A 'Quick' Walkthrough of My Game 1

[ERLoft]

So, after reading Lemmy's epic adventure through Game 1, I figured, since I'm at work, work is slow and I have no Civ to play, I'd give those of you who aren't furiously playing out your own world dominance plans a bit of a recap/review of my first game experience.

Since I'm doing this after the fact, I won't have the cool screenies that Lemmy had, but at least it will give you some idea of the game...

I started my first game as Bismark, wanting to try out the German anti-barbarian abilities. I selected a Large Continents map, Epic speed and Prince difficulty. I also elected to go with 'Abundant' resources for the first go around.

I started with a nice coastal start on a short river along side my settler. I plopped down Berlin right where I started and immediately went about building a scout. I sent off my warrior to get a bead on the local surroundings and went after Greg 2K's recommended start towards the Great Library and the Oracle.

After a bit of wandering, I came across my first ruins and lo, I received a unit upgrade to a spearman! Excellent start as the Germans, now I've got a distinct advantage for barbarian butt kicking.

Sending off my scout to see what lay in the other direction, I began to run into other Civs and various City States. Persia lay to the east of me, Brussels not too far to the north, Bucharest to the southeast, a little south and west of Persia, Egypt was north of me, with Rio and Kuala Lumpur to the west.

More exploring brought me in contact with the Babylonians, the Songhai and Aztecs, all on my continent. Oh joy, I've got the lands of the bloodthirsty all around. Nevertheless, I managed a few Pacts of Cooperation with Nebuchadnezzar and Askia early on. Monty I wasn't going to trust any farther than I could throw him - at least he was way to the northeast of me. I discovered many other city states and hoped that my barbarian busting would bring me friendship with many of them.

After a monument and second scout were built, I went for a settler and set up shop on the coast a bit southeast of my capital, near some good fishing grounds, some cattle and ivory. I can definitely say that it takes a while to produce much on Epic speed in CivV. A worker followed and I began to develop the various resources I had access to and the tech to exploit.

My lone spearman managed to pop a couple of encampments, netting me a brute along the way. Since I haven't played any other Civs yet, I'm not certain about the 25 gold bonus, but I got 37 gold for every barb encampment that I stomped on. Certainly made the early game treasury pretty flush. Flush enough to enter into a couple of Research Agreements once I was able to. I even entered one with Monty, figuring, why not?

Fast forward a bit and I've got myself 4 cities, which seems about on a par with what I can see from the rest of my rivals on the continent. I managed to get the Great Library, which I used to get Philosophy and went to work building the Oracle. Once that developed, I had managed two fairly early game Social Policies. I actually unlocked both the Liberty and Honor trees, getting the early bonuses from each to help with expansion and barbarian hunting.

As things progressed a bit more towards year 0, I actually started to have a few more brutes than I knew what to do with. While it was certainly impressive to my rivals, as more than one commented on my military might, unit maintenance was eating away at my treasury, as I was running a deficit on an annual basis. What's more, my happiness wasn't the best, even with a few luxuries. I was stuck between trying to keep people happy and trying to get some money. A few trades here or there helped, but it seems the AI doesn't think much of trading resources for GPT. They'd much rather trade you a lump sum. Ah well, if that's what they want, and I have extra stuff, why not, right?

A bit of barbarian busting managed to get me friendly with Bucharest, who gifted me my first archery unit and no too long after gifted me a catapult! Woo hoo! I now have siege and ranged units - maybe it's about time to think about some conquest? Darius had a hissy fit when I settled Munich in his general direction - seriously, I was like 5 hexes from his border, what gives? - so I decided to make him target #1. Plus, with ice blocking the southern passage around our continent, I liked the coastal position he had with his second city on the eastern coast of our continent. To top it off, for whatever reason, he had a big gap between cities 1 and 2 and the remaining 3 cities, which were inland off to the north.

 

[ERLoft]

In preparation for the assault, I built another archer and a couple of horsemen to protect my flanks. I also had the fortune to discover the tech that allowed Landschneckts prior to launching my attack, and I converted a couple of existing spearmen right away.

I marched my units to just east of Munich, taking care to have my Landschneckts lead the way, with the catapult behind the middle of the front line with my first Great General, who came my way courtesy of all the barbarian encampments I had knocked off. I used a couple of brutes to flank the formation with my horsemen well out wide of the main formation. As I approached Persepolis, Darius inquired as to my intentions. Since he was already hostile, I figured I'd tell him we were just passing through until everything was in formation. (I think this had a negative effect on my relations with other leaders though, once I declared war a couple of turns later...)

I marched a brute to the top of a hill north of the Persian where he had a road connecting the remainder of his cities, declared war and pillaged it. I moved the rest of my troops into position west of the river that ran past the Persian capital. Darius immediately marched down several Immortals towards my troops, which did some damage initially, but I was able to use my protected archers to damage him and send in my horsemen to polish them off. This left his archers woefully unprotected and I sent in units to finish them off quickly. However, in doing so, my units were left in range of Persepolis, whose defenses fired upon my troops. I withdrew to the safety of the forest across the river with my main force while I tried to hold off Darius' reinforcements who were streaming down from the north. I lost a brute or two in the battle, but managed to prevail, largely because I held the high ground and used my mobile horsemen to strike his damaged units, then retreat before he could bring his Immortals to bear on them.

Once the initial wave of reinforcements was defeated, I managed to move in on Persepolis and with two archers and a catapult whittling away, supported by a medic horseman and a great general, I captured Darius' capital city. Unfortunately, annexing it caused a wave of unhappiness in my empire and my economy wasn't in a position to support any circuses or coliseums. However, I pushed on and captured the eastern seaport I prized from Darius, then accepted a generous peace proposal, which included an infusion of gold and luxury resources!

 

[ERLoft]

After that first war, things kind of blur together a bit. Granted, day 1 for me was a 12 hour marathon session, so it does kind of figure.

However, much of the next couple of centuries was spent trying to balance an anemic economy and citizen discontent. I would agree wholeheartedly that you have to really think about what to build in any given city. You need to consider what you need now, what you're likely to need in the future and what you can afford. I used to build every building in every city in Civ4, but that's just not going to fly in CivV. And that's a good thing

In any case, while I was trying to get my civ in order, Ramses came along and plopped down a city in a spot along the coast north of Berlin that I had marked for future expansion. When I came calling and told him not to settle near me, he gave me the 'Do you think I'm weak willed?' and promptly settled another location north of Berlin that was closer and also marked as a future city location. Oh no, this won't do. It took a few turns to get my main combat forces from the east back into position to turn on Ramses, but after another 'You're not going to attack me are you?' from Ramses, I went on the offensive. This time, I had swordsmen in support, having discovered Iron, which I had to go and claim, since none was inside the existing borders of my Civ.

The ensuing battle with Ramses was pretty smooth. With my now reasonably promoted senior units leading the way, I rolled through the two cities near Berlin and continued on to take Alexandria, making it a puppet state, Memphis, which also became a puppet, then the Egyptian capital of Thebes, which I kept entirely to myself.

I began to move my units back to the east, where despite my past good relations with Neb, I wasn't convinced that his intentions were entirely benign. Also, Monty had expanded down the east coast of the continent around a couple of city states and now had a city uncomfortably close to my empire. However, as my units left the newly acquired cities, Askia decided the time was ripe and launched an assault on my new territories, bringing along a few city state allies into the battle. Although I scrambled to get back, I lost Alexandria, and the great general who was resting within, to the Songhai hordes.

Fortunately, I was able to recapture it and push Askia back. He had one city near my territory, with the remaining Egyptian cities acting as a buffer between our civs, and since the city had Marble, I decided to help myself to it. After numerous years of pushing back Songhai advances, which I simply absorbed, not wanting to launch a counterattack through Egyptian territory, Askia finally sued for peace.

During this time, I managed to discover Astronomy, and sent off a caravel in search of new lands. I managed to find them, all right, and it seemed that Washington had already crushed any opposition on his continent. His skill certainly was reflected in the 500 point score lead he had on me and his dominant position meant that it took a pretty penny to pry loose even one of his 4 extra luxury resources, but I really needed the extra happiness, since back home I was running near zero and still near a deficit economy.

 

[ERLoft]

So, now we're almost caught up with where I am in my game. Washington has a sizable lead on the scoresheet, it's the mid 1800's and I'm the dominant, if not unchallenged, force on my own continent. My economy and happiness continue to flirt with the negative and I have a decent, if not overly large, army.

My last act has been to bribe Neb into going to war with Monty for the paltry sum of 100 gold. Once that was complete, I started my first naval invasion - landing near the Aztec former city state of Budapest. Since Monty was now busy with Neb, he didn't have anyone to send to help in defense, and Budapest fell pretty easily to my landing force of 1 knight, 1 lancer, 1 longswordsman, 1 archer and 1 cannon. I liberated Budapest, thinking that their status as an ally would get me the Whales that a few of my cities desired. Unfortunately for me, two turns after it's liberation, Budapest joined a city state alliance against Neb, the one guy I really don't want to go to war with right now.

I began to march my forces north from Budapest, intent upon taking down the Aztec capital, Lhasa decided to ally itself with the Aztecs! Seeing as how it was on my route, I am currently laying siege to Lhasa before continuing on to take down the Aztecs and earn myself some Pearls!

 

[Demartus]

Great stuff! I like the narrative approach. Glad to see that the Prince AI is giving you a good showing.

 

[ibot66]

This sounds good. Keep updated plaease.

 

[ERLoft]

No updates yet - was busy with other stuff over the weekend, so haven't been playing...