We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Last time, on LPC4DoCF, the Roman Empire had started to fracture. It's 624AD and after a barbarian onslaught, the Kingdom of France declared itself independent. We reconquered Clermont and spared them. Egypt and the Levant have seceded and joined the rising Abbasid Caliphate. Not on our watch

First and foremost. Per @Ubie request I am starving the Irish to death. They get one cow pasture as a food source until I build a mine for them to toil in and the rest are to work directly on building boats until they perish.

Our stability is now Shaky now that the Golden Age is over and done with. Expansion and Economy is not negative, but not good. Foreign is bad of course (it always is) and Military is suffering a little because of our barbarian wars. Domestic is our only saving grace as we have compatible, modern civics and Catholic religious unity.

We have room to expand. Obviously. We just lost most of our eastern territories

Most of my army in this territory got evacuated to Knossos in Crete. I don't have means to transport them yet so they're on a little island vacation for now.

A long time ago I conquered the Kingdom of Nubia, rivals of Aksum. Aksum were pretty ungrateful little b-words about it, but it's been good land and it's now really paying off for me. Nubia did not secede, so some of my troops were able to evacuate there. This gives me an opportunity to quickly retake Egypt from the south.

First turn and with our cavalry we've already retaken Waset, the holy city of Islam. Easy! Muslims btfo

Oh wait

Oh holy mother of Christ

I now know what it feels like to be on the other end of a "Stack of Doom"

Our reinforcements land, but it's not enough. I'm going to die

But suddenly they pull back. I send my spies to take a look.

All the beautiful Roman Roads we built are being used by the enemy, and apparently they got distracted by Persia. Thank the Lord. This will give us time to retake Egypt and regroup our army.

One of our missions to the Mande finally succeeds, so we have another Catholic civilization along with us and the French.

St. Peter's Basilica in Roma serves as the Apostolic Palace from the base game, which is basically the religious medieval U.N. We control the Pope basically, so we have influence over diplomacy in the Catholic world. Since there's actually a Catholic presence in the world now, we can put something to a vote. We call for a crusade against the Abbasid.

Neither of them want this, but with our control over the religion they don't actually get a say. The crusade is on.

We can even team up with our ancient frenemies of Persia. We've always been in something of a cold war with them, but Turkey is a bulwark to Greece, so helping reinforce their cities is in our interest. Plus our espionage network in Dorylaion has been pretty valuable

Our espionage reveals that after some butting of heads their military strength is about equally matched with Persia, overall. And we are way stronger than them in totality They just have their army consolidated.

FINALLY the lazy butt Persians research Civil Service and cause us to fail the third Historic condition. Reminder this is intentional, I want a Space victory.

Civil Service was the only technology I had available to research at this point so it's about time.

We've helped them out so much that they're now pretty advanced, technologically ahead of schedule and researching stuff we don't have. With our spies in Dorylaion we can just steal anything they discover thoughbeit

By the time the Arabs return with a host of Ghazi we're ready for them, we've retaken Egypt and reinforced the army. They have a slight terrain advantage but we can soften them up with our gunpowder artillery

We're victorious With a Great General too

After having researched Commune we can now have this guy build an "Armory" as well to speed up production. Roma is still benefiting from the Flavian Ampitheater so we're going to build on there and churn out superbombards and supercavalry

^^^lol he's clipping into the background

Harun al-Rashi is now willing to sue for peace. He's willing to offer us Jerusalem unharmed or even convert to Catholicism. Some intriguing options here but no We're conquering these frickers and taking Mesopotamia.

We're going to have more problems to deal with though

The Moors are about to spawn in Iberia as well.

I haven't seen one of these unique civ spawning warning messages yet, I think they only show for civilizations in your vicinity (maybe I missed the French one?). It doesn't really make sense here if the Arabs hadn't conquered North Africa and the Umayyad Dynasty don't exist. but whatevs the messages are really cool

Regardless, we're about to be beset on both sides by muslims

As well as Christians

Again... Muslim control? but again

I have an army in the west ready to fight these both the Spaniards and the Moors, but... I'm going to let them go

In fact...

France is mechanically capable of becoming a vassal now, but capitulation is tricky. You need to batter an enemy into submission in a war until they feel it is hopeless. Unfortunately we don't have much room if France has two cities - if we conquer Bordeaux and besiege Paris and they refuse to capitulate, we're kinda stuck.

Right now they won't voluntarily swear fealty because we're "too powerful". Pretty sure they will still capitulate if forced.

Spain is still in the "Rise of the Spanish" and can develop for now. When the "Rise of the Spanish" event is over I might invade and try to get them to capitulate. If they go to war with the Moors first I'll join them. The Moors usually build an Islam specific wonder in Cordoba, if we can capture it it would rule.

So for now I'm going to let western Europe secede and develop independently, and the Catholic world are now all my friends

I liked Tarragona but the Silver mine it had is now exhausted so it's less valuable anyway. The one thing that sucks is that muslims now control the Strait of Gibraltar and west Mediterranean, so our mobility is reduced.

I'm focused on eastward expansion instead anyway.

We liberate Ohrmazd-Ardashir from Arab control for our Persiabros.

Gets us some brownie points, and the city was outside of our expansion zone and not really that desirable. If the map is coherent at all, yellow is a "Contested Zone" while red is strictly foreign. Agarum is the furthest south in our contested zone. The Abbasids are willing to surrender it peacefully at this point.

England is about to split. We'll gonna let them go too.

We're back to Stable. The economy has been a rollercoaster with our conquests but this has been offset by trade route buildings that start becoming available around medieval times. Most notably we now actually have Good Relations and positive foreign stability I didn't know such a thing was possible. I guess all the liberation has worked out

Before there are more European powers on the map, we may as well invade France now. The only other European nation is Spain and they don't like them that much, so they won't be annoyed.

Charlemagne probably thinks we're schizo

Success! France will now capitulate.

The Kingdom of France is now the "Province of Gaul". They are our semi-independent b-word, we can direct their research, they join our wars, and we can sometimes demand resources. With Bordeaux they will still be able to colonize. We'll just have to help them out in technology a little.

The Mali Empire will voluntarily vassalize as well, but unfortunately for our Malibros we don't really want them. There's only room for five vassal civilizations. We do want to maintain good relations though when the slave trade starts tho.

Spain has declared war on the Moors, so we'll take our army from France and join them to retake our western territory. They didn't get a chance to build any wonders, oh well.

We might as well make this into another crusade

IT'S ON

Reconquista time

As we retake land we start to get overextended. Time to whip neighbors and enact population control

Cordoba is defended by a Great General, Abd al-Mu'min. This is the first time we've actually gotten to fight one in combat.

Morocco goes down

And frick it, let's go take Hungary too, there's a nice gold mine

Right after Morocco's defeat this crazy b-word declares war on me

Apparently Spain is dead set on completing the Reconquista and Catholic Roman controlled Cordoba isn't good enough.

She's very stubborn and refuses negotiations even after I retake Tarragona and pillage the heck out of her land.

Only after taking her capital and forcing her to relocate her palace to Santiago does she surrender.

I was going to liberate Cordoba anyway She is now a vassal with France as the "Province of Hispania".

Islam has been thoroughly BTFO. There are no more muslim states in the world. The Moors are dead and the Arabians collapsed when Turks took Mecca. We now control from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sudan and Iraq, with two vassal provinces.

We're Solid stability but getting a little too big for our britches and risking a correction. Fortunately I have a couple Great People I've been sitting on who can trigger another Golden Age should it be necessary.

Other rising threats are coming - I think the northern Italian city states are going to attempt to split off around 1100AD, and the Ottoman Empire is going to reconquer all my middle eastern gainz around the 1200s.

We already have technology to start exploring the New World but the Aztecs haven't even been born yet. That will have to wait until 1300~. I want Roman conquistadors

Part 6

!g*mers !soyteens

OK so basically I'll give a TLDW for all the boomer gaymers and actual boomers who've never gaymed, to comprehend the scope of his clumsy attempt to deceive people in thinking he's some kind of GAYMER badass, and how he's desperate to be seen as one of the COOL kids gaymer crowd, but his terminal out-of-touch boomerism makes his attempted masquerade so incredibly brutally r-slurredly obvious for anyone even remotely familiar with the type of game he's playing on his Tesla-branded (TM) livestreams.

BACKGROUND - POE2: Pillars of Eternity 2

Path of Exile 2 is a vidya where gaymers control fantasy chad characters in an isometric view, to make the characters kick baddguys and monsters in the balls, as the characters gain experience in combat, they level up with better super powers, to kick monsters in the balls even harder.

The game/characters is controlled primarily controlled via the mouse and keyboard, and is called an A-RPG (Action Role Playing Game), in order to distinguish it from all those lame straggy nerdy wimp RPG games which all the 4-eyed losers in highschool played, because A-RPGs are cool and manly

The reason I'm mentioning the genre, is because virtually all A-RPGs are all 90% the same, if you've played one (Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, Pillars of Eternity 2), then you've gathered the intrinsic knowledge to have played them all.

All of them are isometric firework fiascos, and all of them follow the core-DNA which was established in the genre defining releases of Diablo 1 & 2 about 30 years ago in 1997 & 2000 respectively.

Well if all of these gaymes are all 95% the same, then what's the point of playing them all? It's because Blizzard (the company which created the Diablo games, along with the famous World of Warcraft) sucks in its current form, and the latest Diablo 4 is shit, and thus Path of Exile 2 has filled in the void.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hoj0wv/3_weeks_after_release_path_of_exile_2_is_top_of/

POE2 is consistently in the top 10 most played games on steam monthly charts, and though it sometimes falls off every now and then, whenever big AAA releases are released within a month, like call of duty or the latest FIFA. Regardless of the fake popularity contest - I bring this up only to indicate that POE2 is currently one of the most popular games on Earth, and while it isn't as big as League of Legends, DOTA2, Fortnite, it's still as popular as it's reasonable for any Game Developer to can ever dream of, and is spoken alot by children, Highscoolers and terminal gaymers IRL that I have actually spoken to.

The 1st Path of Exile 1, was free which garnered a massive playerbase, especially in the poorcel 3rd world !brics and followed the same transactional-scheme as League of Legends, paying only for exclusive skins and appearances and crap, which the playerbase very happy with, because it meant that skill and progress was never bought.

So it's unsurprising why even a giga out-of-touch Boomer like Musk would have heard about a game like Path of Exile 1/2, whereas games like Fortnite are still in a much more younger audience (at least perceived so, and games like LOL/DOTA are way too fricking painful and turbo-neurodivergent, POE2 is instead something relatively noob/non-gaymers could enjoy, and also eventually grind/skill-up their way into the elite ultra-autism vidya gaymer club, and thus POE2 is semi-cooler as a game for a boomer like Musk to want to relate with, to the cool kids younger gaymer memer maymay club

MUSK CLAIMS HE'S TOP IN PATH OF EXILE 2:

Musk has claimed many times on in interviews that he's a top-tier vidya-gaymer, including in Joe Rogan, where he mentioned that he's played a metric shitload of games and is good in them, including in games which are in different genres to that of POE2, such as Starcraft 1/2. All of the games which Musk has claimed he is a super good chad at, all have one thing in common - they are very popular, and have large playerbases and thus non-gaymers would have heard of them. You'll note, as many others have before me, Musk has never claimed to be good in obscure, non-famous games, the type Boomers like Musk would not have heard of - like Rogue Trader compared to Starcraft.

Musk has claimed in Joe Rogan Podcasts that he's in the top 20, top 100, in games like Diablo or Path of Exile!

And since Elon Musk is such a massively dramatarded dramapilled controversial figure, heaploads of people have sought to disprove even these inane throwaway statements. And shockingly Musk Proved them wrong with an account which he controlled in one of his several livestreams, controlling a verifiable character, which has been actually in the Top 10 leaderboard of the month for POE2!!!

(Here's an Indian "article" )

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/social/elon-musk-joins-path-of-exile-leaderboard-after-many-deaths-what-we-kek-in-life/articleshow/116848996.cms

Where players and Musk-fanbois followed his character's climb from the top-1000 players during the Christmas period, to eventually the top-100 players by the time New Year's Eve arrived.

Here's a jannied thread on /r/PathOfExile, which catalogued Elon Musk's character's meteoric rise into the top-1000 Leaderboard, but which was deleted because even gaymer redditors are wingcucks, and the jannies jannied it because no WRONGTHINK. Please very important to note that this thread is from 31 December 2024, before the following shitshow is about to start!

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1hqq0g8/elon_musk_made_it_into_the_poe2_hardcore/

Here's a comment linking to the Livestream Musk held during the period of the holidays, by one of his fans.

Here is somebody already noting a suspicious activity - that Musk is supposedly talking in Chinese (FORESHADOWING)

NEURODIVERGENT POE2-VETERANS PROVE MUSK'S ACCOUNT IS A GRIND ACCOUNT!

Ok so for the Boomers on rdrama.net @Redactor0Boy , I'll summarize as much as possible how easy it was to demonstrate for people actually well versed in POE2 and A-RPG type games, that they could tell the character/account which Musk played within his December 2024 holidays, was not levelled/grinded by himself, because he displayed the most boomeresk mannerisms and incompetence regarding the playing of the game, during his relatively short, hour long Livestream sessions.

And the reason I went on tangent on what type of game (A-RPG) Path of Exile 2 was earlier in the post, was to demonstrate how transferrable skills and experience are between games in the genre, and that as Musk has claimed he has been a top-tier player in all of the Diablo games since the very 1st in 1997, his inept and incompetent masquerade at his supposed skills in his short 1-hour livestreams makes it all the more hilarious how much of a fricking non-g*mer he is, let alone a fricking A-RPG mega expert cool guy, he wishes the g*mer crow to see him as!!

(1) On one of his inventory tabs, it's called Elon's maps - does Elen refer to himself in the 3rd Person probably. Like someone has been powerlevelling his account, and was like: they're in here dipshit

(2) Endgame hardcore maps/levels/arenas have to be connected by nodes, but in the livestream ELon shows how he clearly has no idea about this as he fiddles with the Map interface for like 60 seconds, trying to click on a grayed out map (which the game tells you need to finish the preceding maps 1st). This boomer move is like your gradpa continuing to click the OK button after he's already exited a program A character as high levelled as Musk's sock-puppet account would have played thousands of maps at this point

(3) He demonstrates he has no notion on what loot is valuable and what is junk, and at some point he just runs past the most rare currency item in the game.

(4) The game POE2 has a nice feature called a "Loot Filter" which basically does what it says - only the highest equipment dropped by monsters/badguys your character kills by kicking them in the balls, are made visible, and the junk filler trash equipment are made to be not even interactable, so as to not waste your time. Elon does not have these filters on during his Livestream.

(5) Musk never once uses Mana potions (a resource to replenish your superpowers juice), even when fighting extremely dangerous enemies - Musk demonstrates a complete absence of awareness of even the existence of Mana potions or how to use them in game.

(6) In all A-RPG games, you have the capacity to loot items lying on the ground by just left clicking on them - Musk goes terminal boomer by DRAGGING each and every item he loots on the ground, slowly into the open inventory screen - which is an option, but not the intended role for the screen by the devs!

(7) Musk doesn't realize when his inventory is full, and numerous time during his Livestream playthroughs, he continuously clicks on items on the ground, not realizing his inventory is full, showcasing his complete lack of understanding of such a basic mechanism - especially as the game has an audio and visual cue for the player to warn them their inventory is full

(8) Elon plays on factory default settings, example not having the game showing your exact health/resources/mama, which contravenes the settings of the most experienced player whi rely on having as much information as possible, the devs turn these settings off and give the player only a UI red orb to show total character health remaining, so as to not overwhelm newcomers.

(9) Elon boasts about destroying trash mobs - low level junk enemies, which fluff out maps and sections of the game, when the majority of difficulty in POE2 derives from facing endgame bosses, thus Elon demonstrating his absence of true undertsanding of teh game. The only endgame boss Elon faces during his Livestream, he repeatedly dies to.

(10) In Path of Exile 1/2, gear have requirements to equip them. But most of the time, this requirement has little bearing on how good the top gear is - some of the best gear in the game, namely those equipment with the best permutation of overpowered stats and buffs and shit, have relatively lower requirements for characters to equip them, whilst relatively mediocre junk gear have disproportionately high requirements to wear, for disproportionately little return in terms of how good they are.

The Youtuber Quin69TV explains how one of the best pieces of gear can even be eqquiped from level 1 onwards. I mention this, because Elon repeatedly boasts to his audience on his Livestream he tries to impress of his lofty giga Gaymer swagness and skill, about the high levels of his endgame equipment worn by his character - not realizing that the equipment levels are indications of requirements to wear, not indications of the powerscales of the loot itself

Musk even goes on to shittalk the loot he's currently wearing, calling them "only level 55" or only "level 40" or whatever, and stating he would soon replace them with a REAL MAN's gear , not realizing that they are literally the best of the very best loot findable in the current iteration of the game, which whomever Indian/chinese powerlevelling poorcel shadowacccount which had powerlevelled Musk's account for him, had gone to extreme lengths to grind on behalf of Musk

Anyways, point is Musk must have paid some Indian/Chinese 3rd worlder !brics pennies (which are worth billions of rands/rubles/yen/rupees in their home poorcel country) for somebody who is an actual POE2 gaming god tier good, who offers to powerlevel characters/accounts, which basically mean they will play the game FOR YOU, in order to get to a set level or grind hundreds of hours per week ingame, in order to find desired loot for westerners with powerful currencies.

And for many Indians/Indonesians/chinks, these are actual unironic decent work for money, if you don't find it soul crushing to play the same fricking game over and over on behalf of fat middleclass neckbeard westernoids.

https://conquestcapped.com/path-of-exile-2/service/poe-2-leveling/

It's not even that expensive - here's just one of the many multitude of websites which offer everything from pre-existing accounts/characters, to finding desired loot for customers, to levelling characters to a specific character!

And what's astonishing about these sites which trade 3rd Worlder lifespan for money, is that the most trusted Sites, the ones which doesn't scam and just run off with money, get the best reputations, and ratings on appstores and game forums! As word of mouth spread of specific site/company services, because to many fricking tens of thousands of peeps pay them!

So our boi Musk, literally just hired a 3rdie account grindmaxxer who probably spent like real world hours ingame to create this super powered character for Musk, which he them used to try and masquerade in front of his Livestream audience to look Swag and Cool with

And the worst part was he was shittalking the gear which probably took monumental effort for the Inidan/Chinese super neurodivergent gaymer to equip his butt with! This is the most Boomer shit I've seen in a year!

Also in POE2 there is something called Permadeath-mode, which all A-RPGs have, which is as the name implies, your entire character and all his shit, gets frucking deleted from your account, if he dies, making death the most of extremes, and is considered the greatest of difficulty dividers. Musk actually lost this giga boosted character during the same timeframe, and that 200 hours of effort by the Sexy Indian dude/Chink grinder's effort into the void ahahahahahaahhaa

YOUTUBE COMMENTS SHIT ON MUSK:

You basically will play an Ainu foid killing the japs

@KoreanFailedCoupKing finally a game with a good plot. Japs and especially their far rights will love this game.

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers !historychads

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

336AD, the Roman Empire is #1 in the world by far but the Roman Golden Age has concluded. We've just conquered Nubia. The Western Roman Empire more or less officially ended in 476AD when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus so we're coming up on the timeframe we're supposed to be dead.

We successfully avoided the Western Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire split but more civilizations are going to rise and attempt to fracture off of our existing territory. The Arabs are gonna spawn with a huge butt army ready to spread Islam (which we founded already in Egypt ) and the European powers are going to start cropping up.

I'll need to prepare for this and be ready to retake this shit at a moment's notice from armies leveraged against me.

My goal is to vassalize the European powers so I can benefit from their global colonization.

We've had a small archer regiment providing us contact with India but only now I've gotten a scout east who can pass through the Bengal rainforest to meet China.

They inexplicably hate us for existing as with everyone else in the world, but they're willing to trade. They offer jade and venison for our wine and dyes with a lil gold to sweeten the deal.

They seem to be doing well but we're still #1 in the world by far. Persia is the only empire that comes close to matching us technologically - only they can research something we haven't researched yet.

Persia also has a lot of gold. I might trade them some technology for cash at benefit to them. This will improve relations, and I have a strong espionage network going with them so if they research something I don't have I can just steal it. Also, I predict the Arabs are going to BTFO them badly when they spawn.

With the money we gain from the tech trade, we can actually apply more espionage power to steal what they research. DEVIOUS!

With continued espionage harassment we get our first Great Spy, Locusta*. If a civilization were far ahead of us we could send her to infiltrate for a huge boost, but as we're top dog I'll settle her in Roma for a permanent +12 espionage and small science boost that will continue throughout history. +12 is quite significant early on, so this is pretty advantageous.

_{*This is a particularly cool article I recommend reading}

The dipshit Ethiopians continue to be difficult, despite everything we've done for them. Repeated Catholic missions to them have been failures and even the Catholic presence in Aksum eventually disappears. They will not bend from Orthodoxy. Even more insulting is that they've now sworn fealty to Persia. It's like they think we're a threat to them. All we've done is help them out and attempt to bring them peacefully into the Catholic faith.

They are officially a lost cause. No salvation for them.

Fine, because I have a new black best friend, the pagan Mande in West Africa

After researching Compass I'm able to pass ships through Cape Verde Peninsula and send a mission to Djoboro

I can't wait to spread the word of Christ and have a new Catholic brother!!!

Barbarians start to swarm about 400AD. The Roman Roads are a godsend as I can get my dudes quickly from one place to another as different areas get pounded. Byzantion as an espionage stronghold allows me to send spies out use the Citizenship bribery mechanic, this felt like a gimmick but it's actually super useful here. Just like irl I'm able to pay off the huns to spare Constantinople + I get free Hunnic Horse Archers to fight back with

By 450 it's a full on barbarian invasion

Did you know a !foidmoment almost caused the fall of Rome? In the 400s Valentinian III had a complete for a sister named Honoria. She was notorious for fricking and sucking around the Imperial palace and Valentinian graciously attempted to set her up with a nice senator while he was attempting to fend off the pillaging of hunnic warlord Attila. Honoria was pissed off by this and wrote a gushy love letter to Attila the Hun out of spite.

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila by Raphael

Attila interpreted this letter as a marriage proposal and invaded Italy directly aiming to claim the seat of Rome, which he felt he gained a rightful claim to. Pope Leo I the Great met with Attila personally and somehow persuaded him to back off.

Our stability is okay, but definitely starting to dip. Okay is not good enough for what's coming. As always, military and foreign trickle down with the rest of the world being buttholes and barbarians up in our shit. Economy and expansion are not booming anymore.

Our treasury is doing alright but could be improved (right now we're running 40% research funding). Domestic could be improved easily with some civic changes.

We've researched Feudalism and now have another Legitimacy civic available to us. We don't have much reason to run Citizenship at this point, other than bribing barbarians, but our military is now spread out enough to deal with them. Vassalage is lower upkeep with compatibility with Thalassocracy. This + the unit upkeep will get us about 30 more GP per turn. We also change to Caste System like we should have ages ago, since Slavery is outdated.

Last time I won by researching "Civil Service" first, completing the final historic victory condition. I undid this so that I could attempt a Space victory instead. We're getting to a point where I'm running out of shit to research OTHER than Civil Service and the Sassanids, our only near-equal won't research it either

This is kinda funny and forcing me to do things differently. I'm going to discover Gunpowder much earlier than I thought and get stronger artillery. "Civil Service" obsoletes our Legion so I have 100s more of those running around (which is good, they're based). But these slackers really need to research it soon so I can fail

I'll have to help these idiots out a little and sell them another tech at an absurdly generous price.

~472-480AD Ostrogoths pop up right outside Rome. I think this is meant to represent Odacer or Theodoric, right on schedule. The precision put into this mod is

I wasn't expecting this but I have knights (Lancers) in Roma at this point

The game does not appreciate that I survived Theodoric. Charlemagne and France spawn as an independent kingdom, taking Paris away from us.

Bourdeoux and Clermont secede too, and we must fight to get them back.

Remember how when Rome spawned we were given a great military advantage? Well now France gets it and I have to pull assault forces from everywhere in the empire to recapture it.

How's that for a Stack of Doom motherlovers

France's doomstack is defeated by my gigadoomstack and I recapture Clermont. France cannot capitulate for some reason Probably a DoC thing for new civilizations. I don't remember all the rules. I think once "Rise of the French" ends they can become a vassal. I don't want to annihilate them, my goal is to have them become a vassal and take advantage of their colonization. For now, I've taken back a city, taken out their army and shown them who's boss.

I'm fine with just holding Clermont as it gives me foot access to Iberia. I just need to get Roman culture flowing fast.

This will be the first of many as new civs start to spawn.

The Vikings/Norse have arrived for example and introduced themselves in England. They may start to raid, but no threat of secession here.

However, around 600AD a certain guy who cannot be depicted visually is born in the Arabian Peninusla

Egypt and the Levant is lost Most of my army is kicked out and expelled to Knossos in Crete. I don't have enough boats to pick them up in, so they're stranded on Crete for a while

Conquering Nubia turns out to have been a good idea because it's outside of the flip zone, and gives us a southern vector for attack.

Next time: crusades

Next

MAKING ATTRACTIVE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY RESULTS IN POPULAR AND SUCCESSFUL GAMES?!

!g*mers !superheroes !coomers

!g*mers This is why I only stick to my League of Snowbunnies BBC kino and will never actually install League on my PC

!builtfor !the !BBC !and !the !BWC !coomers

What are you playing currently?

!g*mers

Previous Iterations:

2025

2024

2023

Other rDrama vidya content

Last week's game: Civilization IV = (10*16+9*6+8*11+7*2+6*2+5*2+4*0+3*1+2*1+1*3)/(16+6+11+2+2+2+0+1+1+3) = 7.86

All Previous Games:

Game to Discuss?

The Sims or something but I want to present the results of our yearly goty thread -2024 RDRAMA GOTY and we have a clear winner:

RDRAMA'S GAME OF THE YEAR 2024 IS CONCORD

Another Sony W

Future Games To Discuss

January 19: Black Myth: Wukong

January 26: Satisfactory

carp capy geto ninjjer donger losercel rwby elfy pin please

I want remake of 6, 6 was my first resident evil and it played so bad like an ps2 linearly game so they can improve it a lot and RE zero GameCube port is decent already even resident evil veronica is better for remake than zero

It was late at night, and Darim's animation studio had just finished designing a new look for a character in one of South Korea's most popular video games, MapleStory.

Darim was proud of her work. So, sitting alone on the floor of her small studio apartment, she posted the trailer on social media. Almost immediately, she was flooded with thousands of abusive messages, including death and r*pe threats.

Young male g*mers had taken issue with a single frame in the trailer, in which the female character could be seen holding her thumb and forefinger close together.

They thought it resembled a hand gesture used by a radical online feminist community almost a decade ago to poke fun at the size of Korean men's peepeees.

"There were insults I'd never heard before, they were disgusting and inhumane," said Darim, which is not her real name. One read: "You've just sabotaged your job."

Messages then started piling into Darim's studio and the game developer claiming she was a feminist and demanding she be fired. Within hours, the company pulled the promotional video.

Darim had become the latest victim in a series of vicious online witch hunts, in which men in South Korea attack women they suspect of having feminist views. They bombard them with abuse and try to get them sacked.

!moidmoment Black lives matter !feminists

Civilization 4 week draws to a close and it has successfully gotten me to waste my weekend and procrastinate on a bunch of work !g*mers

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod that replicates world history. Part 1 Part 2

104AD, the Roman Empire is around it's historic peak. We have completed 2/3 of the Historic Victory Conditions, just recently securing the necessary territorial borders for Pax Romana, so we're in a 24 turn Golden Age

There are still some barbarian cities in Africa and Iberia, remnants of the Carthaginian Empire we might as well go take. Persia also controls Mesopotamia and Turkey, so these aren't true Trajanian borders but we're kinda close!!

For a Historic Victory we just need to research a couple more technologies first.

The Pagan Religious Victory is losing viability. We have 22 cities, 4 of which in Egypt and the Levant have Judaism, and Christianity (Orthodoxy) has been founded and started to spread to the Roman Empire. Pagan Temples are disappearing.

Brennus of the Celts is still alive, they live in Ireland. Their core moves from Gaul to Ireland following the Gallic conquests, so they aren't at risk of collapse. They could capitulate but they're worthless. We could wait for them to be willing to offer tribute but they are poor and underdeveloped as shit. We'll offer peace.

We can even offer charity to improve relations and advance them from being such disgusting backwards savages. We'll probably have to help them out a lot. Such is the Roman Man's Burden.

There are a couple peaceful tribal villages around the British Isles, our scouts can explore them for a bonus (a military unit runs the risk of angering them and spawning barbarians). Did I mention how much Civ5 fricking sucks? In Civ5 these are "Ancient Ruins". Why are there ruins? You start at the beginning of human civilization, you play through the ancient times! Are they ruins of the 12000BC Magic Kingdom of Zeal? I'll bet they changed it for cultural sensitivity or some weak shit like that.

The villagers give me a warrior. I name them the Britbong Warriors. Did you know in Civ5 you also can only name units when they are promoted? What an r-slured design choice. That game fricking sucks. You can't even draw on the map either.

Anyway, the above events are depicted here:

Christianity (Orthodoxy) has spread to Rome and the people are all pissed off about it, particularly because we have the Religion civic "Deification". It's past time for some government restructuring.

Unfortunately, unlike in vanilla, changing civics in a Golden Age is not free. Fortunately, unlike Rhyes and Fall, anarchy does not consume Golden Age turns. We just put our Golden Age on hold for a little while.

This will take some thinkorinoing

In addition to the bonuses, we want to have super strong stability. Around 290AD the Eastern Roman Empire will fracture off if we don't have Solid stability. CHEERS to @RWBY for informing me of that this is preventable btw.

Certain civic combos have synergy/negative synergy and when we start to approach the Medieval age some civics will lose stability for being obsolete.

Religion

We need to move from Deification 100%. Syncreticism would be dumb because we don't have a lot of religions available, and it's incompatible with Citizenship. Clergy is the obvious answer, although we don't have a State Religion yet, we will soon.

Economy

Redistribution is awful at this point with 22 cities and will soon be obsolete. Merchant Trade is much more lucrative.

Territory

I am still running the primitive default "Kinship" here and it is very embarrassing. I would have benefited from taking the anarchy hit to run one of these earlier. Same with Merchant Trade. I kinda forgot about my civics tbh I'm actually bad at this game

Thalassocracy is better with all the fishing boats we have around the Mediterranean, and has strong synergy with Merchant Trade.

Legitimacy

This is still all we've got available for now.

Government

Monarchy is very good and better than Republic majority of the time but we have more fishing boats than farmland right now and free specialists during a Golden Age will get us more Great People. Republic also has strong synergy with Citizenship. Elective sucks, I don't get the point of it.

Despotism will go obsolete I think, but the whip (population rush) is king. It will allow us to speed up building infrastructure (particularly jails and religious buildings we'll be getting soon) and allow us to control overextension (reducing population outside the Italian core). We're going to continue running it.

Soyciety

Slavery has positive synergy with Despotism, but both will go obsolete soon. Switching one more civic here will save a turn of anarchy later, so it's worth considering changing something now. We have more pastures than quarries/plantations and no longer have a lot of opportunities to capture workers, plus lots of undeveloped land, so changing to Manorialism might be a good idea. Unfortunately it has negative stability synergy with Merchant Trade . If the Eastern Roman Empire split weren't a concern, it would be worth it to just take the hit. Caste System has positive synergy with Clergy, but we can't benefit much from it. We'll just stick with Slavery for now and save a turn of anarchy for later.

Hindsight Fun Fact: This might've been the wrong decision. Slavery it turns out is the only civic that becomes outdated. Switching to Caste System now would have been better and helped with a plague later. Not sure when Despotism becomes outdated

Final: Despotism/Citizenship/Slavery/Clergy/Thalassocracy

120AD, during the revolution, Catholicism is founded in Roma. We of course will embrace it once our government restructuring is over.

The revolution is over, and the reformed Catholic Roman Empire returns to work Look at how rich Greece's coast is No way I'm letting that shit become Byzantine Although it's still Orthodox over there

The Religious victory available is now the Catholic Religious Victory. Being "Pope" means being the head of the Apostolic Palace, which in base game is basically the medieval U.N.

Great Prophet Petrus is born in Athens 200AD. Now that I have Roma as the holy city of Catholicism I can found the holy shrine wonder - Saint Peter's Basilica (which doubles as the Apostolic Palace from base game). I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to build the holy shrine yet but holy crap this is TOO perfect.

Our stability is still Solid. The "Foreign" stability is the only kicker for "Bad Relations". Pretty much always in DoC I have "bad relations" because half the world has a different religion and everyone is pissed off about something. One of the weakest areas in Civ4 is diplomacy, and the tendency for foreign leaders to come by constantly whining and asking for shit with a -1 penalty when you refuse is unfortunately common. I've heard trying to entertain this whining can improve Foreign stability.

For example, a few turns back the King of Aksum (Ethiopia) kept coming by trying to pull me into his irrelevant ooga booga conflict with the Nubian Kingdom of Kush. Typically I click "no go away" without hesitation and just accept the -1, but it may have been advisable to just annihilate Kush for these savages instead. Moving forward I will actually consider entertaining the requests of these lesser rulers, within reason.

And hey, why not join the Aksum war? Nubia is pretty lucrative land, and I now have spies to check up on their defenses. It's conquerable and I still have several soldiers and artillery from the Egyptian conquests stationed here. I may consider gearing up for a small invasion.

Speaking of spies, I'm able to look at Persia a little. They can research Machinery, one of the technologies required for the third victory condition.

But when I apply some espionage to them I can see that they're currently researching Fortification - nothing to worry about yet. We have a strong military advantage too, but I'm still going to leave them alone.

We can put this espionage to good use thoughever. Our spies can't do much right now, but they can pilfer the Persian treasury a little. Dawn of Civilization has an expanded espionage mod that provides a full promotion tree for spies, and "Great Spies" from the original game are now generated like "Great Generals". You can see the counter for both Great Spies and Great Generals at the top. If we want to survive past Medieval times we will need espionage. New civilizations are intentionally placed at an advantage so it is near necessary to use espionage to even the odds. Now is a good time to start gaining espionage experience.

Dorylaion, the city Darius founded on top of the independent Greek city he destroyed is the most efficient place to send spies to, mainly because if it's proximity to Byzantion and Roman cultural influence. I was annoyed about this at first, but it will prove to be useful now, we can send spies from Byzantion easily and gain experience. Khosrow will catch a few and it will further piss him off and hurt our Foreign stability, but

If we crank up our espionage and settle a spy there for a while we could even steal a technology.

Notice we can see inside the city now (though Fog of War is only cleared with the research of Electricity in RfC)

Also, with our Citizenship civic we have a fun little gimmick where we can have spies bribe Barbarian units.

290AD is approaching. We're still at Solid, but teetering a little close. Foreign sucks of course. We've lost some ships to barbary pirates and this has messed up our military stability . I'm building my warships in Rome now so they can get a boost from the Flavian Ampitheater to prevent any more of this. Fortunately, we're still booming and expanding, but we're very close to the overextension point and need to start concentrating on making sure our core population is higher than the population outside. Despotism is great for this because we can just whip all the extra population away. Domestic is lower than usual because Slavery is now outdated - if needed, we can change this to Caste System to take advantage of a further boost from it's compatibility with Clergy.

We just have to hope nothing unexpected could tank our economy...

Oh frick. While exploring the far east I discover a plague in India.

Oh God it's spreading west

AAAA FRICK

We are hit with a Certified Hood Classic Plague from the East. On the plus side this will help cull our population and reduce overextension. This is a pretty shitty plus because I could've just whipped neighbors. The downside is our economic development will suffer. This is a justifiable time to invade the Nubians for their lucrative mines and please the Ethiopians (Aksum). I think maybe annihilating a civilization will also reduce Foreign stability penalties (cuz they're dead). I hope that's how it works. Nobody really likes them at least, so I won't get a "You declared war on our friend!" penalty.

The Nubian conquest is slightly riskier than anticipated because the plague is weakening our troops. The highest promoted crack troops are affected worst so the benchwarmers have to step up.

This ungrateful prick is still Annoyed at me, but now that we're in a mutual war he's willing to open borders. After destroying the Kingdom of Kush I can spread missionaries and bring Aksum into the Catholic fold. Maybe I'll have to supply some resources and technologies too. Truly, I am Atlas, carrying the rest of the world on my soldiers

On that note, frick the Irish Celts too. Even after generously trying to pull them out of the Stone Age they're still all pissed off and probably contributing to the Foreign stability penalty, plus there's still some angry citizens in Paris wanting to rejoin them. They can't join shit if Brennus is dead.

The Germanic barbarians are starting to swarm. We take some losses - this is bad. Barbarian losses negate stability. Using the Citizenship ability to bribe barbarians with spies actually comes in handy.

We're so far ahead technologically that I found Islam just for the heck of it. Waset in Egypt becomes it's holy city. The Arabs (Mohammed) will still spawn and attempt to spread Islam by sword but they've been cucked out of the benefits of Mecca as a holy city.

The Kingdom of Kush/Nubia is conquered. But they're still alive for some reason?!? I have no idea where their last city is.

We send a missionary to spread Catholicism to Aksum but crankypants is still only "Cautious" and isn't ready to convert as a state religion. Hopefully when it spreads to his second city he'll join the fold. Once another leader is Catholic the Apostolic Palace/Saint Peter's Basilica will be able to hold diplomatic conventions.

336AD, the Golden Age has ended. We are no longer insanely propserous, and our stability is wavering. We've lost some battles to barbarians and are suffering war weariness for the invasion of Kush. For one positive "Foreign" has gone from -5 to -4, so I guess helping out Aksum and destroying the Celts might've worked. "Domestic" is down because of outdated civics (Slavery) and Religious Disunity (Catholicism is not in cities with Orthodox, Judaism, and Islam). Next time we may have change the Slavery civic and spread Catholicism to the Eastern world.

The Eastern Empire is still ours however. We apparently avoided the Byzantine schism. So mission accomplished

I hope. I can't find this in the code and don't know how it works Some guy on the CivFanatics forum said if you pass 290AD you're good but he was also taking photographs of his monitor instead of taking screenshots. To be safe I'll try to stay in Solid stability as long as I can.

We only have one more technology (Civil Service) for the Historic Victory, so we might as well just win the game too.

()

But frick that! I want a Space victory.

I'm going to reload and intentionally stall researching Civil Service until I fail.

Next game, the scheduled decline of the Roman Empire begins. We attempt to defy history and go to medieval times and beyond.

Next:

https://rdrama.net/h/vidya/post/332528/lets-play-civ4-dawn-of-civilization

https://github.com/freecivx/freecivx/

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1hz2a7z/freecivx/

FreecivX is a web based 3D version using the Three.js 3D engine. It's a fork of Freeciv.

Is there a way to play freeciv with the Three.js 3D engine but on the desktop (that is, offline)?

Yes, you can follow the instructions on GitHub. I am also working on a native build.

Honestly it's like a coin flip if the camera on any game is worse than super mario 64. Why when I play another crabs treasure is the camera phasing into the wall as I walk past it. Guys we figured this shit out with Mario 64 just literally port the camera 1:1 in to every modern game. THAT'S IT, that's the post. I was trying out that fan game sonic world DX and I had to uninstall in literally 15m flat. The camera was nauseating and the right stick swong it around far too quickly.

Assassins Creed Shadows was delayed to Feb. for Black History Month. Then a collectible figure had a half torii gate (A WWII symbol). And now it’s been delayed to Mar. 20 the anniversary of the Sarin Gas Attack! This must be intentional.#Ubisoft #AssassinsCreedShadows pic.twitter.com/qGPF9i3Wba

— TheChrizinator (@Chriz4Evar) January 11, 2025

Got out the city for a bit and met Panem Parker who is, apparently, the most popular relationship choice in the game. I thought she was a bad tempered c*nt tbh.

Panem sounds vaguely Spanish and, seeing as she's a bad tempered and belligerent b-word, I kinda assumed she was. However the other female love interest, Judy, is Latinx (and a lesbian but we'll get to that) so I don't think they'd make both foid romance options walljumpers. The adventures I had with Panem mostly revolved around her losing her temper and doing something impulsively stupid in a Road Warrior-esque desert setting. You do, to be fair, always have the option to call her out- unlike in Horizon Forbidden West. In that game Aloy behaves atrociously to everyone- not just men (because I've seen Chud ID-polers try to argue that... she's remarkably nice to the three guys trying to rebuild Las Vegas [best part of the game] and is awful to Beta, her clone sister)- and nobody's allowed to say anything.

Anyway, Keanu (my imaginary friend) sat in the back during one of our long trips thru the desert and made inciteful comments:

Our adventures brought us into conflict with a group of desert nomads called the Shivs or something. I set off a moonshine canister right next to one during a gunfight and when I came back later I found this strangely bloodless torso which I found quite macabre:

Tried it on with Panem but got shot down cos she doesn't drink from the furry cup- I'm a foid, remember. Apparently this confused and upset the alphabet people who are used to what is called "player-sexual" relationships. The gold standard of this is Baldur's Gate 3. I think this is a bad thing because it doesn't acknowledge respecting all kinds consent, and also because I hate the kinds of degenerates I have to share my hobby with. Yes, that means you.

Back in the city, I ran into a taxi with the voice of GLADOs from Portal and she trashed my Porche.

Some chick killed herself in a bathtub but I wasn't sure who she was- had to look it up and it was the chick who sent me on this mission at the beginning.

I should probably pay more attention to the story.

Unpopular opinion: Starfield was the best game of 2024

Setting: The space setting has been explored numerous times, but Starfield just managed to get it right. It didn't feel like an arcadey experience. Instead, it felt like you were actually facing the austerity of the cosmos. Many people complain about fast-travel but it was a necessary move unless you want to spend literally months and years travelling between planets.

When you land on the planets, that's where the real fun starts. There is a shocking variety of biomes to explore and they all offer different alien life. Some creatures are calm while others are disastrously violent. It's up to you to decide who is friend and who is foe.

Realism: I like games like RDR2 that focus on the little things and force you into more of a "simulator" experience. Starfield is the best game to do this since RDR2, especially if you turn on sustenance mode which requires you to eat food and drink water. I like the fact that you have to physically interact with objects, and that you have to manually loot folks instead of just walking over them. All these touches immerse yourself in the game.

Soundtrack: Starfield's soundtrack is ethereal, taking you off your couch and into the far reaches of the cosmos. It feels alien, extraterrestrial, godly, and classical all at the same time. I like just pausing the game and letting the amazing soundtrack play.

Gunplay: I love how the various guns handle in the game. I usually play in third-person, but during gun-fights I switch to first-person for a much more exciting gunplay experience. The variety of guns in unparralled, and you soon learn that some guns are better for certain situations than others.

Characters: This is where the game truly excels. Characters like Sarah are unforgettable with touching backstories that take genuine effort to unravel. This helps the characters feel real and forces you to connect to them. These aren't 2D characters, they are fully fleshed-out characters worthy of getting to know.

Customization: There is a huge emphasis on customization, especially when it comes to ship customization. You can tweak things to your heart's content, ensuring you have the perfect ship for your travels whether you're blasting pirates or travelling to distant planets.

Narrative: Starfield has the best narrative of 2024. It keeps the player guessing and features so many twists and turns that it's impossible to guess just how crazy things get towards the ending. I highly recommend everyone play this game, if only to experience that phenomenal ending.

Replayability: There is so much to do that it's impossible to complete it all in one playthrough. And that's okay! The game is designed to be played multiple times and with each new playthrough you may notice that things are different (I won't spoil too much, but it handles newgame+ in a creative way).

Community and modding support: Don't like something you see? Is there an aspect of gameplay you don't like? Don't fret! There are numerous mods available for PC and console to help you fine-tune your game to your liking. How can you hate a game that literally lets you alter it to your liking?

Tod Howard: Tod Howard is the greatest human to ever, so anything he is involved with is going to be magic. As you'd expect, nothing changes with Starfield. It is a masterpiece for ages, and it has solidified its place in gaming history as one of the greatest space games to ever exist. He is a legend and Starfield is his magnum opus.

Rockstar, step aside. A new competitor has taken the throne.

Happy continued Civilization IV week !g*mers We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod that replicates world history. Following last game, we have just recently gone from the "Roman Kingdom" to the "Roman Empire" following the conquest of Greece. We control up to Byzantium (Constantinople).

The Persians (probably) razed Sfard so there's nothing left to conquer there. We need to settle one more city in Anatolia at some point. India (Gupta Empire) has a higher score than us but is behind us technologically. Persia (Achaemenid Empire) is very stable, prosperous, and more advanced than us.

Athens is a huge boon to us and a Great Person will be born there soon, either a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet. We need Currency for our first victory condition, so hopefully it's the Great Merchant. I decide to go ahead and research Law. If the GP turns out to be a Prophet we'll get Aesthetics which will put us a step closer to Architecture, one of the technologies we need to research first for the third victory condition.

Law allows us to enable Citizenship

The High Upkeep is going to suck when our empire gets big, but it will help a lot with getting buildings up for the "Bread and Circuses" victory condition. Hopefully the quick libraries will offset the cost of upkeep a little.

Since Carthage opened borders with us when we were in a mutual war with Greece, we're able to spy on them a little. They control the Levant including Jerusalem and their original capital of Surru (Tyre) when they were the Phoenicians.

Surru is lightly defended, but I have to attack fast because the Phoenician Unique Power allows them to quickly raise mercenaries. They have a Silk Road trade route and built the Great Cothon there instead of Carthage so it will be a strong prize along with the holy city of Judaism.

While snooping around the area we establish contact with the Nubians

The Roman Empire is stable as heck. We have strongly booming economy (+9). The way economy works in RfC and DoC is based on commerce GROWTH. Not treasury gain, not commerce alone, but the amount of commerce () gained per cycle whether it be from citizens in cities working tiles or through trade.

The coins and bigass money bags are units of commerce, also available through Trade Routes in the upper left (these show the cities we're trading with, right now Athens is trading with Carthagian cities). Athens is rich and we just built a Silver mine in Tarragona, so we're booming. The drawback is that if we can't sustain this growth we'll crash into a recession. Fortunately we also have very compatible civics for the Classical age (Domestic +8).

Most importantly, there is plenty of room to expand. Trade routes be darned, it's time for some Punic Wars

Surru falls. Even attacking over a river, our City Raider legion take out the defenders easily. The last troops are rushed mercenaries (the blue glow meaning they're so fresh they haven't even been promoted yet) and go down like a b-word.

Surru is great. The Silk Road trade route disappears once conquered and it's a little cramped next to Jerusalem, but The Great Cothon adds production to their coastal tiles and a Great Scientist is settled there.

Where Hannibal is successful is in harassing the shit out of our warships guarding the Iberia/Italy coast with a swarm of galleys. Motherlovers are like locusts

Our Great Person is born in Athens - it was 50/50 a Merchant or a Prophet and we got the Merchant (aka mercenary commander) Pubius Sittius. This will allow us to finish Currency quicker, allowing us to build Forums for our "Bread and Circuses" goal, with some additional spillover to Navigation. With Law and Currency we can now research Politics, one of the technologies required for the third victory condition. Persia, our chief technological rival, can't research this yet so we should be in good shape. If we can get a Great Prophet or Artist next we can blow through to Architecture.

Jerusalem falls next. We now have access to Judaism, our first official religion, giving us access to religious buildings. We could convert to Judaism now, but that would be silly. Jerusalem also has a Great General settled in the city, which is neat, but probably can't be utilized that well because it's not a strong production center.

Somehow I missed this but Carthage had also pulled the Nubians into war with us right after we invaded and they start to come for the Levant. Killing just a few of their dudes gets them back off with miniscule tribute.

Fine by me, I got more important shit to do.

Caption this:

The Roman Empire has successfully conquered the Levant and Hannibal has successfully annoyed me enough with his boats. Great Generals are born in both Rome and Carthage, Gaius Marius in Rome and Hasdrubal Barca, brother of Hannibal in Yglgl. Generals can either join individual armies for a bonus and unique upgrades or be settled in a city (like the one in Jerusalem) for a +XP boost to all troops built there.

We come to an agreement. The Carthagians are sufficiently buckbroken now and willing to offer tribute.

We'll turn our attention back to Carthage eventually, but with these buttholes off our back we can benefit from a peace treaty and safely get our fishing ships back up along the coast.

We are now Very Stable with continued conquests and economic growth. We've pissed off the rest of the world a little, but oh well. There's still room to expand, and we have a large army stationed in the Levant. Where to?

Oh, you. You want some free shit, do you? And you're upset because Hannibal was "your friend"?

Time to die

Egypt is stronger than I expected. We have a 1.5 military advantage (see the diplo overview) but her core is tighter () and her army is consolidated.

I see Persians at my border and I about shit, but they aren't invading. Darius, the fricking r-slur, is seriously about to resettle the city he burnt to the ground. I don't really want to frick with him. Maybe I could get super lucky and cause this city to flip, but more likely I'll have to settle my fourth Anatolian city in Crete. Unfortunately, these tight borders are probably going to cause some tensions.

With two more Forums built we accomplish the "Bread and Circuses" victory condition ahead of schedule

Now, we can focus on colonization and conquest.

A Great Prophet, Claudia Quinta is born in Athens, allowing us to speed up the research of Architecture, one of the necessary technologies for the third victory condition. This is lucky, as Persia has been able to research this tech for a good few turns

We could have also had her found the Temple of Solomon in Jeruslaem, and embraced a Jewish Roman Empire if we wanted to get weird with it. But I don't want that.

This was the toughest siege yet. Only one casualty (a City Raider III at 96% win odds ) but it took a looong time to wear down defenses and had to supply reinforcements and fend off Egyptian chariot raiders constantly running into the Levant.

Surru is suffering and not returning as much $$$ as we'd like due to the ongoing war. It might be worth considering a peace treaty.

As we have researched Politics, we now have the option to let her Capitulate, which she's willing to do after a few turns of War Weariness. She would become a vassal state called the Province of Aegyptus. As fun as it would be to keep Cleopatra as a pet slave, there's little point - with her capital's conquest and me occupying her core she's very unstable, and her land is more valuable directly controlled. However, it is worth it to take a new technology and some gold for tribute for a few turns of peace. The rest of Egypt will probably fracture soon.

And sure enough.

Taking Ra-Kadet is effortless, but annoyingly, the Nubians and Carthagians also had armies nearby. Carthage swoops in and takes independent Waset. I want that

I also notice that they now have Heavy Spearmen, meaning they've researched Steel. This is bad. They need to be dealt with ASAP. It's time for a Second Punic War

Carthage settled Alicante in Iberia right up next to Tarragona. It looks easy to take until Carthage starts rushing mercenary Heavy Spearmen. Promoting a Legion to Shock (+damage to infantry) allows them to take it, fulfilling the "Iberia" part of the Pax Romana victory condition.

Speaking of this goal, I need to get a settler up to colonize Britain soon. I concoct a plan to get my settler ready in Tarragona, slip a boat and warship through the Carthage controlled Strait of Gibralter while we're in conflict, and have the settlers take a Roman Road to meet and board in northwest Iberia. Did you know you can draw on the map in Civ4? It's so fun

Attempting to go straight for the jugular. Skirmishers harass my weakly defended ballistae weakening the city of Carthage (Qart-Hadasht) while I bring in reinforcements for the final push.

Good timing too cause these elephant neighbors start trampling my few soldiers guarding the ballistae

The reinforcements land and Carthage is finished The city falls and the empire collapses.

Now that the Mediterranean is mostly peaceful (save some barabarians and pirates) we can colonize Knossos, satisfying our fourth city in Anatolia, since the Persians settled Turkey.

I complete the Flavian Ampitheatre in Rome. Tbh these resources could have better been spent elsewhere but I felt like building it in Rome because it's cool. .

With Gaius Marius settled there too, soldiers built in Rome are hard as frick and cranked out every couple turns. These gigachad supersoldiers will make conquering Gaul a cakewalk.

We're running out of time, but a two pronged attack from Tarragona and the Gigachads of Rome should make this possible.

Another Great General is born from the Gallic conquests, Germanicus

With the conquest of Gaul and the colonization of London we control the territory necessary for our second victory condition, just in the nick of time.

With Pax Romana a motherflipping Golden Age begins

Orthodox Christianity was founded around 50AD (dunno where yet) and has already started to spread, so Pagan Temples are starting to disappear. The Pagan Religious Victory will probably be unattainable soon, which is fine. We should probably convert to Orthodoxy soon.

If we want to do the Historic Victory, we just need to research a couple more technologies before anyone else. I believe Persia is still our dominant tech rival but I'm sending spies out to confirm that.

We are incredibly stable. The Golden Age will be a super sweet time to take advantage of, but this ain't gonna last forever. Germanic barbarians are starting to attack. Orthodoxy spreading is going to start to upset some religious unity. The economic growth is not going to be sustained. Our income kinda sucks in general, but we're getting Jails up everywhere which will help with that by reducing maintenance. Eventually, the Eastern Roman Empire will split and eventually France, Spain, and England will start to become their own civilizations. At some point even the Northern Italian City States will want to flip. This will really suck.

Next time we will probably win Historic. I still want to go to space, but things are going to get tougher from here. New plan: next time we will win a Historic Victory and then reload and fail it so we can win a separate Space Victory

For now though, we will bask in victory for conquering (almost) Trajans borders.

Part 3

!g*mers