Epic 11 - Hooray for Hollywood

Report by Michelangelo

Epic 11 promises to be a lot of fun, a crowded map with only the cultural victory enabled. This means that AI's cannot win through anything else than a cultural victory, and that one I haven't seen in any of my games. Having tried the cultural path several times and reading up on some SG-games, especially the recent RB-29a/d games gave me some hope on a decent cultural game.

With my experience in my first RB-event, adventure 17, fresh in my mind (I was eliminated very early on, partly because I wanted to maximize the score for the event), I decided to focus on culture and just surviving. Also this is my first game on epic speed, so it would feel differently than a normal paced game.

My pre-game plan was quite simple:

• Get an early religion and spread it around like crazy to befriend my neighbours and stay out of trouble that way (agressive civs and all)
• Try to get more of the later religions and cathedrals to maximize culture multipliers
• Expand modestly to be able to better defend, but get to 9 cities so I can build all cathedrals in my legendary cities.
• Try for the parthenon, forget about the Great Lighthouse. (I figured to many points, so Sullla must have gathered this would be quite impossible, so I would not stretch to get it, unless a opportunity would arise somehow)
• Focus on food / hammers so I can hire more artists to get culture.
• Building the scoring buildings as much as possible before the scoring dates (duh).

With this in mind I started.

I decided to go for Hinduism as my first religion, as Buddhism is preferred by the AI most of the times. Also I wanted to wait with the worker until I grew a bit and started by putting some hammers into a barracks. With all the good tiles in range I wanted to have more than 1 tile being worked for a long time.

I met the other civs in rapid succession

3700 BC: Isabella, Saladin and Alexander, Frederick, Tokugawa, Ghengis Kahn, Peter, Caesar, Huana Capac, Hatseputh, all before 2580 BC. But there should be one still out there, probably at the far end of the continent.

In the meantime Buddhism was founded in 3580 BC, by Isabella (of course). I was still researching Mysticism at that time, so Hinduism would be a dice roll.

As you can see I'll research Hinduism next turn.....

No this is not one of those stories where we miss it by one turn , Hinduism was founded next turn in Washington. My worker allready farmed the corn and was now improving hammers by mining the two hills in range. I've made a small detour to Bronze working to be able to forest chop and change to slavery. Nice surprise was that bronze was at Washington. After this Judaism wasn't founded yet, so I tried for it as well.

Offcourse, the storie of meeting deadlines couldn't continue forever, but allready failing at the second hurdle was a pity. Nevertheless in the meantime I was building the Partenon and had founded my second city. New york was founded on the hill near the gold and two food resources (one just north of this shot). I was tempted to settle in the center forest to grab all gold tiles, but luckily realized I couldn't work them all due to food shortage. So I settled on the hill for good defense. Enough hills left for production.

After getting the partenon, I've went for the oracle as well and got it, took Theology with it, and founding christianity in New York in the process.

Time to choose a religion to spread. I hadn't started on spreading it very much due to the wonder building but I could choose Hinduism and Christianity. I chose the latter, so I could get a shrine in New York. With the gold it would be my big-time cash producer. Other cities would be bothered with cash production. This proved to be a good decision as somehow christianity spread better than hinduism ever did on it's own, helping the missionary task.

By 40 BC I converted four others to the one and only religion. I didn't bother the befriend Montezuma for two reasons. first, I was allready boxed in while having only three cities, so I needed some room to expand and I chose Monty. Second, he would also be the most difficult to keep of my back anyway. All my neighbours were happy with me, exept Isabella. You can see I was at war with both Frederick and Isabella. The first one was Frederick, which Alexander declared on and asked me to join. This must have pissed Isabella of and she declared on me. But neither were much of a threath, so I made peace with the when it was possible. She also was at war with Monty and he destroyed one of her cities just north of washington. A spot which I missed earlier on. I quickly ordered a settler and settled philadelphia right there.

So now it was time to focus on the 260AD scoring time, this added up to 3 temples and 3 libraries for a total of 6 points together with the 7 for the parthenon. You can also see I was trying to get a great profet in Washington for a shrine in New York, but it was never better than 50% due to the free GA-points. So it was hoping for the best.

During the next couple of hundred years I was picked on a lot, because I neglected my military a bit. Even my friends wanted some.

I caved to my "friends" and rejected my foes as a basic rule. I was still able to trade a lot mostly with Saladin and Alexander. I picked up Monarchy, CoL, Calendar, HBR, Currency and some 530 gold, for Literature, Alphabet, Theology and Music.  Right now I was realizing I was behind on several areas. I needed more workers, more cities, much more military. This is probably the trade-off of all the missionaries I build to befriend my neighbours. So I wouldn't have to be afraid of them, but there was still Monty in the north to worry about.

In 470 AD Alexander again declared on Frederick, which I was still at war with and in 500 AD Genghis Kahn asked to get involved in his war with Hatseputh. As she was far away I agreed and getting better relations with GK.

A guy named Gibbon created a great work in which he states the obvious.

        (oops, 4 points gone)

After this Monty wanted more and joined in on the war with Frederick. He was doomed and I couldn't do anything about it. Then finally I get my prophet and use it to build a shrine in New York, which improved my gpt by 15 gold. I was making money while at 100% research, never happened to me before, but still I was very small and I could just keep pace with the much larger AI.

A relative quiet period followed, got a bit bullied around, another fake war with Hatseputh, and when civil service came in I changed civics.

This would enable to improve my military while trying to get some cathedrals out before 1502. I've got more request from Monty and the chart below might explain why. I just couldn't get around to building some serious military. I was second from the last position, and by the look of thing I would soon be last!!! It would be nice if I could just build on until 1502 to get some more points for this game. I made sure I always got some trade with Monty going, also giving him a resource for free.

The trumpets don't sound, so at the 1502AD mark I make up the standings. No Universities and only two cathedral, so 4 points more. So this is probably not going to be one of the best of them.

In 1526 Monty finally has WHEOOH.. But it keeps quiet until 1559 when finally the trumpets sound and Monty declares on.......

Julius Caesar, phew. I had some defense up there, but still would prefer Monty to burn some units on another AI before entering the war myself. In 1562 Pisae is captured, which is good, so I can take it from Monty and still be friends with JC.

In 1568 Monty comes asking to join the war agains JC, I decline off course. A few years later JC comes asking the reversed thing, to which I agree. That turn I take out all wounded units from Monty that were healing after taking Pisae. I take Pisae and some time afterward Tlaxcala as well. Took some time as I hadn't that much of military as I hadn't build that much. So now I have 8 cities, still not enough. Monty stayed at war with JC for a while when we made peace, but had to take the long route all around my empire to get to him, but still managed to get 1 more city.

In 1586 I get a nice message that a city of Peter is in revolt because of my culture pressure. Three cities are pressured around 60%, 2 of Peter and one of Saladin. Would be nice if they flipped soon. And so it did in 1619. The other two would follow so time later so I got up to 11 cities. Especially Yekatarinaburg was nice as it had a fourth religion that I would spread.

I was set to peacefully cruise to a cultural victory now, but in 1634 my hearth jumpes as Peter comes to me and cancels all deals. WT#$#. How could this be, he was friendly all the time, then I notice he changed religion!!! All that nurtured positive attitude gone, he was annoyed now. And he was very strong. So I had to focus once more on military. Somewhere around 1700 AD Saladin followed suit and changed to Islam. So much for my plan to get all neighbours friendly with me. Probably this is a side effect of the city flipping, which were both christian cities. Removing them took them away from the AI and so reducing the christian influence. Should have trained more missionaries, military, settlers, workers...... (You notice some trend in this game?)

In 1738 Alexander declares war on Saladin for changing the faith. I need to help Saladin though as he isn't exactly prepared and I gift him military tradition. But thats about all I'm prepared to do as Alexander will probably come to ask me to join in. And sure enough in 1766 I declare war on Saladin, my former friend. I stake out a city bordering mine so I can take it when it's clearly losing and prevent Alex from taking it. Julius and Tokugawa also join in, so I think Saladin won't make it.

But this is not all, Monty decides to once again declare war on me in 1778. I haven't put many units to the south to attack Saladin, so I can fend of the attacks as most of his stack is made up out of older units. He attacks with 4 knight, 3 riflemen 1 war elephant, 3 catapults and 1 crossbowman. I decide to bring in so others to prevent them from getting the wrong idea of attacking me. I enlist JC, GK and Peter for Astronomy and Military tradition. I manage to fend off the attacks until the reinforcements arrive and then there are no more attacks, thanks buddies.

I had one hairy moment though. As you can see I only have 1 cavalry left at 2.8 health. Monty still has some units left, but doesn't continue the attack. So that got me wondering. Would he have taken the city when he beat that cavalry, or would Julius protect me? If anyone could clarify this, it would be good to know.

The rest of the game is quite straight forward. Saladin got beaten, I didn't manage to get that city I was looking for as it was caputered in 1 turn. I changed civics to Caste System, Organized religion and Free Speach. I needed OR because I still had to spread confusianism and monastaries were obsolete. I managed to land Broadway for free broadcast towers and yes, the Eifel tower (1 more point.

After mass-media I hired a lot of specialists in my three culture cities and made some decent amount of culture in the end, but never used the culture slider the whole game.

So in 1939AD Washington achieves Legendary Culture while New York and Bosted folow with only one turn to go. You see, New york still needs two turns, but I saved the last GA to burn him on the lagging city. So in 1940:

So this concludes my try at this game. It won't win me any prices, but I still had a lot of fun and I want to thank Sullla for sponsoring an Epic event on Prince difficulty.

For the official scoring

25 point: Cultural victory in 1940 AD

24 points: 6 rivals left

6 points: 3 Temples and 3 Libraries at 260 AD

4 points: 2 cathedrals at 1502 AD 

8 points: Partenon and Eiffel tower

Total 67 points

Concluding remarks

I probably focused to much on food and using them all to hurry production and almost none for specialists. This kept me technologically just a bit behind all game. My military was so weak that I was allways bullied around into gifting techs and stuff. The thing that worked until around 1500 was the spreading of christianity to my neigbours which kept them happy with me, but it apparently took a lot of my production which otherwise could have gone to military.