predator, diplomatic.
My initial idea was to claim the remnant of Arabia, then proceed against Greece. This way i would have freed the MPs in the 2nd core, collect the 3 remaining luxuries and (hopefully) generate a leader.
Too bad i discovered that my trade reputation against Arabia was toast. How? I don't know. In the whole game i
never bought hard stuff for per-turn payments, exactly because i didn't want to lose the ability of buying techs for gpt.
To check out things, i saved the current turn and loaded the turn before war with Arabia had begun (10 AD). My trade reputation is clean at this point. There's a RoP (which i didn't exploit) and a trade in which
they are paying gpt for a tech. For what i know, losing the trade rep would require the exact opposite.
Well, guess what? If i declare war, i lose the trade reputation. D'uh.
Anyway, lesson learned. If you
sell the AS hard goods for a per-turn payment and broke the deal, you suffer a rep hit as well.
----
Back with the game now. Those were the AS picks:
- Greece: Medicine
- Germany: Steam Power
- Russia: Steam Power
To be able to buy Fission later i must keep Arabia alive then have the right scientific AS to declare on them so they'll forgive my "ghost" betrayal. The consequence is that Greece must be kept alive as well.
Or else i could declare on Arabia, have Greece and Russia declare on them (gpt), buy Medicine and Steam (waaay more gpt), then declare immediately on both, thus marking myself as the world villain. This looks like the simplest choice, but 1) there are likely to be Arabian settlers wandering and 2) Mecca is for the most part Arabian.
Too much war and too few units to settle this thing quickly (not counting the attitude issues). So i went that way:
_540AD: Nationalism (research); Steam Power, Medicine (trade, Germany);
What now? I desperately need worker power, there's too much to do on the 2nd core. We'll bet on Industrialization, usually a good pick for the AS
_610AD: Electricity (research);
_670AD: Replaceable Parts (research); Military Tradition (trade, Egypt);
_710AD: Scientific Method (research);
Meanwhile i had waged war on Greece, seized the luxuries and obtained the leader, thanks to my all-elite force. Greece was actually a whimp. They were badly hit by the barbarian uprisings at the start of Middle Ages and never recovered. Their land was for the most part still unroaded, and the uprisings of the Industrial Ages made things even worse. So there wasn't anything to expect from them in terms of research assistance. Alex is left playing OCC in a southern town.
No one has researched Industrialization yet, and this is more than a nuisance. The leader was initially intended to rush Evolution ASAP and claim Atomic Theory and Electronics for free. I could still do it, but that would delay the building of Commercial Docks and neglect the chance to get Flight from the AS. So i decided to build Evolution with the prebuild and keep the leader for rushing the UN.
The lack of Industrialization after 23 turns should have sounded like an alarm bell. Too bad i ignored it:
_780AD: Atomic Theory (research);
_790AD: Industrialization (trade, Germany);
_820AD: Sanitation (research);
And now full steam ahead toward Combustion:
_860AD: Corporation (research);
_900AD: Steel (research); Refining, Combustion (ToE); Democracy (trade, India);
That's when i became seriously worried. The AS were way too slow in researching the optional part. But by then it was too late:
_940AD: Mass Production (research);
_980AD: Communism (trade, India); Navigation (trade, Germany);
_990AD: Electronics (research);
1030AD: Motorized Transportation (research);
1070AD: Radio (research);
No signs of Flight. The AS went for Economics and Free Artistry instead. And so the disaster is complete.
1100AD: Economics, Free Artistry (trade, India);
1110AD: Flight (research);
Gifted the AS, declared on Arabia, turned everyone against them, bought Fission, rushed the UN. End result: a non-exceptional diplomatic victory in 1120AD. Firaxis: 5476. Jasons: 8879.
Final comments
Sanitation was actually a good pick. When you own the Pyramids and there are some cities that could grow way beyond size 12, hospitals are your best scientific buildings. Mecca nearly doubled its scientific outcome:
Apart from that, my strategy was a complete screwup. The turns saved in buying Fission were offsetted by the turns spent in researching Nationalism, and the attempt to get Flight from the AS resulted in negating the benefits of buying Industrialization.
With hindsight, it would have been better to simply buy the bonus techs with gpt, declare, forget the idea of buying Fisson and live with the penalty issues. Greece and Arabia could have been easily purged, leaving only one AS seriously against me (Russia). And of course i should have spent the leader immediately on Evolution, pick the canonical Atomic Theory and Electronics and go along without thinking about AS assistance.
Being creative does work... sometimes. And sometimes it does not. You never know.
It is definately not a good win (only about 700 Jason) but much better than losing.
. In a diplomatic game, a five turn lead can easily be lost if no sci civ gets Fission, so it seemed to me that I was in with a real chance of catching tR1cKy.
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