The 1000AD State of the Empire Celebration

[Sullla]

Friends, with the end of the first milennium AD it's time that we looked back at the progress made thus far, and gather together to celebrate the crowning success of our military arms. Not only is it the 1000AD turn, we also captured the capital city of our long-standing rival, the perfidious Knights Templar! We are the first team in the game to capture a rival capital, FYI. Even PAL hasn't achieved anything so grand yet against Rabbits.

Looking Back

Do you remember when...?



We first planned the Pink Dot location? Talk about audacious, sticking a city so far away from the capital, with no metals and no horses, right next to an Incan civ running around with quechuas! I think that gamble paid off.



We referred to Cape Town as "Cape Copper"? And we beat Imperio to the copper - not setting on the tile we wanted! - by virtue of logging into the game and founding the city as soon as the turn timer clicked over?





How about the struggle to settle the iron, and Templars narrowly beating us to the spot in the middle of the map when they settled Jericho?





Of course, we turned that around by sending the settler intended for the iron into the southern jungles, founding Something Fishy, and using the marble down there to chop out the Great Library in no time flat!



The single most important battle in the whole game: Betty Hur winning a coinflip battle against a barb axe, when I stupidly left her next to it instead of being in position to counter-attack.



If we lose that battle, we have no Heroic Epic, and we have no chance of surviving the 2 vs. 1 war against Templars/Imperio.

How about the equally epic scouting mission to the eastern continent with Jennifer:



Where would we be if we had had to wait dozens more turns to contact Banana?! Egregiously bad scenario design to make it so tough for the civs on the "ends" of each continent to meet one another!

[Sullla]

Do you remember the dark days when we faced multiple war declarations from our neighbors, outnumbered 2 vs. 1 and facing trade embargoes from everyone else save Banana? They pillaged our roads under false pretenses of neutrality, lied to us about "border agreements", and poured across the boundary markers like a flood. Those were daring and dangerous times for our poor team!







But under the leadership of our best military minds, our team stood firm and met them blow for blow! First we destroyed their invading armies, then we repaired the all-important road links... and then we struck back!







Culminating this turn with the capture of Jerusalem itself!

Spoiler:

Truly the Realms Beyond stand apart, as the best and brightest of all teams!



OK, some current pics to follow. But I hope you enjoyed some of these old goodies.

[Sullla]

First, let's get some overview shots of our territory, starting in the north:



What was once a tundra wilderness is now a thriving part of our territory. Since this is the "safest" part of our territory from invasion, we've got minimal defenses and cottages going up all over the place. This is where most of our worker attention has gone for the last 30 turns, especially at Bluebell Woods (where we chopped out Taj).

Next, the southwest:



We haven't made as much progress here as we would have liked, given that all of these cities were settled long before our growing towns in the north. However, it's important to keep in mind that this area saw the heaviest fighting against the Templars, especially the area just east of Pink and Something Fishy. Poor Pink Dot had to go through a LOT of emergency whips, and had a number of its tiles pillaged. We're still getting overdue infrastructure in place there now. The good news is that our military successes have pushed this territory into our safe back lines, and we should be able to continue laying down cottages + infrastructure here in the near future.

Finally, the southeast:



This is where the current military front is location, along with our prizes of Jericho and Jerusalem. We just founded Jungle Fever this turn, and plan to add two more cities here, one directly south of Jerusalem and the other in the unused space between Pink Dot and the former Templar capital. We need tons of worker attention here, and all those jungle tiles are just itching to be improved!

Here's a summary of our military, with the Oromos highlighted:



Note that we've drafted 9 of them in the last four turns - that's 81k worth of military power out of thin air! We also have 4 knights, 5 elephants, 10 maces, 5 pikes, and 12 cats even after our recent losses in warfare. (And yes, I'm also still peeved about those 99+% losses!)



Current Demographics info. Aside from population, we are #1 or #2 in every important category, and even population is deceptive because Banana's size 18 capital grossly distorts that number. Now we are in a Golden Age which makes these numbers look better, but if we can just keep settling more cities and get them up to a decent size... well, we will finally be in a position to challenge PAL for real! We currently have 15 cities (with two more on the way), and I believe PAL only has 11 at the moment.

Lots of pictures of cities to follow...

[mostly-harmless]

Nice summary.

mh

[Sullla]

Alright, starting with Airstrip One:



Market is the best build for the moment, although we really want to go university -> Oxford here once we lightbulb Education. It's just too bad we don't have more food here...



The forge should help out Pink quite a bit, and is definitely overdue. How long does the unhappiness last from defying that AP resolution?



I suggested in the Turnplayer thread that we consider changing this catapult build to something infrastructure related. Regardless, here's the picture of our city. We've gotten great value out of a clam, a cow, one floodplains tile, and not much else.



Cape Town does nothing but build military, naturally. Right now, we're replenishing out catapult ranks after having to suicide a number of them against Templars. We'll probably swap over to knights for a few turns when we get our horses back from Banana.



Something Fishy is going to complete its partially finished catapult next, and because we have a need for more cats still. There's a cottage going down on the empty grassland tile, and that worker will probably continue on to fill out the rest of the jungle with more cottages later. Not a whole lot else to do here.

[Sullla]

Continuing on with Green Acres:



This is the city where we probably did the best micro work of all. A desert wasteland with two clams became one of the cornerstones of our empire, whipped over and over again for settlers/workers and now providing a steady stream of Oromos thanks to the draft. There's no need for more infrastructure here, so we're using it to pump out Islamic missionaries for our (many) cities that need the religion spread.



Mellow is getting some cottages and regrowing after our latest whip. After cottaging the last jungle tile, we're eventually going to have to bring irrigation here through the plains tiles (there is fortunately a route from the lake tile near Pink), although there's no hurry on doing that until later. Those plains tiles aren't worthwhile until we reach Biology.



Saxon is another location where we turned nothing into something, thanks to Moai Statue. Unfortunately these awesome tile yields won't last once we get out of the Golden Age, so enjoy the 2/2/4 water tiles while they last! A cheap courthouse seems like the best call to follow the library.



We did some brutal chopping at Bluebell, but it was all worth it for the Taj Mahal golden age payoff. (Not to mention denying it to PAL, especially with them having the Mausoleum!) From here on out, we basically just add cottages on the grassland tiles, and work the grassland hill tiles when they all run out. Remember to farm the grassland tile SE of the city though, to carry irrigation to the plains tiles. sooooo has suggested whipping a university here when we get Education, and with the triple silk plantations plus cottages to come, that sounds like a good idea.



Red Herring has already been drafted and now is whipping out a settler. More good use of a city that has a crab tile and essentially nothing else! Will be a great city post-Biology, until then Red Herring will mostly work the coastal tiles for commerce. Completing the forge (while regrowing population) is the necessary next step in its development.

[Sullla]

OK, last four cities! My, we do have a lot of them.



The hotly-debated city of Upper Burgundy, with its long-awaited improved rice tile! Still a lot of worker improvement to be done here, including chaining irrigation to the rice and getting the extra wine tile up to speed. Upper Burgundy is intended to be a military pump and draft city, however with our cheap libraries and the wine tiles, the current build is justified IMO. Barracks or forge looks to be next here.



Frozen Clams is just about finished with its basic infrastructure, and will serve as a classic fishing village. Work the sea tiles, whip buildings for production, draft every 10 turns. Library seems the logical next build. No need for any more worker improvement - nor is there much of anything we could do even if we wanted to!



Jericho remains an open question. What do we want to do with this city? Military, commerce - what? Probably a good idea to hammer this out before we get any further along here. Thoughts?



Jungle Fever: AKA, the city that Templars didn't want to settle. We'll show them how wrong they were! Obviously all jungle now, but so much long term potential with all those grassland tiles lurking underneath... We also get three bonus food tiles (although the clams will be taken by another city eventually) and a grassland stone tile (?), a sign of amateurish map design. (By now, I'm somewhat contemptuous of those who don't even know enough to hide their edits properly!)

There was also a barb city here that Templars razed rather than capturing. When they make the list of "dumb things the Templars did" after this game ends, it's gonna be pretty long! FYI, Jerusalem will be in resistance for the next 5t, and came with a forge, granary, and lighthouse.

Alright, enough screenshots. I hope this served as a nice summary, and helps get the new faces entering our forum up to speed on what's going on right now.

[MyOtherCar]

Highly appreciated and informative. Thanks, Sullla.

[sooooo]

I didn't realise it was 1000 AD already!



Thanks for the very comprehensive overview and history.

[Iamjohn]

Thanks Sullla, that was really helpful.

Very nice work and a great way to celebrate the new millennium.

[Dreylin]

Yay Team RB!

[Zeviz]

Thanks for the detailed overview.

I especially like the 1000AD retrospective posts. It's nice to see how far we've come and how our early fears turned out to have been unfounded.

[TAD]

A great summary, Sulla.

Especially appreciated for a late-joiner like me!

[darrelljs]

Excellent way to come back from a week long vacation .

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Post so this will be the "last thread" shown in the public forum.

Darrell