EFFORTPOST Let's Play "Civ4: Dawn of Civilization" Cute twinks

In honor of Civilization week I suggested doing a Let's Play of Dawn of Civilization, a mod for the best installment, Civilization IV. DoC is the spiritual successor to Rhye's of Civilization and turns Civ from a random map game into a total Earth history sim. It is still in development to this day. This is the recently released 1.18 version of DoC with a MASSIVE new world map and several new civilizations.

I want to take a Civilization into space. We will see how long this goes. RfC/DoC is designed to make it difficult to maintain a strong empire throughout history. It is possible I'll shit my pants and my empire will collapse. It is also possible we'll hit a gamebreaking bug or a broken turn at some point. Either way let's fricking go!!!!!!

I asked !g*mers for a vote:

Wait wtf, a tie Between China and Rome

I'll guess I'll have to change my vote to be a tiebreaker.

We will miss out on seeing the expanded Bronze Age and early game but I think this will be more exciting. China is more about casually expanding and fighting a shitload of barbarians. Rome is poised to conquer the world.

Playing on Monarch/Epic

You'll notice that we're currently the "Italic Peoples", and an independent city called Melpum is in the north. Right now we're looking at the "Stability View", the blue overlay is our Core region. We want as much population as possible here. As Melpum is in our core it will not be indepenedent for long.

When the settler unpacks his bags our southern neighbors say hello. I have a bad feeling about these fellers

Roma is founded. We're going to start with a Ballista, Rome's unique artillery.

Our first settlers on boats go down to found Rhegium at the southern tip of our core, putting us in range of the Greeks. Sometimes the Greeks settle Rhegium or Messana, but since they didn't, we get a settler to do so.

Diplomatic overview of the region. We are the "Roman Republic". The icons to the right show if we have a trade connection, the religion, their attitude towards us, and stability. Greek City States are stable, Carthage is very stable. All civilizations are currently pagan, which functions basically as No Religion, but of slightly different stripes. The Greek City States and us are Olympian, while the baby sacrificing Carthaginians are Baalist.

Most of the pagan distinctions are cosmetic, but it's possible to win a Pagan Religious Victory. Our victory conditions are as follows:

The third condition is unique to Olympianism. The Baalists have some other shit.

It's very possible we could hit this victory on accident. Some people believe if you hit X victory and Y victory later, you didn't actually get Y victory. Either way, I don't really want a Pagan Religious victory, they're lame.

The Historical Victory for Rome is as follows:

Two of these goals will trigger a Golden Age. I'm going to attempt for the first two at least. The "Late Antiquity" goal I'm less concerned with. It's a little RNG dependent on how China, Persia, and India are doing across the world. My goal is to go into Space, but just for keks it'd be fun to hit a Historic victory on the way. If not, oh well, I just want Romans on Mars.

The opening text talks about our "superior political system" as the Roman Republic. I'm going to throw that out the window.

We get a free revolution on the first turn (otherwise it would take turns of Anarchy to change civics). I'm switching to Deification, there's little point to continue running Animism other than that Deification is unstable when paired with a Republic. We're changing that to to Despotism, giving us the "whip" population rush that you would normally get from Slavery in vanilla (since an autocrat can Get Shit Done). With Slavery and Redistribution we have a very stable civic combo.

Since we switched to Despotism, we are now the Roman Kingdom.

Mediolanium (formerly X Chucks Melpum) joins Rome in the next turn. Brennus of the Celtic Chiefdoms (Gaul) greets us, his flavor of Paganism is Druidic. They are backwards as shit you'll note in the score disparity. The Celts are a new civilization in the expanded 1.18 map, previously they were represented entirely by Barbarians and Independent States who were much more hassling. We're going to leave them alone in Gaul to hug trees or whatever for a while.

Many later spawning civilizations get an Advanced Start to get the ball rolling. Due to Rome's unique power of Infrastructure (giving a production boost to any buildings already built in Rome) we're focusing on getting buildings up.

The Roman Legions can build Roman Roads too, this is cool as heck and will help our workers out.

We have settled our core. Padua is a little cramped, but it will make a fine production city with exclusive access to Clams and makes for a strong chokepoint (soldiers can't move around the marsh to the south). The Carthagians didn't settle Iberia yet so we have it to ourself, and we found our first city outside the core in Tarragona. The Green means this is a historical expansion area, which is a little more forgiving than just settling randomly. The key is we want the population in our Core to exceed any settlements outside of the core. If the population outside the core exceeds we get an overextension penalty.

This is of course a very stupid representation of early Rome. Rome did not just pack their bags and peacefully settle the north and south, nor Iberia, but remember that we're simulating the history of the entire world here and have to fast forward through some shit.

We negotitate for Open Borders with the Greeks so our ships can pass through and meet Cleopatra.

"Your head would look good at the end of a pole" indeed

Then we meet Darius of Persia

The Persians are the first with a true nonpagan religion, Zoroastrianism. They naturally founded it, hence the little star.

The foreign advisor notes that all my new friends around the Mediterranean have Shipbuilding which gives them access to War Galleys. These are going to btfo my pathetic little galleys unattended. If I want to conquer shit other than stupid Gauls I'm going to need their boat technology and they are all willing to trade it. Cleopatra, being a dumb foid, has somehow failed to research Writing which is a mere 380 beakers compared to Shipbuilding's 252.

This is an okay trade, just a bit in her advantage.

Now she likes us a little more!!!

Pretty sweet random event, Padua gains a cultural boost

Borders are expanded, not much we can do with that now, but still neat. Saves us from needing a monument or temple.

We meet Buddhist Ashoka of India from a scout in Greece

and even more surprisingly, a still-alive Assyria. I would have expected them to be rekt by the Persian Empire by now, but apparently they signed a peace treaty. Notice in the diplomatic overview that they are the first Unstable civilization (the red dot on the blue thing turned down). This is also another new 1.18 civilization, probably why there's such a generic introduction.

It looks like they might hold Jerusalem. We could open borders/trade, but there's little point to and it risks annoying Persia.

From our exploring, the Mediterranean World looks like this:

We have enough of an army to launch an invasion once we get some ballistae and warships up. We'll have to skip the Punic Wars for now because Greece is the most valuable target.

Speaking of which, they've stirred up some shit

("declared war on !" I think is an independent state, or an unknown civ)

This is probably Alexander the Great.

Unfortunately for Alex, now my waifu is asking nicely for help

She even spots me some cash, she's so cool

Due to my simping, the war effort must move faster than anticipated. One of our precious galleys narrowly escapes a Greek ship. I was hoping for two ballisate, but we have one at least, and enough Legions to fill up our boats, with a War Galley fresh from Tarragona.

It begins

Oh but wait, while we're gearing up for our first great conquest Hannibal "Cute twink" Barca needs to come by to tell us we should have a turn of Anarchy to completely change back our entire political system and lose the advantage of rushing units. I am suddenly tempted to start the first Punic War instead. Telling him no grants a diplomatic malus.

On the plus side, he apparently somehow got roped into this war with the Greeks too, so he FINALLY allows for open borders. But now I'm suspicious he's talking to Cleopatra too

>Will sign Peace Treaty

Yeah, no, not happening

Athens falls with a couple casualties. Shortly after, the Greek City-States collapse into a series of Barbarian and Independent states. Losing a capital deals a massive blow to a Civilization's stability - it's not guaranteed to destroy a Civ by any means, but if the Civilization is already overextended, screwing up their economy, pissing off the world, and losing military battles they're toast . This is the first collapse/civil war seen this game, and it will make mopping up the rest of Greece a bit easier.

Athens is BEAUTIFUL. With three Wonders, it is VERY profitable and will get us a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet pretty soon. This is going to put us in a much more favorable position for our future conquests.

We have an idea on where we stand. We are behind only Carthage and Persia on tech. This is good - China and India isn't past us. Persia has researched Nobility first and gotten a free general from it, oh well.

Greece is conquered. Unfortunately, some butthole appears to have razed the independent city of Sfard. A Persian swordsman is standing right there, so I'm blaming him. Darius is beginning to piss me off. The "Pax Romana" historic goal requires 4 cities in Anatolia and now we only have 3. We'll have to resettle somewhere.

This was the easy part. Now we have about 30 turns to finish several buildings for "Bread and Circuses". I need the Law and Currency technologies for this (mainly Currency, but Law will help). A Great Person is due in Athens in 10 turns, it's a coinflip if I'll get a Great Prophet or a Great Merchant, the prophet would get me Law and the Merchant would get me Currency. I may hoard cash at 0% research funding and 100% fund research after I know who I'll get.

For Pax Romana, I think Carthage may control the Levant, so we're gearing up for some Punic Wars to take both the Levant and Africa. I'll need to settle somewhere in Anatolia to rebuild the city that got rekt and colonize Iberia and Britain. Finally I'll need Egypt, the New Kingdom of Egypt is a bit unstable so they might collapse, that way I won't have to betray Cleopatra but on the other hand she built the Parthenon so it might be advantageous to her as soon as possible.

For the final technology condition, Architecture and Politics are the most in danger of getting researched first by another civ. Persia is closest to this, and they are prosperous and super stable. It may be worth an incursion into their lands to frick them up if we don't get spread too thin.

The Religious Victory doesn't look like it's at risk of hitting. We are going to control 7 wonders probably eventually, but if I don't build many more temples we should be fine.

Ok join me next time if you feel like it These were like barely that many turns but I felt the need to explain my opening moves and now it's almost time for bed

EDIT:

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Part 8 Part 9 Part 10