I love work - I could watch it all day!

[coanda]

And true to the title, I've decided to put up a game which has one (and only one) driving force - let's run as lazy an empire as possible.

Foreign policy: I'll do my level best to avoid fighting any lone-wolf wars after the initial rushing phase. Joining a dogpile in progress is easy enough, or paying an AI to do my initial fighting for me then jumping in for mop-up.

Internal affairs: I see no reason to build wonders, when the AI's are perfectly willing to do that for me. At most, I might build Oracle or Taj Mahal if the situation for it is truly... golden (sorry). While founding a few cities might be necessary, it's always easier to let someone else go to the trouble of clearing the land and building the city, then simply settle yourself into the governors residence and start collecting taxes. Expansion will be primarily war-driven.

Research and Development: If there's one thing some of the AIs are good at, it's teching quickly. So why not let them? Then I'll beg, borrow, or steal to get the techs they went to the trouble of discovering. This means I'll be running heavy on espionage and light on science.

Victory: Anything goes... but Space Race seems like it'd be way too much stress. Defeat is also a perfectly good option for that matter - winning can be so much trouble sometimes!

Without further ado, the settings and start:
Emperor, Fractal, Epic; no random events, no goody huts. Everything else default. Gotta go with the Philosophical, Spiritual leader here: GANDHI! Seriously, the guy even skipped eating sometimes, it was so much work. Or something like that.
The start:


I figured I ought to start this off on the right foot (or off the right foot, firmly seated in a comfy chair, as the case may be), so rather than walking around I went ahead and SIP.


So there you have it. This is still sort of in the formative stages, so suggestions (either style or strategy) welcome - anything to keep me from having to do all the deep thinking myself. And if I don't like your suggestion, I will probably blithely ignore it while sneering at your weak mental capacity behind the cover of internet anonymity. Or maybe tell you why I don't like it. One of those.

 

[pi-r8]

seems like you'll want to go for a time victory here. Although ironically that's one of the harder victories to win. You could also go for culture, since that means a lot of turns just watching the culture points build up, and you don't need many cities.

 

[vranasm]

nice starting position with good leader...I will borrow the start for normal play I think...at least for some first XX turns...

btw does the laziness mean that you will turn slider at 0% right from the start ?

 

[pi-r8]

also you definitely don't want to build too many workers...

 

[stefista]

Did you read the civilopedia entry for the fast worker? I believe it says something about India's ability to construct roads and temples on remote mountain tops and other evidence of India's historical industriousness.

 

[coanda]

@pi-r8: Time actually was the victory I was hoping for, but frankly I don't know if I can achieve it on Emperor without literally crippling the AIs... if it looks like that's the case, I'll probably go for cultural or diplo. Excellent point about the workers.

@vranasm - It's actually the third map I rolled. The first was plainscow and a bunch of other plains, plus probably some strategic resources; the second was a massively coastal start on what sounded (when I did some brief fog skimming to check for this) like a small, isolated island. Needless to say, the idea of having someone else do all the work isn't really possible if you're isolated. But I'm really liking this one.

@stefista - On the other hand, if you work fast then you can spend less time working! But yes, India isn't necessarily the greatest civ for the "theme"; I was more thinking about the leader traits, and Spir/Phil seemed like the best fit.

 

[coanda]

I suppose it's time to post an update. I played about 40 turns - enough to meet some new friends, check out the surroundings, and get through the boring preliminaries. In case anyone else wants to play the start, I've stuck the entire update into spoilers for now.

Spoiler :

Decided to go AGR -> AH. The Indian civilization didn't want to have to go foraging in the woods any longer than necessary; once they were growing food, they might as well put those cows to work pulling the plows and whatnot. Followed that up with Bronze Working so we can get these pesky forests out of the way.

Thankfully, our warrior didn't have to wander far to meet his first neighbor - Bismarck's scout found him on turn 3!


Bismarck's about 10 tiles north of Delhi. While checking that out, we quickly bumped into Pacal II, who's a little W of Bismarck, then eventually into Genghis Khan (no idea where he is; I'm sure he'll make his presence known eventually). There's some very nice land to work with here, although not that much of it.

Having finished with the farm and the pasture, our Fast Worker went on union break.


After locating all the land I was likely to have a shot at settling, I decided I'd done enough scouting; I'd let the AI figure out the rest of the continent for me then buy their maps when Paper came along. My warrior's camped out on what looks like a solid second-city site.
The world so far:



I'm thinking... let Bismarck settle 3 cities, then take them away from him with Chariots.

 

[UWHabs]

If your worker has 10 turns to kill, why not let him wander around the coast to the south. I know it's a bit of work to do, but it would certainly help out that little scouting.

Otherwise you have a great cap for chopping and cottaging.

And for spirit, running a lazy empire, you have to never turn off the governor for a city. You can emphasize food/prod/science/GPP, or force specialists, but you must always keep the governor on for managing the tiles.

 

[Lithuanian!]

I like this. Continue please.

 

[coanda]

Well this turned into a fairly comical round, which roundly demonstrated why I prefer axe rushes to chariot rushes - and why I'm not very good at recovering from a mistake early on in a rush.

Spoiler :

Gandhi looked carefully at Bismarck's empire, and decided "Nice empire. I'll take it."

Finished up BW, grabbed wheel, and chopped/whipped a dozen chariots. We marched in against Bismarck, and...
Huh. That is a combat-1 spearman on a 40% culture hilltop capital, isn't it?


The wise man would have cut his losses at this point. That would have meant marching my chariots all the way back home, so instead I attacked.
The Indian forces seized Munich quickly, then got bogged down in hit-and-walk warfare... for the next millenium.


Finally, Berlin fell after a long and bloody war of attrition in 925 BC. Barely.


And now the situation is looking golden. Bismarck's settled enough cities I don't need more settlers of my own. Pillage gold should help keep me from needing to actually have an economy. Pacal got Marble, so he's probably building me some nice wonders as we speak. And Genghis is sitting somewhere on the far side of Pacal, just waiting to kill Pacal's armies off for me. Oh - and I may be a bit behind in tech...

 

[lymond]

Whoa...that was way to much effort for one round...I need a nap