Round 7: 1550 AD to 1880 AD, Part 2
I wasn't done tech trading, nosireebob:
I was fortunate to be able to hit up almost everybody in order to avoid the dreaded WFYABTA excuse.
Oh, hey, a few turns went by--time for another civics change!
Well, come on, it's State Property, arguably the most powerful civic in the game. And with my research rate and income in free fall thanks to war weariness, I needed all the help I could get.
I then pulled an aelf-style trade, taking advantage of the AI's devaulation of a tech you've partially researched:
Hey, it saved me 5 turns of research, scored me a tidy sum of gold, and updated my world map.
Then things started to get complicated. First of all, Shaka and Kublai made peace. Fine, the Zulu wasn't that much help anyway, and the mutual military struggle diplomatic bonus wasn't making him cough up any free gold for his buddy. Then Cyrus declared war on Kublai. Yeah, nothing makes the AI dog-pile like seeing another civ's power rating in free-fall! Cyrus managed to raze two of Kublai's cities, which the Mongolian then stubbornly rebuilt!
And then... Kublai capitulated.
To Tokugawa.
Oh, joy, just what I needed, a war on two fronts. Fortunately, I had held back a tech from Shaka on purpose, just for a rainy day. Well, it was pouring outside. SHAKAAAAAAA!!! Oh, there you are. Sharpen your spear points, dude:
This was probably the best thing I did in the whole round. Tokugawa got distracted taking Zulu cities (which he did very effectively) and barely came after me. Which was a very good thing, because he beat me to Industrialism. eep.
I built up some forces in Hippo to deal with any Japanese incursion while my stack kept zig-zagging across Mongolia. After taking the cities on the northwest coast, the stack headed east, taking the cities to my north. One was quite a prize:
Too bad the Parthenon is obsolete. Still, this will likely be the Wall Street city since it has the shrine. Also too bad I never got a chance to build a single Christian Monastery.
I could always switch to Organized Religion for a few turns and churn out Christian Missionaries, but I think I've had enough civics changes by now, and I don't know if the few additional GPT will make up for the lost commerce and research from anarchy.
I finally finished researching Industrialism, dragging my sorry economy there at a meagre 30% research rate by the end.
War weariness was indeed a bear, and more than once I reconsidered my determination to finish off Kublai. I think if he hadn't been a creative leader with such extended borders (not to mention the assistance he got from the Sistine Chapel), and if Toku had been more aggressive in attacking me, I would have called it off. Maybe that would have been for the best. As it was, though, I had to deal with very few problems from Tokugawa. I even managed to kill off the few tanks he sent my way with an Artillery/Ambush Infantry one-two combination. He sent a few Destroyers at me as well, so I churned several out to sink them. Nevertheless, I was relieved to finally be able to produce Tanks and Battleships.
With my research rate so low, I was falling behind atrociously in techs. Cyrus, Huayna, and Mehmed were running away with the tech lead, and I still had several Mongolian cities to capture. Then I'd have to rebuild my economy! I really only had one possible salvation:
Yep, a bee-line to Fibre Optics for the Internet. That's assuming we're going to go after a space race win. I'm not completely ruling out domination--Radio for Bombers (I'll have to get Flight as well, obviously) would be handy there, too.
And my next Great Person was handy for this tech path too:
He trimmed 3 turns off of Radio at my current, dismal research rate.
My perseverance finally paid off in 1876:
...and Mongolia was no more. But at what price? You'll see how far behind I am in the next post. Almost everyone else has Plastics already, so I'm going to get beat to the Three Gorges Dam, among other things.
At any rate, I decided to end hostilities with Japan, since with Mongolia gone, we had no reason left to fight anymore. (I did kill one more of Tokugawa's tanks, though, just 'cause I'm spiteful sometimes.)
Too bad he wasn't willing to give up any techs.
And then... yes! Of course! One more civics change!
Well, I decided to find out what my research looked like, so we can make a decision about what route to go. I'm back up to 80% research thanks to the civics, as well as deleting any and all obsolete units (anything pre-gunpowder, with a couple of exceptions for medical units, went).
The next post will be a state-of-the-world summary. The saved game file is below.
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Are you sure it's worth the loss of a trade route + a turn? I would've also preferred Organized Religion to get that infrastructure built in your new cities, esp. since everyone else has gone FR now, but it's probably not worth the swap now.
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