This is easily my best showing in the immortal U series...interesting that it's come on normal speed.
I was thinking of bribing alex to war vs AC again but held off. I could easily protect myself from him now, but he was pleased with me and cautious with his target, which he chose w/o bribes a 2nd time:
I just took advantage of the opportunity to expand peacefully a bit more, filling in my final spots, chaining irrigation, and slowly teching away from them.
No records broken here on the lib win, but global rate was slow so I won it and took the blah tech choice:
I was expecting to get taj w/ marble but someone I hadn't met beat me to it...grrr.
Meeting the other continent I discovered that I was slightly backward (no trades of consequence will do that) but not bad, and everyone was way ahead of Alex/AC.
I keep current with the usual EP focus when getting gwall:
Mind you, no slider efforts into grabbing this stuff.
After whipping in some unis for oxford and then getting oxford in thebes/some trades with other continent I get rifling @ 1515 AD.
Again, seems kind of slow, but way faster than the idiots I'm next to (they definitely helped slow me down). The other factor that slowed me a bit was the fact that I was able to get 12 cities settled without war. The map has some areas that are pretty good for hammers. I went theology and had been spamming maces and catapults @ 5 xp prior to getting to rifles. Therefore, the rifling war prep did not take a long time at all
. A great merchant one of my cities popped earlier was burned in china via a caravel, and off I go:
Accuracy cats are more hammer efficient than trebs for bombardment, and they're slightly better with collateral...the only caveat is that you will lose them. This didn't concern me. I frequently needed little or no collateral to have > 95% odds with my CR II rifles. Alex had some troops but it was all medieval, and pretty soon it was all toast:
Techs:
I'm set to steal corp from AC in a few turns.
What's my VC here?
Well, obviously the easiest one. UN. To clear the UN requirements I need to:
1. Declare on and capture all of AC's cities to get a decent amount of pop
2. Make sure someone other than myself or china builds the UN. Asoka and charlie are likely tech gift targets.
As AC is pretty behind (no replaceable parts/PP) and doesn't build a lot of troops, a 3 way stack split assault should make short work of him easily. Nobody has electricity yet so I can easily direct mass media to whomever I want.
I have a -1 with mao for declaring on alex. I am in his favorite civic and have started gifting him resources ahead of time, however. He does not like AC. Between civics/fair trade/OB/resources he'll be friendly before the UN is built or shortly after.
I THINK that will net me enough pop. If it does not, I'll declare on sitting bull with infantry/arty or something. Nobody likes SB, and mao hates him.
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