NC LXVIII: Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia

Big-and-Small, normal continents, islands mixed in. Looks to me like this kind of map is in between Continents and Archipelago.

So I moved my scout northwest. I didn't find any resource that convinced me to move, so I decided to settle in place.



So, I guess I'm not unhappy with that start. It seems we're on the western side of some kind of peninsula now. We have a great food resource in our capital. We can pick up the rice with a city to the northwest of that, with a water food resource or two I guess that'd be a nice GP farm spot. Obvious first choice for research seems Agriculture, and obvious first build for Aksum seems a Worker. There's a lot of forests around us, so we might be able to chop out some kind of wonder quickly. I don't really do that often, but this seems like a good situation to go for it. Not sure what I'll choose, maybe the Great Wall is nice, but I'll decide on that after some more exploring.

So, I did what I though was best, and I think I made the right decision.
I moved North


T4 Got a scout from a hut - that's nice as I have 2 now
T7 94G from a hut
T10 my first AI encounter, and he's fairly close.

T13 BW done: Whoot! Copper in BFC - Started Agriculture also Tech from a hut

T15 Worker out - choice: 2 turns to move onto the Deer (forests to get through) or start him on the copper and have 1 idle turn before agri is done. Started him on Copper and started a warrior.
T17 50G from a hut
T20 map reveal from a Hut - also meet a 2nd AI


T21: Agriculture is in. What to tech next....

Here is Aksum and the surrounding lands.


I'm thinking of rushing Hannibal - not 100% sure yet though. All my spy points are on him atm. It's a long way but he has a LOT of food!

Next techs: I'm thinking wheel/pottery then maybe writing. I don't think I need AH for a while and might be able to back fill that when I get Alphabet.

whoops, went a bit overboard on time I think. Oh well.

Lost of forests to chop around, Early BW, Copper in capital's BFC, close enough neighbor. I knew what to do, but... Got a bit impatient and ended up being one axe short to capture Carthage. At least Utica is a good city. Made another failed attempt at taking the city later, where I would have won but got screwed by the RNG in the decisive battle. Hannibal then managed to sneak by a settler while my grip on him was loosened, and founded a junk city. I razed it and soon after FINALLY managed to take Carthage, way later than planned.
..at least no one hates me for declaring war on their friend. Not a surprise considering what hateful douches DG and Toku are.

And now, I have a decent amout of cities, but am in a tech hole. And because Toku won't trade (I have a Settler for a junk gift city on the way though, that should warm him up) and DG lacks Alphabet, I had to self-research it. Even with scientists here and there, this took quite a while. At least I'll be able to build research now instead of all the nonsense builds I had to do before.

As I said, tech is ugly. And researching Aesthetics was, for the aforementioned reasons, of no use for me. I think it and Alpha will give me some good trades soon though, at least with DG.

Demographics aren't even THAT bad, if I'll be able to recover my economy without getting bothered by Toku, I should be fine.

So... Diplomacy... De Gaulle is jewish and has a Missionary in my border city Adulis he is likely going to use next turn, Toku has Hinduism which was founded in Carthage. It is, of course, not shrined yet.
So, with whom should I side? Befriend Toku and ally with him against DG? The other way might mean medieval trouble, since conquering Toku doesn't seem like a good idea, the other way around is far more likely.
What I'm really not looking forward to is meeting the remaining three AIs. If the other continent has Mansa, Elizabeth and Capac - or, even worse, a warmonger milking two of them - I'll be screwed.
Tech target will be Monarchy, or maybe Calendar. My low happy cap (at least i recently added Phants and Gold to it, but it's still quite low) is partly to blame for my crappy tech situation. Also, I'm trying to work on GP before 1000AD or something. Not sure what a GS would research right now, but if I just keep him for Philo (or build an Academy and take the next one for that?)...
I also might want COL (not sure if Confusion has been founded yet) or Currency in my inventory.

So I proceed with my plan of exploring the north part of the map quickly.
Right away I find that the city site northwest of the rice has 2x spices as well, so that's a nice spot for a city. It's no priority though, I can block it off very quickly and take it later. Border pop reveals there wasn't much to the south, so lucky me for settling right away. Also it reveals wine, wheat and a river to the east of the capital.

I pop gold from a hut in the direct north, but it looks like a fairly resourceless region. Then one turn later I spot my first neighbour. It's Hannibal and he's REALLY close, just one city between Aksum and his border. You can see both his border and mine in this screenshot:



I'm not one to do early rushes normally, but also this seems like a good option now. With all the forests, chopping out an army could be really fast.

Agriculture comes in, and I decide to go for Bronze Working right away. I'll need copper as soon as possible, especially if it's close to Hannibal I don't want him to get it. And of course, being able to chop is a huge plus here.

I decide to turn around while exploring and explore the western part of the map which I'd skipped before. I'll need copper quickly if I want to rush Hannibal, so sites close to home are favourable to far away spots. I can pick up two goody huts along the way as well. My culture was going to pop those anyway, but it can never hurt to pick them up right away. They gave me a useless map and some gold. I've also set my worker to improve the corn. The southern part of our continent seems pretty barren, though there is marble (and fur).



No good city site to pick it up though. There was a goody hut with more gold, so that's always nice.

Bronze Working finishes, and surprise surprise, we have copper in our BFC already! It seems like a great spot for an early rush, so I decide to gear up for it for now. Only doubt I have, is if it's smart to take out Hannibal if we're on an island and he's the only one to trade to. My scout is moving north now, to look for another civ. The Wheel finishes, but I don't really know what's
wise to research next. I figure Pottery can never be bad.

The mine finishes, connecting to my capitol. At the same time I meet De Gaulle. He ruined my last prince game, so getting some revenge on him is already a great prospect:



This sets my definite plan as a rush on Hannibal. I'd prechopped a forest, but I'm fully going for it now. The warrior I was building turns into a spearman, and I whip with one turn left. I also upgrade the other warrior to an axeman with the gold I still had.
Turn 36 I send my first 2 Axeman towards Hannibal, turn 37 the third, turn 40, 41 and 42 three more.

I don't have much experience with rushes so I kept on spewing Axemen by now. By turn 44, I reached Hannibal, and he was basically
shouting DECLARE ON ME PLEASE:



Carthage was protected by a river from my side, so I couldn't attack right away. Hannibal was of course producing Archers by now, and he had 3 food resources in his BFC, which would be good for whipping. I decided to take those out, so that in case my rush failed, I'd still have crippled him.

Now I decided it was time to start on my REX, as that's what Zara is good at. I started on a Settler, which I chopped right away, then I made another Axeman with the overflow and continued with a Settler. At the same time I met Tokugawa in the north. I haven't had much trouble with him, so I don't mind him for now.



With the first chopped Settler, I took a site to the northeast of my capital. It might not be the best site around, but I think it's more important to move north first and take the good spots on the southern tip of the continent later.



I'm fairly inexperienced with rushes, so I probably didn't really do it right. In turn 54 I attacked with 6 Axemen and managed to kill two Archers and wound the last one. I got a bit lucky winning a 30% battle, but I lost a 65% as well. I'm not sure if I had to wait some more, but as Carthage was at 7 population I didn't want to wait until Hannibal had chopped some more Archers, ending my rush.
I had two surviving Axemen after that, which were reinforced with 3 more in turn 56. Hannibal wasn't fully healed yet, and this was the end of the proud *cough* leader of Carthage:



Carthage has a shocking 5 food resources. I considered razing the city and splitting the city up in two cities with 3 and 2 food resources. The bottom city could work a tile with deer, and the northern city could pick up silk. But I decided against it in the end, though I forgot about my reasoning by now. My first real question is, how am I gonna put this Carthage to use? I don't have much experience with cities that are SO food heavy. Is this suitable for a GP farm, and how would I go about doing that?

Apart from that, I have a few spots planned out where I want to place cities. The spots marked 1 and 2 are pretty good I guess, but I don't know if I should take them right away. The spots marked ? seem pretty decent as well, though not that great. The city marked with the ! has a great amount of resources, but it is quite a bit out of the way. Also it would possibly box in Tokugawa, who is right to the north of it, marked by some red haze. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. I've got a few choices, but I guess for now the logical step is to expand to as many nice sites as I can get, get some economy running and take it from there.

Edit: I forgot to ask, which site do you prefer for the city marked as 2? I kinda like both spots, one would be sharing a little bit with Carthage, but that city has enough food anyway, and it picks up the silk.

My empire at 1760 BC:



Building order in Aksum
Worker - Warrior - Worker - Warrior *turning into spearman* - Axeman x9 - Settler - Axeman - Settler

Building order in Gondar
Warrior (turning into spearman as soon as I connect with the Aksum)

Building order in Carthage
Library?

Tech path
Agriculture - Bronze Working - The Wheel - Pottery - Writing - Animal Husbandry

I decided to Axe rush Hannibal - sent in 10 axes and have taken his first city with 1 loss.
I forgot to screen-shot it though.

I moved my Axes to Carthage, one axe detoured on the way to pick off an Archer
When I got to Carthage I took a shot of the first attack odds.

That attak failed as I knew it would - I took a shot of the 2nd attack, BUT the SS didn't happen and now all my units seem immovable.

Can someone check my save for me please, otherwise I have to reload an earlier auto save.

I settled in place. Worker first, while teching agriculture and BW. I quickly started meeting our neighbors:







Nobody who fills me with dread, but also nobody that cheers my day, like having Mansa as a neighbor.

I decided to exploit my REXability.











The first two cities I settled are both good production sites. I set the southern one to pumping axes and in the northern one, I went for Oracle.



Bulbed COL, for cheap courthouses and Confu. I didn't adopt it, though, as Hannibal and Toku had founded Judaism and Buddhism respectively. Instead, I sent the free missionary north towards De Gaulle, hoping to put the French in a third religion and create disharmony between the AIs.

And then I settled more cities





Espionage and Livy both put me #2 in power.



While, somewhat to my surprise, my missionary made it to De Gaulle.



He adopted Confu next turn.

My empire at 1 AD has 8 cities:







Toku is the only AI I know of with Alphabet, and he's being his usual unhelpful self. I'm currently going for Mathematics, to unlock Calendar (lots of resources!) and Currency.

Plans after that ... I'll probably leverage my size to stomp Hannibal, who seems pretty small.

didn't see any reason to move so I settled in place.

Hannibal was nice enough to found buddhism for me, I think I will skip the early GS and get a shrine going after alphabet. Tons of land so I'll be able to make good use of it.



My scout died early and I haven't had a chance to meet the other AI.

I failed to axe rush him on my first try. Have to hit sooner and rally new units to him.

560 ad and most of my cities are settled, should have went for broke as soon as alpha hit. I didn't find the marble to the SW until it was too late. The wonder dates here on monarch were silly. I built the oracle in 600bc and took COL to fuel my expansion, GLIB in ~700 AD.



I think what I will do here is go for lib nationalism, have some trebs premade, draft a ton of oromos then go for steel. I want to grab all the cities on this continent and leave the islands for toku and degaulle, they can be little vassal island buddies.

Forgot the screenshots, but I teched to nationalism and steel, and prepared for war. Toku had a DP with Degaulle, so I bribed DG into the shaka vs fred war get him out of it. DOW'd toku with 30 oromos and cannons, capped a few cities before DG vassaled toku. Since I was fighting him off while capturing all of tokus mainland cities it took a few hundred years to stomp the continent. After vassaling both of them I built some infra, teched up a bit.

After capturing 2 of pericles' cities I vassaled him then went after shaka.

A wild shaka stack appears! Not bad for monarch, if I had airlifted some machine guns beforehand this city would have survived. Didn't bother to recap it since it kept his stack there for my later plans.

My stack, after capturing a few cities and leaving a couple garrisons. After seeing TMIT's ragnar vid I wanted to try this. I spent 11000 gold to upgrade most of my drill 3/4 oromos, bit of a waste but I wanted to use them instead of marines. Shortly after this screenshot I combined my gold with the kremlin to make some ICBMs.

10 cities and a few dozen nukes later, shaka finally gives in. On the same turn I take one of freds cities and vassal him.









Final thoughts: fun game, bit easy though. Diplo was a joke, and hannibal without copper was just asking for trouble.

Hannibal finally got Alphabet, so I was able to trade some techs.





Which led to my first civics change of the game: caste system and heriditary rule, at 200 AD.

Shortly after that, De Gaulle was kind enough to trade for Calendar, which was a strong tech for me on this map: lots of resources.



I popped a GP and shrined Confu, which was a nice boost to the income. De Gaulle would soon found Christianity and switch to that, but he'd already spread Confu quite well in his empire, which was good for me.



Finally in 1250 AD I had a large stack of trebs, cats, oromos and maces, and it was time for Hannibal to meet his maker.





I took all his cities on the landmass, leaving him with two cities on an island just off the coast. I could have capped him, but chose not to: he wouldn't contribute anything.

Toku had declared on De Gaulle, so I sent my stack north.



Unfortunately, things weren't going well for Toku in the war at all, and he soon capped to the French.

Well, there's one way to fix that problem:



This was the closest to a war fought at military parity in the game. The French had grenadiers, while I had rifles, oromos and cannon. The cannon, I think, made a big difference

Paris was quite a prize.



At this point Toku broke free ... and the French vassalled to him. I sighed, and kicked both the French and Japanese off the continent; though again, I left them a few island cities, and didn't bother to capitulate them.

By now, the tech situation was well in hand:



Given the size o my empire, I could nasically choose my victory condition: play nice for Diplo, use my industrial base to win space ... or let slip the dogs of war.

Yeah, never much in question what I was going to do

But first I took a Golden Age from a great person and did a big civics swap ... this was I think my 3rd of the game, and also my last.



Step one of my plan for domination: clean up the remnants of my neighbors.





It didn't take long.

In the mean time, Shaka had smashed and capitulated the Germans, but was pretty backward: I had Infantry, Artillery and Fighters. He had ... riflemen.

So I went after him. Ironically, the turn after he declared on Pericles.



Frederick collapsed in short order, and broke free of Shaka after he dropped to 36% of his original size. I capitulated him, since I had no idea where his remaining cities were - turned out he had 5 or 6 ice junkers in the south.

A short time later, with something like 40 tanks in his lands, supported by infantry, artillery and bombers, Shaka saw wisdom.



Which was enough for:



Power over the last 100 turns:



A glimpse of my military production.



And final score:



This was a fun game. Probably a little on the easy side - I likely could have taken Hannibal a lot earlier if I had focused on a military build-up, rather than REXing.