This game was starting to look suspiciously like Epic14. I was again playing as the Greeks, and I was again going to get a lot of trouble from Rome. The difference was that this was an Emperor game, and I was in a weaker position here than I had been in the Always War game. I could defend against just about anything with my hoplites, but since I did not have any horses or iron connected as yet, I couldn't build any units better than archers. As I said, it was going to be interesting. Here was the map from 730BC:
At the time of this conflict, Rome was the largest and strongest civ in the world. Notice that my backlands were still not filled in with cities; I was clearly not done expanding when this war hit me. I had aggressive settlements in Thermopylae and Argos, so I suppose I should have seen this one coming. Notice how woefully unprepared I am nonetheless; in order to put more defenders in Thermopylae and Sparta, the cities I expected to get the most action in the conflict, I have had to pull all defenders out of Athens. Those barbarians you see were to be a serious pain in the course of fighting this war, since I didn't have the units to go and deal with them.
Back to the narrative. Rome was producing more of those awful legions (I'm really coming to detest those things), so the top priority became pillaging their iron and sticking a hoplite on it permanently. I should also mention that a legion killed one of my warriors in 730BC, thus triggering a golden age for them if they hadn't already triggered one. You can see the hoplite I have going to pillage Rome's iron in the tile to the west of Thermopylae. There is a legion standing on Rome's only iron source in this picture. Shockingly, on the very next turn, before I could pillage it Rome's iron MOVED!
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Now that is what I call lucky! Rome would NEVER get another iron source in this game, or the opportunity to trade for one. They only built a handful of legions before losing their iron supply; this game would have turned out to be considerably more difficult if that had not happened. Also note that the 730BC picture was taken after loading from an autosave; you can tell because all of the units are facing the same way, to the southeast. The vast majority of the pictures I take are done in-game, so they don't experience that tendency, as you can see in the 710BC pic. But what a wonderful turn of fortune for me! If I couldn't attack with anything better than archers, neither could Caesar now.
In 690BC a Roman unit suicided itself on one of my hoplites and triggered a largely useless Golden Age; that's the one disadvantage of that great unit. A massive barbarian uprising was triggered in 650BC, meaning that one of the AI civs had entered the Middle Ages. Well great, that's just what I need at this point, two dozen barbs spilling out of those camps to irritate me further. Since I was going to lose whatever gold I had to them and couldn't use it to rush things under despotism, I figured I might as well make some tech deals. Polytheism from the Irouois for 115g + 2gpt. Currency from Azteca for Polytheism + 10g + 3gpt. I enter the Middle Ages as well, drawing Monotheism as my freebie tech, which I sold for some decent money - though, as stated, I lost most of that when barbs sacked Knossus.
By 550BC, I realized that the war I was fighting was going nowhere. My goal had been to recapture Delphi and secure peace, but I realized I wasn't going to be able to do even that. Caesar had immediately whipped a spear in that town, and I didn't have the forces to take it back. I needed to finish settling the open territory behind me and put together a credible attack force, and I couldn't do that while at war. So in 550BC I swallowed my pride and signed peace with Rome. I had to give away Currency to get peace, but I also grabbed a Roman worker in the deal. I had also pillaged Rome's core pretty well, but the hoplites that were deep in Roman territory were dying and needed to be pulled out. It was the right time to get peace. I was not about to forget what had happened though; this peace was going to be used to rebuild and attack Rome once more. Here was the 550BC map:
This map was the high-water mark of Roman power and the low point of my game. I had been forced to accept a humiliating peace and lost one of my cities, without accomplishing anything in return other than killing a bunch of units and pillaging a bunch of tiles. This war went badly because I was woefully unprepared for it. But now I had taken Caesar's best punch, and he had been unable to knock me out of the fight. The time for revenge was coming... I acquired The Republic in 510BC from the Aztecs, but held off on a revolution because of my Golden Age; a golden age in despotism is still better than one in anarchy. Rome continued making foolish decisions; rather than building up his forces and repairing the damage I had done to him in the war, Caesar went to war with the Iroquois in 450BC. Keep it up, Gaius...
Mycenae was founded in 410BC in a spot that dispersed the northern barb camp that had been troubling me for ages. It was just a fishing town, but it grabbed another wines luxury for me as well. Herakleia was built in 350BC as a first-ring city with a bit of overlap with Athens, but it reclaimed a ton of wasted tiles and also had a coastal location. I probably should have put a city there sooner, as it was a good location hindered only by lacking a freshwater site. Ephesus was founded in 290BC on the penninsula to the extreme east of my contient, another fishing town that would quietly contribute loads of commerce to my territory. I had finally finished filling in my backlands with cities, and now I could concentrate on building up my army to attack. I revolted to Republic as well in 290BC, since my golden age ended that turn, and drew a merciless 7-turn anarchy. Ouch.
I finally came out of the anarchy as a Republic in 150BC. That turn saw the fullfillment of my plan: iron was connected and 9 warriors were upgraded to swords. They began moving into position on the next turn. In 110BC, I dialed up Caesar and honorably declared war on the Romans. It was time for some payback! 70BC saw Delphi rightfully reacquired by a detachment of swords, and a surprise bonus as well: the forces I moved to Antium took it without incident as well! That was unusually good news, since there had been a legion (one of the few remaining) defending that city. After moving my units around a bit and healing injured swords, I captured Ravenna as well from Caesar, and the Romans were now in Big Trouble. With no iron, no allies, and notoriously poor city management, the Romans were in retreat on all fronts. Compare this map from 50AD to the one of 600 years earlier when I made peace the first time:
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With hoplites in all my cities and a SOD of about 10 swords ready to move on Roman cities, I was in good shape. In 190AD Caesar again proved his stupidity by declaring war on Germany (not the other way around). What an idiot! But that turn also saw some RNG stupidity, as a regular horse attacked and killed a veteran hoplite in Delphi, so that I again lost the city. What are the odds of that? Grrrr... Even more maddening was that I had a sword only two tiles away from Delphi, so I confidentally expected to kill the horse and recpature the city right back. But Caesar used the odd way that production is calculated for the AI civs to capture Delphi and whip a spear there all in one turn (!) That's because the turn order goes like this: player turn, AI civ turns, player production phase, AI production phase. Thus, they can capture a city and whip a unit there before you get a chance to respond. It's like a player using the instant military exploit; highly frustrating when you expect to capture a city right back. I was NOT happy when I saw this. My notes have a few unpleasant words in them that I won't repeat here. :)
But it didn't matter in the end. I gathered 4 swords and took Delphi back easily in 230AD. It was mine again, for the last time I hoped. Meanwhile, protected by a hoplite, my sword SOD was advancing towards the greatest prize of this war: the city of Rome itself. My attack on Rome in 250AD came 1hp on a spear short of taking the city (arrrg!) So I attacked with my hoplite... and again lost. Why doesn't that ever seem to work for me? Was this attack going to fail as well, like my attack on that one Roman city in Epic14? Fortunately not; Rome fell on the next turn:
Alright! I had really needed that one. With my position dangerously exposed, I now used the fact that the AI only considers the current situation and not the likely course of future events to get a highly sastisfying peace treaty. Caesar ceded me Feudalism, Engineering, and the city of Pompeii for 20 turns of peace. I had fallen behind a bit in tech as a result of my warmongering, so now I traded Engineering and Feudalism to the Iroquois for Theology and Monarchy. I would push infrastructure for 20 turns and then crush Rome once and for all. Here was my situation in 270AD:
I think that map looks a little bit better than the 550BC one, don't you? :) Notice how behind I was in basic infrastructure; Athens didn't even have a library! And Greece is a scientific civ! Fighting had definitely slowed down the tech progress and my internal development, but that was going to be speeded up quite a bit from this point on. Also notice the atrociously poor state of Roman culture; now that their capital has fallen, you can see that their other cities all lack even 10 culture for a border expansion.
In 350AD the Zulus also jumped into the war against Rome. Remember that the Germans were already at war with Rome, and had been so for some time. I had a scare in 430AD when my iron supply jumped up and moved out of my territory. First Rome and now me; it looked like all of the iron anywhere even remotely close to me had left for greener pastures. I needed to claim another supply and quickly; eventually I founded a half-city next to Antium to claim iron that popped up on the mountain to its west.
By 460AD Caesar was almost dead, and had been carved up pretty nicely by the Germans. But in 470AD, my twenty turns of peace with Rome were up. I called up Caesar again and declared war once again, with the intent of finishing the job. Time to die Caesar! Mwahaha... Veii fell immediately in 480AD. Then it was just a matter of moving my swords into position, and in 500AD I achieved this result:
A thousand years of more or less constant conflict were now over. Rome's aggressiveness towards me had bought them their own destruction, and I now stood heads and shoulders above the AI civs. With plenty of room to expand and tons of infrastructure to work on, the game settled back into a more relaxed pace. The tech rate had slipped and great slowed down while I was absorbed in fighting, but I intended to speed it up a great deal from this point on, and to see if I could snag some wonders while I was at it.
