Part 44: Muddle! Muddle our way to VICTORY!

With our stolen gunpowder technology, I've upgraded our troops to muskets and warned Indonesia of the incoming Shaka attack. A Caravel is being produced and will seek out new life and new civilizations to spread tourism to, and soon I'll produce cannons and stuff to go on the offensive and hopefully take Venice for myself.

We soon bump into the missionaries from this lady:



Portugal! Portugal is another trading nation. They get more gold for resource diversity, but the real kicker is they can construct a Feitoria inside a city-state to force the city-state to give them a copy of its luxuries, even if the city-state hates them.

I have absolutely no idea why Firaxis went with the insane madwoman queen for Portugal, but then again, maybe that's exactly why they did go with her, so they could have an unpredictable faction.



Here, Morocco is sending missionaries to mess with the religion of my cities. They already did this once with one Great Prophet earlier, so this time I'm ready for them and produce an Inquisitor to guard the city. Haw! This confuses their missionaries, who have nowhere to go now.

New Great Artist, and a new Great Musician, in the same turn! Guys, whatcha got for me?



(I'm deciding not to show the Great Music again because the image is always the same)



These are the only ones I can see, but based on the fact that I can't order this great prophet to move around any more south means Shaka's got a huge army of Impis waiting to attack Surabaya. Uh-oh.



Good, I'm sending this dude to Mogadishu north of us. We could use the extra money and happiness from its luxuries.

New Policy time!



With this, our culture goes up to +142 a turn. Nice. We're only one policy away from finishing Aesthetics and earning double theme bonus on all our art collections.



Cannons are coming online. Soon I'll be able to attack Shaka, or at least defend myself. It looks like he hasn't upgraded past trebuchets, himself.



I haven't done anything at all to even hint that I might take military action against Shaka. He's just doing this to see who else will bite if they want to attack me.

So I denounce him right back!



This gives us a new happiness building, the Zoo, and also lets us build a new wonder, The Globe Theater, which has lots of writing slots and a free great writer! Researching Printing Press also increases our religious pressure due to our belief choice and this unlocks the World Congress. Oooh…things will get political soon.



No kidding, buddy. Sorry about trying to kill you before, you were just cramping my style.

Another new person discovered!



Emperor Pedro II of Brazil! Brazilians work hard, and they play hard. Other Civs get bonuses to culture, but Brazil's the first to focus on Tourism. During golden ages their tourism doubles and they produce Great Culture people faster.

I set Warsaw to produce as quickly as possible and it cranks out the Globe theater in 6 turns. BAM!



Crossdressing actors, you've saved me! Marcel Proust, you're up!



Excellent.



Great. Insults. It's only a matter of time before the shooting starts. Sneaking my great prophet around his territory has revealed a bunch of obsolete soldiers. He's got the numbers, but I've got the firepower. Of course, firepower alone isn't enough to thwart the mighty Zulus…



We're ahead of the tech curve! Building tall has helped with that, fortunately. Sending food carts to our cities probably helped them grow.

Final Aesthetics Policy!



Nice. With this, our World Wonder/Museum theme bonus doubles and our tourism goes up! We can also start buying Great Writers/Artists/Musicians with faith once we go Industrial.



FUCK! We were two turns away from completing that thing! GAAAAHHH. I swear to God, if anyone beats us to building the Uffizi…

Another Great Writer and Musician born, on the same day! Let's hit it, boys!

Gaspar Fernandez gives us the music Xicochi, and Fyodor Dostoyesvsky gives us Crime and Punishment:



Intelligence = depression, huh? Yeah, that's Crime & Punishment, all right.

More good news: we are Influential on our first victim!



Indonesia is now our cultural conquest, eating our Polish food and eating up our culture! Six more to go. Being Influential will also make them really, really unhappy if they choose a different modern ideology than we do.

Ahmad al-Mansur, stop sending your missionaries to my city!



Thanks. That was annoying. I plan on generating most of our faith internally now, through a couple of Holy Sites. That's because our next Policy will finish off Piety, making Holy Sites give us gold and culture too. After that, I dunno, either Rationalism or Exploration.

I finally bump into the last guy on the planet, or maybe Brazil does first, but either way, I meet the final player:



Ashurbanipal! The Assyrians are a combination Military/Science faction, with libraries that are slotted for Great Writing works and the ability to steal tech from guys they conquer. Ashurbanipal was very proud of his library of stone tablets. You had to be one muscular nerd to be well-read back in those days. There was no such thing as "Light" reading.



And this is where things get interesting. We can make a proposal, but it'll be 30 turns before anyone votes on it to enact it.

I've narrowed down the most likely proposals we could enact to just a few, though:



I'm tempted to propose this. A lot of others are also trying to get culture up and running, but if we were to win, we'd beat out everyone else for culture and would get a free social policy. How the prizes work is, first place takes all, second place takes that and third, and third place is just runner-up. The danger is that if anyone else won, they'd produce so much culture it'd be difficult to overwhelm them with tourism, so to ensure we won I'd need to set all my cities to doing noting but contribute to the World's Fair production.

We could also do a Standing Army Tax, piss off the Zulus a bunch by making their army cost more than they could support. We could propose to embargo the Zulu, too, making it harder for them to make money through trade routes.

I'm tempted also to propose ourselves for World Religion: It'd make our religion spread much, much faster and our Holy City would gain +50% Tourism. Not bad, huh? We'd need more spies in order to force this decision through, though. Maybe next session?

State of the Continent:



I am amazed that Shaka has yet to actually attack anyone other than Venice. His Impi will be totally obsolete soon. Maybe once I get proper riflemen instead of musket guys I'll attack…