[GEM] Transient Utopia: A Tale of an Illusionary World

Transient Utopia: A Tale of an Illusionary World​

Chapter List

No game this time. Only story.

Restarted.

In the beginning, there was naught but the island, and the sea.

At least, that was all that the residents of this island knew.

They traversed the paltry mountains, the softly rolling hills, the tiny rivers, the compact plains.

They weathered copious amounts of snow in the north, ample rays of sun in the south, and boundless rain throughout the entire island.

The various islander tribes existed on their humble isle more or less peacefully. There wasn't much to fight about on the expansive territories, and the islanders by default preferred to keep to themselves.

Food was plentiful. The gargantuan, endless seas were full of a variety of fish and other sea life. Wild fruits and vegetables abounded in the hilly terrain of the island center.

The islanders generally preferred to fish in peace, trade in peace, live in peace, and die in peace. This serene lifestyle, full of synergy with the environment, indifferent coexistence with other tribes, lasted for decades, perhaps even centuries, since their arrival on the island.

Naturally, though, for every rule, there is at least one exception.

And here, on this island, that exception to the islanders' rule of peace was a singular man, an ordinary member of one of hundreds of tribes dotted across the island.

Teki, of the Mizuno tribe.

Many, even his closest, dearest friends, considered him a crass man, rude and unrefined. He was tall and strong, with countless scars from a variety of sources lancing across nigh every part of his body. His hands and feet were encased with several years' worth of impenetrable calluses. His hair was matted, unkempt, unwashed, hanging down nearly to his knees. He was wild, natural, apparently unrestrained by standard human conduct.

The other members of the Mizuno tribe were, in general, not keen on humoring Teki's violent, chaotic tendencies. They would usually prefer to ignore him, leave him alone, and go on with their daily tasks.

Eventually, however, this method of ignoring Teki took a turn for the bizarre. The tribe noticed that he would be missing for increasingly long periods of time, returning to the Suino village only rarely. On his return, he would bring back, strangely, people.

Not people of the Mizuno tribe, as it was a very small, tight-knit group. People, in fact, of other tribes, surprising as that may be. Tribes from across the plain that the Suino resided in. Tribes that spanned the entire length of the grand lake that cut through this plain.

While eternal peace reigns across the united peoples of the island, it is quite important to remember that, indeed, it was violence, chaos, that formed the strongest union of these people.

A union that would last ad infinitum.

But Teki did not know this. Nor would his successors. Nor would their successors. No one would know of the illustrious perpetuity of this insular nation. Not for a very, very long time. A time of which length has yet to be determined.

What Teki did know, on the other hand, is that he had created a powerful entity, a curious entity. He had created, essentially, the very first nation to rest on these islands. The very first nation that spanned from the greater northern sea, to the grand lake that stretched across the plains, to the abyssal southern sea.

A country known as Ōmizu-koku.

following this i love Gem but always only played the first turns cos of the computer

良い仕事.

Thanks y'all for reading the first chapter! Please tell me how it was.

angelitocarc said:

following this i love Gem but always only played the first turns cos of the computer

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Haha... Yeah. About that. My computer is a wee bit of a pile of crap, so.... Dunno how long this'l last.

Daedwartin said:

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Thanks for the support!

strijder20 said:

良い仕事.

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どうもありがとうございます！　もうすぐつぎの章は完りょうします！

(Thank you very much! The next chapter is coming soon!)

I find this to be very good. Please continue!

This is good, but why not revolutions mod? Everything is better with Revolutions mod!

Bair, it's nice to see another GEM story
I want to give some pointers though, although I'm sure you may already know this.

Yue will be a problem. They have good land and they usually end up getting the dominant position in East Asia. Luckily, you are in a prime position to snuff out their supremacy in it's infancy.
I see you are rushing Sailing to get some boats on deck; instead of rushing Corea, I would recommend attacking Yue instead.
Corea never amounts to anything thanks to the barbs coming in from Manchuria and can be targeted after Yue goes down.
Similarly, you will not have to worry about Mongolia. Consider taking out China as well.
However, Khmer, the other typical East Asian superpower will be even worse than Yue, considering they'd have more time to build up.
India is usually a monster too, and going through all of them will definitely be a slog.

In Europe, you will have to watch for Spain, Hungary or Poland.
Left unchecked, those are typically the strongest European AIs.
The Middle-East is usually dominated by either Babylon or Israel,
and in Africa, Ethiopia is usually the leader.
You have nothing to worry about from Australia or any of the American civs.

Good luck, and I'll be following.

EDIT: If you have 2GB of RAM, you'll start crashing every turn as soon as the 1700s.
4GB and up doesn't really have this problem, although you'll need to start using single unit graphics & no attack animations.

I'm checking the forums after a week of sleepaway camp, and not one, but TWO good stories started, after so long! And I haven't even finished checking the new threads!

Tomorrow's Dawn said:

You have nothing to worry about from any of the American civs.

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this honestly doesn't make sense to me. WHY would the US not end up powerful? it was the natural resources of the land the US and the people it attracted that made it so successful, though the fact it was on the side of the world to not be devastated by either world war helped big time. The Midwest, breadbasket of the world, isn't grassland, its plains, with their one food and hammer. yet we produce the most food of all nations (probably has to do with technology and well, not having much else but plains to farm which resulted in us mastering the art of farming with very little water at all. and despite the lack of water, their was like 6 feet of the highest quality topsoil you could find. still, we are using plains to grow massive amounts of the world's food. )

Guess you cant get stuff like this perfectly accurate.

Daedwartin said:

this honestly doesn't make sense to me.

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Low # of civs to contact means a slowed tech rate.
By the time Bair reaches the Americas, they'll all still be using Axes/Spears.
Longbows at best. But Bair is playing Warlord so Longbows won't be there.
Also, California beats out the Midwest in food production IRL,
considering we can grow all year and have about 2000 different crops in rotation.
But it wasn't so until the large scale irrigation projects in the earlier half of the 20th century.

By the way, this mod is actually easier with Raging Barbarians.
It cripples a lot of civs into redundancy.

Tomorrow's Dawn said:

By the way, this mod is actually easier with Raging Barbarians.
It cripples a lot of civs into redundancy.

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NOW that makes even less sense... more barbarians=more difficult to defend against, though Bair is Japan and safe by default. that or you build a great wall. which just makes it someone else's problem. im cool with that. just no xp. greater survival chance or more xp. your choice. OR you be Japan. and it cant be matter as your going to settle the home islands completely.
FOR THE EMPEROR.

Bair, if you start naming emperors, DO NOT GIVE THEIR NAMES TIL AFTER DEATH. Its been illegal in japan for extremely culturally and religious (up until after WW2 the emperor was considered a god) reason to use the name of the emperor while said emperor is alive in japan for centuries and when he dies, you still don't use his actual name(Meiji wasn't Meiji's name actually. its just the name that decreed he be referred to in japan and everywhere else after death). Its been at least before Tokugawa Ieyasu's (the tokugawa everyone outside of japan is familiar with) reign as shogun. Also, Tokugawa is his Clan/family name. In Japanese, the "last" name comes before your given name. Though something tells me that you know this. if you do, well now everyone else is aware of this.

nope.

Due to the stupidity of a friend involving deleting my entire CivIV folder, and thus my saves and pictures as well. However, I have recovered a few pictures, so thus I will begin to recreate the scenario that I was at in the story. Either that or just make a new save and rewrite the story... Luckily I take a lot of pics so I have a good idea of what the world is like.

But for now, this story is on INDEFINITE HIATUS.

^I would advocate starting over and taking my advice
I think you ought to be good enough to try and start Noble.
Remember, attack Yue first! And keep Raging Barbarians on.

Also, more jidaigeki style scenarios, less animu. I kid, I kid.

@TD

Yeah, I probably will start over, not just because I'm too lazy to recreate the world, but also because the game was going badly anyways. But there were some fun occurrences involving a Japan spawning from a barb village on Java and Colombia in Turkmenistan declaring for no reason... Ah well, redone 1st update probably on the morrow, or the morrow's morrow. You get what I mean. Coming soon.

subbed, I'll be watching this, even if it is on hiatus

Will continue watching.

Same here.