism to spread to us. 1 turn of revolt to HR and OR. I just hope that after the Moai Statues we can beat Babylonia to the Colossus.

Turn 109, we build Moai Statues and start Colossus (22 moves) in our capital. Rome won't trade Iron Working.

Babylonia is willing to trade for iron and we find TONS of it in the British Isles! (Inbhirnis is actually on iron so we have it automatically)

Turn 116 we get math. Next up is construction...probably won't be able to beat China or Egypt to Colosseum or Great Wall though.
Turn 119 we get Great Lighthouse in Cardiff. Milan whips a monument.

Interesting: a barb galley appears south of Cardiff! I scramble to get the trireme up north down south.
Indy cities appear in Gaul, hopefully we can capture a few of them.

Turn 124: We capture Burgidala (Bordeaux) and raze it (since it's too close to Xixon).
Turn 127: Colossus in our capital!
Turn 131: We capture Roazhon which we keep as one of our Gallic cities. Lyons is next.

Turn 136: Construction in, Currency next. I don't think we'll beat Egypt to Great Wall but I try to build it in Spain, and the Colosseum in Cardiff. Not surprisingly, Rome is unstable due to lack of expansion.
Turn 137: We capture Qart-Gadir (I think it's Cadiz) and decide to raze it since it's in Madrid's best interest to be unencumbered by another city in it's big cross.
Turn 142: Lyons is captured.
Turn 143: We meet a Japanese trireme at the tip of southern India.
Turn 146: Just as I feared, the Colosseum is built somewhere else. I switch Cardiff to a forge.
Turn 147: We get currency and a great engineer emerges in our capital. I decide to go for Aesthetics next and hopefully will be first to Music.
Turn 148: Christianity is founded in Rome...hm, maybe we'll get Christianity instead of Judaism.
Turn 150: Sure enough, Cardiff gets Christianity and we switch right away for happiness. The Great Wall is built in Madrid--no, sorry, Toletum is Toledo--but somehow it doesn't extend towards Milan
:

Turn 151: We achieve our 1st UHV of controlling the required cities. We meet the Chinese who are rather behind in their techs and will probably die under the furor of barbs without the Great Wall, we'll see. Christianity spreads like wildfire in our empire (almost all cities have it by now).

Turn 155: Aesthetics is in, we use the GE to finish the Parthenon and start the Statue of Zeus in Scotland (will be important in the future to get the Europeans to make peace sooner)
Turn 160: Literature in, Music next. Cardiff starts Great Library while Galway starts on Leaning Tower.
Turn 161: Statue of Zeus built in Scotland.
Turn 166: our old friends the Egyptians perished, probably due to a combination of barbs and impis plus instability from war with Ethiopia.
Turn 167: a great merchant is born in Cardiff. I use him to bulb code of laws since we need some courthouses for decreasing maintenance and increasing stability.
Turn 172: the Great Library is done in Cardiff.
Turn 173: the Leaning Tower is done in Galway.

Turn 174: Well, the Romans declare war on us. Maybe we'll have to achieve the 1st UHV criteria after all rather than the 3rd one--no, never mind, 450 AD has come and passed already, so we just need to capture Rome now.
Turn 175: Music is in, we get the free GA which I'll use to culture bomb near Budapest. Theology is next (I'm sure the AP will come in useful and to get America working quickly, we need faster workers, so Hagia Sophia is a must).
Turn 176: another GA is born in Galway, and I'll use him to culture bomb Toledo when the Spanish show up.
Turn 177: Athens is captured by barbs and the Greeks die.
Turn 182: Theology is in, we need Calendar to know the year and get some of the dye hooked up for happiness.