After some games with Ottoman, i'm back, i won't report the uninterresting one but just the last one :
I wanted to go for a peaceful game and play wide.
Settings normal, Immortal, COmmunitas, raging barb and that's all ( a few mod like info addict and patton bridge but nothing more).
I'm proud to announce my report : (i have added few comments on the pictures feel free to watch them)
The cold one
Hear me, hear us, I'm
Suleiman the Magnificent Emperor of the Ottoman ; I'm... wait what did i say ? let's look the picture :
So seems I'm Erdogan, and where am I ? Oh just click on the next spoiler balise and you will see !
Well, let's dream about wealth and the warmth of Anatolia and the lovely girls and ...
what ! Tundra and snow nord, desert south. Just one little tiny rivers...
Welcome to the dry and cold land of Anatolia.
But despite the weather or the land, we Ottoman are industruous people. Founding our first city on a forest, 2 turns later we got our explorer and what a good idea ! The land around us is surrounded by weak people that couldn't adapt to our homeland. We found 8 ancients ruins of lame settlers ! yes you didn't misread 8 ! 3 of them got production boost, 3 others a cultural artifact, one free technology, and some nomads who help us to grab some land around Istanbul.
The land is maybe a little bleak but after such exploration, you won't catch me complaining again. At least for the next few lines !
With so many rushed production we got a shrine and then a pantheon fast. Erdogan the industrious decided with 3 mineable luxuries to go for God of all creation (+1
/
for founded pantheon and + 2
in the capital). Yep we could go for mine pantheon but i really find this pantheon awesome giving so much happiness and culture really fast with no improvements required. The only cons is the really low faith contribution [feel free to give me your opinion about that in your comments i'm really curious maybe i'm just a little too closed-minded] but i started near a natural wonder that give +4
, so founding a religion won't be a problem.
How should we call the God of all creation ? Zeus of course, so after the stonehedge we decided to build for him a great statue and in his goodwill he gave us a free forge... but we transformed it into a siege foundry
So if you look back again to the precedent picture you can see after only 50 turns i already have 2 tiles that give +6
and +2
in comparison a manufactury (the great ingeneer improvement) gives you on a hill +7
so i already have 2 "great improvement" tiles, thanks holy Zeus ! (and no need to rush the technology for the siege foundry like this !)
So it's decided lets first settle to the east, grabing a natural wonder to be sure to get enough faith income to get a religion. To sustain our growth in this dry land, we need a lot of farms so lets go for progress and mass and fast build farm on the countryside.
Then we settle our 3rd city near the desert to get the opportunity to build petra for another yummy trade route, but i was too slow.
We continued our expansion to the east again. So 2 more juicy cities founded for a total of 6 already ! To be able to get such spots we had to declare war on Inca even after making him believe our eternal friendship on a decleration. Erdogan fear no consequences ! (and i was maybe lucky i didn't meet other civilizations). I captured 2 incan settlers guarded by slingers.... worst unit ever to guard a civilian unit cuz it automatically retreat leaving the civilian behind to our mercy ! So more workers for "farm-alization" and above all a large slow down for my only neighboor !
As you can see on the 6th city i grab another natural wonder :
The war against Inca rapidly ended due to the intervention of Shaka from Zulus who gave me 30 gold per turn to make peace. I did'nt attend to attack Inca (i sjut wanted to slow them down) so it's definitely worth it, and the amount his huge its simply doubling my net income !
And on top of mines which gave us a lot of production we could get as belief by founding our religion second the cathedrals.... and now cathedrals give +1
and +1
per farm, and because I'm Erdogan the kind I'll remember you that fact, i was before that building farms everywhere to don't starve, so this belief was sooooooo powerful in this context, all hail Zeus our God !
Let's end our expansion with one last city for the moment. Keep in mind with 7 cities this early in the game i never drop off negative hapines (due to my beloved pantheon). Who said Erdogan the great couldn't make his people happy ?
My caravans are send into internal trade or to city states north from me, because i have no neighboor !
Let's start our first golden age (in term of gameplay and it was really a great period for our empire). Never unhappy, tons of gold thanks to Shaka, so we can keep buying land for our cities. We keep growing, and look now at our happiness, religion enhanced give us tons of happiness because we could convert the inca Empire and firstly 3 cities states to our dogma (+1
per 6 followers in foreign cities and missionaries less expansive). Meanwhile we start our second branch of policies, Statecraft after progress. We are now allied we 3 cities state and caravans now give us plenty of gold from trade with them, and our influence doesn't decade (+1 influence per turn for city state with trade route offset natural loss). We could even build the great colosseus (another statue for the glory of Zeus of course) by rushing down the tech tree : so another free trade route ! Petra's revenge !
But our greatnes provokes the jealousy of bad people and now Darius from Persia declared us the war...
[To be continued, i will surely edit my post]