Thank You
My thanks goes out to the staff for bringing us 3 XOTMs and to my fellow players for your participation. Thanks to all of you, I've made the effort to play past turn 20 in a BTS game. Considering that I bought the expansion shortly after it came out, this point is really meaningful.
Game Summary
Entry class:
Challenger
Game status: Cultural Victory for Ethiopia
Game date: 1744AD
Base score: 1613
Final score: 28786
The Early Game
Early on, I settled on the Ivory, worked the Plains Hills Forest, and started building Warriors. I built two groups of two Warriors as Worker-stealing parties. I wasn't sure if I was going to make one or two groups, but upon seeing so many Ivory Resources with my Scout, I felt certain that we must be on a continent with at least two AI.
Actually, it felt liberating to start with an initial exploring unit. So many of the Challenger Class games of late have left me without such a unit, so it was a fun opportunity to actually see the lay of the land early on in the game. I didn't manage to find any Huts on our starting landmass, but it was a neat variant (to have a starting unit besides a Settler) once again.
As it turned out, I couldn't find anyone except for Churchill, except for the possibility of a Civ starting in the not-well-explored northern tundra or else blocked by Churchill's cultural borders. I sent my Warriors towards Churchill, thinking that I could try attacking his capital, and if nothing else, explore past his capital to see if I could find another AI.
Four of my unpromoted Warriors went up against Churchill's lone defending Warrior. There was only a 20% cultural bonus at this point, so I felt that I had a decent shot of taking down Churchill's capital. Only after capturing it was I going to decide if I should raise it or keep it.
Further Developments
It wasn't long before a master English bowyer had developed techniques that improved the strength of all English war bows. Taking on the English wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
Fortunately, by then, I'd built a Worker and then went on a massive Settler-spam. I settled my cities a little late, but I had at least placed my 3rd Legendary-to-be city in 1000 BC, so I had a good enough start to warrant continuing for a Cultural Victory. Normally, I like to have at least two Legendary-to-be cities settled in the BCs and have my 3rd one settled by the 500 AD mark. I've had success with settling my 3rd Legendary-to-be city as late as the 1100s, with a cultural victory in the 1800s, but for an earlier victory date, I suggest using settling dates roughly according to my suggestions.
In 5 BC, a heroic gesture by the English forces of healing one of my wounded units led to an unstable, yet game-lasting, peace. Over the course of the game, I had to give in to several demands from Churchill, as he still managed to carve out a large empire and he fielded a huge number of troops. Paying the occaisional Resource in tribute and cancelling deals upon his request kept his forces at bay, allowing me to focus on my desired victory condition.
Other Events
Some early Events were interesting--twice, while I still only had one city, Forest Fires struck, making me chose to lose the Forests or to lose about 10 Gold from my treasury.
Also, slave revolts seemed to be lined up against me. Twice, on the turn before I was going to whip in a city, the city revolted. City revolts used to be the normal course of things in previous Civ games, rather than just having an unhappy citizen sitting around doing nothing. Thus, it wasn't a really big deal, but this kind of event was irksome enough to be noteworthy.
I also had a Monastary discover a cache of ancient texts, allowing the building to have more culture. However, it occured in 1295 AD, when I'd already decided that the city was not going to be a Legendary city, so I just took 38 or so Science Beakers.
With England having a different State Religion from mine, a wedding went awry, hurting our relations. Interestingly, although you may normally get a choice for such an event, as to the degree of suffering in your relations with the AI, I did not get such a choice. Churchill is the one who received the choice. Fortunately, he let me off easy and didn't pay any cash to further sour our relations; perhaps the Prince level difficulty was a factor here or perhaps Churchill really was interested in peace, as long as I was willing to keep paying him tribute.
There was one point where 4 Barbarian Swordsmen appeared WITHIN my cultural borders. Although they were spawned one square CLOSER to an English city, they headed straight for my city. I suppose that this point is fair, since I was, after all, the recipient of the event, but it would have been nice if the English had have sent some of their forces to help me out. With the whipping of two Axemen, upgrading a Warrior to an Axeman, and sending another Axeman from a nearby city, I was able to repel the attack without losses, but the whipped city was slow to recover.
Colonies
Boudica liberated a colony and caused Tokugawa to appear in the game. I would like to know more about founding colonies. For example, I wonder if the Leader chosen is randomly selected or if there is some algorithm used to determine which Leader will appear. Also, I wonder how many colonies an AI would be willing to found, assuming that they had enough territory to warrant the possibility of multiple colonies.
Spies
I didn't get much chance to use Spies in this game. I researched Alphabet really late in the game and I really didn't know what to use Spies for, once I was able to build them. Also, I wasn't sure if it was possible to instigate bad relations or a war by a failed Spy mission; lacking late-game military power, I wasn't about to go goofing around and risk getting into a devastating war. Anyone have any insights onto how this part of the game works, in terms of a failed Spy mission?
Interestingly, the F9 Statistics page does not track the number of Spies which you have captured (and presumably killed), nor does it track the number of Spies which you have lost. I'd say that these missing Stats are a bug, or at least an unthought-of usability issue, as there is no other way to get values into those columns, if a Spy is truly invisible to other players. I'd care more about the number of Spies which my Civ had captured (killed), as the number of Spies lost can easily be calculated from the number Built minus the Current number, but I'd still like to see both values being tracked correctly.
The Oracle
Either a bunch of you were lucky or else I was unlucky. Justinian built The Oracle in 1225 BC. I was still struggling to recover from my early Warrior gambit to even have started building it at this point.
Great People
At one point, after all of the Wonders of the World for which I had the technology had been built, I recieved a Great Engineer. There's nothing really special about that situation, other than the fact that I had a 2% chance of receiving a Great Engineer and a 98% chance of receiving a Great Artist. I was hoping to use the Great Engineer in a fourth Golden Age, but I only was able to get a Great Scientist. Since I'd already started two Golden Ages with Great People, I was lacking an additional Great Person for my would-be Golden Age. Near the end of the game, I took Machinery and most of Engineering with the Great Scientist and the Great Engineer for fun, as those two Great People wouldn't be able to contribute significant enough culture to even shave off one turn from my victory date.
For my last Great Person, I had a 65% of getting a Great Artist, with the remaining 35% a chance of getting a Great Scientist. Luck was on my side this time. This Great Artist shaved 4 turns off of my victory date, so it helped to make up for my earlier unexpected, and all but useless, Great Engineer.
In this game, I received the following Great People:
8 Great Artists
5 Great Scientists
2 Great Merchants
1 Great Engineer
I was happy enough with the results of the Great People, but you can definitely see the effects of building The Great Library. It could probably be easily argued that you'll get more Great People if you build the Great Library. However, for a Cultural Victory, it would probably be worth missing out on as many as 4 Great Scientists if it meant that you could get 2 more Great Artists. Thanks to the lowered cost of getting to the next Great Person by having received less of them, I think that 2 more Great Artists would be achievable in place of 4 Great Scientists. So, building The Great Library is indeed a questionable move in a Cultural Victory game.
). Had to farm over towns for the first time ever! I have 54 % of pop ... even with Vassals, not quite enough for the UN vote. With the vassal structure, any attack will be world war (1914 anyone?)
