We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. 
!g*mers
With the research of Logistics technologically the Roman Empire has reached the Renaissance age. It's 1015AD so we're quite advanced, almost a full age ahead of medieval Europe 
Persia isn't even matching us anymore but China has researched one technology we haven't (Printing Press).
We already have a spy settling east to take care of that 
We're already discovering Brazil, interacting with the natives and fighting panthers 
We prove that the world is round when we discover Japan 
In Rhyes and Fall if you found a city in the Renaissance you get a bunch of free buildings. In Dawn of Civilization it's the same, but settlers in a new age can also be used to rush buildings that would have been provided otherwise. Here we can build a bunch of stuff for free with "Rebuild", including a library and a forge. We'll need these because Poland just spawned, hello Poland 
Athens has historically been our Great People city since it's conquest, though Rome is catching up. We've had a Great Prophet born here, Eusebius.
We're sending him to Jerusalem to found the Temple of Solomon.
This will let us then build the Dome of the Rock, which will boost the output of St. Peter's Bascilica in Rome.
When we discover Economics we get a free Great Merchant (Marcus Crassus), and with Economics we can have him build a Stock Exchange in Rome
After the Dome of the Rock is built, St. Peter's Bascilica is maxed out at 40 gold per turn.
Rome turns a 150+ gold profit per turn 
England is coming for Ireland.
We go straight for London, after capturing it they become the "English Government in Exile" but still refuse negotiations.
Really wish the AI was prone to settling just one more city in England 
It's kind of annoying that London controls its entire English core.
When a European or Christian civ researches Academia, the Protestant Reformation begins and Europe erupts in war. Since we're already fighting England, now is a good time to do it. Protestantism is founded in Rhegium. 
We can adopt Protestantism, allow Protestantism to spread, or stamp it out. After all the work I've put into Catholicism you should know what I'm gonna pick. 
England joins the Reformation, as expected. Portugal and the Norse join them. France probably would have if they weren't under my boot. Austria (the Holy Roman Empire) and Poland do not, fortunately. 
The Italian Maritime Republics are supposed to spawn in 1167AD. In a normal medieval game they spawn in north Italy and found Florence, taking Milan and Padua with them. I was afraid my two core cities were going to secede and I would need to reconquer them, but the 1167AD date has passed so apparently not. 
I can focus on the Reformation wars.
The Austrians have claimed Denmark, blocking Norse access from Birka. The Norse have a port from Nidaros but I'm not too worried about them, we might need to be ready for a little naval harassment. They're at war with England, so there's not a risk of them reinforcing them.
With espionage I can see the Portugese army in Lisbon. It's big 
(see unit icons at the bottom)
In fact, they're one of the stronger military powers right now. Ethiopia is also up there too, interedasting 
If I don't take care of them they could frick up my vassal Spain, so while waiting my main army to arrive I reinforce their cities with troops from Tarragona and Alicante.
A couple good wonders are becoming available, to get them up I think it's time to expend my Great People for a Golden Age. 
The Ottomans should be coming too 
so I want to need to start getting gunpowder units up everywhere to properly fight these guys:
England collapses 
If they had just been willing to surrender I would have returned London to them. I maybe should have taken their city in Scotland instead, but I really wanted them to capitulate.
This is going to screw up world history a little 
There will be no British Raj. The United States spawns assuming there are European colonies there, there will still probably be some but not in the same way. We might get a Dutch New Amsterdam instead of New York.
We already have an explorer in America. Maybe we could even colonize it 
At least Alfred did well with his time running London. He's given it a Great General and a Great Engineer. It's still in our historic expansion zone so I think we'll keep it. Ireland is not, so I might set it free.
By the time my army arrives at Lisbon, Portugal is willing to surrender, but as it's the "Rise of the Portugese" they can't capitulate. I figure I will allow peace so I can properly focus on the coming Ottomans.
But suddenly, something extremely strange happens.
Byzantine leader Basil I appears out of nowhere 
Apparently Persia collapsed. Right after I lost 500 gold investing espionage against them
And Turkey has become the Byzantine "Empire of Dorylaion". I had no idea this was a thing. 
This is the city that the Persians burnt down when I first conquered Greece, rebuilt, and I helped defend from the Arabs. It's been a valuable espionage center for centuries. What a journey it's been 
A few turns later we become the "Western Roman Empire", but no cities want to secede. It's not the Eastern Roman Empire, it's just this weird made up new "Dorylaion empire". Fascinating 
Regrettably they do choose to become Pr*test*nt 
My spy sees that Genghis Khan has arrived and the Chinese are fukt 
After China collapses they start mopping up the remnants of Persia too
...and harassing my new Byzantinebros
Notice that Mazaka is in revolt, when mongols are the gates the citizens panic 
We're still stable but have outdated civics - apparently the culprit is Merchant Trade.
Time for a revolution.
Regulated Trade has stability and general gameplay synergy with Bureaucracy. I'll miss my Despotism whip 
but Monarchy will further boost our stability.
Thalassocracy's benefits are negligible especially as more towns are popping up (Roma is working 3 towns and 2 fishing boats for example so we'll lose 1 commerce), and it no longer has a stability benefit with Merchant Trade. There's not much point to colonize too much but Colonialism will be fun anyway. We'll get some slaves and slave plantations up 
So many High upkeep civics and losing the free units from Vassalage is gonna hurt. But it's a very stable combo and Roma is so profitable that focusing all commerce to the capital might outperform the costs.
Sure enough, once the revolution is settled it turns out to be profitable. With Rome pumping out 275 gold per turn 
we're making 5 gold a turn at 50% research funding instead of losing 6.
Around 1280AD the short lived Empire of Dorylaion collapses.
No Ottoman Empire ever appearaed 
I'm guessing the weird Turkish Byzantine Empire in their place prevented it.
I guess we can go ahead and mop up Turkey now.
We finally have unified borders 
and we're back to being the "Roman Empire" instead of the "Western Roman Empire".
The mongols right on my nuts are a little worrying tho. When Temujin asks me to fight Kievan Rus I have no problem doing so, any little thing to potentially keep this guy off my back. 
I take Tarnopol and call it a day before setting it free. Later the mongols take Kyiv and Sweden somehow scoops up Tarnopol
Since Spain and France are our provinces we technically have Trajan's borders now! 
Oh except Poortugal. Whatevs. What a beautiful empire regardless 
I was really expecting a big civil war and conflict with the Ottomans, it really does appear that the weird Byzantine state blocked them from spawning. This is very good for us. But if the mongols invade, as they're prone to do, it could be trouble.
For now, time to look towards the new world 
I accidentally discovered the Inca, spreading disease to them
Mexico is controlled by Toltecs, predecessors of the Aztec. No conquistadors for either 
It might only be available to colonial European powers.
I've given my vassal France and Spanish technology to colonize, so they should get started soon 
Since I accidentally killed England, I can take care of colonizing America instead
I think I'm going to colonize the Deep South so we can set up some tobacco plantations
And I've got a crew headed to Africa for some labor
Australia will be next 
and should be uncontested
Till next time Civ4bros
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Why are lizards running your empire?
I do miss the text log. I hate mousing over and clicking each "news" icon in civ 6. Annoying!
Why don't you use a great general for your army? I remember it always being worth it, then I'd use the 2nd or 3rd for that city XP bonus.
Now I remember my choice civ.
Those units are nasty.
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Don't ask too many questions
Mainly because when Flavian Ampitheater was active (it's obsolete now
) settling them & building an armory in Rome let me pump out units with 3 promotions out of the gate 
Tbh settling or building armories is often preferable, but attaching them to troops is more fun and having a Medic III general around is awesome. I have Scipio Africanus still hanging around so I might attach him for the war coming up
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Shut up, Civ hater
Drop to your knees and give me thirty hail Sorens 
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I'm starting to get annoyed by their attempt at "history".
Are you fricking kidding me? They have "Byzantines" as a separate civilization from Romans and even Greeks? And it suddenly appears in
the 1000s? I'm gonna resurrect Anna Comnenna to cut their peepees off.
As someone who has spent way too much time researching ancient cities in western Anatolia: Dorylaeum was never important except as a stop on the road from Europe. (And I think there was a road from Mysia too.) This was never a major city. I could easily list 20 cities in Anatolia more important. Why did they choose this one? Oh yeah, because something happened there during the Crusades. So neurodivergent chuds are like
Yes. I am angry.
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No offense Redactor but whenever I see someone complaining that the Byzantines shouldn't be a separate thing in historiography, I remember all the times they were fun to play in some video game or other, and I remember people like you are trying to take that away from me
It's perfectly justified in Civ terms. For example, I think the Byzantine UHV requires you to do stuff related to Orthodoxy. Perfectly justified for a medieval time period, but not really relevant to what a classical Roman UHV would entail.
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My favorite part about the Byzantines in EU4 was how the whole population of your nation was made up of 50% of muslims and 25% greek orthodox.
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How do you feel about Byzantium in Hearts of Iron 4? I like to go Allies as Byzantium because then you can blitzkrieg the Ploieștie oil fields to keep it out of Axis hands. Do this early enough and you can trade it to the Gauls so that Hitler's Goths never defeat them in the first place.
It's pretty funny to force the Axis to the peace table with Vercingetorix still in power. Plus if you join the Allies then the Iroquois Confederacy will like you enough to lend you B-29s to use against the Sassanids.
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All I remember about hearts of iron is that it was fun to play as Britain before they fell behind and became a vassal of the Commonwealth of Australia
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!strayans discuss
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We all know that a true Bong, like Winston, would have joined forces with Australia against the commies in the 50s to create the greatest superpower on the planet.
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Yeah, I'm just being bitchy. When you try to think of a civilization that's actually "stood the test of time" for 4000 years in any recognizable way at all there's... like... Egypt, China... uhhh... that's about it.
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It's Dorylaion because the Persians built it. The Byzantines were supposed to spawn several centuries ago as the Eastern Roman Empire but we prevented the schism. Them spawning now was a bizarre accident where Persia collapsed and a civilization spawned in its place centered on that city. Byzantine just happened to be the closest culture. It's ahistorical because we broke history.
Dorylaion probably should have changed to Dorylaeum when it became Byzantine culture but this enlarged map is new, the city name updates aren't quite done yet.
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Oh. That... actually is a really good way of putting historical events into a world that you can't predict because the player is changing it from reality. Darn these people put a lot of work into this.
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It's just a game, sweaty.
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Mongol clay
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Reminds me of when I won Korea's UHV one turn after the Mongols took Pyongyang and one turn before they would've taken my capital
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Wow this is the autism game of my dreams
I loved playing the world map in Civ4 and this looks like that + EU4. Nice series.
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Italy occupies the same "slot" as Rome so you shouldn't have to worry about them spawning and being a problem with a "modern Rome" game
Also Leoreth himself confirmed that vassals don't increase your science cost lol. I must have been thinking of something else.
But DoC does take a page out of Civ 5's book and made it so that expansion increases tech costs. Plus vassals do increase your city maintenance costs. There may come a point where continued expansion will be unhelpful for your science victory?
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That was a mod feature way before Civ5 came out...
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At this point I'm
ahead of the game already and have room to frick around, the colonization is mostly me fricking around but Australia is definitely worth it in the long run for the space race because of the uranium, aluminum, rare earths etc.
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Let's read, join me
@Arran
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Gotta pump those numbers up, little man.
You've got enough wonders and shit, so have all cities crank out army units and mop up. I'd even raze some bordering cities to push them away and then plant my own. Another thing I used to do was take a foreign city, starve it from 8 to 2 or 3 and let it regrow with Romans. Less AI penalty there. There was nothing harder than pleasing major foreign cities with 50% of the conquered population. They'd eventually riot or protest (whatever it is where their citizen does nothing). Useless bums! I killed half of their friends and family to bring their city into the modern era, and this is how they treat me!?
Off with their heads!
With this, I'd wind up doing totalitarianism and free enterprise.
The central planning was crap since I never needed the extra hammers. I might be misremembering, but I swore I did something contradictory like that. I took the stability hit because it was worth it.
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Lol I've never seen that kind of Byzantine spawn either. It's always been a thing that any unstable or collapsed civs in a core can cause that civ to spawn, but I didn't know those rules applied to Byzantium. Apparently they're not limited to their initial classical era spawn check.
In universe maybe your espionage against Persia was too successful. Maybe it caused a group of Roman schemers to take root in the land or something.
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I want to frick the conservative out of you. I can't help myself. Every time you come into my office with your low cut shirt and cross necklace subtly splayed across your immaculate breasts I think about taking you, right there, as a man (with your consent, of course, r*pe culture is not okay). I want to pull off your panties and eat your kitty until your juices trickle down to the lower classes. I want you to moan so hard and so loud that you can't form coherent words, let alone talk about what Rush Limbaugh said about immigrants the other day. Each time 'those people' crosses your lips I think about your mouth wrapped around my prodigious peepee as my little people spill out of it. I want to make an anchor baby with you. I want to throw all the papers off my desk and ride you until gay marriage is legal in a majority of States or until you've come enough times to admit that maybe universal health care makes sense. And I mean all this respectfully, of course. I'm a feminist. Why do you do this to me. Why. Do you know what you're doing? Every time you come into my office and sit across from me and cross and recross your legs and talk about the weather and then (somehow) about how unemployment insurance is actually bad for poor people do you know that I'm wondering if your panties are equally as conservative? That I'm curious what you'd look like on top of me, my hands tweaking your nipples like doing so would be tweaking taxes on the top one percent? That I'm thinking about you looking back at me as I frick you from behind, your Jesus necklace swaying back and forth as you scream "Drill, baby, drill!" You're not crazy, just politically hypocritical. Social conservatism is selfish and untenable. Your adherence to laws written when people owned slaves and the largest city was 1/10th of what it is now is ruining this god darn country. And I want you so bad. I want you so so bad. Ugh. Be my Monica Lewinsky. I'll be your Bill Clinton. Let's reach across the aisle... and into each other's pants.
Snapshots:
Dawn of Civilization mod:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Eusebius:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Marcus Crassus:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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