Epic 6, Part III

While capturing my first Indian cities, I had researched Engineering for pikemen and faster road movement, then started to go for Liberalism. Since Taoism hadn't been founded yet, I did so now.


An extra religion to spread for happiness once I would have reached Liberalism and Free Religion would come in handy, I think. I also had hired a priest specialist in Berlin to increase the chance of getting a Great Prophet for the Confucian shrine, and indeed, I got one in 1085AD. Around that time, I saw war weariness kicking in for the first time - only to disappear completely after a couple of turns?!? Strange! Looks like defending only for some time had decreased WW again. I expected it to reappear once I would capture another city, which happened to be Karachi, but this was not the case.


Gandhi finally had longbows now in 1142AD, but they were no match against my City Raider III macemen, some already with Combat II on top even. In 1154AD, finally the first enemy catapult could be seen, but all in all I really wondered what the AIs were doing! There were turns where I didn't see a single enemy unit, and attack stacks were small, the Spanish stack behind Bombay being the largest one I've seen in a long time. They also were incredibly behind technologically, so what were the AIs doing?!?

This became so easy that I even was able to create two attack stacks, advancing simultaneously on two different fronts! I'm not used to be able to do this so early in an Always War game.

I had carefully seen to it that my catapults attacked and killed off wounded enemy units for training, and now had six catapults with the accuracy promotion. This reduced city bombardment time considerably, and the next two Indian cities fell on the same turn.



The only enemy units besides city garrisons were small pillage stacks, but I did no longer see any larger stacks. I almost wished for a huge surprise attack somewhere! At least the AIs advanced on the tech tree, albeit slowly: I saw the first enemy war elephant in 1238AD. Yay. My Combat II/Formation pikemen had become terribly bored already by now anyway.

But somehow the game seemed to believe I had a hard time, and handed me another freebie. No, two freebies to be exact, but only one really important.


Yeah right, I popped iron and gold on the same turn. And I had popped my second happiness resource at Berlin already in this game! I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Anyway, onwards with the game. I discovered Liberalism (first! *gasp* ) in 1280AD, and took Astronomy as my free tech.


Around this time, I clearly lost focus, maybe because the game was so easy and felt so un-AW-ish, or maybe because I had been sick for some days and played with an aching head. What I should have done next was to beeline to Rifling, and finish the AIs off. What I did though was to beeline to Economics next, as I often do in my games, meaning I researched Guilds, Banking, then Economics. What for?!? I was so far ahead in tech already, I didn't need an even better economy! And while Banking for adopting mercantilism is a good move in AW, researching Economics was of course a total waste. All I got was a free Great Merchant, because Free Markets are of no use if you're at war with all other civs.

Mid-Game Status Report

Anyway, time for a map update. Here are my lands one turn before discovering Liberalism in 1280AD:


As you can see, I had captured Delhi already, the Indian capital, and would capture the last Indian city a few turns later, in 1388AD. Bye bye Gandhi! I also adopted the civics now that I wouldn't leave for the rest of the game.


I remained in Representation because of the happiness boost and the science bonus for specialists. Thanks to the Pyramids, I could have also adopted Police State to fight war weariness, but...there was none. Or for the unit building boost, but...since I seldomly lost a unit, I didn't build that many! (Yes, this is still the Always War game report! )

Free Speech was now better than Bureaucracy, because by now I had a lot of towns so the extra gold from them was worth more than the double commerce in my capital. Slavery is great for whipping expensive buildings like Marketplaces and Universities, or Forges in new cities (once they have a Granary). In most of my games, I remain in Slavery until emancipation anger becomes unbearable...which is unlikely to ever happen in this game.

Mercantilism is the best economic civic for Always War, until your empire becomes so massive that State Property gets better - I never researched Communism though. And finally, Free Religion is always nice for the research and happiness boost.

In a more difficult game, Theocracy and Vassalage might have been worthwhile for the bonus XP, but in this game my units were so superior that they easily got their XP from fighting without much risk of dying anyway.

In 1502AD, Berlin finished the Taj Mahal.


As I finally beelined to Riflemen next (which I should have done much earlier!), I lost focus once again. This time, I was so busy building infrastructure that my offense slowed down because I had to leave too many units behind to guard newly captured cities. I don't know what I had been smoking, but somehow I still couldn't believe that this game would remain so easy, and always had the feeling I had to prepare my economy for the time when the AIs finally would wake up and throw huge stacks against me...Additionally, I wanted to wait for riflemen before mass-producing units again. All this led to a unit shortage on the front lines, and suddenly, too few defensive units in a captured city faced too many enemy stacks, including lots of catapults. Whoops.


As you can see, my units were wounded already from collateral damage, and there were several stacks with catapults, war elephants, horse archers, and swordsmen surrounding the city!

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