DMI VI - The Mearas

Got it for tomorrow.

Some thoughts:

Liberalism: It looks like we can delay finishing it. One thought was get Nationalism and take Constitution. Any other thoughts? I usually take Astronomy but I'm open to trying things differently.

Relations: Everyone looks friendly with everyone else, except Zara doesn't like Brennus. Any thoughts to who we want to get a PA with?

Great people: We have a great engineer, and will get another great person next turn. What are we saving the GE for? I can settle a GScientist in Edoras since there's an academy there already.

 

Astronomy with Liberalism is good too. Observatories + trade routes.

I still think to align with Hannibal (unless his vassal complicates this somehow). Brennus looks good in score but lacks in tech.

GE could be saved for Taj Majhal. GS could be settled or maybe bulbed towards Printing Press.

 

I would consider risking researching nationalism by hand before taking Liberalism Mil Trad line. Astronomy can then follow allowing us to also snag the Taj Mahal for a nice GA to boost research through Astronomy?


For me the key thing is to make sure we all agree on Diplomacy as to get a PA we are in full B@tt Kissing mode with our selected pal and we do need a friendly religion spread (give / trade him Optics for caravels if he hasn't got it to speed it up if he sends us a missionary?)

Ralph

 

We also need our future PA partner to hate some other AI so we can bribe him to war etc. Now everyone seems to be getting along.

Njorls suggestion for Zara seems good in that way. Can't take a closer look at the game but could someone confirm if Hannibal is willing to stop trading with anyone for a prize?

 

I've decided not to roleplay during building rounds, "Theoden King, the following has happened" just gets a little old

The world is indeed round



We got a great spy, I saved for a golden age



I changed research to Nationalism

I then took Constitution with Liberalism



GE rushed Taj in Aldburg, didn't want to pollute Edoras with artists



Astronomy was researched next

Somewhere in here we got *another* great spy, there's 2 in Edoras

There's an interesting island to our south, explorer popped a hut there for 59 gold



We need to decide on permanent alliance and how to approach, I didn't do anything diplomatically. Also, there may be no metal on this map at all.

 

Good job. I would go for Democracy next. That island is definitely worth settling. We can start one GA with first Great Spy and hold second one for another GA.

Personally I find it hard to roleplay Rohan at this stage of game

Winth is up!

 

Of course roleplaying Rohan gets more difficult once we reach the Era of Gunpowder and advanced units. Do as you feel, if you're not in the mood for storytelling and/or have no ideas, then it's okay to put up a normal report.

One thing that is critical for a PA is precise planning. We need to work out which modifiers we have and which we can get with the Civs. Of special interest is the favourite Civic. Trade apparently is no problem, a lopsided deal nets the +4. War is not necessarily needed to get an AI to friendly. I'll post more on that later when I got a look at the save...

Imhotep

 

Should pholkhero continue so we can get this game going again?

 

Yeah, Winth has missed the 24-hours-got-it. Therefore I'll skip him...

The Roster

Imhotep >> ON DECK
Meiz >>
Ralph "RJ" Jackson >>
Lucky >>
njorls >> JUST PLAYED
Winth >> SKIPPED
pholkhero >> UP NOW

 

Okay, i finally had a peek at the save. We have three possible PA partners.

Hannibal - his favourite civic is Free Market. We'll run that anyway once we've discovered Economics.

Brennus --- his favourite civic is Organized Religion. Not exactly what we want.

Zara --- his favourite civic is Theocracy. I'd adopt this once we have the Theoracy tech. The problem is that if we adopt it there is no chance of any religion spreading to us. And it would be easier to get a PA with sharing Zara's Buddhism.

Still, I'd say we go twicefold for insurance. We'll buddy up to both Hannibal and Zara (which is possible because they both like each other) and see which relationship improves quicker. Vassals don't affect the master's affinity for signing a PA by the way.

Imhotep

 

Okay, i've got a couple other games on my plate for now, but i'll get to this ASAP, but i'll probably need all 72 hours for it.

 

Umm...

What do you mean that this frickin' GMail didn't send me a notification?!

I'm SO going to stop using this crappy e-mail... While I don't get spam, I don't get now ANY regular mails that I wait for, neither anyone gets mine!

Gah! Well, I suppose I won't bite if I was skipped. Sorry for the in-con... inconvenience. I can wait until later, no problem. Still, it's only my fault - I shouldn't depend on the system that fails to work all the times a row! :/

 

Winth ~ i can't get to this probably until tomorrow at the earliest ~ you should play if you can!

 

Hm, okay, I'm getting it ASAP.

I think I'm not going to sign any PA at my late turnset - because I won't want to make a bad decision, and we can gang up with only one civilization!*

*Remember my gripe when I said something about Darius = Theoden? If Zara is Denethor, I'm gonna laugh off my ***.

 

I doubt that PA is possible at the moment. If I remember correctly, it even needs some tech which we won't be having in a while

Just don't upset anyone we concider as PA. + modifiers are very good

 

I start by carefully checking the Diplomacy screen. I don't want to mess and fire some "You traded with our worst enemies!" problem. We can't trade with Brennus, it gives the risk of making Zara unhappy (and we don't want that, do we?). And so, I thought of trading for Engineering, but I found that we are 2 turns away from that, so no.

I think now about what to do at the end of the GA... decisions, decisions... Well, the choice is straightforward. We don't have state religion, and I decide to simply adopt Free Religion for the moment. +10% to science is almost nothing (something like free Monastery in every city), but it doesn't hurt either...

Slavery -> Caste System? No, not that either, I think. We will benefit from whip much, especially with a Globe Theatre city.

So, only a trivial change... From Paganism -> Free Religion, and uh wow, we got actually about 100 beakers out of it. A pity it's all about Golden Age, but still.



I cruise through our cities and see that we have no Academies in them! I like to have at least 2 Academies, each for one of the science cities. So, I decided to dial some scientists in Edoras... or I was up too. In fact, we have only a bit less than 1/4 chance to get a Great Engineer! However, we can also get something such disgustingly ambiguous as Great Artist, which, on isolated continent, simply doesn't work at all. Therefore, I think nobody will hang me up if I speed up the production of a Great People and give us a better chance that it will be a really good choice! Two scientists in Edoras dialed up, siree!

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/6950/civ4screenshot0033lh0.jpg

And see that Angkor Wat isn't built. Well, this is a wonder that I would like to fire in our capital. Why? Well, some wonderspam games shown that some of juicily pumped prophets give a good deal of production, we don't need Ironworks that way!

I still didn't decide what to do with Great Spies. I am reluctant to mess too much with them. I could settle them for extra SIX beakers and nice +12 espionage points to boot! If I delay, we will get the benefits faster. But since the first one is still "on deck", I'm not going to do anything with the second one. You certainly have a plan.

Ahh... and I'd really *love* to get Buddhism to our lands. We don't have the biggest relationship modifier in the game - religion! And spreading religion is important, especially after Theocracy (who needs Vassalage? :]), and Organized Religion (which certainly helps). Pacifism in peace times would help Edoras...

OK, enough of that grumbling. I'm sitting at the first turn for 15 minutes now, 10 minutes spending on writing.

Next turn, and...

HOLY HOLY CRAP!

ZARA YAQOB DECLARES WAR ON US!!!

Well, I suppose THAT flushes alliance with Zara down the toilet! And WE HAVE NO IRON! How am I able to win without Longbowmen, even?!

And Qin built Angkor Wat, scratch that also (we didn't waste any hammers on it, because I dialed it AFTER observatory that Edoras didn't finish yet). On the final turn of Golden Age, I decided to get Gunpowder for protection, and uh wow, we can get needed 1800 beakers in one turn! I must stop underestimating Golden Age, I think.

Ah, and Zara has released some of his cities to a colony state. We have a new competitor - it turned out to be Mansa Musa. Financial civ running a colony, probably surrounded with water - oh, why in my second turnset all those bad things must happen? I will buy some lottery ticket tommorrow, that's for sure. Malinese territory is below.




EP provided us with an info that Qin is three turns from Printing Press. I made this minor deal:


Why? We don't have these outdated techs, Qin is close to get Printing Press anyway, and some spare gold can't hurt.

Oh God, I think I know now what means "beware of those genuinely hand-crafted maps!" No Iron on any island, nor even Copper.



And the fact that we're in the middle of the power graph is quite surprising, given the fact that one of our strongest units is the Explorer down that island...

I bought a World Map from Hannibal for 105 gold, revealing the main continent. Qin Shi Huang is pushed in his territory, he simply sucked at expansion, probably going for wonders, I suppose he asked for a protector. Since Beijing is the only juicy city with it's resources, I think that Chinese are not going to be any big player in this game.



I'm delaying the journey of our three Immortals to the island, because we are pressed to defend our hopelessly defended cities.

And that makes me fear EVEN MORE:



Folks, this is going to be a wild ride. And Qin Shi Huang broke away from Hannibal. Wow, it's only two turns, and so much happens!

I ordered Military tradition. Cuirassiers will improve our glory - the mounted armies! And we need military badly. I would switch to Democracy, but Zara's betrayal (at Pleased...) forced me to, and Brennus is twitching...

As predicted, we've got a Great Scientist. Quick rush through our cities - and Dunharrow is the winner. His head explodes for our cause.



We have Military Tradition. Weaker cities still spam Musketmans, those really weak work at what they worked, and in strong, I dial Cuirassiers... umm... wait, we don't have Iron. Weed to the boot! "A man in weed is in weed indeed!"

Ectabana gets a workshop, in my mind, after Chemistry it will give +1 to production, we will want to squeeze production from that city.

Important note:
I emphasize spying on Zara. We will want to know what's going on here, he's quiet, even though he declared that war...

We get Christianity in Methedras. Nice, but we don't need that.

And... whew! Brennus declares war on... Zara Yaqob! How convenient for us.

And shortly thereafter, Pacal II does TOO! Do you think you have time to mess with an intercontinental civ now, you ". .. .. .. .. .. ."?

And we have now nice diplo bonuses with Pacal and Brennus for war-sharing.

And now for something completely different:



Gave it to him.

Save is below... With special thanks to pholkhero - now a better player can fight out of this mess!

 

Haven't looked at the game (I will) but just wanted to say I loved the report really felt like I was peeking over your shoulder, great reporting

Ralph

 

War declaration was caused by a bug. When AI made a colony, it somehow gets some information from a killed AI (in this case, Orc Queen Victoria). And we were in war with Vic before she died (naturally...). Bhuric's patch fixes this bug btw.

Still, no real harm done. Good to have little rivalry between AI's

Edit: Would it be possible to resisize your pictures a little?

 

Sorry, this is the first time in 3 days I can connect to the internet. I don't have a civ computer for the time being, and I am not sure when I will be able to play. (Had to hand over my laptop to customer service ). I will keep you informed.

Since I can't check the save, I don't have much of an oppinion about our situation. Just note that we don't get any - modifiers from being declared upon, so Zara might still be an option for later, although it might be esier now to align with Brennus or Pacal.

 

There was nothing much for me to do during this set, but NOT anger our remaining ally candidates, and that I think I did ~ or rather, didn’t do that. Sorry about the report, esp. after getting the resource help from Talamane, but I’m low on time atm, and, as you all know, it’s hard to RP “Press Enter” and choosing builds ~

Tech-wise I went crazy: Demo > Engineering > Monarchy > Feudalism > Guilds > Banking > Economics > Chemistry > Military Science!

In the beginning, Zara still lacked Galleons, so I shipped all our navy over there for now to guard against an assault, and built many musketeers, as that’s the only counter we have for his army. He has a couple galleons now, but nothing to worry about.

There IS metal in the game, as Zara has it. Here’s the army he had:

Nothing too much to worry about, I don’t think, but I built up the troops just in case, and sent most to the SW.

At this point, i think we should farm over edoras and make it a GPF ~ it has the globe theatre after all and all those sea resources! Also, Eastport is getting “We Yearn” penalties, too ~ that’s a damn crummy bug!

I took peace with Zara when I could, getting only 5 gold. I didn’t think we watned to invade any time soon, so I thought that was best.

With all the new techs, we can revolt:

I didn’t yet as I thought we should discuss.

We hit 20 million people:

You can see we’re #1 in power now, so I don’t think we should worry about anything from anyone right now.

Here’s a shot of the empire as it is now: