This is an Epic. A full sized EPIC! Only time victory is available so it will be a long, long game. It is also on a HUGE(!) map which will make it seem even longer. Details of the game can be found here at Realms Beyond.
I played my first set in this game back on January 14th (its now March 12th). I have trouble remembering what I did yesterday, let alone 2 months ago. My typical play / reporting style is to take lots of screenshots (only took 371 for this game - other games typically max out in the low 200s) and then write my report based on screenshot fueled memory recall.
Unfortunately, for this game, I don't think that my usual method will work that well. Thus, my reporting style will be slightly different for this game - its broken down into the following areas:
- Initial Game Plan
- First 3 cities
- Blood Enemy
- Initial Contact with other Continent
- Great Opportunity
- Sans Blood Enemy
- Cultural Pressure
- Navel Forces
- Nukes
- Scoring
- Mistakes and Other Items
Once those are in place, I'll spam cities to grab as much land as I can. I'll also have to start AI relationships and tech towards grabbing the circumnavigation bonus and met the other continent.
Next stage is to determine who draws the short straw and becomes my Blood Enemy (maybe on other continent so that I can grab land there without the 'invasion' penalty) and start teching towards the cultural corporations.
Final stage is to play the always-peace cultural push to take land from the AIs, squeeze in cities on valid tiles and keep taking tiles. Ideally, this will net me the majority of tiles on my land mass and, coupled with taking out my future Blood Enemy on the other land mass, allow me to grab a chunk of tiles there too.
During the final stage, build enough military to scare off any attack and / or suitable punish a war declaration mistake. I am expecting to fight some large scale navel battles somewhere in the future.
Here is my capital (pic from 2050). I chopped grassland forests and farmed them. I chopped the hills and mined them. I farmed the flood plains. This city was set up to grow, work high hammer tiles most of the time (to build wonders) and to tech via Great Scientists. With lumber mills and dykes, this city really took off. Wow, look at all of those settled Great Engineers - I had forgotten doing that.
New York
My financial center - New York. It has my primary religion (Confuciasm) and both of my Corporations. I didn't fully cottage this site either, prefering to retain some strong hammer tiles for spamming executives. This was also my early game settler / worker pump with lots of high food and hammer tiles. During the city spam stage, this city was alternating between growing to max size, building a settler and building a worker.
Boston
This is my military pump city. Once it built the Heroic Epic, it was on an almost permanent military build. Looking at it now, I don't know how it got that town there (oops) but all grassland was farmed, nearly all plains were work-shopped (I actually had to farm two plains tiles to generate enough pre-corporation food. I also popped a late game gold (NE of city tile) that robbed me of a few base hammers (don't you hate it when that happens).
I was pretty lucky with my scouting warrior in that he popped a few huts that awarded 5XPs - thus I had a warrior with the Woody III promotion very early. This opened up the Heroic Epic even before I got the tech. It also set up a mini-game of trying to get that mythical of all beasts ... a Woody III, Medic III super healing unit.
In 900AD, I discover Optics and send out two Caravels to find the other continent. I find Julius Ceasar (1120AD), Elizabeth (1130AD), Shaka (1230AD), Bismark (1230AD) and Catherine (1270AD).
These guys are a mess. JC is currently at war with Shaka, Catherine is at war with Elizabeth. Let me see if I can summarize the relationships.
- Julius Ceasar
- Elizabeth (Annoyed)
- Shaka (Furious)
- Bismark (Pleased)
- Catherine (Pleased)
- Elizabeth
- Julius Ceasar (Annoyed)
- Shaka (Annoyed)
- Bismark (Pleased)
- Catherine (Annoyed)
- Shaka
- Julius Ceasar (Furious)
- Elizabeth (Annoyed)
- Bismark (Annoyed)
- Catherine (Pleased)
- Bismark
- Julius Ceasar (Pleased)
- Elizabeth (Pleased)
- Shaka (Annoyed)
- Catherine (Friendly)
- Catherine
- Julius Ceasar (Cautious)
- Elizabeth (Furious)
- Shaka (Cautious)
- Bismark (Pleased)
There is a huge mass of unclaimed land in the South West of the other land mass. Shaka and JC are currently going at it so they are not expanding into this region. I beeline astronomy and send some forces over to capture a very nice size 10 barbarian city with iron and a bunch of developed cottages.
Thus starts another expansion phase. It also means that I don't have to select one of the other continent's AIs as my Blood Enemy.
In the end, Saladin become my Worst Enemy so we might have to say goodbye to his nice green color. I get to start Operation Sans Blood Enemy. Its a battle of artillary fueled infantry (later tanks) against Muskets and Grenadier. So, basically, less of a contest than normal. It starts by him declaring on me in 1685 (Turn 247) and me killing him of on 1812 (Turn 276). Honestly, I don't know what he was thinking by declaring on me. Look at our power graph! You'll also see where Catherine splattered her units.
This war also had a little mini-game ... hide and seek. I had a couple of privateers causing some usual mischief and gathering some nice XP. They got a little injured and then Saladin pops out some frigates ... so it was time for "Run Away!!!". Unfortunately, AI units have a visibility range equal to their movement range. So, I have to move my privateers well out of range of these chasing units. This means taking a looped path back to my territory.
