International Communist Conspiracy (Civ4 BTS AAR)

[Lagom Lite]

International Communist Conspiracy (Civ4 BTS AAR)

Map: Fractal
World Size: Standard
Climate: Rocky
Sea Level: Medium

Difficulty: Emperor
Game Speed: Epic
Leader: Stalin of Russia (Starts with Hunting and Mining)

Spoiler:

The object of this game is to try to maximize Production (hammers). I will try to build as many cities as possible that specialize in production. The exception is my capital, which will be a commerce-based Super Science city, and of course if I find a good spot for a city with access to commerce-generating luxury goods, such as Gold.

Stalin is Aggressive and Industrious.

Aggressive gives melee and gunpowder units a free promotion, and discounts to building Barracks and Drydock. I definitely want to warmonger to make the most of this trait.

Industrious gives discounts to Wonders and the Forge improvement. I normally stay away from Wonders since building wonders prevent me from building military, but it will be nice to have something to fall back on between wars.

Starting position:

Spoiler:

This is a great start. We have access to a luxury (Gold), a Wonder resource (Marble) and lots of flood plains to cottage. I might get some problems with Health because of the floodplains, so I’ll keep from chopping too many forests for now.

I’m building a worker, researching Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry to build a pasture on the Pig and see if there are any Horses about.

Spoiler:

I’ve met de Gaulle of the French to the southeast. He’s boxed away in cold tundra so I’m betting he won’t be much trouble. I’ve met Mansa Musa’s scout, Mali must be somewhere to the north or west. Mansa is dangerous if unchecked since he’s Financial and builds cottages like there’s no tomorrow – a likely target for my first invasion. I think I’ll befriend de Gaulle for now.

There is no Horse in my starting city, but there is one to the east. I’ll place my second city there. There is also Stone to the east, pity it’s so close to the French border. I found a Silver deposit far to the south in the tundra, I’ll try to hook it up if nothing better comes along.

[Freezer-TPF-]

That's a great start, particularly since you already start with Mining. That gold is going to turbocharge your early research. Plus you're Industrious, with marble and stone nearby. Nice.

IIRC, Mansa is a very willing trading partner (I think he'll trade just about anything though he will often ask for a lot in return) and usually not much of a military threat, so I'd probably leave him be unless I really needed his real estate. But I've never played a game on Emperor, so that may change things as all the AIs tech faster.

[Lagom Lite]

Another stroke of luck gives us Copper within our capital:

Spoiler:

This means we can soon start our crusade, but who will we attack? The area north and west of us turns out to be uninhabited jungle, so Mansa Musa must be farther away than we thought. This means we will have to introduce France to our ideas of equality and solidarity, and if they refuse to see it our way, well, we’ll just have to force them!

Even though we now have access to superior units, we build a city to hook up the Horse resource, mostly to prevent de Gaulle from building Axemen-countering Chariots. Stalingrad is founded 2575 BC.

De Gaulle has built the Great Wall, which will add nicely to our empire once we’ve transformed Paris into a socialist paradise.

Spoiler:

With a basic Axeman defense force built, we’ve hooked up Marble and is working on The Temple of Artemis. With +150% production bonus, it’s going to complete quickly, giving us a free Priest and +100% trade route yield (early on, this basically means +1 commerce or +2 if we get Open Borders and Trade Routes to another civ, which is pretty neglible - but the Priest means we'll get early Great People which is important).We will build the Oracle shortly thereafter to get Code of Laws, followed by our Axeman invasion army. There is little point in building more settlers yet, our population will soon be booming through other means.

[Lagom Lite]

The Temple of Artemis is constructed in Moscow in 1475 BC.

Spoiler:

The Oracle is constructed in Stalingrad in 1300 BC. We’ve found Confucianism! Since Mansa is Jewish, we’ll hold off on converting to it on the chance that Mansa sends us Jewish missionaries.

Spoiler:

Upon discovering Writing, we signed Open Borders with both Mansa Musa and de Gaulle, the former for trade and friendship, the latter for mapping out their landscape before we attack! It turns out de Gaulle has neither Copper nor Horses.

Since we found Confucianism, we send out our free missionary to Paris. De Gaulle has no religion, hopefully he will convert his cities himself so we won’t have to after we invade. It also sows distrust between de Gaulle and Mansa, who is Jewish, making it so Mansa won't mind if I attack France.

De Gaulle completes the Pyramids in 1125 BC. It turns out they were the ones who built Stonehenge as well. Excellent, I’m glad we didn’t make an early Axeman rush. Now we really have no excuse not to pilfer France.

In 825 BC, Mansa Musa sends a Jewish missionary to us. I’ve now begun tech trading, and since I’ve decided to invade France for their territory and Wonders I convert to Mansa’s faith: Judaism.

We will soon invade, this is France before the invasion:

Spoiler:

Two things stand out: Paris has Archers on a Hill and +60% Cultural defense (the drawback of waiting to invade). We’ll need LOTS of Axemen to take Paris – at least ten or fifteen. The good thing is, we have two or three Axemen that already has some combat experience from fighting barbarian units, an of course Stalin is Aggressive which give all our Axes Combat I.

The other thing is, there is a deposit of Iron just to the west of the French border. We must keep this resource from de Gaulle at all costs. If he tries to build a city on it, we must destroy it at once or this war will be much more difficult.

Coming up: The Liberation of France!

[Freezer-TPF-]

Paris looks like an ideal great person farm, with primo wonders as well. Très excellent!

[Grey Fox]

Paris could also be a future Draft city with Globe Theatre.

[Exodor]

I love these Civ4 AARs. I've been playing Civ since the original (I've still got the 5.25" floppies because I can't bear to throw them out) but I'm usually too chicken to play on anything tougher than Noble.

I also like putting the screenshots in spoilers to avoid breaking the margins. Very nice!

[Lagom Lite]

Great Prophet Mani is born! All hail Mani! We use him to build the Kong Miao in Stalingrad:

Spoiler:

Kong Miao spreads Confucianism automatically and gives us +1 Gold per city that has it. We have now started our offensive on France. De Gaulle was trying to connect that Iron deposit by building Rheims, and we can’t have that! We quickly destroy Rheims and take Paris. Paris is renamed Paris Commune. De Gaulle is a real Wonder-addict, he’s even burned a Great Spy to construct Scotland Yard, a pointless Wonder this early in the game:

Spoiler:

Notice how +100% of zero is still zero? (To be fair, he had his Palace in Paris which generates +2 Espionage points, but it would still have been a better idea to just camp the Spy there as a Super Specialist).

We overrun Orleans and Lyons. France is destroyed! Orleans is renamed ”Freezer-TPF-”, Lyons is renamed ”Dreadnought” (I hope it’s alright with you!). We change Civics to Organized Religion so we can start spreading the Jewish faith, and get that +25% Production on building Courthouses and Barracks.

France after the invasion:

Spoiler:

On a lower diffculty level, this game could almost be said to be won already. We have five cities and a large army. But as it happens we’re playing on Emperor difficulty and for all we know there could be four angry civs on another continent spouting Macemen already! We can’t relax, but we must not over-expand either. Time for some peace.

Next up, we’re going to rebuild France, settle the area around Moscow and then decide what to do about Mansa Musa. So far we’re keeping up with him tech-wise since we’ve been lucky with Wonder resources and the Great Prophet. Mansa likes us since we switched to his faith, so he’ll be a loyal trading partner as long as we can keep up with him. If we can’t keep up, we might consider spying on him instead...

Note: Thanks for your comments! I am listening to your advice, although I'll play the game my way (I am a commie dictator after all ). If you want your name or handle in the game, just say so and I'll try to include you - either as a city or as a Great General or something.

[Freezer-TPF-]

Are you building that Settler to grab the iron/silver?

[The Meal]

Really enjoying this AAR (though I'm bummed that work blocks the location where you're storing the images -- so no following along until I get home). Feel free to toss my name in there somewhere.

[Lagom Lite]

Are you building that Settler to grab the iron/silver?

Maybe, I haven't done a post-war analysis yet. Either that or the small area to the northwest, there are great production sites there. I'm at the happiness cap in both Moscow and Stalingrad but I'll switch to Representation shortly to alleviate the happiness as well as building Forges. I'm not in a hurry to get Iron right now, but I'll probably settle down there to get the Silver anyway, there are food resources and the commerce from Silver is nice.

We'll see, we'll see... Sooner or later I'll get the Silver, it's a given.

[DCL]

I love these Civ4 AARs. I've been playing Civ since the original (I've still got the 5.25" floppies because I can't bear to throw them out) but I'm usually too chicken to play on anything tougher than Noble.

I also like putting the screenshots in spoilers to avoid breaking the margins. Very nice!

I can't beat anything better then noble. The BTS ai is tough! It's always interesting to me to watch people play at the higher levels so I can see how they do it because I sure can't...

[Grey Fox]

I kinda like it cold, and I like meat, so no complaining about the location for my name

[Archinerd]

I have no advice, as I am terrible at this game but love it anyway. I just hope you don't get bored with the AAR, I'd like to see you finish the game... as that is something I'm never able to do. I usually get bored shortly after circumnavigating the globe. Maybe you could do that though? I love +1 ship movement.

[Lagom Lite]

I have no advice, as I am terrible at this game but love it anyway. I just hope you don't get bored with the AAR, I'd like to see you finish the game... as that is something I'm never able to do. I usually get bored shortly after circumnavigating the globe. Maybe you could do that though? I love +1 ship movement.

Don't worry, I'll finish what I've started. Right now RL work is pushing me around (and the cat, and gf trying to get me to qi gong) so don't expect an update before the weekend (unless I find some time tonight). I usually get bored when I reach the "shuffling millions of tanks around" stage, but by then victory is at hand anyway and there's no reason not to finish!

Re: circumnavigation, I won't count on being the first to prove the earth round, since the AI techs faster that means they'll send out those Caravels before I do. There's a trick to it though: You build one Caravel on the west coast and one on the east, and send them off in their respective direction... When they meet each other's meridian the event is triggered.

[Grey Fox]

That, plus you can build Triremes, have 100 gold at Optics, upgrade them. Then when they meet people, buy their maps if you can (though without trading partners you are probably going to be behind, though Mansa likes to trade, but will he trade if you are the only one he knows?). You don't have to prove the world round by actually going round it. As long as your maps can prove it first!

[Lagom Lite]

With the Pyramids in our hands, we change our Government civic to Representation. Representation gives us +3 happiness in our five largest cities as well as +3 beakers for any specialist. We stay in Slavery for now, we have no immediate use for Caste System yet and we may have to whip some improvements. Later, we will switch to Caste System for the bonus to workshops.

We make sure we have Granaries, Courthouses and Forges in every city. We don’t need Monuments since we now get them for free from Stonehenge. Select cities get Libraries if they have some commerce and maybe Aqueducts if they have problems with poor health.

Stalingrad, where the Kong Miao is, is the only city where we will build a Grocery, Market and Bank. If we need cash in the future we will simply build Wealth in our Production cities, since building Wealth is modified by Production improvements only (Forges, Factories). It saves us quite a bit of building and grants some flexibility. The downside is that Hammers are harder to come by than Commerce – economies specialized in Commerce tend to generate more ”pure” coins to distribute. But who cares! We won’t fall victim to their capitalist wiles!

Barbarian Galleys have been a nuisance since the very first Civilization game, and Civ4 BTS is no exception:

Spoiler:

Luckily, we are researching Metal Casting which allows us to build anti-Galley Triremes. Shoo! Pity the Great Wall doesn’t close off the ocean from attacks. I really hate building a navy that I know I won’t use for anything but defense against barbarian ships – every unit we build counts toward the total unit tally and winds up costing 1 gold per turn. But, it’s necessary. The citizens of Paris demand tasty crab dinners and pearl necklaces. Filthy decadents!

This is the area northwest of Moscow:

Spoiler:

As you can see, there is a barbarian city in there, which is awesome news – an idle army is a costly army! We raze and pillage it – we might get into financial difficuties if we keep the city since it’s so far away from our capital and our coffers are already strained. Later, we find another barbarian city which we promptly raze as well.

The Meal is founded in 305 BC. It’s our first city that features Iron and will be an awesome production site with coastline and access to food:

Spoiler:

Siberia is founded in 50 BC. The bonus to Commerce and Happiness from Silver will surely keep the proles entertained (and less likely to start demanding Pepsi and Cable-TV):

Spoiler:

We have stumbled upon Mali’s borders – they are far, far away from ours so we’ll play nice with Mansa for now.

Coming up: More peaceful expansion as we spy, tech trade and map out future military targets of the unwitting Malinese!

[Grey Fox]

With only 1280 wide resolution I lose some part of those spoilered screens.
(Just noticed that I can see them all here when posting cause I don't get the left part of the posts )

[Lagom Lite]

Just to give you an idea of how fast Mansa Musa techs:

Spoiler:

This is right after we discover Metal Casting – and he’s only 11 turns away from discovering Feudalism, giving him Longbowmen and destroying any chance we have of invading with our old Axemen.

We trade Metal Casting to Mansa for Mathematics and some gold since we need aqueducts badly in some of our cities. We assign a few spy specialists to boost our espionage – hopefully we can steal some techs from Mansa in the future. Each Spy Specialist gives +4 Espionage and +4 Science (because we run Representation) so it’s a pretty good deal.

Espionage is a pretty effective way of catching up to a runaway neighbor. Usually a tech costs about as much in Espionage points as in regular beakers (modified by Open Borders, distance to capital and some other variables) but they are easier to come by. Castles give an espionage bonus, as do Jails, which we will build anyway for their primary functions.

Since we’re looking at a period of extended peace, we research the (often neglected by me) Aesthetics-Literature path to get some Wonders up. We are Industrious after all, it would be a shame not to use that.

Gulag is founded in 70 AD:

Spoiler:

We won’t expand any further until our economy has had a chance to build up.

Great Spy Anthony Babington is born 205 AD in Paris. Excellent! We send him off to infiltrate Mali. Their secrets will be ours! Good thing too, they are now four techs ahead of us. This is Mali, as explored by our Axeman recon squad:

Spoiler:

There are islands to the north of Mali. We are sending our Trireme there to scout. Hey, it’s not useless after all!

We are sending Confucian Missionaries to Mali alongside our Spy to make the most of Kong Miao.

Our Great Spy infiltrates Mali:

Spoiler:

The Infiltrate mission is almost overpowered in the early game – one single Great Person have now opened up the possibility for us to steal ALL of the following tech from Mansa: Philosophy, Construction, Theology and Feudalism. Awesome. Tech trading is for amateurs!

After we’ve stolen Feudalism, we switch to Vassalage and Caste System. We have entered the Medieval Age, and it’s become time to upgrade our army!

[Lagom Lite]

With only 1280 wide resolution I lose some part of those spoilered screens.
(Just noticed that I can see them all here when posting cause I don't get the left part of the posts )

Sorry to hear it. After my first post in this thread, I reduced my in-game resolution from 1400x900 to 1024x768 to make the images fit the forum better, because I had the same problem as you. I can see the current images fine myself on widescreen (1400x900).

I can edit the previous posts to remove the spoiler tags, would you like that? The reason I put spoiler tags in the first place was to show consideration to folks with slower ip connection speed.

[Freezer-TPF-]

What was your thinking in founding Gulag instead of expanding as quickly as possible to the NW? All that prime green real estate up there should be lucrative territory for cottage or workshop (once you can avoid the food penalty) cities.

[Lagom Lite]

What was your thinking in founding Gulag instead of expanding as quickly as possible to the NW? All that prime green real estate up there should be lucrative territory for cottage or workshop (once you can avoid the food penalty) cities.

Well first of all, I committed to making as few commerce cities as possible and since workshops aren't really viable until Communism/State Property (which takes away the food penalty from workshops as you point out) there is little point in settling there yet. You'll notice there is no food resource up there, no river to line with farms and I have to commit dozens of worker turns to clear jungle before it's even possible.

But it would be a great place to cottage. In fact I suspect Mansa will build cities there to do just that. And cottages are nice to pillage... and then replace with workshops!

[The Meal]

[bigimg] [/ bigimg] tags accomplish what you're after even more elegantly. At least for OO.

/non-documented

[Lagom Lite]

[bigimg] [/ bigimg] tags accomplish what you're after even more elegantly. At least for OO.

/non-documented

Ah-hah! Yes, that's much better. Thanks!

[Lagom Lite]

Paris Commune completes The Colossus in 430 AD:

Spoiler:

Strange that it hasn't been built by someone else already! It’s not a particularly useful Wonder for us since we don’t work many water tiles, but it was cheap to build and gives us more Great People points as well as score. Consider it a luxury.

Moscow builds the Great Library in 490 AD:

Spoiler:

We get 2 free scientists that benefit from the Representation bonus, yay!

We steal Machinery from Mali and is researching Civil Service for Macemen. Mansa is currently researching Guilds which leads to Gunpowder. I hope he won’t go for Gunpowder too soon! Musketmen are nasty defenders before the industrial age.

Shwedagon Paya is built in Stalingrad in 595 AD:

Spoiler:

Shwedagon Paya enables all Religion civics. We will switch to Free Religion at some point, but for now wer’re still building improvements so we stay in Organized Religion.

Adam Smith, Great Merchant, is born in Moscow the same year. The irony is staggering. We plant him as a Super Specialist in Stalingrad – they need some more food, and the Gold bonus will multiply when we build Markets and Banks there.

Hagia Sophia is built in Moscow in 670 AD:

Spoiler:

Hagia Sophia makes our Workers +50% faster. Nice. We complete the National Epic in Paris as well, it will serve as a Great Person farm.

I don’t think I’ve ever built this many Wonders in one game on this difficulty level! One thing to consider when building World Wonders is that even if you fail you get a payoff – all the hammers you've spent on constructing gets refunded as Gold. This means that if you had +200% production bonus when building (+100% from appropriate resource, +50% for being Industrious, +25% from Forge and +25% for Organized Religion) that is indirectly applied to the refund as well. This can be used as a strategy; building Wonders you know you won’t complete just for the gold refund.

We are now 5 turns away from Civil Service which will allow us to build Macemen. Until then we have built some Catapults for the coming war.

[Freezer-TPF-]

You're going to need that worker boost to chop all that jungle.

I haven't tried running a hammer-focused economy. I usually do a mixture of specialists and cottages, depending on the map, leader traits, etc. So it's hard to resist seeing how powerful that jungle can become with even just cottages, even if it takes a while to develop.

If Mansa is teching fast and you can continue trading/stealing from him to keep your research going, have you considered just containing him for now until you check out the rest of the world? I haven't played that many games of Civ4, so I like seeing how other players think through macrostrategy decisions like that. Your AAR is great so far.

Smooth sailing so far, with some extra Wonders to boot. I'm curious to see what's going on in the rest of the world!

[Grey Fox]

It's funny how you mention that Civil Service unlocks Macemen when the reason I usually tech for it is to use Bureaucracy.

[stessier]

I'm really enjoying the write up but liked the pictures behind the spoiler tags.

[Lagom Lite]

John Roebling, Great Engineer, is born in Paris Commune in 730 AD. Conventional wisdom is to use Great Engineers for hurrying Wonders, but since we can’t construct anything interesting right now, and since we are so good at building them the ordinary way, we use him to lightbulb Engineering instead.

We steal Guilds from Mali. This boosts all our workshops and enables Knights. Our espionage frenzy is at an end, we’ve used up all the points we got from Babingtons infiltration.

We discover Civil Service, which enables Macemen and Bureaucracy. We stay in Vassalage though – the boost to unit xp is too valuable right now as we build our army.

Our economy is getting solid, we found Leningrad in 805 AD:

Spoiler:

I usually avoid upgrading obsolete units because of the cost, preferring instead to simply delete them... Building a new Maceman costs 105 hammers. Upgrading an old Axeman to a Maceman costs 179 gold. The benefit to upgrading is that the unit keeps all its old promotions, and the upgrade is instant.

We delete all our old field troops, with one exception – check out this guy:

Spoiler:

Mansa wants Engineering. Not gonna happen, not for a while!

Spoiler:

We actually have a small Military tech advantage on Mansa. We can build Pikemen and Macemen, he can only build Crossbowmen. He would be able to build Knights if he could be arsed to research Horseback Riding!

He is only a few turns away from discovering Civil Service himself, but him having Macemen isn’t worse for us than him having Crossbowmen since he will be on defense the coming war. The only thing we need to watch out for is if he starts researching Gunpowder – but so far he hasn’t.

The Apostolic Palace is built in a far away land, uniting the Hindus. Luckily, neither I nor Mansa have any Hindu cities so it won’t affect us at all. The AP is otherwise a real annoyance when trying to warmonger against rival tribes of the same faith – they will keep voting to end the war, forcing you to play nice. None of that, now.

James Clerk Maxwell, Great Scientist, is born in Paris Commune in 930 AD. We use him to construct an Academy in Moscow, granting a +50% boost to all science there.

Our army is swelling and getting expensive to maintain. Time for war!

Prolonged wars are very much won by out-producing your enemy. If we can construct 3 Macemen per turn across our empire and Mansa can only coonstruct 1 Maceman per turn, he is at a serious disadvantage. Hopefully this war won’t be very long though.

The object of the coming war is:

* To sue for peace – if we invade and destroy enough, Mansa will gift techs to pacify us.
* To vassalize – if our invasion is particularly successful, Mansa will surrender. That means all our cities will get a +1 Happiness bonus, we can demand exactly 1 Resource from him (I’m thinking Gems) and hopefully he will still like us enough to keep trading with us. If he gets too resentful, we’ll spy instead since he will tech quickly enough to discover stuff we don’t know despite his empire getting gimped by our invasion.

This is our Stack of Doom:

Spoiler:

This is Mali before the first war:

Spoiler:

Coming up: The First Russian-Malinese War!

Note: stessier, I’ve now put the bigimg tags withing spoilers tags as well.

[Lagom Lite]

I need some volonteers! Don't make me draft y'all.

First to sign up gets to be our first Great General!

[Hipolito]

General Hipolito here. I'll handle Mansa personally.

[stessier]

stessier reporting for duty, Sir!

[theohall]

theohall signing on the dotted line, as well.

[El Guapo]

El Guapo reporting as well!

[Lagom Lite]

awesome

[Lagom Lite]

General Hipolito here. I'll handle Mansa personally.

Glad to have you aboard. And let me dedicate this AAR to your excellent Alpha Centauri AAR a few years back. Best. AAR. Ever.

[The Meal]

You're definitely looking at a prolonged war if that's the extent of your stack. You look ready to tackle one city for certain, but possibly stall at the second (depending on how many defenses he musters).

Still a fantastic AAR! Onwards!

[Lagom Lite]

War! Niani is defended by a single Maceman. Two Catapults demolish their defenses and our Shock-promoted Crossbowman takes the defender down. Niani is renamed ”stessier”:

Spoiler:

Mansa already wants to sue for peace:

Spoiler:

Normally, the AI gets the ”Refuses to talk!” tag for at least a few turns even if a city is taken. That is not the case here, Mansa wants peace already after a single turn of war. He really is that weak, that's the result of over-cottaging and not building enough military. We stay in war for a while until he decides to bribe us with techs. The reason for his behavior is this:

Spoiler:

This is the most important variable to the AI when determining war attitude – the Power Graph. Power is increased by number of military units, but also by the strength of those units (a Maceman counts for more than a Axeman, for example). Walls and Castles increase the perceived Power as well, so it is a good idea to build Walls even if they will never be used if only to artificially increase your Power and make the AI:s more scared of you.

We march north. Mansa is visibly scared, and moves a lone Longbowman to Walata. Mansa is so predictable, he never builds enough defense.

Paris Commune constructs Notre Dame in 1060 AD:

Spoiler:

Notre Dame gives all our cities +2 Happiness. That will stave off any war weariness we might suffer.

There is only a single Longbowman defending Walata. There is another Longbowman on the Sugar Plantation directly to the north of our army:

Spoiler:

We promote a Maceman with Cover and Combat II and defeat the Longbowman easily, he had no defensive bonus on the plantation. As a result of this victory, Vercingetorix, Great General, is born!

Spoiler:

We march him to the front with intent to super-promote one unit – probably the upgraded City Raider III Axeman.

We discover Optics. Optics enables us to send out Caravels to meet unknown civs. I'm excited! I hope they will enjoy our ideals! We tech straight for Astronomy next – I don’t think we will need Gunpowder units to defeat Mansa.

Mansa managed to get a Chariot into Walata before the attack:

Spoiler:

Now there are two units defending Walata! Ooh nooo!

We take Walata. That Longbowman managed to take two of our Macemen with him, but that’s life in the Red Army. Walata is renamed ”theohall”:

Spoiler:

Mmm, Sugar! We march the main army northeast towards Awdaghost. A few Knights are moving in from the south to assist the attack there. As you can see, we have also sent a small detachment to the west near Tekedda – Tekedda is defended by a single Maceman so we should be able to take it with even just the 3 units.

We are offered a Quest – The Harbormaster:

Spoiler:

We are tasked to build 7 Harbors and 4 Caravels before the Industrial Age. We will definitely try to complete this quest since we get to choose from free ship promotions and extra gold from Harbors. Only problem is, we only have 5 coastline cities so we can’t build 7 harbors yet. We will have to remedy that.

The war rages on… Tekedda is taken by way of suicide catapults and is promptly razed. We only made 13 gold off this, but hey, it was fun!

Vercingetorix leads our previously promoted Axeman unit as ”Hipolito”:

Spoiler:

He has City Raider III, Combat II and +1 Movement range. In the future, this unit will also upgrade to modern units for free.

Before we even take Adawghost, Mansa wants to capitulate!

Spoiler:

It appears he would rather be our vassal than give us free techs. What a tool. We stay in war and press on anyway, Adawghost looks way too tasty with all those Dye deposits. Mansa can surrender to us later.

Adawghost is situated on a hill and is defended by a Longbowman, a Chariot and a Catapult. It would seem slightly harder to take this city, but we take it without a single casualty. Adawghost is renamed ”El Guapo”:

Spoiler:

We accept Mansa’s surrender. He is still ”Cautious” with us so we will be able to continue our trading relationship. And of course, we will steal the techs he refuse to give us.

We sign Open Borders with Mansa, trade Horseback Riding, Compass and 240 Gold in return for Banking and demand Gems as our free resource. We could use some Fish as well, but the barbarian city to the north has access to fish and since we need more coastal cities, we’ll take it with our victorious army. We can also tell Mansa what to research now, so we say research Paper.

We change Civics to Mercantilism/Bureaucracy/Theocracy. Mercantilism gives us free specialists who all benefits from Representation all over our empire. Bureaucracy gives our capital a great boost to commerce and production. Theocracy gives us the xp boost we need for warfare while assuring that Hinduism doesn’t spread to our cities – remember the Hindu Apostolic Palace? We don’t want to be part of that club.

While in anarchy, we take the barbarian city Shangian to the north. Tragically, lowly barbarians proved a greater challenge than Mansa:

Spoiler:

They almost defeated Hipolito, who was left with a sliver of hit points. Those nasty northerners! Nevertheless, with superior numbers we take Shangian. We delete some of our units, especially the siege units, to save money. We won’t go to war anytime soon, and certainly not before we get Gunpowder units.

This is Mali after the invasion:

Spoiler:

Now that we are out of anarchy, we let some of our core cities build Wealth while we re-educate our new citizenry! We will also send a settler to the north of Moscow to build a coastal city so we can finish our Harbormaster quest.

[The Meal]

You're definitely looking at a prolonged war if that's the extent of your stack. You look ready to tackle one city for certain, but possibly stall at the second (depending on how many defenses he musters).

War! Niani is defended by a single Maceman. Two Catapults demolish their defenses and our Shock-promoted Crossbowman takes the defender down.

Oh.

[Lagom Lite]

You're definitely looking at a prolonged war if that's the extent of your stack. You look ready to tackle one city for certain, but possibly stall at the second (depending on how many defenses he musters).

War! Niani is defended by a single Maceman. Two Catapults demolish their defenses and our Shock-promoted Crossbowman takes the defender down.

Oh.

He he, I actually thought Mansa would provide more resistance too. It's not unusual for a civ to panic-whip units through Slavery if they're losing. But he proved to be a real pushover...