Round 5: 540 AD to 1110 AD (34 turns)
You'll recall that we were just winding down a war with Mao and as such I was building some infrastructure and wonders, having stopped the production of units. However, I now had 10 cities, and with just six workers getting all my new tiles improved would take too long.
In my two cities that were working on world wonders I inserted workers at the top of the build queue. Workers are a nice thing to whip. The way it works is that I put the worker at the top of the queue, let the city work on it for one turn, then next turn come back and whip the worker to completion for two pop. The overflow goes into the wonder. In many cases, when wonder production resumes the lost hammers are negligible. In all cases, though, we have another worker. So all in all its generally a good move. I'd avoid it in super tight wonder races, but I have no worry we're going to lose either the Colossus or the Parthenon.
I spent a long time thinking about what to tech after Currency finished. We discussed possible options at great length in the previous posts and this is what I ended up deciding to do.
I'm going Drama and Music first. This would allow us to build theatres at our leisure and still have the Globe Theatre in time for the second round of wars. Music is nice for several reasons. One, if we're the first to get to it we get a free Great Artist. Two, if we get to it first the other AIs are less likely to pursue it. We don't want the other AIs having Music because it increases the speed of their culture victories and it is a pre-requisite technology for Military Tradition. The next three techs are just your everyday Liberalism beeline.
I popped a Great Prophet in Paris.
As suggested by many of you, I sent him down to Shanghai to complete the Shrine, which gave us 11 commerce right off the bat.
My last battle with the Chinese was over before it had even begun. I lost one catapult and earned Mao's last city on the continent.
I had a Great General that I had popped a few turns ago and I was considering what to do with him. I decided that with this war wrapping up, I'd be better off settling him since a super warrior, whether it be medic, city raider, or flanker, isn't necessary just yet and the General would give me 3 beakers a turn if I settled him, so I did so in Shanghai.
Things were chugging along nicely in the French Empire. And what's an Industrious leader without his wonders?
Now you're probably thinking we're at peace. And I'm not going to lie, for some reason I thought this too. Then I realized that I was still at war, it had something to do with my citizens asking what war was good for. Anyway, I ceased hostilities for all that Mao had to offer, which wasn't much.
I'm not disappointed though. Code of Laws was on our current plan of techs, and Meditation would let me build another wonder.
The great artist from Music came in, and I decided to settle him.
Golden ages are nice and all. But settling is just so attractive I have trouble resisting. Also, not starting a golden age now means we can start them for cheaper in the future when our empire is bigger and has more tiles to work.
I had a spy go poke his head in Japan and this is what he saw.
. That's a pretty large stack. Luckily Tokugawa wasn't plotting war. And if he was I wouldn't have minded since I was plotting war on him. Unfortunately the spy got caught the next turn, but at least he got some useful intel before he was ... by the Japanese. Not quite sure what happens to spies in this game, hopefully their deaths are quick and painless.
We meet our new neighbor. Welcome Zara Yaqob, ALC 28 leader. I'll introduce him in a different way for some novelty.
(He's at the top of that list). Don't worry though, he's not that advanced. He had Feudalism and Machinery on us when we first met him, and we had some stuff on him, including Music. Borders were opened the next turn. Also, I'm pleased we got our hands on music. Zara is definitely liable to win a Culture Victory, but without Music (and the Sistine Chapel, *hint *hint) he won't be nearly as threatening.
Another Great Person, also settled.
Here's a cool image.
There are two things I want to draw your attention to. The first is our army. That's what we're going to declare war on Toku with. It will turn out to be a little bit to small for what I was hoping to accomplish. The second thing is the lighthouse + Colossus powered lake tiles. Those are awesome.
Oh right and another wonder.
Now some of you may be picking up on my inability to switch civics when I should. This would have been a nice opportunity to switch into either OR or Theocracy. I didn't, though. I think I played too many Spiritual leaders as a young child, or something.
Here's a look at our Heroic Epic city in action. When cities start to get many multipliers, it become less efficient to whip as the city can do stuff by working tiles.
Shanghai is a funny city. It's our HE city, but also a holy city, and also the only the city in our empire working cottages. My point is though, it was producing two War Elephants every three turns. So no need to whip. Other cities were doing the classic one turn of production into war elephant / catapult followed by a two-pop whip.
Anyway, back to the war front.
Alright, have a careful look around this picture.
You'll notice the troops in his city. But look due east of my stack. That's where Toku's stack is. It wasn't in a city, and I had no idea where it was going. So despite it being in a forest I attacked anyway. In so doing, I wiped out Toku's attacking forces and precluded any possibility of a counterattack.
The next turn I took the city.
The city would be taken back by the Japanese the next turn and then taken back by me a few turns following that. Unfortunately in all the hustle and bustle, the market was destroyed. My plan for the city is to farm/workshop it over. Tokugawa is useless at working those cottages. I might leave the one that is up to a village, but I'm not working hamlets at this point in the game.
Reinforcements arrived, and I took the city back for the last time.
Some micromanagement by my allowed this to happen.
Two turns later.
Here's what happened. I was perusing my cities when I noticed the Guangzhou was 3 turns away from a Great Person and Paris was two. Paris was running away with the GP points and I knew that if Guangzhou didn't get it's GP out soon, it might never do so. So I starved the city which allowed Guangzhou to beat Paris by one turn. Two turns later Paris finished it's next one and voila, two GP in three turns. This way no GP points are wasted in Guangzhou. In case you couldn't tell, I settled the Engineer and built an Academy with the Scientist. The capital now looks like this
I'm probably not doing the WE/SSE justice. But it's working out okay for me.
I sent my stack south to capture the Japanese city that was now disconnected from the rest of the Japanese empire.
Not bad. I had built my six theatres by now, so the dye would increase my happy cap in those cities with the theatres.
I sent a scouting party up into the Japanese heartland to see what I could see.
Sigh, I was hoping to see a few archers defending the city. But that Tokugawa spams troops like no other. Unfortunately I was not able to hit him as hard as I wanted, so I took peace the next turn when my Espionage showed he was five turns away from longbows.
Compass would let me build the harbors that Mec AntiKythera has been telling me to build. Also, the world map would prove surprisingly useful given that it's Mr. Toku the isolationist's.
Yupyup, that's another wonder. You can also look down at the map and see that AIs are lined up side-by-side which will make warring incredibly easy. I'll just take them down one after the other. I haven't met him yet, but the 7th leader is Saladin. He's been warring with Huayna for the past while, as there've been a few Great General born over that side of the continent.
The last realy decision I made this round was what to research after Paper. I chose Nationalism, as opposed to Education, for a couple of reasons. One, I want that Taj Mahal soonish to allow for civic changes. Two, Education can be bulbed. Here's my plan, we build the Taj Mahal, while researching Education with the slider off. We revolt into Pacificism and Caste and force two scientists, a la Kossin, who bulb the remains of Education and then Liberalism (from which we take Military Tradition). At the end of the Golden age we switch into war civics and do as much damage as we can with Curis and Musketeers.
And to finish the round off on a nice note of closure, let's say goodbye to a worthy adversary (not really).
That's my update! I'll post a state of the world shortly. In the meantime, look at the save and ask any questions you have, and give all the advice you care to give.
): the malus works with all met AIs. In your case trading with Mao before killing him didn't help in the sense that the other guys know that you did it. Each AIs have a threshold, a number of techs. If you trade for more techs than this number the AI stops trading (ex Shaka has 5 iirc, so when you get your 6th tech via trades, he will stop trading with you - provided he agreed first, diplo matters here too-). Mansa has 25 as threshold so you want him to stay a little longer around! That's why it is bad to trade for ancient techs generally (as always sometimes it's worth it, but you better have a very good reason to do it).
) ones.
. With an industrious leader and access to ivory, stone, marble, and gold, what can you expect me to do?
.
3
tiles which are superb for most of the game.
to settled GPs. I'm not sure, but if so it might be worth building since we have stone.
.
)
/turn of scientist.
. I'll make the change.
