Okey, my first report at Realms Beyond... Who am I? I'm a 29 year old male, living in Oslo, Norway. I have been a civ-player since the days of Civ 1 and with the release of CIV I discovered the Realms Beyond website. I learned a lot from reading reports and I am still learning. And now, after lurking almost a year, it is time for a report of my own :)
When opening the mail from Griselda i quickly noticed "mali" in the filename. Mansa Musa, financial and spiritual....perfect! I dont have much experience with financial, but I know its a strong trait. And spiritual just might be my favorite trait, so this is good even before opening the file. However, the starting location was not too impressive:
Financial gives one extra commerce to any tile that produses 2 or more, so with this starting location that wont be too helpful. I wondered some time about moving the settler to the plains-forest 1-SE so the capital would be coastal with more water-tiles, thus making more use of the financial trait...but beeing a pangea map I didnt need a coastal city and I also didnt want to waste a turn. I setteled on the starting spot, with research on hunting and then animal husbandry for furs and sheep. Early happyness from furs is always welcome. I build a worker out of the gate, then a couple of warriors, then a settler.
Before getting the save I had done a few dry-runs with the same map-settings to know what a standard pangea with 7 AI's would be like...and my experience was that you wont get to much space before the map is filled with cities. I knew I would have to rely more one taking cities than settling them myself. So the next research went into bronze working to see if there is any copper around...and its right at our capital! Excellent :)
Of course, beeing financial I need to get up cottages on the grassland tiles sooner rather than later, and to "prepare" for that i chop a forest to clear the tile and at the same time speed up the settler. Scouting in the southwest revealed a nice spot for the second city...however, Hatty is just to the south, its a little bit hard to see, but Thebes' border i just visible below the elephant. Would I get the settler here in time?
NO! Argh, got beaten by a couple of turns and had to settle Djenne, my second city, on a crappy location halfway in between. I decide that hatty must die.
Some time later this screenshot is taken, I put my third city in the north to grab marble, a nice resource for wonder-building. As you can see 1000BC passes and I can declare war when I want to...and Tikmbuktu is pumping out axes. We need Egypts land as soon as possible as our own land is mediocre, and if we wait to long we will lose terrain to the AI.
...and to make a long story short(due to lack of screenshots), this is the situation a few years later:
I made peace with Hatty, with her giving me monarchy. This left her one city, Heliopolis, directly to the south of Thebes. My troops were ready to take the city, but to avoid breaking my economy I decided to wait and come back to it at a later time. You can also see on the minimap that the last egyptian city was the only thing left between me and the south ocean, effectivly closing in Elisabeth and Saladin. I regulary got demands from other AI to cancel deals with Elisabeth, so it was clear that she was the worst enemy of several AI's. An attack on her next would fit perfectly, I just had to get my economy going to support it.
With marble hooked up, I had beelined for literature and the Great Library, making som tech-trades on the way after getting alphabet. I had tried to build the Oracle, hoping that the AI's had ignored it, but I missed it as expected. I did not lose the library, though:
A nice boost to my resarch, and also guaranteeing me some great scientists in the long run. Next research was currency for markets and trade routes, and calendar for hooking up rescources in my new egyptian lands. Things were going in the right direction, but I made one horrible mistake...I had set out djenne, my second city, to be a military-factory, so after getting literature I started building heroic epic there....I thought. But after smoking som massive weed, I misclicked or something, and built the national epic there instead, a total waste since the city would never run any specialists. I dont know how that could happen, but anyhow, it was no catastrophy.
Taking a look at the GNP-graph gave me a little shock:
Wtf? Runaway-Elisabeth? I am also financial, but she is totally off the scale here..a golden age I have missed? I later found out she had built the great lighthouse, and she also had many luxury resources near London. Well, this semented her position as beeing my next target...after finising off Hatty, of course.
An overview of the empire so far...as soon as these courthouses and markets are done, Egypt will be finished off. I had also switched to judaism by now, since almost everybody else was. No need to stir up religious tensions. Dont want to get backstabbed by Julius or Saladin.
Only one screenshot of the second crusade against Egypt...there were one more city to the west of Elephantine, which i razed to the ground. That was the end of Hattys reign as pharao.
Scrolling through my screenshots I found out that i built the Hanging Gardens...I had forgot about that.
A nice wonder, but no "winner" in this game...anyway, I decleared war on England in 1178AD. Coventry was the first city to fall, with York next in line. Defence was relativly poor, and the cities fell easily.
Oops, an Arabian revolt taking place in Coventry?? I thought cities didnt flip after being conquered? I moved some troops into the city to keep things calm.
A look into newly conquered London..with the Great Lighthouse, an academy, a forge and more. Excellent indeed!
Next city to fall was Nottigham, which i razed because I expected arabian culture to choke it.
An overview of the empire...Hastings was also razed, leaving England with only Warwick in the bottom left corner as its last city. I made peace with Elisabeth...and started my preparation to rid the world of the Arabian presence.
Grabbed Liberalism and took Nationalism as the free tech. Started buiding the Taj Mahal which i got just in time for war with Saladin.
Arabia provided me with a Casus Belli for declearing war, flipping Coventry...
First target was Medina, the jewish holy city, since it was a culture-heavy city at a strategical position between my egyptian and english lands...I also expected it to be an economic boost since judaism was the major world religion.
Hm, not as intact as London, but it got the building I wanted; the temple of solomon. A very nice addition to my empire indeed. You can also see that Military tradition is due in 4 turns.
...and now cavalry is rolling over the rest of Arabia. Wonderful ;)
All Arabian cities fell in relative short amount of time...exept this one. Saladin and Elisabeth both hiding in Mao's backyard. Well well..."we will not destinguish terrorist from those who harbor them" - yes thats my propaganda machine in effect. Innocent Mao was about to feel the wrath of the Mali world power.
After a 35 year diplomatic crisis, war erupted...and it was a one-way war:
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" - Mao Zedong. Well then, Mao, how do you like it now?
Beijing fell with most of its buidings intact. Niiiice!
Nowhere left to hide...so long, and thanks for all the fish
A new overview...Baghdad is building the statue of liberty with the help from a great engineer. Research is temporarily turned off to upgrade catapults into cannons, and some cities are still pumping out military units. Next step in the plan for world domination is to fight Rome.
Some 50-years down the line I declare war. It is not the complete one-way show this time, Julius puts up some good resistance...he even recaptured a couple of cities before his luck run out...oh, waith...what is this?
Djenne produced a great engineer...National epic was not a *complete* waste then, it just took a good millenia for it to pay off...hehe. Well, I did'nt need the engineer at this stage so it was a waste anyway. War was about to end, as I saw that I had enough land to push through the domination threshold with a little cultural focus.
Domination victory in 1730AD. A most excellent game with everything...well, almost everything, going as planned. I am fairly pleased with my game, but I dont expect it to be anywhere near the fastest finishers. I did not push for a fastest possible finish either, I played the game the way I enjoy to play it - well within my comfort zone :)
Score: 70300