Well, the two bits where I really thought 'what's he doing' were
- Not taking advantage of Representation. It's an awesome civic... sure, you can potentially get more happiness out of HR, but it takes a lot of hammers, and you don't get the research bonus.
- Not preparing for war with Washington soon enough. You need to plan ahead - it's no good thinking, "now's the time for war," and then taking twenty turns to build up troops. Once you'd killed Ragnar, every single action you took should have been to prepare for a war with Washington - whether by making troops, giving extra cities or shoring up your infrastructure. Instead, you meandered.
Agreed on both. I think I touched on not taking advantage of early rep in my post-mortem post, but I forgot to mention that I clearly waited far too long before taking on Washington. The biggest indicator of that is how much easier the game became once I eliminated him.
I often do have a tendency to settle back after a successful war for too long. Even when playing as Rome, where you can fight on the backs of Praets for most of the game, I "meander" as you call it. Partly it's that you do need a respite between wars to restore your economy; but once you do, all these shiny new buildings and wonders become available and it's easy to get distracted. I also get my own personal version of war weariness sometimes and then go into builder mode.
The other problem is "one more tech" syndrome--you know, where if I can just get Engineering for pikes and trebs, or Machinery for Xbows, or whatever, then I'll have the advantage I need to go to war.
Well, as Shaka clearly proved in this game, you don't need a tech advantage to win a war. Hannibal clearly had a tech advantage on the Zulu, but Carthage got its butt summarily kicked. Something to remember, especially since there's a Shaka ALC coming up soon.
that was a wild game. meeting those guys and seeing shaka had clobbered sitting bull down to one city
. there was one ALC where monty eliminated somebody before we ever met them iirc, asoka or gandhi. that's just so wild.
That was the Hatshepsut game, still one of my favourites, even though I've surpassed its score several times since then.
Quick question: Do two unhealthiness points always accompany the Three Gorges Dam? I was always under the impression that no downside came from it-- as if there was a Hydro Plant in each city.
The TGD used to work that way, but I believe the +2
from power was introduced in BtS, I would guess in the interests of game balance. It's strange, though, because it means that the TGD is the only wonder in the game that has an inherent drawback.
There isn't really a way around it; not every city can build a hydro plant, after all, and the other two options (nuclear and coal) have similar drawbacks.
Well done
. It's interesting to see that a game that everyone thought would be brutal, was won with relative ease at the end. Just had to get over that Washington hump, the rest was coasting downhill on momentum.
Well, the other key to this victory was recognizing that Shaka was going to be the power to be reckoned with and sucking up to him big-time ASAP. There are so many games where I've given Shaka the virtual equivalent of the finger if he wasn't next door to me; if I'd done that this time, I think a DoW by the Zulu would have been inevitable, and this would have been a very different game.
A bit of strange luck played into this, mainly that no religions got founded on my continent. That meant I was free to convert to Shaka's state religion as soon as it spread to me. Ironic, since I was bemoaning the lack of a religion early on to help with happiness, but its absence helped save my butt.
I'll start the Ragnar pre-game thread in a few days.
