[SPOILERS] Sandover(cre/spi) of Egypt

[Sandover]

I felt the most convenient thing to do was to start in the southwest corner and move counterclockwise from there.

Changed my mind. Scooter's Ethiopia is up!

Western edge;


Core;


I forgot to add a white star to Blur marking the Great Wall. No harm done though, as I figure that wonder isn't very easy to miss...

Scooter's grassland Gems and flood plains at the capital has me jelous. Bureaucracy and an Academy was definitly the right move here, but a negative seems to be that he's relying too much on Adelaide. It could be that late Hereditary Rule in combination with whipping an army is what keeps the rest of his cities so small in comparison. He can definitly feed a larger population considering how fertile his land is.

I tagged the minor border city of Illuminati as his military camp. It's actually the only city out of 11 that doesn't have any cottages. There's no GP-farm to be seen anywhere and he could definitly benefit from specializing a few more cities for something other than running cottages.

I still question chopping the Great Wall even with access to Stone as barb Warriors on Noble surely aren't very hard to deal with, and because those chops could have been used to fuel his expansion instead. Being Creative/Organized he's in fact slightly better suited for fast expansion than I am and he still couldn't keep up initially despite the green neighbourhood. Nevertheless, he did a good job catching up, and deserves some credit for that.

Rating;

Development; 4/5 (I expect a little more with that land)
Diplomacy; 5/5 (flaudless up until now as far as I can tell)
Warfare; -

[Sandover]

The Khmer Empire by virtue of Timmy;

This one is a little difficulty as I lack visibility on a few cities. Nevertheless, here's a go at it.

West;


East;


Timmy has 11 cities, of which I can see 9. His dual Gold capital is pretty crazy and definitly challenges Adelaide for the title of best city in the game. With its Academy it's his obvious commercial centre, and I also tagged it as his main military camp as it can produce a large amount of hammers. Timmy's cities are mostly the same; large cottage heavens that can also work a good amount of hills for production. With such powerful hybrids having a pure military camp is less important, though I'm missing two cities so it's possible he got one. What else I don't see is a GP-farm. Rhenish might be tuned for that role but I don't see the tile improvements so I can merely guess.

Timmy made really good use of his traits, and with the help of his powerful commerce capital he could fuel rapid expansion even when I had to make halt for a while to consolidate. His land is the best in the game, as stated by Scooter, and left alone he would've been really hard to deal with later.

As a builder, Timmy has played close to a perfect game. No silly wonder distractions or such, just pure development. The problem is his diplomacy, which has been horrible. Being sandwiched by both his closest neighbours is proof enough. The fact that a third is about to join in and that a fourth is helping out with units just puts icing on the cake.

Timmy's chances to win the game has been lost unless he can somehow pull out of the hole he's placed himself in. It might be fair to state that avoiding elimination is a step upward at this point, even though he dominated the scoreboard only a few turns ago.

Rating;

Development; 5/5 (can't do anything but give him thumbs up)
Diplomacy; 1/5 (being described as a "non-entity" is almost as bad as it gets)
Warfare; -

[Sandover]

Celtica - Moogle's personal gateway to heavenly afterlife;



Advisor Moogle is up to 9 cities, having recently captured the barb settlement at the coast. I described his situation as "stable" not long ago, but man, that empire is in a sorry state.

His territory is crap. There's no denying that. However, being a religious nut surely didn't help his case. Stonehenge, the Apostolic Palace and Buddhist Shrine are located at Bibracte. Tolosa has the Pharthenon (bet I spelled that wrong again). He should have been way faster expanding to the southwest, where the land is decent. However, I can't see a way he could've played this to have a chance to win. The weakness of Germany and good relations with Ethiopia is what's keeping him alive for the time being.

He only recently researched Code of Laws, and he may not even have Construction yet. The poor guy is basically a sitting duck despite his free Guerilla cookie-cutter promotions.

If Moogle can somehow squeeze himself into top-3 he should be mighty happy. Anything but last place is in fact an acceptable finish.

Rating;

Development; 2/5 (don't build wonders out of the gate)
Diplomacy; 3/5 (he's keeping himself safe but that's pretty much it)
Warfare; -

[Sandover]

The paranoid Chancellor and his Germanic tribe;



7 cities total (Samba is out of the picture to the east). Cha Cha Cha has the Oracle but that's as far as it goes in terms of special features.

TT played his start all wrong. He should have recognized the lack of cottageable land around him and turned the capital into an Academy commerce city sooner rather than later. It's not the strength of Adelaide or Dem.hornsignal, but would've served him greatly nevertheless. Instead, he build the Oracle and bulb Metal Casting for Forges despite having really high hammer potential anyway. First priority should've been Writing. Second Monarchy. A beeline for the Great Library after that would've been a smart move.

His city placement is rather odd, as he miss four grassland tiles between Foxtrot and Waltz. That's a huge waste on a map like this!

I've marked Charleston as his military camp, but he's got quite a few cities tuned for production. I didn't mark a commerce city as with his capital being so underdeveloped, he doesn't really have one that's worthy of the title. None of his cities can even pretend to be a GP-farm.

Looking at diplomacy he should've seeked out to make friends with Egypt rather than neglect responding to messages. He failed horribly to create an alliance with both Bob and Scooter, and Moogle has promised to focus his military expansion toward Germany. TT's attempt to save himself by sending me on a campaign south wasn't all bad, but he gambled too much on such a risky operation.

The faith of Germany is likely death. TT should be happy if he can keep himself alive long enough to not suffer the first elimination, having placed himself in such a poor position. His power rating is nothing to sneeze at so he definitly should't fall like a deck of cards even against a strong invasion force.

Rating;

Development; 2/5 (there's a lot of room for improvement)
Diplomacy; 1/5 (communication is always better than no communication)
Warfare; 2/5 (he somehow managed to lose two Workers in the war which he could easily have saved)

[Rowain]

Comparing the northern lands with the southern shows how well you played your game to get such a strong empire with not so great land.

Both timmy and scooter have really nice land so I wonder how your empire would look with that land

[Sandover]

The Pharaoh and his Egypt;

East;


South;


North and most of the tundra region;


I've already told you why my capital isn't awesome, so I won't go into that again. What I will say, however, is that it isn't below the average capital out there. 4 out of 6 civs got fairly weak capitals.

I'm definitly satisfied with my decision to make Sandoria a production-based GP-farm. The Hanging Gardens, Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus and National Epic gives the city decent GP-generation while still maintaining a good amount of production. I would've liked having the Great Library in there as well but had other priorities at the time and figured I might as well let Bob have it for the diplo benefit.

Satet is a real beauty with the Heroic Epic in place. I'm actually running a couple of Scientists in there at most in order to not waste overflow while I build Horse Archers (I really don't want more Crossbowmen). It will, soon, spew out 1-turn dual-promo Knights.

I tagged Chillingworth as my commerce centre as it's slowly pulling ahead of Psamathe. Psamathe is, in case you're wondering, the only city I have that can match Timmy's large cottage hybrids. Nubian can get there with some more development, but will be slaving Catapults for a foreseeable future.

I believe I've done a good job in grabbing the 13 cities that I have. While more of them are being tuned for production than I would've liked I guess I can compensate for it by going to war more often! Infrastructure is in a good place, with Granaries, Forges, Libraries, Markets and Courthouses being present where they're useful. I also have some Barracks, a couple of Stables and even a Temple or two. Looking at buildings built I've established a comforting lead.

I'm not going to rate myself but I think I'm doing pretty good job overall.

[Sandover]

Comparing the northern lands with the southern shows how well you played your game to get such a strong empire with not so great land.

Both timmy and scooter have really nice land so I wonder how your empire would look with that land

I made the right decisions with my early scouting. Recognizing the need to found Psamathe, Darrell and especially Chillingworth early on really made the game for me. They provided the much needed economic base to funnel further expansion into production sites and helped me just enough to keep a good pace before Currency, even if I had to stop for a while at 7 and later 9 cities.

The main advantages Timmy and Scooter had on me was the fact that their capitals was so well suited to finance their expansion. Timmy used this really well in combination with his traits but got too greedy. Scooter was a bit slow and focused somewhat too much on upward growth rather than growing outward (despite no Hereditary Rule) which is why he wasn't able to keep up in score with Timmy and me. He can still catch up if the war goes well for him, but that requires that I make a mistake or two down the line.

My game strategy was most certainly the right one, and I've managed to execute it successfully so far. Now that I've seen the progress of the other civs first hand I feel very confident of my chances to win. It's mostly a matter of not screwing anything up from this point forward, unless the Khmer war winds up being a huge success for either of my opponents.

[Rowain]

The various city-sizes also tell a story of egyptian success.

You with a size 15 + 14 + 2* 12 and an 11 compared to scooter who despite his green pastures has just his capital at 12. Only timmy (from the little that can be seen) seems to be able to compete with you. So it looks like the great Sandgod will be pleased with you

[Sandover]

To be honest I'm not even sure my God is following the game anymore as I haven't seen him around in ages.

No wonder the Egyptians are converting to Hinduism...

[Sandover]

Hello,


I popped a great scientist last turn. Do you want it? Next great person in in approx 10 turns.


-Bobchillingworth

Dear Bob,

I pass on the Scientist and hold my fingers the next one will be an Engineer. I find those a lot more fun to toy with.

Congratulations on the Colossus! I just completed the Statue myself so I believe we're still on equal footing in terms of wonders. Though I won't try to argue with you if you want to claim that yours are more useful than mine.

I made an offer of Furs for Sugar in-game. You probably don't have health issues in your cities but I threw an extra Sheep in there anyway. I have three more where that one came from so don't worry about having to return it any time soon.

You... appear to have missed the road when you dumped the latest Missionary. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Care to update me on the war?

Regards,

Pharaoh Sandover of Egypt

Hello,


Many thanks for the sheep in addition to the furs for my sugar! I'll remember your generosity. Same for promptly letting me know that I was free to use my scientist.


Apologies about the missionary... I had him on auto-move, and evidently wasn't too careful in where I set the destination.


As for how the war goes... where would you like your new great general :D ?

Took & razed timmy's front-line city for the loss of a single catapult, killed about a dozen assorted defenders in the process. I'll have vassalage (and longbows) in a few turns, and I fully intend to capitalize on my evidently having seized the initiative.


-Bobchillingworth

Dear Bob,

What marvelous news you bring! You may deliver the General whereever is most convenient for you. It's a shame that part of Hindu Khmer had to bite the dust but we must be prepared to give some sacrifice if the crusade against the heathen empires is to be successful.

Make sure to give Timmy a good kickin' while he's down. Aim for the nuts!

Regards,

Pharaoh Sandover of Egypt

I get a Great General in time for the German campaign.

Seeing as my Merchant spotted 11 more Catapults in Quickstep this turn (106) and one was constructed in Waltz, TT is now up to 22 Catapults minimum. A medic will be awesome considering his sieges outnumber mine 11:2 atm.

Timmy's loss of Hari sure makes it sound like he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Did he really think he could hold the city by just sitting in there awaiting Bob's Catapults and Praetorians to do their thing? He should have abandoned the city and saved those units since he obviously didn't have the strength to strike out at the invasion squad. He just adopted Vassalage, meaning he can now slave dual-promo Longbows, but they might come too late to save him.

I also asked Scooter of an update but no response as of yet, so I guess I will get one tonight.

The really big and important news this turn, however, is that I spotted a barbarian ARCHER!!! That's right, they're becoming advanced! How can I possibly protect my empire against the barbarian hordes now?

My kill count is 85 by the way, and 2 more Warriors are lining up to be disposed off. Closing in on the magic number!