Anyone here playing the Game of the Week? This week it’s Egypt, one city challenge, on Magnificent (second to hardest), Duel map with one opponent.
Playing with one family in one city forced me into some bottlenecks I didn’t anticipate.
First, I chose Sages as the family. I imagined that I would need the 20% discount to urban specialists to realize my tallness. As it turned out, not a lot of Master and Elder specialists got built, and when they were, they were rush bought by a Judge governor. The Sages did offer me several specialist-related ambitions, though. I wish I knew more about the flavor of missions each family will offer.
Second, I got to Colonies law to buy tiles as soon as possible but I still spent the first 30 turns with too small of borders. My workers, unenthusiastic about building more than 5 mines, went out to harvest 10 food tiles and chop wood.
Third, I didn’t have a Builder for my second leader, and that’s when I had the stone to start building wonders. That’s when I want to stack multiple workers to bring improvement times down.
Fourth, Civics were in short supply. I built the Pyramids, but wasn’t able to get an arid or desert tile until after I built the Hanging Gardens, which itself was unimportant.
Fifth, Science was in short supply, and the +1 from Sages is not enough to square the circle. After a couple of heirs didn’t turn out as I would like, and I was only offered Courtiers of the wrong gender, I actually had lower science from turns 60-80 than 40-60. Court characters are the main source of Science in a One City Challenge. Without them, tech-related ambitions fall out of reach, and Scholarship is a pool noodle in the ocean.
Sixth, I only spat out 4 units. They were enough to fend off the invasions of Gauls that coincided with barbarians traipsing around, and my 5 workers were able to repair any damage afterward. However, they weren’t enough to control the map and so I didn’t meet the opponent nation, Carthage, until turn 70. I also suffered delays as workers had to flee or heal pretty routinely on some flank of my city.
I stopped around turn 80 because I had 2000+ of Food, Iron, Stone, and Training, but ~20 beakers and a lot of shame.
I restarted the Game of the Week, and discovered it generates a new map each time. I assumed the point of the feature was to stoke community comparisons, but it’s just there to, as far as I can tell, set some settings you could choose under a Custom Game.
In this second experience, I knew to choose Landowners. They can buy tiles in their seat without Colonies, and allow you to build rural specialists in tempo with workers to heat-seek bonus resources.
In this game, Greece was the opponent, and they had 9 cities by turn 15 or something. They declared war on me around turn 50, then the Scythians invaded, and the Gauls declared war.
Gratefully, Greece destroyed the Gauls on the warpath to my city. 2 Warriors and 5 Workers camped my urban tiles and healed every turn while 5-7 Scythian horse archers each shot something different. The horses drove my discontent level to 8 before my Militia, which was exposed on a non-urban hill, did 4 damage per turn for ~20 turns. They never targeted it, so it was free to attack. This lack of focus-fire seems very aberrant. Maybe the Gods were taking pain in my misery. By turn 80, Scythia had lost half it’s forces and sued for peace.
I thought it was an example of how the game seems, though I expect I’m over-interpreting random chance, to buoy you with good events and characters if you’re failing behind or make everyone in the court insane if you’re doing great. But it might have been because Greece was destroying the Scythian encampment on their way to me.
Without ever attacking a unit of mine, Greece accepted an affordable tribute Truce. Ten turns later relations spiked up to Pleased and peace. I could continue, now that everything around me is subdued, but it’s not great fun to be a tribe in Greece’s world. Even if I did have 12 bonus tiles in my borders.
In one game I was wealthy, isolated, and built every wonder, but had no science. In another I had rich lands, and every bully decided to take it at the same time. These experiences didn’t feel worthwhile or interesting beyond the education in extremity.
