[SPOILERS] I had first pick and all I got was this stupid combo

[Bobchillingworth]

I guess I'm splitting the middle of the map with Stick:





Founding another city to the east next turn. I could also fit a pretty nice one west, bordering Mardoc, but that might bother him. Need more troops in this area first before I can really consider it. Half-way finished constructing my fleet to found colonies on Continent. Galleons would be much more efficient, but obsoleting the Colossus would absolutely murder my economy.



Mardoc & Jowy made peace, after Jowy wiped Mardoc's stack. I'm kind of surprised Jowy didn't want to attempt a counter-attack; I guess he might not be aware of how gassed Mardoc's empire is (I'm now second in power by a fair margin).

[Bobchillingworth]

Another city:






A little cramped, but whatever. Two bananas are great.


Stick is finally wiping Sian off the mainland:






He's going to handily beat me to Economics, and surely take every other first-to bonus remaining. This game isn't a chore to play by any means, especially since I'm just playing at sandcastles and not having to think too much about my turns, but anytime Mardoc & Jowy want to concede I'm game. I'd kind of like to just put this to bed so that I'm almost completely freed up for a new game or two.

[Bobchillingworth]

Postmortem time I guess?



This was a fun buildery game. I liked the main continent quite a bit, and I wish the game consisted only of that and maybe a few offshore islands or something. I already wasn't likely to fight anyone by the time I learned of the other continent, but once I did I had absolutely no impetus to declare war, considering how much open land remained on the map. Having very nice, resource-laden land everywhere also made aggression less attractive, since there wasn't anything really good to fight over.


I guess my mistakes are all pretty obvious. Biggest was losing so many important wonders, despite being IND and having like every resource doubler Oracle was too early- I didn't have a plan or even the means to really capitalize on the early forges, even at half-price. Colossus was great and more-or-less constituted my economy for most of the game, but missing Pyramids (even after I had talked up how important they were), the HG and especially the MoM was inexcusable, especially since they all went to the same guy (who wasn't even IND). I also wasn't kidding when I said I was terribly out of practice with BTS- I only realized stick had landed the MoM after I researched Aesthetics hoping to build it, saw that the wonder actually requires Calendar, and then found it listed on the World Wonders screen. All of those Classical Era Hellenic wonder icons look the same


My tech path was pretty awful, lots of probably misplaced priorities. I haven't read the other guy's threads yet, but unless Archery, Feudalism and to a lesser extent Construction and Engineering warded off a potential attack, then I researched all of them far too early. I'm so used to FFH, where casual warfare is more the rule than exception. Religion so early was likely a mistake as well, although I don't regret founding Buddhism in the capital, where the shrine made a good amount of gold w/ Bureaucracy. With a bank I think I would have been landing maybe 120 gold per turn there at breakeven, which seemed pretty good (relatively speaking).


My combo was very fun to play. I'd like to think that it wasn't completely terrible either, but I don't know. I never really got any use out of the Maya, since Commodore was already pretty generous with the luxuries, and then popping a lucky Silver from a mine gave all my cities +2 happy. I think I ended up building two Ball Courts, and neither was really necessary. Might have been more useful had I ever gotten in a war which required a lot of whipping, or something.


I suppose I did some stuff right as well, since I was in first or second place for the entire game. Creative was totally awesome for the map, like I predicted. Secured a lot of nice land that way, helped make up for poor expansion early on. I took forever to get cottages up, but I never worked many unimproved tiles.



Anyway, congrats stick! I enjoyed playing with you, Mardoc and Jowy

[NobleHelium]

Bureaucracy does not improve shrines.

[Bobchillingworth]

That... shows what I know