By 1070AD the wonder cascade had been broken and I was in good shape to get the remaining ones. Cairo was working on Magellan's, which was the only wonder in play at the time, and I was on target to finish it before the requisite techs for any another wonders were discovered. In 1100AD, my gold per turn deal with France expired and I took advantage of that fact to declare war on the country. France had planted a colony just outside my borders, and I thought I would use it as a chance to fish for a leader. Imagine my surprise when I actually got one!
This picture has been lost.Well, there was no question about what to use this leader on. I had already snapped the cascade, so there was no reason to use it on a wonder. It was time to form an army and enable the Heroic Epic - and the Military Academy too; even 1 culture/turn couldn't hurt! I loaded up several Ansars into the army right away, only to find myself with an unexpected problem; there were no enemy units to gain a victory against! I ended up waiting for a number of turns until France finally landed some measly units in one of the typical AI pathetic naval invasions; in 1160AD a swordsman was landed and I got my desired victory. Peace was signed in 1180AD, signifying the end of a highly profitable war.
Magellan's finished on schedule in Cairo in 1190AD; the city again went back onto a prebuild for its next wonder (Shakespeare's if everything went according to plan). This game was practically on cruise control - except for the fact that everyone else detested me and could declare war at the drop of a pin. Here was my civ in 1250AD:
Three of my five cities were on wealth because there was nothing to build (you can, in fact, kill yourself with too many unit costs when you have only five cities) and the additional income from having cities run wealth was not insignificant (about 30 gpt at this point). Baghdad, which already had Copernicus, is prebuilding for Newton's and Cairo is using the Heroic Epic to prebuild for Shakespeare's. I was not about to give the AI civs much of a chance at either one. More importantly, here was my F5 cultural screen at the same date:
This is pretty much the order my cities have been in the whole game, except that Mecca (still with no wonders) has finally begun to fall behind some of the other cities. That was a good sign, since it had started out with such a big advantage to start; if I had put an early wonder in Mecca, it was unlikely any other city would have caught up to it in culture. I hadn't decided yet where to put the Heroic Epic, though it looked like I would have to put it in Mecca to keep the capital from being completely overtaken.
Of course not everything could go perfectly. France treacherously sneak-attacked me in 1280AD, well before the 20 turns from our previous war was over, and I had to deal with the extremely irritating attempts of their frigates to bombard my tile improvements for quite a while. Their sneak attack did send my cities to a 100% happiness rate for my entire civ, which is the first time I ever seen that feat. Then France signed Caesar to an alliance against me in 1305AD; 4 turns and 4 razed cities later, a somewhat chastised Rome made peace with me. I finally got peace with France in 1325AD, trading for Metallurgy in the deal.
France was now in the Industrial Age, and with both Rome and Egypt hopelessly far behind, I was in the worst of all possible situations for a tech race; in the position of having to buy at second civ monopoly prices to stay caught up, and unable to trade away luxuries or gold per turn either. Hoo boy, this could be tough to do with only five cities; let's see what happens. Baghdad finished Newton's in 1330AD and Cairo Shakespeare's in 1360AD; I followed France into the Industrial Age in 1365AD. In the new age, I saw that France had chosen to go for Nationalism first. Ha! Bad decision Joanie; all alone on their own island, defense was the last thing that France needed to worry about. I went for Medicine at max rate; Steam Power was not that important to my cause in this game, but Sanitation and Hospitals were. I would have to get my cities to size 21 and use all of their tiles as fast as possible to keep up with France in research; otherwise, I might end up losing the space race to the AI. And that's NEVER happened to me before!
Mecca built the Heroic Epic in 1410AD. A few turns later I discovered Medicine and traded it to France with 300g for Steam Power. I had two coal sources, not surprising with all the territory that I had, and so with no wonders in production (finally), I dropped into a one-turn anarchy to become a Democracy. The next turn my workers went to town railing my territory. In 1455AD I was dismayed to hear that France had started work on Suffrage (no!) in London (yes!) Why Joanie had chosen to work on the wonder in a 90% corrupt city is beyond me, but I wasn't about to complain. Of course the issue became moot a few turns later when France tried to sneak-attack me again, in the course of which I got another leader:
Of course I didn't really need another leader at this point; as usual, they pop up when you don't care about them and won't appear when there is a desperate need. The war started in 1465AD with France's sneak-attack. It continued on and on and on, with megetting more and more irritated by the completely useless bombarding attacks from French frigates and ironclads. Joan just would NOT make peace, despite the fact that anyone could see that her attacks were useless. France still wasn't talking in 1525AD, but at that date the hopeless Egyptians somehow got a hold of Industrialization and I traded for it, rushing Suffrage the next turn in Baghdad.
I finally was able to get peace with France in 1545AD; I had to pay them for peace, but at this point I was so irritated by their useless bombarding, I was willing to do just about anything! (What an interesting AI strategy; carry out pointless irritation attacks until the player is so fed up he'll give you anything to stop!) After discovering Sanitation and quickly putting hospitals in every city (and then quickly worker-merging them up to the size 18-20 range), I found I was able to keep pace with France and discover techs about every 6 or 7 turns. Electricity was discovered in 1570AD and I traded it to France for The Corporation and some gold. Scientific Method was discovered in 1600AD, and I had Theory of Evolution timed to complete the next turn in Medina. Take a look at my civ at that point, with the game pretty close to finished:
This picture has been lost.Now that the game was coming to a close, it was Mecca and Medina which were lagging behind in culture; I made up for this by putting ToE in Medina and Hoover's in Mecca (which is using the Battlefield Medicine as a prebuild, of course). I continued making some trades, like Electronics to France for Replaceable Parts in 1610AD, and generally tried to play out the game to its conclusion as fast as possible. It was becoming boring by this point; the endless AI sneak-attacks became tiresome very fast, especially now that I just wanted to finish the game. Mecca made up for its cultural lag by building the Military Academy, Intelligence Agency, and Battlefield Medicine in rapid succession, since it could just top 100 shields/turn once it had a factory and power plant if I ran a slight food deficit. When I finished the Intelligence Agency in 1670AD, I noted that all five of my cities were over 5000 culture; what a great showing! I had hoped to do this well, but things really had played out nicely.
Then in 1685AD Egypt decided to make things more difficult by up and sneak-attacking me out of the blue. Their attack on Baghdad failed miserably, of course, but it meant more moving units around and dealing with their attacks (sigh). At least I got a leader on the first turn of the war, which I used to insta-rush Battlefield Medicine in Mecca and get myself an extra 5 points of culture compared to if I had built it by hand. (Now why couldn't you have popped for me earlier, when I needed you?!) I razed six of Egypt's cities (including Istanbul) over the next few turns and Cleo was ready to make peace in 1710AD. I really wish that the AI civs would have just gotten the point that I couldn't be beaten. But no, they alway returned to do more fighting, and since I had to raze all cities rather than capturing them they could always refound more cities. It was frustrating, to say the least.
I actually managed to play a number of turns in peace after the Egyptian war, but in 1756AD France landed more units on more soil in their THIRD sneak-attack. Did I mention this was getting irritating? OK, look Joanie, let me make this clear again: you CANNOT beat me. Got it? Bombarding desert and jungle railroads on the edges of my civ does not hurt me. Now please, just leave me the hell alone for the last 20 turns of this game! But, of course, it was not to be. At least I was able to trade Motorized Transportation for Flight before asking France to leave my territory and getting the war declaration. I entered the Modern Age in 1756AD.
Then, set against this backdrop of frustration, Caesar demanded Scientific Method from me in 1764AD. I should have just given in, but... I was not in a good mood at all, so I refused and Caesar declared war. BIG mistake. Something in me just snapped at the time; all I wanted was to play out this game until 1802AD and then end it, but the AI civs just were not going to let me do that. And then Rome had the GALL to demand technology from me? The AI civs obviously were only going to recognize brute force, so I sadly hardened my heart and resolved to finish this once and for all. It's over for you Gaius; if ever there was an appropriate time for the phrase, this was it: you chose unwisely.
11 turns and many razed cities later, I had wiped the Romans off the face of the earth. Total extinction. I hope you're happy now Caesar; you made me waste two more hours of my time finishing you off in a completely useless war. The only good thing to come out of it was another leader, who rushed SETI in Medina (in last place on culture) in 1774AD. Let the record show that even on the final turn of the war against Rome, when I had a dozen tanks outside their final city, they would not talk to me and give peace. So be it. France finally agreed to peace in 1782AD, and this era of pointless warfaring came to an end.
Do you understand now why I wasn't anxious to play this one out to the foregone conclusion of a space race after 1802AD? :) Go to the next page for the ending details.
