CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Ten

I had to let India live for twenty turns, since I had gotten techs as concessions for peace. I believed I already had enough units to complete my conquest of the home land, including vs France, and I was aiming for best rate of Domination, so I swapped my no-longer-golden production to galleys and harbors, and settlers, and the going was a little slow, even with the Pyramids under my control.

I found two very tiny, dry islands just off the west coast of Niagara Falls. I found a large island across the sea, north of Delhi. I grabbed both of the small islands, and settled three cities on the larger island, securing another horse resource. There was iron at Delhi, so I was good on that front, too, but I saw no need to train swords. Mounteds had more movement, and the retreat ability.

Incredibly enough, Bombay DID finish the Oracle! France cascaded to Lighthouse and I expected to get that too! Yes, build these wonders for me! But then disaster. Rome finished the Lighthouse! Gah!

That meant I would either have to get to domination without the lighthouse (slower ship travel, fewer safe crossings, some lands I might not even be able to reach at all) or else swap over and go for conquest. In retrospect, the conquest may have been faster. I underestimated the number of lands and the effort required to reach them all without the Lighthouse, plus I still had to conquer some of the Roman and English colonial islands anyway. A better planned or luckier game plan might well top my result by a considerable margin. Then again, maybe not. I have more experience with pelago maps than most, and I DID win the Apolyton 5 tourney game with the fastest victory, a pelago domination race.

For all that the Pyramids and Oracle were lucky, and would aid my cause, they were not the wonder I most needed, and now I'd have to make do without that. Ah well. I did the best I could with it. I bought India's world map as our treaty expired, AND found out they had just enough time to go settle the long narrow island just west of Thebes. Gah! The enemy that would not die! I did capture the Oracle from them, though.

You can also see that France has expanded off the homeland. Should I have stayed focused on military and wiped these two out sooner? An interesting question. As it turns out, instead I pushed my own settlements, and besides, England had already spread way out and with the logistics of trying to go invaded them, I'd need a LARGE invasion force and a lot of ships to succeed. I just didn't have the production for that yet.

Rather than go and kill India's latest new city post haste, I ferried my troops over there and parked them in the jungle, waited for the city to expand its borders from the new Indian palace (ten turns), then captured rather than autoraze the city. Saved me from having to build my own settler to grab that site. Gandhi finally gave up the ghost.

You can see that Lizzie is continuing to expand, and that Rome also now has an offshore colony. My chance to go conquest seems to be drying up. So I again focus on exploration and expansion, continuing to fill in the corners of those northern isles (a dense build to ensure that one cultural expansion will pull in all the coastal tiles, needed for domination). Yes, I was very ambitious, thinking I'd win the game inside another 50 turns. Ha! What a dreamer I was.

A lot of turns were going by without all that much happening, but it was for that very reason that the turns went quickly. I'm confident that two weeks was plenty for this map and scenerio, though that might eclipse some folks who are pressed on free time.

I started gearing up for war with France and Joanie either figured that out from my activity or else had similar plans of her own, as just a few turns later, and before I was fully in position, she sent her troops at Madras. The game was afoot.

I took Thebes but lost a unit or two, as it actually had WALLS. Amazing. I don't remember seeing the AI build walls very often.

Joanie pulled a fast one with a good side attack, landing a force at Bangalore. Lucky I had left a garrison there. I finally pulled my first great leader!

Too late to rush the Lighthouse. No sense building an army, since I didn't need it for the homeland and couldn't take an army aboard these creaky, leaky ships anyway. So I sent him home to Delhi and would save him to rush the Hanging Gardens some day, if the game lasted that long. I thought about using him to rush an FP on those north isles, but it just didn't seem worthwhile enough. The FP was already more than half built anyway.

All along I withheld selling contacts. I hoped to prevent Rome and England from ever learning about the other civs. I succeeded with India, who were gone before Rome came our way. In fact, I was started to find Rome NOT coming our way. But then he got itchy and decided to attack Lizzie, and once they went to war, their expansion phases slowed considerably. Liz had ten cities at that point and Caesar had five.

Paris was on a hill and I lost THREE mounted units attacking it! My once-mighty forces were now thinned and spread out, and I lacked enough units to force a final push against Joanie just yet. So rather than spend my strength and have to train settlers to fill in the autorazed sites anyway, I decided my time was better spent conserving my forces for the moment. So I parked an attack force above her new capital and waited for its borders to expand or pop to grow to size 2, and then attack. So I scouted out the two remaining islands south of the home land, to see what I could see about her remaining towns. She had more than I thought down there, and there was also more land than I expected. In addition to those two, there were more sea currents leading eastward in the deep south, to presumably yet more islands. On the way back to pick up settlers to take there, Joanie attacked my ships for the first time. I won that first naval battle, but only barely.

Been a long while waiting on construction at Min Sci. Ironically, Allegheny, my sad little lake city to give me a military launch point vs Egypt and India, was now my largest and best city BECAUSE it had been on the lake. Delhi was also growing in size but suffered from bad corruption until the FP was completed.

Oops, I had let Allegheny riot once there. You see it on palace placeholder for the Great Wall. England had already discovered monarchy and started the Hanging Gardens, so I planned to build the Great Wall myself, and use the leader to deny England the other prize. Rome was still at war with her, so they weren't sharing techs, and I was the only contact they each had, so we were ALL doing our own research, and the tech pace was very slow. I refused to trade with either of them, as I did not want them getting to Feudalism. I would HAVE to do at least some attacking of their cities to win the game, and there were no benefits to me in Feudalism or chivalry. The mounteds were going to be it, start to finish.

Once the borders expanded at Orleans, I finally attacked, but my luck was poor and I lost TWO mounteds out of three and the attack failed. I had to bring more troops, and that took another few rounds. Then I captured the city and accepted Rheims for peace, guaranteeing Joanie 20 more turns with her last city.

I finished researching Currency in 450AD and finally entered the middle ages. Here's my civ, and the minimap, at that point. Rome founded a sixth city on the south side of the big jungle island, and England had founded an eleventh city on the north end but Rome had actually destroyed it! I have the north islands filled in, the long narrow isle filled in with three cities, and am in the process of grabbing those two islands east of the last French city. I'm going to have to attack at some point, that much for sure. This game's going to go on a while longer.

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