England Vs The World; Take Two! - Civilization V AAR

[Space Voyager]

Interesting, I can see the pics on the first page just fine, but for some reason these don't show or open... I'll try to go through them at home. Sorry.

[Sunflash]

The recent ones use Dropbox, so work or something may be blocking that?

[Space Voyager]

Ha, I can see them all just fine at home.

 

I don't like the look of this sneaky Ethiopian diplomat.

[Sunflash]

Managed to get SOME CiV in prior to GW2 releasing. Both have been crazy,but so far GW2 is in better shape. Why? Well sit down and I'll tell ya!

 

 

Rome starts this batch off by jumping higher on my "I hate you" list

 

 

I'm looking forward to punching you in the face, bro.

 

 

Good bit of news:

 

 

 

Not too terriably bad. We're still lagging behind most by a heavy margin, but we're not falling completely behind.

 

Here's some stats for ya:

 

 

In order, some comments.

 

Population: Well I'm not overly surprised we're rather low(out of 8) on the list. Kinda surprised that Ethiopia is the leader, but a quick glance at his cities(that I can see) show a fair amount of food resources, so that's probably the reason why. Downside is high population = better Science income which means better Research. Oh well, we'll catch up one way or another.

 

Crop Yield: Pretty sure this effectivly means the rate at which the Population is growing. Kinda interesting that Ethiopia isn't in the lead here too, but I suspect Rome's in the lead because of better Tech.

 

Manufactered goods: Fancy term for Production. The fact that we're so far above the average is nice, and proves that it's basically our ace in the hole right now. We don't have much on the field, but we have the ability to churn things out when we decide to.

 

GNP is gold production,we're better than I thought we would be, about the middle of the pack. The lead Rome has in this, like most things, is problematic. Not insurmountable, but definatly an issue.

 

Land I'm not surprised at, Rome again had the most space that I've seen to expand into.

 

Soldiers I'm kinda shocked at it. We've got very little even by my usual "Minium until needed" approch. We're also close to Rome(The leader again) as far as that number goes. Iiinnteresting!

 

Approval is silly, as it's simply a rating of how much extra Happiness you have compared to soem random scale or something. We're doing fine on total Happiness, so I'm ignoring this slanderous comment.

 

Literacy is what bothers me, being a rating of how much science per population your cities are producing. 6th means we're doing fairly ugly compared to the rest actually; but the fact that the leader is 29% and we're 26% means the spread isn't TOO bad. Still farther behind than I want.

 

Not doing horrible over all, but not near as good as we should be. This whole "Three Civs on One lsland" thing kinda sucks.

 

Moving on:

 

While some of the Honor stuff would be quite nice, I opt instead to start the Commerce line. Considering our trouble with gold and such lately, this should help keep out coffers decent.

 

 

 

Ceasar, for all his blustering, is interested in our Dyes still.

 

As I'm trying to stay on his good side for a BIT long, I go ahead and say yes. 5 Gold is yummy anyway.

 

BLATENT CONFIRMATION OF WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW.

 

THANK YOU, Goethe, you hambone. Like I wanted the fact that we're 3 techs behind the two leaders(OUR NEIGHBORS MIGHT I ADD) announced to everyone. Ugh.

 

 

Oh well. Let's close the gap a little shall we?

 

Yay for a ranged navel unit! That'll make harrasing people from the shore much easier.

 

HOWEVER what I didn't remember/count on was that the Termines don't actually upgrade into those Galleasses. So I may sacrifice them to replace them with the ranged units.

 

ALLRIGHT. I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH THIS.

 

Yellow-belied pile of hambone, YOU'RE NEXT.

 

 

FIRST ETHIOPIA FOR THEIR SMACK TALK:

 

THEN YOU, CEASAR.

 

 

Grrrr. But anyway, yes. I get another trash-talk comment from Ethiopia and decide I've had enough of him. PUSH THE BIG BUTTON, PINKIE PIE, WE'RE GOING IN.

 

After a few turns of embarking troops and harrasing their coastline with my pitiful termines, Rome decides to Denouce me to the rest of the world. Annoying.

THEN, about the time I start the seige on the Ethiopian city in earnest:

 

So Germany is Friends with Ethiopia AND Rome. This is quickly shaping up into a 3v1 war. Weeeeee.

 

Now THIS is curious.

 

We start a War, get Denoucned, and France(just behind us in overall score) wants to be Friends. INTERESTING. Apparently he thinks we've got a good shot at winning. Well I figure we'll accept this, just 'cause. It's not an Alliance or anything; closer to a NAP. Still, handy enough. Might hold Germany off for a while.

 

Also, Toughest Catapult ever:

 

Scrapes by with a measly 3 HP left. TROOPER, I tell ya.

[silencer_pl]

The soldier thingy is a bit shadowy number. Each unit has it's value and they are totaled. So for example you can have 1 swordsman that has for example value of 1000 and enemy can have 3 warriors that have value of 1500. Obviously that one swordsman can be killed by 3 warriors on flat ground but 2 warriors might fall. On hard terrain that swordsman will beat a hell out of warriors so you might actually have stronger army.

[Thorondor]

High time we demanded some satisfaction from these ill-mannered ruffians.

 

::

 

And so, to invoke a precept from a certain well-known forum dweller: 'This island ain't big enough for gentlemen like us and villains, like the lot of you'.

[Sunflash]

Another bite-sized update, coming your way now so I can not feel bad about spending most of Labor-day weekend playing Guild Wars 2.

 

Cutting right to the heart of the matter(ho ho ho), our swordsman manages to smash into the heart of the Ethiopian city that they foolishly planted on our northern coast. Of course this took several turns of covering fire from a pair of catapults and the selfless sacrifice of at least one of my horribly-outdated termines, but by jove he never once phased from the task. Which is good, as I really didn't want to let that fight drag out any longer than I had to.

 

 

Victory gives us three choices! Razing the city is, of course, ALWAYS an option. However as I was wanted to put a city up here eventually anyway, I figure I'll save myself building the settler and keep this one. This leaves us with the other two options.

 

 

Annexing the city is the more satisifing conclusion, since it makes it completely under my control. However, as noted, this action would increase empire-wide unhappiness by an unwholesome seven points. As we're currently sitting at nine postive, we COULD choke this bitter tonic down with little issue. HOWEVER the REAL focus of this fight is to get Adwa, his city to the south. That one is in a bit better position(read: not tons of tundra) AND a bigger city; and is also the one I really want to annex right now. This brings us to option three:

 

 

Mu-Puppets everywhere!

As part of the trade off from no longer being able to 'vasselize' entire nations like you could in Civ4, V allows you a different(and in my opinion, BETTER) option. Puppeting a citty does not let you choose the production of the city, nor change it's specialists/focus/etc. It DOES, however, continue to give you Gold, Science, Culture, and all that good stuff. Even better, it will continue giving you those goodies while not increasing the cost for your Social policies and such. Quite nice. Annexing the puppet later on is, thankfully, always an option.

 

Puppetering is generally the preferred option during the middle of a war, since it allows you to keep the cities you fight over but doesn't require you to have a metric ton of extra happiness to keep your homeland working. All in all it's a pretty good deal, and one of my favorite changes with V.

 

 

Even while the war machine is rumbling forward, the steam trainHorse-pulled Cart of Knowledge never stops!

 

 

Aqueducts! Water water water flowing everywhere!

No, the better bit of this is the whole 'bridges over rivers added to road networks' thing. Keeps your units from coming to a near-dead stop every time they try to cross rivers.

The downside is as we're an ocean map, road networks are going to be limited since A) Roads are stupid expensive at 1-gold per tile, and B) We've got faster movment over water than even a road-network at this point. Railroads later on, maybe not. But still, another gateway tech.

 

 

 

Now we come to one of the more epic "If I knew then what I know now" situations I've yet to find myself experiencing in a game of CiV.

 

 

Ethiopia sues for peace not five turns after we take the northern city. I haven't had time to remanuver my forces back south to start the seige of his southern town, but apparently he knew he was in a bad spot. This really isn't too terriable an offer, as early offers go, but I figure I'm in a good enough position to be able to go stomp his souther city fast enough before Germany jumps in the war that I decide to DECLINE his offer.

 

Those of you with a bit more foresight than I can probably see something coming that I forgot.

 

A few turns later, Germany catches me by complete surprise and asks to swap embassaries. "I HATE YOUR GUTS but hey can I put an embassy in your captiol?" Uh sure why not, maybe it'll help keep you away from me for a while yet? Please? ?

 

Then it happens. I am brought back screaming and kicking to the wide world of "Ceaser thinks he's the boss". Luckily Ceaser is also a raving moron. Behold.

 

 

Ceaser your ballistia seems to have accidently landed next to my city. Do you think you could move it for me? ?

 

 

Oh.

 

Well.

 

Okay then.

 

 

*SIGH*

 

This is going to be one of THOSE games, isn't it.

[Space Voyager]

Those, of which any similarity with the real world is not coincidental at all.

[Sunflash]

Those, of which any similarity with the real world is not coincidental at all.

 

Yeah, if this was realistic I'd have set fire to the jungles and forests engulfing Ethiopia ages ago and LAUGHED. >.>

 

Bit of good news to start the day off: MONEY!

 

 

Well, the possibilty of money, at any rate. Also, Machu Pichu which I really really really want. It increases the amount of gold you get from Trade routes(that is, having cities connected to your captial by either roads or Harbors), and since you can usually have a ton of easy trade routes on an island map(Harbors everywhere!) it can make income quite delicious.

 

Of course, this achivment is deftly overshadowed by my ability to make HITLER jealous:

 

Three-front war, anyone?

 

Luckily we're far enough away from mister Bismarck that pretty much the only thing he'll be able to do is bother Iron Island. Considering that place is fortified enough to make a landing a pretty bad idea, I'm not going to worry about him for a while.

As to if that'll come back and bite me, I have no clue. NONETHELESS, one wildfire at a time.

 

 

Well after far too much back and forth, I managed to push Rome back away from London again.

 

 

Actually didn't do too badly, only lost about two or three units that I can recall.

 

A confession: I am horrible at remembering to take pictures during the battles. I'm working on this, but if it seems like I'm missing shots, it's more because I simply forgot to take them in the first place.

 

The good news is as a result of all that chaos, we pick up a Great General!

 

Not too shabby, all things considered. The Citadel improvment can be handy, but I generally avoid it on ocean maps. So easy to just land elsewhere, and the +15% combat is worth more in most situations anyway.

You may notice he doesn't have any combat information listed. That's because Great Generals are NOT combat units. They're supposed to hang back under protection of the other units(they CAN stack on the same tile with a military unit), simply supporting the fight with their superior tactics. Or something.

 

 

Moving on, another light shines forth from the darkness of war:

 

We get another Great Prophet! Time to enhance our strugglingfledgling religion!

 

After lots of back and forth with myself, I finally decide on the last two options you see on the list there. Liturgical Drama is one I don't normally choose, considering Ampitheaters are more for the Culture than anything else. However, I'm hurting for Faith income, so any little bit will help once I get the next great Prophet and jumpstart our religion's spread.

 

Religious Texts I usually avoid, but then again I've usually got my religion to this point before now anyway. We're close enough to Printing Press tech that the 68% increase of spread is going to help keep our religion competivie with Ethiopia's until we can actually wipe them out.

 

 

Speaking of Ethipoia, however! Something happens that I have never gotten to actually happen in all my time of playing CiV or IV.

Haile sues for peace, offering all his gold and most of his gold-income as ransom. He's asked for peace twice before, and as previous I asked only for Adwa(the town south of York).

Unlike the other two times, however:

 

 

It actually worked. Admittily I had to smash most of his standing army to do it, but I managed to avoid having to trundle catapults into that bloody jungle to capture the place!

 

Of course, as happy as I am about it, the empire as a whole isn't very pleased for some silly reason.

 

8 Unhappiness in the hole isn't good, but it's far better than it could've been. Anything under 0 means Cities growth pretty much tanks, while 10 or less means production tanks as well, nevermind the combat penalty it applies.

 

In an amusing note, the VERY NEXT TURN, Haile complains that we're settling lands he considers his, and could we PLEASE not do that.

Considering how, from a techincal standpoint, I have no interest in anymore settling; I apologize. Then I laugh at his back as he's leaving.

 

Or maybe his face. I get the two confused.

 

Bismarck proves to be alltogether stupid, and refuses to agree to a peace.

 

Yes, very good then you blistering buffoon. Continue to do nothing but throw terimines at Iron Island. Lemme know when yer done with whatever 'business' you intend to settle.

Maybe he's trying to push business onto my nation's salavge crews? I 'unno.

 

 

Oh well this is....disturbing.

 

The Celts are leaving the rest of us in the dust when it comes to Social Policies. Of course, since the total culture you need to get a policy is based on the amount of cities you have, Boudicca's TWO cities are probably helping with keeping that number low. Still, she'll have to be watched. She gets to the point where she gets several more branches done, she could go for a Utiopa victory.

 

At which point I'd have to go TAKE her two cities.

 

 

OH HO HO HO. HEY CEASER LOOK WHAT I GOT, BRO!

 

Aw but Sunny that doesn't seem very impressive!

 

LOOK AGAIN:

 

It may be hard to figure out, so I'll explain: Cities defenses hit hard. BUT, and this is the trick, they only have a range of 2 tiles away.

 

Longbowmen? They have a range of /3/.

 

Sure this single longbowman would take forever to wittle that city down by himself, but he'd be able to do it with zero return fire from the citiy.

 

And that is glorious.

 

 

Tech adjustment!

 

I'm really wanting to try to find a way to punch back up in the Tech race, so i'm going to noodle around Education for a few turns. Once that's done, we're going to go nab Banking(moar monies!) before soildifing our position as monsters with Gunpowder.

 

We're still too far behind Rome for my liking, but once we get Education then I can probably take a breather on unit production and put my massive production line to use in 'producing' Science. Since we're pretty much in the lead there, that should help us catch up.

[silencer_pl]

You show them who is boss around here.

[Sunflash]

I have GOT to stop playing. The backlog is going to MURDER me.

[Thorondor]

"You may notice he doesn't have any combat information listed. That's because Great Generals are NOT combat units. They're supposed to hang back under protection of the other units (...)"

 

So what happened to the "They lead the charge into battle" bit?

 

::

 

Stop playing? Are you out of your mind? We're supposed to be winning!

[silencer_pl]

Yes, you don't want Zombie to visit you - do you ?

[Sunflash]

So what happened to the "They lead the charge into battle" bit?

 

::

 

Hey I didn't write the story!

 

Stop playing? Are you out of your mind? We're supposed to be winning!

Yes, you don't want Zombie to visit you - do you ?

 

 

You maniacs! I meant I've got such a backlog of information to catch up on that I really need to stop playing long enough to let the thread catchup.

 

 

One of those "I am enjoying this particular game too much" situations.

[Space Voyager]

Also known as "one more turn syndrome". Yeah, been there, done that.

[Sunflash]

Also known as "one more turn syndrome". Yeah, been there, done that.

 

Or as is more commonly known at my house, "Just until I stomp whatshisface into the dirt."

 

 

Speaking of smashing things into dirt, here we see Mediolanum almost completly smashed(we also see one of my ships managing to narrowly avoid being smashed itself). The goal here is to go ahead and and capture this city, raze it to the ground, then move on. We don't really have the happiness right now to support even another puppet-city, and that's not that great a city spot anyway. I think I'll probably let most of my troops heal up while the ships(and probably a longbowman) goes and wipes Circei off the planet, and save the real strength for Ravenna.

 

I've managed to scrimp and save and deal like a madman, so the gold situation isn't killing me at this point; however it DOES limit my force deployment. I think, however, that as long as I control the sea between Rome and London, we should be able to make do with our limited amount of troops.

 

 

Another amusing quote. Civ has always been full of them.

 

Civil Service is a very nice little tech. Roads give a bit faster movement, farms in the right places give a bit more food, and most importantly are the Pikemen. Their main draw is a fierce counter to mounted units; but in a game like this where there is little large space for a mounted unit, they're most useful as their secondary draw: They dont' really have a weakness. They're stronger than Swordsmen, don't require a resource like Iron to build, and their tech is generally eaiser to get to than Steel(for Longswordsmen, the Swordsman upgrade). Not fantastic units, but a very good core unit.

 

Doubt we'll make much use of them, however, as we need the highest damage available(and we're /this/ close to Longswordsmen) for offense and our defense consists of "Blowing them out of the water before they make landfall".

 

Quick, someone bring me some graham crackers and chocolate and marshmellows!

 

Time to set a city on fire! The large unhappiness hit will bring everything screeching to a halt, but luckily it'll only last for about 7 turns or so before we're back to 'normal'. Not 'acceptable' mind you, just 'normal'. Still need to find more happiness resources somewhere, ugh.

 

 

Oh hey I almost forgot about this guy.

 

Well, in the sense of "Wait we're still at war?" forgotten, anyway.

He orignally offered just under 200 gold, but I was looking for a more long-term solution to my gold issues. He actually refused this 10-gold offer, but did accept 5-gold per turn. Stringy punk, you've got over 60 a turn. Still, not a bad result considering I never actually did anything to him.

 

 

And now we come to the 'Kings' part of 'Gods & Kings'

 

Well, one aspect of it at any rate.

 

SPIES! No, sadly, none of them are called either Elizabeth II OR Daniel Craig. I checked.

Also no mention of jumping out of helicopters or anything for that matter. BOOOOOORING.

 

So how do Spies work? Well I've only got a general idea of it at this point, but here's what I've figured out.

You've got three real options: Defense in one of your cities, Sneaky-Beaky in one of your opposing Civ's cities, or Sneaky-Beaky in a City-State.

 

Defense, of course, attempts to foil other spies who are operating in that city; while being all kinds of sneaky in an opposing city means, in GENERAL, you're trying to steal tech. Both of these are based off the city-in-question's Potential, which is fancy-pants talk for 'the more research a city produces the better chance you'll have of stealing Tech'.

You'll sometimes come across neat tidbits as well, such as "Such and such is plotting a sneak attack on so and so!"; at which point you get to decide "Okay do I tell so-and-so, or would I rather Such-and-such launch that attack and then take advantage of the situation?".

All kinds of fun.

City-states work differently. Instead of trying to steal tech, or random battle plans, you instead 'rig elections'. Every x number of turns(I want to say 14 but I'm not sure), City-states hold these elections that your spy can try to rig. If they are successful, your influence with said city-state will increase while /everyone-else's/ will drop. Quite a handy tool.

 

 

Being English as we are, we get a second spy. This leads to an interesting tid-bit: We can actually have our own defense spy staying all cozy in London and defending from hostile spies(well, trying at any rate) while ALSO being sneaky-beaky with our other spy at the same time.

Knowing that Rome is the tech-leader at this time, and also knowing that he PROBABLY has his spy playing defense in Rome; I opt for the second-best option and send our spy to Antium. Not as high a potential as Rome, but since there's not a defending spy there I don't think we can actually have our spy die, even if he fails.

 

 

Moving on: The usual happens with Germany, we make peace and then two turns later...

 

I'm not to be trusted, you weasel? At least I'm not a bleedin fool! Cripes.

 

Our ships continue to trade shots with coastal Roman cities, and it finally pays off.

 

Great Admirals are, as expected, the sea-borne varients of the Great General. Instead of building a tile improvement, however, burning up an Admiral will instead give his hex and all adjacent hexes a full heal. VERY nice way to keep a fleet at operating strength in hostile waters, doubly since ships can NOT heal outside of your borders without a certain promotion/upgrade that takes a good deal of time to get.

 

 

Rome attempts a counter-attack whilst my troops gather on the shore for departure.

 

Well, I guess that's what its supposed to be. Hard to tell, what with the whole "Argh our ships fall apart like cheap toys" disease they have going on. Shame, that.

[silencer_pl]

You forgot to mention that spies have 3 levels of experience. Each time they steal a tech or murder enemy spy they rise in rank thus increasing their performance. And the election in city state isn't based on speed of the game ? Also in city states a spy can make a coup. For example if you and someone else is allied with such city state you can make a coup to reduce it's support for other country. The catch is - your spy can be caught and executed. The success of such operation is based on how much support you have, how much support enemy has, the skill of agent.

 

Spies have teleportation devices in their rear ends since relocating them to any city no matter map size or tech level takes 1 turn, but they first need to do some surveillance job to begin operation.

[Sunflash]

THOUGHT I WAS DEAD, EH?

 

Not quite, but between GW2, Minecraft, and JA2(made the mistake of re-reading M-Team so I had to go bother Arulco again); I've been a bit busy. Luckily I've still got a backlog of CiV updates to make so I can keep bothering things without getting sucked back into Sid's masterpiece.

 

As you can see from Silencer's post, he's dabbled in the art of backstabbing a good deal more than I have; and this is why:

 

 

I have NO paitence. 62 turns to steal a tech?! Argh, I must be trying to sneak in with a big sign stuck on the back of my shirt that says "I'M A SPY, SHOOT ME!"

 

In happier news, it's time for another social policy! Determined to push my naval advantage as much as I possibly can, I opt to open the Commerce tree.

Free Great Admiral, +1 movement for all sea ships, and +1 sight for combat ships? Yesplz.

 

Turn 276, let's take another gander the ole demographic list shall we?

 

Holding it together, more or less. Rome is still top dog in everything that counts, but I'm right on his heels. Once I start hitting his mainland cities, he'll topple over like a house of cards made out of cookie-crumbs.

 

Research Agreement!

 

These are interesting. You can no longer flat-out trade Techs in CiV. Instead, you can opt to do one of these little do-dads: Pay so much money up front, and after so-many turns(I forget the exact number) you AND your partner will get a very nice boost to your research. I want to say it's based on the amount of research you and your comrade generate during the wait, but I can't be certain. Will have to look it up again later.

 

Germany and Rome buddy up, and next turn we get the ability to buff up our science output. Gonnna be nifty!

 

Of interesting note is the University building. Not only does it add some amount of Science, but every Jungle tile worked by that city will also give extra science itself(two per tile, I think?). Makes the age-old practice of burning every jungle you can get your hands on a bit of a "no longer the best idea" thing.

 

Peace with Germany ends, though he seems content to sit on his laurels for a while yet.

Rome and France of all people make a declaration of friendship(CURSED FRENCHMEN), and since our declaration with France just ran out we renew ours. Trying real hard to keep France at bay, since he's right behind us in the score list. Dunno how strong he is, but still.

Greece renews our Pearls-for-Copper deal, and complains off-handly that we're friends with France. Whatever.

 

Techs are chugging along, ever so slowly. Going to bang out Chivarly then Banking(because banking requires honor?) before burning for Gunpowder(ho ho ho).

 

After that it's probably straight on to Navigation, because I can't wait to get my grubby paws on some Ships-of-the-Line. Watery graves for EVERYONE!

 

 

Circe is healing for 22 damage a turn, whilst the Longbowman is dealing 25 damage a turn.

This could take a while.

 

So I decide to speed things up a little.

Won't be able to stay long, since that ship doesn't have a range of three and is therefore within range of the town's defenses. Still, can at least take a shot or two before having to retreat.

 

This works out fairly well, as about six turns later:

 

Buuurrrrnnnn.

No, really. I'm not so needy for cities that I need one in the middle of nowhere, only last turn did we recover the happiness from burning the first city.

 

I realize Rome'll probably try to rebuild there as soon as we go to peace, but still. Will cost him another settler at least. Anything to be annoying!

 

Ah, good ole King Aruther.

May have to rename a Great General that, or something. Only fitting I suppose.

 

Okay, I HATE spies.

Don't know which punk did that. Probably Ethiopia. Maybe.

Bah. Dumb spies.

 

Time to invade!

 

Woops, that didn't go near as well as I'd hoped. Had more pikemen nearby than I thought. That hurt, lost a swordsman. Bah.

I decide to pull back and heal back up before trying another angle.

 

Ceaser decides to try to counter attack. By launching a longswordsman and a pikeman into ships and trying to rush across the water.

That was not the best plan.

 

 

Sorry about the formatting ugliness. Had to do this update at work in Wordpad; and apparently Wordpad A) Defaults to 10-point font and doesn't tell you, and B) copy-pasta didn't really save most of the effort. Too tired/busy to fix it all though!

　

[silencer_pl]

I think it is fixed time depending on time speed - I think that in Marathon speed it takes 90 turns to complete scientific agreement but I think there is an exploit there. Declare scientific partnership then declare a war - you should finish the partnership with success at least I think it has worked for me when AI decided to be a smart ass.

 

About the spies - yeah sometimes you get a luck roll - I even had a level 3 spy protecting a city with the first protection building and a spy stole a tech from that city and I didn't know who was it .

 

Rome probably puts a city there since from Civ 3 AI knows where all the strategic resources are located even if they don't know what they are (well you don't know he does).

[Sunflash]

 

BOOM!

 

And just like, I'm back! Hi guys! Let's just right into this mess, shall we?

 

 

The list of World Wonders reveals a dead heat among the top four:

 

Honestly thought I was far behind someone, but apparently this game is turning into something of an even match. Could be interesting!

 

Ceaser asks for peace. After I get done with the laughing fit, I point out the window:

 

I told him he could have peace if he gave me Ravenna. He said no.

 

So we'll just go take it from him.

 

In other news, Ethiopia continues to try my paitence.

 

I have no idea what he thinks he is doing, but the next time I get some free turns I am smashing him to pulp. Annoying creature!

 

 

TOLD YOU I WOULD HAVE IT, CEASER!

 

Muhahaha. And now we have a foothold on Rome's side of this bizarre island. Easier healing and quick upgrades? SUCK IT.

The downside is puppeting Ravenna hurts our Happiness like ow. We're currently sitting at -4, which means our cities only grow at 1/4 speed again. Not CRIPPLING, but something we need to fix. Again.

 

I hate happiness.

 

 

Ceaser, infuriated by the loss of one of his cities, pulls the big sticks out.

(The fact that he can suddenly reach a target with all his land forces has nothign to do with the swarm, I'm sure! )

Sadly he shows a startling lack of foresight, and has led the assult with his archers.

 

Oh well, free xp I suppose!

 

Elsewhere in the empire kingdom, a Great Merchant is born! Not currently hurting for gold, the decision is made to opt for the tile-improvment ability: A Custom's House!

 

+5 gold a turn(I think, need to check again)? Yes please.

 

 

Back to the war:

 

 

And for whatever insane reason, Ceaser REFUSES to pull his archers off the front lines. Nevermind the fact he tried to be sneaky in plain view of one of my ships:

 

He's not very good at this.

 

 

SO, up to turn 300 in this madhouse. Here's another look at the world's DEMO-GRAPHICS:

 

Little bit of give and take. Up in some areas(Land and Goods, mostly) and down in others. Still, top of the overall score chart AND holding our own against Ceaser? I'm quite happy.

[Thorondor]

Caesar is having a day off? Well, blimey if we don't mind.

 

::

 

Oooh, and brownie points for the 'bullet time' screencap of those archers. Didn't know they had that tech back then.

[silencer_pl]

Come on ol' boy ol' chap - let's get down to world domination shall we ?

[Sunflash]

But, but...XCom... D:

[Sunflash]

I have about two, two and a half updates worth of pictures and junk; but the wedding is soaking up most of my energy. (Yes, Silencer, I know I've been gaming. That's a different type of energy, thanks.)

[silencer_pl]

You would have been excused if you would play XCOM but you didn't (just joking).