All the World's a Stage: Part 2

Now that I've got Drama my next plan was to get the free Great Artist from Music, and more generally to expand my empire & consolidate what I've already got. Canterbury is founded next:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 16

This is the other city that the Voice of Hindsight suggests for one of the Big Three cultural cities. Bit late now, that thought ;).

1AD rolls round, time for an overview:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 17
All the World's a Stage Screenshot 18

My notes even say "Pretty pathetic powerwise". I just don't seem to have acted on that enough. I did decide at this point to deviate from my beeline to Music & pick up Bronze Working and Currency first, to address my power & economic issues. I also built a few more Archers as I was manning most of my cities with cardboard cut-outs (well, one archer a piece). Coventry got founded round about now:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 19
All the World's a Stage Screenshot 20

The above look at my cities illustrates 2 things - firstly I'm building Theatres all over the place to ameliorate my happiness issues. And secondly that my GP rate and my culture rate are currently pretty shoddy. The theatres will of course help with both of those, too.

Napolean is rather kindly spreading Judaism all around for me:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 21

And this is another point where the Voice of Hindsight gets to chip in. My notes say "I'll convert if & when he asks". Thing is - he never asked. I think what I should've done was converted anyway after a bit of a wait to see if I could get the relationship bonus for caving to a demand. I was busy caving to his other demands, after all:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 22

So, along with not building up my miltary sufficiently, I think one of my bigger mistakes this game was not to work harder at getting Napolean as my best buddy. Given my aggressive settling of Nottingham & Hastings it'd've been an uphill struggle at the best of times, but I really just coasted along hoping it'd work out.

Once the Theatres were built I hired artists in various cities (Nottingham, York, London) and built more infrastructure (and some more Archers). The discovery of Music in 700AD brought my next Great Artist:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 23

And the third was born in 720AD:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 24

My research goals now were Monarchy (for Hereditary Rule, and thus happy cities), followed by Calendar (for more happy cities). Then Optics for Caravels, as I'd had no luck finding anyone else with my galleys. I found the time to slot in a couple of wonders, too - The Hanging Gardens in Nottingham and Notre Dame in London.

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 25
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I founded my last self-founded city in 1030AD:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 27

And the first indications of which is going to be the non-self-founded city:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 28

It got down to 0% Barbarian a while before I got it:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 29

And in fact wasn't to revolt until 1350AD:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 30

Other notable events during this period included 2 more Great Artists:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 31 All the World's a Stage Screenshot 32

Which brings my total to 5 so far. And I finally meet 2 of the other civs, first Caesar:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 33

And then Mali:

All the World's a Stage Screenshot 38

And this is the point where I finished my first session of play. I didn't come back to the game for another week or so, when I suddenly realised it was Friday, the game was due on Monday & I had all these other things I wanted to do all weekend.

Back to Part 1 | Onward to Part 3