Fall Patch Boogaloo: What Measure a Utopia?

[smallfish]

Elsewhere in this fora I started a mini-AAR that massively deviated colorfully enriched a strategy thread with some examples of diplo hits...

Yeah I'll just get to the point. I'm on vacation and I'll be on Emperor!

It's no secret that when I dial down to 6, rampages tend to happen more often than not, things like diplomacy will jump straight out of the window and the AI is well... bullied. Thoroughly. Like two civs losing their workers and settlers just because I happened to be incredibly livid that... ugh, I wanted to have some peace and it might have been possible with GW, but it didn't come fast enough.

Hence Baby's First Cultural Victory

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Now ya'll might be wondering: what exactly happened after Gao was taken? Why was Jeermany not mentioned much, and did that blatantly hinted at war with them actually take place and super randomly omg crazy AI?!... well, calm down, we'll get to that.

In fact, the AI is quite rational. Its playing the Great Game, folks tend to forget that it is extremely treacherous and well there's this saying someone once told me: "People never forget the things you want them to forget"

In CiV, that tends to hold true for a really long good time

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Thusly, one must always keep in mind that people do not forget things such as the extermination of an entire civilization... plus the fact that you just hogged a wonder capital city, and possess extremely ~legendary~ lands to pursue...

For now, we had a spare Great General and there were really no immediate foes to be had. So we put it to good use instead, securing a vital trade route from foreign bedevilment plus an extra copy of that juicy luxury

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We had hoped that the Hagia Sophia would have been available, but sadly nope - Sejong the Tech Leader took it and used it to enhance his already founded Confucianism

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He had also apparently secured a peace deal with Bismarck, whom we paid off many turns ago to ravage the Coreans from gaining a greater lead

Apparently it involved Landsknechts helping themselves to Busan

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Then at the dawn of the second century AD, a Great Prophet finally arose within the walled jewel of Delhi

Who could fathom the Mind of Brahma?

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But trouble went afoot - the Germans had decided to settle Essen on that hill with marble and mountain. Apparently they had deigned their spartan eyes on jungle-carpeted Vijayanagara, our third city we gotten laid down before the Fall of Songhay. And fall they deserved.

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Thus we paid off Bismarck to have another go at Sejong for something cheap... something like less than a hundred gold and a lux

(Did I mention we also sold horses to them? )

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But Bismarck was becoming an aggressively serious city builder, so much so we considered denouncing them... but perish that thought, what India needed now was to spam some wonders

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... well, maybe not.

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Or rather, definitely yes! This secured us an alliance status with one of the CSes... Vatican City IIRC

But then Sejong decided to plunge a vital CS into war with the Germans

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Entering the Renaissance ourselves before the 9th Century

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Bismarck caught up not long after, and he was at peace with Sejong again so we went and paid him off again to have another go at tech leader

With Landsknechts, he was more than willing - to ignore the other Great Wall wonderspammer:

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Then just before the 11th Century, most hateful Polynesia loses his capital. What manner of foe would be going on a rampage with his capital?

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Then terrible news struck - Sejong beat us to the Forbidden Palace, and the Germans were in command of Brussels

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As we went off and discovered new uncharted lands to the far east, Sejong again completes Himeji Castle... perhaps his only solution to the German Problem

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Then we met him, the Conqueror of Rome and Genghis Khan and every other Immortal Civs Polynesia. He had a ton of cities and was the score leader in almost every respect

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A look at the known world then:

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and fallen Honolulu - notice that instead of being puppeted, it is annexed. Yes, the AI will now annex and rushbuy units in their puppets if it feels the need to, and it can become a big problem

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Then we met the other inhabitant of that continent

He eventually asked us for embassies, and we told them "mil agua" since he was not a threat at all

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Sejong is tech leader in every sense of the word, however - here he manages to take the Porcelain Tower at 1150 AD (T175), a bit too early for Emperor but not surprising on Immortal or higher

Oh well... we had bigger fishes to fry anyways, such as the spreading of our money-grubbing religion

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Then a timely Great Engineer arrives in Delhi to finish off

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and lo we saved another Great Engineer with one of the most crucialest of culture buildings but oh my...

oh dear...

oh, jumping Buddha on a pogo stick You Will Pay For This

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T200 - Sejong enters Industrial Era

T202 - the Huns settle Tepexpan close to our capital, too close for rational comfort actually. And we did not give them any embassies at all...

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We entered Industrial ourselves three turns later through Archaeology, and the next turn the Lourve was rushed into existence in Delhi

Two GAs immediately settled on already worked tiles of horse and farm because there was no empty space left

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But this stealing of land was quite serious... so serious, and since we had no other crucial buildings or wonders to build, it was time for military buildup instead

Because we had no other source of iron and was dumped with two Swordsmen at penalty... well, there will be no frigates for now

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"Ich kann nicht warten bis Ihr noch mächtiger geworden seit. Bereitet Euch also auf den Krieg vor!"

It sure did take him ages for him to finally say this though

and he brought in good ole Kamehameha for good measure, apparently


NEXT UP: How to fight Industrial Era opponents with only Knights, Trebuchets and Crossbows

(it was real messy business)

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[Heerlo]

Nice to see ya doing a story again.

NEXT UP: How to fight Industrial Era opponents with only Knights, Trebuchets and Crossbows

That sounds like fun.

 

[smallfish]

Nice to see ya doing a story again.



That sounds like fun.

Aye, danke

and yes, it was sorta exciting. Bismarck played well with his mounted units, but I wondered what actually happened to his navy (we'll get to that). With its absence, his attempts to actually do a combined arms assault... didn't really go well.

I lost quite a bit of units (not shown)

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NNWE of Essen, you might notice that he had a lot of units for a seeming flank - that's apparently because he was going for a new city, a spammy one.

He had the Kremlin, which boosts his city attack damages, so in some ways it makes sense but I'm not totally sure it was worth the cost because it quickly fell and got razed

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Because I was rolling in cash through Hinduism (Tithe)... it was time for me to pay off someone else really large to do the dirty legwork of creating a second front (or at least a major nuisance)

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But the Iron Chancellor would have none of it! Gandhi needs to be absorbed into the Greater German Reich, and what better way than to have him give up everything he has maybe except his cities but we can take that later anyways mwahahaa

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Then Delhi completed Oxford, and I was given the chance to bulb Radios which brings us to

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Someone elsewhere on this fora just recommended that I do this... but its kinda a no-brainer eh. I guess my point about the power of Trebuchets against units fell by the wayside (more like thrown into the ditch midway through)... and so we went with good ole worker's bait

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You might be wondering here - how did I jump from -2 to 5 irons? Didn't that iron tile contain only 2 irons and is that a FRIGATE?

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Whoa there, folks. Yes it is. Yes I managed to get a really timely sauce of 6 irons close to my core cities... and it was thanks to the power of Culture

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So now we have this insane two tile chokepoint where Bismarck sends his advanced units to go and die

The worst part I think was that now I had a Frigate to double the firepower of that garrison there

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Nah that's not the worst part. He was now very angry and wanted my own city itself

Basically it's this - I will send down that worker to repair that other pillaged citadel, and everytime some fool Germans will try and grab it without fail

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At least he now annexed Brussels for rushbuys

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Every turn a bait and kill, and now I had a second Frigate with Bombardment I off the bat

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Now for a look at the power of Hinduism; only Christianity has been able to surpass it, and by 3 cities only

For our enhancements (not shown), we took that +8 additional culture for Hermitage and Itinerant Preachers which is really powerful stuff when it comes to spreading your religion everywhere

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Now things were getting (a little) serious... Bismarck finally wisens up and sends in two cavalries to nab that worker and play overwatch

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Well, it went well, two dead Cavalries for no loss... well it looks like he has Artillery too

This might hurt a bit

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Then we completed the pre-eminent wonder of the Modern Era - the Eiffel Tower. The Statue of Liberty was snatched by Bismarck, sadly, and he was a communist to boot...

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Now I did it might hurt a bit... yep, he now has a shot of breaking through my lines there

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"What's the matter? Tired of battle? It won't end until I dominate zee welt with Deutsche Efficiency!"

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In this following shot, we finally mounted an amphibious counterattack now that we had at least five Frigates

With disastrous results

(that Gatling gun sitting in my citadel is a Crossbowman who has +1 range promo and all three dots in the rough terrain excellency)

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But still, we managed to pull off an ole fashioned Frigate Assault especially once that sixth Frigate came into play, liberated a vital Cultural CS as our own personal ally... and boy the response was now big

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At this point in time, we had quite a few CS allies who either kept changing hands or we would throw wads of cash at

Bismarck was now back to being keen on helping himself to our luxes, gold and cities

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Apparently they threatened our very existence...

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Brussels managed to change hands literally... so we went back in, and this is why I love the border mechanics

All his well-prepared troops instantly flung out of Brussels and all over the place

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Still that didn't stop him, and since Brussels was not a city of ours, a city under the protection of the Great Wall, it meant that he could rapidly bring to bear his infantry units

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Oh, what's this? You want to give up now after I killed your artillery and infantries?

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Ah, this makes much more sense. I figured he also caught wind of this fact that mutual neighbor Sejong was planning on liberating one of his captured cities from him

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[smallfish]

But what really happened was that our dear friend Attila the Hun finally got fed up with us over one too many CS pledges. I was planning on holding on till Bismarck gave up a far larger sum for peace... but this sudden backstab was too much to bear

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Thus, we had no choice but to just go with this

The luxes in particurlar helped boost our happiness beyond 40 and if we ever needed natural Golden Ages they will come easily (not needed - the 100-turn Golden Age propagation through GA burning is not a myth at all)

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I figured the moment he started settling cities all around my lands it'd be nothing but trouble

And would those barbaroi happen to be thou?

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Then we caught wind of Sejong's Masterstroke - striking at the Germans after they've been Versailled (lol)

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It's kinda boring having such a one-sided war... so we tried to help the poor Jeermans by bringing in the other kind of "Hun" to help out

It was quite cheap to boot, probably because he is rampant warmonger

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See that Golden Age we are in? It never ends, I'll tell you that now. So we can afford to trade some luxes and gold for another kind of lux to fulfill some cultural CS's wanderlust

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The Siege of Daegu by the Heer:

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We never made mention of the other player in the game, the Celts. Boudicae never really recovered after the Huns took some of her cities (and presumably razed them down), and eventually her capital was taken by them too

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Completing quests! Here our frigates (and an embarked Knight further out) were on their way to clear a particularly troublesome encampment of luddites

On their way, word came in that the Aztecs were caught trying to steal our stuff (and got stuffed for their troubles)

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Despite being aggressive settling this days... the AI never changes. That Hun settler there not captured? We freed it from another rebel who got wiped out by a frigate barrage


Now Sejong, who never really liked us since the Fall of Songhay, seemed willing to settle down and sign a pact of mutual cooperation...

... that kind of went out the window after our latest round of espionage on him got caught red-handed (spy remained unscathed; free techs)

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Not the smartest thing you could do there, Monty

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By now we were busy trying to chug into Atomic Era (Bismarck and Attila beat us to it) when word came in that the Germans had Apollo in their hands

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I knew that was going to happen eventually

Indian gold and resources weren't involved... or were they?

After so many games, even our last Culture win War of 1812 Utopia, we finally had the chance to get this wonder

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This is what a serial ICS runaway is like - takes over his entire continent, or most of it, and then goes forth to expand into someone else's landmass.

Mine.

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I figured there would be trouble... Attila was not Neutral, but was very Hostile and thus suspectible to declaring war on a whim. Plus he and Bismarck were Comrades.

Plus Bismarck was back to Neutral, again.

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But at T318 - Gandhi completes Manhattan Project. We still need to slog through Railroads and then Ballistics line before we can finish Nuclear Fission... but the footprint is already there

A look at our policies of the day (and nope, no Autocracy)

Also 40 turns of Golden Age I told you it was perpetual

4 trees finished, 1 left to go and the last would be the best ever tree to finish

Then we checked what was the world scene like. Was there another war looming... I'm not sure if he was being extremely deceptive or he just wanted to be friendly

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The Germans finally made peace with Sejong's Corea, and Daegu was theirs

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Then one of our submarines, sent to prowl and uncharted south of our continent, discovered the sole reason we never saw much of the German Navy in our last war with them

They were all stuck in this ice-locked sea, and there were two of them (the other facing the Coreans...)

So much firepower isolated here, a fradulent waste that will probably never get fixed even if the devs see this

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More Hunnic spammy nonsense, this time there was no pretense to be logical at all (except maybe if he conquered a few cities up there and had them annexed for rushbuying harbor)

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Our DMZ with Bismarck the Great People's Friend:

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Made more worrisome by the fact that he was in Information Era, and had just completed Manhattan too

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Vijayanagara's Sydney Opera House - helped us to finish Liberty asap

At some point we paid off Attila to declare war on Moctezuma... and now this paid off as we got to witness a devastating naval assault on the Mexica Peninsula

The Huns were going with blitzkrieg

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But an even bigger surprise came when he offered us a hand in friendship

Again.

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Well, I had to accept. Simple as that. Just watching him eviscerate Montezuma in some 10 turns made me do that

At some point, Bismarck wondered why were there a lot of units on his borders, perhaps not realizing the point of a "DMZ"

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Then Chairman Attila asked us to join in war with Polynesia... this we heartily agreed with

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The death of Polynesia was pretty quick, but we managed to snatch this unknown CS ally before it became part of Hun

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Now we were really cooking with fire. Atomic Fire.

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And it was around this time that the moment to finally deal with Jeermany once and for all came to its head

"Give us 10 turns, while we prepare ourselves"

And prepare the Indians did, for Utopia was at hand

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[Heerlo]

Looks interesting...

 

[smallfish]

Looks interesting...

Yeah I made some edits to screenshots that got double posted. That 30 pic limit isn't helping, even though its better than... some other fora I frequent. Other than that, it is boring. I never tried culture because... sheer boredom, and on Immortal I'd just get bamboozled into Domination or Death. But its something interesting to dwell for future projects, eh.

But Cho, I do wonder - what kind of a city do you think this is?

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The Huns, with ten times the number of cities, could never match the sheer brilliancy of Indian Culture

With only 3 core cities and a puppet, we managed to rate almost as high as Attila's bois in population

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So we both agree that this is kinda boring end to a questionably interesting game, right?

You saw that air stack and the artillery massed on Essen, right? Well they are all now Rocket Artillery but I digress.

I never liked you Bismarck, thanks for your worker in the ancient times, now it is time for me to help myself to your lands

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The funniest thing was that he built this wonder - the Great Firewall (a Great Wall for spies) - in Essen a turn before I attacked him.

Thanks for the wonder, Otto

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But for now Gandhi was surprisingly mute on using nuclear weapons

Instead, he opted to tear chunks off the Germans' rear lines through merciless application of $$$

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A reponse was attempted - we were not sure if he was concerned with Brussels or our thrust through Essen to Frankfurt... and he brought in an atomic bomb to boot

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Oh right... we managed to take Bremen here, and gifted it to the Huns who automatically razed it down anyway

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But Gandhi. Nukes. Civilization.

OUR WORDS ARE BACKED WITH ATOMIC BOMBS... this is sadly not a lot of units, but I guess that is what happens when you spam too much uselessly placed naval units and are drawn into a three front war

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The German atomic threat was gone for now... but we couldn't be entirely sure it was permanently off the table

So we made it thoroughly sure by nuking this uranium mine

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Before long, Berlin fell in a speedy blitzkrieg that would've made Manstein proud

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Our bombers, non Logistics, had to recuperate after beating down Berlin... and so we brought another two atomics and used them to bring down Munich and some other Hamburgers

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The only problem was that our Scarcher Machine Gun, a long lived fellow from 3000 BCE, was caught in the blast. It died when these two cities fired at it.

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His death would usher in a new era of Peace with Germany, however

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And bring forth a glorious, splendorous Golden Age for all time to come, such that the Ganges would spring new life a thousand fold in a thousand worlds to come

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Fin

 

[Heerlo]

Congrats and .

And 46 population....that's about as much or more as my capital on Into The Future.

 

[Mike III]

nice job. cool story. now lets see how I end up...

 

[ense7en]

Love the writeup!

 

[The Pilgrim]

Your glitches look especially attractive with nuclear apocalypse in the background.

 

[smallfish]

Thanks ya'll!

Congrats and .

And 46 population....that's about as much or more as my capital on Into The Future.

Aye, its doable with just about any river start really... and I presume your cap has a river too eh? Just put it on food focus when not building crucial buildings/units or wonderspamming, and it'll somewhat do.

nice job. cool story. now lets see how I end up...

Vell, vell hav to see dat thread o' yours, but soon eh

Love the writeup!

Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Your glitches look especially attractive with nuclear apocalypse in the background.

Indeed, they are very spiffy reflective flares of artificial sunlight eh




But now I feel like exploring new maps that haven't been shown much around here. Mainly been playing Continents and Hemispheres (and some variations thereof), so we decided to do Frontier Continents. It's... proving to be an interesting ground for some "peaceful" starts, and maybe when I get back to 'mortal I'd put Raging Barbs just for kicks to see how much worse things could go but I digress (Frontier map has tons of barbs by itself tho. Tons)

So let's have some Room Enough For DOWs

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Apparently we started off as ole favorite Pachacuti... not so many hills around either at first glance. A rocky start indeed, but hey a river

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Further explorations revealed that there were an alright amount of hills in our surrounding area. Still not the Incan Start, but since its 6 I won't need such a start anyway

And hey look our first contact!

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She was quite Friendly. The only problem with that is that I'm not interested in a peaceful game, and here we are about to show ya'll a fine example of an aggro start

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Not so great to see me again now aren't ya?

Well the scout died to massed arrows, but the price of a free worker was worth it... and this is Frontier we'll get more on to it

The worker began his long trek back to cap, and with Andean Road, the hills were free roads for it to escape marauding barbs and Carthaginian scouts prowling the darkness

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Was DOWing this early really a thing to do? Absolutely

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On the way back, the free worker proved his immediate usefulness... by stumbling upon a ruin that gave us 20 Faith. We had gotten 8 Faith earlier by visiting Wittenberg (CS in the south) first, and gotten a Shrine up asap... so Pantheon was quite guaranteed now

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Was presented with some hard choices - Desert Folklore... or good ole Monument to the Gods Wonderspam?!

Getting Great Wall and some other wonders up asap was the thing to do, and since there weren't many desert tiles around the cap to begin with...

Monuments it was

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Then we finally met Selassie... and he had oodles of cash. Like 400+ in his private funds that were unused

Quite rare a thing in the post-Fall CiV, I must say, and I put it to good use giving him some truffles

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Then just as our 3rd settler was about to go settle along the coast with marble... the Ethiopians founded Christianity in 1640 BCE

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The problem with unescorted settlers... is that they are heavily reliant on luck

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Like this and oh my barbarians so many of them... This is the highlight of Frontier maps, folks. Lotsa barbs than in normal games, and I suppose they'll come in way bigger herds with Raging on

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We took that worker from her at T23. It is now approximately 52 turns later, and she still does not want to give up the fight... I'm figuring she is one of those tough cookie AIs, and I'll keep that in mind for future raids

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Another highlight of Frontier is that with so much open (and barb filled) spaces between the empires, there are plenty of Ruins to be found and looted

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Finally after I got a handful of Slingers up and upgraded into Composite Bows, Dido offers us a generous sum to end the war

A little bit late for such a deal, but we'll take it anyways

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And apparently Haile Selassie has more cities than both of us combined... enough that the very turn after peace Great Pachacuti was greeted with Carthaginian offer for a joint war against Ethiopia

Not really interested... but we'll keep that in mind anyways since we just discovered ruins... and more ruins... AND EVEN MORE RUINS

I think this is becoming my next favorite map type

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Also Carthage now wants to be Friends with us... will this end in backstab who could say now eh?

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The main thing was that just south of Carthage was the recently founded Ethiopian city of Adwa. We had a composite bowman and a Slinger prowling around when they chanced upon an Ethiopian scout... yeah you might guess what happened next

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I figure it might distract from wonderspamming (he built Stonehenge some turns ago, which really set me off to be honest)

Also, my scout chancing upon more ruins in the deep southron wilderness

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So we managed to hurt the Ethiopian scout rather badly... and "raided" Adwa by taking potshots at its garrison without being in range of city defenses

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Then Manila whom we pledged to protect in the early days of exploration and swashbuckling trekking against Carthage, now wanted us to protect them for realz by sending in units.

So Monty is on our continent...

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One of our more notable Ruins from the deep south...

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Now the Ethiopians were willing to give us loot to make us back off... but Pachacuti felt it was too little and frankly so little for this late

So war continued... and now Carthage took his weakness as her opportunity

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We don't know what will happen to Adwa (it looks like dancing and kumbaya with a Carthaginian archer getting killed...), but the fun is only about to start for real

(Haile Selassie entered Medieval some turns ago)

 

[smallfish]

Well actually, the war stopped with alright peace deal, and things looked to be settling down for a series of wonderspamming. This map as someone else pointed out is really crazy huge; part of the charm is the... sheer expanses you have, probably why I'm seeing tons of barbs (and ruins) than normal (seriously, every dozen of turns there will be a barb camp or two around the edges of my borders)

It's quite fun... and since this is new map, I'm going for something I haven't touched for sometime.

The Hanging Gardens

A wonderlust dream

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Our poor Slinger Scout got cornered by the hordes of Barbarians in the south, and got killed pretty quick. Rest in peace

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We tried going for the Pyramids in our second city... but it was eight turns too far. Same thing with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and the Terracotta was a pipe dream

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But a couple of CSes, one of which was mercantile Singapore, wanted the HG really badly. So I figured then that I had a good shot at finishing it, and lo it was indeed one of those games

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Then we went for finishing National College, and a religion! Divine Inspiration looks interesting enough, we are sorta heading down the path of Culture here after all...

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Now good friend Dido asks me to join her in war with the Ethiopians - again. She made peace with him more than ten turns ago after taking Adwa (surprisingly enough), but her thirst for dominating the wonder capital of Addis Ababa was legendary

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So naturally we agreed; also a look at us barb hunting for border security and completing quests

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Three turns later after we dealt with an encampment nearby, Singapore was fully satisfied with us all round and joined in our random slugfest with Selassie

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Our tiny piece of real estate in this large wilderness

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And yes we completed them both... a cap with both Hanging Gardens and Petra, few would dare to dream such a powerful combo

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Haile Selassie giving us half his arm and leg, a common theme in this game since the dawn of time

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At T133... or 450 AD, word came in that some unknown bugger lost his capital. Now I'm not going to name names here, but judging by all the fellas I placed in that list, it has gotta be Harald

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Another wonder - the Hagia Sophia

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We wanted to enhance Judaism with Itinerant Preachers, which is extremely powerful stuff when it comes to spreading your religion like hotcakes... but Selassie was smart enough to nab it long before us

So we went with the Poor Man's Preaching: Religious Texts

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And of course, Religious Art for this is a Culture game of sorts

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Things began heading downhill when Dido appeared out of the blue moon one day and stabbed us in the back

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She was still at war with the Ethiopians, couldn't break through Harar even with CBs and elephants... so I suppose she wanted an easier target to pick on

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Easy being a really relative term, especially with someone who has the Great Wall and an innate ability with hills

The problem was happiness - I wanted Notre Dame for 10 smiley faces and some extra faith output, but someone else beat us to the punch. Especially galling since I was few turns away from a Great Engineer who could have rushed everything in one piece

So instead, Inkan society was stuck in unhappiness, the curse of Ekkekko's Depression

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So we immediately headed straight for Banking for another source of happiness, and since we had a GE and not too many players were in the Renaissance (or Industrial, for that matter), there was a good shot we could nab it good

Worryingly enough, there was a second peace between Carthage and Aethiopia, and this one ended with Haile Selassie ceding control of Harar to her

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On the same turn we entered Renaissance, the GE was put into immediate action and made Cusco a Forbidden Palace

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Ibn Battuta's Guide to World Military Rankings:

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Great Pachacuti tried getting a DoF with her again, but she was totally not interested and then we knew trouble was afoot

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Carthaginian units at the southern edges of Tiwanaku:

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It might not have been alarming had she not shown all these other stuff hanging behind them

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Ya'll could probably guess what happens next; it's too predictable, and that Neutral status really gave it away

Big Time

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[Heerlo]

Oh boy.Now you're gonna need to be Scipio...

 

[smallfish]

Oh boy.Now you're gonna need to be Scipio...

Nah, we don't need no Scipio. What we need is some Medieval units... and That Wall. I remembered once when I played a duel game with someone famous hereabouts; the only house rule that was laid down at game's start was "No Great Wall". Of course, as it turns out, even if I had GW he would have gone to town on me anyways (he was Persia with Chichen Itza), but the point is that the Great Wall is an invaluable weapon - both for defense and offense.

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Combined with Inkan hills and Slinger bows, they make for an almost impregnable opponent to crack

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We wanted to grab Himeji, but someone went deep bottom techs much further than us apparently. It could have been Monty... or Nappy (a fav beeline of his)

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Why did I say Monty? Because we met him not long after this shot, in tow with a Danish capital of Copenhagen, and it turns out he was score leader the second

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The poor Danes... rule of thumb I have for Monty is if he is starting on jungle heavy area with only one or two other "conventional" buggers like poor Harald (or Darius), its very likely that our favorite Aztec warmonger will gobble them up real good

Also, for some inscrutable reason, Moctezuma here was quite unwilling to pay full price for my goods. I wonder why is that...

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He wasn't as close to me as they were... and surprisingly, despite having a full continent to themselves, the Iroquois were not tech leaders at all

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The AI's idea of Barb Hunting - Mohawk rush

Meanwhile, with the failure of their south-east rush, the Carthaginians now opted for a heavy blitzkrieg with elephants and trebuchets from the east

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They managed to make some headway... before being stalled by a certain legendary Great General and some composite slingers

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Dido wanted all our funds, and was "generous" enough to opt out the luxuries and cities bit

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We figured Moctezuma was on a continent pretty close to ours, but on the side of Carthage... and since he is a big time warmonger, Great Pachacuti went up to his altar one day and asked what would it take for him to raid certain peoples...

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Similar prices for the Carthaginians as well...

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So we modified it a bit, he heartily accepted and now Carthage was at war with a score leader

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It was apparently too much to bear for Carthage, with her coastal capital and a ton of obsolete units

She gladly accepted a peace with honor

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THE FOLLOWING TURN ~

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Well, why not. I do wonder if she would stab me in the back again (probably), but it was great to see no hard feelings were involved

I didn't like the fact that Haile Selassie took the time to overtake us in wonders by building the Leaning Tower of Pisa, so I asked Dido "would you be interested in a war with Ethiopia?"

And so Ethiopia was once again at war with everyone on his continent

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Quite a needy fellow too, this Dido, but why not

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In 1400 AD, the Iroquois founded Hinduism in the holy city of Onondaga. It certainly derailed Inkan plans for spreading our own religion to fresh new lands... peacefully

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Our very first Great Scientist, gotten through building the Porcelain Tower - instead of bulbing, we settled it on that recommended desert tile

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Barb huntin' ahoy - I regretted not taking Honor, because that would have been an absolutely great tree to flesh out in this map with the amount of barbarians running around

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We also had a free GE and used it to rush the Taj Mahal a turn before

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Then our caravels finally met him, the Score Leader, the world's greatest military mind to ever live

And he had an historical nemesis under his boot, apparently

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T204 - The Aztecs become the world's first Industrialized civ

Some turns later, a Carthaginian spy was caught trying to steal stuff in our capital. We... promptly forgave them and it looks like they repented...

Remember when I said that we weren't intent on spreading our religion "peacefully"? I didn't care what Hiawatha thinks, Judaism is good for him if he knows what's best in life

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You have defeated us - so be it. But our spirits will never be vanquished! We shall return!

T208 - the Aztecs settle their first city on our continent, in the heavily barb-infested south no less

T209/210 - our caravels met Germany, and as hinted with the French city list... they were not doing well

So we proceeded to do what AIs love doing when someone is about to get knocked off the gameboard world map

Hopefully it'll allow us to score more brownie points with Nappy (who "covets wonders you've built")

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Another generous Ethiopian peace treaty... not that there was much they could do, and expanding into the barb-filled south seemed to be too hard for them, so tall they went

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T214 - Berlin falls to French musketeers and cannonae

Then Hiawatha begins to turn extremely hostile towards us... I wonder why

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T217 - The Inka joins the group of industrialized nations; Germany ceases to exist as a Renaissance nation-state, absorbed into Napoleonic France

Then not long afterward, Hiawatha finally denounces us for being so far ahead of him

We then took this opportunity to tell him not to settle on our continent OR ELSE

Seems like he took it the wrong way, and not that he cared anyway

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[Heerlo]

So Nappy got rid of Germany before they could start fielding Panzers.

This expansion looks great.I think I might get it in the near future....

 

[Mike III]

dude, I'm in some deep cow dung. Austria has 2 ICBMs pointing directly at the cities I took from Babylon. The vast majority of my army is bogged down there, and could be vaporized at any instant. I haven't even discovered atomic theory yet. How screwed am I, and do I throw in the towel?

 

[smallfish]

So Nappy got rid of Germany before they could start fielding Panzers.

This expansion looks great.I think I might get it in the near future....

Indeed Cho, it is great stuff. This Fall patch has done a lot of things to make this game exciting... on Emperor.

dude, I'm in some deep cow dung. Austria has 2 ICBMs pointing directly at the cities I took from Babylon. The vast majority of my army is bogged down there, and could be vaporized at any instant. I haven't even discovered atomic theory yet. How screwed am I, and do I throw in the towel?

Not really - your puppets will get hit, but so long as the American Heartland is far from Austria, you should be safe and fighting strong. Space out your forces two tiles away from any American cities, and go take some Austrian cities if at war.



All that said, 'tis the time to shoehorn in a short update before we get to a Big Main Epic, a grand tale of One Man's Dream to do an Autocracy Culture and possibly it will all end in failure even though its 6... yeah, maybe not

Spoiler :

Not long after this shot was taken, Moctezuma approached us with a hint of war: this time against rampant city spamming France

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It might have been an undauntable prospect at the level above this... but Great Pachacuti cared not for peace for he was getting ready to loot as many culture as possible through massive colonial imperialism

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T226 - Napoleon finally enters the Industrial era

Also, Aztec General Patton the Vanquisher of Daneland greets an Inkan caravel visiting the port of Manila

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Great Pachacuti never really denounced Haile Selassie... but then he saw great opportunity to befriend a fellow American warmonger when the latter denounced Mexica for its bloody sacrifices

So denounced, King of Kings was

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Then Oxford was finished in the capital, and the Inkans propelled themselves into the Modern Era in 1595 AD

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[Heerlo]

Are you going after France?

 

[smallfish]

Are you going after France?

In not so many words... wait and see!

There was much preparation to be had in the Inka's sole port city, Machu. Trebuchets and Frigates were getting readied, the drums of war beating furiously red even as the smiley faces rolled green

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Great Pachacuti had to warn the world not to trust the Iroquois at all after they bullied some city-states... or maybe it was one of his many random whims

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But nevertheless, some turns into our military buildup and after our war agreement with Monty expired, the Napoleon offers us his terms of peace... more like a bribe for peace lol

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Not really interested in such a lowly sum, the Inka had to decline. After all they were building such a large fleet to take them head on, no?

And here we see Dido trying to antagonize a lion by patting its head... with a city

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It's an interesting continent, fa'sure. Carthaginian expansion in the north, while the French hems in from the south and east, not realizing that they have a massive runaway on their hands

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Streams of French riflemen reinforcing their Mexican colonial holdings

While furious battles raged between the outmatched French garrisons and their humongous Aztec foe, Moctezuma applauds the Inkans for calling out the Iroquois on their wicked Indian ways

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But just as our lonely and badly damaged caravel sights more French forces coming in to Mexica, word came in from the Vatican that they had been thoroughly stripped of their treasuries and citizens by the Aztecs

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But just then the Eiffel Tower was finished in Cusco...

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And then... not-so-terrible news came that the Iroquois had massed most of their troops on this mainland for a sneak attack against Ethiopia

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Perhaps they had all of their armies stationed there while their home islands were bare and empty...?

A new round of Nappy's bribery was accepted, now with the prospect of an easier war with the New Yorkers at hand

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Was their hubris that high and mighty to anger a potential aggressor?

Great Pachacuti then decided it was high time that they pillaged some Iroquois culture instead

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But in a moment of confusion, he accidentally denounced Moctezuma as well and lo the Holy Pope was satisfied well

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And so was our good friend Dido

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With an impending Iroquois attack at hand, we felt that the stacks needed to be stacked really high against the wonderspamming Ethiopians... and so we paid off Dido for 163 gold to attack them

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The Great Culture Crusade being readied off the shores of Machu:

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Then Napoleon offers us a hand in friendship, apparently unfazed by the totally random war between our two great peoples

Being random enough Great Pachacuti was deigned to accept it (and close off any potential hostilities from the far west for time being)

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Instead of opening another tree... we took Naval Tradition for a free Great Admiral to complete a CS quest and lead the upcoming assault

It was then that our French... friend decided it was time to treat us like a bank. For free. For reasons of pitiance and friendship, Great Pachacuti acquiesced to this rather large sum in the hopes that it will help them fight the Aztecs more effectively...

In 1695 AD, the Iroquois finally launched the long awaited assault on Addis Ababa

The poor, poor Ethiopians... so small and so at war with everyone else but France

Spoiler :

It was at that same moment when our naval forces were ready, with a promise of ground reinforcements following quickly, and that we asked our Great (if Denounced) Fellow Moctezuma the Second what would he like to do

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The first target was Genesse River, identified as the fastest route to Onondaga and thus a chosen beach head

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Iroquois forces were indeed nowhere to be found, having presumably been sent to their colonial outposts to launch that Ethiopian adventure

And finally Ethiopia gives up everything but the kitchen cities

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But on that same turn, terrible news struck - the French had completed the Lourve, a valuable wonder in our quest for culture

And we were at peace and unable to stop them by declaring... oh so they will pay

"Your warmongering is a popular topic these days," said the weary Ethiopian leader. "Better watch your back."

An Iroquois show of force finally came... two turns late, and so little.

Spoiler :

T254 - Cusco completes the Big Ben

A little after that... an Iroquois show of force finally went into Genesse River, hampered greatly by the Inkan Great Wall

Then in the next turn... Great Pachacuti sat down on his throne, stunned and disappointed, that great and potential (if denounced) friend Moctezuma had chosen to enter the path of Communism instead

With so many ruins abound, it was quite likely that some AI units would inevitable stumble upon those that gave them really advanced units

Like this Carthaginian Anti-Tank Gun here

Spoiler :

While the Genesse beachhead was static in wait for ground forces to actually arrive onshore, the French took the time to settle this spammy city north of Machu

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A nice look at our reinforcement pipeline: riflemen and siege engines streaming down towards Genesse

Finally in the late 1750 AD, Inkan ground forces had properly massed themselves towards the Iroquois capital

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While the Iroquois began taking this push far more seriously, the French finally made peace with the Aztecs after one of their newly settled cities was threatened with downfall

Instead, the Little Corporal began turning his war... thirsty attention towards our friend Carthage

We bluntly refused, being in the midst of a massive campaign to dislodge the heart of Hiawatha from his home isles

Spoiler :

1770 AD - the Fall of Onondaga

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[Heerlo]

You got the capital!