Well I had survived an AI sneak attack, on Deity, in the Middle Ages when I was utterly unprepared to fight a war. No, more than just survived, I had expanded and captured a critical city site that gained me four luxuries and the bloc of territory where my penninsula jutted into the rest of the continent. Here's the full-screen image of my territory in 460AD:
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To be honest, I'm still shocked I managed to get this much land. I now had enough territory to stand an excellent chance to win the game, just so long as I was able to hold onto it. Tlacopan brought me a tresure trove of wines, which I sorely needed in my luxury-deprived starting position. Yeah, in addition to terrible land and no resources there was only one luxury anywhere remotely close to the starting spot. This was just a tough spot all around.
Now you can see I was back on full infrastructure mode again in my cities. But it's also painfully obvious that I was backwards on my overall city and civ development. It's 460AD and my core cities still lack basic improvements like marketplaces and aqueducts. That's pretty bad. To make matters worse, the food-poor starting position combined with frequent interludes of warfare that disrupted by building projects had left me critically short of workers. I would normally had tried to offset this by buying some from the AI civs, but that was off the table in this game. There was just no place that I could pump out workers rapidly; Swazi was finally set up as a worker factory, but that didn't occur until the AD years. I only had about 10 workers when this picture was taken - far, far too few. But where could I pump them out from? Aye, there's the rub. The warfare that I had first needed to secure Neapolis and then was forced upon me by the Aztecs, combined with the overall poor state of my land, had left me far behind of the curve of where I should be in city development. The thing I most needed now was a long peaceful interlude to work on this and catch up to the AI civs.
You can see in the above screenshot that I still lacked Feudalism in 460AD. That was pretty bad, as the tech leaders were somewhere around Astronomy at this time. Through trading away my excess luxuries for techs, I was able to acquire the basic Middle Ages techs by 660AD. It wasn't until 710AD that I was able to get the fully revealed world map (though of course I had known the basic extent of the world long before that). I place a very high priority on map information, so that should tell you something about the seriousness of my position in this game. Everything was just a brutal struggle for survival. On the positive side, the F11 screen shockingly said that I was 4th in land area - someone was smaller than me! (It was France.) Wooo! That pretty much meant I had enough land to stand a chance to pull out a victory. My Forbidden Palace completed in Ngome in 740AD:
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Naturally this changed my cities across the bay from useless colonial holdings into a productive second core. 740AD is a bit later than I like to get the Forbidden Palace built, but I think it's understandable given that I didn't even found Ngome until 270BC. A lot was going on at this point in time; my FP completed in 740AD, and on the next turn the English aggressively settled in a spot 2 tiles from there current city of Rome to steal a dyes away from me. I had avoided settling there to avoid irritating them, and I had never seen an AI city placed so close to another one. The dye they stole from me sent a bunch of cities into disorder, since the other three were going to other civs (leaving me with none; I did NOT trade away my last one, it was taken away from me). And, also in 750AD, I notice the Aztecs making these moves around me:
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Oh no. You can see what's coming here. Monty wants those dyes back and he is coming for me right now. And he now has cavalry too - I have no defenders better than pikes. This was not good at all. Well, I might as well make the most of the situation. I get Invention (longbows!) and Theology from Monty in return for all of my gpt, then ask him to leave my territory. My goodness, he declared war! Never saw that coming. ;) It was once again time for Lizzie to save me from the big, bad Aztecs. She was willing to sign an alliance with me for a pittance of gold. The Second Aztec War was underfoot.
Once again, I should state that this was a war I emphatically did not want to fight. I needed to develop my land, not divert production into military units! But if the choice was to build units or die... well then, order up some longbows for me. I planned to teach Monty a lesson this time not to mess with the Zulus. Although I myself might not be very strong, I have some powerful allies. Naturally Tlacopan was going to be toast though; just look at all those units coming after it. And at the moment, my only attacking units were still archers - which could NOT be upgraded to longbows per the rules of the game (sigh). Depite this fact, the majority of those Aztec units turned around and headed in the other direction as soon as the next turn began. Wowzers! Saved again by the faulty AI targeting system that prioritized going after closer English cities rather than walking into my pitifully weak cities that were further away. Or something like that. As it was, I had my hands full with the trickle of knights and cavalry that wandered up my direction.
I had one chance to get a significant gain from this war. If you'll look at the top map, you can see the presence of the Aztec colony of Cempoala very close to my Forbidden Palace city of Ngome. It was useless to the Aztecs, but would be highly productive for me. And since it had been cut off from their home cities the whole game, it would be defended only by spearmen and not muskets. I moved the three archers I had in the region over there to try and capture it, defending them with an impi. And just as I was getting there, an English cav killed two spears in the city, leaving only one remaining that my three archers working together managed to take out. Cempoala was mine in 790AD! Taken with archers that late in a Deity game, no less. How cool is that?
In 820AD the rest of the world popped into the Industrial Age - I was nowhere close. BUT, offsetting that bad news, was the knowledge that F11 provided telling me that I was now up to third in land area. Not bad at all for a game where I started on a frozen popsicle! In 930AD France jumped in with England against the Aztecs, and the Iroquois soon followed. It was the official "pile on the losing civ" tactic in progress. The Aztecs were hurting badly too, as England's cavs continued to roll through their cities one by one getting closer and closer to their capital. I, on the other hand, made peace with Azteca as soon as I could do so honorably (950AD) and prepared to grab some more territory as the English razed Aztec cities. I grabbed another one to the south of Tlacopan that picked up another saltpeter resource, which was completely unnecessary but still nice. Here was the picture in 1000AD:
I was really rolling now. Plenty of territory, infrastructure push in full swing, and the rest of the AI civs at war. Frankly, I still can't believe I reached such a favorable position under the restictions of the game, but it certainly was exciting to be in this great shape. Although I was still far behind technologically and in terms of city development compared to the AI civs, given time I would certainly pull ahead of them and be in a position to win the game. England popped out of the war versus the Aztecs in 1040AD, but jumped back into it again in 1190AD. It was clear that this would be the end of Monty, whose state was exhuasted from incessant warfare and sadly lacking in development. What a change from the Montezuma of 250AD, who had dominated my continent and stood far above every other civ! I had settlers ready to sneak into positions of razed cities.
I myself had entered the Industrial Age in 1170AD (a full 35 turns after the AI civs) and traded for Steam Power in 1230AD. It would seem that despite all my land, I did not have any coal anywhere in my territory. The Iroquois had no fewer than 3 sources, 2 of them on tiny islands next to their homeland. I was able to get some from them of course, but the resources card again was not kind to this starting position. Was there ANYTHING of value where we started? I made due. The Aztecs lost their capital in 1230AD, and they were being cut up simultaneously by the English advancing over the land and the Iroquois dropping off cavalry by ship in their backline cities. It was all over for them. Monty was killed off in 1270AD. I had outlived my longtime foe and stood in a great position to win the game. Now onto the industrial age!
