Round 3: Rising Sun: 395 BC to 1440 BC
frogs sing
sisters dance with dolls;
father gone
The boy regarded his haiku and frowned. When it dried, he carefully hid it under his sleeping mat.
Eleven-year-old Hiro Kondo picked up his wooden bokken and went to practice swordplay.
---
The round was long and peaceful. The majority of our turns were spent trying to expand while simultaneously improving our beaker and commerce output. As you will see at the end, the frightful economic prospects improved and we are in a decent position to expand militarily.
The only way to kickstart the research was to put scientists in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Beijing: the cities with a good food surplus. I then determined to settle new cities with an eye towards commerce resources. All of the classical age civic/economic techs would need to be discovered quickly: Monarchy, Currency, Code of Laws, Calendar.
First, we settled Kagoshima to get the three dye tiles:
Next, we built a galley and settled the gold city:
A few more workers were built to improve the jungle areas of our main island. We still hadn't finished Calendar yet, and the slider was down to 10%. We were essentially researching on scientists alone.
You can also see we settled the northeastern island to grab the deer and have a presence there.
Things eventually got better. We learned Monarchy and Code of Laws and were able to have bigger cities with Hereditary Rule and Caste System for the SE. Beijing was soon able to run several scientists.
Currency was going to be online soon too. In the meantime, we settled another city on the home isle to get the spices:
Years passed, and one of the technological crown jewels was ours:
Tokugawa paced. His chamberlain nervously bowed.
"Lord, adding to your staff will allow us to specialize. Ministers of agriculture, of fishing, of trade. Each will focus. Kyoto will become efficient and productive."
The Shogun raised an eyebrow. "If you are incorrect, I will find a replacement."
"Hai!" the chamberlain uttered, bowing quicly and leaving.
Yes! Bureaucracy immediately became a hit, as Kyoto, already a nice production city, was able to make some serious hammers. And the chamberlain kept his head on his shoulders, for now anyway.
We pressed on to Machinery to enable Samurais and Crossbows. We also settled another island city, to get bronze and crabs:
My thinking here was to establish a presence in the islands and get new resources. I decided to leave the barbarian cities alone for now, as they are generally not worth capturing. When I razed one, it reappeared in a few turns.
Finally, we finished Machinery and were able to nab Optics. Exploration!
It was then that we met our closest neighbor to the west:
Now I know what you're thinking: we don't trade with
gaijin. Under the RP rules, we don't have open borders with non-vassals. So while economic trades are off, tech trades are fine. Frankly, we really needed that one, too. It really helped us catch up.
There was another neighbor close, to our northwest:
On the other side of the world, on the northern end, was Shaka, who had little to offer us. To his south, from what I can tell, was Charlemagne:
I believe he will be our biggest threat.
Great person update: as you can imagine, quite a few Great Scientists appeared. We settled most of them in Kyoto and Beijing. While lightbulbing is powerful for certain strategies, I was terrified of falling behind on beaker output.
Wonder-wise, we missed most of the classical/early Medieval wonders. However, in Beijing we had completed the Mausoleum of Massallos, which improbably garnered us a Great Artist amongst all of the scientists there.
Mausoleum + Great Artist = Golden Age!
Turns out Charlemagne had expanded onto other islands and formed a new colony, headed by Friendly Freddie, who had some techs to trade:
I got a lot of mileage out of trading Philosophy. Since I wasn't beelining Liberalism or trying for Angkhor Wat, I decided to use it as trade bait.
Our island expansion was paying off too, in other ways:
The round was nearly ended when we landed this gem:
And we were the first one there, too:
For the capper, we picked up circumnavigation while sailing to the far side of the world.
Situation update to follow.
Though that would make me the power behind the throne....
Interesting.
. if you didn't know astro, you wouldn't be able to reach KK even tho he can reach you with galleys, so unfair! he's lower than you on power, but looks like you refused a demand from him. of course you refused, who is he to made demands of us? i'm thinking that might just put him in a tizzy so much that he overestimates his power. i'm certainly not worried, we'd beat him. "we" meaning that you're the one playing and i'm just sitting here typing, that is. if i ever have to fight a war for you, you're in for trouble.
oh this is a fun week to tease you and S *giggle*
