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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Aug 22, 2014 2:53:56 GMT -5
Civilization: Portugal Map Type: Perfect World 3 Map Size: Huge Difficulty: Emperor Game Speed: Standard
This is my first and only screenshot showing last nights progress. My Capital appears to be situated in a bay just south of the northern ice cap. To the South lies a formidable mountain range with only a single pass allowing passage between my fledgling empire and the rest of the world. The Eastern Coast also allows minimal passage to the south, yet both passages west and south are interrupted by the borders of neighboring city states. The trio of rivers and flood plains leading to my capital and the dense cluster of gold mines immediately to the east have blessed me with a starting position which is both rich in production value and food, but also fortified against attack and relatively wealthy. Barring the occasional Barbarian incursion, I have been able to build and grow in peace completing the Hanging Gardens, Temple of Halicarnassus and, of course, the Great wall.
I think moving forward I'm going to embrace the small isolationist setting I've been granted and focus on diplomacy, trade and cultural achievements to grant me victory.
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Aug 25, 2014 2:58:43 GMT -5
I'll get screenshots up tomorrow but the awesome thing is I managed to pull off a Political Victory (achieved world leader) without building any more than the four cities pictured above. Was a really tight race though between my political clout, Brazils cultural influence, and Denmark's scientific achievements. I really thought they had me there.
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Post by Kaez on Aug 25, 2014 21:42:53 GMT -5
I'll get screenshots up tomorrow but the awesome thing is I managed to pull off a Political Victory (achieved world leader) without building any more than the four cities pictured above. Was a really tight race though between my political clout, Brazils cultural influence, and Denmark's scientific achievements. I really thought they had me there. "Playing tall" is a pretty popular strategy. A lot of the hardcore Civ strategists never build more than 4-5 cities most of the time. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Aug 26, 2014 13:06:37 GMT -5
I'll get screenshots up tomorrow but the awesome thing is I managed to pull off a Political Victory (achieved world leader) without building any more than the four cities pictured above. Was a really tight race though between my political clout, Brazils cultural influence, and Denmark's scientific achievements. I really thought they had me there. "Playing tall" is a pretty popular strategy. A lot of the hardcore Civ strategists never build more than 4-5 cities most of the time. It might be a popular winning strategy, but frankly, it's kind of a boring one. At least it was this time around. 4000 years of peace, the worst it got was escalating tensions with Indonesia for a while. I think I was only denounced like twice in the whole game. At the end I was friendly with everyone, allied with all but one City-State and sitting on the smallest military force on the map. I basically used gold to buy my way to victory. Screenshots are still coming. I went to watch the Doctor Who premier in theaters last night so i got home late. |
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Post by Kaez on Aug 26, 2014 20:07:33 GMT -5
"Playing tall" is a pretty popular strategy. A lot of the hardcore Civ strategists never build more than 4-5 cities most of the time. It might be a popular winning strategy, but frankly, it's kind of a boring one. At least it was this time around. 4000 years of peace, the worst it got was escalating tensions with Indonesia for a while. I think I was only denounced like twice in the whole game. At the end I was friendly with everyone, allied with all but one City-State and sitting on the smallest military force on the map. I basically used gold to buy my way to victory. Screenshots are still coming. I went to watch the Doctor Who premier in theaters last night so i got home late. Yeah, these are people who also play on Deity and I'm sure no Civ game is boring on Deity. Looking forward to the screenshots. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Aug 28, 2014 2:15:38 GMT -5
I've only got a few screenshots of this whole experience as, since my territory was small, there wasn't a whole lot in the way of events to keep track of. This shot is about the halfway point, I noted it as the turn on which my Capital officially hit level 30 which is the highest level I've ever hit with any city prior to this play through:  I was about this time that I got some boats in the water and started exploring. I began to realize how interesting this particular map was and began regretting my play strategy. It appeared as though all the Civs had started on one big mega-continent with a bunch of littler islands scattered elsewhere, mostly housing City-States, Barbarians and Archeology sites. I began sending a crew of workers to the various City-States to build their unique tile augmentation to secure the various luxury resources. As you can see, I had lots and lots of room for farming, but other resources were surprisingly scarce. I only found a single iron mine and it was well outside my walls, forcing me to buy tiles to the south east to reach it. Thankfully the massive mountain range had pretty much kept any threats greater than the odd wandering barbarian at bay so I didn't need the swordsmen and such as Archers pretty much did the job. I'd also noticed a distinct lack of prophets and missionaries running about. I hadn't really worked toward building faith, preferring to make a bee-line for the Great Wall and spent a lot of time playing catch-up but the additional income from Portugal getting double from trade routes was helpful in building structures quickly. Though I did take a significant hit to my income right about this time as the World Congress passed an Embargo on trading with City States, and they had been my primary partners while I worked on building rep. I had only discovered a handful of coastal towns belonging to other Civs and all but two, I think, were out of trade range. Also, my North western City of Coimbra had a significant and perpetual food shortage, forcing me to devote a trade route to it to keep folks fed. I can honestly say that right about this point marks the darkest time in my Small Empire's history, which is ironic because it's literally during a Golden Age. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Aug 28, 2014 2:29:50 GMT -5
The End: This Screenshot was taken one turn before victory. I figured I'd take it then because I knew I was winning the following turn.  At this point I knew the World Congress met the next term to vote on a World Leader, I knew I only needed 44 votes in my favor, and I knew that because I was allied with all but one City State that I had 46 delegates on my side. The most interesting thing about this, though, is the map. Now that you can see it all, you'll see that it is, in fact, a single large continent with all but one Civilization Capital located on it. Carthage had complete control of the largest island and used it as a jumping off point to build little colonies all over the map. It was really cool though because you had all these big, clearly defined, countries on the map. The weirdest part, though, was that everyone sort of got along. Near the end, Denmark and Brazil got into it a bit, but for the most part everyone was friendly. Every Civilization except Sweden chose Order for an ideology, and even Sweden ended up having a revolution and changing before the end. You'll note my Capital still doesn't have a religion, and only Coimbra ever really felt any religious push, and I suspect it's because it shared a road with a religious City State nearby. But it never spread past there. Having all the votes in the world though was a fun little project. Being able to smooze the other Civs into swinging my way on various issues and throwing my political weight around was fun at first. But after a while I found myself burdened by the responsibility of choice. I didn't want to have to decide on the next vote all the time, but the game made me since I hosted every world congress from the 2nd to the 9th or 10th where I finally claimed victory. Spreading to the other island paid off heavily in late-game ruins and several archeology site netted me Cultural Renaissance bonuses, so I was able to put lots of points into Commerce and Exploration, making my seaward expeditions quite profitable. What I'd really like to do is learn to incorporate some of the tricks I learned this time around into future games. It was a fun experiment keeping thing small, but not super entertaining. The culturally isolated political juggernaut is a lonely creature. I don't imagine I'll do it again without being forced to in some way. In fact, the next game I start I'm thinking about going the exact opposite direction. |
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