Orbital Megastructures is my next empty technology. Unfortunately, there are currently a lot of empty techs in the Transhuman and Galactic Eras.
Carhenge provides a free Recycling Center in every city. C2C Recycling Centers provide +1 happy and +3 healthy instead of cancelling all unhealth from buildings.
Smart Dust. It refers to floating clouds of nanomachines that can form objects out of seemingly thin air. This offers the Interstellar Speedway building.
I generate John Williams as a Great Artist. As I said before, Great Artists aren't that useful since I don't need to worry about culture bombing.
Nanoelectronics offers the Nanite Lab wonder, which provides a Nanobots resource. This is important for some later building projects.
I also pick up a free technology by finishing the Computer Center national wonder. Shielding is the most expensive tech available, so I grab it.
Shielding does provide the Arcology Shielding building, but I don't want to build it since I will get free Advanced Shields from the National Shield wonder further down the road.
Nanomining offers a small hammer bonus to mines.
It also segues into Nanobotics. It opens up the Nanofactory building and the SS Docking Bay.
This is one reason I am still going to build garrison forces despite having conquered the world. The Nanite Cloud unit is absolutely devastating (and genuinely creepy to see in action), and there is a random event capable of generating a pair of
Barbarian Nanite Clouds. Not something I want to face.
SETI Program speeds up spaceship production (not that I need it) and speeds up Laboratory production in all cities.
Asteroid Extraction tech. I wish there was something here - it would be very useful for raw production.
Lunar Exploration is another empty Modern Era tech.
Despite sounding it like belongs in a later era, Ion Propulsion is another Modern Era tech. It gives me the SS Thrusters.
Ion Propulsion leads into Space Tourism.
The destruction of so many cities has opened up space for new Barbarian cities to appear. One of the Flying Squadrons still left (I've disbanded three of the six) finds and burns the barbarian city of Ainu. Even though they have Riflemen, I can easily tear them apart with Modern Marines.
I've finished shipping all of my captured Warlords back to Chuito, upgrading them, and then settling them. This requires at least Military Science and Rifling to promote to Great Colonel, which grants +2 XP per unit. The weaker captured Warlords (Great Chief, Great Captain, Great Corporal) only provide +1 XP. I have a total of 16 GMI's for +32 XP per new unit.
I haven't discovered Sonar yet, but I don't need it for submarines.
I do need Sonar for Modern Seismology.
Modern Seismology leads into Volcanology.
I generated a total of 11 Great Generals this game; 9 through combat, plus two from being the first to discover Leadership and Fascism. I used 5 of them as Field Commanders for my armies. Once converted to Field Commanders, the Great General cannot be used for anything else. I decide that I will not need the remaining 6, so I use John III Sobieski to build a Military Academy in Chuito and then settle the remaining 5 as Great Military Instructors.
Special Infantry are one of the two best endgame city defenders. Chuito is ready to start churning them out.
I grab Astrogeology next. This is one of the last techs of the Modern Era.
Flooding event. For the cost this event demands compared to my treasury, I could probably replace the route in solid gold bricks.
One of our biggest handicaps to adding new material to C2C is graphics. We don't have a dedicated unit maker, so we have to work with whatever we can download or modify from existing units. I myself created a Highwayman by taking a Nazgul unit skin and placing it on a Cuirassier. On the other hand, if a model exists, and it isn't
too fantastic, we will probably add it. Buildings are easier, since they can usually get by with just a button and (for Wonders) a static movie.
Example: the Lara Croft unit. Lara starts with Blitz and March on her own and gets Heal from the Bioenhancement Center and Medic I from Red Cross, along with 66 XP from other sources. Since no other civilization was going to get close enough to Mass Media to train her, I decided to wait until after the Great War was over. Of course, she's unique.
I also churned out another 81 Special Infantry units ready to be airlifted to new cities. They start out at Level 8, coming out of training with Combat I, City Garrison III, Urban Tactics III, and Land Warrior I for a total of +25% Strength and +120% City Defense among other bonuses.
I settle my first new city on the former Korean islands. This is Aachen. I ran out of Incan city names a long time ago, and so the game picks a random civilization and then gives me the first unused name from that civ. Many of the new civilizations that arose in this game did so through revolutions. Their city names do not change when the city revolts, but the civilization will start using up its names if it gets big enough to found cities on its own. Since this did not happen to a lot of civilizations, there are still some unused capital names available.
Next time: City, city, city, city, city, city, baked beans, and city.