CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Fourteen

Around 400AD, with India still expanding, I realized it had been a mistake not to park a hoplite at Delhi and ensure its suppression. Rather than compound that mistake with further neglect, I dispatched a unit (could not spare many, was busy training settler pairs and building more ships).

As this unit, an elite, passed by Calcutta, the natives there were apparently inspired by my leet-ness and flipped over to join the Greek Empire. (Wise folks!)

Note a couple of Indian horsemen to the west. They have connected up the horses at Bombay to their capital and have built a few of these smelly units. They were not much more threat than archers in the jungles, but disconnecting those horses, permanently, was one of my short term war goals. Having Calcutta flip to me was a minor boost at best, but I was happy to take it.

The real target for me currently was England. I wanted to press on to London, capture that, then let York either grow to size 2 or wait for its new palace to expand the borders, then capture it and finish off the English. My force of swords and hoplites were now advancing on London, but would take a bit of time to arrive.

I also had in mind to try to score the bonus for connecting three lux as soon as possible. There were only three lux types on the mainland: wines, dyes, gems. I had beenlined a settler right to the dyes. Someone might connect them sooner, but they'd have to do so along with these gems down at London. The dyes might be connected quickly with a rushed harbor, but the gems needed a bona fide road. This was going to take some time. Aside from the value of possible bonus points, though, just having the lux online would be worthwhile. In my emperor Always War game, I was stuck through the whole ancient and middle ages with just ONE lux to my name (the world's whole supply of it, albeit) and that really crimped my economy.

After nabbing philosophy off Persia and entering the middle ages, I started a palace placeholder at Thermopylae and had begun research on Theology. My plan? No one else had started the Great Library yet, nor any wonders, so the Great Library could wait. I wanted Sistine ASAP, and would use the GL as placeholder in Athens until that tech came in. Then I'd build the Library in Thermopylae and start a new placeholder elsewhere for the next wonder.

I had EXPECTED a combat-heavy game. Perhaps it will turn out that way for some who fail to pillage-n-park with these godly hoplite units, but otherwise, this will be a low-combat game, like it has been for me. Always War, yet relatively little conflict. It is... quite different from what I planned. As such, the scoring for self-building wonders is a little out of whack. I guess like the gems points from Epic Two, it's impossible to tailor scoring precisely without advance knowledge of the map. Self-building wonders in the typical Always War game is a big deal, something you take serious time out from unit building to attempt. Here... it's a cakewalk, or looks to be for me all the way down the line. I expect a lot of players to score a lot more self-built wonder points than I had in mind when I laid this out. You know what they say: no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

We are all learning as we go with these variants. I had as much Always War experience as anybody else, coming in to this. I never would have imagined, however, that the Greeks would be THIS strong. That says a lot about why successful early war is so strong in this game. It goes beyond the units. The growth curve of any civ is fragile in the early going. Wipe out their land improvements and deprive them of good tiles, that's just as devastating, if not more so, than taking some of their cities. Once they fall significantly behind, they will never catch up. THIS is what AI civs look like when they sell off all their workers: they sit there, helpless, unless and until they can recover by training more workers, which slows down everything else even if they do it, and leaves them wholly wiped out if they do not. I'd go as far as to say that civs with strong early UU's who go on a determined pillage campaign can probably secure for themselves a dominant position in the game if they can ruin the growth curves of their neighbors while preserving their own. Jags, Impis, Bowmen, Hoplites, Egyptian Chariots: early game devastators in waiting. Even standard chariots might be more useful than we realize for this purpose. Pair one with a spear, you have a pillage team.

As stated, my forces were moving south into English territory. A few turns later:

I put the two slaves to work on a road to one of the gems, but I had no other workers within a thousand miles and it was still going to take me a while to hook them up with a road north to Troy, so there was no hurry on the other end, with the dyes.

Theology came in next turn. Athens swapped to Sistine, Thermopylae swapped to Great Library.

My ships carrying the first batch of colonists were making their way north along the western shore, and some also heading west along the north shore of China. The Chinese and French were still locked on their starting continent. Uh... oops. Maybe not. I spotted a Chinese galley as my lead ship neared the first, largest island. Uh oh. They are on the way back. That means they dropped off units, surely a settler pair. Don't tell me I'm going to get beat to this island by ONE turn! Well, sometimes the AI's land, then move before they settle. Yeah yeah, not often, it's a pipe dream, but no harm offloading my units just in case. Uh... nope, no good.

Blah. Lost that race by one lousy turn. I loaded the units back onto the ship the next turn and sailed north with them, going to go grab a different island.

Meanwhile, my north galley is sailing around Persia and their south island, looking for more crossings, more islands, more contacts. Nothing there but water. My west galley is finishing its circumnavigation of Azteca and coming back toward the islands northwest of China. My southeast galley is sailing up the east coast of the mainland, I'm now thinking I'll use him to ferry a settler and some troops up to the northeast peninsula on the mainland, grab a jungle site east of Ulundi.

Perhaps getting beat by China was a good thing for me, in postgame analysis. I would have sent that ship home for another load. Now, instead, it took the settler pair north to that hilly island just above the big one I failed to settle first, and from there it spotted sea currents to the northEAST and followed those, becoming my fourth exploring ship. You can see the sea currents northeast of my new settlement in the shot below:

You can also see in the minimap that I grabbed a second island in the area, the one southernmost, with the horses, due west of China and southwest of the island I lost. So that's two islands I have settled first. Also note that my plan to grab a site on the peninsula at home has worked, and that that ship has sailed on, as well, and I have finally uncovered the island off the northeast coast, which is now occupied by two Indian settlements. My Aztec ship is also back into the game, exploring the western edge of that mass of islands northwest of China.

The ship that got beat by China sails across that patch of sea and finds...

Oddly, Egypt has beelined to Monarchy and does not have mapmaking yet. As such, they are still locked on their starting island, which is pretty much barren except in the far south. It's all desert and mountains for the bulk of it. They have all the incense and all the spices, but their cities are all small and she's in generally poor shape. Gah. Did NONE of the AI's get a really decent plot of land except for the Aztecs? Wow. And even theirs is somewhat rugged.

Well, the islands west of Egypt are all up for grabs and I continue to train settlers at home and send ships. Only going to be those original three settler pairs going north, but lots of chances to do something to the west.

Meanwhile, York made the mistake of surviving ten turns and expanding its borders, so the English are now kaput:

The galley that contacted Egypt sailed north through the strait between Egypt and the large island to its west, then turned east and went clockwise around Egypt. The Aztec galley continued clockwise around the top of the island west of those two, then over to the one in the middle. I continued to explore outward into the ocean with some dilligence, and for this reason only, I found the long crossing north from the middle island to the south tip of Japan. Full contact with all eleven AI's in 680AD:

I believe I did very well with rapid contacts. To beat this date, someone would have had to build the lighthouse, send out all the ships I did, find the two crossings from the homeland toward the AI's about as quickly (some delay affordable on the one to Persia, but not the other, which leads to all five of the rest of the AI's), and then send out more ships westward than I did. Could be done, but they'd have to be both good and very lucky. :)

With all the AI's separated except France and China, the rest of the game was going to be a breeze. I was beelining to Navigation, but I also took out time to run zero science and pull in all cash for a pack of turns right about here. Why? To rush half a dozen libraries, and also to rush a lot of hoplites, walls, and even some barracks in my island settlements, especially those the AI could reach near China and Egypt. I had to protect my colonies, and that came at the expense of tech pace, slowing me by several turns.

There had STILL not been a second great leader for me, so I would soon start to self-build an FP in New York after its courthouse was done. The military action on the home continent was now exclusively in this area: New York, my dye town, and the front along that latitude.

Although my great leader luck was awful, my disease luck was spectacular. Despite half a dozen jungle cities, some wholly surrounded, I did not get hit with my first bout of disease until now, and that came in a size 2 city that could only take half the hit.

Those barracks were not allowed to complete in New York. I swapped to FP before they did.

Meanwhile, both China and France targetted my southernmost island settlement, the one closest to their mainland, and began to ferry attack units on a regular basis. I had to rush two regular hoplites there, in three turns, then walls and barracks, then more hoplites. A LOT of cash got sucked up into defending this one location. Egypt also finally got mapmaking and they dropped off some attackers near my settlement on the island west of their nation. All the action was relatively lightweight, but considering that my logistics were beyond nightmarish for protecting and reinforcing my western colonies, a lot of cash was spent on these. A couple thousand, I'd even say, all together.

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