530AD     The Mature Iroquois Civilization


As the title indicates, I had developed a very productive civ by 530AD. The cities around my two cores had most of the important city improvements in them, and I was well on my way to out-producing the much larger AI civs. This was nothing short of a miracle given the rather poor starting position, but the ability to irrigate and build railroads can really work wonders on turning unproductive terrain into useful tiles. Here was the full civilization at this time:

Irrigation would work wonders over the next few centuries in the St. Regis area, turning worthless desert and plains into highly productive food producing regions. I've also managed at this point to put some more cities in the west as the formerly Roman area was cleared by attacking English forces. Chondote has an excellent location that is actually close enough to my Forbidden Palace in Mauch Chunk to be productive, once I put a courthouse there. Gandasetaigon is sitting on an incense luxury, where a former Roman city once sat. Thanks Elizabeth! That incense was immediately traded away for a good 20gpt and put towards buying more tech.

I continued peacefully developing over the next few centuries, as the AI civs flew through the industrial age techs and I struggled to keep up. The worst was when Russia researched one tech and Persia a different one; they would then trade each other their techs even up and go on to new ones. I could keep up when the AI civs researched the same tech; when they researched different ones I would fall a little more behind. It was... nerve racking. If my game had gone on this way too much longer I would have gone into depression of some kind. But fortunately I did the whole game in a week, so no worries here! But also not something I'm eager to go through again for a while.

My income forunately increased apace with the increased cost of techs. Unfortunately, as the turns continued to roll by with no slowdown to the AI research pace and myself always right around 2-3 techs behind, I realized that I was not going to be able to build the UN. My whole goal was a diplomatic victory; any kind of military victory was out, the other civs laughed at my culture, and I was NOT going to go through the hassel of trying to keep up on tech for another 10 techs to build the spaceship first. My relations with every other civ were extremely good, as I had done enormous amounts of trading the whole game; I was guaranteed a diplo victory if I could build the UN. But that meant being caught up on tech, and I realized around 700AD that I needed to take steps to ensure that would happen.

There is only one way to slow down the AI on Deity in their insane tech pace, and that is through wafare. I decided around 700AD I needed to get Russia, the world's tech monster, into a huge war that would slow their research to a crawl and allow my tiny civ to catch up and steal the UN. The only problem was that I had spearmen defending all my cities, and Russia had literally dozens of infantry walking around in my territory. It didn't help that they were all veterans thanks to Russia controlling Sun Tzu's either. I would need allies - more than allies, I would have to orchestrate a worldwide alliance against Russia if Persia or Japan weren't going to build the UN instead of Russia. And I would have to do my part to defend what I had against the vast Russian army.

Thus it was that about this time I began a large military buildup. Salamanca was the only city with a barracks, so I set it to build infantry while several other cities began artillery. I needed to defend two fronts: the Tyendenaga region in the south and the Centralia region in the east. Akwesasne I couldn't possibly defend, so I just left it as it was. These two cities I turned into forrtresses, with 5 infantry and a good 7 artillery in each, defended by city walls and with a barracks in each for quick recoveries. My target date for war was 950AD, which I planned to observe scrupiously. Here is what my civ looked like gearing up for war in 830AD:

You can see I have all of 1 unit in production. Pretty sad, huh? But in all honesty I needed those banks so I could continue buying techs, and I wouldn't switch over to military units until after they were done. It was rather difficult to get forces to Centralia, since it was cut off from me by Russian territory, but I managed. You can see though how much irrigation there is in my second core though, which was finally allowing some growth to take place.

In 930AD, the AI civs entered the modern age. I was missing Flight, Radio, Mass Production, and Motorized Transportation at this point, plus whatever tech Russia had gotten for free upon entering the modern age. I was praying it was the useless Rocketry and not Fission or Computers. This only reaffirmed by decision that war was necessary. When 950AD rolled around two turns later, I was ready to throw my civ into the ultimate gamble: war against the mightiest foe in the world.