NC CXXIV Ramesses II of the Egyptians

[Tall German Joe]

to 2440 BC:

Spoiler :

something I didn't point out in the last SS: my warrior has been exploring in a concentric ring around my capital. on higher levels, you want to find your prospective 2nd city spot ASAP and camp there so that a barb city doesn't spawn. in my case, since I'm WC rushing, I won't be building a 2nd city right away, but it's still good to explore this way since if I can't find another civ close enough, then I won't bother rushing.

what my capital has been doing in the meantime:

I went worker first, which completed in 12 turns due to the capital plains hill, and then grew up to size 2 working a barracks rather than a warrior so as to speed my rush. at size 2, i built another worker, as I have of roads to build. I unfortunately cannot build another city because a settler is too expensive - equivalent in price to about 3 WC! i do plan on building a city at that corn/wheat I just found eventually, though. my capital is a rather poor cottage spot, so at least for the time being I don't have to worry about settling satellites to help work cottages.

tech-wise, my path was AH first (egypt lol), then mining (I have 2 bare hills in BFC) and bronze working. if gandhi has bronze its not the end of the world, but I'll need to find it before I attack.

here's my road path: first square hooks up the horses, and then it's a straight beeline to Delhi:

incidentally, this will also setup a road to where I want to settle the wheat/corn for later.

barb is gonna cause some trouble. gotta dance around this ...

joao is also around, but he found me via workboat so he's probably far away (or even on an island)

first WC is ready. gonna send it over to india to scout

here's a trick:

I stop working the corn for a turn to prevent my city from growing:

next turn, i switch it back:

notice that both the WC and the city growth will both *almost* finish.

one turn later I can now whip:

this city immediately goes back to lvl 3 the next turn, I get a war charriot for free, and I stay under the happy cap without needing my warrior in the city. I don't actually gain any net production this way, as it means missing out on a mined plains hill for 7 turns, but I do get that production earlier. combined with a chop, I actually pump out 3 WC in 4 turns, with more on the way!

corn/copper/cow is lookin much nicer than corn/wheat now:

I also am able to take out a barb archer with my WC, pumping him up to combat 2. he'll now have odds on a fortified archer in a 20% culture city!

holy smokes, gandhi rushed iron working because of the jungle gems:

I might need to advance my plans for war... can steal 3 workers right away here...

We'll find out... what I do... NEXT TIME!

 

[Tall German Joe]

to 2240 BC

Spoiler :

2440 BC:

of course i went for it!

in retrospect I coulda waited a turn or two while the fast workers built mines, but I was scared that iron might also be nearby. (the ai will always try to settle strategic resources with their first cities if they can. the ai can't actually "see" the resources until they have the tech, but they'll always settle on "blue circles"). it wasnt until later I realized that the very fact that he was improving the gems first at all means that he does NOT have iron unless he settled on it, and I already knew he doesn't have bronze, so...

I take 3 archers with 5 WC and lose only 1 to take my first city:

I use some of my new workers to finish roading all the way up, while the rest go back to the capital to chop more WC out faster.

the RNG is thinking that it's gonna me with all these barbs (I guess ganhdi did a really job fogbusting for us, lazy bastard), but actually all they're gonna do is upgrade newly arriving WC to combat 2. thanks!

 

[Tall German Joe]

to 1920 BC

Spoiler :

lookee here, it's the holy city of bombay... and it's only lvl 2 with 2 archers defending. (I bet the city just made a settler), one of them has CG1, unfortunately, on top of 40% cultural defenses, because its the holy city. unfortunately for ganhdi, I have 1 combat 1, 3 combat 2, and 1 combat 3 war chariots in range next turn, and so I take the city with just 1 loss:

actually, these relentless barbs are starting to PISS ME OFF

more:

I explore a little more, and finally see his capital. this is gonna take at least 7 or 8 WC to break, even with my super strong upgraded dudes.

this is lucky! sometimes the only way you can defeat huge AI stacks in early wars is to just wait them out and hope you can catch them in the open. in this case, I can take 2 plus a worker at 95%+ odds:

I saved the upgrade for that WC so I can bring it back up to decent strength after the attack.

I cut the road on the ivory camp (this ends up costing me hella $$$ later though) so that he'll have more trouble taking the gemscity back if I have to leave it undefended for a turn to kill barbs. also, speaking of, HERE'S EVEN MORE BARBS!

hahaha, check out this foolery. the AI isn't usually THIS dumb. he apparently just hooked up horses somewhere, and built a chariot. he then took his shiny new chariot and attacked a barbarcher sitting in a jungle tile BETWEEN TWO STACKS OF MY UNITS !!! cool, another free C2 wc. while I'm here, I send another WC up to burn the pasture and cut its road that he can't send any more down. I mean, if he wants to kill barbs for me that's great, but I actually want to leave the city lightly defended if I can so I can pool more military resources elsewhere, in the event that I fail to take Delhi.

now it's time to take delhi. i have 8 WC participating against 4 archers.

and I take the city with 4 losses! at this point, ganhdi is broken, and it's time to just mop up while fixing my economy. incidentally, Spain finishes the oracle this turn... 0_0 spain is one of the biggest oracle threats, due to her habit of beelining priesthood, and I've even seen isabella land it before 2500 B.C. oh well...

that's it so far; I've played far past this, but it just takes awhile to write these up!

 

[Tall German Joe]

to 625 BC:

Spoiler :

Joao sends me a threatening letter via fish mail. it reads: "If you don't do what we ask, we'll invent boats 500 years from now and come beat you up!" fearing for the future, and because I was already planning to switch anyways, and because I'm spiritual so that I can easily agree no matter what he asks, I switch my empire into Buddhism.

now Gandhi and I are brothers in the faith. so, I'm sure he'll have no problem if I take another city of his...

in the intro post, I mentioned that I'd explain if there came a situation where an obelisk, egypt's UB, was useful; here is just such a situation! it's 1440 BC, judiaism and hinduism were founded in a foreign land, izzy oracled something stupid early, and so buddhism is the only known religion. there's gonna be a LOT of cities with buddhism before long!! building the shrine will not only help spread it (hopefully enough so that if spain founds christianity, as it probably will, they won't switch into it), but it will bring me tons of $$$. I want to get that shrine up ASAP, and that's what the obelisk helps you do!

researching Mysticism was extremely expensive, however. I also picked up Hunting (to reconnect the ivory), and shortly Masory too. I burn through almost all my capture gold getting these simple techs because nobody yet has Alphabet and I'll need them if I want to grow. Masonry will actually help me dig my economy out of the hole, as I'm hoping to failgold the Temple of Artemis after I hook up the marble in my capital.

unfortunately, it goes before I can even get Polythesism.

Instead, I get started on failgolding the mids...

I've also decided to move my capital to the gemscity, the first one I captured from Gahndi. this city's got a ton of commerce coming in plus is in a much more central location. you can see here that I'm using the whip to overflow into the Palace. I've also sent some workers to start setting up some cottages; its a little late to really have a monster bureau cap, but, better late than never. in addition, most of my unused land lies near Thebes, my old capital, and so I'll want to pump settlers from there as fast as I can, which, unfortunately, is not really compatible with working cottages..

I seem to have unfortuantely saved over a few screenshots here or something. I decided on a whip to try for the pyramids. I sent down 6 workers to the stone south of my capital, whipped a settler in Thebes, and settled him at the fish/stone/crab spot. The workers hooked up the stone in just 2 turns, timed to complete with 3 pre-chopped forests in Delhi.

a couple more turns and...

BAZINNGA! this timing is cutting it a bit close to the Pyramids cutoff for deity, but luckily none of the known civs so far are industrious, and bigger wonders tend to fall a bit later on Hemispheres continents anyways because the tech pace is slower. On pangaea, I've seen the mids land anywhere from 1800 BC to 300 BC, with 800 BC-900 BC being more typical. However, even if I lost the race the failgold would have been wonderful.

on the same turn, Joao becomes the first AI with Alphabet. I really need to catch up! he doesn't yet have Aesthetics, so I'll research that plus put a little bit into Alpha and trade it to him.

in other news, my shrine finally completes in 750 BC, and immediately starts paying off:

my new palace completes a few turns later. my first few cottages here are already starting to come online...

Joao finally gives in the next turn. here's what Isabella has on me. Nothing worth trading so far...

I discover Darius the next turn, who must be on a seperate continent with Joao. Between the two of them, I broker around Aesthetics (since I don't actually want any of these wonders, I just want to failgold them) and get four big techs: Polythesism / Iron Working from Darius, and Monotheism/Sailing for Aesthetics from Isabella. I still have Alphabet if they decide to open up a bit more...

next up is to get Currency, which will completely fix my economy and allow me to really make the most of my huge empire. till next time!

 

[pomthom]

I'm trying this on Immortal, Normal.

Other than the fact that I'm playing very poorly I chose a different starting tech path and wanted to know your thoughts:
Mining > Masonry > AH > BW

I did this to get the significant commerce boost from the Marble tiles first. But I know that going AH is obviously good because of the WC

 

[tijup]

Conquest victory, 1590 AD, Noble, no hut.

Spoiler :

Tech Wise, AH, Mining, BW, then up to writing and Priesthood.
I started by rexing a bit, up to 3 cities, since at noble, the AI is slow.
I mixed some WC while recouping from whipping settlers and barracks.
I captured 2 fast worker from Indians before DoW him "for real".
I took bombay (close to gems) and delhi, then took peace. He has one city left.
Later, after expanding a bit further and assess old Indians' territory, I did some tech trades
with Izzy, then DoW her. She still has only 2 cities, and managed to build Oracle.
She fell a few turns later under WC boots such a powerful unit.
I now have the whole continent for myself, Indians are still struggling to get a settler out,
I did get ride of him later, when he was getting in the way of my planned cities.
By end of BC, my empire was already thrilling., even if I was at research 20%
For the next 800 or 900 years, nothing much took place. I kept expanding and researching.
I kept the tech lead for the whole game by a good margin, focusing mostly on economy.
At one point, I got DoW by Jao, and since I didn't built a single military unit since the early WCs,
I was quite badly equiped for this attack. Hopefully, his attack stack was composed of 2
swordmens and a few axemens. I managed to get ride of them, then to take a small city he has
built on my continent. I took peace after that. (Much later, he peacevassalised to me.)

For the last 2-3 centuries, I kept pumping Macemen, trebuchets while teching the Rifling.
I finally used liberalism to get it, and update some of my macemen to riflemen.
I switch most of my cities to build armies while researching Astronmy. As soon as it came online
I started building a navy of galleons, and set sails to Napy coasts.
I can't remember exactly when did I DoWed him, but that was close of 1300AD.
Since he has chemistry, I got some hard times and lost quite a few units at his grenadiers, but
he finally capitulated once I took Paris.
I healed my units, gave Napy his cities back, then attacked Mongols. His capital fell 3-4 turns
later, and he capitulated the next turn.
Saladin fell the same way, I had to snatch him 3 cities before capitulation.
I DoWed Darius on the same turn I was DoWing Saladin, I was producing so much units that I
was able to divert 2 dozens of units to Darius, which was so much behind in tech.
Darius was willing to capitulate as soon as I took his capital (which was the first city I attacked,
since it was directly accessible from boats)
I didn't accept his capitulation until Saladin was ready to capitulate too. I was wanting a conquest
victory, not a domination one ;-)

That's it, a really nice map, I did play it a Noble because I was in a rush, but I definitively retry
it at monarch.

Thanks for the map

 

[Tall German Joe]

I'm trying this on Immortal, Normal.

Other than the fact that I'm playing very poorly I chose a different starting tech path and wanted to know your thoughts:
Mining > Masonry > AH > BW

I did this to get the significant commerce boost from the Marble tiles first. But I know that going AH is obviously good because of the WC

Spoiler :

I think an early Masonry here isn't necessarily a bad choice if you don't plan to WC rush because, like you said, it generates some early commerce, and allows you to both build the Oracle (although watch out for izzy, who likes to build the oracle REALLY early) and ToA fast for a SS/WE. i'm interested in hearing how it plays out!

 

[Tall German Joe]

congrats @tijup!

update from me, to 425 AD:

Spoiler :

i'm a bit overdue for an empire overview:

so you can see here that I have southern and northern halves of my empire that are a bit spread out, and i've already settled a few good cities. 9 cities total, with my last-taken indian city (not shown) in the north getting crushed by barcelona's oracle culture. the corn/copper/crab site I settled earlier, around 1500 BC and so its pretty well developed by this point. the fish/stone/crab site in the south is the one I rush-connected for the mids, and it will eventually be a very nice location for the Moai statues. elephantine is a site I just settled, and it can share thebes' corn for a little while until I can get some farms built up there. thebes is just currently working on some failgold anyways, and so it doesn't really need the extra food.

i still have a TON of land to fill in, and I need to do it quickly because you can see that isabella is already starting to aggressively settle into my land with that ridiculous jungle city to the west of my capital. however, my economy is still stretched a bit thin even with the mids doing the heavy-lifting, and so I can't keep REXing too much right now. what I can do, though, is send over my buff war chariots to go take that barb city before isabella gets any ideas.

here's varnasi, which just finally built a library and was one turn from a border pop, that at least woulda protected it from the oracle at least a little bit. oh well.... i'll get it back eventually... mark my words.........

finally, currency! it's bringing in about 25 commerce per turn just by itself, and lets me get some sweet trade gold from garbage techs.

speaking of gold...

so, how good is industrious here compared to financial? well, i'm building these wonders with OR, industrious, and the doubler resource, which is +175% production. memphis, for instance, failgolded the parthenon for 255 gold. from that, 255*(2/11) = 46.4 gold. this was generated by the city working 15 production for 6 turns, or, in other words, it gives me about a half a commerce per production. (e.g. a hills mine will give me equivalent to 2 commerce). this is pretty good!

of course, I don't want to failgold every wonder, especially not this one... 200 B.C. is a bit late for TGL on deity, but our continent is a bit behind on tech due to a late alpha, and i've seen a few great generals pop up from the other continent despite them being monoreligion.

joao is the tech leader, although he still only has 6 cities. I guess him and darius are on their own little islands or something; that can sometimes happen on hemispheres. anyways, trades like this might not seem like a good idea, but this is actually really great because the gold will help me focus my research on critical techs like bureaucracy and sidelines like theology even if the trade nets me a beaker disadvantage.

speaking of sidelines:

so, Isabella bulbed theology to found Christianity (surprise surprise lol), and I got scared that she'd switch and then build the AP for that. I really really really really wanted the AP for Buddhism because its gonna make my economy go ing insane, so I actually went ahead and researched it myself. Unfortunately yet Fortunately, Isabella beat me to it just 2 turns after I started the wonder, but foruntately she stayed buddhist! thanks buddy for saving me the trouble! trading theology around and failgolding the Hagia Sophia will make up for the gold I wasted researching the tech.

being in the AP religion as a spiritual civ is really great even if you don't win the seat. first of all, there's no fear of losing to a religious victory here because 3 civs are across the ocean. second of all, the AP gives you a chance to improve relations with another member by voting for them. last but not least, the AP gives +2 hammers per turn to all religious buildings of that religion. since i'm spiritual, that means I can build a buddhist temple and monastery for 80 base hammers (OR + remember that spiritual gets half-priced temples; the buildings pay for themselves within turns) in all of my cities. this is basically just 2 whips, one of which is free because of the temple! in fishing villages, this can basically quadruple your total base production. in more developed cities, I can also eventually get the cathedral for +6 hammers/turn, and my shrine city will get +8/hammers a turn, or 2 plains hill mines! for free!

in other great news for production, stupid joao finally traded me metal casting after he finished the Colossus. OR + a forge turns my 4 hammers into 6.

I lost the election, oh well. :[ its not a big deal if not the Pope, because I can just wait for a gap in the scheduled votes for when I want to invade Izzy.

I'm first to paper, and Darius traded me his map. It turns out Joao and him are on an island together, and Darius' land is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bad lol...

you can also see that I built a market in Bombay. normally this is kind of a useless building except in unusual circumsances where you actually do have fur ivory and silk, but my shrine in Bombay is now pulling in +28 gpt, and so the +25% wealth actually makes it worth it here.

landed another major wonder. the mausoleum is one of the very best wonders in the game, as it extends your golden age length by 50%. golden ages in civ4 are incredibly powerful, and so getting 3-4 will give you about 2 whole extra golden ages. i'm gonna try to land one soon, depending on what great people I score.

ehehhe looks like someone else was chasing it too. thanks for not being too much of a sore loser, izzy. you can also see that I've started on Philosophy, which I want early so that I can get started on Angkor Watt, an ordinarily crappy wonder that becomes very good when you're Egypt of the AP Religion and can hire 3 priests in every single city. (it gives you +1 hammer per priest) all of a sudden, a fishing village or jungle farm can get 18 hammers/turn at size 7 or 8 without a single mine or workshop in its BFC...

as a final shot, here's my capital as I start on Education. still not too bad, considering I didn't start cottaging it till late, eh? note that I did have to make some farms to grow the population up, as I wasn't able to build any nearby satellites to work other cottages for me. I'm in the process of replacing them with cottages now.

I just popped a second Great Scientist, and so I've gotta think about whether I want to bulb one and pop a golden age with the other, or bulb both of them, or WHAT

 

[tijup]

I forgot to mention the religious part of my game

Spoiler :

Gandhi found buddhism, at start spreading it to me and Izzy. Some time later, Izzy found
judaism and switched to it. Sadly, none of them had time to get a GP to build its shrine.
When I took Delhi, I focused on getting a GP as my first great person to build the shrine.

Jaho and Darius were buddhist too, until the later found Christianism, and switched to it, worsening
our relations.
On the other continent, I later discover that they were in a hinduism love fest, I never saw a
great general pop before I start warring on their side of the ocean. They were all at pleased.
Once Darius found them, he managed to get them so upsets that Saladin and Gengis DoW him.
(none of them have astronomy yet, nor Darius)

Since I lost quite a lot of riflemen in the initial attack on Nappy, I took peace after securing 2 cities
and waiting for my reinforcements. In the meantime, Saladin got greedy and DoWed on Nappy,
trying to drag me in after the ten turns truce.
I gladly accepted since my reinforcements were arrived the turn before.
Nappy capitulated a few turns later.

Never trust your religion buddy Nappy learnt it the hard way.

 

[Tall German Joe]

to 780 AD

Spoiler :

I decide to use one GS for education, and the next for a GA. The next won't be done for a few turns, so I can't use it on edu without slowing it, and using it on printing press to speed rifling will be too slow; I'm far enough ahead of Isabella that I can crush her just with cuirs.

the next GS pops a few turns later, and I pop a GA to make my economy go into hyperdrive. the GA will help me finish my last few temples, finish a few key wonders (the Taj, and less importantly but still useful the University of Sankore and Angkore Watt, two ordinarily marginal wonders that are actually in this game pretty great because of how much I have dozens of AP buildings and capacity for dozens of priest specialists, and get a few Great Merchants.

GA give +100% GPP production, and so a trick you can do is to switch into Caste and Pacifism to make the most of it to get a few specific GP that you need. In my case, I've begun spamming horse archers in a lot of my cities for later upgrade into Cuirassiers, so I want a couple Great Merchants to conduct Trade Missions in the Temple of Artemis city (which is in Darius' capital) for epic $$$. I end up landing this Great Merchant at 60% odds, but fail the next one at 80% odds, oh well.

Angkor Watt finished, which gives me super priests. Came just in time, too, as all my new REX cities are starting to run out of improved tiles. I had 9 or 10 workers very early, and so I hadn't run into problems with this until just recently when my city count expanded from 8 to 13 in a short period. If I had feudalism, I'd have switched to a burst of Serfdom to compensate, but I don't want to trade away anything good for that stupid tech right now while I'm preparing to Lib MT.

Another AP vote; I lose again because Joao likes Izzy better than me.

Now this is a great trade; Engineering allows me to move 3 per turn in my own empire, as well as lets me pump out a few trebs. Ordinarily you don't want trebs for a cuir war, but Izzy has her Stack of Doom sitting 3 tiles away from my capital in that jungle city. Ordinarily you'd try to lure a stack like that out of the city and then crush it in the field, but I don't want it anywhere near my capital. The city itself is pretty big, but has no production due to being crushed by my 6 surrounding cities, and thus it doesn't have city walls. A few shots from a few trebs will greatly increase my odds on attacking it.

20 turns of golden age ~_~

lost again... I guess I'll just have to console myself with taking half of her cities...

booya! notice that I already have a Galley ready to go here... although in hindsight, it would have been best to road all the way down to the tip of the continent. that woulda saved a couple turns

MT is in... joao got paper about 4-5 turns back, so I didn't feel that I really had time to go all the way to rifling even if I did have another bulb. oh well.

one of the big points about MT, by the way, is that Cuirassiers aren't affected by city walls or castles. I can just blast huge, fast-moving stacks into cities at ~60%+ odds, taking a lot of losses for sure but also taking a lot of cities really quickly, which is important not only because of war-weariness but also because Izzy can eventually call an AP vote to stop the war.

Once gunpowder is in, its time to backfill some old ass techs as I head for rifling... luckily, Philo and Paper are now on the table for this stuff...

holy , this is a lot more than I expected. I guess its b/c of the ToA multipler plus the "other-continent" multiplier together? anyways, this is more than enough to upgrade the rest of my stack; 2300/170 gold = 13.5 cuirs. if my empire were a little smaller, and I had built elephants instead of cuirs, I coulda upgraded 16.5 for this amount! in total, I have about almost 30 ready for war, including ones I built as cuirs and other war chariots / horchers that I upgraded by dropping my slider to 0% for a few turns.

before the war, I beg peace treaties from Darius and Joao. I hadn't been begging off them so far, as I wasn't sure when I'd be ready to attack. I could have asked for more, but I wanted to make sure they'd accept. Getting backdoored with a stack full of medeival units would have been a real pain...

NEXT TIME:

ITS TIME FOR WAR!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

@Tall German Joe - loving your write-up, thanks!

 

[VSarius]

An interesting side point to the Pacificism/Caste during GA is to also include Vassalage in that switch to a)Cut down the amount of money Pacificism is draining from unit maintenance and b)DoublePromos with just a rax to facilitate the military build-up. The times to not do this are when you have a Super-Buro capitol that is fronting 80% of your research.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Cultural victory in 1892, Monarch, Epic.

Spoiler :

Quick recap - started with Masonry so I could get the Marble online and then the Stone, built a 2nd city and then spawned War Chariots until Ghandi and Izzy were gone. Economy crashed but followed advice here and Rep / Specialists meant we could get to Courthouses by building Research to get to Currency then Wealth to CoL. Whipped a load of Courthouses and we were back at the races.

Once we got to Liberalism took Gunpowder and shortly thereafter upgraded the War Chariots to Cuirassers. Capped Darius and drove Joao off the "sub-continent".

In the meantime Thebes, Dehli and Madrid were busy building Wonders and Spiritual buildings, could have upgraded to Cavalry and gone after the other continent but I quite liked the idea of a cultural victory using 3 capitals! Timed it really well with all three coming in between 1890 and 1892.

Genghis declared on me in 1885 but it was too late to stop me.

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So my first Monarch victory on a Normal sized map!

 

[DanielTorrence]

to 780 AD

Joe, thanks for the effort you are taking here. Following your write-up will hopefully get me a little bit closer to Deity...although I mostly win my immortal games only with creative leaders and marble around

 

[Tall German Joe]

glad everyone is enjoying the posts.

here's an update to 1150 AD:

Spoiler :

its time

before I declare war, I make sure to get a peace treaty from darius. joao doesnt have anything to beg so I can't get one from him, unfortunately, but he remains quiet for the duration of the war.

unfortunately, I do not seem to have taken a screenshot of isabella's SOD; I must have saved over it or something stupid, and I think I was playing this period as part of a long session so I don't have any nearby saves. oh well.

at any rate, she has her stack in Murica here, and its pretty big - roughly 25 units, with some classical trash (swords, axes, cats etc), longbows, macemen, and pikemen. on my side, I have about 30 cuirs and 2 trebs.

the two trebs take the city's cultural defenses from 40% to 8% in 1 turn.

I then shred most of her units, winning about 80% of the battle. I have a pair of war chariots that I haven't upgraded because I'm hoping to get a few more upgrades form them first; they're at 16/17 and 23/26 XP, respectively, and if I upgrade now they'll go to 10/17 and 10/26. I havent upgraded my GG (even though its free) because I never want this guy to be a top defender in the case that my stack gets counterattacked after a big battle.

just enough! ;]

even though I won lib, I'm still behind in net beakers I guess. the techs these guys have on me though are all things I can backfill pretty easily, and am currently in the process of doing.

for example:

the only way I can get a good deal like this is because I have guilds already half-researched. Compass is only really worth getting because I want Optics to find out who's on the other Continent.

also, behind the picture you can sort of see the text "You are no longer the worst enemy of Isabella." why wouldnt I be, considering I just backstabbed her and took 2 of her cities? well, that's because she met someone new with a different religion than her... PROBABLY FROM THE OTHER CONTINENT !!!!

one of the best cool thing about horse units is the 2 movement points; opportunities like this don't pop up when you have seige! by the time I'd have moved adjacent and seiged down the walls, there'd be a whole host of defenders waiting for me.

after taking murica, I press on towards barcelona (the oracle city) and varanasi (that indian city that spain flipped with the oracle's culture). I take Varanasi easily, and then spain tries to counterattack as I press on towards Barcelona. I take some losses, but it goes far worse for Spain.

on the northwestern front, I'm pressing towards Madrid. Madrid is a pretty awesome city, so I really want to take it before I accept capitulation. its still pretty lightly defended... to take this, you figure 2 cuir for every pikeman and longbow, then 1 for every mace, chariot, and cat = 11 cuirs. I have 12 here, and end up taking the city with 2 to spare, due to some of my highly upgraded units actually having odds on the longbows.

no wonders, but this will be a great production and commerce city later.

I try to take Barcelona next, but fail with just this one stupid longbow remaining. ;[ its not a big deal though, since I just take the city the next turn easily.

here's the vote, exactly 10 turns after the war started. its OK though, since she'll already cap. I wanted to take a few more cities on the continent to spare Madrid from revolts when their borders expand further, but, so it goes...

stupid oracle. at least the forge and courthouse are intact.

nobody's built Versailles or the Spiral Minaret yet, so maybe I'll get a chance to failgold the former and build the latter?

hmmm, she had first contact with the Mongols... they're really behind! I end up gawking at their backwardness and forget to take a screenshot. he's already annoyed with me because he already hates Isabella... when you have a vassal, your actual relationship with other AIs is the average of each of your relationships. can lead to nastiness, like guys you thought were friendly will suddenly start plotting...

during the last few turns of the war, I knew I didnt need any more troops on the spanish front so I started sending newly produced cuirs towards portugal's borders. Joao managed to nab 2 cities on the main continent, and I actually only need 1 of them to vassal him because he has 6 cities and I have three times that much. however, a couple turns before I declare:

uh, OK! saves me the trouble I guess. voluntary vassals can break away, but I really doubt he will considering how huge I am. at any rate this will really help save me some turns towards taking out darius.

I can now safely trade a bunch of techs with him. I dont want to trade too much, though, as I'll need to save up a bunch of $$$ to upgrade my cuirs to cavs and that will eventually allow him to pull ahead of me in research. AI's get a 40% discount to all techs!

I soon meet the other AIs:

lmao, this is actually worse than GK

it looks like Saladin is a vassal of Napolean. I had seen a bunch of GGs pop up throughout the game from the other continent, and I guess what happened is that Napolean and GK double-teamed Saladin, with Napolean eventually vassaling him. Nap and GK are two of the biggest unit spammers in the whole game, so its no surprise that they eventually let their aggressions out even despite their shared religion.

neither of them will open borders with me because I guess they already don't like Izzy again. will have to make due with a blind invasion...

another golden age, to get me to cavs and astro:

siphoning off Joao's extra resources to redistribute to Isabella. AIs will sell you their extra resources extremely cheap if you already have a copy. I dont want to demand a resource from him yet just in case he has something that I don't. (i.e. uranium or oil)

I only sent over about 2 dozen cuirs; I should only need to take a city or two before he's willing to cap. as for the rest of my leftovers from the spanish war, I've begun stuffing them into galleons in preparation for a war with either GK or Napolean.

yep.

and that's that. entire war lasted maybe 5 turns.

next time: we'll explore mysterious second hemisphere... with cavalry and cannons, of course!

also, grats on your win, NobleZarkon!

 

[Bleys]

Nicely written TGJ. I would be interested in links to other games you have written with such detail.

 

[pomthom]

Immortal, Normal, NHNE - ~1880 AD Space Win

@Tall German Joe

Spoiler :

About my Masonry opening:
Well it turned out pretty good I guess because it allowed me to build and power-up my economy like hell right from the start. Built Stonehenge 'cause I think it synergises well with the Obelisk, the Oracle [CoL] and the Mids [Rep]. I mean what's the point of being IND and have a Marble/Stone start and not build all this neat stuff

I'm not a big rusher and my start compromised the potential use of the WC, but in the end, Gandhi had no metal so I WC'd his ass ANYWAY

Just like you, I then Lib'd MT and Cuir'd Izzy to capitulation (with the exact same HA build-up + mass upgrade via GMs). Could have then stopped and go for Space or Culture (Culture was the obvious route: IND+SPI+3 good commerce cities+plenty of religions...) BUT I had built sooo much troops that I thought "meeeh let's go kill some more stuff instead". So I went for Joao (funny how in your game Darius and Napoleon had the upper hand on their respective continents whilst in mine they had been crushed by Joao and Saladin). Destroyed him completely (+ his wimp vassal Darius) with Cavs (took the whole island) and finally decided it was time to rest and conquer other stellar systems.

The game was really easy: "great leader + reasonable starting position + wimp neighbour with great land and no metal" is a combo that makes it difficult to lose I guess. I've never tried Deity but I think I would have pulled it off here

About your game:
Good play and nice posting! The game is in the bag obviously, I'm guessing a Conquest Win by ~1500/1600 AD

Thanks for the map NZ

 

[Tall German Joe]

Nicely written TGJ. I would be interested in links to other games you have written with such detail.

for civ4, no I haven't. I have written up some Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup games, if you're interested in that. will try to post another update of this tomorrow, at any rate.

@pomthom - grats on your win!

 

[Tall German Joe]

to 1420 AD:

Spoiler :

ok, lets get back to it. 4 down, 3 to go.

my first cavs are starting to pop up, and to that end I generated a little bit of failgold with West Point (a stone national wonder) because I knew I'd build that anyway. this is enough gold to upgrade 15 cuirs to cavs by itself!

in the meantime, I've been building up galleons and cavs and shipping them over to the new world. because I don't couldn't get open borders, much less a map trade, from anywhere on the whole continent, I have no choice but to do a blind invasion. the thought did occur to me to try to drop out Buddhism for 4 turns to try to improve relations a bit, but these new world dudes hate my vassals so much that I don't think it would make a difference.

eventually, I decide to just hit mongolia and dump my stack somewhere in at the edge of his territory. I luck out when it turns out that its right near his capital. ;] certainly didn't plan on that, but hey, its the only small strip of land available for me to land on.

the reason I'm attacking GK first, by the way, is that I figure it will make for a more easily managed war, going from city to city in a line rather than spread napolean's hot mess, who has a long strip of western coast without any cities on it.

unluckily, it seems like he just got military science despite being behind dozens of techs. ;[ it also appears that genghis AND napolean both have large power ratings than me somehow. this might end up being harder than I thought...

but, to hell with it!

his power rating is still pretty high... I wonder if he's got a big stack somewhere.

some really important production techs coming online here, biology and communism. biology gives + 1 food per farm, and communism's state property civic gives +1 food for every workshop and watermill, and +10% production on top of that. (in addition to cutting the maintenance costs in half for my sprawing empire). this essentially gives me +1 food for almost every tile my cities are working! I also switch into caste system, which gives +1 hammer for every workshop. a grassland workshop now gives 2F4.4H!

excuse me, I meant to say that a grassland workshop gives 2F5.5H, due to my golden age from the free great spy!

Genghis tries counter-attacking, but it doesn't go well. his power level is still so high despite my taking city after city...

I want this for hospitals, since I'll have factories and coal plants coming online soon. the fact that Joao still has a tech lead is really annoying me. he's started to expand out to the various little islands around the map, and his city count has jumped from 6 to 10. he's still under my thumb though..

bam, and lookit that, 1835 beakers a turn. caste + rep is really paying off.

in war news, I'm just beating the hell out of GK. I still haven't seen his stack, but I've taken 6 now. he still won't cap, and I doubt he will until I find and destroy his stack.

more trades. I'm almost up to parity with the er.

an old world overview. normally at this stage of the game I'd be whipping like crazy, but my production is so good that its actually better to "slow build" everything, where "slow" in this case means "a unit per city every 1-3 turns." however, once Assembly Line hits, I'll want to take a big break to build new infrastructure, so I hope I can cap GK now and then take a small break before I hit Nappy.

buuuuuuuuut that doesn't look like its happening, lol... ;[

PEACE VASSALING TO A REAL WORLD WAR! DAMMMMIT!!!

 

[vranasm]

@tGJ

I am far from giving advice to deity players, but if you had some turns before the wars, you could have scouted the coast with caravels, since they don't need OB