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v1.14 Euro
Conquest.
I finished the QSC session meeting the
Spoiler 1 criteria by a turn or two. At the start of the game my goal was :
... I'm just hoping to survive and not lose via diplomatic again (any other loss is just fine
).
Everything was going a lot better than expected, so I was thinking, wouldn't it be ironic if I could
win via diplomatic after losing by it the last two times! Bearing this in mind, I wanted to avoid wars, keep everyone happy with me, try to force the tech pace to be high.
875BC the Zulus declared war on me. I guess I didn't look strong enough to defend myself. Their warrior and archer managed to take Aldea de Ribbanah off me, which was defended by just the 1 spearman.
850BC my 3rd suicide galley made it across (the first 2 sunk the 1st turn in ocean during the QSC) to the Japanese. Unfortunately the W continent was quite a way behind in techs, the exception being the Aztecs having Monarchy. I did a lot of trading, getting the W continent back into the tech race to speed it up, and getting India, Celts, England, France, Ottomans to form an alliance with me against the Zulus.
The Zulus immediately retreated and attacked France.
800BC change to Republic.
650BC to 625BC I captured Zaragoza/Aldea de Ribannah back from the Zulus, so I had all my original citys back.
590BC I made a bad mistake. I forgot that an alliance is a 20 turn deal (I mentioned this in
Spoiler 1 without letting on that it had happened to me between Spoiler 1 & 2. Yndy and bloodlust kindly replied) and made peace with the Zulus and got 2 workers, 15g & 1gpt. This made India, Celts, England, France, Ottomans furious with me, not a good start if I want to win diplomatic!
From here to
110BC I concentrated on making money, trading techs, giving techs to the tech losers to speed up tech and make them like me again.
110BC the Ottomans entered my territory with 3 horsemen. I tried to trade tech for gpt to put them off, but they wouldn't have it (probably didn't help breaking that alliance).
They declared war. The first 2 horsemen attacked my Defense and died, the third didn't even try.
90BC I had some luck with my fortified Elite Swordsman guarding one of my cities, 5 Ottoman archers attacked it and died, leaving him with 1hp to spare.
50BC I start Leonardos Workshop. I'm not planning anything military, but it would help to upgrade my military to put the other Civs off from attacking me, and any money I save can be used elsewhere.
30BC the Ottomans got into a war in alliance with the Celts against the Zulus. Next turn I make peace with the Ottomans who are now concentrating on the Zulus rather than me, getting Printing Press off them for the cutdown price of 205g.
330AD Built Leonardos Workshop and start upgrading all my military.
Continued making lots of trades to keep all the Civs at about the same tech level. India and Japan are the main tech leaders, normally India 1st, Japan 2nd, then me trading the techs around. I've seen others mention they were surprised that India was the tech leader. In my game I believe this was in part due to me almost exclusively starting my tech trading turns by buying tech from India (who were the cheapest). This probably helped them continue with a higher rate of research.
520AD (ish) The Celts finally wiped out the Zulus. This war has continued for a long time (875BC).
560AD I made the final trades to complete the criteria for this Spoiler.
I had managed to improve the disposition of the Civs on the E continent, but plenty of room for improvement :
E Continent
England : Annoyed
Ottomans : Annoyed
Celts : Polite
France : Cautious
India : Cautious
Zulus : Love me, but dead
W Continent
Japan : Polite
Aztecs : Polite
America : Polite
Iroquois : Polite
At 560AD my minimap looked like this :
I haven't expanded much since 1000BC, with the exception of a little territory gained towards the french by using spare cash to rush culture, then settling into the gaps between the French cities. This allowed me to reach the French Silks, so avoid having to trade for it.
I continued my 0% research policy. Trading has really paid off (though takes a lot of time!), especially while I was the only one in contact with the W continent. Because the W only had contact with me they valued any new tech I had very highly, not knowing that all Civs in the E continent had them already! This didn't always help all that much as the other Civs never seemed to have much money (I keep bleeding them dry

), but having sole access to the W came in especially handy for the last opportunity to exploit this when India researched Navigation in 300AD.
When India got Navigation I knew it would only be a matter of time before they made contact with the W, so I wanted to make the best use of the contacts and world map that I had been withholding. At 300AD I hadn't got Astronomy yet, but I was pretty sure India had enough time to research Navigation so I wanted to get Astronomy and find what else had been researched.
At 300AD the current state relative to me was (the bracketed amounts next to the techs are how much the civ would let me pay for it) :
India : 115g, Astronomy (1415g)
Aztecs : 80g, Music Theory (758g)
Japan : 4g, Chemistry (69gpt+2397g), Music Theory (764g)
France : 1g, Astronomy (1415g)
Celts : 38g
Ottomans : 18g
England : 63g
- Trade 1415g to France for Astronomy.
- Trade Astronomy to Aztecs for Music Theory, 80g, 93gpt and World Map.
- Trade Astronomy to Japan for World Map, 4g and 24gpt.
- Trade Music Theory to France for 1285g.
- Trade Music Theory to India for 103g and 28gpt.
- Give Americans Music Theory.
- Trade Contact with Aztecs, Americans, Iroquois, World Map and 1829g to India for Navigation (Note didn't trade contact with Japan so cost of Navigation should still be high with Japan. Trade contacts now as India can now reach W continent).
- Trade Contact with English, Ottomans, Celts, French, Zulus, Navigation, World Map, 49g for Chemistry. (Note didn't trade contact with India so cost of Chemistry should still be high with India, who have loadsa dosh).
- Trade Chemistry to India for 1841g, 17gpt, World Map.
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I had all the techs I wanted, so just did a quick round of "Get what I can for maps/contacts and make everyone happier" :
- Give Contact with Japan to India (still annoyed).
- Give contact with Aztec, Americans, Iroquios to the Ottomans (still furious)
- Give Music Theory to the Ottomans (still furious)
- Give Astronomy to the Ottomans (still furious)
- Give Chemistry to the Ottomans (still furious)
- Give World Map to the Ottomans (still furious)
- Give contact with Aztec, Americans, Iroquios to England (still annoyed)
- Give Music Theory to England (still annoyed)
- Give Chemistry to England (still annoyed)
- Give World Map to England (still annoyed)
- Give contact with Aztec, Americans, Iroquios, Chemistry and World Map to France (still cautious)
- Give contact with Aztec, Americans, Iroquios, Music Theory, Astronomy, Chemistry and World Map to the Celts (still polite)
- Trade World Map, contact with Aztec, Americans, Iroquios, Astronomy to Zulus for World Map, 7g, 38gpt.
- Give Zulus Music Theory and Chemistry.
- Trade Iron to Japan for Spices and Silks.
- Trade World Map and Chemistry to the Aztecs for 17gpt.
- Give World Map, Astronomy, Chemistry to Americans.
- Trade Education, World Map to Iroquois for World Map and 5g (this keeps them very backward. They're getting a bit big on the W continent).
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I make that :
Out
3293g
Iron
In
3325g
217gpt
Astronomy
Music Theory
Navigation
Chemistry
Spices, Silks
And everyone with full contact, almost everyone at the same tech level. Can you tell I'm especially proud of this trade? 