Adventure Twenty-Six: Holiday Surprise

Now I'm streaking to Biology. Suddenly I'm quite competitive in tech rate: my own economy can knock out Chemistry and Sci Meth in 6 turns each! And yet more techs in trade for them - Constitution and RIFLING. Mao and Caesar went into WFYABTA (which is silly, I'm still seven or so techs behind the leaders), but Khan and friendly Hammurabi kept trading with me.

With Biology, my cities could finally get above size 10 where they'd been stuck by food availability. With that, I finally bought some Rice for cash for health, and also converted most mined hills to windmills. 2-2-2 production from a Rep Parts windmill isn't a shabby tile at all.

I also kept a steady stream of Christian missionaries flowing to the big continent. With the shrine at +100% gold, 40 hammers for a missionary was actaully a better economic payoff build for my fringe cities than the usual economic multiplier buildings. After Hammurabi converted, I targeted Rome. But he wouldn't convert even after I sent Christianity to every city of his. A while later he went Free Religion though, good enough.

GP #5 Prophet settled. #6 Artist settled. #7 Scientist (from the Great Library city), best use is an academy almost more for its culture than science. These Great People are coming really slowly, though. With no cap space and little food (even post Biology), it's pretty hard to push out any sizable number of Great Artists. What I really need is specialists that don't eat food or count against health and happiness. Free specialists, you could call them. If only there were a way to get eight or so free specialists in one city, I could be in really good shape here.

I made good use of Forest Preserves elsewhere too. I had quite several plains forests that would never be worked for lack of food, so why not preserve them for a happy face? Almost every city except Washington had two or four forests kept within the city radius for health purposes. Post Environmentalism, I could have gotten away with cutting them, but with nothing really better to build on the tiles (too late for cottages to mature), I just kept them.

I considered renting copper from Churchill to build the three Buddhist cathedrals, but he's "worst enemy" of no fewer than four other leaders, so that's a no-go. Also he wants 40/turn, and converting 400 gold to 450 hammers is okay but not spectacular. (Copper doesn't do anything else here, the Statue of Liberty is long gone.)

Still about eight techs behind financial Pacal. (Yup, I never got Animal Husbandry all game.)

Churchill was under a dogpile of wars, so Hammurabi came asking for help that I had to accede. That phony war lasted all of three turns until Churchy vassalized to Caesar.

Emancipation anger also piled on, but Caste System was absolutely mandatory for my culture chances. Definitely cheaper to cash-buy happy resources than to raise the culture slider, so I did that.

Pacal beat me to all three Radio wonders. I continued to Mass Media, though it hurt to obsolete my Apostolic hammer bonus, I need culture over all else which means Broadcast Towers.

Pacal then also built the United Nations. The world went Environmentalist: fine by me! I need health and I've got lots of windmills and forest preserves. Also Free Speech, which was redundant. The civic I want to see from the UN is Universal Suffrage - I still lack the tech and wouldn't want the anarchy, but now have a lot of towns. The civics I dread are Emancipation and Free Religion - I still need both parts of the Caste/Pacifism combo.

After Mass Media, I contined research to Refrigeration. Malls seem worthwhile. The food is half an artist, plus I have a shrine city to add 20% gold to.

Then I traded for Railroad and parked on the culture slider. I want Assembly Line for infantry defense but Khan has it and will trade it as soon as somebody builds the Pentagon. Now every city just built Machine Guns then infantry and kept them in the culture cities. Doesn't matter now if I get attacked and lose any other city, as long as the legendarys stay safe.

Each of the three cities is getting to Legendary by different routes. Washington coasted about halfway there on the early Stonehenge/Oracle culture plus the Sistine combo platter, then cut over to the slider to use its dozen towns. Boston built early wonders too, but its bulk is coming from National Park artists. Philadelphia is getting by entirely on settled Great Artists and the Hermitage, and a modest boost from the slider late on a few towns and windmills. All three cities are over 800 culture/turn now.

And yes, no resources and I still built a corporation. That Great Artist could have been worth 14 culture by settling, or 8 x 3 cities plus a cash profit as the corporation. Seemed worthwhile to me.

Caesar declared war against Mao, hauling in vassals on both sides. That's nice, but it doesn't involve Pacal who is my main problem.

That's actually GREAT news. Pacal researched Robotics, off the space line. He also went all the way up to Stealth which is another three offline techs.