As I eluded to previously the opener was Settler with FPs/Fur tile swaps while training a Settler. I worked the Fur only long enough to cut one turn off of research as each turn not spent on the FP greatly increased the Settler build time. Second time through it works and even more importantly is the only religion in the area for a while so no diplomacy issues as of yet. This in my experience seems to help with passive religion spreading. No clue if that is true or not.
Pacal has an archer up north so I risk an unescorted settler to where my warrior is stationed to the NE. I’ve always assumed the AI can fog bust for you and so far it seems to work. I found Barcelona 1S this time. It claims the rice, stone, cows, and fish. Barcelona is a very strong starting city due to the resources that will fade due to the deserts long term. This makes it a great worker pump and early wonder builder. Other than a forge, granary, temple (only buildings that were whipped here) and a single settler all Barcelona will actually do until the very end of this session is just that. Wonders and Workers. Also clearly the beginning of the Pacal box in.
Madrid grows a size then uses a forested hill to build a worker. Normally I’d probably have grown to size 4 and worked 2 FP and 2 forested hills in this situation to start pumping workers, but in order to build a massive economy ASAP this would simply take too much time – i.e. I’d miss out on some wonders. Instead once the first worker is out Madrid gets going on SH. Since I did not restart a second time, yeah I built it.
Meanwhile to quickly grabs resources from Pacal, Seville goes up down south. This is a very marginal city to found this early, but also very essential for what I am trying to do. I will need the wheat. I will absolutely have t have at least one city above size 10 with a forge. Even with the expansive bonus this will require grabbing all the early health bonuses I can since all forests must go quickly towards production of Wonders or Settlers/Workers. As a side note after founding Seville I realize I had neglected a ton of worker techs and had to back track for them as time allowed. Seville reminds me I need agriculture for both this city and the future Gold/FP city.
Pacal did the same thing in the last game that he does here. He founds his second city to the east on the coast and not trying to land grab to the west. There is still a city sitting there that can work some grasslands and gold. Not a great city however if he doesn’t take it now he’s not going anywhere. As such he does not go anywhere the rest of this session. Edit - Knew this looked wrong. This is a picture from the first game. Need to clean up my computer. Oh well you get the point.
During this time Madrid started on The Oracle and now it is done. This is when the benefit of “free” pottery really starts to come into play. Instead of researching The Wheel and Pottery in order to take MC Instead I work cottages the entire time while building The Oracle. As you can see on the left side of the screen two have already matured to Hamlets. Pacal also founds Judaism in here but stays Hindu for now. So then why am I going after Monotheism so early? Organized Religion! Oh also note that Elizabeth already has writing here, but no Alphabet like in my last game. She is not Hindu however as Pacal is slacking I guess this time around so she’s actually quite pissed at me compared to everyone else. Shaka is only barely worse off than me. Sheesh.
In the starting area we have Gold, Stone, and Copper. Okay, I have no interest in SP but Stone for Pyramids and Copper for Colossus. Stack this on with really early forges, Organized Religion (Hence Monotheism here), and a couple chops and suddenly massive hammer investment buildings become much less daunting. Isabella may not be industrious but this will do just fine.
Seville has grown a couple sizes and put some turns into a settler. Madrid is growing very slowly now while working cottages so its workforce migrates to Seville to chop the rest of the settler, well most of it. A 1 pop whip finishes it off. I’m not going for efficiency, just speed. This is because this next site is will huge to commerce/specialist growth. Yes a tundra city, but a tundra city with 2 deer camps, fish, copper, and most importantly a ton of coast tiles. This early coast tiles are essentially riverside cottages once a lighthouse is up. As I plan to build Statues here along with the Colossus somewhere all these coast tiles will eventually be worth 2f/1h/3c. Wonders, gotta love them.
Oh and just going on the fact that yes this took a lot of luck. Calculated luck, but a lot of it. Like religion spread within 2 turns of settling a new city
Now things begin to come together. 1100BC and not that many turns left to year 1AD. I am still only producing 17bpt but the bonuses are about to start stacking in a big way. It starts with finally completing the Pyramids. After the pyramids are done Barcelona starts to work more food tiles in order to grow while employing its engineer. The hope is that after the initial Great Prophet for the shrine, guaranteed thanks to SH/Oracle, the second one will be an early Engineer in order to rush a key wonder. In this case that would either be The Great Lighthouse or The Great Library depending on how the rest of the session goes. The first time around I used him on The Great Lighthouse. All the production bonuses make this a very fast Pyramid build, but that doesn’t mean that all those turns of not making workers did not hurt. 4 cities currently with 2 more on the way and the 4 workers I have are about to go into high gear. This is when worker micro starts to add up and all those half turns spent starting roads on currently unworked resources as I move workers around starts to come into play. For example the rice in Barcelona came online around this time frame and only had a couple turns left on its road instead of the normal uh… 6? I don’t remember but it took one worker 2 turns to complete heh. I know I have not mentioned it much as to now but especially at the start of games I’m the guy that has to check a city whenever something finishes building or a new population point is grown in order to properly reshuffle everything. My games take a while.
Madrid has been training another settler along with Barcelona (decided to use the remaining forests being chopped on a settler instead of The Colossus). Madrid’s finishes first after whipping back down to 8 population points and to prevent unhappiness the excess hammers from the whip are put into a partially complete cheap spiritual temple. The Settler goes west to found what will be another very strong coastal city. This one will eventually have a lot more production as it can steal many of Madrid’s hills along with the plains Stone Quarry exclusively in its BFC. The food resource is the fish up north which along with a lighthouse will be a very nice surplus. Not great as it will delay growth but it should allow a granary to complete before the city even hits 3 pop just by working the quarry. As I’ve eluded The Colossus and The Great Lighthouse play prominently into the plan so coastal is important on its own.
A turn in between the Barcelona settler I referred to finishes the first Great Person is finally born and at 85%+ odds it is the expected Prophet who immediately turns into the Kashi Vishwanath for +7 or 8gpt. Also writing is about to complete for the very important Library and for opening a trade opportunity with Elizabeth for Alphabet. She got it a few turns ago but does not want to trade it yet. I thought the computer ALWAYS traded Alphabet? It isn’t a monopoly tech is it? What the hell. What an annoying… person.
Barcelona’s settler founds Santiago while the chopping worker follows him down in order to farm the FP and then mine the gold once borders pop. One FP farm can support both mines, however depending on the slider position a couple scientists would still be superior from a pure beakers standpoint. Also once again the remaining couple hammers on the settler are whipped and overflowed into the wonder (The Colosus). This is a really cheap wonder time wise with copper on top of Monotheism and a Forge. A few turns are put into it at a food deficit in order to complete it 1 turn faster without quite sacrificing a population point in Barcelona. Once again not really optimal but I’m going for speed. Finish line is coming and I’m only at 23 beakers a turn.
Finally! I stopped checking for a few turns and in 900BC Pacal magically gets Alphabet…
and Elizabeth magically adopts hereditary rule. She takes MC for Alphabet straight up and allows me to research Currency at a slight discount once Mathematics is done.
After some whips and tile shuffling The Colossus is done. Yes I’m whipping Barcelona a lot and a lot of them are 1 population whips that regrow the next turn. This is possible thanks to representation, fur, gold plus a forge, and really cheap spiritual temples. Special credit goes to Pacal for spreading Judaism for an extra cheap temple to whip up.
Okay this round is not going nearly as well as the one I am attempting to recreate. My pile of gold is a pittance of the 2k+ I had last time and it is largely due to fact that Shaka and Elizabeth are Confucius and not Hindu this time around. In first go at this opening they both went and stayed Hindu. They hated each other and went to war. They both traded with me profusely as well, at least until Shaka straight up eliminated Elizabeth. This time? Shaka will not even open borders denying me a ton of trade commerce he supplied last time. Additionally he has been too busy for a while. It’s going to be my neck and I have no military at all. Just a garrison of one troop or none in each city, but that’s not the point! Hopefully I will have until at least 100BC to try and pull this off. Decide to essentially gift Pacal Mathematics. I want the gold since I’m still hovering around the 60g that equates to me being flat broke. Oh yeah, Pacal has Currency. Financial AI’s are hilarious when they trade with one another. Hilarious now has the same meaning as scary btw.
More Barcelona whipping. This time I straight up whip the ToA to completion, my first Marble wonder since the Oracle which barely counts. In case you were curious yes someone else did build The Great Wall. It was either that wonder or another settler and seeing as how I’m still one city behind by not setting up the Iron/Cow city to the north of Madrid I had to let the useless wonder go.
Down south Cordoba finally contributes to the empire. Decided to go for The Great Lighthouse before the Statues which was probably dumb. With stone statues has a huge production bonus and likely would have finished The Great Lighthouse around the same time if I had the extra production the whole time. In hindsight I probably should have waited the five turns and just rushed it. All Cordoba has is a lighthouse, and a great lighthouse. A lot more infrastructure or another settler would have been smarter, then again I don’t know that Barcelona will be putting out a GE at 50% odds so perhaps I’m doing some Monday morning quarterbacking here.
Currency. No need to say why this is an important economic technology.
The previously eluded to GE is born in Barcelona. Benjamin Franklin to be precise. It seems only fitting that he should go to Madrid and rush a wonder though I don’t really have any to rush. After Compass its time to go Aesthetics -> Literature. The beaker total is starting to spike up now and The Great Library will all but seal my goal.
Not much to say here. Literature is done and Franklin does his thing. Still not quite strong enough of a bpt figure however. Madrid needs an Academy! With the “free” 8 GS points provided by the library and a few more employed scientists over the current fur tile and engineer set up could perhaps bump up the chances enough.
Pure. Win. All skill. No luck.
Well I’m a city and 30 beakers per turn short in my standard “grow” tile set up. So while I technically fell short the entire known world now hates me since Pacal went Jewish. Shaka will be declaring soon and Elizabeth could possibly dog pile along with Pacal as well. Granted none of this would be an issue and trade relations would have been much better if those bastards would have gone/stayed Hindu. My luck has run out; however I’m not trying this again. Hope this was worth my time. Actually I would have just wasted that time anyway.
A few closing thoughts. This was only possible because of the map and other Civilizations present. No one is industrious and as far as I’m concerned none are big wonder builders. I however am. I love to whore wonders. No, building every known wonder except for The Great Wall is not something I’ve done in any other situation it just kind of happened in my first game and in my attempt to do it again I did. Everyone knows The Great Lighthouse is an economy in and of itself. Throw in The Colossus and ToA in a coastal city and it gets silly. Put Representation specialists on top of THAT and this is what happens. Of course you have no time for a military at all and run very worker light while squeezing out settlers. You must pop pottery out of a hut and the wheel too if you start with it. Founding one of the early religions is a must for the gold income. Oh and being on a peninsula so barbs are a non issue. Also if you can manage to cure cancer that would probably help this out too.
So yeah TMIT - Possible but not damn likely really sums it up well.
Now I'm going to say screw the rest of this map and wait for the next one. I don't want to look at this game ever again. *Hits Delete*
. I can see how it's possible now...but not damn likely normally 
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Certainly no accusation of cheating from me - it all looks very possible, and I've seen enough of your previous games to know you're one of the top players on these boards.
So I went back to some saves to pull out a few pics from the relevant timeframe.
and then gifted him back one of the cities.
, leaving me a few votes short. So I spammed christian missionaries to about 5 of my cities (and 1 of Liz), and re-DOWed Mehmed taking 3 more of his cities, including his capital. In spite of giving rifling to Will, he was losing ground (Mehmed only had cuirassiers, muskets, and maces, so I don't know what Will's problem was). But at the next vote I squeaked in by 2 votes. I could have won 10 turns earlier if I'd had more experience with the AP, but c'est la vie.
until he finally succeeded to found Lakamha (his first city after Capital)? What did he build all the time - Wonders? No, you got SH and GW was built in a distant land. So did he feed his Settlers to the Bears?
in its first ring, even assuming you had instant magic Hindu auto-spread after founding it and 100% of your later Workers (4 Workers) improving the Farm at the moment of the border pop.
. I am not at home and even if I were I reloaded so liberally during this game in order to try and get the perfect line of research/building that I don't remember which one was the one I'm trying to represent. Heck, I know the picture of Lakhama being founded (as I mentioned in the report) is from the wrong line of saves/game.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
