Round 7: 1525 AD to 1720 AD (45 turns) - Part 1
Oh, man. You guys and gals are gonna love this.
Okay, remember this post? Maybe you don't, but bear with me and re-read it.
Thanks for all the advice so far.
I know I often get criticized for not devoting myself to a specific victory condition early enough, but I like to leave my options open. I'm deliberately going to avoid a AP win because I did that once before and it's cheesy, and I'd like to see the UU and UB in action.
I just came out of a war; typically in Civ IV that puts you in a bit of a hole. Let's see if I can climb out of that hole and then see where I stand before we decide upon a victory condition to pursue.
Let me interpret for you. What I'm really saying here is, "I just played a good chunk of the next round, and it went
really well, so anything's possible at this point!"
But of course, I didn't want to give anything away. And on top of that, I was continuing to get excellent advice. So much good advice, in fact, that I began to think that a round I played based on very little ALC feedback could have gone even better if I re-played it based on even more feedback. I usually don't do that, but I've been playing and posting pretty quickly this time, so I thought, hmm, let's be fair to everyone and I'll replay the round and incorporate even more of these good ideas and it will all turn out even
better!"
Or so you'd think.
With all due respect to CivCorpse, Scarredroman, sylvanllewelyn, and the rest of you... but when I re-played those turns following your advice, things turned out worse. A lot worse.
So then I had a choice to make. I had been prescient enough, you see, to set aside the screenshots and the save from the first attempt that went better. So should I post that round, or the one that incorporated more ALC advice but was, well, mediocre in comparison?
Then I said screw it. First off, it's my game thread, I can do what I want; second, it's my first Immortal game, so I cut myself some slack. What follows, then, is the first attempt that got better results. Mind-bogglingly good results, in fact, I think you'll all agree by the end of it. So let's get to it.
Now, I didn't ignore all the advice I got--I played mostly based upon the first few responses to the last round. So I started off by loading up Washington with specialists in order to generate my next great person ASAP so I could begin a Golden Age, change civics, and get 10 turns of boosted commerce and production to help me catch up.
I also adjusted my espionage allocation as described, attempting to get visibility into the research of the board stragglers, who were also my most likely tech trading partners.
I also wanted more EPs on Caesar because, as we all know, he was up to something.
Early in the round, an AP vote came up. Some of you recommended that I vote in favour of the proposition, whatever it was, as this would restore me to Full Member status in the AP from the Voting Member status I currently had thanks to defying several resolutions. By the way, would anyone care to spell out all the differences between the two different types of memberships?
It was going to cost me 8 GPT and a potential trading partner, but I could live with it. Caesar is so woefully behind that having him possess a tech I didn't seemed unlikely to recur. And he seems to have a very low WFYABTA threshold, as well. But I'd be back in good stead in the AP, and as you'll see, later in the round, that became very important.
On the next turn, before the results of the vote were displayed, I finished my next tech:
I then decided to pursue Validator's recommended Assembly Line gambit.
While everyone had Steam Power, you see, only Hammy and Gilgamesh had AL. The gambit also went on the assumption that (a) neither of them would trade AL to anyone because they were building the Pentagon and (b) few of the other civs would research AL because they usually don't make it a priority. You'll see how if those assumptions were correct in a little while.
On a broader note, it's often worthwhile to look for target techs like this that can get you back in the game when you're behind. In one of the very first ALCs--the Qin game, IIRC--it was Steel that was used this way. It should usually be a very expensive tech and one that most of the AIs make a low priority.
The vote results came in, and Caesar was
persona non grata in the Buddhist community.
It was just the beginning of things getting very bad for JC, in fact. And yes, you might notice that I held the swing votes in the ALC. Interesting, no? You have no idea. Just wait...
As predicted, voting for the resolution restored me to full member status:
However, it unfortunately did nothing to alleviate the AP-villain unhappiness. This caused trouble in New York and Pasedena--the two cities with -10 unhappiness left over from defying resolutions during the war--throughout the round.
With Rifling in place and money in the bank, I went around upgrading some of my best units in order to boost my power rating and deter any foreign adventurism.
This is, as I recall, the only level 4 unit I upgraded, because it had the newly-relevant Pinch promotion. I upgraded all of my level 5 units, of which I had several thanks to the Charismatic trait and the war with Monty. I didn't upgrade any of the City Raider Macemen, however. Since I had no plans to fight a war right away, it didn't make sense to spend money on that.
Shortly after this, Caesar's WHEOOHRN came home to roost: he declared war. On... Gilgamesh! Who had a defensive pact with
Shaka, you might recall.
Okay, it's now official. Caesar is the game's new Monty.
I mean, he has Galleons. Gilgamesh has freakin'
Infantry. What on earth is he hoping to achieve? "I built the damn units, I may as well use them..."
No, I did not join Gilgamesh in his defensive pact, and I was glad of it at this point. I didn't join for exactly this reason, that I didn't want to get drawn into a war while I was working on recovering from the previous one.
As you'll see, however, things were not going to remain that way. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
From the mix of specialists running in Washington, I drew a Great Scientist.
He would have lightbulbed part of Scientific Method, a tech I need, but I needed the civics change without anarchy and 10 turns of boosted production even more. So he started my first golden age of the game.
Right away, I changed civics. These are the ones I chose:
This is where, you can see, I was playing without the benefit of the advice that came along later in the thread. So I didn't stick with HR, nor did I adopt Bureaucracy. I did not research Democracy so I couldn't switch into Emancipation. I also left Slavery behind and chose to run Organized Religion rather than Pacifism. In retrospect, the last two were my only regrets here. I probably could have benefited from a few judicious applications of the whip, and I certainly could have used 9 turns of boosted GP production before changing to CS and OR as I did here. However, with CS boosting workshop output and letting me run more specialists, I think the results were similar.
Then Shaka came along with a request.
Hmm. I thought on this long and hard, then I went with it. I want to keep Shaka at Friendly, after all, and I'd already ticked off Caesar by voting to stop trading with him. I doubted he could inflict any real damage on me. He still didn't have Chemistry for Frigates (I did, and had a couple off my west coast by this point). JC was also going to have his hands full with Giggles and Shakey, here. AND I'd get another diplo boost for "mutual military conflict". So I agreed, and engaged in a largely phony war with Caesar for the rest of the round.
Oh, you can also see from the above shot that I was prioritizing banks as suggested, to help raise the slider. I was also getting libraries and universities built. And here and there I plunked down a monastery while I still could before Scientific Method came along.
In the middle of the golden age, I finished my next tech.
It's strange to be so far behind that when you research a technology you find you can't trade it to
anybody. That usually only happens to me at the very beginning of the game, if at all. Welcome to Immortal level, Sissy-boy!
Someone founded our first corporation of the game--the very desirable Sid's Sushi Co.
I later found out that it had been founded in Arabia, of all places.
Then look what AP vote came up next:
Of course I voted in favour! First off, there was even more diplomatic points to be earned for the shared military struggle. Furthermore, this helped further ensure that America would be unlikely to see any fighting, because Caesar now had to worry about a plethora of enemies.
The vote passed.
And Caesar found himself at war with the whole freakin' world.
Well, he started it, and he's gonna finish it--or, more accurately, it's probably gonna finish him.
Then I finished my next tech, the one I'd been waiting for, the one that was going to save my sorry butt, or so I hoped.
So, would it help me catch up at all? Or had the AIs already beaten me to it?
Stay tuned...