Hello there Civ forumers,
"long time reader, first time poster", i have kinda been lurking here for years now, and let me first take this opportunity to give a big thanks to all the community for teaching me what i know about Civ4 and now Civ5 basically
Well, i am currently trying to take a small break of the pangea-continents-fractal-pangea cycle, and getting to know the scenarios...
Did not really know what i was getting myself into when i started this scenario.. Jeeze what a game.. Originally i did not plan on writing anything about this game, hence why i did not take early game screenshots.. might be a thing to do in the future, maybe
In civ5 vanilla, i was almost quite definitely consistently winning on Immortal so for this scenario i gave this a try on that same difficulty level. What could possibly go wrong? (trololol)
Wall of Text
So I started as England, drooling in advance at the idea of a mighty fleet... More on that later.
We get a settler, a worker, and two swordsmen (which by the way don't require iron to build.. hmm does this by any chance mean that iron is scarce?)
Neat, the land is fertile around london and we get three social policies; it is definitely free settler time.
Then i quickly realize that i am going to have to do some seriously fast expansion as i see Bouddica planting a cardiff right in my face... Not cool lady! I thought this was a muslim/orthodox stomp fest...
I also realize the channel is two tiles large and i may just get settled in the face as well by the french!
I queue Nottingham and Hastings in a hurry, although due to happiness, i would later come to regret my overall city placement.. a bit.
Well, better safe than sorry, and on the plus side it will help my science, gold and production... At this point Bouddica was already pointing her finger at me for settling aggressively and purchasing land in her vicinity (guess Hastings was too close to Cardiff trololol).
Oh yeah and i forgot to mention that she was coveting my last lands one turn after i met her.
Turns go by, i build infrastructure in my capital while getting archers in the other cities.. I notice ireland has a potentially interesting location (Canterbury), so i figure "In for a penny, in for a pound" and go settle that.
A couple turns later, Bouddica declares war on me, and has... welsh longbows..
Uh Oh, taking a look at my tech status, i will have to stall her for 19 turns... Yeah because you see, apparently researching guilds for trading post over rushing lowbows was definitely NOT a good call.
At this point i am thinking oh crap the turn times are already getting somewhat long, let's see how it goes, i may just have to abandon this.
24 turns later i take cardiff and start putting the hurt on Truro.. And that is really a comment about Gods & Kings in general, i feel like Immortal AI produces much less units than it used to, which is not necessarily a bad trend, but maybe it is slightly too less?
Anywho, Truro is way harder for me to take; not a lot of places for my bows to shoot, the Braveheart trait is killing me, and there is no way i am going to beat her navy (especially if it doesnt grant me any advantage on land at this point)..
But joy! she decides that at some point she would be better off giving me Dublin and all her gold. Who am i to turn 2900 gold pieces down, plus now that i have Dublin, i can take her capital the next time, for i'll be able to pew pew her from all angles
I do just that on turn 104 and go: okay, half the turns are over, i have a couple city states, 66% of the map is unknown to my greedy little eyes, and my score looks abysmal.
my continent(s)
That is another point where i thought i should abandon, especially when Austria was marrying a city state every couple of turns...
But hey, I had england & Ireland.. So i focus on science and see what i can get from the caravel exploration victory points.. Well if i remember correctly i got all 4 (5?) of them.. Helps a bit, but definitely not what i have to be after if i am to go anywhere with this.
Pushing on to Ships of the line, i start feeling the power
But hey, reality is harsh; I have 2 iron, William has given me two for the last 40 turns but..
Gustavus asks me to denounce one of the few actual trading partners i had that could help me deal with my unhappiness (Genghis Khan).. I refuse and he suddenly thinks "I am showing my true colors, etc" and denounces me.
Few turns later, i get declared on simultaneously by Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria.
Why you no like me ):
anyways, in a desperation move i get Lisbon as i see it is Muslim and has a high pop.
oh, what is that city in the distance that has 6 Iron? well, a few turns later, many privateer sacrifices, i get it.
From there on i annex Lisbon and buy a ship of the line everyturn.. I now have 8 and although not ideal, i start thinking that all those coastal morrocan cities could be next.. Pew pew time, who cares about the religion, just give me those 6 iron!
The Gibraltar area
As i take the city of Kabis, and start working on Murcia after having dealt with a seemingly endless muslim fleet, Isabella says look, i have had it with you and your.. well, war it is!
quick recap: I am at war with Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the Berbers, i have been denounced by everybody else in the Christian world, including my old buddy Francis..
But fear not! as the Turks apparently love me to death, which in the end is better since they have duplicate luxuries
Turns fly and i get to t-14 turns when i realize, hey wasn't it the scenario where England had to conquer jerusalem to get an achievement?
shieeeet....
Well, i could try it, but i am tied in score with Theodora and Austria is not far behind...
On the way to jerusalem, i realize it is not coastal and let another shieeet slide.
this is where i ended up realizing it
Sicily! my actual birthplace! and look, Firaxis is implying that we were barbarians at the time too... Troll face straight back at you sir! Not professional
Well, i had to go berzerk after that, as you can imagine..
In the end, screw the achievement, eventually if i am feeling super bored i will try again from my last save and see what i can do with 3/5 of the known world at war with me and 15 turns to spare..
End game photos
My score on the last turn
Austria's population
B-b-b-ragging time
The known world at turn t-100
The known world at t-0
Short conclusions (for the lazy
)
That's it, sorry i didn't plan on a proper write up, but i must admit it was a nice game..
Long. but nice.
All comments and follow-up photo logs appreciated
Thanks again to the community, special thanks to Maddjinn, Wayniciv, Themeinteam and Bibor for basically teaching me what i know about the series without them knowing me
See ya
"long time reader, first time poster", i have kinda been lurking here for years now, and let me first take this opportunity to give a big thanks to all the community for teaching me what i know about Civ4 and now Civ5 basically
Well, i am currently trying to take a small break of the pangea-continents-fractal-pangea cycle, and getting to know the scenarios...
Did not really know what i was getting myself into when i started this scenario.. Jeeze what a game.. Originally i did not plan on writing anything about this game, hence why i did not take early game screenshots.. might be a thing to do in the future, maybe
In civ5 vanilla, i was almost quite definitely consistently winning on Immortal so for this scenario i gave this a try on that same difficulty level. What could possibly go wrong? (trololol)
Wall of Text
So I started as England, drooling in advance at the idea of a mighty fleet... More on that later.
We get a settler, a worker, and two swordsmen (which by the way don't require iron to build.. hmm does this by any chance mean that iron is scarce?)
Neat, the land is fertile around london and we get three social policies; it is definitely free settler time.
Then i quickly realize that i am going to have to do some seriously fast expansion as i see Bouddica planting a cardiff right in my face... Not cool lady! I thought this was a muslim/orthodox stomp fest...
I also realize the channel is two tiles large and i may just get settled in the face as well by the french!
I queue Nottingham and Hastings in a hurry, although due to happiness, i would later come to regret my overall city placement.. a bit.
Well, better safe than sorry, and on the plus side it will help my science, gold and production... At this point Bouddica was already pointing her finger at me for settling aggressively and purchasing land in her vicinity (guess Hastings was too close to Cardiff trololol).
Oh yeah and i forgot to mention that she was coveting my last lands one turn after i met her.
Turns go by, i build infrastructure in my capital while getting archers in the other cities.. I notice ireland has a potentially interesting location (Canterbury), so i figure "In for a penny, in for a pound" and go settle that.
A couple turns later, Bouddica declares war on me, and has... welsh longbows..
Uh Oh, taking a look at my tech status, i will have to stall her for 19 turns... Yeah because you see, apparently researching guilds for trading post over rushing lowbows was definitely NOT a good call.
At this point i am thinking oh crap the turn times are already getting somewhat long, let's see how it goes, i may just have to abandon this.
24 turns later i take cardiff and start putting the hurt on Truro.. And that is really a comment about Gods & Kings in general, i feel like Immortal AI produces much less units than it used to, which is not necessarily a bad trend, but maybe it is slightly too less?
Anywho, Truro is way harder for me to take; not a lot of places for my bows to shoot, the Braveheart trait is killing me, and there is no way i am going to beat her navy (especially if it doesnt grant me any advantage on land at this point)..
But joy! she decides that at some point she would be better off giving me Dublin and all her gold. Who am i to turn 2900 gold pieces down, plus now that i have Dublin, i can take her capital the next time, for i'll be able to pew pew her from all angles
I do just that on turn 104 and go: okay, half the turns are over, i have a couple city states, 66% of the map is unknown to my greedy little eyes, and my score looks abysmal.
my continent(s)
Spoiler :
That is another point where i thought i should abandon, especially when Austria was marrying a city state every couple of turns...
But hey, I had england & Ireland.. So i focus on science and see what i can get from the caravel exploration victory points.. Well if i remember correctly i got all 4 (5?) of them.. Helps a bit, but definitely not what i have to be after if i am to go anywhere with this.
Pushing on to Ships of the line, i start feeling the power
But hey, reality is harsh; I have 2 iron, William has given me two for the last 40 turns but..
Gustavus asks me to denounce one of the few actual trading partners i had that could help me deal with my unhappiness (Genghis Khan).. I refuse and he suddenly thinks "I am showing my true colors, etc" and denounces me.
Few turns later, i get declared on simultaneously by Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria.
Why you no like me ):
anyways, in a desperation move i get Lisbon as i see it is Muslim and has a high pop.
oh, what is that city in the distance that has 6 Iron? well, a few turns later, many privateer sacrifices, i get it.
From there on i annex Lisbon and buy a ship of the line everyturn.. I now have 8 and although not ideal, i start thinking that all those coastal morrocan cities could be next.. Pew pew time, who cares about the religion, just give me those 6 iron!
The Gibraltar area
Spoiler :
I ended up taking both Rabat (south) and Granada
As i take the city of Kabis, and start working on Murcia after having dealt with a seemingly endless muslim fleet, Isabella says look, i have had it with you and your.. well, war it is!
quick recap: I am at war with Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the Berbers, i have been denounced by everybody else in the Christian world, including my old buddy Francis..
But fear not! as the Turks apparently love me to death, which in the end is better since they have duplicate luxuries
Turns fly and i get to t-14 turns when i realize, hey wasn't it the scenario where England had to conquer jerusalem to get an achievement?
shieeeet....
Well, i could try it, but i am tied in score with Theodora and Austria is not far behind...
On the way to jerusalem, i realize it is not coastal and let another shieeet slide.
this is where i ended up realizing it
Sicily! my actual birthplace! and look, Firaxis is implying that we were barbarians at the time too... Troll face straight back at you sir! Not professional
Well, i had to go berzerk after that, as you can imagine..
Spoiler :
In the end, screw the achievement, eventually if i am feeling super bored i will try again from my last save and see what i can do with 3/5 of the known world at war with me and 15 turns to spare..
End game photos
My score on the last turn
Spoiler :
Austria's population
Spoiler :
B-b-b-ragging time
Spoiler :
The known world at turn t-100
Spoiler :
The known world at t-0
Spoiler :
Short conclusions (for the lazy
)- Immortal AI built a questionable amount of units; Bouddica and Napoleon, who usually build zounds of stuff didn't really do it this time. Spain and Morroco had an insane fleet, but didn't really commit (as in attack with 50% or more of it)
- I settled too many cities, the british islands have a total of 6 different luxuries, and i ended up settling it with 10 cities. On Immortal. I suffered quite a lot of this, until theatres and social policies came online.
- Social policy wise, i went liberty first, don't see much choice here.. the free settler from turn 1 is too good, especially because your cities start at pop 3 and settlers are subsequently more expensive to build. I then went mercantilism all the way starting from the right side, and it ended up beeing invaluable for me, both in terms of production and gold, allowing me to have a huge military and especially rush buy anything late game. After that i mxed in two or three policies in rationalism for the happy, can't say it was a brillant move though.. and finish with Order for the happy and friendly territory bonus (my own braveheart ) My only regret, skipping the left side of honor...
- The historical map script is interesting. 2 Iron for England. 2 civilization on a tiny weeny continent. enjoy. And again it would be fine if anyone else would have spare iron to trade but they don't. and to be honest at some point everyone start going bananas on you anyways, so. can't do much trading. and 8 Ships of the line is NOT enough, not matter how good you promote them
- The AI expansion pattern was really questionnable. Spain for instance chose to expand in the face of France instead of securing their own peninsula, which not only pissed France off, but also allowed the muslim to get a hold of good city spots in Spain. No civ went for the caravel vp bonuses.. go figure. and sweden had ample time to get a foothold in the baltics but never did so. I know i would have. straight opening to conquering heathen Russia...
- Protestantism life must have spanned a stunning 6 turns. My god, what a challenge for Roman Catholicism.
- Spies were useless for me this game (see my point about city states later). It was taking those some 70 turns to steal anything and by the time i got there i was ahead in tech anyways... oh, and no point having them in your capital either, you don't get stolen from.
- Research agreements are exceptionnaly cheap and you have very good relations with many civs early on so i spammed those as much as possible and ended up far enough in research to get 3 times Future techs..
- My best advice for this scenario though; have a kick ass computer
turns are soo so long..
- My second best advice for this scenario: Avoid going the patronage route. In fact avoid getting any city state. Its a lost cause, i dumped about 4000k gold into the vatican, not only did i get like 20vp * 30 turns out of that (versus rushbuying all the infrastructure possible in all my cities), but its slowed down my turn times by about 30 seconds as you have to sit and watch those city states and their meaningless wars over and over again.
That's it, sorry i didn't plan on a proper write up, but i must admit it was a nice game..
Long. but nice.
All comments and follow-up photo logs appreciated
Thanks again to the community, special thanks to Maddjinn, Wayniciv, Themeinteam and Bibor for basically teaching me what i know about the series without them knowing me
See ya
