I left off telling you about an adventurous gang of swordsmen chasing glory in Spain. This war started in 850 BC. We were able to capture 5 towns, including the horse town, destroy one and build some new ones in the large gaps that the AI always leave. Some temples were rushed. In 290 BC, we finally got a leader, with only 5 active swordsmen left. One town has flipped back to Spain.
In 430 BC we became a republic, but this was followed by problems with unit support as we built up troops (archers to upgrade to beserks, then more beserks and knights) to deal with the world leaders France.
Meanwhile, the decimation of Spain has had a good effect. Their research is not as fast as that of the others (Mongols, Russia, Japan) and I have been able to trade some techs with them. Without that opportunity, we would have lost a couple of the late MA wonders.
Here are the Bjoergvin wonders up to the IA:
1790 BC Colossus
925 Great Library
550 Forbidden Palace
110 Hanging Gardens
30 AD Sistine Chapel (leader)
370 Leo's Workshop
530 JS Bach's Cathedral (leader)
630 Heroic Epic
820 Shakespeare's Theatre
850 Smith's Trading Co (leader)
The worst wonders to miss were the scientific ones. Copernicus' Observatory is hard to get, I knew that, but Newton's Academy is more sorely missed. The main reason was poor research capability and the main reason for that was that France was a tough nut to crack and my long-planned palace flip to Paris was much delayed by many musketeers fortified on hill towns!
Now, around the time of the Christening of Iceland, I have reduced France to one town on the other side of the world. Flip risks are minimal (during the siege of the infamous, rock-solid Orleans, our workers chipped in and chopped a whole temple for Paris while it was still in resistance, despite one flip and one recapture.) We are now ready to join ten native workers to Paris and all available troups are meeting there. We will need a lot of troops to avoid the palace being flipped to Bjoergvin instead. It has a rank of 50 in the CivAssist meter. But this won't be a problem.
A nice detail is that France have built several wonders for us: The Pyramids, Sun Tzu, Copernicus' Observatory, Great Lighthouse, Great Wall and the present world leaders Russia don't have a single great wonder. But this was also the reason Orleans was one of the worst fortresses I've encountered.
As we enter the IA, Russia, Japan and Mongolia have Nationalism but probably not Communism or Espionage. Russia has Steam Power. I will research Medicine and try to trade it for Steam Power or at least a part of Steam Power. Then I will go straight for Scientific Method, build ToE, trade Industrialism and hurry Universal Suffrage - we have a leader stashed away.
There may be time to build the Military Academy before saving up for ToE. I haven't checked that yet.
Everyone except the measly English and Arabs have Military Tradition and have had it for a long time, so if they decide to gang up on me I may be toast. But I have good trade agreements with Russia and the others are involved in other wars.
The main problem will of course be to avoid a Space Ship victory for the AI or myself. The 20K win date will propably be after 1750 AD, and Russia has had a much too long peace. We have to involve everyone in big wars very soon. I loathe the thought of having to launch massive, destructive attacks on gigantic metropoles just to slow down research. If it comes to that, I won't finish in time.
Still, I'm glad I tried this. 20K on deity is really a Rolls Royce challenge.
Picture: Leader scurrying back to Bjoergvin to hurry JS Bach. I think he susequently beat two foreign cities by 1 turn. I examined S:t Petersburg about 10 turns earlier, to see if I could hand-build this wonder, which I couldn't, and knew that it would be close when the leader appeared. But it was a Japanese city that cascaded to Magellan the same turn I completed JS Bach, and not S:t Petersburg.
