Lonely Hearts Club LXIX - Montezuma of the Aztecs

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm still playing it, I'll post a report when I'm done. I had to take a break halfway and haven't gotten back to it yet, but i'm still just before checkpoint 2 (I say just before because on immortal SOMEONE will have caravels soon no matter what).

 

[spigo]

Long-time lurker here; noble, normal, no huts. Post-game write-up, hope it's detailed enough; I didn't take many screenshots until after I played it.

Checkpoint 1:

Spoiler :

I moved my settler 1E onto the plains hill for the extra hammer. I went worker > warrior until size 2 > settler. I went for agriculture, animal husbandry, the wheel, pottery, mining and I started bronze working. Next I went for Code of Laws through Writing, Math and Currency.

The land is very devoid of happy resources, that's obvious. HR is my friend here. I decided to settle 2W 1S of the marble for a nice science city. I've planned for nine sites in my dotmap.







I settled the silver somewhat early for the happiness bonus from the silver there. I settled Calixtlahuaca and Tlaxcala as production cities. Everything else is mostly commerce or hybrids. Tlaxcala was also settled for the whales and horses there. Atzcapotzal was settled for the fish before I even knew the iron was there, ditto for Tlacopan.

I have far too few workers, so I started building some in Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan.

At some point I got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and they took Tlatelolco while my cities still had warriors and chariots. I built some jaguars and beat them back, and didn't have any more barb troubles after that.

Checkpoint 2:

Spoiler :

I went for caravels around 1200 for the circumnavigation bonus (and got it). I'm a little bit behind in classical and midieval techs but I'm in good shape otherwise. I traded techs with the other civs and I'm at tech parity with them now. Ragnar's way ahead of me in GNP but not so much in tech. Cyrus and Shaka are a little bit backwards.

Cyrus and Hatshepsut are Judaist while Shaka and Ragnar are both Buddhist, while Wang Kon is Confucian, and it's clear that it's not making them very happy neighbors. Ragnar took Pi-Ramesses and Shaka took Alexandria from Hatshepsut. Wang Kon isn't very popular either, having only a few cities left after Ragnar had taken the Confucian Holy City and around two to four others.















Shaka is an eventual target simply because he's large and somewhat backwards. Here's the tech situation before trading much.



I used a large number of chariots in HR to keep my cities happy. With so few happy resources, it seemed like the way to go. I beelined Liberalism and used it for Nationalism, teching toward rifles and emancipation.

There's a small island off the west coast of the new continent filled with barb cities. I thought about settling it and capturing the barb cities on it, but it didn't happen.

Checkpoint 3:

Spoiler :

I commited to a military victory (either conquest or domination), so I drafted around four to five rifles each from my three northern tundra cities. I've never used drafting before, but I stacked unhappiness to get them out before Cyrus could catch up. I built some galleons in my west coast cities to take them to Cyrus who is still hopelessly backwards. 17 rifles loaded up and headed for Ectbana...



Lots of drafting unhappiness in the north cities, but I believe it was worth it. The drafted cities from west to east:

Checkpoint 4 (1963 AD):

Spoiler :

I won a conquest victory (incidentally my first) by vassalizing all the other civs.

I landed at Ectbana and took it, then moved toward Persepolis. I didn't leave enough garrison units behind the first time, so it traded hands a few times, but I got it in teh end. Next I took Bactra, then moved up through Susa and up to Dariush Kabir. Hatshepsut vassalized to Shaka in the meantime. He had cuirsassiers shortly into the war so I believe the drafting was nessecary to success.





I capitulated Cyrus and prepared to go to war with Shaka. I got a good size force of rifles built and attacked Elephantine, Bulawayo and uMungundlovu. Somewhere along the line infantry came in. Next I took Alexandria and Ulundi, and then Memphis, capitulating him and then Hatshepsut.



Ragnar went WHEOOHRN some time after the war while I prepared more units for a final push. In 1940, he declared war, moving a feeeble few units into the liberated Zululand area. By this time I had tanks, fighters and bombers and liberally bombed the units, destroying them with some infantry from the nearby city garrisons.



I made the push with City Raider tanks followed by a knight supermedic. Haithabu and Bjorgvin fall first, followed shortly by Roskilde, Jelling, Pyongyang and Seoul in that order. Ragnar offers Pusan and capitulation, and Wang Kon capitulates without taking any more cities.






During the war, Hammurabi moved several large modern stacks into my territory around Memphis and Nobamba, but they failed to take anything or accomplish very much due to my bombers and guided missiles.

Wang Kon and Ragnar also sent a few destroyers over my way to pillage my now-obsolete whales and my crabs tile in the east. I built a new workboat for the crabs and a pair of my attack subs sank the destroyers.

Going for the killing blow, my military gathers in Nobamba and moves toward Hammurabi's city of Mari.



Directly after that, Hammurabi agreed to capitulate:



I won a conquest victory, incidentally my first. Very cool video.



Civics ended as HR, Free Speech, Emancipation, State Property and Free Religion.

 

[ecuwins]

that looks difficult to accommodate the other city, hmmm

The main floodplain city was actually my second city. *Spoiler relevant up to Civil Service*

Spoiler :

I went for early cottages there and even used my first GS to academy there. It was better than my cap(commerce wise) at the time. Bureaucracy changed that.

 

[Capellan]

I've finished the game and will be releasing all the videos over the next couple of days.

1945 AD Conquest win. Which is kinda late for me to win militarily on Noble, but

Spoiler :

I was going to just peacefully tech to speace when Shaka started looking like a danger to win by capping everyone else. He'd already done Hatty and Wang, and was beating Ragnar pretty handily.

So I pumped out bombers, marines and tanks and introduced the AI's grenadiers to modern warfare

 

[Um the Muse]

Alright, I've taken this noble game to turn 265 (late 1700's). I could probably have been in better shape by conquering, but what's the fun in that?

Spoiler :

My capital is poised to take over the world...the corporate world, that is. Note that I have a GS sitting in my science city, and a newly-born engineer nearby.

Spoiler :

From what I hear, some people have managed to get a lot more science than this, but I think it's impressive anyway.

Spoiler :

This city is pretty much crap right now. I want to get forests to grow throughout that tundra so I can get an impressive national parks going. Is that going to be possible?

Spoiler :

From what I can tell, my empire is doing alright, though it is suffering from a lack of focus. I thought corporations would be the end-all be-all to winning and I've probably suffered from lots and lots of buying infrastructure w/o the Kremlin. Oh well, it'll be fun when I've got a monopoly on the world and fun trumps winning nine times out of ten.