Shadowflit's RBCiv Adventure 28 Report

I recently picked up civ4 (decided I liked it, obviously), and more recently picked up BtS. So while I've won multiple games on Prince in vanilla civ, this will be my second game in BtS and first on Prince. I've got some ideas on how to proceed - I know I'll want the Sistine, perhaps Pyramids (though I'd better have access to Representation by 1900 or I'll have way bigger problems...), and founding religions would be nice too. On the other hand, I've got to balance the scoring goals with actually doing well enough to win...we'll see how it goes.

Moved towards the sea before settling. I like a coastal capital and there was a bit of ocean peaking out beneath the fog. As you can maybe see, I've picked mining first, deciding that religions really aren't that critical and I'll try for later ones.

Popped sailing on turn 3, how thoughtful.

2600 Bronze Working is in and the Dutch adopt Slavery.

2480 Hmph. Lost a scout a woodsman 1 scout sitting in a forest and across a river from the lion who killed him.

2000BC Founded Utrecht. Stone was actually still in the fog when I founded, the location chosen mainly to cutHamurabi off (on the peninsula above me) and for the fresh water and pig. I was really hoping there would be some other worthwhile resources, but it was a gamble. Current researching my way Writing -> Alphabet.

1120BC Next city, The Hague, founded to lock down my iron supply. I'm realizing I should have taken better teching notes. Well, Iron Working has apparently come in.

775BC Alphabet comes in... lots of tech trades to be made.

Pick up Pottery and Monotheism for Iron Working to Asoka (not a monopoly tech - and hey, he's not exactly a war-monger either)

Also get Hunting and Animal Husbandry (perfectly in time to pasture up my new cows in The Hague and pigs in Utrecht - got the stone all nice and hooked up now) for Writing and Polytheism. Currently 7 turns away from the Great Lighthouse.

600BC Pretty!

675BC Hammy asks for Monotheism - and since its my first trade with him and all, I cave and hand it to him. For now, I'm planning on locking him up in his peninsula and keeping him relations relatively good with him.

400BC Rotterdam founded for the ivory and continued cultural blockade plans. Workers start heading over after they finish current projects to get started on hacking away some of that oppresive jungle. And as far as cutting Hammy off, yeah - I'm a little worried about that passage of unclaimed land between my cultural boundaries. Turns out he never sends settlers, only endless quantities of Christian missionaries. Which are bad enough, as far as I'm concerned.

In case anyone was wondering what happened to my 'found some later religions' plan - it got scrapped after I saw how fast everything was falling. Though its quite small, you can see Hammurabi and Asoka have both founded religions (Christianity and Judiasm respectively) - and most of the others have fallen too. I wasn't sure if anymore if Confucianism was gone yet so I was busily researching CoL.

300BC Yay! Mine now. Also, you can see I'm getting my slave labor to crank out a set of Pyramids for me too.

275BC First barbarian warrior to actually come close enough to attack. Wow, that sure took a while. Everyone's packed in pretty tight.

With 13 turns to go on Pyramids, I switched to a spy (explore hammy, cheap) and whipped for 2 pop (after one turn) to get rid of the unhappiness in Utrecht and put the overflow back to Pyramids. Then switched from a sea tile to my mined hill to go from 7 down to a final 6 turns. Nijmegen (the other city in the screen) founded a few turns back to lock down horses.

25BC Asoka came demanding alphabet...uh, you're last in the rankings. Let me think a sec, no. Instead how's 'bout you give me Meditation and Archery for Mathematics, hm?

50AD Oh. Hi. You're in this game too, huh? Jolly. (other interesting data pasted in so you don't only get a screen of Ms. Unhappy over there)

200AD Start to get a little worried about my defensive status after seeing this, so I order up some military (The Dutch barely beyond only being able to club the occasional hungry wolf, I'm sorry to say). Waiting on Calendar to come in before my switch to Representation. (Pyramids completed as scheduled)

225AD Hanging Gardens complete. Calendar completes. Switch to representation - mostly for the free happiness in my cities. Not taking a religion is hurting a bit.

250AD My galley and a scout reach the other side of Ragnar's lands to discover...AN UNCLAIMED MARBLE?! I was sorely tempted to get a settler over there asap and secure it, but finally decided against it due it sitting right next to Raggy (might lose it by the time I was over there) and far away. But geez Raggy, get with the program.

350AD Uh, WTF Atilla? Spearmen whipped up in my three core cities... I may have been doing a little something about my military - but I wasn't done yet.

Apparently the barbarian crusade against civilization isn't actually against MY civilization. The Netherlands just serves as a corridor. Ok, thanks much.

560AD I still had not actually picked a state religion (so many all around me), but then Joao comes asking nicely for me to convert to Confucianism. Since I founded that, I think that's a great idea. Let's convert the world, shall we Joao?

620 (No more AD's now) Boudica DoW's on Asoka. Poor guy.

660 Tech Situation Roundup: So Asoka has philo...which might be cause for worry in the future, but with Boudica's DoW, I really don't think I need to worry about him ^_^

Raggy DoW'd on Hammurabi after waltzing through my lands - perhaps I should build up a bit more of a military and capitalize on this... Construction picked next in light of this idea.

In 700...What do you know, here comes Raggy asking me to join in the bash Hammurabi fun he's having. But of course my friend. In hindsight this was probably the first really bad decision I made. At least I could have checked the power graph to see if I was woefully behind (way below last, actually - I discovered a little later), but no - just join the war why don't you. The second bad decision - in case you were wondering - was allowing the war to go on for so long and crashing my economy in the process. I should have looked at my chances of winning a war, and signed a peace treaty as soon as Hammurabi was ready to talk.

940 I've discovered by now I'm horribly unprepared for a war, but decide to go through with it for a while. Hammy thoughfully suicides a 5 unit stack on Utrecht.

1070 Masoleom and Chichen Itza complete. Offer for mediation turned down last turn, my economy's just getting switched over to war time, why stop?!

1090 Hmph. I apparently forgot to leave troops in that city. Oops? Well, I get to make sure I have macemen for my long-postponed attack. So I guess that's good. (Metal Casting a turn away from completion, Machinery's up next).

1100 Pacal comes asking to adopt hereditary...er, no I don't really want to...

But he's already annoyed, and I'm involved in a war - so I accept, and then spawn the golden age I had waiting to get rid of the anarchy and be ready to switch back

With 5 turns left of Golden Age I switch back Representation and add Bureaucracy. Masstricht is now once again under my control, as well.

1160 Oh, Hammurabi's got the Apostolitic Palace and he wants the war to stop. But this time Hammy gets what Hammy wants because I'm not yet ready to defy stuff to kill him off. This will change.

(years go by)

(Dutch army grows)

War! I chopped the date right off this pic...so you'll have to guess. But I took Akkad next (and shortly after this) in 1450. Suffice to say, this time my army >> Hammy's army, and there was carnage.

Akkad was the city directly west of here on the other side of the peninsula, and the Christian holy city to boot. The shrine income started at 14g the turn I took the city =)

Also defied Hammurabi's attempt to get me to stop this time...I've only got one christian city in my core.

1450 Meep! Uh...this was supposed to be a private affair with Hammurabi... uh Pacal, you didn't get the memo? ...oh. I immediately make peace with Hammy (getting Drama, Compass, Map, and 45g for it) Also limping my way towards liberalism as you can see in the screen.

1515 Pacal decided to bombard my city instead of taking it when it had *one* longbowman garrisoned, and then promptly suicided his macemen on a much larger garrison of longbows and crossbowman. My army has in the meantime managed to crawl its way over...time to pay for your bad judgment Pacal.

1525 Noble Knights Quest. Sounds fun.

1530 Hm. My screenshot is no longer here. Anyways, my note for this year was "Yeah...he is SO dead" and I end up burning two cities down in short order for revenge before signing a peace treaty in 1565. Hammy uses the Apostolitic to take back one of his cities (everyone votes yes except me and Boudica. She's actually been voting with me on just about everything so far ... Boudica as an ally? Strange rthings have happened I suppose)

1535 The power graph tells me my army size is squarely centered as far as the world is concerned. Boudica, Ragnar, and Joao (whose never fought anyone) are bigger, and Hammurabi, Pacal, and Asoka are smaller. Incidentally, Boudica and Asoka have been fighting skirmishes every now and then, with Asoka eventually becoming vassalized.

1540 Pop a great engineer, so I rush the Sistine (actually working towards scoring criteria here instead of pounding on Hammurabi and Pacal).

1550 With two turns to go on liberalism, guess who gets it? Hammurabi. The guy who I've been at war with for centuries. Ugh.

1565 Peace with Pacal for his treasury (510g).

1590 DoW yet again on Hammurabi. This time, he's finished.

1610 Adopt Police State and Nationhood. War is upon us afterall. Sometime around now I complete my Noble Knights and prep 'em for invasion.

1675 - Take the capital in a turn, and then his 'army' suicided against the Akkad garrison. (I would've pasted unit listings on the stacks, but...despite starting to get in the hole with research relative to everyone else - I've got a tech lead on Hammy. Knights, and soon Muskets vs his Macemen and Longbows). You can see the rubble left from the city I burned down on my way to the Capital. the same city he stole back from me with the Apostolitic.

1735 As you can see, the Dutch now control the Apostolitic Palace, and after Hammurabi's gone this I should win the elections and this particular annoyance can be put to bed.

1760 - Slave revolt hits Nippur. Heh. Only have 3 muskets, 2 cats and a treb to take advantage (the rest of my army only just arrived) but I use 'em for all they're worth.

1770 War is over and Hammurabi is but a bad memory.

1808 - Yeah...not a lot of time to dig myself out of the hole I'm in scoring-wise. Or techwise, for that matter. Make a major civics switch: Police State -> Universal Suffrage, Nationhood -> Free Speech, Slavery stays (no emancipation researched yet, though I'm getting an unhappy face or two from lack of it), Free Market, Organized Religion (need infrastructure!!!)

Sign a defensive pact with Boudica (only one whose willing, but hey - she's in the lead score-wise). I really don't want to fight any wars for a long time until my cities are all up to speed - hopefully this will be a deterrant.

Planning on spreading Christianity - now that I control the Apostolitic and shrine - building up Christian buildings (for hammers and culture from Sistine, though not switching yet b/c Joao is still Confucian)

1900 Skip over reporting a bunch of infrastructure building. Basically, anything and everything to increase culture/gold/beakers in that order. All (or almost all) cities have both Christian temples and monastaries in addition to a bunch of cities who have the Confucian varieties too. Cathedrals are pretty much maxed out also. (All Sistine boosted, of course).

Make a switch to Representation and Free religion, switched to Chrisianity a little earlier. Currently also at the tail end of a golden age. I held off researching Scientific Method (I was already terribly behind and there was plenty else to research) for the continued monastary boost.

Set most of the cities to run 2 artist specialists (for +6 culture, +4 research) and build research/culture. Total: 3318. Certainly not too good, even for me. Oh well.

To summarize the rest of my game...

After all the infrastructure building for 1900, my research was moving along at a good pace but I was very far behind. Ended up attempting a Space victory out of lack of other options (my production was good). I raced for internet in the hopes it would drag me out of my tech hole...but lost it to Ragnar in between turns (I would have completed as soon as it was my turn again). I was lacking copper despite trying to find a trading partner (but could build it naturally in 7 turns I believe), he was not lacking copper. That loss was pretty detrimental to my overall wellfare.

I'd learned in my first BtS game that spies could sabotage production and improvements in addition to a variety of other fun things. I learned in this game that spies can sabotage space ship parts, even after they're sitting on the ship. Well, that was certainly a surprise. Since I was using sock puppets for spies (no, really - I couldn't even see anyone's demographics), I had practically no defense for a while and lost about 5 parts to Joao. Thank you, Joao. Eventually I wisened up and started doubling his espionage mission cost with my spies and building the 50% harder building anywhere that wasn't critically busy doing something else. I did bag the Space Elevator, which helped in my building - and rebuilding - efforts.

In the end, Joao launched (minus one engine) as I was starting on my first engine. I was ready to launch right about the time he won the space victory. Ragnar and Boudica were starting to get frisky with their DoW's, so I eventually canceled my Defensive Pact with her to avoid getting drawn in.

Ending Info & Map

Fun game (...well, except for Joao's spies anyways).