Seeds of Greatness: Thread II

[Sardaukar]

Starting a new thread because the images in the previous one are too large and they seem to have scrambled the text formatting.

upload photos to the internet

Mighty Babylon! My favorite civ yet. Was just starting out with Egypt. Greeks and Minoans can get a little finicky inasmuch as they're in the corner of the map and rely on sea travel.

But Babylon is great. There are the usual barbarian waves, competing civilizations and treacherous events but this is an enormously fertile area with excellent growth potential. In this game, I managed to hoard most all the wonders other than the first few. With that kind of happiness bonus, Babylon ran on monarchy the entire game. Usually, it's advantageous to switch to empire (vanilla communism) for the double police powers of garrison units but the corruption can bite. Republic boasts its own benefits but the difficulty of military action conflicts with the goal of the scenario: conquering all seven founding cities!

I particularly enjoyed this game because I took a new strategy, foregoing the usual research of Chariot IVs to instead rush sewers. Medium game warfare consisted of appalling trash units (spear-chucks and the like) supporting sluggardly but lethal armored siege towers. Those took out Persia and Assyria, my immediate neighbors.



Even once all the objectives are fulfilled, the game doesn't end until every enemy faction is conquered, time runs out or you press the retire button. I took the opportunity to put together a world-shaking fleet and invade central Asia, north of the Caspian. This is where the barbarians keep the Ishtar Gate (Great Wall). Absurdly well defended. Can't imagine any way to take it except for siege ships, which are quite advanced and you need a lot of them. If anyone could conquer the city before meeting the victory conditions, it would be Persia, but even that is doubtful.