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Adventure Fifty-six: Santa's Workshop

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Hmm, I hadn't anticipated this - there's nothing useful to build! Okay, throw out some extra warriors. Pottery would have to be the next tech after Hunting, just to have something to build. But when it was researched, the city had already hit size 4 with no useful tiles to grow onto, so the granary wouldn't even be helpful. The only thing to do was to start putting out settlers.

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Heh, non-snowy forest can spread into tundra. Never saw that before. I wonder how the game picks what type of forest spreads? Best guess is the type of the originating forest?

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Anyway, I had a very ambitious plan. See, on Monarch difficulty with a boosted start, it should be trivial to sprint far ahead of the AIs and supply all their techs. There are three factors that will determine the score for this game:

This would require a big pile of early wonders, but that fits fine for an Industrious civ. Oracle - Alphabet was the right answer for the first. The Great Wall into a Great Spy (assisted with a spy specialist when possible) would get the last. And Stonehenge should get built just for its general effect, Ind/Cha absolutely demands it.

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ARGH, I missed the Great Wall by 3 turns. (What the heck happened here? How often does that fall before Stonehenge? And what kind of idiot builds that on a no-barbarians map?!) I did get Stonehenge, although probably didn't deserve it at the late date of 1840 BC.

A really early economic crash then followed. I guess Christmas isn't about commerce after all. biggrin.gif - 1kb I'd expanded out to five cities too fast. Had to stop building settlers and let North Pole grow just to work some coast tiles! Stonehenge getting the gold for Montreal would help a lot, of course, but the going was really slow until I finally got some cottages built and growing.

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I did land the Oracle for Alphabet in 1080 BC, a reasonable date, probably about 90% likely on Monarch. Here's the tech landscape:

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Okay, I needn't have worried much. Three civs lack Mysticism and only Frederick got to Priesthood. That also explains why Stonehenge lasted late (Frederick built the Great Wall instead.) Anyway, it's GREAT for me if the AIs neglected the cheap religious techs, that means Santa gets to hand out more goodies.

I took Sailing and Polytheism in trades, and a bit later Iron Working after Mansa went for Alphabet himself so I couldn't hoard trading any more.

Plan: Keep Archery unacquired so I can use it to judge when to trade cheap techs. Like this:

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So we know he's got Writing research underway, so I just gave it to him instead.


I still had some really terrible economic trouble, though. Alphabet got me a few trades, but couldn't do anything more for my research rate. (I suppose I could have built Research, but that never seems productive.) Stonehenge/Oracle produced a Great Prophet, who settled helpfully, but he couldn't rescue things all on his own. I was limping towards Mathematics, but it was taking something like thirty turns. If I can't research, how can I get techs to give away?

Then the light finally went on.

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Right. Economy in a can. A big cylindrical can with a fire on top.


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With the Great Wall gone, for research visibility now I had to get to courthouses sometime soon. Santa needs his naughty and nice list! Mansa Musa helpfully researched Code of Laws. I'd been in the zero phase of binary research intending for Calendar, but now the delayed-choice aspect of binary research paid off as I switched to Currency instead and traded it for CoL and Monarchy. I whipped out about eight courthouses, which in one stroke both fixed my economy and rapidly got Santa's spying capabilities online.

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Civilization can still make me laugh. lol.gif - 1kb

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