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En cuatro o cinco juegos consecutivos no tengo cobre y en la mayorÃa no tengo caballos ni cerca de 10 fichas alrededor de mi capital.
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It was me Magno. At least it was quick. It happened that I had no copper and you had copper and I had to take yours.
There was one turn, where you arrived with a warrior early near my second city and if you had attacked me, I was unable to defend it, so I got scared but lucky for me you decided to skip.
In four or five games in sequence I have no copper and in most I have no horses either nowhere near 10 tiles around my capitol.
Fue un gran juego vale la pena publicar crónicas. Desafortunadamente estaba demasiado ocupada para escribirlas. Espero poder encontrar algún tiempo durante mis vacaciones que comienza muy.
1st part of my chronicles, sorry for English. I will translate it whole when I finish. Any help is appreciated.
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This game I had everything from the beginning, 3-hammer start, perfect expansive leader, plenty of land and luck with huts. Seriously after executing start I was asking myself do I need any conquest at all?
I started from building 2 or even 3 scouts. I had land start and only pigs as food resource which I couldnt improve quick, so starting from worker would be a waste imho. Scouts payed off and I got several techs from huts including sailing, archery, iron working and metal casting much later.
I was quick at 4 cities when iron working came in and by that time I had the following information about my neighbors.
1) Louis was to the northwest, probably somewhere in tundra. He had a few but big cities and very low power.
2) Lincoln was to the east above jungle line
3) Boadicca was to the south below jungles. From very beginning she was assigned as AI for plenty of turns and then continued with building stonehenge. Not very good start for Boa.
3) Justinian was somewhere close to Boa but surprisingly they didnt know each other for long. Later Justinian lost 2 cities to barbarians and thn they were captured by zulu. What a drama!
4) Isabella was located to the west and she seemed to gave the only reasonable early game development despite of bad starting tech.
Attacking Louis was obvious choice but the land between us wasnt attractive and I didnt settle in his direction. Also in case of success I could be vulnerable to Isabella. I could attack Isabella herself but my inner voice is always saying to pick weaker target.
Boa was behind natural walls of jungles which I wasnt ready to make use of. So I decided to astack Lincoln. He looked weak and stayed without 2nd city for vety long and in case of success I was safe from the east because I saw there was nobody behind him. So geographically he was perfect target.
How did it go? I settled towards him while making melee everywhere. I used slow stack in hope to minimize loses though it doesnt work in most cases. I captured 1st city very easy but capital was behind the river and he managed to plant another city on cooper which I couldnt cut quickly. That wasnt good because I wasnt close to bring siege and my core cities were too far to bring reinforcements and overwhelm him. But after all luck was on my side or may be he made some mistakes and after some exchanges I captured remaining cities.
Meanwhile Isabella made her move and captured Louis in like 2 turns. That was only possible with chariot attack. Isabella hained at least 1 city size if 6-7, I saw it in top5 cities. I got 2 size 1 cities from my conquest, but in my core I built Pyramids and was finishing HG. Also I was ready for chariot invasion, had a couple of spears and archers. As I mentioned I never planted to the west so my front was my capital of 60% culture.
My army was released and I was seeking for the new target. My sight has stopped on Boaddica who has founded religion and got shrine from stonehenge. I saw she had hardships with barbarians and probably failed to connect metal. I also saw the source of ivory near Bibracte which appeared to be the only one on my part of continent. This was ideal target for me though some of celtian archers were well-promoted.
I added some chariots to my melee stack and brought general too. Everything went well in general however in some moments I still had to rely on random luck, but it was with me.
I researched Calendar and planted some cities in jungles mainly to hook some extra luxuries which made my empire happy but very poor in terms of wealth. I regret many times that I didnt tech Currency, when I had chance. The only hope was on representation and scientists which I had set almost in every city, but I was still losing about 20 gold per turn and was running out of cash.
Isabella used this moment and in a few turns teched HBR and whipped a whole army of HA. This was very bad news for me becausevmy army was worn and far behind jungles, in 12-15 from capital. Also I couldnt afford to whip much more because every citizen was either assigned as specialist or working on cottages to cover maintances. More army demands more dinero, you know.
But the worst thing was that I couldnt really do anything to HA/axe stack besides sitting behind city walls. I had no Construction either. So he could just pass by my 60% hill capital and raze my other core cities. The situation was very complicated...
Fui rapido por 4 ciudades cuando llegó el trabajo con hierro y en ese momento tenÃa la siguiente información sobre mis vecinos.
1) Louis estaba al noroeste, probablemente en algún lugar de la tundra. TenÃa unas pocas pero grandes ciudades y muy poca potencia. ndt:Pobre pato... Pato bueno---
2) Lincoln estaba al este por arriba de la lÃnea de la selva
3) Boadicca estaba al sur debajo de las selvas. Desde el principio, ella fue asignada como IA durante muchos turnos y luego continuó con la construcción de Stonehenge. No es un buen comienzo para Boa.
Pero lo peor fue que realmente no podÃa hacer nada contra arqueros a caballo / además de sentarme detrás de las paredes de la ciudad. Yo tampoco tenÃa Construcción. Asà que podrÃa pasar por mi capital de colina con 60% y arrasar mis otras ciudades centrales. La situación era muy complicada ...
I knew Isabella invested a lot in this campaign and her economics wasnt doing much better. She had Alphabet but no Currency and was going to have strike after whipping half of population into military. But my capital was full of developed cottages located at the western side right at Isabella's border. Letting her pillage those wasnt good idea so I moved troops out of the city to pillage it myself.
Honestly I decided about it too late so I couldnt finish it as I planned but it was hardest decision of this game I think.
I had enough defenders to sit in the city but not enough for any counter-attacking actions. My only hope was that Isabella overestimates my power most of which was out of reach and makes some wrong action in hurry. I also was going to try to pull her on exchanges, to force her rush with HAs against spears instead of waiting for axes. Rivers played for me. And it worked. On a certain turn of siege Isabella attacked my capital with horsemen and failed. I must admit she had chances but in my test they didnt appear to be over 30%. Also I knew she couldnt raze city because it was too big though losing it wasnt promising me anything good.
After this attack we started peace negitiations. When it was signed (without conditions for both sides) I hurried to found a city to the southwest cutting whole the eastern part with all jungles to myself. I was still very low on income but I couldnt let to have that land contested. When my setller got in position I realise that there is barbarian city a bit further which denies me planting where I wanted to. So I sent all I could to capture it and after all I was lucky to do it 1 turn before Isabella's squad arrived.
The peaceful period innlife of khmers has begun. My strategy was to build all wonders I could and to transform every single tile in my empire into cottage. A little bit earlier I managed to transform Bibracte, former celtian capital in wonder/GP farm. Actually one of my biggest mistakes was to spend my own GS on academy. I did it and then spent like 100 turns on 0% of science. Dont do it. Dont make academies if you are going to have 20 cities whether you plant them or capture. So Bibracte appeared to be the city where I could get 200 GPP points to run my GA finally. With free shrine left from celtian reign and cheap CRE library and enough food /pop for 5 specialists it was quick. Earlier I got Mausoleum in Washington to extend and needless to say that I had the highest population in the world.
After my first GA was launched Bibracte's population was assigned on mines and it produced Parthenon, Great library, National epic and Temple of Artemis, thanks to unspoiled forests left by celtians. Till the end of the game about 10 great persons were born there. Imagine 80+ great person points per turn!
The situation stabilized. I found trade parthner Alexander who was Isabella's other neighbor. I supplied him with luxuries and got some necessary techs from him. He was strange player amd produce zero military for the most part of the game. No idea how he survived that long while all the western part of the continent was drawning in blood.
I ran one GA after another and my GNP was growing along with my other graphics. My tech path layed to Nationalism for obvious synergy with Taj and cheap civic. I realised that bureaucracy isnt very strong in my situation despite of that I have restored my cottages around the capital. Just maintance was too high.
By the time my NAP with Isabella was about to finish I had nice WE+cata+sword stack and was building knights everywhere along with drafting muskets. I was very well prepared to the war though I didnt plan to hurt Isabella unless she was going to attack Alexander. All I wanted was to continue improving my land which contained about 1/4 of the continent and honestly its best 1/4 because each jungle tile was supposed to convert into fruitful town. Justinian's, later Shaka's and later Saladin's lands never made enough interest for me.
After some dozens of turns of cold war with Isabella she appeared with new NAP and surprisingly trade agreement. But this deserves its own part of the story.
1st part of my chronicles, sorry for English. I will translate it whole when I finish. Any help is appreciated.
I started from building 2 or even 3 scouts. I had land start and only pigs as food resource which I couldnt improve quick, so starting from worker would be a waste imho. Scouts payed off and I got several techs from huts including sailing, archery, iron working and metal casting much later.
3) Boadicca was to the south below jungles. From very beginning she was assigned as AI for plenty of turns and then continued with building stonehenge. Not very good start for Boa.
Usually you shouldnt make deals with your worst enemies and I knew Isabella was the top contender against me.
Isabella had great potential, she never ran any GA while I was running one by one. I was throwing GPs on my current needs and Isabella has just only grown 2 or 3 while I had something like 10 by that time.
One more concern with Isabella was that she managed to spread her religion to her neighbors and construct AP. I had to worry about diplomatic victory. I knew Justinian with 1 city wasnt following it and I could possibly deny everyone from sending him missionary by surrounding him but the most safe way was to spread AP religion in my own empire and keep enough votes for veto.
On the other hand trades work for tech leader because only embargo works against. I also knew that I will not receive much of raw techs from Isabella but she will most likely buy what she needs but it still gives me some boost
I also knew that NAP between us and Isabellas meant death to my friend Alexander who was kind and cooperative but failed to build strong civ. He didnt use slavery, he wanted his own religion over basic military/economic goals, half of his land was unimproved. So I was sure I had to go alone this game. After all I warned Alexander was warned by me about possible spain invasion 15 turns in advance and I believe everything was in his hands. He only needed to run golden age and adopt nationhood, but instead of this he turned on common revolution and converted into bureaucracy. With aggressive muskets and castles he could easily survive that 25 before my new NAP with Isabella expires.
In exchange I could spend my army to remove Saladin who took control over zulu and byzantine lands on the other side. He wasnt plotting with Isabella yet but I didnt want to have a potential threat in my back when my advantage become obvious.
Other nations didnt hurry to make alliance against me yet but I couldnt prevent it from emerging in future and even with huge GNP advantage several cooperating civs can overcome. From this view letting Isabella buying my techs was great move because her potential allies were never going to get them. Their doing were much worse but improving. The top ones were Juan who almost never entered any war, had TGLH but not good situation with food so no huge potential, and Ragnar who was making one war after another, not very effective but after all he managed to take the most piece of land from his neighbors and vassalize Rome.
So on T170 the peace was signed. All my attention was aligned on Liberalism. My idea was to take Democracy with it to get the best growth and use of cottages. On T178 I got it with several GP bulbs and I adopted Emancipation immediately. Therefore by T210 I had 120 towns and ~250 towns by the end of the game before I turned some of them into workshops to make SS. Literally everywhere I was building cottages including green hills but somewhere I made farms to grow city to its maximum size first of all. After city got to its reasonable size those farms were turned into cottages too.
I was aiming to adopt Universal Sufferage to boost my production with raw hammer output from towns and ability to spend wealth to hurry current construction. Given the fact I had the most cities and no stable trade partners I had to solve problem with trade routes. Considering the map had no small islands for ICTR, I tried to have several huge cities in different parts of the empire. And after size of 16 even domestic trade routes shifts to 2. Of course I was using mercantilism civic not to shift Isabella's trade routes as well. This also worked well with representation before I grew enough towns.
After Liberalism I needed 2 things
1) To get Kremlin to have improved production Universal sufferage effect. The denial aspect was important too because Isabella could have great production with slavery. I couldnt let it be so I invented a plan to build it in 1 turn (mass choppings)
2) Industrial revolution. This means building levees and factories everywhere. I knew I could industrialize better than others because of Universal sufferage. Just stop research for 3-4-5 turns and you get key buildings everywhere.
War with Saladin is not wort describing, nothing heroic happened. I just had too much.
Also fortunately Isabell's war with Alexander didnt go that well and took somewhat like 10 turns more than I expected it to last after having a look how Alexander's preparations were going.
Closer to T200 I knew that I cant gain anything from my trade agreement any longer. Isabella could by all my tech at 1/8 rate and her income could pay for all. Herself she almost wasnt teching besides useless techs like Divine right and Military science. I decided not to finish techs and queue overflow to make burst of new techs right after our agreement ends.
I had a queue of Scientific Method, Communism, Astronomy, Replaceable parts, Rifling, Steam power, Railroads in 1 turn each. Isabella also let me steal Military Tradition, but I guess she didnt pay much attention at that point.
But at T210-213 I got war declaration from the top 3 leaders: Isabella, Juan and Ragnar... I knew this was going to happen and was well prepared.
I think I will make one more post describing how it was going and may be I can find some interesting screenshots.
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