Hello everyone,
I've been lurking these forums for a very long time, and finally registered so I could comment on Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn. Shortly thereafter, I found out about Caveman to Cosmos (C2C) and have been playing it ever since. I've played through 400 turns of a Marathon speed game (in C2C, Marathon games last 4000 turns) and I'd like to post what I have done. I'm using v16 of this mod, with changes to fix European Culture and Anarchism. I've been playing since v12, so I think I know what I'm doing. We'll find out.
This is not going to be a character story. I think I'll try that if I do another story. This is going to be more of a heavily-narrated walkthrough. The changes to the tech tree alone are amazing.
In the Beginning...
My main choices are:
* Random Leader
* Difficulty Noble (to begin with)
* Random Map Script
* Huge World Size
* High Sea Level
* Marathon Speed
* Mastery Victory is on.
The Mastery Victory condition is that the game doesn't end until the max number of turns elapses. Once it does, all civilizations are ranked based on percentages of land, culture, power, wonders, and other demographic categories; number of cities with legendary culture; percentage of cities with their state religion; and having launched a spaceship. The highest total wins. Once everything is done, I may pull the trigger on the Mercy Rule and end the game prematurely.
* Unrestricted Leaders
* Important C2C settings:
* Advanced Diplomacy is on.
This gives many more diplomacy options. Some include establishing embassies, right of passage agreements, free trade agreements, and selling Workers.
* Assimilation is on.
This lets you build another civ's Unique Unit or Building in their captured cities.
* Great Commanders is on.
Great Generals can become Field Commanders. We'll probably be seeing them later.
* Advanced Espionage is on.
* Guilds is on.
* Modern Corporations is on.
* Advanced Nukes is on. (although we probably won't use them)
* Divine Prophets is on.
Instead of auto-founding religions at the right advance, you get a free Great Prophet. You must use a Great Prophet to start a religion, but it doesn't have to be this one. This lets you delay religions or skip them. I'll skip many religions.
So, the world is born.
I get Ramkhamhaeng of Inca to start. Ram is Expansive and Industrious. He is nominally a Siamese leader, but I turned Unrestricted Leaders on since there is virtually nothing that's restricted to a particular civ.
Notice I have no starting Techs, no Unique Unit, and my Unique Building is Native Culture (American). Unique Units are built with the Culture system. The previous Unique Buildings were folded into the main game, and the Native Cultures are the UBs. There are six: American, European, Middle Eastern, Asian, African, and Oceanic. Australia is currently the only civ with Oceanic culture. With the proper Native Culture, technology, and resources, one can build a Culture building, which gives the ability to build one Unique Unit and a discount on the wonders associated with that culture. For example, Culture (Roman) requires Native Culture (European) somewhere in your civ, the Bronze Working technology, and Olives in your city radius. This lets you build Praetorian and gives you 50% faster production of any wonder historically built in Rome or Italy (all the way up to Leonardo's Workshop). One current drawback to UU's is that they can't be upgraded. There are a few places where this is not a problem. I've found two of them so far.
Here's my starting location:
I start with a Band of homo sapiens sapiens instead of a Settler (they won't come along until we reach Sedentary Lifestyle) and a Stone Thrower instead of a Warrior (they come along pretty soon, but we won't be building any).
Since I have a River and a pretty good location, I settle in place. I can't see any resources to start. I think all resources require a technology to see, so since we don't know anything yet, we take the river.
My first building options are pretty limited.
Stone Thrower is a cheap military unit.
Native Culture (American) is a cheap early culture building.
Meager Wealth converts hammers to gold at 1/3 the normal rate. You'll see Meager and Lesser versions of Wealth, Research, and Culture early on followed by the full versions at the standard techs.
I choose Native Culture to start. It's really cheap and +2 culture per turn; +1 from the building itself, +1 from the Culture (American) that it provides to every city in my civ.
My first technology options are pretty limited too.
I don't even have language yet. We won't actually start talking until turn 57. I start with Nomadic Lifestyle.
My Stone Thrower starts exploring. What will he find?
