Space Race loss (to Egypt) in 1856 AD
Base Score of 1280, at the bottom of the 9 Civs, with Ramesses II leading with a Base Score of 4261
A simple mis-click led to a journey of a lifetime.
My first move was East onto the Grassland Forest... with my Settler. I didn't even get 2 moves out of the deal.
I have to admit that it took a lot out of me not to reload that game. I told myself, however, that we're here for a good time. Recalling my goofy performance in the GOTM 12, where I almost lost my capital to USA's first scouting Warrior and had to sacrifice a Worker just to survive, thanks to a poorly executed Worker-stealing mission, I felt that I would do my best to enjoy another off-beat and crazy game.
I recalled some of my Civ3 games where I made it a challenge to myself to wander for up to 20 turns until I settled, just to give myself a greater challenge.
Due to my move, it would take 2 more turns just to start in the starting location, since we started on a hill. If it weren't a hill or if my Settler still had half a movement point remaining, I might have done it, but I really did not feel like returning to under those conditions. Further, if I settled in my current location, I would have to give up both of the Corn and the Cow. There weren't any other food resources in sight, unless you were to count the Spices, which I didn't really count as I would have to wait a long time in order to be able to use them.
I thought of Marius and his line "they traveled East". And so, my people, too, they headed East.
At this point, I realised that my time was limitted. I could either scout for AI and goody huts in another direction with my Scout, or I could help my Settler explore for potential city locations. I would end up "wasting" my Scout's early exploration potential in favour of more quickly finding a new city location.
I kept my eyes scanning for food resources and settled by the first ones I saw. My capital's location proved to be pretty sweet--I found flood plains, a Cow, and a Rice, so I settled. I even found Stone in my capital's second radius after sitting down, which ended up being a lot more useless than useful.
That one Stone proved to be my undoing, I believe, but more on that in a bit.
I started on building a Scout and researching Agriculture.
I would later win several fights against Barbarian animals with my 2 Scouts--probably about 6 fights in all, but neither Scout survived to see the end of the game. One later died to a Barb Warrior, while the other died in a war.
I received Mining from a Hut and then began research on Archery.
I obviously gave up on founding an early religion. Egypt founded Hinduism, spreading it far and wide--every city on our continent had believers at the end of the game, other than Isabella's cities. Buddhism had been founded in a distant land, so Hinduism spread like a weed.
After building the Scout, I began work on Animal Husbandry and started building a Worker.
Since I was working a Flood Plain to begin with, my Scout came slowly, but at least I had just grown to City Size 3 plus one turn when I began my Worker.
I finished Animal Husbandry one turn before the Worker was complete and then went on to research Writing.
The Worker immediately began working the Cow next to my city's center. My next build was an Archer.
My logs say that I spotted Cyrus' Settler with 2 Archers and sighed. I then almost fell out of my chair when talking to Shaka and he bragged about having Axemen. Boy, was I in for it. That meant he also had access to Impi, which I would see some of soon enough.
After building my first Archer, I started on my second one in 2410 BC.
I also noted in my log that at this point, Ramesses II had War Chariots and Persia had Immortals. Would there be no easy AI to rush? One Archer certainly couldn't take on any of my nearest neighbours. It didn't seem fair.
In 2020 BC I noted that several AI had three cities. I had begun work on Alphabet, but since it was taking so long and since I had both pre-reqs for Masonry, I started research on Masonry.
That way, my worker (to be joined by another worker down the road) could start building the Quarry on my stone.
In 1870 BC, I finished my Settler, but I missed founding my second city in an ideal location by 1 turn. Shaka was too close and was obviously going to found a city 1 square away from where I wanted to. So I had to sit down close to my capital. I sat down in 1780 BC. There were actually only 2 squares or so of overlap, but I missed out on some nice resource.
My retribution was that although Shaka settled just a bit farther away, grabbing some of the nice resources, he lost that city to me (my only favourable culture flip) in the 1700s AD.
As a point of interest, after I had completed and submitted the game, I went back and tried playing for a few turns from this point in the game. By moving my settler 1 more square to my desired location, I actually improved my position in the game. It just so happened that Cyrus' turn came prior to Shaka's, so he settled nearby, which caused Shaka to send his Impi and Settler back North, instead of settling near the additional resources that I wanted. I would still have been able to get my city site, while Shaka wouldn't have had such a close city next to me and would have actually delayed getting his next city for a long time (within the extra 12 turns or so that I played out, he still hadn't created a city). The game would have been quite different, but that's just how it goes.
After building the Settler, I built another Worker. My second city began work on an Archer.
After finishing the second worker in 1690 BC, I noted in my logs that Shaka already had FOUR cities, while all of the other Civs on the continent besides Isabella had three cities (Isabella only had two).
I then started to build another Archer in my capital. At this point, the Barbs were getting harrowing. They were converging from many sides on my capital and I had to make a few risky offensive attacks in order to preserve my resources from being pillaged. I lost out a couple of turns working on my Cow, not remembering that since the Barb Warrior had died on it, I'd have to manually set my citizen to re-work that square.
I built a second Archer in my second city and then started work on a Barracks, thinking that un-promoted Archers wouldn't be enough to take on War Chariots, Immortals, or a combination of Axemen and Impis.
I tried to build Stonehenge in my capital, but I missed it by 1 turn to Ramesses II in 1090 BC.
I said "enough is enough" and kept my capital pushing on to The Great Wall, being the one to get it.
One single forest chop might have given me the first Settler a bit earlier, giving me the confidence to found in a more optimal city location. A second forest chop would not have given me Stonehenge earlier, though, as I had both workers busy on building a Quarry and Roads to the Stone before I even started on Stonehenge--if after hooking up the Stone I had used only 1 worker on a forest chop, the hammers wouldn't have appeared in time for Stonehenge. Two workers on the same square would have worked, which was a thought that ran through my mind, but I figured (foolishly) that I had a lock on the Wonder, so I used my Workers to help improve the squares around my second city instead.
I couldn't help but feel that the Stone resource made me do stupid things:
1) I gave up on a military rush in favour of Wonder-building. I really needed the production from my capital, with its improved land, if I really wanted to pull off a rush. I got too greedy, counting my captured cities before I even attacked, thinking that I'd like Monuments to immediately appear in the cities that I had hoped to capture
2) I waited until I had Masonry, The Wheel, and a connected Stone resource before starting to build Stonehenge, instead of skipping a second worker and just gunning for it early
3) I then wasted more time on another Wonder--The Great Wall--which proved to be of very little use, other than for generating a Great Engineer down the road
Later, I tried to capture a barbarian city that appeared near Hannibal. Hannibal unfortunately came with overwhelming units before I could get my first Gallic Warrior there in time, and I lost that race as well. Meanwhile, before I even got Gallic Warriors, Egypt took another Barb city to the North West of our starting location that I hadn't even seen--it would have been nice to get it, but I didn't exactly have map trading available, so what I didn't know, I didn't miss, until I later saw the city's name.
Incidentally, Egypt's second city was placed in our starting location. I agreed with them that it was a good spot, but they refused to hand it over to me. Ramesses II muttered something about cold and death, so I let him keep it. Like I said, I didn't really have a choice in the matter, but I would have preferred to have settled in our starting spot and gone for a religion, as per my original plan.
Later, I had both Drama and Literature, but foolishly, I traded them away early. While teching towards Music, with about 12 turns or so of research to go, I traded both of the pre-req techs to Ramesses II. He beat me by 5 turns to Music, ending my hopes for an early Great Artist cultural push. I couldn't believe how quickly he could research a tech.
At least I was able to beat Ramesses II to Notre Dame, as he was busy with other wonders. I got that wonder for its Great Artist points.
I was able to generate a Great Engineer many years later, thanks to the Great Wall, getting The Sistine Chapel with it. I wanted this Wonder for its Great Artist points and for the extra cultural incentive to use Specialists (which were almost always Artist Specialists) in my cities.
The AI out-expanded me, out-resourced me (especially with military-based resources), out-teched me, and kept me in a fearful defensive posture for the entire game. I ended up having too many military units for someone that refused to dare to attack any AI on the same continent other than Isabella, so after being the second to research Music, I barely kept pace and then later fell ridiculously behind, with my money tied up in a military that served little purpose.
I was gearing up to attack Isabella, but Shaka beat me to it. Before my units could get to her, he razed two or three of her cities. Before I could get Settlers built and near enough, he'd placed down new cities. Then, after finally capturing one of her cities, I closed on the two remaining ones--the good ones with Wonders and some nice sea-based resources, one being her capital. Once I was outside of the borders of both of them, knocking down the defenses with catapults, she vassaled to Shaka.
What do you do when Shaka has a superior force, is the aggressor along with you, and you are thus forced into a peace with Isabella that you didn't want? Well, I couldn't fight them both at once, and couldn't really take Shaka with my units so far out of position and out-dated compared to his, so that one game dynamic ended my military career. I still pumped units constantly for many centuries, but could never get enough units to attack Shaka before he upgraded his units to the next tech level. I didn't dare to go after the other AI, as Shaka seemed like he was eyeing me and would backstab me at the first sign of fresh blood, so a perpetual stand-off it would be.
The only other war where I saw combat was when Shaka and his vassal Isabella declared war on Augustus of Rome. Augustus dropped a number of Cavalry on my home continent and started pillaging and attacking Shaka's cities. Shaka had too many units, so he wouldn't be losing any cities. I decided I'd just get a few nice kills and got in a few licks on Rome's Calvary that walked into my territory--getting double the Great General points for fights in my territory. Unfortunately, I never did generate even 1 Great General, so again, too little, too late. Besides, I was fighting with Catapults, Elephants, and the odd Maceman at that time, while everyone else was using Musketmen, Cavalry, or Riflemen.
It's nice to see that the AI will sometimes gift you techs if you are nice to them, but you're only going to get 1 tech per AI from this method (or that's all I was able to get)--although I obtained one from each of the AI on my starting continent, other than Isabella, since I kept buddy-buddy with them.
The AI were also extremely pushy--they wanted me to get involved in a lot of wars or trade embargoes that I wasn't really ready to make. Actually, they never asked for "trade embargoes" but they asked me to cancel my deals. I guess since the AI that you cancel your agreements with will refuse to talk with you for a while afterwards, it's essentially an embargo, right?
You have to pick your AI allies and enemies VERY carefully in Warlords. You really have to have your head about you in terms of the global alliances. The Hall of Fame Mod is quite useful in this aspect, saving you a lot of clicks in a poorly designed diplomacy interface.
Hannibal was a real trickster, getting me to declare war on Rome and then declaring peace on the next turn. At least when Shaka set me up this way, he stayed in the war for about another 15 turns, before leaving me with a big bill to pay Augustus while Shaka got some free techs out of the deal. I could tell that he got the sweet deal as Shaka immediately began upgrading his military, essentially ending any chance that I could overpower him with greater numbers of out-dated units.
Other than the Great Engineer, I generated solely Great Artists, hoping to push back the oppressive cultural borders that surrounded me. I think that I generated about 6 of them. All but 1 were settled, with the last one culture-bombing about 10 turns before Egypt won the space race. Without them, I would have lost several cities due to cultural pressure. With them, I was able to get one of Shaka's cities, so they were fun to use, even if Ramesses II was far more likely to get a cultural win before I could (at the end of the game, he had 1 Legendary city of 75000+ culture and two that were pretty high up there, while I was sitting around 15000 to 20000 for my top 3 cities).
At least I finished the game being second in Culture.
Near the end, Ramesses II was incredibly far ahead. Even Shaka claimed that Ram was so far ahead militaristically that he was actually afraid of him. It's arguably my first game with Shaka, but still--Shaka being afraid of someone? Wow. Of course, Modern Armour, Mech Infantry, and Gunships do kind of make your Infantry and Cavalry quiver with fear, even if you are Shaka.
It was a fun game, but a humbling one.
. So then I decided what the hell, I'll build it (Tolosa) in the jungle one square NW of the single elephant. Then made an attempt to go for the copper (I know this is probably the wrong way round) and settled Gergovia inbetween two Persian cities - Cyrus had built on the SW coast. I still didn't have access to the copper but managed to culture expand to get it quite quickly.
Nevertheless, I now had 6 cities 
so I built another cathedral. I even managed to pay off Shaka to have a war with Rameses (which lasted for a decent amount of time). I figured I had probably given myself enough time to slowly crawl to a cultural victory.
. So it was all good. I quickly rushed missionaries, temples and cathedrals all over the place (I now had the perfect 9 cities).
Now only Bibracte remains. All my other cities have been burned to the ground.
Oh, and Cyrus has built the 1st spaceship part.
Build two nukes, and enough transports for a small army to clean up in the ashes. Muahahahahahahah!
