Epic 4: Part 3
It's weird. I've met 2 of my opponents, and nary a religion between us. I'm beginning to wonder if the others are Montezuma and Isabella, given the clean sweep. And I'm beginning to wonder quite why I haven't met them. Still, 2 over-powerful enemies are enough to be going on, I think. I start my next session by deciding it's time to expand again - the Barbarians are being dealt with, and if I want to get any more cities up and running I'd better do so before the AIs get there. So first order of business is a Settler and escort. I also decided that I could do with some more cultural buildings as I was beginning to lose control of tiles to the Indian city off to my east. So I switched research to Alphabet then Drama, for Theatres and adjustable culture.
It feels really weird to be researching technology like that while getting messages about other Civs building The Manhattan Project or SDI. But those messages did tell me who my other rivals were - Louis and Isabella. I'm still wondering why I haven't met them, but at least I know who has all the religions (it's got to be Isabella really, doesn't it).
Phoenix (it rises from the ashes!) was founded in 1918AD (yes I know I said the silly names were over, but that was just too apt to resist), not quite on the site of Rome as I thought I'd risk a non-hill site to get the gold hill as a workable tile.
I finally reach half a million citizens in 1927AD, a few turns before the Chinese get bored of whacking Barbarians and decide to take on the Indians. The fanfare for the war start nearly gave me a heart attack - I though my time had come! I really don't want to get caught up in this war - they have tanks, I have Longbows. But equally, I need to expand. I've got the odd unit or two out looking around, but I can't really see much space:
One possibility is that the Chinese razed Hun, as I noticed they'd taken it out. Alas, when I sent a spear down there to take a look it was not the case:
Yay! Spears and tanksmech infantry. I so hope the Chinese ignore me!
I'm beginning to think that the Chinese might win this:
Hopefully not by going through me - I'd rather fail to win than be crushed mercilessly. For now it's OK - Qin is busy dismantling the Indian Empire piece by piece. Which opens up some space for me:
I rush (at a rather glacial pace) to take advantage of this … while I'm still building my Settler and escorts, Qin finishes off the Indians. I'm reduced to crossing my fingers and hoping on every turn end …
Just a few more border pops will do it - he doesn't need to attack me!
I finally get back up to three cities in 1982AD:
Just before Qin wins:
I don't normally pay much attention to the replay - I generally have a vague feeling for how the game played out for the other civs, so I'm not that interested in the details. But I knew so little by the end of this game that it was actually quite interesting. Here are the starts:
So I was right about being on a continent of my own initially. And it looks like Isabella and Louis were trapped up there in the north - which explains rather why I didn't meet them. I was part right about the religions too, Isabella got the Hydra:
The score graph is faintly amusing - runaway Qin!
And the demographics show that I'm … last in pretty much everything!
But it looks like there weren't as many Grenadiers as it felt like:
Final screenshot shows the final extent of my empire, all on the one picture:
That was actually a lot of fun. I'm clearly overly pessimistic about things are going - I kept thinking it was all over, then looking back at the year & realising that another umpteen turns had gone by and I still wasn't dead. I was rather surprised by how quickly the AI won, though. I had though I stood a decent chance of getting myself up to tech parity if I could only survive, though I'm not quite sure what I would've done once I got there ;) And I'm definitely looking forward to reading the other reports and seeing how other people did.
Backwards to Part 2