The Oz-Man
Enter: The VAIKE!
Hi-diddly-ho, Civ-a-rinos!
Pretender to the Throne is a series where Iride Neal's coattails to gloryplay around with the popular Earth map, exploring the various leaders in their real-world contexts. Last time, we took Catherine for a spin on Monarch. It was cheesy, it was easy, and it highlighted one of the map's heavyweights. It also demonstrated one of the easiest paths to victory on the Earth map:
1. Take over Europe.
2. Win!
This time, I don't want that option. We're bumping it up to Emperor, where I probably should be playing anyway. We've got a new leader set thanks to a suggestion from capnvonbaron. And we're going into Africa with... Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia!
In my experience, Zara is just about always a player in any game. With a pair of powerful traits in Creative and Organized, Zara can claim and afford a lot of land. His Oromo Warriors add Drill promotions and first strikes to the otherwise unremarkable Musketman, and his Steles are a beefy culture-multiplying Monument (sort of redundant on a Creative leader, but they still help push things back in a real culture war).
In short, Zara's got the ability to be a very competitive leader. In Neal's Asoka King of the World, Zara gets a chance to shine by virtue of claiming the commerce-rich Nile floodplains. On this map, we won't have that option without a fight, which leaves us with Zara's same starting location from that map.
So let's have a look at that, shall we (marked with the green dot)?
...holy jesus what.
Yup, stuck in the barren highlands of Ethiopia, with our only escape through the hills, around a bunch of mountains. And when we get out? JUNGLE.
Basically, it's a perplexing start. I think our best advantage in the short-term is to head south, working the fish, the gems, and the horses. We can set up another city in Somalia to work those fishes and cows for a pretty nice production site (and there's a Creative neighbor to the north as I'll explain, so that may be worth doing early). Beyond that? REX as best we can to the south and maybe the west.
Here's a look at the parts of Africa that are available to us:
We're sharing Africa with Ramesses of Egypt and Hannibal of Carthage, so we're going to probably have to fight to get the nicest land--that is, the land around the northern floodplains. If we want them, though, we have access to most of the continent's metal, as well as jumbos. The drawback is that there's basically no whippable land and very little to chop.
In short, it's a mess. But it's a mess on purpose. After the breezy last game, I feel like a challenge.
For some reason, I'm having trouble attaching the scenario to this post, so I'll explain it.The save is attached to the third post in this thread. I'm playing a modified version that adds Emperor-level techs to the AIs. I'll put in spoilers who's around and who they're replacing; it's often just a leader change between the same civ, but sometimes things aren't quite so clean:
As usual with me, no huts and no events. Choose Religions is also on this game for flavor. Without Isabella or Saladin on the map, the religion game may be very interesting indeed.
I'm eager to see your thoughts; needless to say, we're in for a much more challenging start this time!
Pretender to the Throne is a series where I
1. Take over Europe.
2. Win!
This time, I don't want that option. We're bumping it up to Emperor, where I probably should be playing anyway. We've got a new leader set thanks to a suggestion from capnvonbaron. And we're going into Africa with... Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia!
In my experience, Zara is just about always a player in any game. With a pair of powerful traits in Creative and Organized, Zara can claim and afford a lot of land. His Oromo Warriors add Drill promotions and first strikes to the otherwise unremarkable Musketman, and his Steles are a beefy culture-multiplying Monument (sort of redundant on a Creative leader, but they still help push things back in a real culture war).
In short, Zara's got the ability to be a very competitive leader. In Neal's Asoka King of the World, Zara gets a chance to shine by virtue of claiming the commerce-rich Nile floodplains. On this map, we won't have that option without a fight, which leaves us with Zara's same starting location from that map.
So let's have a look at that, shall we (marked with the green dot)?
Spoiler :
...holy jesus what.
Yup, stuck in the barren highlands of Ethiopia, with our only escape through the hills, around a bunch of mountains. And when we get out? JUNGLE.
Basically, it's a perplexing start. I think our best advantage in the short-term is to head south, working the fish, the gems, and the horses. We can set up another city in Somalia to work those fishes and cows for a pretty nice production site (and there's a Creative neighbor to the north as I'll explain, so that may be worth doing early). Beyond that? REX as best we can to the south and maybe the west.
Here's a look at the parts of Africa that are available to us:
Spoiler :
We're sharing Africa with Ramesses of Egypt and Hannibal of Carthage, so we're going to probably have to fight to get the nicest land--that is, the land around the northern floodplains. If we want them, though, we have access to most of the continent's metal, as well as jumbos. The drawback is that there's basically no whippable land and very little to chop.
In short, it's a mess. But it's a mess on purpose. After the breezy last game, I feel like a challenge.
Spoiler :
As usual with me, no huts and no events. Choose Religions is also on this game for flavor. Without Isabella or Saladin on the map, the religion game may be very interesting indeed.
I'm eager to see your thoughts; needless to say, we're in for a much more challenging start this time!
Go Oz!! DoW and kill 
! He is on your way to culrural victory!! Starting place looks pretty..umm... Not promising 
I'll play this map someday on noble. And don't laugh to me if I get owned by 
