CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Two

Shortly after the second millenium AD began, steam was discovered and railbuilding began. Right at that time, a second iron source appeared on my homeland.

I continued running full cash, buying techs. I also needed luxuries, and I every other civ except for Russia had a luxury I needed. Persia's luxury got taken over by China, so they had two I needed, and my cash infusion helped solidify their position, but I couldn't help that. The tech in this game just CRAWLED. 1250AD and still no electricity anywhere. That's very slow for an Emperor game. Some Emperor games are into the Modern age by this point.

For centuries, I watched Japan war with the Zulus, and the Zulus always bought the Russians to be their ally. Always. Japan captured some Zulu mainland cities, but that didn't last long. The Japanese city on the south side of Big Island became the main point of contention. It changed hands more times than I could count, although with Japan's mainland just across the water, nobody else could hold it for very long. I thought this would continue, but at one point the Zulus landed next to one of MY cities on Big Island and I realized I had become the target. I shuffled troops to the site, and in between turns, the Zulus attacked.

Two turns later, they brought Russia into the war against me, and that spelled the doom for Russia. I would have been content not to battle Russia, but... since they insisted, I vowed not to pause until I had taken full control of my home continent, to score the 6 points for that.

I had jumbos sitting around waiting for a chance to kick off my golden age. Zome Zulu invaders on Big Island offered the perfect opportunity.

Once the GA was initiated, I no longer needed any jumbos: I upgraded them all to cavs. In the mean time, I took out the two backwater Russian cities on the north side of our continent. That was the easy part. Without the ability to starve down any cities, I needed more troops not just for capture, but also for pacification and peacekeeping, so I did start training some swordsmen and longbowmen to go along with the riflemen and cavalry.

I scored one great leader on Big Isle and used him to make an army. I then stuck a single rifleman into the army and used him to kill off a longbowman and get access to the Heroic Epic. And... heh, I never got another leader after that.

I bogged down at Kiev, lacking artillery and cavalry to keep going. I was also busy building factories and coal plants in my big cities and had little time for troop building as yet. I had to take advantage of my golden age to push infrastructure. As long as I didn't make peace with Russia, I could honorably press the offensive at a later date.

Once I had factories and power plants in place, I went on the high cranking of military units and fairly rapidly took over the rest of the Russian homeland.

Woops, my delay had one very negative consequence: it gave Japan time to capture the southernmost Russian mainland city. Arrrrgh. They even had an army of one rifle and two cav on my continent now. The last Russian city on the mainland still under Russian control was on a hill, and it had to wait a few turns for me to get Rep Parts and ugrade my cannon stack. From there, I finished off the Russian homeland, and accepted one of Russia's two weak colonies for peace. With one city left, the Japanese eventually landed units there and finished them off.

I had taken over my own research at the golden age. I fueled my research by selling the techs around. Egypt, Japan, and Zulus were the customers at first, but then Egypt and Japan got locked into a long long war, and after having made peace with Zululand, they and China stayed democratic and became my only real customers. Now I was into the modern age and first tech to get when you're in the tech LEAD going modern is Computers: get those labs going to speed research, which otherwise starts to bog down at this point. There was only one site on the entire planet capable of building the Hoover Dam, and it was on the Zulu continent. So the rest of us had to make do on coal power.

Because you have to have size 30 cities self-sustainable at the END of the game, global warming posed a huge threat. So my second modern tech was Ecology and mass transit at all cities was my top priority. I had three plains tiles at Kiev and Odessa go desert on me. If any one of them had come at Bangalore, I'd have lost 8 points. For this reason, I also decided I'd launch as soon as I could, except for pausing just long enough to grab the ten points for AEGIS cruisers.

China had captured the city on the west end of Big Island, and I built two fishing villages there (and rushbought temples and needed improvements) to pressure, and this eventually paid off.

Japan now had one city left on both the Big Island and my home continent. That was nine points worth of score on the line, and yet I could not provoke them to war. I asked them over and over and over and over to vacate my territory and they did, every time. Our relations went from gracious all the way to furious and they still refused to declare war. (This is actually a pretty bad flaw in the AI, that they totally disregard borders like this. There ought to be a point at which just ENTERING territory can no longer be possible without an active declaration of war: a demand to stay out. The diplomatic side of this game could really stand a little more development).

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