Ruff_Hi's Antics

All Happiness is the Release of Internal Pressure

 
Game Report: Sooooo's - All The World is a Stage (5/6)

 
... until, finally, artistic power burst through!

I think this picture says it all. For me to win this, it will be a very long grind, modern warfare (which I hate) and simply too much time. No clear path has presented itself yet ... I'll just have to make to and see what turns up.

I start courthouses up and down the country with the aim of putting the forbidden palace in Paris. However, most of my costs are in my standing army. I spread that out to bust fog and thus control the Barbarians. I set my tech path to techs that the AI doesn't have and also try to bring in some happiness (drama / music).

I met Huayna Capac in 1505AD and Washington in 1535AD. I'm hoping for points for the last person to meet all the AIs. Mansa finally gets astronomy and I trade one of my stone resources for wine, incense & cow for ivory (need more happiness). With my discovery of Music, I notice that Notre Dame hasn't been claimed. I have a lazy Great Engineer laying around (the others have lightbulbed tech along the way) and he rushes this wonder (artist points plus happiness - things are starting to look up). Mansa gives me back that 200 gold that I lent him earlier plus Monarchy for music.

And then two things happen, one that I was waiting for and one that I wasn't.

One flipp'n tile of fog and, bingo, barbarian archer with no close good unit to take care of him. I scramble a sword towards York but he pillages a worthless farm (those farms are from my automated workers - did I mention that I hate some of the micro management this game forces on us. I'mm willing to put up with wasted worker cycles if it means that I don't have to answer pesky questions from these guys all the time).

Anyway, less gripe, more game. I'm still waiting for something to turn up regarding victory, My small part of the world finally has some religion so I guess I will be pushing for a cultural victory. I am starting this very late but lets see how I get on. I take a tour through my cities and decide that London, Nottingham and Paris will be my three legendary cities. Here is a snap shot of Paris (also a GP farm) set up to produce Great Artists.

One thing to keep in mind when trying for a cultural victory is that you don't get attacked when you start falling behind in tech. There are no madmen in this game (thank you sooooo) like Alex, Mondy, Khan etc so that shouldn't be much of a problem. Here is the latest international relations position.

You will notice that Huayna Capac and Washington don't really get on. In fact, we had a series of wars between the two all game long. Another option to help protect you is to sign a Defensive Pact ... I signed one with Huayna that he cancelled by attacking Washington some time later. I then signed one with Mansa that lasted until the end of the game.

Here is the last bit of military action that I got involved in ... I don't remember getting gunpowder but I think that I must have for the Barbarians to be able to build riflemen.

In the end, five of the seven religions spread to me. I took numerous screenshots of the religious advisor but none of them came out (is that a bug)? I swapped to Universal Suffrage, turned off the tech research and build stacks of various missionaries to spread the religion and then cash rush temples to open up the religious culture multipliers. I will add up the temples that I build when I calculate my score for this game.

My three legendary candidates had 5 religions (+250% culture), I was in Free Speech (+100% culture) and one city had The Hermitage (+100%). I had also settled some Great Artists early and bombed some too. After all the required temples were cash rushed, I turned up the culture slider and started to press enter a lot of times. In fact, this game finished while I was downstairs cooking potatoes, carrots and broccoli for my dogs (these guys sometimes eat better than me ... well, not true because they get the same meal over and over again while I have a mixture of dinners ... jam on toast one day, honey the next and sliced tomatoes the third). Anyway, here is a snapshot where Paris and Nottingham will go Legendary next turn. Unfortunately, London is a good 5 turns away.

But no, I had found a city that was set to product a Great Artist, rushed two (just to be sure) Jewish missionaries there (+100% GPPs) that I have overlooked earlier, generated the Great Artist 6 turns prior but then had to transport him to London ... all in all, he arrived in the nick of time ...

Scoring ... part I

Total Plus Points = 20 + 12*3 + 3*3 + 2*13 = 91

Scoring ... part II

First Points ... unknown (Edit: Zero!).

Scoring ... part III (Illegal Actions)

Total Illigal actions that I remember ... 180 ... minus 1800 points!

Total points = -1709

I think that I anti-milked the scoring system!