Part 5: Polynesia/Celtic Tensions Escalate

Okay, so skipping ahead a couple of turns, I spend some more Culture on unlocking Piety so future Shrines and Temples get built faster, and--



Oh, you motherfucker.

That's okay, man. That's fine. I'll get you next. I don't care that you're a hard target, you will be SO worth it.



Oooooohhhhh.



Caesar, by comparison, is remarkably chill at all times. Even when he hates you or declares war, he sounds really bored. We could always use seeing where his home base is and having shared embassies does improve relations, so, sure, why not.



This is actually a really really useful tech to have. We get our first archer upgrade, Composite Bowmen, who do more damage than either regular archers or chariot archers. We get to build Coliseums, which are the first building that manually increases happiness for our empire, alleviating the stress of high population. We get access to the wonder, Teracotta Army, which gives an impressive +6 Culture per turn. We also have the ability to build Lumber Mills in forests to increase the production yield of forests without chopping them down completely.

We still want at least one virgin forest next to our city, but we have two and can spare one.



South of Dublin, east of Rome, I have sent our Chariot archer to destroy some barbarians and rescue a worker for Budapest. If this works out as well as Hong Kong did, we will soon have a second Militaristic City-State allied with us, giving us more free soldiers per turn. Mua ha ha ha ha.



Our workers are trying to finish connecting the road to Dublin and building pastures. Dublin is trying to build a Settler so I can get at that ivory, and we are ALMOST finished with the Pyramids…let's pray nobody else snipes them.



I basically want everything on this list. Optics will let our units walk into the water to cross shallow coastal seas. Philosophy unlocks Temples. Iron Working will let us see iron on the map and build Iron Swordsmen. Our Military and Foreign advisors want us to get Mathematics, though, because it lets us build Catapults, our first siege engine, and Courthouses, things we build in captured cities to make them shut up about how they hate being captured and produce less unhappiness. There's also Hanging Gardens, a food-boosting Wonder, in Mathematics. So Math it is.

Plus, military city-states only give us units we can technologically support. If we research mathematics, they could potentially give us free catapults.



Ahahahaha. YESSSSS. More friends, more GUNS.



Oh. OHHH. He's beaten us to the punch. It seems he's invading for purely breathing-room reasons, which is a legitimate reason that early-game neighbors can have to become your enemy. Most of the land surrounding Honolulu is tundra or desert, too, so he knows the only place with good stuff is our land.

This is not as bad as it could be. I've already got several forces in place, and since he started this war, that means that we do not get the "Warmonger" label from the rest of the world. We now have all the excuse in the world to kill him.

This does interfere with Phase Two of My Plan, though. At least part of it is to spread our religion to his city to overwrite his Goddess of Protection pantheon.




Aw, shit. Honolulu seems to have spent many turns making armies. Their basic Warrior is replaced by a Maori Warrior, who are no stronger than a regular one but instill fear in surrounding enemies, making them 10% weaker. I need to quickly gold-buy more composite archers of my own to beat back the horde. Fortunately, it seems he still doesn't have catapults, and our city-state allies have also declared war on him. They will also attack him to the best of their ability.


I can at least partially turn this around, though. My Pictish Warriors are strong outside of friendly territory by 20%, which means I can get that one unit of Picts out past Dublin's small borders to wreck their faces.



Oh…Dido, honey, I would love to go to war with Rome with you, but now is not the time. Ten turns from now, okay?



Some goddamned barbarians have attacked Edinburgh and have pillaged my cotton fields to heal themselves from my city shooting at them. Crud. Barbarians are a real nuisance and this is why. It's not all rescuing city-states from them and getting rewarded.



AAAAH I do not need this shit! FUCK YOU TOO Pacal!



And where are your feathers? Seriously!

In other news it looks like Pacal and Gustavus Adolphus are at war with each other. Good. The more they tear each other apart, the less I have to worry about it.



Ohh, we managed to build it, yesss! Sidon will be impressed, our improvements will improve faster and we've got some leftover laborers to help us expand further. Pretty painting, too, huh? The Pyramids originally had beautiful white marble exteriors with a gold cap on top. We can only guess at how dazzling this must have looked back in the day.

Not pictured: Pyramids also giving us a Great Engineer Point per turn. Also also, all wonders give you +1 culture point per turn, which is why we're at +10 now. Wonder-spamming is one of the preferred ways to win a culture victory.



Here's a list of comparative prices for purchasing units using faith. It's relatively cheap and if we become Faith Hogs we should be able to afford something soon.

Missionaries are the primary way to manually spread our religion (it spreads slowly over time on its own). They have 4 movement and can spread religion twice before dying. They can pass into a foreign country without Open Borders, but doing so will weaken them every turn, making them convert less unbelievers and they will soon die of attrition. However, City-States do not make them atrophy!



Hee hee, Edinburgh has a little pyramid next to it!



I'm clearly doing something right because Kamehameha's forces are retreating only a couple of turns later. I think he realizes he doesn't have the resources to take Dublin and is backing off.

Incidentally, you can only conquer a city with a melee unit. Archers can weaken a city down to 0 hp, but they need someone with a sword to walk in there to claim it. Mounted units also have a penalty against attacking cities, even though they're awesome, they are not so awesome for scaling walls and holding the mayor at spearpoint in his office.



I move one of my workers over to repair the pillaged stables and cotton plantation. Because of a combination of the Pyramids and the Citizenship social policy in Liberty, repairing a damaged tile is now instantaneous. I love Pyramids for this reason, they seriously speed up your entire empire's development. Speaking of which, let's get that settler down to the ivory coast.



Cardiff? CARDIFF? Man we are like all over the map of Great Britain for city names, aren't we? Cardiff is within three tiles of a bunch of sweet resources. Cities can expand their borders further, but can only collect resources from three tiles away.



Shrines and Monuments take the same amount of materials to build, but thanks to Piety Social Policy, you can see here that the shrine's build time is greatly reduced. Also, our Culture requirements for a new social policy have gone up by a little.

We get a notification that Kamehameha has built the Great Lighthouse wonder, something that increases naval sight and movement range. One more reason to conquer Honolulu.



Hell yeah I want to be your friend! Sweden's Unique Ability is "Nobel Prize." Both they and their friends generate Great People faster. This ability stacks, so if Sweden makes lots of friends they produce a lot more Great People. They can also gift Great People to City-States for 90 Influence (!!!!!)

Plus, since he's our friend it means he is not likely to hate us if we need to fight Pacal too, his enemy.



Albany has given us some Horsemen. This is why it's important to keep your military tech up when befriending military City-States, they can only give you the stuff you have researched.

Wittenberg wants us to build Hanging Gardens. It is a kickass Wonder that gives a ton of food to its city, and with Albany giving us all this free military, we can afford to attempt it. Plus, for our second Follower Belief, I'm going to select the belief that gives us +2 Faith for each Wonder in the city. That will jack up our faith income enormously, even with the two wonders we've got that would be +4 faith.



Damn, looks like Kamehameha learned his lesson and is building catapults now. We can still pick them off with our cavalry.



FUCK YOU TOO Rome. God damn, man. We are surrounded by assholes.



Here are all my workers, working to improve Cardiff. It won't take long. In fact, things being what they are, I may run out of things for my workers to do soon!



Hohoho, this is rich. Whatsamatter, run out of city-states to bully for gold?

He is literally offering us everything he has and he doesn't even have much. He must have built too many buildings or something because his gold income is 0 per turn. He can't afford to build any more army units. We've got him on the ropes.

I…don't think I want to accept this peace treaty, sir. I think I'd rather build up an army and take that nice Great Lighthouse you've got. If I allowed peace now, and declared war later, that'd make me a warmonger in the eyes of the world. So…tough tidily winks.



Sure, why not dude. Let's go with it.



Sure, why not. Refusal would just hurt our relationship with Dido, who, as I said, I DO NOT WANT TO PISS OFF at this stage in the game, and with the units we're getting from our military friends, we can afford to throw some stones at Caesar.

(Not pictured because I missed the opportunity: A City-State quest where they wanted me to give them my religion. The popup: "Almaty Wants Asskicking." I am not regretting this religion name AT ALL.)



Eh, that's not quite the same.



Right now I'm taking potshots at any soldiers leaving Honolulu so he can't build up on my borders. Our economy is a bit more fragile than I'd like it to be, so it's time to research Currency, which will let us build money-boosting banks, mints (only useful if you're next to gold or silver) and the Desert-improving wonder, Petra.

Desert tiles, incidentally, are largely worthless because they give no food (except for floodplains next to a river) and no production (except for hills). Petra can only be built by a city next to the desert, but it makes all non-floodplain desert tiles give +1 food, production, and gold. Very, very handy, if you can swing it. If I decide to try to build a colony near Mt. Sinai, I'll have to give it Petra.



Sidon wants us to kill this nearby barbarian camp and return their worker, which would lock us in as their allies, giving us a THIRD military city-state granting us units. We need to be careful, though, it's guarded by barbarian spearmen, who do extra damage against our horsemen and chariot archers. That's what the Pictish warriors are for. They get a combat bonus outside of friendly territory, so they are wonderful barbarian hunters.



Shiny shiny people, shiny shiny…

We still don't know who our mystery 8th player is. No doubt they're on some other island separated from the rest of us. I hope they don't become a "runaway civ" that super-develops while the rest of us fight each other.



Time for Cardiff to earn its keep and build us a Trireme. I won't expect it to do much fighting, but it's imperative we map out more of the world.



He's offering us furs this time too, he must be even more desperate. He's making a ton of gold per turn, I think he must have sold all his salt to every other nation on the planet for that.

Still, I'm gonna stick to my guns and not give in. Not until we can give him Asskicking.

We are notified that Pacal has entered the medieval era. He must be researching deep into the tree instead of wide like we are, because he only has two cities. Then again, he is using a fully-unlocked Tradition, which helps his cities grow.



Alright! Cha-ching!



Shit!

Fuck!

GOD DAMN YOU!

Well, folks, the war is over, for now. The Great Wall slows down invaders inside your territory. Honolulu's highly defensible position just became nigh impenetrable with our current weaponry. Any assault we attempt would turn into a unbearable slog and our units would be slowly but surely destroyed as they approached. We need to upgrade to trebuchets and knights and stuff before we stand a chance in there. Maybe even musket men and cannons.

Sorry, Pictish Warriors, I wanted to see you shine today, but the fates were against you. You killed a lot of barbarians, though, you earned your keep!

So, I make a peace deal with Kamehameha. He gives me 73 gold (no furs this time) and we end the war. For now.

Now, where were we?



YESSSSSSSSSS yes-yes-yes-yes. Here's where things get interesting again.

We can choose a second Follower Belief. I'm choosing Divine Inspiration, +2 Faith for each World Wonder in the city. That will already give us +4 in our capital and more in…THAT GUY'S… capital when we conquer it.

We now have access to a new type of Belief: The Enhancer Belief.



Most enhancers allow you to spread your religion more efficiently in different ways. Some make missionaries stronger, or Prophets cheaper. The two most popular choices are Itinerant Preachers which makes the reach of your religious pressure farther, or Religious Texts, which makes your pressure increase. With those, you don't need to worry so much about manually spreading your religion.

There are two, however, that are unique. Defender of the Faith makes our combat units stronger in friendly cities that follow our religion, and Just War gives us a lot of combat strength near enemy cities that follow our religion.

We are going for Just War. We will spread our religion to every capital on the globe. Do you see my Master Plan yet?

We will give everyone Asskicking…and then we will give everyone an asskicking.

Muahahahahahahahahaha.



Indeed I am.

Current State of the World:




New Game Plan: Find someone better to attack. Either Rome, or Palenque. Additonal plan: build road to destination before attacking.