Nice to see that this thread has picked back up again.
(0) 1550AD Well, I don't have a whole lot to say about the inherited turn. Swiss Pauli looks to have everything running very nicely; we've accumulated a massive bankroll of over 2000g while waiting out the last couple turns, which I'll burn as soon as we make the swapover. I also heartily approve the decision to build the Heroic Epic in kwaDuzka; even if it's not the absolute perfect location, better to get some more soldiers going now than wait any longer. I'd also like to whip some more universities to get Oxford going in our top science city (probably Madrid or Kyoto, have to check after the swap to see which one). I also want to continue spreading Christianity for our shrine, try to figure out the location for Globe Theatre, and try to figure out which victory condition to pursue. I'm sure we could pack this in and cruise to Space... but I'm not sure how interesting that would prove to be.
Time to roll the dice and figure out our next civ and leader. For the new civ, we land... Germany. Ugh.
Talk about totally useless! We're still nowhere close to either Assembly Plants or Panzers on the tech tree. Just goes to show that for all that we've had some lucky picks (such as Rome for Praetorians) we've also had some complete duds. Now for the leader... we roll Napoleon (Charismatic/Organized). While I wouldn't say that those are perfect traits for our situation, we could have done a lot worse. The later we get in the game, the more Organized will help us out, after all.
As always, I have to go through massive reconfiguration of our cities after the swap. Set all cities to max food to replenish those granaries, pick new infrastructure and unit builds, etc. It's not a good time to build soldiers right now (a much better thing to do will be revolt into Nationhood civic and draft some rifles once we have the tech), so I don't, except in our Heroic Epic city. Despite our huge size, we're in a shockingly bad way in terms of luxuries - only a measly THREE such resources! We'll be able to pick up gold and furs from conquering Tokugawa, but that's still not really enough. I go ahead and trade for gems with Shaka, sending him excess copper and horses in return (he already has sources of both - huh?
) That will help us out significantly for the time being.
Here's the new look of our civilization:
(1) 1555AD Suryavarman wants to trade us spices for rice. Sounds like a deal! Incidentally, the Great Person golden age counter DOES reset after the civ swap. In other words, we can trigger a Golden Age just with our single Great Artist sitting in Madrid. I think that we should definitely do so - just in a couple of turns, since so many cities are working max food right now. Then we can use our 15 turn Golden Age to swap briefly to Nationhood and draft rifles, for another powerful offensive against Japan!
We should also think about what economic civic to run. I think that Mercantilism would probably be better for our situation (since we're in Representation, plus many of the largest civs out there are also in Mercantilism at the moment), but need to wait for the Golden Age to arrive to experiment with which would be best.
(2) 1560AD This unit should come in handy during our next war:
As a Charismatic civ, I actually had enough XP to get the uber Medic III/Woodsman III combo, only to find that Recon units can't take the Woodsman III promotion. D'oh!
Well, that's still a pretty nice healer anyway.
(3) 1565AD Sell Education @4th to Suryavarman for Divine Right and 50g in change. Although the odds of us getting anything from Divine Right are next to nil, I can't resist picking up a tech at basically no cost to us by trading with a backwards civ.
(4) 1570AD Espionage reveals that Ramesses will discover Banking next turn, so this is the ideal time to sell it to him for his 90g. He actually pops up requesting this deal himself, saving me the minimal effort it would take to click on his name - ha!
Peter pops up requesting we go to war with Shaka, and of course I decline. Our relations have been so crazily fickle in this game; best friends with Peter before one of the swaps, now we're down at the low end of Cautious. Heh. I'll also note here that I've decided to have Rome (the very strong eastern city on South Island) start cranking out a navy for us. We're going to need it eventually to do any kind of conquering overseas, so might as well get started with some Galleons while we have the time.
(5) 1575AD By the way, speaking of awesome coastal cities...
Take a look at Oporto! The double-lighthouse + Moai Statues combo has this city rocking a crazy mixture of food, commerce, and shields. If we ever draw the Dutch and their overpowered unique building, this game is OVER!
(6) 1580AD Discover Replaceable Parts, start work on Rifling (7 turns). We've got just enough of a bankroll to make it there at 100% science, and then the fun will start.
(7) 1585AD Now that our cities have remaxed their food boxes, and I've got them assigned to their "normal" tiles, I feel it's time to trigger our Golden Age. Burn our Great Artist and start the fun! Rifling ETA drops from 6 turns to 4. I pull the swap to Mercantilism, and our science goes up from ~860 to 950 beakers/turn. Seems like the right move!
Of course, I have to go through all our cities and beat the AI governors over the head, firing about a million spy specialists...
(9) 1595AD Darius demands Replaceable Parts, which is a monopoly tech on the way to Rifling. I'll say this one time, Darius:
N-O. Otherwise, pretty uneventful.
(10) 1600AD And that closes out a very quiet turnset. Nice to get some easy ones in for a change.
Next turn we discover Rifling, and will also be 5 turns from our last civics swap, so we can pop into Nationhood and start drafting. We may want to spend those 5 turns in Theocracy as well, for a little extra XP. I'd probably go for Chemistry as our next tech, but Constitution/Democracy is another decent possibility. If we get a Great Engineer out of Madrid for our next Great Person, I'd hold it for use on the Statue of Liberty (now THAT would be sweet on our very large continent!) One final little issue: I'm running a longbow via galleon to our undefended city of Sapporo. I've marked it on the map below.
What's left of Japan:
Lead us on to glory!
Sullla
Dantski <<< UP NOW
TheArchduke <<< on deck
Swiss Pauli
sunrise089
Here's a list of our civ swaps so far:
Facing a Drill1, CG3 LB on a hill with a couple of Maces and some Praets is no fun, so I took peace for Sapporo & his Map. Sadly Sapporo wasn't on the island; it's next to his capital. And it didn't managed to get a granary in time, though borders have popped and it's working its fish.
Japan and get to working on dismantling the Egyptian empire. That will set us up for a showdown with Shaka, which is always fun!
