Part 34: Sand and Walls!

UPDATE 34: Sand and Walls!

Well, damn it. Harar's toast. I could at best thin out half of his army before the other half kills it. For some damn reason I had two spearmen guarding it instead of two bowmen. I have no idea why.

But on the plus side:



YAY! All that previously-worthless desert around Addis Ababa is now producing proper amounts of resources. With every tile producing at least one gold, too, the Golden Age effectively doubles our gross gold yield. Pretty awesome, huh?

We literally have a capital that eats sand and shits gold.



Ah, lovely. At minimum, +1 Food, Production, Gold and Faith per tile around our city. Our capital will be very strong, if nothing else. I just need to build more of an army to protect it.



Well, there goes Harar. On the plus side, I did manage to get a lot of his warriors killed. I have also quickly produced a new settler and am moving him south to the coast near the marble. I'm researching drama and poetry because this unlocks amphitheaters and Petra gives us a free amphitheater.



Y'know, I'm taking this peace treaty, because it will give me just enough time to finish the other wonder we've never managed to finish in this Let's Play so far: The Great Wall! Once that is built, it will be extremely difficult for him to mount any kind of offensive on me.



Here's Adwa! You can also see the under-construction Great Wall. Heh heh heh.



Screw you pal!

As soon as I'm able, I'm going to build up an army to wipe Montezuma off the face of the earth, because this asshole clearly won't be satisfied with unless we're dead. You can still go for a cultural victory quite well as a puppet empire.



What the hell?! I think this is because of what I mentioned before: due to how it scales, the cultural victory is best accomplished by having three or four cities, not just one, and right now, everyone but us has three cities. Soon, soon…



Good, this'll finish off Tradition and make our cities grow much faster.



DA DA DAA! YES! YESSSS! FINALLY! I think the only reason we got to build this thing is because everyone else is so offense-oriented instead of defense-oriented. Well, this will slow down invaders to a crawl, letting our bows shoot them down. Speaking of which, time to queue more bowmen! Better now and not need them than later and do.



Beautiful! Look at that. The desert becoming lush farmland within our walls. It'll be even better once we research fertilizer and Civil Service.



Excellent, now we can build the national college and the Oracle.



Ahh, crap, Maria Theresa built Chichen Itza, I wanted that! We can still win this cultural race, though.

Especially now that we've got the Teracotta Army!



Yay.



No surprise that Monty is so well-fed, the Aztec unique building is the floating gardens, which increase food intake.



Scouting out Monty, he doesn't seem to have much of an army because I think a lot of it is fighting Washington.



Attila wants us to gang up on Monty. I'm not strong enough to do so, yet. I tell him I'm not interested.



…okay, you, I can't turn down. Give me ten turns to put out more bowmen, okay?



OKAY! We are at a crossroads, folks. Since we're going for a cultural victory, we can and probably should try to unlock Piety, but this will lock us out of Rationalism later down the line. Do we go for it?

I also could try to focus on unlocking and finishing Honor if not Piety. Decisions, decisions...

State of the World:



Gah, Monty's conquering so much territory, no wonder everyone hates him. And Maria Theresa seems to be going for a cultural victory too, interesting. I hope she doesn't purchase too many city-states out from under us.

I'm focusing on wonders because wonder-spamming is one of the preferred ways to win a cultural victory. Each wonder gives us at minimum one more culture point, helps generate Great People, and so on. Still, I should probably be building even more soldiers than I already am. I shouldn't get too cocky because of the Great Wall.