Epic Nineteen: Arise, Ethiopia!

I've actually got about 20 sushi resources, which with Free Speech would add 80 GNP PER CITY! That's huge! I liked Epic 16 so much, I'm going to play it all over again!

And instead of Rifling, I can use the Liberalism slingshot on the Medicine line!

So I researched Scientific Method next, but had to pause it in order to first grab Economics for the Merchant, since my rivals started on that. And unfortunately that pushed Liberalism beyond the end of my Golden Age, meaning that I had to wait to get into Free Speech. No way was that revolt worth 3 turns of anarchy.

I was prepared to cash in the Liberalism free tech for Biology if necessary, since Louis and Peter and Hannibal all had Education. But the AIs bypassed Liberalism long enough that I could research Biology and delay the slingshot all the way to Medicine itself. That's 10,000 free beakers. One quick research to Corporation later, and Sid's Sushi was born in 1375...

What? NO! Frickin dammit Mercantilism bug! WHERE IS OUR FRICKIN PATCH?! It'll take 3 turns for a revolution to Free Market! Well, I have no choice; I can't get the 3-man Golden Age until only about 10 turns before the end, not enough time to spread the corp far enough.

However, there is a silver lining here. My vassal Peter had researched Democracy, and "mutual military struggle" in the Holy Roman war got him up to Annoyed and willing to trade it to me for Chemistry + Rep Parts. I can at least add Universal Suffrage to my revolt (one extra turn of anarchy) in order to cash rush executives pronto.

... and Sid's Sushi was founded in 1400 AD. So now I had precisely 20 turns to spread executives everywhere.

During my anarchy, the Holy Roman Empire collapsed quickly enough to my cuirassiers and grenadiers that I definitely didn't need to spend research on Rifling and unit upgrades. Rather, we needed 20% culture to balance war weariness, and the rest of my economy went straight to cash rushing Executives. For the remaining 20 turns, every single penny I could make would go towards the corporation: either direct expansion costs, or rushing an executive or galleon or courthouse. The first few executives were actually full-rushed from scratch, for 675 gold each, to hit maximum possible speed on bootstrapping more cities into making executives. Also with that Democracy acquisition, I bid for the Statue of Liberty, but Louis beat me to it, but I got a cash refund of 1000 to buy more executives.

My GNP exploded through the roof, from about 1500 units before the corporation, to 3000 after incorporating most of the continental cities, to 5000 as I conquered more sushi resources in Holy Roman lands, and would go even higher with Free Speech, Wall Street in the corp city, whipped courthouses, and a late Golden Age.

My National Epic city needed to crash out as many GPPs as possible, in hopes of scoring a 3-man Golden Age before 1500 AD, both for the Free Speech revolution and to boost raw commerce GNP for the scoring checkpoint. I farmed over all its towns and gave it Sid's Sushi for the food, and hired max specialists. The first new Great Person (#4 total) was a Scientist, rendering the free scientist at Physics irrelevant. The second was a Merchant. So then I hired max specialists of all specialists except scientists and merchants, and then finally got a Prophet just 3 turns before 1500 AD. golden-3.jpg 438x62

So with that Golden Age, I rearranged civics one last time to Representation (contributes to GNP), Free Speech (double culture GNP!), Free Religion (+10% to Representation's beakers!), and Caste System (artists produce the most GNP of any specialist.)

(Incidentally, I often edit my reports somewhat out of chronological order. The corporation research and great people plans actually began many turns before the Holy Roman battles. But the narrative flow works better in describing each line of play separately, even though I was concurrently following each thread while playing. I advise this approach for report writers; it reads much better than something like "1400 AD: Captured Aachen and researched Biology.")

I finished eliminating the Holy Roman Empire in about 1460 AD, bringing me right up to 60% land area. I actually approached the land area scoring a bit wrongly: I somehow got the idea that the scoring was based on percentage land area, where I could ensure I got first place by actually going over the domination limit precisely in 1500 AD. But the domination percentage includes my vassal, while the demographics land area excludes it, so it's possible for someone to beat my result in that category by going all the way to the dom limit without taking any vassals.

I wound up with 37 native seafoods and rice, and since this isn't the actual Something Fishy game, I can even import seafood from my rivals for one last layer of GNP absurdity. That brought the sushi count to exactly 50 resources, for 100 culture in each city; 200 with Free Speech. Times 51 cities, that's 10,200 GNP just from Sid's Sushi.

So in 1500 AD, I just barely finished sailing executives to all the captured Holy Roman cities. That included three newly-settled cities that I delayed a few turns in order to break the domination limit at exactly the right time. And the last order of business was to assign all cities to build culture, all specialists to artists, and culture slider to 100%. The official scoring tallies in 1500 AD:

37 sushi resources for 37 points, and 51 cities with the corporation for 102 points.

I actually didn't build all that many units; my domination wars were done with only 27 grenadiers, 14 Oromos, and 22 knights/cuirassiers. They never fought anything stronger than longbows, so maintained great kill ratios (91 longbows killed!), and the promotions snowballed as usual into great combat odds.

The hilariously absurd GNP graph, where Sid's Sushi just goes completely bonkers.

The power graph, which tells the real story of my game. Follow the military demise of Montezuma, Asoka, and Charlemagne in turn, and see where Peter escaped by vassalizing. See where my Heroic Epic city got rolling, and also see where Louis spawned Lincoln as a colony. I expect that will happen in most games - that island was right by France's start, and the AI always seems to liberate colonies with as few as three cities. That's probably not so smart, compared to keeping the cities for itself -- and definitely not smart when the spawned vassal later breaks free as Lincoln did in my game.

350K game points! I figured the original Sid's Sushi game would never be topped, but this did it! I guess Advanced Start breaks the normalization formula even more than big whacks of food from the free corporation. Mostly because the domination win came much earlier, where Advanced Start sure helps. (Someday for the humor value I'll do an Advanced Start with a billion points and win the space race in 3000 BC.

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