Tiny Islands

I originally lost interest in Civilization V before playing one particular game I had in mind. (What killed that interest was an Always War game which went frightfully wrong: you literally cannot conquer usefully because of the happy cap. I conquered two civs by around 1 AD and got stuck around -20 happiness with any prospects for recovery dozens of turns away. Always War _sucks_ in Civ 5.)

Anyway, the game in mind was something on a tiny islands archipelago, to check out naval mechanics and combat. Gods & Kings greatly revamped the naval combat model by introducing a division between melee and ranged combat ships. I had to try that out. Naturally the civ to do it would be England, who gets +2 movement for all naval and embarked units.

This report is of my fourth attempt at the game, after two tries missed the Great Lighthouse and one missed the Pantheon I needed. At Emperor difficulty, sometimes that stuff is out of reach no matter how tight your beeline, since the AIs seem to get extra free techs and of course their cost discounts. And they do seem significantly more prompt on building wonders in G&K. I didn't want to drop to a lower difficulty though, Monarch would be cakewalk-easy after the opening stages, so I resorted to a bit of start-scumming. (I also rerolled some maps into the start I envisioned - a small island with fish - rejecting some that were good but not on-theme with a dozen land resources and forest.)

Here is the starting save.

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