1150BC     Frustration Continues; I Need Culture!


My corner of the world looked like this after the first 3000 or so years had gone by:

In addition to Osaka, Tokyo, and Edo, I had managed to found two other cities and had more settlers on the way. Of course so too did the other civs, as you can see in the mountains near my capital. Satsuma was located entirely in jungle to start - except that it could grab a grasslands wheat once it got a temple. I let it grow to size 2 by setting the worker onto the lake tile, then whipped the temple. After that, it produced workers for ages that spread throughout the rest of my civ. Kagoshima locked down an iron resource, controlled three wheats, and was also on the coast: an excellent location for a city with a planned Forbidden Palace in Tokyo. You can also see the borders I would have with the other civs for quite some time to come; Persia was a bit closer than I would have liked but I had done alright. Even with my purchasing of workers from Persia, they still had knocked Egypt back pretty far and even captured Thebes at one point (before 2500BC, apparently). If I had not slowed them down, they may have crushed Egypt entirely - not a good thought. It should be interesting to see what happened to others.

This was not a good game for my nerves. While it was fortunate indeed that most of the unsettled land was near me and not the other civs, to get there they had to walk right by my capital. A war of any kind would have been disastrous for me, with foreign units all over my territory. I also was very worried about culture flips, as I didn't have enough cities to afford losing even one to a flip. Fortunately, religious civs can whip out a temple even in a completely corrupt town in just 10 turns, provided the town reaches size 2 in that span. I whipped out a number of temples in high food/high corruption areas in order to get ahead on the cultural battle. It proved to be extremely effective in the long run.

See the horses to the northwest of Tokyo? I had been pushing a settler up there as fast as possible and trying to blockade foreign settlers in the hopes of getting to it first. Unfortunately the Chinese settled one turn before I could in the area I wanted (my note for this says "Damn it!") Losing races by one turn always hurts, since you almost certainly could have gotten the site if you had planned things better. I'm sure that held true in this case as well. As a result, I founded Nagoya in 825BC in a location where it was almost certain to flip, but could potentially grab the horses if its cultural border could win a struggle with the Chinese city. Hey, for a resource I needed it was worth trying. On the next turn in 800BC Persia founded an embassy in my capital(!) Hey X-man, didn't know you cared! ;) On a more practical note, I learned that China and Persia were at war.

730BC saw this rather strange event: a Chinese leader wandering around unescorted out in the middle of the northern wilderness. What was Mao thinking!

In 690BC I finally saw a trade route open up to the other civs. Persia had been a bit slow in building roads through their territory. *ahem* I sent out my dyes and some cash for three techs. 1.29f is certainly a lot different from 1.21f though, when a couple luxuries would get you all of the techs up to the industrial age. I must say that I like the current version much better though, as it just makes for a better game.

The AI civs on my island entered the Middle Ages in 630BC, which is awfully late for a Deity game. Considering that they had been at war with one another for most of the game though, that wasn't too bad. I was.... not very close to the next age. With no oportunity to broker contacts, or world maps, or anything for that matter, I was 7 techs away from the next era. That didn't bother me too much though, as I would be able to catch up as time progressed and as the AI civs began to separate in the tech race. I had been running several min science strategies since it was cheaper to buy techs than research them myself. I first researched Alphabet over 40 turns, then Literature, and finally Republic. Not my normal strategy, but it worked well enough. In any case, here was the overall map of my territory a bit later along in the game, in 590BC:

This image has been lost.

You can see that I had no real hopes of ever holding onto Nagoya - it was under way too much risk of a cultural flip. But there was a small chance that it could take that horse resource, so... Nara grabbed an iron resource and was sitting on an incense luxury. It too was in a less-than secure spot culturally, but sometimes you just can't get perfect sites. I made due with what I could grab. I now had 4 iron resources at this point, which meant that SOMEONE else had to be lacking the stuff. Of course no one else on my island lacked it, though Persia's source was right on my border. Izumo was a fishing town of course, and I put another one in the jungles to the northwest of Edo. And.... that was it. I had six real cities (though several of them were buried under jungle), two fishing towns, and two colonies. With this small force, I would have to set out to conquer the world. It was not the most appealing prospect.

Contact was made with Bismarck in 410BC - not by me of course, but I bought it from Egypt. Apparently Bis was isolated, because he was even further back on tech than I was! I got a tech or two from him and secured his world map; the Germans were on a small island to the southwest of the one I was on. They lacked iron, but naturally I couldn't trade it to them without a trade route. Why couldn't he have iron and Xerxes be lacking it! Oh well. Due to the harshness of the land around my capital (and my insistence on cutting down jungle rather than building a road over it), I didn't connect up my ivory until 370BC. Yep - the top half of my territory had been unconnected the whole time. I sent the excess ones away for more techs of course, putting me only two away from the Middle Ages. I didn't actually enter the next era until 90BC though, at which time I estimate I was 3-4 techs behind the leaders. There actually had been some peace for a while in the late BC years (just look at the last screenie to see China and Persia on the move), but in 10BC Persia declared war on China and opened up a new era in the game, one of even more violent battle as everyone fought one another... in my territory.