Armchair Civ

New civ expansion
- posted by Shane @ 6:30 PM
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Honestly, I have no idea what's going on anymore. Started everything off in the middle of World War III, brokered some deals for peace, and then by the end of it all, we found ourselves back in the thick of it. Basically, at the beginning of my turns, I started getting geared up to take more of Ramses' cities. I had our research set to 0% for a while and focused on building artillery and pumping out more units. I was a little afraid of Louis, as on the power graph, he was far above us, so I bribed Ragnar into declaring on them as well. Then all of a sudden out of the blue, Stalin declared war on us. I didn't want to fight a two front war, so I made peace with Louis and Ramses, with no concessions from either side. Stalin blindsided us and brought a load of Cossacks right next to London by way of ship. Luckily, we had some units still stationed there, so I did some emergency upgrades and sent all our mobile units north. We were easily able to clear everything out within a matter of turns, so I sent our extra forces to the north west so we could get rid of that city that Stalin had next to all the iron. Ended up conquering and razing it. It would have been a pretty unprofitable city, engulfed within Moscow's borders. It also had a lot of overlap with Moscow's tiles, which I didn't want, since I have plans for owning Moscow in the near future.

Now while all this was going on up north, there was a lot of action to the south. Genghis and Ragnar between the both of them took three of Ramses cities. What this did was free up some of our borders and now, we seem to have access to oil in the southwest. So I hurriedly got a bunch of workers down there to finish an oil well. With oil now in hand, we could finally build some ships to compete with Stalin's frigates. Started and cash rushed a battleship in London. 40 power compared to Stalin's dinky 8 power frigates means domination time. So basically towards the end of my turns, I was gearing up for a rush on Moscow. I have a couple of transports cooking in some of the coastal cities, as well as another battleship. What we need to do now is send our battleships around the coast to clear out Stalin's entire navy. Then we can transport over some tanks next to Moscow.

Oh yeah, by the way, on my last turn Genghis asked us to declare war on Ramses again. I noticed he's now down to a single city, so I obliged. It's now a race to see who can conquer his last city amongst ourselves, Genghis, and Ragnar, so as you can see I sent whatever extra units we had in the south into Ramses' territory. After Ramses is eliminated, we should automatically go to peace with Louis, so don't fear him too much.

As for plans besides military ones, we should probably hit up Rocketry next after Plastics. Three of the computer players already have learned this, which means they all have a jump start on us in the space race. We need to learn this ASAP so we can start on the space elevator.
- posted by Shane @ 6:13 PM
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Started my turns by starting the U.N. build in York. Sometime shortly after, Louis declared war on Ramses and promptly took control of two of his cities. This basically means Ramses is not going to be a contender for the rest of the game. Not to miss out on the land grab, I declared war on Ramses when Louis asked. I tried to assemble our forces to the southeast as quickly as possible and rush built a bunch of trebuchets to try to take over Pi-Ramsses. Unfortunately, one turn before I conquered the city, Ramses capitulated with Louis and is now his vassal! That automatically ends war with us. Now, we're in somewhat of a predicament. The good news is, we are researching at a very fast clip and I think we'll be able to maintain the tech lead from here on out. But with all the war and chaos, the diplomacy goal is now out the window. I guess it's time to gear up for the space race. In order to best do this, here are some things we should probably think about. I think it would be highly beneficial for us to build the Three Gorges Dam to power the continent. The space race is a battle of tech and production, so this wonder would help with the latter greatly. The more immediate concern however is getting hold of some oil. We can't build the best military and naval units without it and living with obsolete units is basically an invitation to get stomped by someone. There are two paths we could take to accomplish this. First, we could try to capture the heart of Stalin's civ, though I think this would be a pain in the ass, considering we'd have to march our army up north through Ragnar's territory to be able to do this (because we have no iron, our navy is inferior to everyone's so we can't ship our ground units by sea). The better option is to declare war on Ramses again, capture Pi-Ramsses, and hope we can expand the borders enough to take that off-shore oil well. The problem with this is Louis will automatically declare war on us in retaliation since Ramses is now his vassal. I think the best option would be to group gangbang Ramses with Genghis. After all the stupid vassal connections take effect, it would essentially be us, Genghis, and Hannibal against Louis and Ramses. Louis has a very strong military right now, so it might be best to sick Genghis on them first to provide a distraction, then sneak in and capture the city, hopefully making peace again ASAP. If you have a different plan in mind, feel free to go ahead. Things might get a little sticky from here.
- posted by Shane @ 6:10 PM
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So I'm really not sure what we should do now. After making peace with Ramses (and getting a nice windfall of cash in the process), I tried to further stabilize things on the home front by reorganizing some tiles and upgrading our military. Made sure to switch back to Universal Suffrage ASAP as well, considering this is the single most important civic for us now. We seriously have the least varied terrain of pretty much any civ I've ever played. It's all plains and grasslands, making our production pretty poor overall. The hammer bonus from Universal Suffrage is really key for us. Tech wise, I switched away from Assembly Line, finished learning Electricity, and started on Radio. While Assembly Line would give us a better military unit, I think we're fairly safe right now. As long as we keep pumping out our current units and continue upgrading, I don't think anyone aside from Ramses or Stalin would declare war on us. Both of those guys are kind of lagging in tech and are not a threat to spring some new fangled military force on us. We're almost to Mass Media, meaning we can probably start building the U.N. during my next set of turns.

The big problem now is I think we group gangbanged Ramses a bit too hard. You'll notice that he is now third in score, just below Genghis by a very small margin. Remember way back in the day when I said Genghis was a great ally because he had a strong military, but had a very low total score and was not a threat in a diplomatic race? Well, Hannibal gave him a giant boost in score when he agreed to become his vassal sometime during your last set of turns. Worst of all, I think Ragnar ended up taking one of Ramses major cities during the last conflict. (During my turn it was us, Genghis, Hannibal, and Ragnar all on Ramses at once.) Things were starting to get a little out of hand so I had to reach into our tech wallet and bribe everyone to chill. Hopefully, this will give Ramses enough breathing room to rebuild his military and start chugging along in tech again. One major concern though...I think the city Ramses lost was Memphis (don't really remember, it flashed on screen only briefly). It hasn't updated this on the map, but I'm not sure if that's only because of "fog of war" or if Ramses somehow regained it. The reason I bring this up is because Memphis was KEY for him. It had The Spiral Minaret and another big wonder that I don't remember right now. If he happened to lose this city, he's toast for sure.

So I'm not really sure what course of action we should take now. Diplomatically, the last war was a bit of a mess for us. We have to somehow get Ramses ahead of Genghis in score again to have a shot at diplomatic victory. I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to bribe Genghis into a war with Ragnar. They are both very strong militarily, and doing so might preoccupy them with neither gaining a major advantage in the end. Then, we could hope Ramses gets going like he used to. If worst comes to worst, we could gift him a lot of techs somewhere down the road to get his score up, but I'm not sure if we'd take a diplomatic hit from all our allies for "trading with their worst enemy". Also, if you do decide to sick Genghis on Ragnar, we've got to be concerned with the diplomacy hits we're going to take with each of them. Ragnar is going to be a little pissed for bringing in a war buddy against him. And they're both going to be a little miffed that we won't join the war ourselves on either side (declaring on either Genghis or Ragnar would totally kill our diplomacy with one of them permanently). This is a tough call that I'm going to leave totally up to you. The situation is fragile, but I think we still may be able to eek out the diplomatic victory. Otherwise, it's onto Plan B - ramping up our production in preparation for the space race.
- posted by Shane @ 3:51 PM
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10 turns (1675 AD - 1725 AD)

Mostly focused on diplomacy and war management for these last few turns. Ended up making peace with Ramses around 2 turns in. His peripheral cities were too well defended to take over, and we were both just fortifying our borders staring at each other the whole time. I think we knocked him down a peg with our triple team, as we're a bit more comfortably ahead of him score wise now. Louis also made peace with him, but it seems Ragnar is still carrying the war torch against him.

For really no particular reason at all, Stalin decided to declare on us again. His grenadiers were actually giving me some problems, as our redcoats weren't placed well strategically for his attack at first. If he starts wandering around our territory with grenadiers, try to be the aggressor with the redcoats. Grenadiers get a huge +50% attack bonus against riflemen/redcoats, but don't get the same bonus on defense, so we want to try to head them off at the pass. I sent a small band of units up towards his territory. His city is defended with 3 riflemen, which I think is a bit too strong to try to take over right now. I'm really just planning on moving around tile by tile to do some pillaging. He has very good production in that city now, so I want to blow up all the mines and windmills so he can't create as many units close to our territory. I don't think we're in any real danger with him, just make sure to pay attention to the borders to see what he's sending in at us. We could also use a few reinforcements for London, so some unit shifting wouldn't be a bad idea.

A few turns into our war with Stalin, Genghis finally revealed what he was up to. Hannibal ended up being his target, and just taking a peek at the conflict down there, it looks like it's going to be a massacre. Genghis was WELL prepared for war. Just take a look at what he's sending down there...huge clumps of cavalry and riflemen. In fact, one turn after declaring, Genghis took over Hannibal's northwest city. I have a feeling this isn't going to be pretty for Hannibal, and if Genghis is feeling especially ambitious, this may eventually end up with Hannibal being wiped off the map. Of course, Genghis asked us to join the war, and being the good ally that we are, I accepted. Hannibal should be so busy trying to defend, I really don't think he'll do anything in the way of attacking us. Just make sure the southern most cities have some kind of decent defense, but otherwise, we'll just watch the border like we did with Ramses.

So just to summarize on current world events: We're at war with both Stalin and Hannibal, Genghis is at war with Hannibal, and Ragnar is at war with Ramses. Let's try to minimize the damage, build up our army, and maybe get rid of that annoying city of Stalin's near the iron if the opportunity presents. Of course this is going to cause more unhappiness like before, but I don't think we have to switch back to Hereditary Rule. We'll hold things together by building happiness related buildings in cities that need them. At this point, we're just playing the political game, with the ultimate goal being to strengthen relations with Genghis, Louis, and Ragnar, while weakening Hannibal and Stalin. Ramses we're fine with, as long as he remains a world power and is hated by everyone.

Tech wise, I was thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to beeline towards Mass Media. That's the tech we need to build the U.N. so we can go for diplomatic victory. If need be, we can detour to learn some additional military techs if the rest of the world gets ahead of us, but I think priority should go to techs like Physics and Electricity so we can get to Mass Media ASAP.
- posted by Shane @ 9:15 AM
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10 turns (1575 AD - 1625 AD)

Ok, I just had an extremely eventful set of turns. This may actually end up being the key period in this game. Louis and Ragnar are at war with Ramses, and we will be joining them soon. So here's what went down when I started the save game...

I like the stock exchange focus, and in most cities I continued to build them. In a few though, I swapped them out for military or health/happiness related buildings. Just remember, stock exchanges give a 65% bonus to gold in city, which is only useful if that city is already making a significant amount. In production focused cities and small cities that aren't yet well developed, this is basically useless. But yeah, those really gave us a nice gold bonus in the big commerce based cities like London.

Continued to work on our tile development, which is progressing nicely. There are a few tile-related things to make note of though. First, if you look up north, you'll see we lost our iron supply due to Stalin's border's expanding. Because that dink city of his is so close to Moscow, I don't think we're going to be able to overpower him culturally to regain it. I don't think this is a huge deal at this point, but it does hurt us if we want to eventually build Ironworks someplace and it keeps us from building cannons, which could be a factor if we want to try to capture some cities. Another issue is the border around Utica. Due to being so close to Carthage, it's getting swallowed up culturally. Kinda sucks, because Utica has so many gold resources around it. We just can't work any of them because Hannibal controls all the food based tiles. If we're feeling ambitious, we can try to overrun Carthage in the near future, though we have to weigh this against perhaps cultivating him as an ally for a future diplomacy victory attempt. He's lagging in tech, so he may not be too difficult to conquer if we want to go that route. Lastly, since we hit Replaceable Parts, we can now build lumbermills. Just taking a glance at where our remaining forests are, I think we should avoid chopping any more down. All the forests we have left should now be having lumbermills being built. This is especially important for Canterbury to the south, since we're now building the Statue of Liberty there. Just make sure, when we go to war with Ramses (and I think we have to), that the workers pull back into the city or are defended with riflemen, because they're easy pickings.

Tech wise, I switched from learning Chemistry to go for Replaceable Parts and Rifling. I actually ended up operating at a large deficit for most of my turns in order to get there faster. During this era, Rifling is probably the single most important technology available. The power upgrade over previous units is massive, and if you get left behind, you're liable to become a victim. This was especially important for us, since we were building all those stock exchanges instead of military units. The plan was, we needed to get to Rifling quickly in order to use all that extra money to upgrade our units. There was a time there that we were very weak and vulnerable, but fortunately nobody decided to make us the target. Anyway, I hit Rifling on my ninth turn and promptly used all of our vault money to upgrade as many weak units as possible to redcoats. Here are the results.



As you can see, in one turn's time, we got our military up to snuff with the rest of the world. You'll notice that Ragnar and Ramses we're starting to curve up, which is often a sign that they were thinking war in the near future. Genghis was going nuts on military production and he wasn't taking offers to declare war on people, so he was definitely up to something as well. At this point, I felt the state of the world was a little too unpredictable, so I paid both Louis and Ragnar (with Democracy and Liberalism) to declare on Ramses. Note that we have not yet declared on Ramses. Here's the plan I have in mind, which ultimately is centered on planning for a future diplomacy victory. Neither Louis or Ragnar have Rifling yet, while Ramses does. Their units are much weaker than his tech wise, so I'm somewhat confident they won't be able to overtake much of his territory. I'm hoping they'll be able to do some damage by razing and that they'll distract him from developing further economically. Eventually, one of them is going to ask us to join the war effort, and when that happens, I think we have to accept. This will significantly strengthen our relations with both of them. The goal is to buddy up with everyone and get them all to hate Ramses. Also, because at that point it will be three on one, we may be able to take a city or two from him without too many casualties. The thing we have to be mindful of is making Ramses too weak. In order to win by diplomacy, you have to beat your main competitor in the UN vote. Your competition is based on who in the world is most powerful, so for this plan to work, we need to ensure Ramses stays at the top in game score. If he falls too low, we'll end up competing with a different civ in the vote, which could lead to unpredictable results. So the goal is a worldwide mutual hate war on Ramses without crippling him too much. As for where Genghis falls in all this, I'm not sure. He's clearly gearing up for war, but I'm not sure who the target is. Even with our friendship with him, it could have been us during our weak phase, but I think our military is now to the point where he'd think against it. Looking a the diplomacy screen, I think his likely targets are either Hannibal or Ramses.

So basically, here's what I think we should do. Let Louis and Ragnar soften Ramses up a little, but don't join in until they actually ask you to (this will give us additional diplomacy points with them for helping them out). In the meantime, I think we should just continue to pump out redcoats to stick on the Egyptian border and work on improving the economy more. Just remember, if you get into a tight military jam, you can always run 0% science for a turn or two in order to accumulate cash that can then be spent on immediate military upgrades.
- posted by Shane @ 10:32 AM
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10 turns (1450 AD - 1525 AD)

Started off my turns by making peace with Hannibal. Genghis was no longer involved, which meant we didn't have Hannibal spread as thin anymore. I didn't think it was worth it to try to take his next city in line, which was his capital. First, the defenses would have been high, we were running out of military resources, and strategically, it was in a bad place to send future reinforcements to. Hannibal ended up giving us a good deal in the peace treaty, giving us his map, a load of gold, and 5 additional gold per turn. Afterwards, I tried to patch things up with him by gifting him some obsolete techs. Eventually got him in + relations with us.

As for that city we lost, I think that was actually a blessing in disguise. I seem to recall taking that city early in the game from barbs. I ended up placing the new city a few squares to the east, giving us more riverside grassland tiles and allowing us us the room to squeeze in an additional city somewhere in that mass of jungles to the west.

The rest of my turns were spent building improvements and managing city tiles. The two cities we won from Hannibal are pretty food poor, so I'm planning on making these production centers (hence all the farms I'm throwing up). Without the farms, those cities are going to stagnate easily. We could actually use more production, mostly for military right now, but also to build spaceship parts in the future if it comes down to that. Also focused on making Hastings a production city, so we should end up having 4 production dedicated cities when it's all said and done. We didn't get much variety in terrain this game, and it seems to have split our cities into being all commerce focused or all production focused. Normally you'll have some cities that are more of a mix, but I guess those are the breaks for us this game. By the way, you may notice I'm working an artist in Utica (the last city we stole from Hannibal). The reason for this is to try to expand the border there so we can work those flood plains.

Did a bunch of trading with the AI. You'll notice we've now gotten to the point where most of the computer civs won't trade with us because of how advanced we are. This is fine. What I'm trying to do now is trade only for key techs (mostly important military techs) as the computer allows. Now, when a computer civ learns a tech that we already have, I'm trying to gift those to other civs before they can start trading amongst each other. This helps our relations with everyone and keeps them from advancing as quickly. I've got the feeling we're now learning techs at a rate that's allowing us to outdistance everyone else. Try not to trade techs to the computer that nobody but us has learned yet (especially key ones like Printing Press, Constitution, Democracy and the like).

Towards the end of my turns, I had the dilemma of researching either Military Tradition or Democracy. Military Tradition gives us the ability to build cavalry, which would be a huge unit upgrade for us, especially because we can upgrade our elephants to these. Ragnar has already learned this and if you look at the power graph, you can see he really ramped up his power level in the past few turns (often a sign the computer is gearing up for war). We currently don't have anything that can deal with his cavalry particularly well, but in browsing the diplomatic relations screen, I'm counting on Ragnar going after someone else if he declares war. He likes Ramses and Hannibal less than he likes us, plus, Hannibal is very weak compared to him military wise. Nonetheless, I tried to move a lot of our units over to Newcastle just in case. The best units we have available to us right now for cavalry are the elephants and pikemen. Just remember, we have a TON of cash in the coffers, so if you get attacked, be sure to do some instant unit upgrades (axemen -> macemen, spearmen -> pikemen) in key strategic points.

So if you haven't guessed yet, I chose to go after Democracy. I can't emphasize enough how good Democracy is for our civ. It gives us access to the Universal Suffrage civic, which is amazing. Notice how all our cottage based cities are so slow to build things? It's because all the cottages leave little room for mines. With Universal Suffrage on, all our fully grown cottages will give us a hammer as well, allowing all those cities to actually build something at a semi decent pace. Best of all, it allows us to hurry buildings by spending money. As you can see, we've got some cash burning a hole in our pocket. Democracy also gives us access to the Emancipation civic, which drastically increases growth of our cottages, both giving us more money and helping to get those tiles to the point where they get the hammer bonus as well. If we learn Democracy during your set of turns, remember to change our civics immediately.

Oh, and just for fun, you should check out the diplomacy screen with Genghis. I love being friends with that guy. We have four quality techs that he doesn't have, plus, he's willing to go to war with anyone in the game. That guy is always willing to sell out. Let's just say Genghis is now our military lap dog, and we can sick this guy on whoever we want if need be.

So unless war breaks out, I think your next few turns will probably be a lot like mine...just trying to improve efficiency. We're making progress toward Rifling, which sets us up to possibly go on the offensive again. Redcoats are our unique unit of course.
- posted by Shane @ 6:38 PM
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11 turns (1240 AD - 1350 AD)

I ended up taking 11 turns because I got the save game back in 1240 AD and I wanted to even things back to counting by 50. Anyway, we're in pretty good shape right now. I was scared when you told me Ragnar declared war on us, but it was actually Hannibal. I think this is actually a good thing. Military wise, he's pretty weak, and he gives us a common foe that we can tag team with Genghis against (traded Paper to Genghis so he'd declare on Hannibal). Also made peace with Stalin at the start of my turns. He wasn't being unreasonable anymore, and we were able to establish peace without any concessions. Of course, being the ass that he is, he promptly declared war on Genghis after making peace with us. Sigh.

So the big news is we captured Thapsus from Hannibal. I'd like to scout his territory to the south and see how well defended Utica is. That would be a really nice city to have with all the flood plains and gold, but it could be difficult depending on how much he has left in the tank military wise. I'm hoping his military power is diluted because of Genghis. If he defenses aren't too unreasonable, I'd like to try to take over Utica mainly through war elephants, with some macemen and catapults sprinkled in. The only way this can work is if he doens't have too many pikemen hanging out there. Just make sure when you scout his territory, you guard the elephants with macemen, as our little tusked friends are extremely vulnerable to the pike. If Hannibal's military strength is too high, I'd recommend trying to make peace with him soon so we can concentrate on securing the borders with Ramses and Ragnar.

Speaking of those two...I'm pretty concerned with where their military is at. They just hit Guilds, so they now have access to knights. While our elephants should be a good defense against those, this won't be reflected in the power ratings, and Ramses and Ragnar may eventually develop delusions of grandeur. I think the current setup we have is fine, with all the elephants down near Hannibal, but if we're going to take another city from Hannibal, we have to strike fast. We may really need those elephants for defense eventually.

Tech wise, this was an exciting set of turns for us. We were the first to learn Liberalism, which allowed us to get Printing Press for free (very helpful with all the cottages we have everywhere). Also changed our civics to Free Speech and Free Religion, which we gained access to after acquiring Liberalism. For the future, our two priority techs are Democracy (Universal Suffrage and Emancipation are amazing with a cottage based economy) and Rifling. If possible, I would recommend against trading key techs like Education and Printing Press to the computer unless we really need to. We've built a nice little tech lead and if we can just survive until we get to Rifling, we'll be in really good shape. None of the techs we've skipped over are particularly important at this point in time.

We're in good economic shape, so I had our workers build a handful of farms in food starved cities. Also built some mines near Nottingham to ramp up production there, with the goal of making this another military center. We did get another Great General, though I've yet to use him. I'd recommend stationing him as another military instructor in either York or Nottingham.

There's a hell of a lot going on right now. I'd try to focus on moving the right kinds of units to the right kinds of areas and continuing to improve infrastructure. We currently have the slight problem of not having any iron, as Stalin's borders just expanded and stole our only source to the north. I'm hoping we can quickly recover that, as the recent civic change to Free Speech will give us an enormous culture boost everywhere and should allow us to push the border back. Hopefully we don't get entwined in yet another military conflict, as we're really teetering a fine edge between running away with this game and failing miserably.
- posted by Shane @ 2:59 PM
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10 turns (1050AD - 1150 AD)

Nice peaceful set of turns from this end. Stalin did try to send a couple of horse archers by way of boat, but our war elephants quickly gobbled them up. I'm not entirely sure what this guy is up to right now. He's still very strong on the power graph, but he keeps sending over these dinky attack teams.

I interrupted Education for a few turns to learn Machinery after trading for Metal Casting. Machinery was key for us so we could start building macemen. Yeah, they have the same power as our war elephants, but they help cover some of their weaknesses, namely pikemen. Unless Stalin starts throwing Knights at us (which he might, hard to say as I'm not sure if he has Guilds yet or not), I think we should concentrate on building mostly macemen at this point. I started throwing up a few barracks in a couple of our production rich cities. Barracks themselves give us a power boost, but more importantly, I think they're worth it if we plan on building lots of military units in those cities long term. As for the Great General, I ended up sending him as a military instructor in York. York will be pumping out very experienced units from here on out, which is a great advantage.

Switched our legal civic to Bureaucracy to give us a boost in production and commerce in London. Our economy is getting on track, but I did think it needed a little kick start to really get going, so I pumped out four or five workers during my turns. A few are over to the west to repair Stalin's pillaging. Most of the others are scattered about hooking up new resources or building cottages. A couple of places need some farms, specifically that city to the far southwest and that dud city with all the plains.

So I think our future plans include pumping out more military units in high production cities and finally taking the tech lead. I believe we're actually pretty close to doing this. I like how you beelined to Education as this tech is very important. The current goal should be to get to Liberalism first so we can get Printing Press for free and watch the cash really start flowing in. Hopefully we can also get our power level up to a point where Stalin will accept a reasonable offer for peace. (York for a treaty? What an ass.)
- posted by Shane @ 4:17 PM
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10 turns (700AD - 900 AD)

Hectic set of turns. Of all the people to attack us, Stalin was one of the most unexpected. I thought I remembered being on ok terms with him, so he must have some aggressive AI tendencies. Anyway, there was a lot of blood spilled in the past few turns, some of it ours, some of it his. He faked me out big time at first and it almost cost us a city. I saw the injured chariot near London and thought that most of his attacks would originate from there by way of boat, but I was much surprised to find a bunch of axemen, chariots, and horse archers approach from the northwest. This was not a good situation, as we only had two axemen up there. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the strengths and weaknesses of individual units (if you want a rundown, just let me know), but our axemen are only even in strength to his axemen, somewhat weak to his horse archers, and incredibly weak against the war chariots. There was basically nothing I could do except play it as safe and watch as he pillaged everything around Newcastle while I kept the center tile fortified. First thing I did was slavery rush a spearman in Newcastle to try to fend off all the mounted units, which seem to be the main unit of his army. Also slavery rushed another spearman in a nearby city. I was eventually able to fortify in strategic areas (hills and forested hills), which he stupidly attacked into, and we were able to fend off the first wave. Everything seems to be stabilized now, but be careful, as I have no idea how big his next wave is. I'd try to keep most of the units floating around Newcastle and the capital. And make sure you guard the copper mine with your life, as this is our only metal source. Fortunately, I think we have him trumped unit wise now. We finished learning Construction, which gives us access to war elephants. While we werent able to get them in combat during his first strike, there are now plenty of reinforcements. I'd focus mainly on these now. War elephants completely annihilate horse based units and axemen, which seem to be the bulk of his army. They are weak against long weaponed units like spearmen, for which they're about a dead even match. Because Stalin is so far away from us and has to rely on mobile units to attack, he's basically screwed now. I'm not sure how advanced he is tech wise, but all we have to really worry about from him in the near future is pikemen (if he's learned Construction). So just to be safe, keep building the occasional axemen as well, since they eat up pikemen pretty good.

Other than the fighting, I'm still trying to work on tile improvements where it's safe. (Dude, no more cottages on plains (the flat brown tiles), it hurts me to the very core to see that.) Also, attempting to rebuild the tiles and roads around Newcastle after the onslaught. Tech wise, we are pretty far behind, but I think we're starting to catch up. I'd try not to trade Code Of Laws to anyone, as that keeps us a slight step ahead in teching up our military. Other than that, I'll leave the future game plan up to you. Just keep in mind Ramses is going nuts with the literary techs, so I'm not sure how feasible it is for us to land the Great Library at this point. Actually, because of our poor production due to the map layout, it might be hard to secure any great wonders for the forseeable future.
- posted by Shane @ 2:43 PM
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10 turns (0250 AD - 0500 AD)

Ok, as I said before, I started out my turns switching our government civic to Hereditary Rule, which fixed all of our angry citizen problems. I like how we had axemen going all over the place, as that now helps us with both our military strength and our happiness. Unfortunately, I had to curtail the axemen production after that last wave came in due to us finally learning Code Of Laws. Now, I basically have every city focused on building courthouses or granaries (to help fuel slavery to build courthouses). I still think it would be beneficial to get our power rating up, but we also have to make sure we fix our economy so we can stay up to date on tech. Not much use building tons of military units if they're all last gen. I think we can have most places start on building axemen again after the courthouses are done. Started researching Alphabet. You basically know you're behind on tech when the computer learns Alphabet before you do (which Ramses already has). We birthed a Great Prophet during my turns. I don't know if you want to attach him to a city to help with our gold problems, or you want to use him to learn a new tech. I'll let you decide, but if you use him for a tech, make sure you trade for Polytheism and Monotheism first so we can get a tech that's worth something. The only other thing of note is that I sent a new settler down to found that site I was talking about in the last blog post with the dye and ten riverside grasslands. He should arrive at the site next turn, so I guess we get to add another city to our collection. The only other city sites for the near future are that site by the fish in the northeast and somewhere near that cow to the southwest.

One thing I did notice during my turns was that everyone seems to hate Ramses. I think once we establish a position of power, it might be possible to use Ramses as the hate magnet and start thinking about going for a diplomatic victory. Mutual war, all on Ramses, might be the plan when we get to the medieval age. But first, we've got to catch up in tech, or we have no bargaining chips.
- posted by Shane @ 3:22 PM
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10 turns (0200 BC - 0050 AD)

This was an interesting set of turns. While we're still in the economic recovery phase, the computer's aggressive expansion forced me into expanding further before I really wanted to. Louis sent a couple warriors to hang out around the barb city, while Ramses actually had the gall to try to take it over with a single chariot. I wasn't about to allow anyone to grab a chunk of real estate right dead center in the middle of our civ, so I sent four axemen up there and took it over. I also had my eye on that coastline area to the east. I didn't want Ramses moving up there, so I settled a spot over there with the hopes of closing off the north. After that eastern coastline city's cultural border grows, if you see Ramses trying to send a settler up there, you should go to the diplomacy screen and close borders with him to block it off.

The ecomonic recover was going well, but as you can see, settling two additional cities has put us back in the hole again. During my set of turns, I mostly cranked out more workers (to accelerate our economic recovery) and more axemen (to get us at a respectable power level). I attacked that barb that was camping out that tribal village, and we were really fortunate with the result (free Monarchy tech). I didn't institute Hereditary Rule yet, but if you find any of our cities starting to become pissed off with that red anger mark, I'd recommend getting it online. Other than the free Monarchy, I finished off Masonry and got started on Code Of Laws. Once we learn that, we should probably rush build courthouses all over the place using slavery. I'm also a little concerned about our power level, as we have some fairly aggressive civs floating around near us. I'm trying to slowly march our axemen out to the peripheral cities to beef up the border and move the warriors to the internal and coastlline cities just to keep them happy, but numbers wise, we're maybe a little too far behind on the power graph, which can lead to random spontaneous attacks. York was our best production city, so I threw up a barracks there with the intent of making that our main military facility.

When I started my turns, I noticed you had a bunch of libraries cooking all over the place, which got me thinking about the best way to increase our science. While at first it doesn't make a lot of sense, I think the best way to fix our science rate is to build granaries instead of libraries. Kind of counter intuitive at first, but if you consider that the majority of our cities were only outputting around 1 beaker a turn and that libraries only give you a 25% increase in science, you're only getting an additional 0.25 beakers per turn with a library. If you build granaries first, you're increasing the population growth rate in the city, allowing it to work more tiles more quickly. When you consider the majority of those extra tiles will be cottages, you can see how that's a good way to ramp up our economy, with a lot of it getting siphoned off to science due to the slider. Granaries also give you added ability to crack the slavery whip and get key buildings (like courthouses in the future) built faster. I am a fan of the early library in Canterbury though, as that's a key border city that has to fight a culture battle with two different civs.

I'll also talk about cottages and terrain, with I guess the main point being that grasslands rule and plains generally suck. Also gives me an excuse to post some pictures.

So here's a picture of Hastings with just the center tile being worked:



Sorry if this is too basic, but I just wanted to make sure everything made sense. Note the top bar showing the food generated (2) and food used (4). Also note our population of 2. Whenever you first build a city, you automatically get a population of 1, meaning you get to work two tiles automatically, the center tile (which you always get for free with no food requirement) and an additional tile of your choice. As you can see in Hastings, we have a population of 2. Every 1 population in a city requires 2 food, explaining our total food requirement of 4 shown in the pic. Our food generated is 2, explained by the single center tile being worked. We're currently in a starvation condition, but the only reason that's the case is because I'm not working all the possible tiles soley for example's sake.

Hastings with two plains (brownish squares) being worked:



As I said before, for every 1 population, you get to work a tile in addition to the center one. So in this case, we get to work three tiles total. Here, I've chosen to work two additional plains. Note the growth bar. We have a requirement of 4 food due to having a population of 2, but we're only generating 4 food (2 from center tile and 1 each from the two plains). When your food generated does not exceed your food consumed, you're city can no longer grow and increase population. This is why plains are generally bad spots for cottage spamming. If you think about it, the only way your city can grow is if you're averaging about 2 food produced per tile worked. Cottaged plains only give you 1 food, meaning you have to have other tiles generating more than 2 food to compensate.

Hastings with two grasslands (green squares) being worked:



Here, you'll notice that every of the three tiles is generating 2 food, giving us 6 total food produced, exceeding the requirement of 4, and thus allowing for population growth. This is why when you're scoping out terrain, you want to be on the lookout for food rich resources and grasslands, because they have good growth potential. Areas with lots of plains and few food resources are going to have trouble maintaining growth. Fortunately, Hastings does have the one cow square generating 4 food that we can work, but this can only compensate for three food poor plains before the city stagnates. Eventually, if we want to continue growth, we're going to have to build some farms. While this helps, it isn't a great solution, because that will only get us to the point where the plains are breaking even at 2 food.

So what was the point of all that? Whenever possible, we should be building cottages on grasslands instead of plains. Doing so allows us to work the cottaged tiles, while still maintaining growth. One other point to make which you might be aware of already, is to preferentially build cottages on tiles next to fresh water sources as opposed to landlocked tiles or sea bordering tiles. Tiles next to fresh water generate one free commerce, as you can see in the pics above. For a financial civ like ours, it's even a bigger deal. Financial trait generates an extra free commerce from tiles already generating two. So that means while financial, whenever you build a cottage on a tile next to a river, you are accelerating from 1 to 3 commerce immediately.

Alright, almost done. Here's what I have in mind for future settlements. Let me know if you have any other opinions or want to slow down land growth.



I was all prepared to settle the red spot where the warrior is standing during my turns, but the settler didn't get there in time. Settling this site right now is questionable. It's going to give us more economic burden, but it really is a nice spot, as it has six riverside grasslands available to it fully expanded. If we wait too long, that new Ragnar city to the west is going to grow and prevent us from settling there, causing us to adjust postion a little. I'll leave it up to you whether you want to settle the dot now, or if you want to wait a little a bit and just have the settler chill over there for a while.



I think I may have made a mistake sending the settler out over to the west in that first pic, because the spot marked here has Cash Money written all over it. A dye resource and ten riverside grasslands means Scrooge McDuck potential. Not totally perfect as it could really use a food resource, but I would hate to lose this site to the computer. So I guess another option you have is to move that settler down south and settle here instead, though we could risk delaying it and making a new settler.



This is just a site for the distant future that we want to protect from Ramses. Have fun.
- posted by Shane @ 3:54 PM
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10 turns (650 BC - 400 BC)

A few more uneventful turns on my end. I basically had to run 0% research for the entirety of my run. I think we probably should have chosen Code Of Laws with our free tech, so we could rush build courthouses by way of slavery and get our economy under better control. Upon starting my turns, I switched from learning Sailing to Pottery. We absolutely have to start building cottages to improve our research rate before we do anything else, but yeah, getting to Calender will definitely be our next order of priority. I interrupted the worker in Canterbury from doing whatever he was doing in order to start chopping the jungle on the gems. I was able to finally get one of the gem mines operational on my last turn, and it ended up making an enormous difference. Whereas we were on pace to learn Pottery in 63 turns at 0% research, by working one single mine, I was able to bump our research rate all the way up to 30%, putting us on track to learn it in 4 turns instead. Cutting off 59 turns of research is probably pretty good.

So I'd say in the next set of turns, the general plan should be to get the gem mines going in Coventry and to start spamming cottages on grasslands all over the place (start on ones next to rivers if possible). Sometime in the near future, though not necessarily in the next set of turns, I'd like to get cities placed by the rice/fish to the east and the cows to the west. I have a feeling those spaces are going to get filled in real soon.
- posted by Shane @ 3:31 PM
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10 turns (1200 BC - 875 BC)

Fairly uneventful set of turns, as we're still kinda of jockeying for map position right now. As far as things go now, we definitely have our work cut out for us. I still think the magenta dot would have been the best spot for our fourth city rather than where Hastings is now, mainly because of the gems that we would have had access to. Gems are really, really good for us right now, as they increase happiness (London is angry) and they generate enormous amounts of commerce, helping us fund our rapid expansion. Hastings is going to be a money sink for the forseeable future (stalling our growth) and it has poor long term commercial potential due to the derth of grasslands there. We did have a free roaming settler down south, but the magenta dot was too far out of the way, so I founded Canterbury instead. Though it only has one gem tile as opposed to the magenta dot, it has a really nice balance of commerce/production potential with lots of food/commerce resources, grasslands, and hills. Long term this might actually end up being our best city.

I know we talked about having you freewheel, but there is something we're going to need to take care of in a very specific, orderly way in the next few turns. The Oracle had one turn left to finish, but we weren't done with Writing yet, so I switched to building an axeman. If we would have finished it before learning writing, we would have ended up getting a cheap, crappy free tech. Also, I have a new settler camped out on the magenta dot by those gems to the east. I didn't want to found another city quite yet as it would have delayed us learning Writing, which in hand would have delayed us finishing The Oracle, opening up the door for one of the other civs to finish it before we do. So basically, once we hit Writing in two turns, we should get York working on The Oracle again and have the settler settle the spot where he's currently chillin' out. As far as everything else goes, have at it.

You'll notice that we have some new barb neighbors right in the middle of everything. I'm not too concerned about this. Our axemen should eat them alive within the next few turns. Oh, and if you get the opportunity, I'd really like to do some fog busting to the west to see what's over there.
- posted by Shane @ 10:44 AM
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2000 BC - 1600 BC (10 turns)

Here's the map:



Pretty uneventful turn, primarily just built more warriors and settlers. The next few sets of turns are going to be key for us, as they require a lot of decisions on what types of units to build. Again, I'd like to focus on expansion at this stage of the game (at least within reason). We currently have two settlers running about, ready to settle the yellow and magenta dots. I'm not really sure of the optimal settle pattern right now, but I think what I have laid out works pretty well. Eventually, we're going to want to settle the green and cyan dots, as well as that area in the middle with the two ivory resources, but right now, I'd like to move south as much as possible. We can fill in those gaps later. I think our fifth settle site is going to be somewhere in that clump of sugar, gems, and corn further south, but we need to uncover some of that territory first to find the right spot. Settling so many spots this early is going to put a damper on our economy, so we have to focus on pumping out commerce as soon as we can. I'm not sure why you built the farm next to the rice farm in London. We're financial, so we're pretty much going to want cottages on every grassland possible. Economy wise, here's what I'm kind of looking towards for the near future. We have two workers currently improving York. Let's get the copper and corn hooked up once York expands (which should be in two turns). I think that's our number one improvement focus so we can get The Oracle built faster. After that, I think we should send one of the workers to the southwest in order to farm that rice tile, build some cottages and chop down some jungles. The other worker would then probably be best served connecting the resources up in London (since we just now got access to roads). I think we're going to want another worker down in the magenta city to the southeast once it gets settled, so London should probably start on another worker after the settler is finished. Really, your set of turns will probably be all about exploring and getting the new cities started. Make sure to be mindful of where the barbs are. We don't want to lose a worker or settler to one of those f'ers, as that would really put us behind.
- posted by Shane @ 11:30 AM
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4000 BC - 2800 BC (30 turns)

Alright. It begins again. The goal is victory by either space race or diplomacy. The best way to achieve this is to focus on science and technology. Let's do so by utilizing arguably the best leader trait in the game.

We are Queen Victoria of the great English empire. Here is what we're good at:

Financial - +1 gold on plots that produce 2 or more gold.
Imperialistic - +100% Great General (Warlord) emergence. 50% faster production of settlers.

Financial is an amazing trait. It gives us free extra commerce on squares that would normally produce at least two. Essentially, this means that we will want to be working lots of coastal tiles and building lots of cottages. Imperialistic is a new trait which I haven't played with at all yet. I'm not sure how much the Warlord emergence is going to help us this game, but the 50% production bonus to settlers looked intriguing. One of the keys to maintaining a significant tech lead is having more land than everyone else. We will be focusing on expansion this game. (Compare with last game where we only had 6 cities and went with quality over quantity).

Not much happened during my turns. Just founded London, started working on some techs, and went exploring. London is in a really nice spot. It has four health resources within its usable borders. This means rapid growth and added flexibility with the other tiles. It also has a plains/hill which I built a mine on to ensure we have some decent production here. I built a worker first to improve a couple of our tiles. When the boat is finished, you should immediately start building a settler (and make sure the fish tile is being worked after the work boat sets up there). I had the worker start chopping a forest about a turn ago, meaning that he'll finish chopping as the settler is being built, speeding up production. We want to get a jump start on settling new cities. From there, we should probably pump out another warrior or two, and then go back to making another settler. It's important that we're efficient in these first few turns. When the first settler is done, I think that we should settle the blue dot first, as show here.



This gives us quick access to copper, allowing us to have better barb defense. For our third city, I think we're going to want to move south rather than settle the green dot up north. I just marked that as a place that we're going to want to stake claim to in the future, but right now, it doesn't offer us enough. Moving south allows us to define our borders early to other civs and it gives us access to really nice resources. Sugar and gems are definitely nice prizes. I haven't yet determined the best place to stick our third settler. We're going to have to do some more exploring down there. Additionally, we're going to need Iron Working before we can be productive down there due to all of the jungles. Of course, this is a little ways off though, so we should probably address what we want to research in the near future. When Animal Husbandry is done, we're most definitely going to want to learn Mysticism so we have access to monuments (called obelisks in the pre Warlord version of Civ). Remember, in the last game, we built these all over in the early game to gain culture in new cities so the borders would expand. After Mysticism, we have a few different directions we can take. We could work towards learning Priesthood so we can try to build The Oracle. What makes The Oracle so good? It gives you a free tech when it's built, allowing us to probably learn Code Of Laws for free, maintaining our theme of staying ahead in the tech game. If we're going to be a rapidly expanding civ, Code Of Laws is a must, as it allows for courthouses, which reduce city mainentence and allow for larger empires. Another route we could take would be to learn Masonry so we could try for either the Pyramids or The Great Wall. The Pyramids are amazing, as they allow you to start using the representation civic very early in the game (increasing happiness when it's at a premium) and they also give you Great Engineer points. In the early game, Great Engineers are by far the best type of great person. The only problem is, we're not an industrious civ, and we don't have stone, meaning the Pyramids would take a very, very long time to build. The Great Wall in of itself isn't that great, but it too gives you Great Engineer points, and it is much easier to build to boot. The third tech option is to just work the standard technology centric branch and move toward Writing and Alphabet right away, skipping over the early wonders. This is a perfectly valid option and would be the one of choice if you want to focus on growth over everything else. I'll leave it up to you what we'll do, but personally, I think trying for the Pyramids is the worst option.

As you'll notice, on the map above, I outlined the workable borders around cities built on the dots. I think there was some confusion last game as to what "workable borders" really were. Note, the red border around London. Right now, that red border corresponds to the real border of London. (If you play the game, you'll see that border shape on the main map screen.) Of course, as you know, borders can become bigger than that. The outer white border that surrounds our civ as a whole demonstrates the land that we own, but not all of those tiles are necessarily workable. Only the squares in the shape I drew above on the map can actually be used by a city. This is how you determine the best places to build cities. Notice, there are two fish tiles, as well as a pig and rice tile within the "workable borders" of London. As the borders of our civ grows, the maximum workable border for London will remain the same, right within that red cross. Notice that solo square right between the workable borders of London and the future second city, shown by blue lines. This is just outside the workable borders of each city, and thus cannot be worked. What does this tell us? Don't build anything on that square. Ok, I guess you can build a road to improve travel, but if you build a farm or a workshop or a cottage or something there, it will never be used, so don't even waste the time to put something there. Lastly, note why the blue dot is a good spot for a second city. Once the borders expand into the fat cross drawn in blue above (made possible by first building a monument there for +1 culture/turn), that city will be able to use copper, corn, ivory, and bananas with the proper tile improvements in place. One last thing about workable borders. Notice how the workable borders of London and the hypothetical future city on the green dot overlap. Only one city can work a tile at a time, so London will likely have access to that mine, while the hypothetical green city won't have access to it on the tile setup screen.

Alright, that's it for me. Goals in the near future include building more settlers and an adequate military to protect them, and exploring more of the darkened regions to the south. I was thinking the 30, 20, 10, 10, 10... pattern would work best to get through the early turns, so I guess you're up with 20 turns now.
- posted by Shane @ 1:49 PM
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15 turns (1850 AD - 1880 AD)

(Re: 20% city defense bonus...I'm not entirely sure if it works anywhere within your borders. I was always under the impression it only worked for guys who are actually on the city square, but I could be wrong. At this stage in the game, the better buffing upgrade is probably +25% against gunpowder. All the best units at this point are gunpowder units (riflemen and grenadiers). Not only is the bonus bigger, it works for attacking as well.)

Here are a couple things I did immediately when taking my turns. Traded Medicine to Mao to get him to declare war on Victoria. If they're occupied attacking each other, they won't attack us. I changed our economic civic to Environmentalism to give us +6 health in all of our cities. Looked at Medina and changed the way the specialists were set up. You've got to watch Medina whenever it grows. The computer decided to auto employ priests there instead of artists. This poisons our great person generation pool and increases the chances of us getting a great prophet instead of a great artist. It also lessens our culture growth there a little. And dude, what happened to all our workers? Did they get taken after Victoria declared war on us? I'm going to make the two we have left build cottages in Damascus instead of farms. The more money we have there, the more culture we're going to generate. Remember, based on what your slider says, our commerce there becomes either science, culture, or gold. Cancelled the grocer in Damascus. All that does is give us more gold. We need commerce/culture and military pretty much exclusively now, so I'm going to build a barracks and start building riflemen there now. We could use our extra hammers to generate additional culture there instead of military, but the increase would be marginal (when I tried it, it was something like 40 more culture a turn). So instead, it's all about survival.

Additionally I used one of the great artists to expand the borders of Damascus in order to put extra cultural pressure on London and win the border war. Lastly, I changed the slider to generate culture instead of science. We're pretty much done with science from here on out. You can see the effects of these last two changes below.

Before using great artist


After using great artist


Notice how we've now taken her bananas, stone, and cows just by using a great artist. What's even sadder is the fact that our third city has almost completely engulfed her starting capital city culturally.

Before adjusting culture slider


After adjusting culture slider


I was able to change our culture slider from 80% science to 80% culture. Note the difference. Mecca went from generating 391 culture a turn to 814. Medina went from 381 to 435. Damascus went from 484 to 592. Why did Mecca jump up so high? When we adjust the slider, what we're saying is, we want to put 80% of the commerce generated in each city into culture. Mecca is almost 100% cottages/villages/towns/etc, which all generate commerce. Damascus would have jumped up in culture per turn much more if Victoria hadn't pillaged us. It makes sence that Medina went up very little, as we're working farms primarily there, which emphasize food over commerce.

So here's what happened with the rest of my turns. Huayna and Mao made peace with Victoria, but I bribed Huayna into attacking her again, just to keep her busy. I rushed the Hindu Mandir in Medina to get the culture pumping more. Everywhere else has been focusing on building military. I kept a handful of riflemen in our three secondary cities, but have been sending everyone else to the three cultural cities for defense. I did the math and decided to take 15 turns this go around so you could finish the game. Here's where we stand right now.



Mecca is going to reach 50000 culture naturally in a couple turns. We have three great artists twiddling their thumbs in Medina right now. You'll probably want to end up using all three in Medina. There should be another great artist on the way in Medina soon, and if you need it, you'll probably want to use it in Damascus. I'll let you figure it out, just do whatever gets us to 50000 culture in the three cities fastest. I'm not sure if it'll take 10 turns or not, but go ahead and finish us out regardless. If anyone attacks us, just send a bunch of riflemen to the target city and have them sit there. We can pretty much ignore everything that happens peripherally, as long as they don't take over the city.

So that should just about do it. Let me know if you want to get another game going.
- posted by Shane @ 5:39 PM
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Alright dude...that was pretty close. I actually had to reload once to figure out a way to keep us from losing Damascus. When we get attacked, try not to let them get up in your business with guys all over your tiles. It's ok when their army is all bunched up together in one tile, but when they get all spread out, they can really start decimating you with pillaging. You'll notice that almost all of our riflemen are now in Damascus. We almost lost the game because of how our armies were situated before. Just remember this...all we really MUST defend are Mecca, Medina, and Damascus. It would suck to lose the other cities, but if we lose one of our big three, we lose the game. It took some real close calls to get all our riflemen down to Damascus before Victoria overwhelmed us. I think we've stabilized now and Victoria is a bit on the defensive from the attack from the south by our ally. Just make sure the border between London and Damascus remains sealed and that you keep any stragglers that start wandering around in our territory off our property. We could probably take one of her satellite cities, but it wouldn't be worth the effort and resources since we'd want to destroy them instead of installing a new governor anyway. Military wise, keep building riflemen in all of our non culture cities. Make sure we have adequate (~2 units) in our northern towns and send everyone else to Damascus.

Other things to take care of during your turns... Keep building culture related buildings in Medina and Damascus when possible. I noticed that Mycenian still does not have Hinduism yet, so I'm building a Hindu missionary in Mecca. If he fails to spread the religion, keep building others to send over there until they learn it. After Mycenian gains Hinduism, build a Hindu temple there immediately, so we can start on a the Hindu +50% culture building in Medina. We also need to fix our resources a little bit after Victoria blitzed us. Also, I sent a worker down south to hook up the bananas that we stole from Victoria. Just make sure there's a road there to connect everything once he's done building the plantation. Once that's done, try to rebuild the cottages that Victoria pillaged in Damascus. We should also work on getting a better road network up north so we can send troops south faster if need be. Tech wise, we're almost done learning Medicine, so that means we'll being going in to the No Learning Zone soon. Once we hit Medicine, you should change our economic civic from mercantilism to environmentalism. This will give us a giant boost in health, meaning more growth in Medina to make more great artists. Then, adjust our slider so we are putting 0% into science. Turn our culture slider up as far as it will go so as we're still bringing in net gold. Also, try to immediately bribe Mao into declaring war on Victoria with Medicine. We'll be nice and safe if we can pull that off. Of course, keep in contact with Victoria to see if she'll accept peace at all.

So yeah, remember. Military, military, military, excepf for the exceptions listed above. The world leaders are way ahead of us in tech now and our other rivals will soon be far ahead as well. We just have to hang on and survive. Race to hit triple 50000 culture before the cpu decides we're easy prey.
- posted by Shane @ 7:20 PM
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10 turns (1735 AD - 1785 AD)

So looking at everything at the start of my turns, I decided that our military strength is our #1 concern right now. Just take a look.



That is not good. I know that some CPU personalities will go after you if you are this weak relative to them, regardless if you're friends or not. I don't want Mao or Victoria getting any funny ideas, so I'm halting tech for now and going straight up cash flow in order to do some serious military upgrades. That means science and culture sliders at 0% for a few turns.

Also starting off, I cancelled production of the forge in Medina. Forges are normally great structures to build, but we definitely don't want this here. Remember, Medina is our great person farm, so we value food and health over just about everything. We also built the Globe Theatre here, meaning we don't have to worry at all about happiness. What does a forge do? It increases production (always good), DECREASES health (very bad in Medina), and increases happiness (totally inconsequential in Medina). It's really all about culture and health related buildings there now.

Building wise, didn't really accomplish much during my turns. Science went no where as I upgraded almost all our guys to riflemen. I think I made a mistake when I suggested we learn tech up to Medicine. We probably should have pumped up the culture slider to the max instead, but I guess it's kind of too late now. If you look at the stats screen, you can see Mecca is just about halfway to becoming a legendary city with 50000 culture. I'm concerned about Medina...it's only generating about 200 culture a turn while the other two cities are at about double that. We didn't do a very good job of balancing our +50% culture buildings, as Medina will only be able to have 2. We're probably going to end up having to use all of our great artists there at the end of the game. Our next couple sets of 10 turns are going to be big. We're well on our way to winning this game before anyone can build the spaceship. The tough part is going to be keeping aggro off of us. Hatty is hates us now due to the dealings I had to do with Mao to get him off our back. I thought it was more important to be friendly with Mao just because he's on the same continent. Remember, with the exception of our 3 culture cities, military is key. We have to pretty much pump out as many riflemen as we can to compensate the computer getting ahead of us in tech and being able to make stronger guys.

By the way, here's where we're at power wise after my 10 turns of military upgrades. Still not very good, but better.



Good luck. I'm anticipating this game is going to be over in about 40-50 more turns as long as we can hold off aggro.
- posted by Shane @ 11:29 PM
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10 turns (1635 AD - 1685 AD)

Again my turns didn't take too long this time around. Focused mostly on culture buildings in our relevant cities. I see that you keep trying to build monasteries in places like Narjan and Mycenian and I keep cancelling them. I think it's our own little inter-civ power struggle or something. We don't really need monasteries in those places, as we don't care about culture except in Mecca, Medina, and Damascus. I'd prefer to try to fix the happiness there and I started up markets in those places during my turn. I feel that if we're not building happiness or health related buildings in Narjan or Mycenian, we should be building riflemen.

We finally got to Democracy, and I promptly switched our government civic from monarchy to universal suffrage. The problem with this is that a couple of our cities were really relying on monarchy to supply happiness, so these places are kind of pissed now. This is a change we needed to make however, as it gives us a big, big boost in production in cities with lots of cottages (like Mecca and Damascus) and we can get the important culture buildings up faster.

So I decided that we probably shouldn't go into cocoon mode just yet. Our great person farm could really use a boost, so I started a beeline to Medicine for our tech tree. This allows us to get Biology, giving us an enormous boost in food from our farms in Medina, as well as the environmentalism civic, which gives a huge bonus in health. Once we get to Medicine, I think we should shut our science down permanently. In the next few turns, there are a few things that we should be mindful to take care of. We still need to get all five of our religions in Mycenian, Baghdad, and Narjan ASAP. These places should be building the temple (NOT monasteries) of each respective religion as soon as they learn them. Mecca is pretty much the designated missionary production city right now. After we've maxed out religion everywhere, we may want to start building more +50% culture buildings in Mecca again, or we could try to build the Statue of Liberty. I'd like to get the Statue somewhere, as it gives us more free specialists (ie artists) everywhere. Note that since we changed our gov civic to universal suffrage, we can now hurry building production by spending cash. It's usually better to not hurry a building right when you start it. Better value to build for a couple turns and then hurry it. You should experiment with this, as it's really powerful. But yeah, other than that, let's get those temples and monasteries up in Medina and Damascus!

Oh, and one other important thing. It probably isn't worth it to join our Great Artists to cities anymore. We should be saving these guys up now so we can go nuts making great works to put us over the top in culture during the end game.
- posted by Shane @ 5:40 PM
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Uneventful set of turns here. Versailles was completed by someone else, so we lost all that time in Damascus. Not cool. I'm basically building culture buildings of all sorts in Damascus and Medina. I've been able to swing some trades with Hatty to get more health resources, so there's room for growth in Medina once again. I've got two workers building a lumbermill on the forested hill there. Make sure when Medina grows again that we're working that tile to get an extra 4 production. It'll really help us get the temples and monastaries going there. I've got a Christian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. I sent one earlier, but he failed to spread the religion due to the fact that there already four religions there. If this second missionary fails, try to build another one in Damascus. I took the chance and switched our religion to Confusianism and I think it paid off. Victoria is still cool with us and the rest of the people on our continent are back in the safe diplomacy zone. Buddhist Hatty isn't much of a warmonger and is ok with us as well. The other two Buddhists are pretty weak, and we should be able to fend off an attack from them with the help of our allies. I'd like to get Mao to open his borders to us again, which might take giving him a free technology.

We are almost at Rifling, which will seriously help our military. The next step from there is a straight shot to Democracy. Once we get that, we're going to have to discuss how we want to approach the rest of the game. We have the option of jacking up our culture slider and putting all of our ecomomy into creating culture. If we go that route, we will pretty much be stalled out on technology the rest of the game (no more new techs). Or we could continue to play a traditional game and focus on buildings to give us culture. This will be a key decision point, but we have a few turns before we have to make it.

But yeah, in the meantime, it's all about getting culture buildins, mostly temples and monastaries of all sorts built in Damascus and Medina.
- posted by Shane @ 6:40 PM
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10 turns (1370 AD - 1470 AD)

Start of my turn.

Narjan (before changes)



Things to note here. Because this is not one of our main culture centers, we don't really need a monastery here. Notice how our health is currently 13 out of 13. We should probably be bulding an aqueduct, or better yet, a harbor here to increase health. We also have access to universities now, which would be a better building than a monastery if you want to have a science focus. Because it's almost done, I think I'll finish it. Harbor is next up. Also, on the right, you can see we're working an engineer and a priest here. I think we'd rather be working the forested plains tile and the grassland with the cottage though. Why? Because all the priest and engineer are giving us are extra production. The engineer gives us +2 production, +3 GPP, and +2 culture. The priest gives us +1 production, +3 GPP, +1 gold, and +2 culture. Remember, we don't care about culture or GPP in this city. So all we're really getting from these guys is +2 production total. What's better about using the tiles instead? We get +1 food and +2 production from the forested plains. We get +2 food and +1 commerce from the grassland. That's +3 food, +2 production, and +1 commerce total, meaning, our city can actually continue to grow at a nice rate because of the food. Also, cottages don't actually improve into hamlets or whatever unless they're actually being used. When the cottages grow, they make us more money. Lastly, it would be useful to build a work boat for that fish in the corner. Our city won't actually be able to work it (notice how it's darkened out because it's outside this city's fat cross), but it will give us an extra fish resource that we might be able to trade to someone else. Also need to spread Christianity and Confucianism here.


Mecca (before changes)



We really have to watch this place. We just got a Great Scientist. We don't want these guys. We want Great Artists. The more random Great People generated by Mecca, the fewer Great Artists we'll get from Medina. That's why we want to minimize Great Person production here. Employing that engineer on the right is bad. He gives us +3 GPP, plus an additional +3 GPP due to our philosophical bonus. We don't ever want to work any specialists here and you have to watch that the computer doesn't auto assign them when the city grows. So I'm going to get rid of that engineer and work that grassland instead, although we should get a cottage built there to make it more lucrative. Another thing I'll try to do is get Christianity in Mecca. That way, we can build Christian temples and monasteries here. This is one of our culture cities, so we want as many culture buildings as possible. Also note how our unhealthiness of 17 has overtaken our health limit of 16. This will stifle growth until we can get some kind of new health building built or we can get another health resource.


Medina (before changes)



Things are going well here. Monastery here is fine. We like culture. Note that we're generating +60 GPP here per turn (we are employing six artist specialists of course). And they're all Great Artist points. That's big. I noticed that we've jointed two Great Artists here, as you can see at the bottom right. When we make Great Artists, we should be joining them to Damascus for now, as it is not generating as much culture as Mecca and Medina. Other things in the gameplan include getting Judaism, and Confucianism going in Medina. And also, note again that we've exceeded our health limit due to our high population. We lose food for that.


Damascus (before changes)



I think everything is nice and tidy here for now as well. Notice we're only generating 51 culture a turn here, compared to the much higher values for Mecca and Medina that you can see above. That's why we need to join the Great Artists here. Versailles is taking forever to build because we only have 13 production total here. That's fine of course, since Damascus is a commerce/culture center, but it makes it a pain in the ass to build expensive buildings. Hopefully we'll finish the wonder before the cpu does. Just need Judaism here.


Baghdad (before changes)



Not too bad here. I'll get a worker to build a cottage on that grassland so we can make it useful to work. That way, we can start growing again (notice how we're stagnant, because we're consuming as much food as we make). Again, this is our military city. We have a barracks built here, so I think we should just keep making macemen. Macemen are better units than longbowmen in the long run. This is not a culture city, but we should still get those three unrepresented religions going here. Why? So we can build the temples (requirements for those +50% culture buildings that I always talk about).


Mycenian (before changes)



This place is kind of armchair right now, but it's no fault of ours. We're 3 health in the hole here. Using the engineer here kind of hurts because he doesn't make food like a food tile would, but I think it's necessary in order to increase production. We only have 9 production here without the engineer (don't be fooled by the 58 hammers thing at the top, it's that high for one turn because the prodution of the previous building had hammers left over). I'll leave the tiles as they are, but again, health has become our main issue. I'm going to cancel the colisseum. All that building does is give us extra happiness. We are indeed at the happiness limit here, but we could always move a soldier here to deal with that (remember, Monarchy!). Better yet, we could build some religious temples (I'll be redundant and once again mention that we need temples everywhere to build those +50% culture buildings). OR BEST OF ALL, we can build a harbor here. That gives us extra health, plus extra cash from trade routes. Still need to spread Christianity and Hinduism here.

What happened on my turn... Lots of action. Did a ton of trading with the other side of the world to get up to Banking. Learned Liberalism and got Printing Press for free to fix our economy a little bit. Started researching Nationalism. The Hermitage national wonder is key for us and will probably be going in damascus eventually. I switched our civics around a little bit. I went to Mercantilism, which gives us a free specialist in every city. This means, that when you look at the cities, you'll see all of them have one specialist now, such as an engineer or artist. I know I said earlier that we don't want more specialists in Mecca because it will help create random Great People, but this is offset by getting another artist in Medina.

One thing's for certain, the world is becoming a dangerous place. I would love to swtich our national religion to Confucianism, since that's what Mao and Kublai Khan have adopted, but doing so would piss off Victoria. Since she's our neighbor and has the greatest threat potential to us, we don't want to do that. It may be worth out while to spread Confucianism like crazy to Victoria so she'll adopt it. That way, everyone on our continent can be Confuciasts and we can then focus almost solely on our navy for defense from the other continent. Mao is really pissed off at us right now. I don't think he's much of a war monger and I think he'd attack Victoria first, but we should watch out for him. And Isabella too, because she is out of her mind games. If you are not her religion, she usually hates you and can strike at any time. Beware. This might get real tough real soon. We may have to have Mecca start pumping out Macemen. And after Nationalism, we might have to focus on learning Rifling ASAP.

Oh yeah, we're up to >90 GPP per turn in Medina now. Big time.
- posted by Shane @ 5:59 PM
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10 turns (1170 AD - 1280 AD)

Ok, here are some things that I did to start. The computer is stupid and likes to work specialists in places where they shouldn't be worked, so I changed all the specialists in Narjan, Mycenian, and Mecca to work tiles instead. Remember, Mecca already is generating a lot of GPP (which we don't want). When it works more specialists, that's not good for us, as we get more random Great People that we don't necessarily want from there. A few other things. You started the Hindu Mandir, which is the +50% culture building in Mecca. I suppose this is fine. But just remember, if we remain at six cities for the rest of the game, we will only be able to build two Hindu Mandirs total. The same goes for the other +50% culture buildings of the other religions. Because we have three cities that need to get to 50000 culture, we have to make sure to stagger the building of these things so that they're evenly distributed amongst the three cities. We don't want to get into the situation where two of our ciites have lots of these +50% buildings, while one doesn't have any. Just be careful when you build these. I like the call on Versailles in Damascus. Could use more culture bonuses there and it isn't a danger to overtake Medina with GPP like Mecca is right now. The trade for sugar was also key, as we could really use health right now. I also traded our horses (useless to us) for Victoria's bananas. I made a few tech trades with the computer civs...I noticed that Victoria had macemen. It was of the utmost importance for us to trade for Machinery so we could start building macemen as well. Learning Philosophy right now is probably fine. It really doesn't do anything for us, since Taoism was already founded, but it is a requirement for Liberalism down the line, which I think is the tech we should aim for right now. As for what we're building right now, I switched around one thing. I started Baghdad on a temple instead of the monastery. Remember, temples in the random cities help us because they are requirements for the +50% buildings. Monasteries don't do a whole lot for us. If you built it because you wanted to build Islamic missionaries, just remember that we are using the Organized Religion civic and we can build missionaries without monasteries. Also thought it was weird that we have two farms near Mecca, but oh well, no biggie. (Were you thinking of chain linking farms to Baghdad? May not be a bad idea.) Oh, and here's another random note. I saw that we have lots of cottages on plains in Baghdad and some other places. Baghdad doesn't have a lot of food, and plains are a food deficient tile. We probably won't be able to work all those tiles due to food shortage, so the workers should be focusing on building cottages on grasslands and flood plains in food rich cities like Mecca and Damascus. Plains aren't very useful to us in most places. The only place they're going to be used right now is Mycenian because we have so much damn food there. Just remember, it takes two food to feed one tile. If a tile produces two food, it is food neutral. If it produces more than two food, it creates a food surplus which allows for growth. If it produces one or zero food, it takes away surplus food and hurts growth. That's why plains are generally bad for cottages unless you have lots and lots of food from other sources or it is late in the game and you have learned Biology. We also have some cottages on some tiles that aren't in range to be worked from anywhere. We can only work tiles within a city's fat cross (basically two squares away including diagonals).

Here's what happened on my turns... Just focused on building mostly. Started making macemen in Baghdad. For now, Mecca is going to be focused on building missionarries so every city has all of our religions. This is so they can get started on temples. Great Artist was born in Medina (yay). Sent it to Damascus since it's still low on culture growth rate. Traded for Feudalism and Compass from Kublai Khan. Also got Optics and Construction (as a throw in) from Victoria. I've got our tech tree set to beeline to Liberalism, so we can get the free tech, most likely either Printing Press or Nationalism. I'm pretty sure we'll be the first one to get it. We're nearing the point where we have to decide whether to continue in a traditional game mode or to go into a "culture cocoon". I'll talk about this later.

These are some of the things I think we should focus on in the next few turns. Right now, Mecca is just about tapped out on culture buildings. It's built pretty much all it can. We don't want it building more wonders there because we don't want any more GPP there. So what we need to do is get Confusianism and Christianity in Mecca. Then, it can build a couple more temples and monasteries. When not building those, Mecca should be building just missionaries to spread our religions to all of our cities. We want all of our ciites to have all five religions that we know right now. Buddhism and Taoism were founded elsewhere, and since we don't have any religionless cities, the only way we can learn those is if the computer sends a missionary to us. Baghdad is of course our military city and it should be building just macemen right now, unless it takes a break to build temples. Our two seaside cities should be focusing on growth and commerce. I did have Mycenian start on a caravel so we can meet civs we haven't been in contact with yet. There is a Confucian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. If it fails to spread Confucianism there, Mycenian should build another Confucian missionary. Right now, it's all about spreading religion. When Medina finishes the Globe Theatre, it should start up on temples and monasteries. As for our workers, they should continue to build cottages on grasslands and flood plains. I also have one worker hooking up the gold resources that we stole from Victoria through border expansion. It looks like we might be getting to the point where some of Victoria's cities rebel and join our civ. Canterbury is the only one worth keeping because of the clam resource. The other two should just be destroyed, as they'd just be a drain on our economy with little to offer us in the way of useful resources.
- posted by Shane @ 10:56 PM
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10 turns (800 AD - 1000 AD)

So just a few notes on starting my turns... I cancelled the Globe Theatre in Damascus. We absolutely need to have this in Medina. We are already maximized our growth in Medina due to happiness constraints. This means that we're starting to get angry citizens who take up food but aren't productive at all. For the GP farm, we need to get BIG, meaning no unhappiness in Medina is a very good thing. Also, I cancelled the obelisk in Najran. Why? Obelisks are good early game because they are a cheap way to generate culture in order to get your borders to expand. Later in the game, they do close to nothing, as temples give 3x the culture and are pretty cheap as well. The only places we'd want to build obelisks now are our three main culture cities (since we need three cities with 50000 culture to get a cultural victory). Every other city we have can completely ignore culture. It does close to nothing for us in those cities. The only culture related building that we really need in the outside cities are temples, because you need three temples of one religion to build the heavy hitter religious building that gives +50% to culture in a city (they all have different names, you can look in the instructions to see what they're called). By similar reasoning, I cancelled the monastery in Mycenian. Though the +10% to science from the monastery is nice, I changed to a temple. You'll noticed that we have unhappiness there, and the temple gives us another happiness point.

Also, another note. Because all our cities can now use specialists, it's important to semi micromanage the cities now. This is due to the computer autoassigning worked tiles after growth. The computer will often work specialists in a city when you don't want them. For example, Mycenian was working two artists when I loaded up the game. This does not help us at all. Mycenian is not one of the cities we are trying to build culture in. Additionally, working artists there will not help us to generate Great People, since Medina and Mecca (unfortunately) are doing that. I'm not real enthused about the rate of GP generation in Mecca right now, as it's ahead of Medina right now in GP points. This means that our third GP in a row may not be an artist. That isn't optimal for us. I'm torn about possibly switching to caste system at this point. This would allow us to run more than two artists in Medina, but it would also mean the Globe Theatre gets built slower. Medina is a key city right now. It's a fine act between balancing Great Artist generation, gettin the Globe Theatre built for the future, and utilizing the gold tiles to really help our research rate. Focusing on any one of those choices compromises the other two.

Things that happened during my turns. We learned Music, but we weren't first. That means we didnt' get the Great Artist. Not good news, but it isn't the end of the world. I started researching Divine Right. We can still get Islam, but it's important that we use our Great Prophet to speed up research. If you put the cursor over the research bar at the top of the screen, you can see how many beakers we need to learn that tech. For Divine Right we need about 1700 beakers. Our Great Prophet can be used to give us 1100 beakers towards it. That means, that when we have accumulated 600 beakers total for Divine Right, you should use the Great Prophet who is sitting in Mecca to gain the extra 1100 and learn it. This will be happening during your next set of turns. I did a little tech trading, but wasn't too trigger happy. I got Currency, because the extra trade routes can really help our economy. Noticed how I didn't trade for Construction, Calender, or Feudalism. We just don't need those right now. Construction let's us improve travel over rivers (not too pressing of an issue right now), build war elephants (offensive unit that doesn't fit our strategy and we can't even build anyway because of our lack of ivory), build catapults (offensive unit), or build colosseums (no culture bonus, we don't really care). Calender lets us build plantations, but we don't have any resources that require that. Feudalism is very expensive and only really allows us to build longbows. The plan for defensive units should be to build macemen once we learn Machinery and Civil Service.

Here's something good that happened during my turns. I decided to switch to Caste System in order to get Medina to generate the Great Artist before Mecca would generate us a random GP. Look here.



This shows how much our top three culture cities are generating a turn. Don't worry about the total cutlure for now, just note that we are very far away from winning with 50000 culture in each. Damascus is only generating 20 culture per turn, compared to 53 and 30 for Mecca and Medina. I'm going to choose to join our Great Artist with Damascus. What this does is give us 3 extra gold per turn there as well as +14 culture per turn. That's big. Later in the game, we will use the Great Artists to create a great work, but for now, early in the game, it is better for them to join the cities. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense right now, but it'll be clearer as we make more and more Great Artists.

Here are some things we should take care of within the next few turns. As stated above, use the Great Prophet to learn Divine Right when we get to 600 or so beakers. Damascus should be building nothing but culture buildings such as temples and monasteries right now. Hold off on the Hindu Mandir and any of the other +50% culture buildings for now. Those are expensive and require some planning since we can only build a limited number of those (due to the three temple requirement). Like you mentioned before, we should be building cottages on all grassland or flood plain tiles not in Medina. You should be getting a Great Person on your turn from Mecca. If it's a Great Prophet or Great Engineer, save it. If it's a Great Scientist, go ahead and build a science academy in Mecca (our best science city) with it. Perhaps we can miraculously get a Great Artist out of Medina before Mecca makes a GP. Speaking of Medina...



Here's the Great Person farm in action. Currently employing 5 artists, giving us a 15 Great Person points (GPP) per turn there. The National Epic itself gives us 1 GPP. That gives us a base rate of 16 GPP. But you'll note that the fact that we're philosophical gives us +100% birth rate and the National Epic gives us +100% birth rate for an additional +200% birth rate total. In the end, we're getting +48 GPP per turn in Medina. It will get even better if we can scrounge up some additional health (we are at the health limit of 15/15 right now) and use the pacifism civic (even more % bonus). Notice how in Medina I'm working all farm tiles and a single production tile. That one production tile is needed to help create the Globe Theatre. Be on the look out for opportunites to trade resources with Victoria for her health resources (banana, sugar). We may have to trade happiness resources to her, but this is ok for now. If you'll remember, we are using the hereditary rule civic. This allows us to increase happiness in cities by adding troops stationed there. If Medina or any other city ever gets unhappy (has the small red angry face next to it on the main screen), just build a military unit and move it there. Just make sure to manage Medina well so that it is always 1. Working only farms and that one production tile, and 2. working as many artist specialists up to the point where the city is still growing (not "stagnant").
- posted by Shane @ 7:23 PM
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