Again, a game filled by mistakes, and not submitted due to a 20 turn crash.
The start was supposed to be a standard 4-city-Tradition opening, while trying to scout a little to see if I could go Liberty if it allowed.
Scouting went smooth early on, but I've hit 3 coasts quite fast, and even though there were pieces of land, I decided for
Tradition. I never played Liberty up until this point, and I really didn't feel like going down that road on Emperor.
Capital went in place, while the
second city went in the jungle to the NE (next to citrus). Micromanaging the workers and developing copper fast meant that I could approach most building fast, and yet I decided against GL, but went after Hanging Gardens. I was missing ToA at this point. The Pyramid is great. Bonus science and faith, but here's were the troubles start: my third (SW, in the marshes next to the desert) and fourth (NW, next to the gems) went close to T100. I tried to sell luxuries to the girls, but before I could meet them, they must've already went to the mall. Where's the cash, girls? I often needed to choose GPT, just because there was nothing else to pick from them. I had Messanger of the Gods pantheon, but trade routes came quite slowly.
And the Religion that I founded and expanded? Oh the horror... Interfaith dialogue. I didn't buy any missionaries, as I was racking faith very slowly, and I needed to save a lot of it for Great Scientists, since I timed the Long Count just wrong: too late to make a difference, too early as to offset the first Great Scientists.
And the Religion part is really something I should've done better. I ended up with a dominant religion, big time, but there was no benefit off of it.
So, as I was hitting Education at T105, I picked the Great Engineer from the Long Count to get Petra going. And I got it, which made me glad, but... my initial scouting went actually bad, and now I was discovering the desert to the North, and oh wouldn't have that been better?! Not to say that by now I had a sizeable army.
But,
no wars. Dido came down on me at some point, but did a slingshot towards Lizzy. And my army was just standing there, although Lizzy and Izzy were Hostile and could've done with a spanking. But my army (ranking 1st by now) just sat idle and ate at my gold.
Universities were settled by T125, and two Great Scientists (had 4 in total). Palenque and Chichen Itza were growing like crazy, while Utxal and Tikal were raking in SPT due to the massive jungle around.
Diplomacy went smooth, aside from Lizzy: me and the other girls were having slumber parties. I was in the middle.
Yey! Cathy massive spammed everywhere, Wu and Theo were on Bo's hinnie the whole game (and booted here out the door - which was a shame as Bo was buying all my Iron and Horses).
Now spying: By the time RA's were worth while, I was 2 eras ahead. I'm thinking the girls just don't get math. Nothing to steal from them, and I almost completely ignored the military branch as far as possible. And RAs were ridiculously expensive (like, doh!).
I meant for Commerce, as I took 2 other policies before I could open
Rationalism. I went with
Patronage though, meaning to get on the left side of it, but 2 policies there are far from enough. So, should've, could've, would've. But all but one of my spies were into City States, with the occasional foreign capital in between, while the other went Super Agent quite fast (like, doh!, I was the Mecca for foreign spies).
8 turns after hitting and rush buying Research Labs, I spend all my faith on Great Scientists (3 of them), and another one comes up shortly after. I bulb them all on the same turn, hit all but 1 missing tech, which I figure I'll get to while building the other parts.
Now,
the number one rule when building parts: don't build wonders in between! Because there's no point to it.
But wait, there's more. The number two rule when building parts:
don't give open borders if there's too much jungle and not that much space to go in between! Because Theodora comes over with all her army, just passing my, and my spaceship parts can't get to the capital. For about 20 turns. Until her bloody army finally went out. Declaring war would've been faster than that.
Now, I clearly had fun with it. Emperor, tons of mistakes and still won. Exploring the map was like Christmas Day for an 8 year old. Always more presents. Watching Theodora have 4 (!!!) Prophets near Utxal, was a blast (I had units around each and every single city, and there wasn't that much space left). Another challenge cam with happiness. This would be the first game where I had this problem, and maybe it had to do with the fact that aside the capital, every other city had only one luxury. City states helped also, but in the end, I had two 31s, a 28 and a 27, and due to their growth I ran into a few problems.
So, one more round of learning, and as last time I'm continuing the game. I have built an Atomic Bomb, was currently doing a Nuclear, and I'll get a missile also, and in 2012 some lucky gal will get an engagement... ehm... how should I call that? Probably Cathy as she's over expanded quite a lot.
Thanks again for the game. They're quite fun.
for the rest of the game and just clicked on to victory. Played this one in tommynt manner, harassing AIs for cash, buying settlers with that money, taking generous peace deals and generally taking every city i could with CB/X.
