Peaceful empire building isn't very exciting, so I'll just shoot a quick timeline.
520AD - Japan Capitulates
560AD - Sury Builds Apostolic Palace for Buddists
580AD - Boudica wins leadership of A-Palace
620AD - HC makes peace with Monty
640AD - HC peace vassals to Boudica
660AD - A great merchant was born
660AD - Steal engineering from Boudica using spies
760AD - HC wins the Liberalism race
780AD - Apostolic Palace votes HC a city back from Monty
820AD - I prove the world is round through map trades without building a caracal
840AD - Boudica builds Taj Mahal to go with her MoM wonder.
860AD - A great spy was born!
900AD - Infiltrated Boudica, stole Nationalism and Constitution
The great spy was a huge stroke of luck. Not only was I able to quickly start drafting macemen, I was also able to start building jails and perform more tech trades with Tokugawa.
After spying on Sury, I decided it was better to keep him and his vassal Justinian as trade partners than try to conquer them. I set my sights on the much more lucrative target, Boudica.
980AD
The city of Vienne is an immense prize, big enough to win the game if I can take and keep. There are 43 cities with Buddism. The city has a shrine (+43 gold), MoM (+50% Golden Age), Parthenon (+50% Great Person Production), and the Sistene Chapel. It is surrounded by villages and a single town. With markets and a bank, it will generate about +150 gold per turn with all sliders to 0%. On the espionage front, controlling it will give my espionage inside buddist cities a huge bonus too.
I have so many troops on her border, I will go something like -100 gold per turn when they leave my territory and trade routes die off. 980AD is the perfect time to attack though. The Apostolic Palace just passed its voting period, with Boudica declining to put forward anything to vote on. The only way to know is to check the events log in the top left corner and count turns, as votes happen every 10 turns. She was elected in 580AD, a city changed hands in 780AD, nothing happened in 980AD, and the next vote decides on 1090AD I believe. This is MAJORLY important because she has enough votes to stop my war dead. If I defy the vote, I take a massive happy penalty (Pariah) and lose my +2 hammer bonus in my buddist temples. So I waited to start the war on the next 10 turn window, 980AD.
70 troops march to war RAWR. The castles can be dealt with one of two ways. Loads of spies to throw the cities into revolt on the attack turn, or gunpowder units. Since I have no gunpowder it will be hordes of spies!
On my first turn inside her borders, she hurled her main army at my stack of 70 on the hill. The results were very one sided. The super medic healed up the horses while the footsoldiers and siege advanced on the now very weakened city. They saved a turn by attacking across the river and simply overwhelming it. This freed up the horse to split in two, with knights, war chariots, and horse archers attacking the northern and southern cities with only spy support. After mowing them down, reinforcements were brought in, and the 2 southern armies took her capitol while the northern force attempted the extreme north city. Both spies failed, and I accepted capitulation rather than wait a bunch more turns to beat down the walls.
Boudica's Curaissers were the worst I faced the rest of the game. I burned a great engineer for a 12 turn golden age and it was all over after that. It was one giant snowball.
Thanks for the fun game, hope I was able to teach someone something. Drafting from a city every 10 turns is key on Deity. Also, I hope everyone realizes how strong espionage can be on high level play. Not one university was constructed on this attempt, nor was any turn replayed. I could see my opponents entire army before I started war in addition to their teching. It makes things so much easier when there are no huge surprises.
520AD - Japan Capitulates
560AD - Sury Builds Apostolic Palace for Buddists
580AD - Boudica wins leadership of A-Palace
620AD - HC makes peace with Monty
640AD - HC peace vassals to Boudica
660AD - A great merchant was born
660AD - Steal engineering from Boudica using spies
760AD - HC wins the Liberalism race
780AD - Apostolic Palace votes HC a city back from Monty
820AD - I prove the world is round through map trades without building a caracal
840AD - Boudica builds Taj Mahal to go with her MoM wonder.
860AD - A great spy was born!
900AD - Infiltrated Boudica, stole Nationalism and Constitution
The great spy was a huge stroke of luck. Not only was I able to quickly start drafting macemen, I was also able to start building jails and perform more tech trades with Tokugawa.
After spying on Sury, I decided it was better to keep him and his vassal Justinian as trade partners than try to conquer them. I set my sights on the much more lucrative target, Boudica.
980AD
Spoiler :
The city of Vienne is an immense prize, big enough to win the game if I can take and keep. There are 43 cities with Buddism. The city has a shrine (+43 gold), MoM (+50% Golden Age), Parthenon (+50% Great Person Production), and the Sistene Chapel. It is surrounded by villages and a single town. With markets and a bank, it will generate about +150 gold per turn with all sliders to 0%. On the espionage front, controlling it will give my espionage inside buddist cities a huge bonus too.
I have so many troops on her border, I will go something like -100 gold per turn when they leave my territory and trade routes die off. 980AD is the perfect time to attack though. The Apostolic Palace just passed its voting period, with Boudica declining to put forward anything to vote on. The only way to know is to check the events log in the top left corner and count turns, as votes happen every 10 turns. She was elected in 580AD, a city changed hands in 780AD, nothing happened in 980AD, and the next vote decides on 1090AD I believe. This is MAJORLY important because she has enough votes to stop my war dead. If I defy the vote, I take a massive happy penalty (Pariah) and lose my +2 hammer bonus in my buddist temples. So I waited to start the war on the next 10 turn window, 980AD.
70 troops march to war RAWR. The castles can be dealt with one of two ways. Loads of spies to throw the cities into revolt on the attack turn, or gunpowder units. Since I have no gunpowder it will be hordes of spies!
On my first turn inside her borders, she hurled her main army at my stack of 70 on the hill. The results were very one sided. The super medic healed up the horses while the footsoldiers and siege advanced on the now very weakened city. They saved a turn by attacking across the river and simply overwhelming it. This freed up the horse to split in two, with knights, war chariots, and horse archers attacking the northern and southern cities with only spy support. After mowing them down, reinforcements were brought in, and the 2 southern armies took her capitol while the northern force attempted the extreme north city. Both spies failed, and I accepted capitulation rather than wait a bunch more turns to beat down the walls.
Spoiler :
Boudica's Curaissers were the worst I faced the rest of the game. I burned a great engineer for a 12 turn golden age and it was all over after that. It was one giant snowball.
Spoiler :
Thanks for the fun game, hope I was able to teach someone something. Drafting from a city every 10 turns is key on Deity. Also, I hope everyone realizes how strong espionage can be on high level play. Not one university was constructed on this attempt, nor was any turn replayed. I could see my opponents entire army before I started war in addition to their teching. It makes things so much easier when there are no huge surprises.
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) and I understand you have as well. It's mostly a question of focus (getting Archery/Writing/Pottery earlier or making bigger sacrifices for gambits).
One just doesn't have very many diplo cards to play that early in the game, apart from the always useful gift city.
