Part 22: Political Campaign of the Gods!

We begin our campaign by--



Jumping Jehoshaphat! That is a hell of a lot of copper.

Okay. Okay. Let's start over.



Right. We are playing as Empress Theodora and our goal is to win by democracy. Religion is a highly-customizable tool in this game and Theodora's religion is even more customizable than normal, so she's suited for a bunch of different victory types provided you know the religion system in and out.

There's a catch! Unlike every other religious civ in the game, she gets no actual help in forming her super-religion. No traits or buildings that let her generate more faith than the average joe. This means that if we want our super-religion we're going to have to generate it the hard way, the old-fashioned way, and hopefully manage to pick a pantheon that lets us generate more faith than normal. We will also be trying to build Stonehenge to make up for our lack of faith-generation. Remember back in Boudicca's run where I kept talking about Stonehenge? It's even more important here.

Now, we have settled in the middle of a copper bonanza, how fortuitous. Let's hope the gods don't decide to trick us with good fortune one moment and disaster the next.



Ooh, and some salt just down the river, too. I think we'll be settling close to home this time. We are fortunate in another way: copper and salt can both be mined and mining is one of the first techs you unlock, so they're easy to get for your workers to add to your happiness network. Masonry for a marble quarry is right after that. We will still be researching pottery first, of course. Must get that shrine ASAP!




Ah, we're near the ocean, too. Good. That means I can also probably show you guys the Dromon, one of the Byzantine Empire's uniques, soon.



Awesome! Christmas has come early to the Orthodox Christians! My Plan for policies this time is a little different than "Straight Tradition" or "Straight Liberty" like the last two times.

I'd like to show off Honor, you see. Honor isn't so hot for growing your cities but it is very handy nonetheless, and so I'm going for a mix of Tradition with Honor once I get the best stuff in Tradition.



Adopting Tradition gives us 3 more Culture Points per turn, if you recall. Now, the build time for the Monument is just under what we'll get for a new policy, and it'd be kind of a waste to spend production time when the next policy in Tradition gives us a free Monument in about the same amount of time, so I'm ordering the construction of a worker early. When I unlock shrines I'll pause a bit so I can build that shrine first. That way hopefully no work production goes to waste at all.

I send my warrior just a bit more to the west, discovering our nearby neighbor. It's…



…

Oh, Jesus.

State of the World:


Politics of the World: