Babylon deity NO IRON

Hi all,

this is my first story I hope you enjoy it

First of all my tribute to Maltz, his tales are awesome, the idea of 'No Iron' started from one of his threads. I kinda missed the point, since as it turned out the requested GS for domination without Iron demanded no special CIV and normal speed. Babylon is no ordinary CIV and that was my first thought - heavy science and more heavy science!

I feel that on standard speed game kinda slips from me, I don't have a time to enjoy my discoveries/units and I'm frustrated by the pressure of wrong moves I make with workers. On Marathon one wrong worker move across the river means nothing

Let us begin with the setup;

Deity
Babylon
Tiny map
8AI 8CS
Highlands map
Random seed



Map has very little sea I feel it needs a bit more CIV's - 8 it is!

After a few reloads I got this starting location, since the general idea is to Dominate with Rifles I need a Mountain for Observatory. Two Gold and a Whale (I hope it's the only one for good trades) make a decent money making machine.



Three Stable tiles and one Grannary, River... all a boy needs

As we play Babylon the first priority is to get the Writing and worker is scheduled for creation. Since the city is on the hill and the deer are being hunted in nearby woods it's 34 turns for worker - nice.

On the first move there's the ruin!



Since the random seed and the happy-reload game is on I was going for 90 culture for Monarchy, but on the first try -> Pottery. Just propelled to future by 20 turns



I'd reload until 90 Culture but Pottery is just too much! We just need one more ruin...
Since we'll be seriously crippled by No Iron rule there's no point in pretending that we won't reload

It turned out that northern route was not much fun so we'll proceed south-west.

The news of Barbarian encampment were joyful but we'll deal with them later.



We are the first to meet CS Cape Town - that's very important but we'll get to that later.
And finally - the culture ruin.



After a few reloads the rapid border expansion and +3 culture are acquired. A lot of good tiles are a bit far from our city - we'll definitely need it.



Next surprise is the Genoa - first to meet (??) I rarely get two 'first to meet'.



And here starts the part of the strategy:


EXP farming on CS's

Since there will be no Iron rush we better have experienced... other units

The idea is that no CIV 'sees' the war declaration and not to get the Warmongering etiquette - for full trading benefits.

Just in time as two CIV's pop up!

Always aggressive and mighty Hiawatha



And Megaresearcher Wu - I suspect that she'll be our biggest science rival


The barbarian camp is next, as you know the first one is the hardest!
After a couple of reloads (they are on Plains) our Warriors achieve a mighty victory! 5 vs. 6



Few turns of healing wounds and there's the 75gp and the first promotion.
Many hills -> rough promotion


Also the Wonder Builder Ramses appears. He never put's up a respectable show, just builds wonders for human player to take. We better worry about other two...

Seasoned warriors return home with gold and the people are rejoicing!

Also, as they know we are not going to settle any more cities the imminent discovery of Writing and the arrival of Great Scientist are expected with great suspense.
Only 11 more turns and only 7 more turns for our first Worker. The things are going well for us!



Even better - the warriors demanded that they don't need to heal and bravely went on to discover the Rock of Gibraltar - happiness increased!



First worker is here and the people are wondering will we build the next one or will we buy it (since it's cheaper to buy, same turn count like granary but 180gp cheaper). Let's build Granary and buy a worker - it will be costly but the Gold won't mine itself


The story is a bit more detailed in the begging as the initial choices and events are more important - it will pick up the pace later.

Without iron, I guess it stops your worry about early-game wars and allows expansion until gunpowder.

No Iron does not mean no game, you'll see

The Writing is almost in so we check the competition for their gold reserves.

We'll need 880gp to purchase the Library and start on NC as soon as possible.



We have 309 and 4 gpt and on standard trade rates 1gpt is worth 67 so that's 268 - in total 577.
303gp short!

Open borders whoring for 50gp is mandatory just to find some more CIV's and we are fine. 6 CIVs for 50gp = 300

On Marathon I find there's no need to waste precious turns in building a Scout as starting Warrior does the job just fine.

The Writing is in on 38th turn the GS is born!


For NC and for Gold we'll need Mining so that's our next tech. I find mining luxury start to be the easiest one as you immediately gain access to 'Chop Down Forrest' - invaluable for NC.



The grand plan seemed not so grand when only lovely Wo accepted the trade



Even Ramses didn't want to pay the full price to see our Academy. Maybe he has no idea we have one...?



Academy was built on riverside plains and I kinda think that was a wrong idea. Next time I'll build it on Cattle. You lose 1 hammer from Cattle and 2 food from riverside plains (with Civil Service). . Popping up a tech was out of the question as Academy gives whooping 6 bottles - thats equivalent of 4 citizens (with Library).

No gold from our first neighbors imposed that we need to smash more barbarians. As the warriors heal it comes the time for next policy. At this time I was wandering to maybe go Liberty for extra worker and extra GS but as this is going to be a LONG game it turned out that it's better to stick with Monarchy and get a free Monument as +2food and +15% will make up for (only) 4 citizens bonus from Academy. Also the city grows much slower when it's working 'unimproved' - tiles such as Academy.



First 4 cities - yeah

The exploration continues and for our seasoned warriors it's time to smash another camp. Of course it turned out to be on 'plains' again, but +10%+25% is still better than -50%+25% combat modifier



It seems that Ramses overheard the news of our Academy from Wo as he popped in requesting his ticket.

Sold for 50gp!



In other games I found that a CIV wants OB if they come near your territory with their Scouts and cannot pass.

The buyout of Library is falling seriously behind, we meet Monaco for 15gp and only 545gp in treasury



The Mining is discovered only to 'not chop any forrest' since we have not begun on NC!



Let's find out the secrets of Fishing erm Sailing and look for Whales

It's time to buy the Library and our great scientist even without knowledge of Mathematics suggests that it's better to sell 3gpt for 202g than 1 for 67. He earned his coin right there!

Hiawatha is the richest CIV and aggressive so we'll trade from him if he suddenly comes with the idea that it's time for war


67gp from Woo and Ramses and the Library is in!


The NC starts, yeah!

On default assignments population increase is in 33 turns and citizens would produce NC in 60 turns and we are running on deficit of 2gpt - have only 5 in treasury. Not good. Maybe we could sell the treasury?



Forget cows let's visit the mines



The income deficit is fixed and 45 turns for NC is fine. We're going to further accelerate it with chopping some the trees!



Even outside our borders 40hammer is huge. There was the question of building the Gold mine but as it turned out it's better to chop. 11 turns for 80 hammer is 10 turn faster NC. On other hand 11 turns of selling the Gold is around 11*9 = 99gp

Our research with NC will be (13+5)+50% = 27 -> that's 14 more!

11 faster NC equals 11*14=154 -> that's one free tech for 99gp, chop-chop


At this time it seemed that we're in for some boring turns when biggest event occurred.
The mighty Catherine pops up



Well, that's not so big-a event

Someone lost a worker to barbarians and they are on only 1Hp!!!



Couple of turns healing and the worker is rescued with 75gp to boost



Why the AI didn't rescue it itself is beyond me. Maybe they have enough of their own...
(I think AI starts with 2 Settler, 4 Worker, 4 Warrior and a Scout on Deity)

Free worker and 75g!

That's 775g out of the blue. No need for Liberty policy after all

With Liberty you get a free worker and 25% faster improvements so it comes to +1,5 workers (with 2 total). In my other games it's all about reaching Longswordsman and 1,5 worker boost comes right in. As Liberty provides +1 Culture per city and 0,5 happy per connected city along the GS (or GE if Great Library not built) it's the best policy tree for Longsword rush.

Then I usually go for Piety and 25% Happines discount since you run into -10 happy like nothing. That stops the rush and there's nothing worst than having to spoil precious turns waiting for happiness to recover when you could be conquering more.

Back to the game, Budapest discovered



We forgot to sell the tickets for Academy to Catherine



And here comes Darius - if Catherine saw it - I must see it also! Another easy 50g



Our exploration comes to a dead end since there's no point in spending precious gold on sightseeing



Nothing more to explore anyway - the remaining two CIV's are going to come to us and 15g for CS is not worth a 50g ticket. No money to spend on CS's anyhow.

It's time to commence a training on Cape Town and I'm kinda worried - maybe someone will DoW us - better to have our warriors close to home.

On general notes, Catherine is always powerful as is Darius. No Alexander or Oda or Genghis nor Askia yet for easy war manipulation, but as money is short that doesn't matter - we'll divide them later

After Sailing (that we have no direct advantage from right now, I just wanted to get it out of the way if an opportunity for Work Boat comes, that we don't have to wait) let's look what the tech tree offers.

As we are (or will be) in control of three stables resources the Horseback Riding is next logical step. Watermill has always been my favorite - 2food and 1hammer for 1g - a bargain!



I did save here and went for Iron Working to see if there's any Iron around for sale but the game stayed true to itself - NO IRON

Reload and onto the Stables.

The natural border expansion to the chopped tile was in 5 turns (60 instead of 40hammer) and as I'm writing this I realize that I should have micromanage this (chop some other trees and wait), but alas...
The extra worker more than compensated for this. You can see him on top of the screen next to 'Demanded: Wine' - coming home!



NC in 28 turns, time is ticking!

No horses discovered - no extra income

There's the cost of 165bottles for tech (from previous chop vs. mine calculation) - onto The Wheel. The workers are scheduled for more chopping, they must not chop the Deer forrest - hammer > food. NC in 21

As the warrior healed up a bit and was going for his due training he came by an interesting sight. Iroquois Great Artist!



So soon?? We have 2 policies and are half way to 3rd and we 'got' a Culture ruin and have only one city? Liberty tree, eh?
Well, let them entertain themselves with their Artist, better that then the Scientist

On the way home CS Vienna is discovered, it's the nearest CS to us and kinda blocks the way from Iroquois. On the other way is the desert - nice - let them wait with the expansion far from home.



Everyone is protecting them, yeah, blah blah - we got the war declared with our own CS a long time ago

Last chopping for NC and the Gold Fever is about to start.



The Unmet player entered the Classical Era. Hm. I expect it's the one wit score of 214 almost triple of our lowly 86. Not impressive

The AI has little gold on their hands, who will I sell mine?



Wu declares on Ramses and Catherine enters Classical Era - Sweet and Sower mix

Last 3 turns for NC



There's the Marble on the East, just out of reach as are Deer and Sheep out of the reach to the West.
One must not be greedy and be grateful for what is given to him.

And take from others everything else

These kind of friendship declarations were all turned down - we prefer to go it alone!



War training was delayed due my curiosity. Now it seems to me it was wasted turns to find out where Beijing was...



Our great research will make up for these misplays.

Of all the confusion with NC I forgot to take a screenshot



Now, there was an interesting decision. To resume the building of Granary with full hammer output and further delay growth or to build it more slowly but grow population.

The Horseback Riding was in 10 turns so 17 turns for Granary seemed better - we would get +3food from it faster and start to build the Stables sooner (or maybe Watermill?).
Next Policy comes in 5 turns with +2food and +15% - let's stick with hammers and bottles

Gold Mines are almost in so let's check the treasuries of our neighbours



Not impressed. At all. Where's the mighty AI income
Only my new favorite Catherine is up to it, eh

The new AI presents itself - Isabella
She's not interested in visiting the famous Academy for 50g
Maybe she didn't hear how lovely it is from others or she's just plain jealous (I think the later is the real reason)



And where is the top scorer AI hiding? Who is it?

Let's look how we're standing on Demographics - tech domination is main goal.



Well...

Dead last in all categories.

Population is expected since we didn't grow, we are running red negative income (gpt trade for Library) one warrior and two workers are all our 'army' but tech...

Wait! Tech - we are not last! 9% of average 11%; Catherine on 14.
How come Wu is not first in tech as always?
Interestingly the AI with biggest score has 8% - more expansion less tech. Or is it more expansion more tech?

However it be - we are on the right track - domination in technology is soon to be ours!¨

Time for 3rd Policy is here as Isabella declares on Catherine. Chick fight! Sad we have no Scouts to watch the it.



Landed Elite is one mighty Policy



+15% growth and +2 food in each city! It would be the same for us if it was just for capitol
I didn't play Monty on this patch, but in last one his version of Watermill provided +15% on food bonus (all food not just growth). Then Monarchy started with +50% Capitol growth and it was crazy.
This is not nearly as much but more than enough. +2food in ALL cities kinda hurts in conquest game since you want your puppets to stay small as possible but eh, can't have everything. We'll deal with it with Theocracy

A kingdom for a Horse! Yeah, we have none
They would make a nice extra income...



And a warm welcome to Classical Era for us. Don't let me remind you. Last. Hm.



Now it's time to look a bit farther ahead. This game is going to be long. We'll be very old when we reach the finish line.
And the Education is the best provision for old age



From hindsight the idea is to get to Astronomy as soon as possible, build Observatory and research 'by foot' to Rifling. Use Great Scientist and RA's for Rifling too.
Best way is to pop Education via RA and plan another RA some ~30 turns later to pop Astronomy.

Let's research Philosophy sell Gold and sign that RA's. We've got more than 90 turns to research and block all techs for Education now but our population will grow.

On his long a due training warrior stumbled on barbarians. Again.
So nice of them to be here - our coins are in red.



After Landed Elite I shifted some citizens to grow population and as the city was about to pop our first Gold was mined! Oh the sweet sound of coins the glitter of gold!



Sold it to Catherine for full price of 900g! Enjoy our luxuries my dear.
The Great Scientist from Academy advocated that it would be better to make our own gold coins from the mines, but he was always an eccentric one - everyone knows that coins pop from rivers and trade posts - you cannot make them in piles from Gold mines.

Or can you?



The instant surge of cash was used to buyout a Watermill. 2food and 1hammer for 1gpt - bargain!



We would indeed get a +3food boost since 15% of 5+2 is 1

The next Gold was sold to best buyer which ended up to be... Darius.

How can it be that no other AI has at least 900g??



Something is strange here.
Well, at least our income was in green after a long while

It turned out that we have enough time to discover the Trapping for our Dear forest.
One more hammer for the city.



At last Isabella was interested in her ticket!
One has to visit their customers every once in a while - they might change their mind.



Researched Philosophy - now it's time to sign a RA!



But. Erm.

We have no gold!
Worse than that - neither has any of the AI's.
What now!?

On other topic the Dublin is discovered to the south-east.



What happened to the grand plan of training our warriors? I was under the impression that I commenced the training as soon as I could - now it seems that I wandered around quit a bit.

Note to self - next time pay more attention to CS exp training!

At this point the city was rapidly growing and as there no Improved Cattle/Sheep tiles I built one Work Boat to hunt the Whales.



Looking trough the print screens I found that I reloaded at some point and sold Gold to Isabella, can't remember why but the price looks better



Finally the training begins, turn 115. Ramses has already settled his 3rd city Heliopolis - close to Wine. Babylon demands Wine, right?



There's only one spot to train - forest below our warrior - which is good and bad. Good for extra defense and bad... well we're not going to capture Cape Town anyway so it's all good. No need to worry about units coming out of the CS

Greetings from our long time enemies are... impressive, ouch!



8 damage in one turn! If it wasn't for the forest the training would be impossible.
Didn't expect the Archer but in 100 turns of war CS built one

The process is simple enough - move your unit to be bombarded and heal - rinse and repeat.

Back at home Work boat is finished and we need some ranged units ourselves - Bowman to train!



I'm not sure how the engine works but tile expansion managed not to reach the Whales so we have to purchase it.
150g - nothing much but I was kinda annoyed that it expanded to 'worthless' tiles to north-east.

Cool story bro. 

Sold Whales to Hiawatha. Now I know that it would be a better idea to sell it to Ramses but I was hoping to attack Hiawatha first.



Let's look at Demographics



As expected

AI have been busy building Wonders but on the bright side the next round of 50g ticket selling has begun.



No AI had enough coin to sign a RA so I had to loan Darius 283g. Yeah, he was the tech leader but others had even less coin, time was running out and I had to sign a RA with anyone.



Ramses paid only 43g for his ticket - he has something against us...

Training process is tedious at first, when you have only one unit without the other one with Medic. Luckily our Bowman is finished and simultaneous training will begin. Hopefully the Bowman will be able to stand 2 rounds of beating while healing 2hp...



The work has begun on Stable and things are picking up.

lurker's comment: Subscribed.

Somehow I managed to 'speed up' the Stables to get better hammer count in city only to realize that the Academy wasn't worked



I picked up on it quite a few turns later so I couldn't reload it fully from autosaves. I was too busy with training. Which was going very good. Indeed he can stand 2 turns of beating.

First Bowman promotion, let's take Plain for instant kills. Nothing on Rough can be instantly killed.
This one ranged unit will not be promoted to Rifleman instead it will stay as heavily promoted Crosbowman.
We'll build 2 more Pikeman when Stables are finished train them and go to war with Wine brewing Ramses!



Paramount concern in training is for CS Archer NOT to reach double-attack promotion. 3 attacks are hard to endure for fresh units. From my experience, when that happens you have to dance around the CS and damned archer eventually comes out (don't know why). Take it out then and you are ready for the next round.

Civil Service is in, riverside tiles provide extra food and Pikemans will be on the way. I was hoping that I'd build Barracks and Heroic Epic but there was no time. I'll build the Epic for Cannons.



It was time to check when our RA was due, 128+90=218
Why doesn't it say here how many turns till finish?

Instead it writes 'deal lasted 90 turns' - right.
And the price says 750g, probably due current Era rates...


Let's look at tech tree. We have 70 turns - that means we can reach the Engineering for precious Aqueduct -40% growth requirement in time to research prerequisite techs for Education and block others.