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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-07-22_00001.jpg Allright then! Welcome, one and all, to the relaunch of England Vs The World; where we pit might England against the rest of the world because I have no idea what I'm doing for no reason other than because we can. Same rules as the first attempt: Playing as England(+2 movment for all navel vessels, extra spy[new thing!], Longbowman and Ship-of-the-Line units) on an Archipelago map against 7 other Civs(16 city states thrown in for good measure) on Normal difficulty with Epic pacing. The only Victory Condition that is DISABLED is the time-limit. Anything goes in this madhouse! Got all that? Excellent! Let's get this trainwreck party started! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00001.jpg Not too shabby a starting area(I actually had to spend a turn moving my settler over to plant the city there). Two different Happiness resources(each happiness resource only counts /once/ in terms of providing the bonus happiness) in form of silver and two pearls. The Stone just to the northwest will provide a decent production boost once we get it started, while the various food(two cows and a sheep!) will eventually let us grow London to stupid-large status. I'd prefer to have another resource of a production bonus, but you take what you can get! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00002.jpg A quick glance at the city screen. We're going to do the age-old 'Monument then Warrior' build que simply because this island appears like it might be of decent size, so having the extra exploration unit could come in quite handy. Orignally I would prefer to do a Worker, since we've got all these land resources to exploit; but there's been a change with some of the Social Polices that allows me to skip that(which I'll explain in a moment). You might be curious as to the hex with the bright purple outline, straight south of London? Basically, that's just pointing out which hex is most likely to be chosen as the hex to expand into when the city automagically expands it border(done so when the city generates enough Culture). http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00003.jpg With the first City comes the ability to start Research! Wee. Usually on island maps I try to make like an arrow for Optics, to allow myself early ability to send land-units overseas. However, this time I've opted to take a slightly different approach and instead focus on getting the abilities required to abuse those resources near London. As this is a completely different style than normal, I may very well end up scrapping this horrible idea and doing something different; but for now we go after Animal Husbandry(to see Horses and make use of those sheeps/cows), followed by Mining and Masonry(to, well, build Mines and Quarries) before chugging down the Optics path. With Research set up, it's time to start seeing just how small this stupid island is! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00004.jpg Ohhohoho! Ruins! Excellent. As you may or may recall, they're the Civ V goody huts. Let's just take a peek in here and see what we get... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00005.jpg Culture! While this doesn't seem like too shiny of a reward compared to some of the toys possible, it's actually a really decent first find. 30 Culture allows us to go ahead and snag our first Social Policy. This is better than it sounds, promise. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00006.jpg A recap! Social Policies are basically ways to fine tune your Civ even more towards the exact playstyle you want. They have things like bonuses for the City States, science bonuses, trading bonuses, various units/bonuses FOR units; just all kinds of goodies. They work by means of acquiring enough Culture to 'adopt' a Social Policy. Adopting a branch will give some small bonus, each indiviual policy within the branch adds its own bonus, and finally filling out the entire branch will give yet ANOTHER bonus. Fill out enough Branches, and you can get the option to build the Utopia Project; basically another way to win the game. A way, might I add, that /is/ enabled in this game. This early in the game, we really have access to only three Branches of Social Policies: Tradition, Liberty, or Honor. Tradition focuses on buffing up small empires, with a few extra bonuses to your Captial. In comparison, Liberty throws buffs all over the place, with an eye mostly towards enabling fast expansion and small bonuses across every city. Honor is for those who wish to spend time stabbing things, will all kinds of combat and military related buffs. Those who read my last attempt at this may recall that I mentioned I usually try to pick up one or two policies from the Tradition Branch. That was before Gods and Kings came out, where among many other things they adjusted several of the policies bonuses. In this case, there's actually a bonus in Liberty that gives a free Worker unit(remember how I said I was skipping building one in the city? Not as crazy as you first thought! Hah!) while increasing Worker, well, work-speed. For now, I'm PROBABLY going to focus primarly on Liberty; but it remains to be seen considering how early it is. Moving on, we decide to keep sending our Warrior south to explore. A decent distance away(but sadly not near as far away as I'd like) we see an unwelcome sight... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00008.jpg That looks uncomfortably like another Civ's border... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00007.jpg CURSE THE LUCK. We're sharing our starting island with another Civ! On the flip side, I've not played a game with Ethiopia yet, so I've no clue how ugly this could get. I guess most of it depends on how much room to his south and west he has to expand... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00009.jpg So. Ten turns into this, and above is the current world as we know it. Prior to meeting Ethopia, I wanted to put another city somewhere near that mountain(straight north of the Warrior, in case it wasn't obvious what it was) if only to be able to build Machu Pichu later on. Now that we know where Ethopia is, I REALLY want to build there just to cut him off from my section of the island. Any offical manuvers or diplomacy is quite some time away no matter the outcomes, so we've got some time to think on it. Overall it feels like we're doing pretty decent(ignoring the score chart anyway) but I'm not sure how well we're doing considering how close we are to another Civ... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00010.jpg A quick checkup on London. We finished that Monument, and there's not been anything else to build researched as of yet. Knowing Ethopia is where its at, I go ahead and throw a Settler on the list. The only problem I have with doing it this early is when Settlers are being built, they stop the growth of the City until they're completed. Slowing down our captial this early, this close to someone else may turn out to be an ugly gamble; but we'll see! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00011.jpg Tech get! With any luck we'll have a few horses near London or somewhere near where I want to build the second city, so we can have horsemen to crush Ethopia with later on... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00012.jpg Victory! A total of four horses within reach of London, which means a total of four Horsemen can be built when we eventually get that tech(although five is right out). Before I forget, a quick recap of the various resources. All resources provide some kind of bonus to their tile when worked by a City(for example, Horses provide extra production). Happiness resources, when improved with their required tile-improvement(in the case of our Silver, that would require a Mine; whilst the Pearls need Fishing boats), will give us a flat Civ-wide Happiness bonus(see the smiley face at the top of the screenshot, just above the M in Mining). Happiness determines how many cities you can have that are effective and how large they can get. Too many Cities or too many people in those cities, and your happiness goes bad. Not fun. Strategic resources also give a Civ-wide bonus, but instead these focus on allowing certain unit types to be built. Can't build another Horseman if you've used up all the Horses you have, and so on. A cavet with this is that when a unit that requires that resources is killed, it frees that resource back up. Then of course you've got the various miscellaneous resources(sure there is an offical name but I can't recall it while I'm typing this!) that do all kinds of things, but don't provide a Civ-wide bonus. Sheep, Deer, Stone, and Fish are just some examples. These run the gambit from extra food, to extra gold or production. Have I talked your ear off yet? No? Excellent, lets keep trudging forward shall we? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00013.jpg What ho! Horrible savages to our north! Its okay, they can't do much to our city even if our Warrior wasn't in the way. What really concerns me, however, is the terrian. Tundra generally only happens near the top or bottom of the maps(maps wrap around left and right, but not top or bottom). This means our ability to expand is going to be pretty much limited to the south...near Ethopia. That, however, is an issue to tackle when we've got the means to do so. For now, we've got some Barbarians to smash! http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00014.jpg A little bit of the ole back and forth results in a promotion for our stalwart warrior. Keeping in mind the terrain near our second city is mostly either Forests or hills, I opt to give this guy a bonus in Rough terrain(Forests, Jungles, or Hills) to make him more of a problem for the foes later on. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v682/Bobaram/Civ%20V%20AAR-Take%20Two/2012-08-03_00015.jpg A quick break here, but first another glance at the world as a whole. I had pulled my Warrior back to the north in hopes of finding uncontested expansion room, but we'll be lucky to be able to fit in a single city up there without bothering our Captial(cities can work tiles up to three squares away from itself, and can't work the tile that another city already is). It's starting to look more and more like we'll go to blows with Ethopia...