OK, since nobody's signed up and the thread's been quite quiet, Helgo and I are committing to swap turns indefinitely, though there is always a sign-up spot available. We're going to take thirty turns each, at least initially, which gives us fifteen turns over the span of a full game played to 2050 (though I would be shocked if it takes us that long to win). I hope that even if nobody else signs up, this game will prove entertaining enough that any future succession games would have other takers.
Because we're the only players and we both voted for Persia, Persia it is. (Why do people have such a soft spot for the Vikings?) We're doing a Large map- any smaller and the game will be too short to be very interesting, and Huge maps are so big you just get lost in their vastness. I'm randomizing the planet starting conditions, keeping barbarians on Roaming.
Standard house rules (most of them stolen from the Civ 3 succession games forum) are:
1. No automating workers in any way, shape or form.
2. No Right-of-Passage abuse.
3. Please, for the love of god, don't ruin our trade reputation if you can help it. (Sometimes you can't).
4. Savescumming/restarting is only permissible for a really good reason (say, we find out we were stuck on a tiny island), and only with a large majority (unanimous with two players, I suppose...)
Let's begin!
World setup:
Civ setup. I've turned off the weirder rule variants, as well as the culturally linked start locations (makes things too predictable) and respawn AI players (annoying when you have to go chasing an extra civ down) buttons. I've chosen to preserve the random seed to prevent easy savescumming (a sin of which we're both guilty).
4000 BC (Turn 1)
This is our start location:
Note a couple of things. First, there's some incense directly north of us, which is good- that's a luxury, and it also produces excess commerce. We're next to fresh water, which will allow us to grow our capital beyond size 6 without an aqueduct. Finally, we note a cow's head sticking out of the fog of war two spaces away. By moving our settler one tile west, we can start working that cattle immediately (otherwise we'd have to wait ten turns for our borders to expand), and we'll also be able to work what looks like some hills or mountains to the northwest that we can't work from our current spot. So I'll move both settler and worker west one tile, the settler to found our capital, and the worker to head for the cattle.
3950 BC (2)
We're up and running, and we can see everything that our capital will eventually be able to work:
It's a pretty good start, although I wish that tundra were something else (we'll eventually turn it into forest, although not until Engineering).
Persepolis starts on a warrior, which can explore and guard our first settler. We also start work on Iron Working- our unique unit is an overpowered Swordsman, so we want to find out where the iron is early on and nab it before anyone else can.
3900 BC (3)
Nothing interesting. The worker is mining the cattle, and Persepolis is still working on its Warrior.
3850 BC (4)
Zzzz...
3800 BC (5)
...
...
3700 BC (7)
This turn, Persepolis completed its warrior, and we also got the cattle mined:
The warrior will start exploring northwest of the city, since that looks like our best hope for expansion, and the worker will put a road on the cattle.
3400 BC (12)
Northwest of Persepolis is mostly desert, but there's a river to the northeast which may be promising:
We also contact the Zulu, who control that scout northeast of our warrior. We receive Ceremonial Burial (for temples, though we won't build any for a while), Pottery (for granaries), and 10 gil in exchange for Bronze Working and Alphabet.
3100 BC (18)
We spot a really good spot to build the Colossus northeast of Persepolis, at the mouth of the river we spotted earlier:
Our settler had previously been moving to the tile two moves directly north of him. I change his course to send him to the river mouth- we want the Colossus if we can at all get it. Looking back on the screenshots, I also started irrigating Persepolis's cattle this turn to turn it into a settler factory, thinking I'd switch it away from its granary and needed extra growth, but then don't switch its build, so uh...I irrigated and then un-irrigated a cow for no terribly good reason. Woops.
On the bright side, so long as it isn't permanent, the temporary population boost is useful...
2800 BC (turn 24)
Parsagadae is founded at the mouth of the river. It's piss-poor at production right now, so it will build a worker to improve the immediate area, and then begin work on the Colossus, possibly after building a Curragh for exploration.
2590 BC (turn 29)
As my turn is about to end, we have a bit of an...interesting situation:
Shaka is known among Civ players for being a dick, so Parsagadae may be completely fucked. I'll find out next turn. We've just connected Incense to Persepolis- previously we were keeping it happy via luxury spending- and will finish the Granary soon, after which we'll need to build a settler to settle on the red star (assuming we don't need to build a military unit to protect against the Zulu).
2550 BC (turn 30)
Looks like we dodged a bullet for the moment, but we may want to build a warrior in Parsagadae before the Colossus to defend it (and get the military police bonus against sad faces and civil disorder), forgoing the Curragh- we need to get the Colossus ASAP. Again, next probable city site has been marked with a red star. After that we might want to look to our southeast, or the coast south-southeast of Parsagadae. Our worker is currently re-mining Persepolis's cattle now that the granary has been completed.
Aaaaand, the situation at the dawn of Turn 31:
I set Persepolis to build a settler since it demanded me to build something, but I otherwise haven't touched anything. Helgo, you can change it if you want to, though I think a settler is by far the best option.
You may want to turn the luxury slider up a notch until Persepolis builds its settler, since when it gets to size 4 with only one luxury and no garrison, it'll riot.
(The save itself is only a couple of megabytes- I'll get it to you off-forum).
Poll
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Topic: Bay 12 Civ III Succession Game (NP: Persia, 150 AD) (Read 4140 times)