Nobles' Club 269: Gilgamesh of Sumeria

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity NHNE normal speed up to 1000BC

I want to play all the protective leaders. Ziggurats enable espionage fun.

Spoiler :

And we are isolated. No more espionage fun. Had I known this is isolation I would play on immortal. Too late.

State of the union

Spoiler :

Both stone and marble. The choice is Great Library or the Pyramids. In isolation and food-rich map I prefer Pyramids. Creative grants half-priced libraries. Assuming 0% slider, each city builds a library, two scientist specialists under representation, the library grants an extra 3 science per turn. I can accept a 15-turn payoff period. As for the marble route, Asethetics - - > Literature - - > Music have trade value in the early game but I have no trading partners. Otherwise these techs have little early-game inherent value. Instead I prefer the bottom path and reach optics in reasonable time.

Wonders were going quickly so I took no chances and 3-pop whip the pyramids, even though it was 3 turns to completion. Not taking chances.

The city on the stone does not have long-term potential but not every city needs to. I was not prepared to spend 8 worker turns improving the desert stone and 3 more worker turns building a desert road.

 

[krikav]

Super nice @sylvanllewelyn !
I took the other path, very nice with diversity!

Spoiler :

I agree on the settlement of destert stone. If going pyramids thats basically a must.
The awkward position of the stone was what made me avoid pyramids. Not at all sure that was a good choice but thats what I did.

The wonders where flying in my game too, whipping to completion was a sensible move imho.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

And we are isolated. No more espionage fun. Had I known this is isolation I would play on immortal. Too late.

For future reference, whether the game is isolated or not should be listed in the map details .

 

[Pangaea]

@All

Spoiler :

Agree the city on stone isn't great longterm, but I didn't find it akward either. There are two FPs that can be cottaged, and the city will slowly grow on those. There is also rice, so it's a perfectly fine spot in my view. The main purpose of the city was just to get access to stone ASAP, and not waste half the early game improving a desert quarry+road Am glad I built it in my attempt, and getting Pyramids here, and generally in isolation, is very strong. Helps the happy cap a lot, and we usually only have 5-6 cities until Astro anyway, so it's perfect really. It's either that, or building a zillion warriors under HR.

As AcaMetis mentioned, you can see whether a game is isolated in advance. It is written in the first post, in one of the spoilers.

Am actually quite pleased about settling 1W in my game, instead of e.g. on the PH. Slower to get out the initial worker ofc, but it's such a strong location with 7FPs and even double food (tho ofc 1-2 of those will be handed off from time to time/always). Even with a bunch of workers, I struggled to keep up with cottaging all those FPs all over the map. And there was no need to build a new palace either, which it looks like @krikav did. It's nice to see that there are different ways to play a map, with several highly viable pathways

Edit: Gah, that is actually a real user? Humbug!

 

[Fish Man]

t152 update, I took quite a...bold path.

Spoiler :

Gilgamesh the Great decides to start a PYRAMID scheme to conquer the world - literally! But just the mids weren't enough - we complete them and the oracle on the same turn, netting us a free metal casting too (and switch to slavery the same time as rep).

Spoiler :

Fast forward to 840AD, and we've libbed steel and are just 10 or so turns away from rifling. Things could not have turned out better.

Spoiler :

Tell you all what...I may even aim for a fast space victory, from iso! It certainly seems almost doable, at this pace.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T171 :

I feel like I'm getting all this backwards... I must really get into vass and get troops out. so I start the GA, and go from Bur/Slav/OR to Vass/Caste/Theo.
But first thing is to go into confu and do a round of whipping on everything that can be whipped, including the capitals bank. (Want to get that +75% hammer bonus in the whip).
Whipping away pop when going into a GA feels wrong though, and I don't really do anything to setup myself for more GPeople later on either, but I think I can rely somewhat on GLib+Natepic. Besides... priorities. I want strong units now!

Making a count of Saladins situation. His SOD is in Najran and I figure if I land on the hill W of Damascus, I'll get a heads up and see it before it hits. So I can afford to drop of a weaker stack with cannons to bombard a turn first, before the stronger grenadiers land and hold the hill.

August is so utterly behind that I feel sorry for him. He is Cathys worst enemy so I can't give him anything, but in a peacetreaty anything goes so I just give him everything.
Please keep her busy for me august!

Grenadiers and a musket is comming next turn to hold the hill.

My explorer got kicked out to Lincolns territory, just besies Philadelphia which Capac have conquered of him. Only now I note that Capac is at rifles, and that he is plotting too. >_< That bastard is probably trying to steal Saladin from me.
Next turn, I lose my caravels. I was so confident that they got that coastal bonus, but saladin had one at c1 from theo that won 50% against the selected one, and the other caravel was apparantly injured from barb encounters ages ago and I hadn't thought or bothered about letting it heal.

So glad that I have managed to put some breaks on Cathy, she would have become absolutely crazy if left unchecked.

Normally when I pop some mining resource I just worldbuilder it away, but here it adds so nicely to that already beautiful captital that I can't do it.

There is no sign of Saladins SOD, which I find very weird.

I wanted him to put his doomstack from up east into Damascus, but he just sends the catapults from Mecca.
Next turn though, Capac declared on him, and what happends up north after that I don't know. But I suspect that Saladins units got preoccupied!

Last few turns of the GA, I set up cities to that most of them get out their units when it's just 1T left of the GA, because I plan to go back to burocracy and I want as many as possible to have the vassalage bonus.
This city is the most extreme example, and have not worked fish for the last few turns.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T186 :

Cathy and Lincoln buddy up and gets alot of lucky rolls and I lose 3 of the 5 privateers.

A summary of the privateers. In about 10 turns they have managed to smash 4 seafood, kill 8-10 caravels, plunder 155g and send Seattle from pop19 to pop8, and reduce cathys cities from pop 14/15/21 down to pop 10/9/12.
And this on my main rivals in this game, all while me and Cathy have happy faces.
So nice to have a monopoly on chemistry for a lengthy period.
Now it's comming to an end though, Lincoln has started to put beakers into it.

Capac has not taken any city, but now when I'm about to break my monopoly on chemistry, this has the highest prio, he wasn't willing to give me all of his gold either, so he was pretty sure of himself! But I want Saladin for myself.
Thanks for chipping away some units though, Señor Capac!

After Capac, I get RP from Cathy, although I have to add 475g to the deal.
Education+130g from Ramsy, because I had put one turn into education earlier, with the idea of trading for it and then brokering it.
And lastly, I sell the rest of chemistry to Lincoln for 115g.
I feel like I'm managing to keep the techpace abit more under wraps than I usually do.

Apparantly, catapults are no danger to protective grenadiers.
Cathy asks me to join her war against August again, and I think sure why not? I'm sure I can make capac close borders if he sends some nasty stuff to me.

Noone has steel and noone has MilSci.
But still here I felt that I needed to get into the trading game to get somewhere myself. I went MilSci to Cathy for Lib first, to be able to broker that.
And Milsci+25g for nationalism with Lincoln, then MilSci+Liberalism for constitution+560g with Ramsy.
Then I realize it was all a horrible idea, as now Cathy will completely obliterate august with her grenadiers and newly aquired cuirs, so I give her 850g to stop the war against August, but I think that backfired again, as it caused Saladin to becomes Augusts vassal, and promptly supplying Saladin with horses.
There was not much bloodshed though, only saw 2 cuirs from him before he went under.

Look! Now I hae pyramids too!

So long Saladin! Thanks for the cities!
After this, I quickly send all remaining troops out and self-pillage like a rabid dog.
Also give August 50g to get a peace treaty as I was getting unhappines problems.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

For learning purposes, I read spoilers as long as I played many turns after that point. I tried to follow a strategy but did not execute it very well.

Spoiler :

I am having difficulty balancing the whipping out of settlers and running representation specialists. I am not used to this type of gameplay.

It is 50BC and I totally forgot an important part of this game

Spoiler :

I got a Great Engineer. I totally forgot the Pyramids generates great engineer points. Now I can't double-bulb astronomy. I make do and bulb machinery.

I stopped at 225AD

Spoiler :

I got sixty-ish city maintenance. My next research path will be mysticism - - > meditation - - > priesthood to whip out ziggurats. I wouldn't trade for those cheap techs even if I could. Then my research output can be raised about 30 a turn. Maybe it's not the right move but I was thinking about meeting an AI before producing espionage points.

This is a barren tech tree. I wouldn't mind trading away monopoly optics and astronomy to backfill, unless there are other isolated civilisations.

 

[krikav]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Bulbing machinery saves alot of time, and is probably the "correct" move, but personaly, I'm often much more inclined to settle that guy, with rep the return you get from him is decent.
Also, don't be dishearted about not being able to double-bulb astro, with this good land and with rep scientists you can do the heavy lifting by teching half of it without any extreme issues.

I suspect you might have overdone it with expansion prior to optics, but I'm not sure. It's good cities and rep changes alot. But perhaps one have to go for a more focused approach where a new city gets a library and gets to grow to pop3 and after that all other infrastructure (granary+lighthouse+forge) gets slowbuild after that?

You upgraded a trireme in the east, but can't see anything in the west from the screenshot.
Ideally you want to be prepared to that a caravel starts moving from both sides the turn after optics. Getting that speedboat upgrade can be downright crucial in many maps.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T197 :

With Saladin gone, I start to make more concrete plans for Capac.
This is a lovely opportunity, he has almost his entire army in Philadelphia which I can hit on T0 of a war from Lincolns territory.
He also have alot of coastal cities with about 4 rifles each, so I'm thinking that naval grenadiers could work wonders.
Bombard with boats, land a pair of cannons and a bunch of grenadiers, finish bombardment next turn, soften up with cannons and slaughter rifles with grenadiers.

These two cities will be like stealing candy from a child. I'm thinking I won't need that much more war success to make him my vassal if I only start building alot of units and appear strong.

I will have some vunerable cities though, so rifling would be nice. But I also need to get them here fast enough...

There is so much I want.
Ramsy seems to have almost finished steampower, and then swapped tech, why I don't know, but he will only give me corporations for steampower+1100g, and it has been that way for some turns.
I can get rifling from Lincoln, but he is Cathys worst enemy and if I trade with him I won't get any goodies from her. And she is willing to give me MT right away, but she also has communism which I would really love to get my hands on.

Next turn though August is Cathys worst enemy (Worst enemies have been flopping around alot in this game). And I trade for rifling right away.
I was hoping to get alot of nice stuff and broker it around. My plan was to sell rifling plus the rest of steampower to Ramsy for SciMet (and possibly corporations added in if I pay some gold) and then trade steel+rifling for communism.

But the AIs had other plans... Lincoln the shrewd bastard sold rifling to cathy for steampower and to ramsy for democracy. Grrr...
Here I gave Ramsy steel+steampower for scimet+corporations, but I had to add about 900g to the deal too.
I put a full turn into communism with the hope and dream that I could get the rest from cathy for steel. But the next turn she got steel for physics with lincoln and I was in for a marathon toward communism myself.
I shouldn't have been so greedy. I should have just gotten MT or something. Now my greed boosted all of the trio.

Capac is really nice, I love that wonder! Can't whip out nukes without it.

My boats went around Capacs, after Philadelphia I will load my elites into the boats and try to grab Kremlintown.
I attack a privateer at 92% odds and die, and capac pops a great general... I know it was you capac! I'll get you for that!

Communism is finally in, I had to build alot of wealth to afford it too.
Revolt from HR/Bur/Decentralization.
August started plotting while we had a peace treaty, and Cathy have started plotting now too.
I don't think she plots on the player at friendly though? It's that she can be bribed against the player at friendly, right?

Now just revolt and shuffling of some units.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T203 :

Apparantly, August DoWed Cathy a pair of turns ago, so I'll never know who she plotted against. Can be problematic to play without headphones on it seems.
Also, capac has started plotting now too, but I'll never know who he plots against either.
Have had problems getting enough rifles up, I have some as defence in Saladins old cities, and two are in a boat ready to be unloaded on my doomstack next turn for added protection.
I'll hit Philadelphia hard and let him fill it up for a few turns before I take it and then I'll upgrade the maces and the sword to CR3 grenadiers and send all of my best troops, the CR3 cannons and the upgraded grenadiers and some rifles up by boat to Capacs capital.

The settler is something that can be nice to have in a doomstack, once you take a city the AIs culture vanishes, and sometimes there is a brief period where you can squeeze in a city before the culture closes again.

Cakewalk here. Rifles will slaugther the knights and grenadiers will get the rifle+knight in Vilcas. Both get a cannon to make sure.

Pay 4 cannons as the entry ticket for a bloodbath.
After this, every unit in the stack gets a kill, and only a vulture dies at about 95% odds. Good, that saves me the cost of upgrading him!

My defences are abit rushed, have 1 rifle+1musket+2grenadiers in medina, one rifle is standby, ready to run to either Medina or Baghdad, and two new arrivals from boat ar just standing around. Najran is very vunerable with only a lone grenadier guarding, but my intuition says that he won't come at me that way.
Getting rifles produced and shipped was problematic when I had to build wealth to reach communism first, and then revolt for two turns. So most rifles are from heroic only.
A slight tip of the hat to the protective trait here, it helped me feel much more confident that this hurried counterattack-defence would hold.

This went really well. Worst risk I took was with the grenadiers.
Odds for cannon was 30-40% something, but grenadiers had 70% against knight and 75% or so against the rifle after that, so I just went in, possibly saving the cannon.
Had I failed with the first grenadier the cannon would have had to attack too.

He continues to fill up Philadelphia, I get very nice healing here too on neutral land.
I didn't think about it in the game, but Lincoln hates HCs guts and dosn't have OB, so I'm 100% safe here.
Had I realized in the game, i wouldn't have had to worry about shipping rifles for stack protection so much.
Next turn, I take Philadelphia and move in maces+sword and upgrade them and get ready for Capac-Capital.

Cathy continues to spray me with demands. Stop trade with August! Join my war against August! But I ignore her now. She won't like that alot... One of few AIs that gets -2 diplo penalty for ignoring demands.
And horror strikes... Capac have gotten assembly line, and he won't capitulate. :/
I could make peace but the whole idea was that I would get him as a vassal. (Well, and now Kremlin, but that wasn't in the original plan).
But I iron on and load the boats up with the best of the best.

The leftovers from the island captures come a turn late for the party, but gets to join next turn. I feel so stupid for leaving a gren and a rifle as city garisson on those cursed islands. :/
Situation looks nice, not that many units, and he are far away from finishing upgrading everyone.

The dregs march toward some city of lesser significance.

The evil bastard hits my elites!
Vision-guy and Medic kills the severely injured infantrymen 1S before they jump up on the hill again, and I land the reinforcements and bombard to 0%.

 

[krikav]

Don't think I have seen such close calls and exciting events in many games. Pheeew!

Spoiler T204 :

Next turn comes and nothing horrific has happend. There is 6 units defending the capital which is bombarded to 0%.
I have 6 CR3 cannons and two more CR2, and a stack of 6 "attackers" (injured scout-knights and super-medics count!! Everyone counts now!)

It did work!! Lost two cannons, but all units had 99.9-100% odds! I get the capital!

But Capac is "doing fine on his own". :/

So the dregs zerg through a town of their own.
But he is STILL "doing fine on our own."

So I move out my medic and the boats, to avoid having them trapped in Kremlintown if I make peace, starting to plan that I will have to load up defenders and DoW with full boats outside of the capital to defend it later. I scout the map for easy kills that can up war success abit. Killing a galleon and a frigate here..

Then I see these guys! Some random defenders and reinforcements from my mainland that I had not thought about.
I check that I can get city defenders to Baghdad by boat, and assemble the stack.

Not too shabby! Ofcourse no time for bombardment, just send the cannons flying in.
I promoted CR on them, but in hindsight I think collateral would have been much better. All rifles get pinch+combat.

Well.. no city, but still some kills! I still have a grenadier on a hill that I get 75% odds against, and a knight can reach a infantryman at 10% odds to make a last heroic attempt, but I check the negotiation screen first and Capac the stalwart has caved in!!

He wanted to give me divine right, I tried to get all other kinds of goodies, but eventually we agreed on him becomming confu, adopting vassalage and state property and give me 140g.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T248 :

After I got Capac, things brightend up alot. I got stuck mentally abit trying to tech, but then I realized that Lincoln was still at just rifles/cannons so I declared in an instant. Started to march toward his capital. He did get artillery once I had taken a few cities, but with only artillery and nothing else, he just suicided them into my doomstack and then was willing to capitulate...
I then Declared on August who was still at war with Cathy, I thought I would get him as a vassal but she did. :/ Then I just declared on them both and continued to wear them down with infantry+artillery.
Was up at 60%+ domination area with lots of cities still in revolt, just running a 100% culture slider and not doing much except mashing end-turn, when the UN vote came up, so picked victory and lo and behold! I won a "diplomatic" victory.
Gaze upon my diplomats!

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity NHNE normal speed up to 620 AD

About the map

Spoiler :

There is isolation and then there is Isolation where everybody else is on the same continent. Thankfully there was more than one religious bloc or I would have been stuffed.

At this point I can read and respond to some spoilers without spoiling my game.

@Fish Man On Wonders

Spoiler :

I thought about doing what you did. I might have if I played on immortal and I was industrious. Fortunately I did not because, in my game, someone built The Oracle before you did, so it would have been a complete failure. I think fail-gold was not worth delaying the other more important things in the early game.

Speaking of wonders, The Great Lighthouse was build 1600 BC (not a typo sixteen hundred BC) in my game. On maps where The Great Lighthouse was the correct strategy, the player would have been completely stuffed.

@krikav On economic management

Spoiler :

Thank you for your advice! Yes, under representation, I should have went library - - > granary - - > other stuff for my periphery cities. Instead I went granary - - > library - - > other stuff. This critically delayed my development. I forgot that I skip mathematics in isolation, so the granaries were not chopped out quickly.

The Great Person fiasco wasn't great, but too bad. Getting a Great Engineer rather than a Great Scientist meant around 600 beakers lost but the number of turns saved was probably around the same. (Hard to explain... basically the same reason why people lightbulb Philosophy with a Great Scientist or Civil Service with a Great Merchant?). The second great person was a Great Scientist, thankfully, or I would have retired immediately.

Tech trades from 275 AD to 620 AD

Spoiler :

Conventional wisdom suggests that getting Polytheism and Monotheism unnecessarily increases the WFYABTA count. However I am thinking that eventually I would want to take Theology from my first target and then run Theocracy when preparing to fight against my second target. Hunting is not useless either because is ivory and fur on the other continent.

In none of these trades did the AI gave me all their gold. They were all "fair" trades. So I did not gain any diplomatic points.

State of the union:

Spoiler :

Scrapped every last bit of gold to get Astronomy. I even needlessly pillaged and razed a barbarian city just for 77 gold.

America is close to completing Astronomy. The rest have not started yet. None of this "liberalism for steel" nonsense, I am not at that level yet. I am not even sure if I could be the first to liberalism. Of course that is my fault: I did not setup a Great Person farm and I did not switch to Caste System since I had no religion, no philosophy for pacifism, and no literature for National Epic. I might still want to starve out a city to get another Great Scientist to lightbulb parts to Education. I am not sure. Is it even worth it? I have nothing worthy to lightbulb.

Trades. They've got gold for sure.

 

[krikav]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

"Hunting is not useless with ivory and fur on the other continent", just have to check here. You do know that it's irrelevant if you have hunting, you can still trade for those goods.
I don't see the player making any camps on the other continent in this game.
I agree on your philosophy though. I trade alot with my first contacts in many games, but thats because the WFYABTA only starts counting when they know you, so if you have only met saladin and trade for hunting with him, Cathy is none the wiser.

My usual path forward from a situation like yours, is usually to just ignore the lib race entierly and go for steel.
The librace is kind of bad in many regards.. What does paper really do for you? Education? Who wants to sink 200 hammers into universities at that point?
Liberalism itself? Nothing!
All of that is irrelevant or premature, you need alot of the stuff eventually but it's not urgent.
The only reason that the lib-path is so common, is because you can bulb your way through it, essentially getting techs for free considering how overpowered bulbing is... But on isolation maps you have burned that powder on astro, which in alot of ways makes the lib path much less tempting.

The techs that I find that can be traded for in almost every game is CS, Feud, Philo and Engineering at the astro trading phase, but don't rush it here either. It's good to keep the AIs as slow as you possibly can.
Guilds is very good if you can get in trade, and likewise gunpowder... But that happends quite infrequently.
Then you go chemistry, and if you have been wise and avoided paper up until this point and GPerson managment allows for it, you can put a bulb into it!
Then it's steel itself.
Most of these techs are quite excellent trading chips in their own right, guilds is nice to get engineering/philosophy if you are lacking it, gunpowder likewise. Chemistry is good for stuff like PP and nationalism/education too, if you put a turn into them or bring some gold.
Steel itself can get you straight up into more advanced techs.

 

[krikav]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler Resource-trades :

I don't think you want your copper, so trade away the crab first to get capacs crab+gold for your copper.
A pity noone wants rice or cow, because trading those away and getting rice+cow+gold for the horse from Saladin would have been nice.
Gold+crab so ramsy for dye+banana, then you can get crab back from capac, and gold from Cathy.


I like trading like this alot, because it ties up as much of the AIs resources as possible in my hands, giving me power to cancel and form new deals abit more. It keeps the AIs from trading with each other abit more which is always nice.

 

[Fish Man]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

"Hunting is not useless with ivory and fur on the other continent", just have to check here. You do know that it's irrelevant if you have hunting, you can still trade for those goods.
I don't see the player making any camps on the other continent in this game.
I agree on your philosophy though. I trade alot with my first contacts in many games, but thats because the WFYABTA only starts counting when they know you, so if you have only met saladin and trade for hunting with him, Cathy is none the wiser.

My usual path forward from a situation like yours, is usually to just ignore the lib race entierly and go for steel.
The librace is kind of bad in many regards.. What does paper really do for you? Education? Who wants to sink 200 hammers into universities at that point?
Liberalism itself? Nothing!
All of that is irrelevant or premature, you need alot of the stuff eventually but it's not urgent.
The only reason that the lib-path is so common, is because you can bulb your way through it, essentially getting techs for free considering how overpowered bulbing is... But on isolation maps you have burned that powder on astro, which in alot of ways makes the lib path much less tempting.

The techs that I find that can be traded for in almost every game is CS, Feud, Philo and Engineering at the astro trading phase, but don't rush it here either. It's good to keep the AIs as slow as you possibly can.
Guilds is very good if you can get in trade, and likewise gunpowder... But that happends quite infrequently.
Then you go chemistry, and if you have been wise and avoided paper up until this point and GPerson managment allows for it, you can put a bulb into it!
Then it's steel itself.
Most of these techs are quite excellent trading chips in their own right, guilds is nice to get engineering/philosophy if you are lacking it, gunpowder likewise. Chemistry is good for stuff like PP and nationalism/education too, if you put a turn into them or bring some gold.
Steel itself can get you straight up into more advanced techs.

I disagree with your assessment on lib...I always go for lib if I think I can get it.

The first thing is that, believe it or not, libbing steel costs about the same beakers as just getting it normally. Lib + edu costs around the same as steel, and philo + paper the same as guilds. However, if you go lib, for basically the same number of beakers spent, you get two pretty nice Renaissance era techs in addition.

Now what good are these extra techs? Well first of all, don't say no to a few thousand free beakers (even more if you can bulb part of edu) . Second...you may need things on the lib path more than you think. Philo is needed for nationalism, which comes into play should you want to draft. Paper is essential for rifling, education/lib for communism. These are things that you will most definitely need, at the latest, no more than 10-20 turns after you begin your first attack. And of course you can use edu as a trade chip if you don't want to give away astro or people are already getting it...and lib can be that too, but also a convenient way to bribe people in or out of war since it 100% doesn't unlock anything important. So as you can see, if you can lib steel, the benefits are quite enormous.

 

[krikav]

Unless you lose the race that is... Or if you have to go lib premature and get chemistry which you have already put a turn into, instead of steel or something other horrible.
Ofcourse it's nice when it works out, but so often something throws a spanner into the works.

And the crowd of AIs also play a role. If you play with Genghis, Alex, Shaka, Monty and Mehmed, going chem->steel will yield you rather little tradingpower as they will beeline there themelves most of the time.

 

[Fish Man]

Unless you lose the race that is... Or if you have to go lib premature and get chemistry which you have already put a turn into, instead of steel or something other horrible.
Ofcourse it's nice when it works out, but so often something throws a spanner into the works.

And the crowd of AIs also play a role. If you play with Genghis, Alex, Shaka, Monty and Mehmed, going chem->steel will yield you rather little tradingpower as they will beeline there themelves most of the time.

Fair enough. But I think I made it clear enough what type of player I am by my first post on this thread, which saw me attempt two ancient-era wonders on isolation without ind...from my point of view, more fun to go all or nothing .

 

[krikav]

It can sure be! And it's also very enjoyable to see many different styles.

Regarding your game:

Spoiler :

I can imagine that going straight to space w/o any conquest is very much doable here, so much good land already!
I remember some NC game with Fredrich, where I managed to squeeze out a space victory with a worse island than this, but it could be that I was helped by the traits alot there.

Also @Fish Man question unrelated to this game:

Spoiler :

There was some mention of the anti-tank unit in some other thread, and since it gets a promotion I have a feeling that it could be used for upgrading somehow, but I'm not sure and I haven't utilized it myself. Well, perhaps build one and put in in a stack to defend against the rare rogue tanks the AIs builds...

But from old memories of screenshots, I remember that I saw you use cavallery+artillery from time to time, I suspect that involves some sort of beeline for artillery, so perhaps you find yourself contemplating the anti-tank guy more frequently? What are your thoughts on that unit? Any special circumstances where they get some use?