Don Deity: Warlords 2.08, huge random continents map, epic speed

[Snaaty]

A bar… …somewhere strange… …somewhere VERY strange…

“Why are you looking so sad Don Deity?”

“I don’t like my civilisation any more. It is WAY weaker then the other civilisations I have met so far and I seem to be unable to get enough troops build in time. And I don’t like sitting around and waiting for anything to happen, I want to go out and slay…”

“Don’t be so sad Don Deity, in my opinion you have had big luck with your start. You got two technologies for free from minor tribes and some gold... … and bronze working is great as you may have found out yourself I think… …but sailing can be also very useful for you.”

“Why can something like sailing be useful to me? My poor little civilisation hasn’t even invented something like catapults, so I can’t even throw triremes at any approaching enemies…”

“You could for example build a lighthouse ASAP which…”

“Ah, you mean so that my people can throw down triremes from the lighthouse at any approaching…”

“NO, I don’t mean THIS. What I meant is more like that a lighthouse would give you one more food from all your sea resources. This would make 4 more food every turns when working all 4 sea resources. You even should consider squeezing in a lighthouse before building any more workers or settlers. By the way, why haven’t you moved your initial settler inlands, like I have supposed? I have heard rumours, that there is a “super city site” not far inlands…”

“Would you do me a favour?”

“Yes, of course Don Deity. What is it?”

“Never ever mention this again.”

…

5 beers later

…

“…but I don’t want to be weak. And I don’t want my civilisation to fear barbarians. I want everybody to fear my civilisation.”

“Listen to me Don Deity. You have had great luck in discovering a source of bronze that close to your capital. You even can work it right away and build a basic defensive army consisting of warriors and axes. If you place some warriors on strategic hills around your capital and use your axes as defensive strike force, you will be able to spot and fend of any barbarians approaching you without too much effort.”

“OK, then we don’t have to fear the barbarians, but the other civilisations, they could destroy us any time they want to… …look, I even can project you the power chart from our continent for better visualisation…




…we are sooooo weak…”

“Well, the only advice I can give you concerning the other civilisations, is to ignore them right now and to stay low (very low) and be as friendly with them as you can be (which actually could be a BIG problem…). Basically, simply don’t make them angry…”

“So there is nothing I can do right now to make them love me?”

“Not really… …you could convert to their religion to make them your friends, but therefore you need to wait until a religion actually spreads in one of your cities (which you not have). Once you have researched alphabet things will get easier, because then you can gift them technologies to raise their mood towards you, but this is still a long way to go.”

“But how do I proceed now?”

"Give me a second, have to go to the toilet..."

...

5 minutes later...

“To compete with the other civilisations, you need to expand very fast now. The most effective way in doing so, is to raise the happy cap of your capital via luxury resources and to spam settlers and workers at maximal city size. Since you seem to have a quite large area to expand into, I would advise you therefore to settle near the luxurious resources you can work right now (gold and silver) first and to work them ASAP. This will allow your capital to grow and then you can build additional workers and settlers faster. Next step is to grab and block of as much land as possible. And don’t forget to build a worker for every settler you build because you have to work your new cities... ...oh, and by the way, I just have met immortal Lil on the toilet... ...he agrees in most of the points with me on this issue, so you really should listen to me this time."

“But my capital is not good… …and sooooo tiny…”

“Quit whining around Don Deity. Your capital will grow with time and there will be a time, when it WILL be important (unless you are eliminated by one of your neighbours BEFORE that time of course). By the way, I like the name of your capital… …it sounds a little strange in the beginning, but once you get used to it, it’s a nice name…”

“I think I need another beer”

...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

 

[Snaaty]

Despite Don Deity’s whining, the English people really seemed to continue to prosper and grow. And they even seemed to be hard workers… …in addition to the copper-mine, the other two hills near London had also been mined (some statues had to be moved a little to gain better access to the main entrance of a major mine, but since the people of London (of which Don Deity nowadays referred to as “Londonians”) had been very careful, Don Deity didn’t seem to reckon it… …which, of course, greatly helped in keeping London’s overall output of statues in this period on a quite reasonable level…) and a basic road network was forming around London. For the mines and the roads, some forests had to be removed (altogether 4 of them) but this only increased London’s production even more.

Thanks to so many mines London had a quite big production capacity and therefore was able to produce all troops needed for initial defence very fast. And, after the initial urge to ignore his friends advise again, passed away, Don Deity even had a lighthouse build in London, right after two axmen and some additional warriors had been built/chopped. This allowed London to gather 17 food per turn so far and would sum up to 22 food per turn once all 4 sea resources would be worked… …which again would allow an impressive output of settlers and workers.

But so far, only one settler and two workers had been produced in London. Right now, the people of London were busy working on another workboat, so that the city could grow…


London, which is growing to size 5, thanks to silver, in 1900 BC:




…

At the majors house in London:

“What does that mean, we can do nothing with the whales???”

“Umh, I don’t know Don Deity, what do you suppose we should do with those whales?”

“Well, for a start, you could get some glass bottom boats ready and offer some whale watching trips for tourists. This at least would help us in raising some more funds…”

…

About 10 days later, same place, the major and some of his consultants:

“Like I said before dear major, we still have no idea what this “glass” thing is… …but since it is supposed to be transparent, we have some experiments running with simply leaving off some wooden planks in the middle of our fishing boats…”

“And… …how are the results so far?”

“The positive side of it mainly is that we seem to have much more fishes and crabs around London now…”

“How can this be?”

“Umh… …well… …our results with the new boat model are extremely impressive concerning the transparency of the hole… …but there are some minor downsides we still have to overcome … …none of our new fishing boats has been able to leave the harbour so far… …they basically sink right from the start… …but IF we finally have solved this minor sinking issue and our boats are able to reach the whale site, the big hole will allow a beautiful sight into the water (pouring in).”

“Just carry on with your research… …oh, by the way, has anybody found out already, what a “tourist” is?”

…

Although less seafood had been produced since some time now, the still massive amount of food in London had allowed producing the first settler very quick and the city of York had already been founded 2080 BC southwest of London, near the silver resources:

Southwest regions in 1900 BC:




Since some fishes were discovered near the silver, Don Deity spontaneously had decided to expand in this direction first, because unlike the gold, the silver could be worked right from the start, without any border expansions needed (see "super city site"). All workers had been busy with building a road towards the location York would be already before the settler to become York had been finished and immediately after York was found, one of the silver hills had been mined, so London had access to silver more or less immediately.

In York, the following production order was planned:
Monument (to be chopped)
Workboat (to be timed with border expansion, so the nearby fish could be worked immediately)
Library (to grow the city)

...

Some barbarian archers and warriors had been approaching here and there near York, but thanks to Don Deity following his friend’s advice, all territory southwest of London was covered by fogbusters and one of the defending axes had always been able to fend of any approaching barbarians. Altogether, there had been 6 groups of archers and a raiding party of warriors that had been killed mainly in the south-western regions of the newborn English empire so far.

...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

@ mrchadt: Please post 1900 save, thanks

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

…

 

[mrchadt]

The trusty messenger mrchadt rides on his war heffalump to deliver the save of the deity snaaty.

 

[Draknith]

Looks like a great start. Once your "super city" is set up in the north, you should have a very prosperous, industrial nation. Do you know which religions have been founded so far? Can't wait to read the continuing saga.

 

[Snaaty]

@ mrchadt:

... of the deity snaaty.

Sounds good... ...but more realistic is "of the short-time deity" because getting stomped pretty soon is what´s most likely to occure (Alex seems to be pretty near)

Btw, may Don Deity borrow your war heffalump if things start to get really ruff???

...

@ Draknith:

The surrounding are pretty mediocre, apparently nada callendar resources, so only the silver down in iceland ... ...EXCEPT of the "super city site", with 2 gold, pigs, floodplains and one callendar thingy... ...starting directly there would have been pretty awsome... ...maybe was a bad move not to settle there ASAP with second settler... ...looks like we WILL HAVE TO settle there, either peacefull or by force... ...but we will find out soon, I will play next turnset tomorrow

Religions in 1900 BC:

Hinduism (Ash)
Buddism (???)
Judaism (???)

...

EDIT:

@ Izipo:

The guys from http://www.gamertales.com/ are taking this story for their story archive. You can read it there without interruptions and "proper" images (but a little delayed because the have to formate it). It´s there:

http://www.gamertales.com/Civtales/dondeity.php

 

[Snaaty]

Although Don Deity knew that he had more important things to do, he opened his (at this stage of the world quite short) history book again and turned to page 7:

North-western fogbusting squad, 1392 BC, 12. March, 11:32:

“Suddenly, we spotted two groups of archers and one band of settlers, wearing the flags of Brennus, approaching our lookout post on the riverside hill from northwest. But they passed our small fortifications, without even bothering to stop for a chat and camped a little further in the wood, down the river…

Some days later, they packed all their goods again and moved on. We wondered a little about that, because the riverside camp they had built would have made a quite good location for a city, with fresh water, grain, deer and cows nearby, but plain obviously, they were heading somewhere else and they disappeared out of sight, heading towards the gold mountains.”


Don Deity turned to page 9:

Northern fogbusting squad, 1412 BC, 17. November, 18:12:

“At around noon, we spotted a quite big group of settlers and archers heading towards our direction from the mountain range at our west. It took them 3 full days, until they arrived at our camp on the hill southwest of the little lake. We invited them for a cup of coffee, but they didn’t want to stop and pressed on, following the river up towards the desert into the north. We wondered a little about that, because our camp would have made a great location for a permanent settlement, with two gold, some floodplains and all the sheep nearby, but they seemed to travel somewhere else…”

After another 5 days, they disappeared out of sight into the desert.”


Don Deity skipped some more pages:

Northern fogbusting squad, 1565 BC, 12. February, 8:12:

“We already had forgotten about the settlers and archers passing us by, when we suddenly spotted them again in the north, this time going south, down the river, heading for our camp again.

They already seemed a little worn out, because the trip along the river took them this time more then 9 days, until they finally arrived at our camp. They stopped and asked for a coffee, but unhappily, we had run out of coffee 3 days ago, so we offered them some tea.

Most of them seemed to be quite unhappy with their wondering business, because they said something about a “stinking pig named Brennus”, but still they decided to leave our camp again only 3 days later and headed towards the mountain range at our west. We lost sight of them 5 days later”


Don Deity smiled a little and turned to page 15:

North-western fogbusting squad, 1617 BC, 28. March, 13:21:

“We still haven’t found out anything about the band of settlers and archers camping now with us for more then two weeks. A quick spreading rumour is that they are those mysterious “tourists” the mayor of London is waiting for, but we have found no evidence so far, proving this. But the captain has sent out this morning one of the warriors towards London, to inform the major there. But we start to get annoyed more and more of the attitude of these peoples looking at everything and complaining all day long…”

Some visualisation of Bren´s wandering tour:


…

Except of Bren wandering around with his settlers, not very much was happening these days, so one of the most important events was the discovering of the first cultural border of one of our neighbours…

Northeast regions in 1330 BC (Ash’s border indicated by red arrow):




After Bren had passed the “super city site” twice now with his settlers, Don Deity was very quick in settling there on his own (you NEVER now…). But unlike York, the city of Nottingham, build in 1600 BC was not build directly near the luxurious resource, but one tile further distant, on the “super-city site”. This would make Nottingham one of the strongest cities in the growing English empire in the future, but right now, the downside of this was that the gold would only be in reach after the first expansion of the cultural borders of Nottingham. But since a Monument had already been chopped in Nottingham and the production of a library had already been started, this shouldn’t take too long.

…

And Don Deity made another important strategic decision, as you can see in the screenshot above:

The only English early cottages would be build near Nottingham, along the river running up north, into the desert, profiting greatly from the floodplains on its path… ...the first one had already been finished, the second one was in production. Once Nottingham would have grown, maybe one or two cottages more would follow a little more up the floodplain river, but right now, two cottages seemed to be all the English empire needed (and could build/support/work btw).

…

At the majors house in London:

“And you really think that these people are “tourists”?”

“Well… …yes… ….when we informed them about the whale watching trips we plan to offer in London, once we have solved the last problems with the boats, they were quite eager to hear more about that. Some even decided to quit service for Brennus and are heading now towards London… …they really seem to hate Brennus, maybe it has something to do with him having them running around senselessly for several hundred years…”

“Good then, give word to the north-western fogbusting squad, that they are to head up towards the regions where we suspect more of Brennus people to live and have them put up signs and advertisements all along the way for our upcoming whale watching business.

Ah, and by the way, if they come across a good location to found another permanent settlement while putting up signs and advertisements, they should give word immediately to Don Deity, because we now have another band of settlers ready in London.”




...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

@ mrchadt: Please post 1330 save, thanks

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

 

[mrchadt]

Here are the sacred scrolls from snaaty the deity of England.

 

[allansm]

I'm loving the story, can't wait for the next part. Keep up the good work.

 

[Snaaty]

A bar… …somewhere strange… …somewhere VERY strange…

“Hey Don Deity, back again? Feeling a little bit more confident now concerning your ongoing little civilisation project?”

“Well… …not really. We haven’t achieved anything of importance so far and I have a feeling that all other nations are working on some big and important projects. And we basically can’t do anything about it because we are too backwards to compete with them…”




“Don’t worry too much about that Don Deity. Most of the so called “World Wonders” aren’t worth being built. There are only two that I would advise you to try for. The first one is called “Great Library” and the second one “Statue of Liberty”. But right now, just forget about them, because it will take some years until you can build them… …another beer?”

“Yes please… …umh, I have faced something very funny last time I have visited my civilisation… …perhaps you know something about it:

That Brennus guy was running with a settler through my whole empire west to east, only to come back again the opposite way and to disappear again in his own territory…”

“You are a gambler, aren’t you? It was VERY risky NOT to settle on the “super city site” immediately. If Bren or anybody of the others would have settled there, you would really be in trouble now… …but anyways, they haven’t, so back to your question:

The average leader of a foreign nation (=AI) acts quite dumb here and there… …sometimes they go for a very special city site near the north pole… …then this special city site is taken by a rival just before the own settler arrives… …now they estimate a city site near the south pole to be the best available and order the same settler to go there… …even when it takes some hundred years, leads through hostile territory and has a chance of about 100% of NOT making it there… …lets have a closer look:




… look there, this looks like the cultural border of a barbarian settlement (indicated by the read arrows, because it’s really hard to see), so maybe Bren was even beaten by barbarians in this special settlers race. You should send a scout up there soon, to find out if it’s worth to conquer this barbarian city.

By the way, why haven’t you opened borders with Ash?”

“I had open borders with Ash some while ago, but since Bren and Alex seem to be best buddies and they both don’t like Ash too much, I thought that it would be best only to side with them and closed borders with Ash again.”

“A wise decision… …something else, why are your Londonians sinking all their fishing boats and are drowning themselves in the process in big groups?”

“They are building glass bottom boats… …without glass… …watching this is even funnier then turning them to stone.”

“Ah… …don’t you think that this may be for example a reason why you aren’t able to keep up with the other nations?”

“Why?”

“Well… …as you have found out already earlier, killing your citizen slows you down. So do you think there is a BIG difference between killing them and watching them kill themselves???”

“Hm, now that you mention it… …two more beers please.”

…

“Thanks for all the beers Don Deity. But I really have to leave now. But before I leave I have one last advice for you:

When you finally have researched alphabet, try to trade it for math and ironworking. All other technologies aren’t that important. And remember to do the math trade first, because the other nations won’t give you math for alphabet, once several nations know alphabet. And mind the moods of your trading partners, so you don’t get a penalty for trading with “worst enemy” with a nation you plan to do a trade later…”

“Why math and ironworking?”

“Math you need to increase your chopping revenue and it is also a valuable technology that opens up some very interesting research options, like calendar, construction and currency. And you will need it on your way to philosophy and civil service.

And ironworking enables your workers to chop down jungles and reveals iron. Additionally, you need it to advance to compass, which would allow your civilisation to build harbours. And early harbours can do miracles sometimes…”

...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

 

[Snaaty]

And it turned out, that there really was a fairly good spot to settle in the northwest, towards Bren’s land. It was at the bench of the same river then York, so the English people started immediately to establish a river based trade rout there. They called the city Hastings and it was found in 1210 BC. Next to Hastings were growing some strange spices, so once the English would have learned the skills to work them (=Calendar), Hastings would be able to support the whole English empire with spices. One of the axes had been sent to Hastings, to provide a decent defence, while the initial scouting warrior had been retreated towards Nottingham, to do some scouting there.

In addition, two workers were immediately ordered to Hastings to chop down the forests nearby to speed up the production of a monument. Then Don Deity planned to use Hastings to produce/chop some additional settlers, since there wasn’t much else the city could to right now… …on a second thought, Hastings seemed even to be of quite little use now, and, to make things worse, the city was severely dragging down the English economy due to palace-distance.

Still, Don Deity hoped that Hastings would prove worth the investment rather sooner then later… …once the cultural borders would expand, Bren would have to make a quite big detour to reach the lands between Hastings and London thanks to the mountains north of Hastings. So if Bren really would try to settle our backlands now, we would have quite some time to react and to send a settler on our own…


Hastings and surrounding areas (with the mountain passage soon to be blocked, marked):




A small farm, near Hastings:

“Dad, what are all those signs around our house with the strange looking fish for?”

“They are a warnings, son. Don Deity himself had them had put up. But they are not only near our house, they are ALL over the world (nobody in or anywhere near hastings could read... and apparently this poor boy´s dad hadn’t been around very far in addition…)”

“What warnings are they?”

“They are the reason we never swim in the river nearby, or in any river.”

“Are they monsters?”

“Yes son, remember those other signs… …those with the boats with the torn of planks in the middle… …they show us that those mean and dangerous monsters even can chew big parts out off the middle of any boat.”

“Is this why we build all our boats with double floors?”

“Yes son, it reduces the transport capability of our boats almost to zero, a great part of our boats even sink without being loaded because they are simply to heavy (and lots of people drown because nobody can swim of course… …they don’t really have lots of chances to learn it… …mainly because they don’t enter any running water... …except when drowning of course…), but we have to protect ourselves… …that’s why Don Deity had had those signs put up in the beginning of the world the oldest one of Hastings says… …he really cares four his people and wants us all to be as save as possible…”

…

They REALLY REALLY REALLY should invent a public school system in Hastings… …or any school system… …or, if all else fails at least kill the oldest one there…

…

Since the advice of Don Deity’s drinking fiend had proven to be good in the past Don Deity decided to stick to it again. So the warriors from Hastings simply passed by Nottingham and went further up north to do some basic scouting near the barbarian settlement there. And it turned out, that they really revealed some quite interesting things…




The barbarian city, the city of Chinook, was situated on a desert hill, surrounded by two gold resources. There even was a sweet water lake and two rivers nearby. In the west of Chinook, we could see now a part of Bren’s territory (not very good I have to admit, but you can believe me: it’s there…), while in the east Ash’s territory seemed to stretch up along the river. Bad news was, that the city of Chinook was on a hill and guarded by 4 archers… …so our chances of conquering it with our own army of 3 axes were quite small…

Still Don Deity ordered one troop of his Axes up there, to give word immediately if some other nation was trying to capture Chinook… …perhaps they even had a chance to capture Chinook, once some defenders were killed…

…




Another more or less important milestone for the growing English empire happened to be in the year 1090 BC, when Canterbury was founded to finally secure once and forever the marble east of London… …the founding of Canterbury wasn´t planned that early, but as you can see in the picture above, the brave English settlers were obviously forced to do so, because Ash was approaching with two archers and a settler… …and loosing the marble site to Ash would have caused a severe blow to the English nation at this stage of the game…

But since the city of Canterbury was up and running now, a workboat was immediately ordered to be built there, to harvest on the nearby fishing grounds. To speed things up a little, some workers were chopping down the forests nearby. Later, some more workers were planned to be equipped in Canterbury, then a monument would be build there… (or the other way around, we will see).

…

At the majors house in London:

“I think we are running into problems, lord major…”

“What sort of problems do you mean?”

“Look at our empty treasure chests… ...and still we are running a deficit of 2 gold pieces per turn at only 60% research… …I still think it was a mistake to found the city of Canterbury right now.”

“But we had to…. …if not Ash would have taken the marble site and I don’t think that you would have been man enough to tell that to Don Deity.”

“Well, OK then, I can understand why we had to found the city of Canterbury, but why the city of Hastings???”

“I also don’t understand it… …it’s too far away, earns no money at all and therefore really drags down our economy… …it would have been way better to just fortify the settler on this spot, to secure it for later use (like when we would have been able to make some real use of “spices”)… …but what’s done is done, we cant change that now… …and NEVER EVER tell Don Deity anything of this conversation, understand?”

...

...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

@ mrchadt: Please post 1030 BC save, thanks

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

 

[mrchadt]

Here's the save.

 

[Snaaty]

I´m on a business trip for about 2 weeks, so this story will take a short break.

But good news is, that I have just played the next turnset (up to 800something BC) and will try to do the writings and post before I finally have to leave (maybe tuesday)

 

[Snaaty]

With the founding of Canterbury, Ash’s access to our part of the world from the east was finally blocked completely. And Nottingham blocked the desert and river delta between the two mountain ranges up to the north… …only Hastings was doing a very poor blocking job, even after their borders had expanded, because Bren spread out like a plaque and seemed to be able to settle around it without too much difficulty. His cultural borders now even reached almost as far east as the barbarian city of Chinook…

Seeing this, Don Deity ordered the people of Hastings, to speed up their work on the next settler. Another wood there was allowed to be chopped down by them and Don Deity’s hopes of covering a more or less decent shaped empire were based now mainly in Bren’s eagerness to sent out settlers all over the world before occupying the neighbourhood. But in the end, this only meant, that another city would have to be founded very soon by the English, which could pretty well ruin Don Deity`s economy completely…

And, even worse, only one or two more or less mediocre cities could be squeezed in between Hastings and London. What Don Deity needed right now was a plan to recover the English economy… …and it better be a good one…

…

On the market square in London (which is packed with English soldiers):

“Why are all your men here?”

We always meet all here, Don Deity...”

“Hm… …ok then… …you go with your men northward, and fortify on the hill near the city of Chinook.”

“How many men should I take with me Don Deity?”

“I don’t know, maybe 50? How many men do you normally take with you?”

“It may vary… we usually throw the dice and everybody with a number smaller then 3 is allowed to stay home…”

“I think we need to change that…”


A shout from the background:

“Why is HE leading us? He ALREADY was leading us when we were stationed near Hastings!!!”

“Umh… …well… …maybe because he is the commander of your troop?”

“No, he isn’t! We are all EQUAL in rank…”

“HSMF??? And how did you decide up to now who is in charge then???”

“This is VERY easy…

We have invented a democratic voting system all by ourselves… …it works like that:

Every one of us has 17 votes. He can either vote for himself, anyone of the others and, if he wants to, he also can split his votes. Those who haven’t been with us during the last mission get a minus of 5 votes. John, who invented the system, gets an additional vote. Billy, who joined the troop just recently only has 13 votes, and Bob, who is always drunk gets only…”

“Ok, ok, ok… cut it short… who NORMALLY leads your troop?”

“Well, it’s John. He seems to be very lucky and always wins with one vote more then most of the others, except of Billy and Bob, who normally have bad luck end up last and of course…”

“Quit the details… …may it be that most of you tend to vote for themselves quite often, don’t they?”

“Yes, of course, why should I vote for somebody else???”

“ARGH… …we need to change that also…”

…

In the mayor’s house, ten minutes later:

“…is ALWAYS in command. And every basic unit should contain 50 people. Did you write down everything?”

“Yes Don Deity every single bit.”

“So go now and tell all our troops of the new structure. And IF anybody of them EVER dares to mention to me again this idiotic voting system or the stupid dice throwing…”

…

Don Deity was starting to feel a little desperate. Not only was his small empire on the verge of running broke… …even worse was the fact, that he felt surrounded by fools only. He even had to avoid completely thinking about the English army after the disastrous meeting in London, because the thought alone brought back the aching head, he suffered quite often these days. He needed some good news and he needed them right now…

…

And there really was at least some good news not much later. In 1030 BC, some English scientists suddenly approached Don Deity and even before he could turn them to stone just to prevent any senseless discussion (he still had enough from the discussion with the military guys…), they managed to explained to him, that they finally managed to invent an alphabet of their own. And this alphabet would enable the English nation to start selling and trading their technologies with all the other nations on the continent.

And Don Deity REALLY needed some techtrading now, or at least some backfilling of older technologies, because the English were still lacking some essential basic technologies like agriculture, masonry, animal husbandry…

So Don Deity invited the leaders of all the nations met so far (Bren, Alex and Ash) to London to check on their technologies and his trading possibilities. It turned out that the English really had a monopoly on Alphabet so far and Don Deity therefore was able to get the most important deals done without any problems:

Alphabet – Math (Ash)
Alphabet - Iron (Alex)

Since Bren not even had writing, Don Deity gave it to him for masonry so he could trade alphabet for polytheism and animal husbandry not much later with Bren. These were quite important trades also, because now horses on the map were revealed (and off course it turned out that the English had none so far… …but once the borders of Canterbury would expand some more, the English empire would eventually gain access to horses… …which might be quite important by the way, to keep open all options for our future peaceful plans…) and all prerequisites for Literature were met. Still Don Deity would have to do some more backfilling on his own, but he decided to address this problem later, after Literature would finally be researched (it would be quite nice to have agriculture for example, for obvious reasons…)

…




Not much later it turned out, that Don Deity had made another wise decision some while ago, when he had sent the 50 axes towards the barbarian city of Chinook. In 835 BC, Bren really was going for the barbarian city with quite some troops. Still, Don Deity deemed Bren’s chances in taking the city only about 50%, because of the 4 archers garrisoned there on the hill… …with a little luck (what we can’t influence) and Bren acting dumb (what we expect) we really could have a chance to snag it after Bren has killed most of his troops there…

Except the soon to come heavy barbarian fighting around Chinook (which hopefully would involve the English axes in the end), not much happened in the early English empire and so Don Deity´s scientists were working heavy on Literature, and the English people concentrated in equipping mainly workers. The English working power so far already contained 6 groups of workers, but two more were planned (one already in production).

…

Some approaching barbarians were killed here and there, and even some barbarian axes appeared, but thanks to the restructurations Don Deity had forced into the English military system the English axe regiments (which already had some shock promos and were fortified on strategic locations) there were not much English losses to moan for so far.

This is what London looked in 835 BC, with both, gold and silver, hooked up:




As you can see, a library had recently been build and two scientists had been set to work immediately. The first Great Scientists is supposed to appear in 11 turns and London now has a huge trade revenue thanks to a foreign trade route with one of Alex’s cities of two gold pieces per turn (hurray, hurray).

…

The small English empire in 835 AD (with the newly discovered horses nearby marked by the read arrow… …and lots of other, partly completely useless, stuff marked with lots of different and very bright colours):




Seeing the overall map of early England didn’t really help to bring up Don Deity’s self confidence very much …although he liked the bright colours somehow… …but all in all, Hastings was still not connected to main England (and basically shouldn’t exist at all on a second thought), which only meant, that at least one city between Hastings and London would have to be build soon. The English needed to get their territories united to one empire. So Hastings was still chopping out settlers at full speed although any new city would only drain more money Don Deity didn’t have… …he needed a plan to save or gain some money and he needed it right now… …proceeding like this, things really could become ruff pretty soon, and there could be dark times ahead for the English empire, even without being invaded…

...

I’m happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.

mrchadt will provide the saves for this game from now on (my DB-space is gone…), thanks in advance.

@ mrchadt: Please post 835 BC save, thanks

...


See you Soon

Snaaty

 

[mrchadt]

Here's the next save.

 

[Adam Elvin]

I am also following this story with interest.

 

[Snaaty]

@ Adam Elvin:

Welcome on board...

...

@ All:

I have some good news concerning this story:

1. I´m already back from my trip, but some of you might already have found out about this all by themselves, because of the post

2. I had some spare time during my trip and have already played the next two turnsets, bringing us up to 200something BC

3. The English are doing surprisingly well

4. We are quite close to some MAYOR action now

5. I will try to do all the writeups during this week, bringing you all up to date

6. I got myself BtS. I will install BtS and run the last patch as soon as I have checked on compatibility with this game. This are good news, because now we can find out first hand quite soon what the "better AI" really is worth (warlords get´s also patched by running the BtS patch)

 

[Izipo]

6. I got myself BtS. I will install BtS and run the last patch as soon as I have checked on compatibility with this game.

Well, AFAIK the compatibility is : Zero !
You cannot play a vanilla game in warlords, right ? It should be the same with warlods -> BtS.

Maybe there's a trick using worldbuilder, though. KmadCandy posted something along those lines (difficulty change) sometime ago.

Good luck for the upcoming action.

 

[Snaaty]

Well, AFAIK the compatibility is : Zero !
You cannot play a vanilla game in warlords, right ? It should be the same with warlods -> BtS.

...

Good luck for the upcoming action.

...

Thanks for your reply... ...but at least (IF I got it right), all improvements on the AI are implemented in warlords also and installing and patching BtS should result in patching warlords to the same AI (or am I wrong in this???)

...

Another important question now is:

Am I right that I can still run a warlords game after installing BtS when using the warlords CD??? (thanks in advance to anybody for answering this, because this is QUITE important for the survival of this game then...)

 

[Sweetacshon]

Yes, you can do that. The only problem you MIGHT have is with games with modified assets, eg that are "locked" for pbems, etc

If you think you might have issues, zip your CiV 1.61 and Warlords 2.08 (but don't delete), install your BtS with the patches, and if you need the previous ones, extract them to ~\Civ 1.61\ or whereever. If you use the .exe in that folder, it'll load up 1.61. Same for warlords. Many people use this dual installation.

BTW I never mentioned it before, but this story is great, as was your Persian one before it. Keep up the good stuff!

 

[Izipo]

Thanks for your reply... ...but at least (IF I got it right), all improvements on the AI are implemented in warlords also and installing and patching BtS should result in patching warlords to the same AI (or am I wrong in this???)

When you install BtS, IIRC Warlords is patched to 2.13, wich gives :

Warlords Patch 2.13 Released! 07-19-2007
84846989 bytes (82MB)
Check for Update!

These are the Change Notes:

# Ship combat odds no longer affected by crossing a river
# Game no longer crashes when you load a save with the diplomacy screen open
# Fixed bug where ships could sometimes attack ground units
# When the user is the last human player in a multiplayer game, the retire option now works properly
# Forts act as cities only if they within friendly (ally or vassal) to the defender borders
# GameCore DLL no longer loaded from CustomAssets folder. Mods can still have their own DLL
# Fixed pop-rush rounding bug
# Fixed absenece of production popup for conquered city under certain circumstances
# Fixed multiple missions exploit from the same Great Person
# GNP graph shows total commerce generated, not only raw commerce
# Just one Cathedral required for OCC
# Barbarian Spearmen and Galleys appear as intended
# Fixed crop yield history reset on load
# Fixed removed spy teleportation mission
# Fixed hotseat tech chooser bug
# Game no longer hangs when you retire from a one-player hotseat game
# Widescreen Laptop video resolution 1280x720 is supported

So, no AI changes as far as I can see.

Another important question now is:

Am I right that I can still run a warlords game after installing BtS when using the warlords CD??? (thanks in advance to anybody for answering this, because this is QUITE important for the survival of this game then...)

Yes, sure. No need to zip anything when you play single player. Just use the CD of the version of your choosing (vanilla, C4W, BtS). Having different versions installed is only useful when you use specific mods that are not updated with the last official patch and want to play MP at the same time (where you need the last version).

Btw, are you sure you want the better AI on Deity. Man, you're tough (or crazy)