We have achieved Victory! Space Race win 1800 AD.
I have a lot to say about this game, so prepare yourselves
First of all, I LOVED this map. Thal, you did such a great job providing us with a really interesting map with a really great amount of tension in resource placement. I can absolutely guarentee you put that coal to the SE of the capital in that spot just to screw with us "settle on a hill" suckers
No but that was a really interesting feature, as people who settled in place had a very high production cap, while those who moved to the hill were benefited with very nice food. Also, I don't remember seeing anything about a raging barbs setting but man I encountered a TON of barb camps, luckily they didn't spew units at me otherwise I would have been in some serious trouble.
About the game in general, King really is a cakewalk. I don't mean to berate King players as I really see the appeal in playing a more relaxing game of civ rather than agonizing over every bit of city micro and strategic decision making. That being said, if you are a player like me who enjoys doing this, King is really really really easy. My closest competitor was Ghandi, who hilariously went for the Manhatten project as his win condition. WTF, I thought he was Ghandi? So my only competition in this game (Ghandi led me in score and tech for most of the game, with every other civ at about half our score value) finished the Apollo Project 1 turn before I finished the space race altogether.. I would have finished it even sooner in fact but I had a defensive pact with a civ in a game where literally the ONLY person who declared war all game was Alex and lo and behold Arabia declares war on my defensive pact partner and I wound up losing all of my DoFs and OBs with every civ in the game. Slowed me down some but meh I was already on the final 2 techs of the space race when it happened.
Hmm about city placement, I'd like to show you what I did as it is a bit different from the screens I've seen so far.
As you can see my first city was a very far New York, but wow what a city. Gems, Ivory, and a dyes, was never going to be a production powerhouse but it sure did produce a TON of gold and science.
The other noticeable difference I see is my 3rd city Boston. For those of us who moved to the hill with the cap, I HIGHLY recommend settling this spot. Normally it would be somewhat slow growing and maybe have a hard time working all the nice production tiles (end up with 3 stable resources + iron, coal, and aluminum), but with tradition and pioneers this city had no trouble growing, a VERY nice spot for a foundry.
I also chose not to settle the dyes to the north, I probably would have had I had extra happiness but I still managed to pick them up with my rapidly expanding borders of Philadelphia, which I chose to put on the northernmost hill, again a factor of where my capital was located.
So as you can see I did the Stonehenge in the cap start discussed in the pre-game thread. Scout->Worker->Stonehenge purchasing a granary with my first 350 gold. Hilariously enough, that was the only worker I hard built all game, I think I purchased about 7-8 more as needed. After getting the Stonehenge, I built a quick archer to support my foward settlement of New York, then I went back to wonder whoring. (Wow, wonders are fun, who knew
) I managed to grab a really late (not sure by King standards) Great Library, Followed up by the Hanging Gardens and then an Oracle snipe. Unfortunately I missed Notre Dame completely as I went looking for coal and a production boost in my cities instead, but I still managed to hard build the Porcelein Tower (didn't get the HS either). I then beelined to grab Taj Mahal and Big Ben, which was the last wonder built in the cap as its production started falling off compared to Boston.
While all this was going on, I was fighting a war to the south against Greece, basically with military CS ally units and maybe 3-4 hard built units to round out the unit mix. Again, King difficulty = dead AI cities with a barebones military, feels good to stomp them for a change
As you can see I sold Damascus in order to build Seattle, wow, what a city!! The damn thing grew from 2 pop to 16 pop in about 35 turns, and this is actually while I dipped into unhappy briefly taking out Alex. 4 Atolls, 3 fish, an oil, coal, and aluminum. If I had actually needed to build units this would have been a nice spot for it, oh well ^^
This is actually the first VEM game I have ever gone full Tradition, wow have I been missing out! At first glance it seems kind of meh, but then you actually watch its food bonuses in action and it is astounding, I may never select Liberty again! (j/k, but I think anyone who touches Liberty this game is making a mistake, you don't need free workers as you are rolling in gold from early lux sales, and no matter where you settle your cap settler production is quite fast)
So after completing Tradition, I made my way down the left side of the Patronage tree. I had made a nice amount of CS allies through killing barb camps (again, raging barbs anyone?) so the boost to my happiness and science was quite nice. I then used my Oracle policy to open Commerce, the extra income was sweet, and I wanted to leave my mid game options open to the possibility of a gold based economy and/or picking up a free great merchant if needed.
Following that I opened Rationalism (this policy never ceases to amaze me, the finisher is meh, but it has a little something for everyone it seems) and if memory serves I then opened Freedom for the production boost and again to leave my options open if it looked like I would be going specialist based as all indications pointed to this with my high food/growth.
Unfortunately I missed Statue of Liberty by 1 turn due to a micro blunder, I had wanted to switch production of the Oxford University when I had only 1 turn left but I missed it and had to grab Steam Power instead of Replaceable parts as I had intended to do. S.O.B !!!><><
I started to think now that a heavy specialist focus was probably not where I wanted to go, so I proceeded down Rationalism, filling the tree except for the 2 free tech policy, which I was saving for very late game.
My tech after Replaceable parts was to get the Eiffel Tower, I really needed this wonder if I wanted to finalize my conquer of Greece and continue growing my cities. I got the wonder easily, but because of this tech path I then missed Christo Redentor, again by 1 turn ><. (Although if I had microed my cities science output from the beginning of the tech I could have shaved a turn off as I remember I had 1 turn left on the tech but only about 200 science actually left to research) so who knows if I or Ghandi would have gotten it. Fortunately I did hit the Sydney Opera House (built in Phillie as my caps production capacity had diminished in comparison by this point). A very nice wonder, allowing me to head down into Order, getting even more happiness for an amazing golden age.
As far as great people are concerned, thanks to the Great Library/PT I was producing GSs in my cap faster than I could use them. My first great person was an Engineer thanks to Stonehenge and a pioneer fort which I used to make a great tile in the cap. This really helped my mid game production a ton, and was more than worth the time spent hard producing the wonders I could have burned him on. After this was all scientists, by the end of the game I had produced 8, with an additional 2 from the rationalism opener and completing the PT.
Just a general comment, I would have liked to have had a city on the lake to the south, I see a lot of people using this location as a strategic city to ward off Arabia so thats good. For whatever reason I just never managed to get a city there, but I also never really needed it. I was rolling in gold so I didnt need the extra lux sale, and I think all of the sites I settled were better than anything I could have put down there. Had this been a higher difficulty I might have considered it to block Arabia but the AI is so bad and really doesn't know how to put pressure on the human player at lower difficulties so it didn't matter.
So, if you actually read this whole post, thank you so much!! This was a really fun game of civ, and I'm glad to share my experience with you all. Thanks again to Thal for a great map and for giving us this great mod.
I hope to read more about your experiences with our first VEM GoTM, cheers!