CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Nineteen

At this point, I noticed a small error on the map. Rowain apparently added some terrain around the Roman start, as there is no line of sea cover over there between the coastal tiles and ocean tiles. I briefly wondered if this would prove a problem, but it didn't seem to, at least not beyond those Rome suffered during the brief Astronomy period with their ships having to hug their shore so tightly. This feature kept "drawing my eye" over to it as I played, messing with my neatnik sense of scenario building, but I bet nobody else even notices. (I have spent too much time, by now, in the Civ3 editor, methinks).

On the other hand, that had as little effect on the game as the Epic Two "gem dud scoring option", so it was sort of like an interesting birthmark on the map -- just one of those little details that an experienced eye will notice and glean information from.

I drew a nice four turn anarchy on first revolt, then emerged into Republic in 450BC.

My first "territorial acquisition" came in 90BC:

Most excellent. No iron for Rome now. You can see Hlobane has the other source in their region tied up.

That same turn, my FP completed, extending my "first ring" out to the entire western wing of my civ. That was one lesson I learned in Epic Thirteen, the value of very early FP on boosting early cultural values for 1000yr bonus.

Despite all my flood plains and jungle, it wasn't until well into the AD years (a whole decade!) that my civ got hit with its first bout of disease:

Note the Chinamen wandering around my hinterland. The border pressures with them (another Epic Thirteen discovery) had led to early aggression from them on their part, and frankly, I was jungling several plates in the air with a farmer-quality army trying to keep them out of my cities and off my improved tiles. It was all I could do to spare a few regular warriors to blockade the enemy raiding spear parties while my real defenders fought off their sword units on the front lines. Not the hairiest situation I've been in, but I wouldn't exactly call my situation "secure". I did not exactly deliberately bait the AI units with empty cities, so much as I had to move EVERY back line unit to the fronts to protect what was mine, and this sometimes had the side effect of the AI pillage units not pillaging improved tiles they were standing on in favor of moving toward undefended cities. As a result, I think they only pillaged two seconds of back-area road total through the whole war.

Oh yeah, and being the lamb that I am, I had signed up Shaka to fight for me, and made no move vs any Chinese cities. We're not the aggressors, oui? Just leave us alone, so we can build our little temples and such, oui?

Down side, I couldn't make peace for 20 turns, so the war went on and on, although it somewhat quieted for me once Shaka had serious forces attacking Chinese cities in the north.

My second flip was a real doozy!

Sadly for them, there was no safe road to bring in supplies, so the city was starving, and I had to wait three more turns for the Zulu alliance to end before I could help them.

OK, here's some lines from my sparse note file. "In 190BC, China launches sneak attack vs a city pressuring their border. I tell ya, nothing much ticks off the AI more than dense builds at the border. In 70BC, Engineering @3rd from Germany for 30gpt. Monotheism from Japan for Engineering and change. Feudalism from Zulus for Monotheism and Engineering. Paris swaps to SunTzu with 300 shields already in the box." Ha! Now that's how to run a trade, got a 3fer there right before my Great Library prebuild was about to run out. (You might think I wanted the Library for its culture, but phooey on that! I needed to deny these 'mongers the wonder, as well as put a free barrack in all my towns, AND end the cascade before they discovered Theology or Invention).

Finally the alliance expired, I cancelled out of the renewal option, then I threw all I had at Chinese units still on my soil...

...then made peace with them. I was unable to extract any cities, and they had no tech, so the peace deal was dismal, but I was obliged by rule to make every reasonable effort to end starvation. So here you see Tsingtao now able to feed itself after the treaty was signed.

Note that Strasbourg has been added, and that all of my cities hold cultural dominance over contested tiles in all locations. I had to spend large in the southeast (Dijon had to have ALL FIVE of its fundamental cultural buildings subsidized wholly or majorly by federal funds, while dye town had also needed some big purchases).

My towns got their temples and libraries built, and most were working on courthouse, granary, or aqueduct.

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