CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Fifteen

Sistine completed on schedule:

I finally had to sell contacts between the continents as the AI's discovered Astronomy. I had kept the other continents backward as long as possible, delaying their markets, libraries, cathedrals, and military upgrades, significantly. I was content with my results. I had squeezed a lot out of them, and I squeezed a lot out of my homeland neighbors on finally selling contacts and the world map.

In 690AD, I caught another break, a HUGE one this time, as my fourth flip landed me a major prize!

Dacca was NOT a suburb! If only Gandhi had built a temple there, the city would have been wholly insulated from flip pressures with just ten culture! Instead, he had pulled a Smegged and taken his chances, and come up short. Dacca would become another FULL city for me, allowed to train its own worker. What a catch! Of course, I had to wait for it to grow once to train a worker, as it could not be a foreign national, and I did starve the city down to size 1, but still, this was quite the bit of good fortune.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Of course, I now had to ditch one of my existing cities, and despite its size, the things it managed to build, and its greater potential than Kiev-South, the only choice was Iron Coast, formerly known as Pharsalos. My borders had expanded to cover the area, meaning I could abandon this town and not worry about AI's resettling it (and poaching my iron again). If I abandoned the other suburb... well, you know the story.

Fortunately, by now the Greek national had been assimilated, so it was only my own nationals I was displacing. My relations with Greece were not penalized.

Another century of peace and growing prosperity passed. Moscow built Cop's.

Babs built SunTzu, Egypt nabbed Leo's, but the cascade lived on with Bach's. I wasn't going to get that one. This cascade was still alive from the Great Library and had been going forever. I just hoped it wouldn't take out Smith's, too. Now was decision time. Magellans: to be or not to be. Could Moscow build it before the cascade from Bach's could take it out? I looked around the map. Most of the cities on wonders were inland. There was only one potential rival, and I decided to spend a chunk of cash to investigate.

I did the math and concluded that Moscow could definitely build Magellan first, although the cushion was pretty small. I decided to build Magellan's, because I could. Meanwhile, I had a palace prebuild in Minsk (first wonder there) waiting for Smith's, and I didnt want to spend that on Magellan's.

Another peaceful century passed. Progress raged on, and navigation tech had opened up trade between the continents, with me bringing my spices home from Vladivostok.

Then, suddenly, Germany made a move: the first war of the game, to my knowledge, coming just prior to 1000AD:

Although Germany seemed to have the upper hand at first, sending knights against archers and spearmen, India came out with a few regular jumbos, lost several but then won one, and that kicked off their golden age. Thus, one has to wonder about Otto. What was he smoking??? This blunder would turn out to be the worst move of the game, bar none. It would spell the eventual doom of Germany, as their knights eventually dried up while India's golden age production actually led to their numbers increasing turn by turn.

The next thing I know, a string of German cities fall to India, and the AI's all pile on vs Germany. The Babs even managed to take some cities on the coast! And hold on to them!

I completed Smith and Magellan in short order, at which point the Germans still appeared to be winning, but of course that wasn't going to last for very long.

By the dawn of the industrial age, I had built up my core and was more than ready for the government swap. I had spent a goodly bit of my surpluses on rushbuys for the distant cities: libraries, walls, extra defenders, harbors, and of course, courthouses. Even under communism, those are important. Perhaps more important, even, as there are no cities unaffected by the corruption.

If you're going to run communist government, you need to do so with fewer, larger cities. Thus, this variant is a perfect fit. With my widely scattered cities, I knew it was going to fit my civ like a glove, to actually be BETTER than any of the alternatives for my situation, trading some bits of commerce (less trade) for having all my cities productive.

Communism suffers mainly from the "optimal city count". For UNLIKE the other governments, you can't add distant, corrupt cities without penalty. In distance-based corruption, adding more cities farther out doesn't affect the cities closer in. With communism, adding more cities (above the optimal number) adds corruption to ALL the cities. It becomes a zero sum game, in that whatever you get from the extra city, you lose in added corruption spread through all your cities. The "optimal" number is meaningless to most civs, but is actually very important to a communist civ.

By the dawn of the industrial age, I was ready to take over my own research. I had libraries in every city, and university in most. I had the observatory in my best commercial city (Moscow has river, and also lots of coastline). Yet while I was ready to take off, Germany was running out of steam. They were collapsing, and it seemed clear to me the rest of the AI's would eventually carve them up, chiefly India. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

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