CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic TwentyTwo

Spain and Aztecs were already at war. Aztecs were winning, they had captured a couple of cities. Spain finished the Pyramids. Aztecs were in Monarchy. I did nab the hut on the island, though, gaining what amounted to a useless tech for this situation.

At this point, I finally had an attack force assembled vs England. My plan was to use my second core to take out England while the main core diverted attention to Spain, which was a closer target. This turned out not to be the best plan, either, but more on this later.

My alliance we England turned out to be a huge mistake. All the forces Liz spent building up (instead of working on culture) now stood against me, including a sizable force of sword units. Blah. I didn't realize how much it was going to cost me, not to cave to Abe over that 18g in the early game! Wow. I mean, I knew it was strategically unwise, but... wow.

I did learn a few things this game, and one of those is the value of Chariots. They are too weak vs units with two defense, but they are actually quite useful vs enemy warriors and archers, and especially vs barbarian units! I was disappointed with how seldomly they retreated, though. Especially vs spears, I had such awful luck on units not retreating, I think it was more than just bad luck. Then again, in this game who knows. If anybody has had good experiences with chariots retreating, by all means let me know. :)

Here's a picture of one of my very few elites. I got next to no promotions this game.

England did NOT do the worker weed noted in some other folk's games, here in my game. As you can see, they have their lands mined and fully improved, and they were considerably tougher than others have noted in their reports. I wonder if this, too, was an effect of me bringing them into the war? Or was there a fundamentally different approach by my England from the start? It's hard to say, but I overestimated the value of the second core. My cities were out at zero-overlap range, and frankly that turned out to be too far away. Only Washington itself had noteworthy production, the rest were pathetic and useless. Thus I had only ONE city producing reinforcements for the English campaign, and this would not prove to be enough to defeat her, with the rest of my strength aimed at the Spanish.

Speaking of Isabella, I started my campaign against here at about this time.

Now why am I researching construction? Another poor choice on my part. With raging barbs, and all the camps on my continent along the west coast, I'm only going to pop a massive uprising. Oops. And these new barbs are much much more of a big deal when it comes to infesting unsettled areas. They mill around in a rather annoying, costly-to-eliminate fashion. I'm still adapting my tactics to these changes. I learned a lot both here and especially in Epic 21, and in the Roman Infantry SG I've been running.

I still had an inkling of a chance against England, but that vanished when the big uprising hit, just after I razed the first target on the Spanish mainland.

I had a big fight on my hands just protecting the road from America north to England. It was a lot of fun, but in terms of the stated scenario goals, I made half a dozen choices this game that turned out to be poor moves, and only one of those was actually on purpose. Oops. :) Ooopsy-daisy, even.

My ships got attacked, and one even got sunk. One or two even got promoted. (Figures, I'd get some of my rather rare promotions... on SHIPS. Good grief!)

Not only did the barbarians give my units a hassle... they promoted the dickens out English spears in the north. I would face several elite English units as a result, although on the up side, the rest of Liz's sword units completely vanished. I think they attacked the hordes then died from massive counterstrikes. I finally managed to raze London, and I was down to the last hp of my last unit in the minisod. Forces up there were growing thin!

Without enough time left to move troops up to England (any I did move that way would have to get through the barbs, and that wasn't going to happen), and enough units already in place to take out Spain, I ended up building a little culture in my capital in the late game, try to cut down on resisters a bit.

My core is actually too spread out. Tiny maps are SO HARSH on corruption, your inner ring frankly needs to be packed in there, your capital in the center and five other cities within three tiles. Four tiles away is too far! Grand River was the only city with low corruption. Oil Springs was actually sitting on 1/1! I normally dislike jamming cities in at density less than 16 tiles per city, but on tiny maps frankly it's justified. Anybody who did go with a denser, close-in build is likely to have done better than me.

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