It's amazing on how you plan to do something, then RL throws you change up. Meant to do this earlier.
Settings:
Huge/MON/Vinz Great Plains/Max civs/Epic/LR/RB/Space and Diplo VC's/Playing as Egypt
Thoughts/observations;
I choose good old Rammy for his traits specific to this map, as well as his UU. WC's on a GP map? yes plz, I'll take an extra helping of that.
Initial settle spot had 2 rivers within BFC, as well as 2 hills and 3 scenic spots. I figured I could mine the hills and use the scenic for either cottages (my 1st choice) or TP/Plantations once I had the appropriate tech. Additionally, I bee lined for the 1st religion so I could get 1st pick.
Observation; Buddism is immensely powerful on LR. The +1 sight is a huge advantage vs AI's and barbs.. Especially barbs. Vinz, you may want to take another look at your religion bonuses, as I have considered the sight to be the most important perk, especially early game.
AE proceeded normally, lost my scout (usual for me) on turn 4, but my warriors were doing quite well in fog busting around my Cap. Since this was my 4th game, I was familiar enough with the tech tree to bounce around techs until I could get my palace built for the freebie GP. I did wind up losing out on SH and "Mids, but I considered that was a decent trade off.
Observations; The AI will invariably go for one of the early wonders instead of building up their cap to take advantage of the GP's. Granted, they get a short term culture pop, but long term planning from the player catches up by the end of the AE or a wee bit earlier.
Once I got the early religion ( I picked Belly Boy), that made scouting a bit easier. After getting reli, I back filled on essential techs that I needed to improve my BFC. I got lucky on a couple of goody huts (Arch, AH), and started scouting around for some horses/camels... No luck. I did manage to get bronze and marble in my cap, and 2 cows and a stone 5 tiles west. Perfect for city #2, so off I go to settle.
In the meantime, my warrior scouts have lvl'd enough to get sight, and found Monty to the east of me at about 20 tiles... Not good, as he already expanded to 2 cities, and looked to be ready to pop a 3rd near me. Still no horses/camels yet.
Warrior #2 reported back intel from the south.. KHAN! and he was approximately 25 tiles away, and he had horses. This was not looking good. In the meantime, RNG apparently didn't like Liz, Izzy, and Freddy, as RB's decided to exercise their Pagan rights to annihilate those poor slobs.
Observations; Ai's still have issues surviving with RB checked. Not that I'm adverse to having a civ ghosted by barbs, but these poor bastards only placed 1 unit in their cities, usually a warrior.
Since the leader board showed That I had a slight lead (tech), but both Monty and Khan had had a higher power rating, I was a tad bit paranoid. Fortunately, I whipped a few spears just to be safe, and placed some archers at some key locations. Still no horses/camels.
Towards the close of the AE, warrior #3 found another civ to the west of me at about 35-40 tiles... Shaka! This was one of those moments where I actually did say "WTH?!". Of course Shaka being who he his, decided to DOW me just because he didn't like the color of my tunic. By this time I had a decent BFC with cities at the main compass points (N,S,E,W) and was into the early CE. Since I like to specialize my cities early, I used my saved GP's to place in each respective city to start generating GPP's. Of course gold was really thin at this point, so I had to adjust sci lower in order to compensate.
Observations; GS's are extremely hard to come by in the 2 early era's, even with a lib (1 slot). Was this by design? AE to CE may need some type of sci building before libby. Maybe make it obsolete when you get lib's.
Since I knew Shaka was the immediate threat, I spammed Buddha Boys to Monty and Khan hoping to make them brothers of the faith. Plan worked, and I managed to get both of them to a positive modifier. While this was going on, RGB barbs took out 2 more civs ( I had to fight off several waves as well), and I found 4 other AI's.
During this, I managed to get some spies in place and saw that Shaka had a stack of about 30 impi's heading my way at about 20 tiles distance. So pretty much guessing I was gonna be hosed in about 10 turns, I gathered what forces I could in the hopes of slowing him down until my axes could be built.
After about 12 turns, Shaka hasn't shown up yet and I was curious as to why. Sending a spy out to investigate, Shaka apparently decided to move NW of me in order to deal with a size 6 barb city. Interesting choice for the AI, and I was more than willing to take advantage of it. While Shaka's stack was hammering away at the barbs (which was on a bronze forested hill, and had walls) I managed to squeak out a few more axes, and combined them with my spears and archers to send off and battle Shaka.
During all the festivities, I finally popped horses in one of my open pastures that I built, finally giving me access to WC's. But I had a problem. I was dangerously close to going negative in gold unless I dropped my sci slider another 10% ( I was already at 30%). Then the RNG gods decided to be nice, as my GM city popped 2 gold and a gem on areas where I already had mines. In addition, I popped a GM due to my building TOA. WC's, here we come!
Observations; The random element of a resource is one of the most fascinating aspects of this mod, as it proves prudent to have a mix of improvements in a cities work radius for the chance of getting a much needed resource, as opposed to the old standard method of farm/cottage/mine everything in sight. Well done Sir
The battle was fairly long (especially with barbs in the mix), but not only did I mange to beat Shaka, I also captured the barb city (which turns out had Iron on the next hill over). All of this continued into the ME, during which I managed to find the rest of the civs on the map, and spam some more Buddha Boys to get me BOTF.
Through the ME and RE things were fairly quiet, with occasional wars fought at other areas of the map. Shaka backed off from me during this time, and focused his attentions on Mali and his allies of Persia and Arabia (which pretty much controlled most of the NW and SW part of the map). Monty had most of the Eastern part of the map with his vassals, Khan had the southern along with his vassal China (who was entrenched along the coast). While I was in the center with a solid 8 cities.
Observations; IMO, the advanced diplo modmod would greatly enhance the diplo aspect of the game, especially huge or greater maps. I greatly enjoy your mod, but I miss the additional diplo choices in these type of games.
RE to IE saw a major tech investment for pretty much all civs. While I had the tech lead and modest modernized military ( to the related era), my supremacy was by no means assured. Spy ops were flying left and right by all major powers (yours truly included), and quite a few border skirmishes were happening on a fairly regular basis.
Observations; Gold was decent to come by, as long as 1 to 2 cities were dedicated to trade. Trade relations with other civs helped, but didn't offset the need to maintain a steady sci/gold slider ratio. made things really interesting, especially given the VC's of this game.
In the IE is where things started to really happen. I managed to maintain friendly relations with both Monty (yes, I'm as shocked as you are) and Khan (who knew that Ol' Horse Boy wanted a friend?) and their vassals. On the one side of the map you had all of us Buddha Boys and their mini-onions loving the dream life of free trade and prosperity (not to mention me controlling the AP), and on the other side of the map you had a Jewish Shaka bitterly trying to covert/exterminate a Confucian Persia (and lacky's) to take control of the west.
Enter the Modern Era. Or as I like to call it, "The Oh SH** Era".
I still managed to maintain the tech lead ( I just love city specialization), courtesy of managing to pop GS's on a decent basis (which was a royal PITA customizing cities to get to that point) and traded off on placing them in cities as well as burning for sci points.
Pretty much everyone either got oil, or had access to it (Arabia ironically, had 6), and that was the kicker to start rolling out the bigboys... Tank warfare and arty (thank god freddy got taken out early), as well as air warfare.
Observation; I noticed that the AI's will only sometimes build air units, focusing primarily on land units. There was several key battles that the AI could have won from me if it had more air power.
Shaka started the ball rolling by declaring on Persia and company ( I have expected it to be me, considering he had me beat power wise) with a 3 pronged tank attack (larges stacks of tanks are interesting to shudder at) towards Persia and vassals. Since by this time I was in control of the U.N. and had excellent alliances with Monty/Khan, I figured I could cruise to an easy Diplo win... Yeah, right.
I forgot about one key aspect of Monty's character.. Yup, his overwhelming need for blood, no matter who's. Monty, in his infinite wisdom, decides he wants to help the Persians and declares war on good old Shaka (this of course led to my other "AYFKM" moment). Now, since he declared war, it doesn't activate my defpac with him, so I figured I could still go for the diplo, I'd just have to be careful and not piss off any of my other allies, right?
Wrong! Horse Boy decides he wants to play as well, so he decides to declare on Shaka as well. he politely asks me to join him on this grand adventure (which Monty, dripping in blood and smiling manically asked me one turn earlier), and I could even bring my toys over to play. This of course screwed me on the diplo vic, as the entire map was now engulfed in a Bobby Flay throw down.
Enter the Manhattan Project and The Apollo Program built by yours truly 10 and 15 turns later respectively. Minor problem. Shaka captured an allied city that had the only access to uranium on the map.. And he was fortifying said city. So for the next 30 turns I'm building SS parts like crazy, as well as trying to keep up with enough military units to keep Shaka from invading (spies helped immensely here, TYVM spy specialist city)me.
Shaka meanwhile is managing quite well against those Confucian infidels, and has managed to keep us Buddha Boys from capturing any more of his cities (he 's lost 3 so far). Enter the mighty Egyptian Bomber Core. Shaka, it seems, has neglected air power in favor of land power, and now is paying the price for it. Focusing a concerted strike on the uranium city Shaka has control of with both air and land strikes, I finally manage to take the city.
Shaka though, apparently is a wily foe, and managed to move out 2 nukes the turn before I took the city. Uh Oh. Shaka then retaliates by nuking my spy city (must have offended him somehow) and by nuking Monty's cap. I figured since I was the only one with uranium now, I could probably brow beat the other civs back to the peace table for a diplo vic. Nope, got a defy resolution from all western civs (sigh). Then the RNG Gods decided to be nasty. Each major power block got access to uranium by several sources suddenly pooping up on the map (grrr, really?).
To make a long story short, there were several nuclear exchanges, peace talks, clean up, more nukes flying (courtesy of Shaka), then a space race, which I won by only 7 turns. Whew, rough game, and 1 that I thoroughly enjoyed.
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I ended throwing 3 tactical nukes on one of his cities that had 20+ transports in it. They could easely had taken out another of my (by then) 2 taskforces. Ghengis was by far the most vicious naval AIs. In all he took out 3 of my carrier task forces.
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