After the pre-game talk I decided to settle north on the plains hill anyway, and I'm glad I did!
The first settlement, Orleans, was a compromise. It would control 2 gold and a clam if Memphis wasn't already leveraging Egypt's culture bonus. Oh well, one gold is better than none.
At just 2 towns it looked like further expansion would already be bad for the economy, so instead of another settler I focused on a workforce of 3 workers to hook the gold and do everything else that takes forever at marathon speed.
It was in the 2300's I think when the two towns were hooked. Researched Writing for libraries. With the production bonus it was 26 hammers/turn in Paris. Library finished in 2020 and immediately generated 2 specialists. Science was up to 27 bulbs.
1705- Priesthood. 3rd settler complete.
1645 Library Orleans. This town began work on Stonehenge with the intent of Not finishing it, but rather getting gold for the hammers. With the production bonus that is actually a good deal.
1615 Lyons, our 3rd town, founded to the west to claim horses and funtion as a canal town. And to box Shaka into all points south of there.
1405 Pottery. 1390 The Oracle in Paris, take Metal Casting.
1345 Shaka demands that we convert to Hinduism. What do we have against Hindus? Heck, their religion was founded just across the border in Memphis, why not convert?
1270 Stonhenge is completed somewhere. Orleans earns 150g, we're able to crank up science to 42 bulbs.
1195 Forge finished in Paris.
1150 Great Scientist in Paris against slightly polluted odds. Whew! Used for Academy. At this point I just left an engineer specialist up as much as possible in the hope we'd get an Engineer someday.
940 Alphabet. We know a lot of civs thanks to our wandering workboat, so what can we do? Writing and Meditation aren't known by everyone, so we traded those for Hunting and sailing, and again the next turn for Archery and Masonry. Then trade Sailing and Meditation to Ramses for Polytheism. Also revolted to Slavery right around this time. First whip: Lighthouse.
Meanwhile Orleans had a barracks and generated its first Chariot. Lyons had built a galley, we were going to pop that hut and claim that copper next. But first we had to finish chopping the Great Lighthouse in Paris, which we did in 750BC. The economy took off- all our trade routes were foreign. Reaping more than 50 bulbs a turn.
670 An AI civ I never met was destroyed! Hmmm.
650 Horseback Riding. Settler completes in Paris. Rheims claims cows, two sea resources, and copper two turns later.
I got aggressive with the whip and took Lyons down to 1 for some horsemen and swords. In 560 Ramses was just turns away from hooking Iron, and Memphis had built the Pyramids to make attacking that much more attractive. After a few more turns we did. Drawing in Shaka cost Metal Casting and Alphabet but gained us Monarchy (we got Monotheism earlier somehow). Elephantine, a town west of Paris and trying to claim Iron also, was easily captured. We captured several workers before the end of this war.
We finally collected enough of an army to capture Memphis in 420. Thebes is growing- 6 archers, 7 archers. I still wanted to try and overwhelm it.
300BC Gustav von Eiffel the Great Engineer born in Paris! The odds were about 1:4 for that, pretty lucky. I guess this means we're switching to Literature
At 280BC the economy was crashing and we still hadn't captured Thebes. Revolt to Representation and Organized Religion. By 260 Thebes had acquired an incredible 14 arhcers!! We had even more units than that and thought that with our huge stack of retreating chariots and promotions we could win in a few rounds. Nope, the chariots underperformed and all died, we drew back our swords and made peace. The only upside is that we weren't paying maintenence anymore on all those chariots...
Then a focus on science. Building bulbs in various places increased our research alot. We were at 112 bulbs in 220BC I think, and then we rushed the Great Library in Paris in 170.
Meanwhile Ramses had moved most of those archers out of Thebes and into what towns he had left. Still, we waited for Construction (10AD) and some cats before going back.
Dow in 80AD, land some cats right outside of Thebes.
110AD Meet some distant but galley-reachable AI. Gift them Meditation and they become pleased with us.
We captured Thebes in 140 against 11 units. Heliopolis was ours in 190, a turndra town with Iron and forests west of Memphis.
In 230 the number of coins Ragnar would pay for Construction started to drop, so we sold for 420g.
Frederick Dowed us out of the blue during this war. Who knows why.
Anyway, Thebes came online in 220, we whipped a lighthouse there and made peace with Ramses.
Circumnavigate in 280AD. I can mention that I think- galley-reachable should include hiking-swordsman-reachable.
in 320 our hut-popping, barb-fighting, circumnavigatin' swashbuckling swordsman captures Fredricksburg, an island town wayyyy east that can control clams and iron after it grows. Hey, they declared on us remember?
370- Great Prophet born in Paris. He'll build the Hindu shrine and boost our economy greatly. 12gpt just to start, we could research over 100 bulbs at 20%.
Dow Ragnar this same turn. If our first-strike amphibious assault works we can sink the Viking navy of 2 triremes and 3 galleys in port. Lodose is on a hill, but what the heck. We lost a sword and an xbow but it worked.
Captured Nidaros in 390. We're getting Ragnar from both ends and hope to meet our armies in the middle of his bent west coast. We captured Bjorgvin south of Lodose in 410. Sigtuna on the south coast was left inexplicably unguarded (just one archer), so we captured that in 430.
Shaka learned Feudalism in 440, not good. Better him than Ragnar though.
3 citizens whip a forge in Nidaros after it comes online in 470. It'll be stable at size 7.
Haibathu in the nice central 4-floodplains location was captured in 480. Odense, a crummy west coast town, followed in 490. I thought that amounted to a convincing case that Ragnar ought to cough up Currency, but there's no reasoning with Vikings
At 500 we were getting 138 bulbs at 10% science with deficit spending from our large plunder trove. Would we battle on to wrest gems too from the Vikings? Aren't we going to build the Hanging Gardens? Would we ever get Currency? Code of Laws? And what about Shaka? These questions will have to wait for the next spoiler.
The first settlement, Orleans, was a compromise. It would control 2 gold and a clam if Memphis wasn't already leveraging Egypt's culture bonus. Oh well, one gold is better than none.
At just 2 towns it looked like further expansion would already be bad for the economy, so instead of another settler I focused on a workforce of 3 workers to hook the gold and do everything else that takes forever at marathon speed.
It was in the 2300's I think when the two towns were hooked. Researched Writing for libraries. With the production bonus it was 26 hammers/turn in Paris. Library finished in 2020 and immediately generated 2 specialists. Science was up to 27 bulbs.
1705- Priesthood. 3rd settler complete.
1645 Library Orleans. This town began work on Stonehenge with the intent of Not finishing it, but rather getting gold for the hammers. With the production bonus that is actually a good deal.
1615 Lyons, our 3rd town, founded to the west to claim horses and funtion as a canal town. And to box Shaka into all points south of there.
1405 Pottery. 1390 The Oracle in Paris, take Metal Casting.
1345 Shaka demands that we convert to Hinduism. What do we have against Hindus? Heck, their religion was founded just across the border in Memphis, why not convert?
1270 Stonhenge is completed somewhere. Orleans earns 150g, we're able to crank up science to 42 bulbs.
1195 Forge finished in Paris.
1150 Great Scientist in Paris against slightly polluted odds. Whew! Used for Academy. At this point I just left an engineer specialist up as much as possible in the hope we'd get an Engineer someday.
940 Alphabet. We know a lot of civs thanks to our wandering workboat, so what can we do? Writing and Meditation aren't known by everyone, so we traded those for Hunting and sailing, and again the next turn for Archery and Masonry. Then trade Sailing and Meditation to Ramses for Polytheism. Also revolted to Slavery right around this time. First whip: Lighthouse.
Meanwhile Orleans had a barracks and generated its first Chariot. Lyons had built a galley, we were going to pop that hut and claim that copper next. But first we had to finish chopping the Great Lighthouse in Paris, which we did in 750BC. The economy took off- all our trade routes were foreign. Reaping more than 50 bulbs a turn.
670 An AI civ I never met was destroyed! Hmmm.
650 Horseback Riding. Settler completes in Paris. Rheims claims cows, two sea resources, and copper two turns later.
I got aggressive with the whip and took Lyons down to 1 for some horsemen and swords. In 560 Ramses was just turns away from hooking Iron, and Memphis had built the Pyramids to make attacking that much more attractive. After a few more turns we did. Drawing in Shaka cost Metal Casting and Alphabet but gained us Monarchy (we got Monotheism earlier somehow). Elephantine, a town west of Paris and trying to claim Iron also, was easily captured. We captured several workers before the end of this war.
We finally collected enough of an army to capture Memphis in 420. Thebes is growing- 6 archers, 7 archers. I still wanted to try and overwhelm it.
300BC Gustav von Eiffel the Great Engineer born in Paris! The odds were about 1:4 for that, pretty lucky. I guess this means we're switching to Literature
At 280BC the economy was crashing and we still hadn't captured Thebes. Revolt to Representation and Organized Religion. By 260 Thebes had acquired an incredible 14 arhcers!! We had even more units than that and thought that with our huge stack of retreating chariots and promotions we could win in a few rounds. Nope, the chariots underperformed and all died, we drew back our swords and made peace. The only upside is that we weren't paying maintenence anymore on all those chariots...
Then a focus on science. Building bulbs in various places increased our research alot. We were at 112 bulbs in 220BC I think, and then we rushed the Great Library in Paris in 170.
Meanwhile Ramses had moved most of those archers out of Thebes and into what towns he had left. Still, we waited for Construction (10AD) and some cats before going back.
Dow in 80AD, land some cats right outside of Thebes.
110AD Meet some distant but galley-reachable AI. Gift them Meditation and they become pleased with us.
We captured Thebes in 140 against 11 units. Heliopolis was ours in 190, a turndra town with Iron and forests west of Memphis.
In 230 the number of coins Ragnar would pay for Construction started to drop, so we sold for 420g.
Frederick Dowed us out of the blue during this war. Who knows why.
Anyway, Thebes came online in 220, we whipped a lighthouse there and made peace with Ramses.
Circumnavigate in 280AD. I can mention that I think- galley-reachable should include hiking-swordsman-reachable.
in 320 our hut-popping, barb-fighting, circumnavigatin' swashbuckling swordsman captures Fredricksburg, an island town wayyyy east that can control clams and iron after it grows. Hey, they declared on us remember?
370- Great Prophet born in Paris. He'll build the Hindu shrine and boost our economy greatly. 12gpt just to start, we could research over 100 bulbs at 20%.
Dow Ragnar this same turn. If our first-strike amphibious assault works we can sink the Viking navy of 2 triremes and 3 galleys in port. Lodose is on a hill, but what the heck. We lost a sword and an xbow but it worked.
Captured Nidaros in 390. We're getting Ragnar from both ends and hope to meet our armies in the middle of his bent west coast. We captured Bjorgvin south of Lodose in 410. Sigtuna on the south coast was left inexplicably unguarded (just one archer), so we captured that in 430.
Shaka learned Feudalism in 440, not good. Better him than Ragnar though.
3 citizens whip a forge in Nidaros after it comes online in 470. It'll be stable at size 7.
Haibathu in the nice central 4-floodplains location was captured in 480. Odense, a crummy west coast town, followed in 490. I thought that amounted to a convincing case that Ragnar ought to cough up Currency, but there's no reasoning with Vikings
At 500 we were getting 138 bulbs at 10% science with deficit spending from our large plunder trove. Would we battle on to wrest gems too from the Vikings? Aren't we going to build the Hanging Gardens? Would we ever get Currency? Code of Laws? And what about Shaka? These questions will have to wait for the next spoiler.
