Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

With my 1st expansion phase complete, it was time to put my head down and get some techs under my belt. I had to dial down my commerce to science rate to 0% (in fact, it stayed at 0% for 95% of the balance of the game). My capital was put on a worker spam and, thanks to landing the Hagia Sophia, I had teams of 3 workers swarming over the jungle just chopping it away with other workers coming through and farming, roading, improving. My cities where also set on 'growth'. I landed Philo and flipped that around for Civil Service, Machinery and Feudalism (had to throw about 50g per tech in) which is a pretty good haul for a peaceful tech.

I saw some different things that people did with all of the GPs, Rushing Wonders, lightbulbing techs, kicking off GAs. What did I do with mine? I settled each and everyone (sans first GS for Academy in capital) in my capital. This provided lots of beakers but, more importantly, it provided hammers to my capital. At the end, it was able to build wonders in a pretty reasonable time frame. At one stage, I had my capital building the Mausoleum of Maussollos (10 turns) while my Wonder city built The Taj Mahal (13).

Lizzie was able to tech pretty well and she was racing me for Liberalism. I decided to complete Nationalism prior to completing Liberalism. So, I start on Liberalism and I can do it in 6 turns at break even (which is 0% science at -1 gold per turn!). I had to sell some of my older techs for cash as I was burning 200g per turn running 100% science. The gold allows me to tech at 30% (-42gpt) and finish Liberalism in 4 turns (same as Lizzie). I watch her tech rate closely and complete it the turn before she would have - mwah! I pick ...

... so that I can build Jails for the extra EPs (not a particularly strong reason). At this point, I notice that both Ragnar and Hammurabi are WHEOOHs. I check the glance screen and work out that they are both preparing for a future war against each other (I think). Sure enough, Ragnar does declare on Hammurabi and asks me to join in (I accept). My military consists of 1 axe near the front line and that is about it. Hammurabi sends an incredible stack of non-doom against me and I sign a peace deal with him 5 turns later. The stack? 1 stray catapult that I kill. Here you can see the results of my 3-headed jungle chopping hydras - the grassland is slowly being revealed. I've also set my cities to grow again and started to build the second round of settlers for my back yard (North East). You will also notice some additional information in the scoreboard.

• the green '+21' is my score delta - it has gone up 4 points from the start of the prior turn
• The 0.5 with the strong arm represents my strength v the AIs (less than 1 - they are stronger is my preferred display option)
• a smilie for attitude
• the number right at the end is the number of cities that each AI has - a very useful guide to tell you when you are falling behind

There are others that come and go ... war and peace treaty indicators, WHEOOHs indicator, vassal / master, etc.

Meanwhile, Willem has built the Hindu AP and I have buttered up Cyrus, Ragnar and Peter to get them all to Friendly. I easily take the AP leadership and then propose a vote for victory. Here is what the BUG enhanced AP Member screen is predicting ...

The displayed voting decisions are based on the displayed attitudes (Friendly, Pleased, etc) while the actual voting decisions are based on the true attitudes (as per the undisclosed modifies mentioned elsewhere). As such, the BUG predictions can be wrong and we show that by including the usual 'margin of error'.

Sure enough, the actual results basically reflect the BUG predictions ...

So, that is my diplo victory condition met. Now to check how to score this ...

Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so. If you want to be scored, you need to document (via screenshot or saved games) all items that you claim for score, in case we call on you to verify any of your claims. For this game, you can take care of the scoring with a single screenshot.

Score one point for each vote cast in your favor in the United Nations diplomatic victory vote. Your own votes and those cast by other civilizations thus count equally here; you can run up a high score through building up your own population, through making friends with other civs, or through conquering other civs and absorbing their territory. Or a mixture of all of the above! Note that there are no variant restrictions on declaring war, although you are subject to this game's strict limits on military units.

To prevent lategame score milking, you must submit your UN diplo vote score before 1925AD. You may still submit a score after this date, however you will lose 1% for every year that passes. For example, a score submitted in 1950AD will subtract 25% from the total. There is no bonus for achieving an in-game diplo victory.

Oh bum! This is what happens when you play the game 3 weeks after reading the rules. I score a big fat zero!