Includes
4000BC - Start File
Game 01 - Select Saves
Game 02 - Select Saves
End Game - Replay File
The Pre-Game
Settings
Noble Difficulty
Incan Empire
Huayna Capac
Default Game Settings
No Barbarians
Beyond the Sword 3.19
BUG Mod 4.5 [Build 2221]
BULL 1.4 [Build 243]
BAT Mod 4.1
Incan Empire:
Starting Techs: Mysticism & Agriculture
Unique Building: Terrace -> a granary that provides culture... very nice.
Unique Unit: Quechua -> a nice early raider (as it gets 100% versus archery units), but I doubt it will come in much use during this game.
Huayna Capac
Let's just call him Huey, shall we?
Industrious: +50% Wonder Production & Double Production Speed of Forge, all of which begs the question whether there is a difference between +50% and double... which I suppose, there is. It's the same as the difference between 1.5x and 2.0x.
Financial: +1 commerce on plots with 2 or more commerce... perhaps the nicest trait in the book, for those playing a long haul game.
In Game Goals
Obviously, I want to win. But I want to win with style... and differently than I have before. So, let's make some arbitrary goals.
First, I know Bismark and the German lands lie to to the east... and that he's (likely) my only pre-astronomy neighbour.
Thus, Bismark is to be my bestest of buds.
No rushes.
No declaring war.
Give him what he wants.
And more so.
Or if that doesn't work, completely obliterate him.
But if that happens, I've done something wrong.
I want to fight a Nuclear War.
I don't know what this means.
Originally, I was thinking of setting the goal as making and firing one-hundred Nuclear Warheads, but that could get tedious... as can dealing with Nuclear Fallout.
So, I'm going to fire at least one Nuclear Missile... maybe many-many more.
And that's enough hard and fast goals.
I'd like to have another bestest friend.
I'd like to win a Diplomatic Victory.
But getting a high point score basically requires war, which is at odds to those last two (possible) goals, so let's keep it simple for now.
Basic Strategies
See the in-game notes, for the full pre-game debriefing. That said, the path to greatness will be based upon:
Seaside Cities
Wonders
The Great Lighthouse
The Colossus
Techs
Optics
Astronomy
Monk Economy
Wonders
University of Sankore
The Spiral Minaret
Buildings
Temple
Monastery
Corporations
Mining, Inc.
Sid's Sushi
The conflicting priorities of which I'll have to work out. But that's enough for a rough outline.
Now, it is time to play... or at least, start the in-game notes.
May the most psychotic man win!
Strategies & Spoilers
So don't read beyond this point, if you don't want to know.
I do not consider the notes to be great literature, so I only proof read them once. But it's fun enough reading for me, allowing me to revisit my mental state and seal in any lessons learned.
There are two sets of notes, because I played this game through twice... more or less.
The first and last are the ones covered by the In-Game Notes. The middle two were both quickly aborted. Best to sweep under the rug and pretend they never happened. I restarted them, as I was unhappy with my early game micro-management. The first game, on the other hand, was lost pure and simple (due to a lack of military preparedness, if I remember correctly).
Bismark
of
Germany
Yellow shaded territory is controlled by me: The Incans.
While white shaded territory is controlled by Bismark of Germany.
It's a pretty poor showing to lose tiles in your capitol's fat cross (as Germany has done). What's even more embarrassing is that both Berlin Gate and German Crush are cities that I founded mid-game on territory I had already taken-over (via cultural dominance) from Germany and both of these cities control all of the tiles in their respective fat crosses, while Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich do not.
This is a side result of the Monk Economy, as The Sistine Chapel gives (going by memory, here) +2c for every specialist and +5c (c; as in, culture) for every religious building in a city. So given a free specialist here or there and three religious buildings in my border cities (one of which gives +50% culture), Germany did not stand a chance.
It's sort of odd (that I was able to crush Germany culturally), as I had decided to befriend him early on and gave him whatever he asked for, never declared war, and in ways other than cultural, always helped him.
By the end, I had a +16 Diplomatic Bonus with Bismark; and he had long since Peace Vassalled.
This aspect of the game was very fun.
Nuclear War
Nuclear War, on the other hand, will likely never figure prominently in future games. It comes too late. And is not particularly fun or rewarding. Sure, one missile can cut a city's population in half. But a dozen tanks will give you control of the same city, so there really is no advantage to using missiles in the least. If missiles are one's best option, then they've already lost.
-2 Diplo to Launch a Missile
-1 Diplo to Launch a Missile at a Friend
Which may not be clear, so -2 for attacking a civilization with nuclear weapons and -1 for attacking one of their friends.
Watery Death
an
Awesome City
At game's end, Watery Death (my capitol) was pretty awesome.
Gold: +2,032/turn
Beakers: +345/turn
Hammers: +122/turn
Great People: +237pts/turn
The gold comes from having Wall Street (plus 100% gold), along with all the commerce buildings, the shrine of my state religion, and two corporate headquarters spammed to my entire empire all shoved into one city.
The other National Wonder I built was the National Epic, which gave me plus 100% Great People Points, which along with Pacifism (another 100%) and The Parthenon (+50%) allowed me to birth 22 Great People this game. (I think that number is accurate, but my math might be off. Whatever the case, the next Great Person was going to cost 3,600 points.) And if the game had gone on longer, I would have gotten a lot more Great People, as Sid's Sushi allows one to run specialists across one's entire empire.
But as awesome as Watery Death was, I think it could have been better if it had access to a few more hammers... or cottage locations. In the late game, those sea tiles did me no favors.
Thus, after a few minutes of research, I have opted for a Rain Forest map (with the caveat that I will start in one of the Flood Plains areas), as my next adventure.
But first, I have a graph or two to post.
Game Graphs
The second game (right) starts achieving commerce in the high 700's slightly earlier than the first game (left). But this has nothing to do with why I lost the first game. I did not build enough military units the first time around: pure and simple.
The real trick (if any) is to try and shift the slopes of these graphs to the left a bit earlier and hit that upward trend a few years (or decades) sooner.
Anyhow, this is what I achieved starting with a Fishing Economy, moving to a Monk Economy, and settling down with a Corporate Economy for the final stretch.
Let's see what a War Economy can do next time around.
