CV turn 343
Turn 0-10
Moved settler east and actually found an even better settling spot (arguably) in the bay next to the bisons.
Hut gave gold to buy cow tile.
2nd hut gave population.
Found mount Kailash.
3rd and 4th hut gave just barbs and map, but La Venta was discovered on turn 9, including 8 valuable faith.
On the interturn the second scout is ready and I switch to shrine immidiately. I want a pantheon, but maybe religion should be downplayed, for as I have mentioned elsewhere, I have a tendency to prioritize EVERYTHING in cultural games.
Turn 11-30
Huts give 75 gold, sailing, upgrade to archer, map, bronzw, population.
t17 - met iroquois,
t21 - met Brazil and then found the mountain wall blocking off our upgraded scout,
t26 I finally got to open Monarchy. Hut luck was OK but culture sorely missed!
Turn 30-60
Cleared the barb camp south of La Venta in order to create a worker factory.
Bought several tiles to maximize 6 food granary.
The starting warrior was sadly closed in between the mountain range and Iroquois cities. I had to, and did, declare war to get out. This was dumb because the warrior couldn't get out anyway because of enemy units. But it survived and nicked a worker, who reached the Mt Kailash area around turn 90. It's doubtful if it was worth the 2 gold in unit maintenance. Impossible to say, really. But on the topic of early triremes and the risk of being closed in or limited in your sailing, I think declaring war just to get past is most viable. The AI you declare on, except maybe Dido, is unlikely to destroy your trireme, and phony wars carry little or no diplomatic penalty.
Finally got a pantheon on turn 39, needing 30 faith. Unfortunately, Stone Circles was taken. So we picked oral tradition. It had a very marginal effect. We later got the last available religion, choosing the follower beliefs Pagodas (which I agree with
@fiddlesticks was rather useless and should have been substituted for Swords into Ploughshares or any belief that would increase the faith per turn a little), and Religious Art, which gives extra culture and tourism.
The worker factory got off to a shakey start as my thieve scout was only 4hp from getting killed on top of the furs. Then a second La Venta archer appeared. We tried to save the factory by killing this archer. (This gave the scout triple extra sight.) But since the remaining la Venta archer was upgraded to a bowman, the days of free workers were going dim as the early Scandinavian twililght. But 4 La Venta workers in total was OK in the end. (Of course I did not get all 4 before turn 60. I'm just commenting my own notes from that time period.)
On turn 60 we have 1 settler headed for the crabs, and 2 expos: New York near Mount Kailach and Boston by the numerous atolls.
Turn 61-100
As Byblos seeks the Inca we are glad we haven't agreed to embassies yet. I was mildly curious about it myself.
As for social policy, Monarchy came before both Aristochracy and Landed Elite because happiness hasn't kept up.
On turn 71 I could finally afford to buy the MT Kailash tile. Having no way to raise cash is annoying.
On turn 91 I had the Oracle and my 4 acqeducts. Had I missed it, I would probably have quit - what with 13 cpt and 13 turns to next policy? Not so unlucky, though. In celebration of this we buy a work boat for the crabs.
On turn 95 we finally met Spain. I can see why people find fractal maps interesting.
Turn 101-200
We try to keep up in tech, overtaking the prime threat Inca in 160.
We have some wonders: Oracle, Sistine, Uffici, spread out to three different cities. This helps with the 33% culture bonus from Flourishing of the arts. Turn 174 the Aesthetic policy tree is finished. Hermitage with its extra culture and tourism came in at t181.
Aztecs has the lowest culture, and I like the fact that they also have the Great Wall and are militarily strong, since we would probably want to save them to last if we got a chance to eliminate a few AIs.
Unwisely, I missed out on buying tiles that were claimed by the Iroquois city "Cuba".
A plan starts to take shape: I will try to capture the biggest Brazilian cities, Sao Paolo and Rio. The brazilwood camp culture will eventually be great converted to tourism, and Rio is the wonder leader. First, however, I deem it necessary to capture the Incan city Huamanga to obtain shared borders with Brazil.
188 - 5 galleasses upgraded to frigates.
Lost Louvre to Pedro unnecessarily. The crappy information in Global Politics never warned us that Pedro had Exploration. After 14 years this has still not been corrected. Why doesn't it just sat "Exploration: 0" so we know that they have the opener?
Well, at least it fell into the right hands because if I can't eliminate Pedro, I can't win anyway. But the Incas must be crippled first.
In 193 sea war with Inca. Countless Incan units were destroyed, especially the embarked half-wits.
Turn 201-343
202 - Captured Huamanga. We also tried for the core cities of the Incas, reaching 8 frigates, 4 privateers and the odd galleass and caravel, before the age of sail drew to a close. Money was a constant problem, happiness a smaller one. As
@raider980 said, stalemate wars slow other things down, so I did not want to burn my chances with Brazil. The Incan peninsula was left unscathed.
On turn 227 we picked autocracy for the chance of getting some good policies. This cost some initial dissent, but the tide turned within a few turns as France also chose autocracy. What a nice ol' tenent it is! [rolleyes]
En route to Sao Paolo one of our privateers captured an ironclad before I even had the tech to build ironclads. Fun! That is the first time it's happened for me.
The fleet and the artillery took Sao Paolo with hardly any losses, but when the turn came to Rio, the pracina really showed up in droves. Battleships helped and we captured Rio too, but then Inca backstabbed mortally, 90% of our fleet now being on the wrong side of Brazil. Also, the very powerful CS Ragusa were allied with Inca and attacked us immediately. At one point, a worker finishing a road was the only thing that allowed me to stop a melee unit from reaching and capturing the bombed-out Sao Paolo. At that point, the Incas had already temporarliy captured Huamanga- Losing 2 key cities is much worse than one, though, because if you only need to take back one city you can then sue for a white peace immediately once you have taken it - even though you would not have been able to keep it for a single turn.
(You must love the Spanish Duke Ellington who decided to float around amidst the clamour.)
Reflecting on the last picture, so many enemy units survived with 1-2 hp left in this game that it was almost laughable.
310 - Internet from last rationalism policy + hurried Visitor Centre in Rio. This means Rio alone goes up to a whopping 352 tourism. Quite a catch. The tourism levels out at 610.
318 - International games commences and 2 turns into it we get a Great Artist and start a golden age to increase our chances. And in fact we got the gold medal! This would allow culture to peek at 927 tpt. In the mean time Iroquois has finished Great Firewall, but we will be influential over them in 3 turns anyway. The next important thing is to secure Hubble, and so reduce the risk of science loss.
However: We missed CN Tower to Hiawata by 2 turns and Hubble by about 3 turns.
Should I declare war on Inca, who has the biggest military of all, to get the 50% Cult of Personality tourism bonus from France, who is now the strongest cultural AI, having swallowed up England and a bit of Aztecs? I have already been allied with France against Aztecs, but they have made peace and America is barely even popular with them.
I have to ally France against Inca, or Iroquois may win by science. At least Inca didn't nuke Brazil when they wiped them out 2 turns ago, while Aztecs and France nuked each other repeatedly. Clausewitz's legacy was a neat present as the last tenent reached, and this time I made sure that Ragusa would be on my side. It turned out that Inca was rather harmless after all: They would bomb Rio down to zero, but had no chance of getting a melee unit in there to capture it.
When I learned that Cult of Personality stacks if you are allied against more than one common enemies, I allied France to declare on Iroquois too, and liberated Byblos.
342 - The final Great Musician, worth 9210 t, appeared in Washington. I gifted Philadelphia to France and checked out.
I'm happy with this cultural victory, even if I was nowhere close to the superb finish dates of
@The_Black_Vegetable and
@fiddlesticks. I didn't ruin my rep, which meant I could keep open borders with all the important civs to the end. Always having at least 2 DoFs also allowed me to buy all the cash I needed for gpt, for example when I wanted to buy the alliance of Ragusa or wanted to avoid unhappiness. I was also happy with Autocracy, including Futurism, Universal Healthcare and Cult of Personality.
