Hello everyone! Continuing my good resolutions of doing writeups of all the Games I Play in Order to Honor the Work of the Gotm-Staff, who as always have my gratitude for making those games possible. Seeing the other writeups, I was Not the only one moving the Scout Inland And discovering the other wet corn. Which Made me settel two tiles north of the starting Position. Which after doing an extensive Replay is Not the optimal choice. Staying lets you improve the two corns And Cooper much faster. Which will give you a faster settler And faster axes to kill Fredi. Although you will have to move the Capital later. On the other Hand who could have known that a second corn was lurking in the dark.
After getting my worker Out I did a huge mistake by building a second Scout. I wanted to get more information on the land forgetting that it was a Donut and more importantly Not realising that the Cooper whould be instantly connected, via the river.
At least I did get one Warrior Out which went in Fredis direction for a worker steal. The First Settler build went straight south settling the starting position.
After connecting the Cooper I immediately chopped Out two axes the First going east for Bismarcks Capital the second west for Fredi. Now this startegie was my bigest mistake and also the most unluckies part of the Game. My reasoning going for Bismarck was that since Babylon does not have hunting as a starting tec He is more unlikely to get archery. I thought about this for a very Long Time. I also knew that Fredi went for Meditation First since he founded Budism hence he could Not have gone for for archery early. But greed for a good Produktion site and full Vision of Bismarcks territory because of the early writing(Open borders), actually the only benefit of the second Scout, which was still close to Bismarcks borders and No information (The First Scout went west and had already past Fredi going alonge the Coast for later Trader routes), tipped the scale towards Bismarck. He only Had a Warrior in His Capitol for ages. But literally the Turn my Axe reached It, He wiped or build a Bowman. What a disapointment. Withs 50% against melee Units I had to withdraw to His forrested Hills until He Made Peace. Meanwhile the Warrior out west came Up to Fredis unprotected worker improving the hill next to an already improved marble with roads( two other tecs Not going for archery.) Oh I'm gona get you, perfekt! Moving on the hill with the Warrior. Gotcha. But then No Horns of war accompanied my capture
. What? And then I realised. I forgot that I had opened our borders already. What a blunder. Having to move the Warrior Back the next turn was one to much. The Worker disappeared in the fog and I Had nothing. ( In the the old days a ragequit whould have been reasonable, and IT still feels Like IT
). At least I could Scout him Out now, and since he had only one Warrior I m still getting His Capitol (and only City at that Point). The Axe going west finally reached His Capitol. The Turn before He build build a second Warrior. But since Axes kick Warrior-buts i am still fine. I killed the first Warrior and then he Had to build an Archer of course. That was very frustrating. So I did get nothing and made Peace. In hind sight the right move whould have been to send Both axes to Fredi. Probably needing only 1 but my Replays showed that an Axe can actually lose to two Warriors in a City. And in a later Replay which was had the earliest attackdate he went for archery so fast that he already Had an Archer fortified.
While all of that was going on I expanded to 5 cities. One north, getting the pigs and sharing the northern corn and a Lot of rivertiles with the Capitol and two to the West, the First of which could share the two southern corn. Because of the Low happiness I Had to constantly Switch tiles around but but it paid of and I managed to sling civil service in 950 BC. The Happiness from confu already helped a lot. After that I teced Alpha to backfill animal husbandry sailing and a little later Iron working. Then calendar was first on the list for the spices and the silks to the West which were aquired by a City that also stole a sheep from Bismarcks second City Via culture. An other City to the east by the Copper compled the 8 cities I Had before 1 ad. After going for monarchy, a trade for montheism allowed me to switch civics and spread confu everywhere. Currency comleted all the economic tecs so I could finally Gear Up for war. First going for machinery (around 100bc) pumping Out 6-8 maces for Freddy whom I eliminated in 325ad. Then engeneering (100ad) let me build trebs in preparation for attacking Bismarck. (Notre Dame too) It also helped to bringing some of the Veteran maces Back from the West faster. A few had to stay Back for barb defence and also taking a very juciy barb City that had iron pigs, stone and corn. As soon as I had 5-6 maces accompanied by 4 trebs I went for Bismarck. During this war Knights were added to my Army and Bismarck went down in 800ad. His Capitol beeing the big price having the Great light house and Having such good Produktion immediately became the Heroic Epic City producing nothing but Knights. While the war in the east was raging my Empire expanded westwards peacefully, setteling cities Up to the Jungle belt, creating a straight Border from the Mountains in the middle to the ocean in the West, right at the nine o clock Position.
My over all tec Strategy right from the begining was to lib assemblyline (cudos to nocho who did that in the Arthur Game where I picked up this idea) an then go communism which I normal pick up with lib but as an organised Leader those factories are just so cheap.
And since my tec pace was pretty good I aimed for space as Victory condition.
While figting Bismarck I was able to build the great libary in my designated national Epic spot (second City), which came as a little suprise since gandi had teced literatue some time ago and already had music too.
My original tec path to Victory got really screwed up after paper, because a map trade from gandi revealed the Center of the Donut. I Had thought about Corporations but Cereal or Sushi combinded with Mining Inc (without gold,silver and gems) did not seem worth it. After discovering the Center it appeared much more viable but I still wasn't able to make a decision. Leaning more into the direction of state property. But since I Had to reach assemblyline First l still Had some time to decide. I also delayed lib by a few Turns tecing nationallism and MilTrad. because Mansa got to Longbows. He was disposed of by 1120ad. In Addition I had to declare on Sitting Bull, since he beat me to capturing a barb City between Bismarck and Mansa which I Had already designated to be my Future National Park, sighning a peace treaty a few Turns later.
At 1020!!! lucked out with the hanging gardens. Around 800BC I noticed that it was not taken jet, eventhough I had traded math in the BCs. This was a big score since I I Had almost 30 cities (Not Sure) at that Point.
In 1170ad libing assemblyline came true at Last. Factories were build and whiped everywhere and I had to decide If wanted to go for Corporations or not. So I had to do a lot of resource counting. I knew that I could get at least 23 hammers from Ming Inc. and around 12-13 food from Cereal Mills. (Did Not want to go for Sushi, although it was faster to reach, the extra culture whould push me over the Domination Limit.) But losing State Property meant losing at least 10 food in a lot of cities (some cities even more) instantly. So I went for communism. On my way there I Had a Change of Heart. I wanted to try corps. Because those 23 hammers+ where to tempting. But since I was so close to communism I finished researching it an swiched into State Property.
During this phase gandi was finished of. (1210 ad) and I settelt 5 cities in the Center to get all the recources online. I Ended Up with 62% of the landarea and checked carefully every turn in case I Had to gift a City to Ragnar or Sitting Bull in Order to avoid Domination. But my rough estimation of how much Land I could Take was Spot on. (Playing a dough Nut map helped a Lot of course. It is feels cutting a cake
)
While going for Mining Inc first, courthouses where build If they were still missing and Versailles and the forbidden palace were build in cities on the 9 and 3 o clock positions of the dough nut. Getting Mining Inc First also meant, that combinded with factories and coalplants, that I was able to oneturn the corp. Executives. From that Point on the Slider was Always Up at 100%.
(I could be wrong on this one) The tec path after Cereal was going for rocketry First while building the Apollo Programm, going for Superconductors to build Laboratories. Then Industrialism for aluminium. After that Genetics and then going almost straight for Fusion only picking up ecology on the way. To start building the engines before going for and compsites. Almost straight also meant using the satellites-laser route in order to not obsolete the Spiral Minarette and the University of Sankore. In Addition going for Fusion First also enabled me to Trigger my fifth mausoleum powered golden Age. My Iron works City was able to build the engines in 3 Turns
. The second best Production City needed 6. Since I could one Turn composites I only needed to find 5 cities which could build the caseings in 5 Turns. Unfortunatelly I only found four. So I lost a Turn. With a little more planing and micro this could have been avoided but since Ragnar decided to Attack me during that Phase (distract me) I'm Not to bitter about that. It basicily meant to turn down the slider just a bit for some Upgrades and build Tanks and gunships in cities that produced research and wealth. And since his best Units were Knights at that Point his army was crushed before he could do any damage.
And then finally my Spaceship reached Alpha centauri in 1635 (Turn 237).
I know that this was a very long writeup and that it is littered with spelling errors and bad grammar. For that I m sorry but it is a second language after all.
The reason for doing such an extensive writeup is besides showing of to maybe show some other players to improve and to again thank the Gotm-Staff (in this Case kcd_swede especially) for creating the maps we are playing.
This map was awesome and has a lot of Replay value because it allowes, with mapknowledge of course some crazy early finishing Dates for space and culture wins.
And If you manged to get to this Point thanks for reading.
