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I thought it interesting that despite the varied paths the two workboats took, they met at a point nearly halfway around the world from Athens. I marked the halfway point with a sign. It may show up in some future screenshot. I think I managed to meet all the other civs except Gandhi, Mao, and Isabella. And I saw the outline of Isabella's borders, but didn't detour to actually make contact.
It was also around this time that I realized I should have been taking greater advantage of my philosophical trait and high-food capital, so I assigned a couple science specialists at the library of Athens. I popped two great scientists, creating academies in Athens (since it had my never-to-move palace) and in Sparta, for which I had high commerce plans.
Around this point, I finally learned Sailing and started making galleys.
Sparta's borders finally popped in 725BC, bringing pigs, horses and gold into the range of the citizens and workers. It's amazing how crippling the walls-before-obelisk restriction can be for a city withe nothing of any interest in the first ring. (This was pre-pottery.)
Catherine had sent a galley with an archer and a settler sailing past my continent a while back. In fact, at the time, I only had my starting scout in the city of Sparta as she sailed by! I was hoping she didn't ambush me, but I guess the AI isn't programmed to do the wicked deeds we humans do. (Playing here as Alexander, I certainly kept his back-stabbing reputation intact.)
When I finally trained a galley, I put the scout on it and sent it out looking for the Russian colony. After a few missteps, I found it. And an unpopped hut too! This was one of two huts I found--both in this same general area northeast of the starting Greek continent--and I got techs from both: Horseback Riding, then Archery. Of course, I'd rather have had the cash. I think I had one chariot that I upgraded to a horse archer, but all it ever did was pillage.
Of much greater value (than HBR) on this expedition was finding this sweet location. Iron and two plains hills with two food sources! Oh yeah, a great production site with a rare strategic resource; we're grabbin' this site baby.
Note that Catherine's creativity kept the Elephants out of my reach until I could generate a raiding party to go raze St. Petersburg, but that was fine: I had my iron.
That turned out to be Corinth because I also had a settler and a worker on their way to this site:
Thermopylae was settled just one turn before my iron-providing Corinth. Although I'd said to myself that I only wanted cities that had a good food surplus, the lure of grassland, grass hills and gems (after walls and an obelisk) was just too strong. Plus, I thought it might serve as a troop-gathering point for attacking Russia, Spain, and India, all of whose capitals were nearby.
Another close call here. As I'm bringing my axeman garrison to Thermopylae (Gem City), Isabella sails right by my undefended city with a settler and an archer. I can't help but think she was aiming for this spot. Later, I wished she'd gotten it.
By 175BC, I had access to iron, and I was saving cash to research construction. While I was starting to build up my invasion force and only a few turns from learning how to build catapults, one of my original workboat explorers noticed the borders of the last civilization on the planet:
It turned out that China (Mao) was isolated until his borders popped. Then, he could get out with just galleys, but he had his own little protected zone for a while. This meant Astronomy was probably going to be necessary to end the game. Well, I figured I'd still go for the conquest of the other civs first.
In that screenshot, you can see that I tried to find a coastal route to meet Mao, but I guess there wasn't one. (You can also see the little sign I wrote for myself--truncated by length-limits--indicating the halfway point around the world from Athens. Maybe not the exact halfway point, but halfway for coastal vessels on auto-pathfind.)
It actually took a lot longer than I'd expected, but I was finally ready to let Catherine know that Moscow had been placed one tile too far to the east. And that it needed to be under my control. With that expression, she knew she'd been "Alexandered."
Very soon thereafter, the first boatload of troops landed in the hills near Moscow. This is actually a decent defense, but considering that Catherine drew the short straw and was only able to fit one city on her starting island, the battle was pretty much over before it began.
After bombarding the cultural defense down to a more reasonable level (zero), I sent in the catapults on catikaze raids. To my surprise, none won and none retreated. Total loss. Well, at least they left the defenders in no shape to withstand the cover-promoted swordsmen, who were attacking at 95+% odds. I didn't lose any of them, though it did take two rounds because there were just so many defenders.
Soon, I had my fifth city--Delphi--located one square west of the ruins of Moscow. After the long wait for Sparta to become productive, you can be sure that all my other cities had mines within the first ring. Still, Sparta was productive now, and that's what I figured would matter. The build order in the new cities was almost always the same: walls, obelisk, other things.
Actually, although I'd planned to take over another AI capital site for my sixth city, I got worried when I saw the isolation of Mao. I figured I'd better save the last city in case I needed it for some late-game resource. So, this was the last city I founded for a while.
Here, you can see the little raiding party I put together out of Corinth for dispatching the two (!) cities Catherine founded on that continent. She ended up putting another, here her new capital, on the continent to the west and yet another (the last actually grabbing copper) on a small island to the north.
But on archipelago, once you've taken the AI's capital, they're through.
As soon as enough troops had healed, we paid Isabella a visit. Actually, she paid for the visit, since I demanded cash before declaring war. With two cities on her starting continent, and her second a double-holy city, Isabella's defenders were more spread out than Moscow's. Nice.
Oh, and I noticed that this wonder was still available and hardly took any time to build in Corinth (the Iron City), so with a fond memory of Epic 7, I grabbed it:
I don't know if this really helped me or not, but at least I didn't have to worry about one of those distant financial civs getting it and jumping up the tech tree to good defenders.
End of Part 2--First Blood. Continue on to Part 3.