CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Thirteen

My min sci gambit on Monarchy came in in 350BC, and I had already prepared my cities with entertainers and such to make an immediate revolt without massive civil disorder. So I lost a round of production, but no commerce, taking advantage of the half-turn revolt opportunity the instant a government tech comes in. (Big Picture access would allow that any turn a tech is discovered, but that is now listed as an Exploit for any epic games).

Here's a shot of the new Indian Monarchy, complete with Hanging Gardens via prebuild almost complete already.

Yes, I have about twenty cities, but only fifteen regular warriors and no other military units whatsoever. THAT is a Farmer's Gambit! :) My first vet spear is about to be produced in Bangalore. My first vet horsie is being trained in Madras. I have some other barracks under construction, and it's 330BC! Just give me another fifteen or twenty turns to solidify this position, baby, and I'll be Fortress India, completely unstoppable.

Now if only Rheims would flip to me. It's got seven pressure on it, and a massive culture overload, my awesome culture vs Joanie's little tidbits. Sadly, those Pyramids are helping her a lot in that department, and she's very big on other wonders. Going to get the Lighthouse for sure, and she may get the Great Library, too. Oucher. Babylon built the Colossus in Ur, which you can also see, so I'm running a culture program against two of the civs who are the strongest in the game on cultural priority. Grand.

I need to get libraries going here, soon, too. The sooner the better. As the Hanging Gardens (my first great wonder) are completed, you can see the minimap shows the land race in the south that I described, still underway.

Then, as if sensing that her window of opportunity was closing, Joanie took advantage of our RoP to attack me.

Not good. Indus is a dead duck if she goes for it. I dodged a bullet on the initial attack. Two bullets, actually. You can see that my lone warrior to garrison New Delhi is about to arrive. If she had attacked a turn sooner, she could have walked a warrior right into New Delhi and I'd never have seen it again. I had only one warrior in Calcutta, too, which is the main bullet I dodged. She attacked, she lost, and then she went after Indus. That gave me time to move my few spears and my one horse up to the front line. All she had was warriors, mainly. I also bought Hammurabi into the war on my side.

There was one bad thing about this timing, though. I had two population in Indus. Enough to whip a spear. Yet a warrior finished on the same turn, leaving no shields in the box, and me unable to whip. I then had a tough choice: abandon Indus (to be able to come back and try again to settle there in future) or let Joanie take the city from me. Although not specified in the rules, I judged that abandoning the city would be against the spirit of the scenario. It would be like razing your own city. I'd just eat the mistake instead. Joanie would gain Indus, and its control over iron, and take some pressure off Rheims. That's all she was going to get, though. Hammurabi came after her and they duked it out in the space between Ur and Paris, north of my gap city, Pune. That went on for a while, a goodly while, then eventually the signed peace, Babs breaking their deal with me, and so I also signed peace, and peace was restored.

Indus had been a stretch, I knew that all along. I could have called it Operation Market Garden: "A Gap Too Far".

The French did indeed complete the Lighthouse, in Orleans, and the Great Library a couple turns later, in Paris. That made Paris a real powerhouse city. I also figured that any wonders built in enemy capitals would be lost to me for the duration, as those could not be flipped, not with culture, not with Propaganda. The Library cascade took out the Great Wall, built on the other continent, by Egypt, in Thebes.

While the French war was still ongoing, though, I got my first flip: their dyes city in the south. You can see in the picture, I do have Literature tech and am busily building libraries (even rushing a few) while still in BC times. I ran min sci on Poly, then Monarchy, and now on Republic, but I'm encouraging as much peace as possible, for the moment, to advance the total tech pool, my cash tech buys infusing further AI research. I want to get to Monotheism quickly, to get those cheap cathedrals started, and having lost the Pyramids, I definitely want to nab SunTzu (mostly for denial purposes, though it will play nicely on my continent) and of course the big daddy for a religious civ: Sistine Chapel.

As I said, I'm not planning on relying on flips to win this game. They're unreliable, a bit too luck based for my taste. I'm playing aggressive in the deep south to flip those four sites down there, but I am intending to keep my military lean, to keep the number of locations at which I need heavy garrison to a minimum. What I'll have to do on the other continent, I don't yet know. I'd prefer to avoid an ICS solution if possible, though. For now, I need consolidate my own wide holdings and build my economy and nab the key wonders before I start thinking about the other continent. I didn't even have any idea what things were like over there, although all that changed quickly enough when Joanie's Lighthouse let her ships across to the one big island on this map, in the north, off her east coast. She contacted the Zulu, and full contact was made worldwide in 50AD:

You can also see by those slices from the graph that I'm by far the largest civ in the world. Good. Things are off to a decent start, despite the one major misstep at Indus.

It wasn't all that long after one war ended that another began. This one I saw coming, though, as the Babs moved units into my territory. I wasn't absolutely positive they weren't heading for France, but it seemed likely I was the target. So I bought some insurance. I paid the Hammer 30gpt for Monotheism and all his cash. I could have paid for Republic also, as I had 14 turns left on the lone scientist research, but thought it way too much risk, in case I judged wrongly. Then he attacked:

I then immediately paid France to side with me, which distracted most though not all of the Bab forces. I had about three horsemen, and all three lost humiliating defeats in which they did not retreat, whenever I attacked. I got some swordsmen out there, though, and prevented any pillaging of my lands. They even sent one bowman deep into my territory after my iron source, and I blocked him off and didn't take him out until I had trained some more horses. Also note the sorry state of my economy, all these expenses. I had a lot of workers, so even though I had relatively few troops, I was over the limit and paying per turn for many of them. Now that "0 income" includes the 30gpt I was paying the Babs, which they just broke, so it's not quite as bad as it looks, but even so, only 30gpt total income running max taxes is thin for a civ this massive. I had a lot of buildings: temples, libraries, courthouses, harbors, granaries, barracks, and yes, colesseums. I was topheavy and in need of marketplaces, but was ignoring them in favor of libraries and culture. Everywhere. My core cities that could afford to build markets were prebuilding wonders, with first and second ring cities building library or colesseum, and now cathedrals. Remember, this was all part of my game plan: maximum culture early, maximum sprawl, maximum self-built wonders, then shift into high gear on the offensive in the industrial age. As long as I had stuff to build everywhere, I didn't need a lot of new tech. Tech was coming in quickly enough, and I'd be ready for universities after this round of cathedrals was done. And STILL not building any markets!

I fended off the feeble Bab thrusts with scattered units, largely trained out of Madras and Bangalore. All my other cities were busy, and their plans changed little if any because of these wars. Some activity in the south changed, with rushed troops, or reinforcements from the core, but all in all, not much concern. The AI's kept one another busy enough that threats to my territory were low to negligible, with few exceptions.

When France broke the alliance by making peace about eight turns in, I accepted peace from the Babs, too. Didn't get any cities, but didn't expect to: I did practically no damage to them, and had even lost those early horse vs bowman battles, despite catapult aid. Pune was enough of a fortress, and built on a hill with walls, that I was wholly unconcerned.

And when Republic came in? I did nothing. Nothing! After spending 40 turns on lone scientist to grab it, I decided not to switch, and in fact never would use that government all game long. More on this later.

Immediately after Chivalry was discovered, France launched another sneak attack -- their second, this game, and the third overall. Three sneak attacks before 500AD?? What is UP with this game? Why are the AI's attacking so much? This is not one AI on a tear, it's systematic. (More on this later, too. This one is a big deal).

As flat-footed as Joanie caught me last time, she did it again. This was actually very well done by the AI, both times, attacking during a narrow window of opportunity, at a time when they had an advantage that would rapidly disappear if not used. I quite nearly got hurt badly, this time. The French SoD she assembled was way, way more than I thought she had the capacity at the time to put together. Here comes her first swordsman, once again using the RoP to invade and attack on the same turn. Not a RoP rape like humans manage, but a one-unit desecration of the RoP to kick off a war, as the AI is known to do:

That's not the worst of it. I had lost one worker the last time she attacked me, plus Indus. This time, she nabbed FOUR more workers off our border, including the two under the fortified spear on the mountain that were almost done mining. And once again, the irony of garrison reinforcements arriving at New Delhi as the French come in BEHIND them to attack.

It was the numbers that scared me, though. Half a dozen or more swords, and... knights. Several knights, all veteran units! Here's the SoD that freaked me out:

You can see that I moved reinforcements into position as quickly as I could. The pike and a warrior from Bombay, some units from Madras. I moved horses into the town, and I changed my colesseum at Lahore into a Jumbo with some loss of shields. (Yes, I too had chivalry, but I hoped to not have to kick off my GA just yet as I had other plans for it).

Oh, and of course, I enlisted Hammurabi's aid once again. He was only too happy to return to war with Joanie, for about 11gpt. I decided this time to buy some insurance by taking his cash as a deposit and increasing the gpt payment. If he reneged and made peace early, it would cost him. If not, he'd make a few pennies off the interest.

I literally scrambled everything I had to Calcutta's defense. Only the sword had attacked the first round. All else moved into position, mainly on the mountain, with more coming. I literally was able to put only five units in there on the first round. ONE of my units had to win, or the city would be lost. This was including two vet horsemen.

Well, exactly two of my units survived. A pike beat a sword with 1 hp left. My other pike, unfortified, was slain, then two horsies slain, then an archer caused a knight to retreat, the archer with 2 hps left.

I kept sending everything I had to add to the defense. The threat remained strong. More knights on the way. (Theirs, not mine). Here's what I managed to assemble a few turns in:

I also managed to kill a french settler pair in the south, below Lagash, as they moved toward the silk country, and got myself a couple of slaves. The next turn, one of my pikes at Calcutta survived two attacks, promoting to elite, and more troops were being produced out of Bangalore and Madras. Delhi and Bombay remained tied up. At this point, the Babs (who had no horses or iron, so were building only bowmen) moved forces into French territory at Paris and "pulled the strings" of the French, who diverted all their units in that direction.

I had dodged another bullet.

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