At the conclusion of Epic 5, I understood why Monty is such a nut case in standard games - he doesn't know how to fish and is ticked off at people who do - thus the mad rush to try and eliminate them. The one major restriction for Epic 5 was that we could not learn the tech fishing. There was also a late change to rule out steam power - thus eliminating all sailing craft from the game. The full details can be found here at Realms Beyond.
With no fishing or steam power, the following techs are not available:
- sailing
- steam power
- calendar (due to sailing)
- compass (due to sailing)
- astronomey (due to calendar)
- (Ed: oh enough of this list stuff ...)
Hmmn - no infantry, no tanks, no ships (goes without saying), no planes. I guess modern warfare is out. Not only can Monty not fish, he is also closed off from a lot of tech. The plan for this game is to show how Monty should go about being a nut case and attacking his good buddies. The biggest downside of 'No Sailing' is the loss of Calendar and the resources that you can improve with that tech. It means a lot of lost happy pills. A sub-plan is to wait until the AIs have researched that Tech and have the happy pills from those resourses (even though I don't know how to build the improvements) then just take the improved resources away from them. The plus side is that Stonehenge will never get obsoleted (is that a word?).
Action Plan
- Found Religion
- Spread Religion and Tech to Iron Working
- Wipe out person who is my closest friend with swarm of Jaguars
- Spread Religion and Tech to Construction
- Get other two fighting
- Wipe out person who is my closest friend with swarm of Jaguars and Cats
- Tech to Steel
- Wipe our remaining person with Swarm of Cannons
I set the research to Polytheism and the build to Stonehenge and set the population to work max commerce. In 3760BC, my borders expand and I set the population to work the wheat (3 food and 1 commerce). I meet Gandhi (3880BC), Elizabeth (3760BC) and Alexander (3730BC). In 3520BC, I found Hinduism - Step 1 complete.
I set the tech to Mining and finally work out how this works in 3280BC - I then set sail for Copper Working (Ed: When the author says "Set Sail" I am sure that he doesn't mean sailing, he just means that he selected Copper Working for his next tech). As soon as my city hits size 2, I swap over to a worker. In 3190BC, Gandhi founds Buddhism. I check the turn count for Agriculture (9) and swap away from Copper Working when my worker turn count is 8. In that way, my worker will be in location (on the wheat) just as we work out how to actually farm it).
The tech gets set back to Copper Working and I finally decide that I should build a warrior. Once the warrior is completed, I start a Settler and send the Warrior to the choke point on my penisular. The worker builds a farm on the grasslands near the river. I learn Copper Working in 2440BC, The Wheel in 2170BC, Priesthood in 1810BC and Pottery in 1630BC (Ed: enough of the silly tech detail - we want fun, action, excitement and typical nut-case Monty actions!).
In 2050BC, I found my second city near the Copper ...
My worker then goes on a chopping blitz (I also have some luck with a few forests growing near Tenochtitlan). Stonehenge is completed in 1450BC.
After Stonehenge, I set the build to the Oracle for the Civil Service sling shot (guess I should get my techs in place for when the Oracle completes). With a few timely chops and hammer tiles maximized, I bring in the Oracle in 970BC.
For my free tech, I select Iron Working ... yes, what a nut case Monty is ... all these other techs that he could have selected and he selects Iron Working!
Iron is found ... oh, who cares ... we can build Jaguars without Iron! A barb city forms in the Jungle (how lucky is that - just where I was going to put my next city), between my two cities and the Jaguars get some free training in city taking ...
I spent some time with three cities and was able to tech along fairly well. I also was getting along well with Gandhi, Liz and Alex. Actually, in the back ground, I was trying to get Alex to attack Gandhi but he just wouldn't be in it. My cities were also pumping out Jaguars for the attack against ... hmmn ... Gandhi or Lizzie? I went with Lizzie because she was leading in score and needed to be taken down a peg or two and she had some plantations on some special resources that I longed for. The war started in around 70BC. My approach was to sweep down the East, taking some cities, razing others and then head West to London. Lizzie was making things difficult for me with her horse archers - she had two sources of horses (say that three times fast) and I was having difficulty pillaging both of them.
I don't have any pictures of the first battle (I thought I did), so here is a picture of another significant event ... I guess my Step 3 didn't work out as I had hoped, but at least I have finished Step 4b.
The battle against Lizzie continues and I make full use of my cats and her forest - being able to walk all the way to the front door protecting my stack with a Woodsman II Jaguar or two.
On to London. I had fantastic luck at York with 5 suicide cats that forget the suicide part - yup - five cats in a row withdrew - that is what I call luck! Unfortunately, I didn't get a screen shot of that, but I did get a screen shot of the 3 out of 5 that withdrew at London - whoo hoo ...
A few turns later, Oxford falls and the English civilization is no more ...
I had been trying to get Alex to attack Gandhi with no luck. I shall keep working on that. In the mean time, my delayed attack of the English had let them build plantations on a number of key resources - something that I couldn't do with my lack of Calendar. I even had more than I needed and could trade for more happy pills.
Alex wouldn't attack Gandhi just because I asked him to - he had to think that it was his plan. In 1274, he took Bangalore. This might be a problem as I needed that space to reach my domination threashold. In the following picture, you can actually see Bangalore burning during its revolt stage - first time that I actually noticed this.
I contacted Alex and asked him to sign peace with Gandhi. Yes, that's
right, first I want him to attack Gandhi and then when he does, I ask him to
stop. My hope was that the would just tie themselves up in a war - build
units, lose units but not actually capture cities. When Alex started to
push into Gandhi's land I had to ask him to stop. These were cities that
I wanted to take from Gandhi, not from Alex.
Well, Step 6 was actually Step 3. I guess I will have to repeat but throw
in Elephants too. My first war with Gandhi netted me Madras and another useless desert city with
Iron - prefer that resource in my hands thanks. Alex then made another
push on Gandhi taking Calcutta.
It was about this time that I discovered Civil Service enabling Bureaucracy - a
very important civic for me as my capital was my major source of income (gold
income from religion really saved my bacon in this game - more later). I
joined in the frey against Gandhi taking Delhi
and finishing Gandhi off for good a few turns later. Gandhi had built the
pyramids so I was also able to swap to
This is my usual game plan - get a higher tech unit and go smash up on the
low-tech army. Cats and Cannons really do a lot of collateral damage and
typically form part of my game plan. After the passing of Gandhi, I spent
some time teching and building units that I could use to support cannons.
I actually got sick of this and just decided to take the few percentage points
that I needed for domination without cannons.
Cross out cannons and put in SODs. The three or four cities that I needed actually fell fairly easily and I had my domination win in 1732. Another situation where I should / could have pushed instead of waiting.
Alex was actually lucky that domination was on the cards, for he was close to losing two more cities. After they fell, it would have been a quick march straight down his lands.
As per normal in my games (well, in all my epic games so far), my GNP sucked big time ...
I cannot wait for Adventure 9 when I get to learn how to get out of these situations.