The scientist-spam works, and Amsterdam is blessed by a Great Scientist who founds an Academy, which boosts our beakers per turn from 952 to 1030! (373)
Amsterdam will not be building National Epic, though, as we plan to take Cuzco and plant the NEpic there to have a tandem GP-farm thing going on between the two cities. [Editor’s note: math analysis will show that I should have put the NE in Amsterdam anyway to get the most GPs in this game, but whatever, it wasn’t a critical error given that the rest of our start up to this point.] (376)
We start selling our world map around. (378-83; mostly not pictured.)
Roosevelt, sit down and shut up. As a vassal, you do not even have the ability to declare war on us should we refuse to give you anything. (384)
We would love to do this during a golden age to save a turn of anarchy, but whatever, switching to Emancipation and Free Market in just one turn is pretty good, too. (386)
We are doing okay in power rating for the time being. Replaceable Parts->Rifling is up next. Only Korea does not yet have gunpowder, but we will leapfrog muskets in favor of riflemen in just a few turns thanks to our massive gold reserves allowing for a deficit research rate. (389)
I stopped playing at this point to take a breather. It should be interesting to see how this game stacks up against the first run-through. The game so far is eerily similar to my the game the first time around, except that I was a bit faster to take Scythian this time and therefore got more cities out of it; unfortunately I also built far fewer workers this time, which slowed down the development of many cities. Another major thing that changed is that I took the advice of y’all and settled the city east of Amsterdam; it should be a dominant naval yard eventually and take the burden of producing naval units off The Hague and Amsterdam, which are commerce-oriented cities. The last major thing that changed is that Inca went after Astronomy this time; the first time around nobody went after Astronomy for a long time, allowing me time to spam privateers like crazy. It ought to be harder this time to suffocate our rivals.
Renegotiated with Ragnar to up the gpt we get for cows. (389c; not pictured)
Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism are dominant. Suleiman-Ragnar on Buddhaland are a strong pair. Sitting Bull and Gilgamesh are both Jewish. Capac went Free Religion on us, which sucks, as we are left as the only Hindus now, other than Capac’s colony (America). (389d)
Prod cities have been focusing on infrastructure during this lull before Riflemen. Replaceable Parts means that we’re getting really close to Rifles. (389e)
We ignore the Mil Trad research. Although we can get Cavs in about 7 turns, we don’t have the kind of production necessary to get the mass cavs needed to run over a Protective civ like Korea, or a civ on the verge of Rifles, like, well, everybody. Note though that Haarlem gets hit twice: water poisoning and granary arson. Also, Maastricht is getting pummeled by Native American culture, so it builds Hermitage to try to cope. (389f)
Suleiman says that it is theoretically possible to bribe him to DoW on someone, but we just don’t have enough tech/gold. Ditto with Ragnar. (389g; not pictured)
Gunpowder done; we go for Rifling next, as our prod cities wrap up their building construction and will resume unit construction when we can build Riflemen. (389j)
Beginning with screenshot 390, we again trade maps around with everyone and make some money in the process. There’s no use in hoarding the maps now, not when more and more rivals are getting Astronomy and can trade maps with each other. (390-1; not pictured)
Just in case we can’t easily get Divine Right later on to activate Spiral and Versailles, we trade with the least advanced civ to get it, in exchange for Banking and Paper. (392)
The Amsterdam continues its scouting voyages. (393)
Even with copper and all the other bonuses like Bureaucracy, Amsterdam is taking a long time to build the Statue of Liberty. It’s such a hugely important wonder, though, that we forsake monastery and bank construction just to shave off a few turns from its completion. (394)
Barbarians have longbows now. Earlier, we sent up some siege and veteran units to knock out that city and maybe gain enough experience points to get to level 4 = Heroic Epic time! The Galleon, or, excuse me, the EAST INDIAMAN, built by The Hague, Trompest in a Teapot II, is there to ferry troops across the narrow body of water. (395)
Wang Kon basically asks for Rifling. Yes, the same wanker who poisoned and sabotaged our cities repeatedly. (396) We refuse. He’s too much of a pansy to declare war on us in retaliation, though, as his hands remain empty. (397; not pictured.)
). also, for espionage, you might want to weight it so it doesnt give points towards roosevelt. Since he's just a vassal, and also comes in with Huayna's EPs, you'd have to spend 330ish points just to see his demographics, which imo, would be better spent towards the other civs.
Pictured: Rene Decartes, scientist/philosopher.
. how is he able to some what keep up tech wise with so many troops? I guess that may be why you were able to still get physic. you could probably handle any stack that he sends over (if he does before rifling), but it would probably still do a significant amount of damage, especially if he manages to take moai city since it would destroy the moai along with many other building right? I dont know how he feels about huayna, but i think you dont have to really worry about an attack from him too much since it's a lot more inconvenient to attack you that huayna.
