Adventure Thirteen - Sixth Column

Variant Rules:

• If you lose your capital to invasion, you lose the event.
• You may not move your Palace.
• You may not build any Great Wonders in your capital.
• The first improvement (building) in every city must be Walls.
• Every city must build a Castle before it is allowed to build a University or Observatory.
• This is a SIX CITY CHALLENGE. You may not ever possess more than six cities.
• Your six cities must all be self-founded, using your own settlers, or else captured from barbarians.
• You are not allowed to deliberately lose a city for the purpose of "getting rid of" one you regret.

Scenario:

Pre-game analysis

OK, OK, my suicidal instinct has brought me to this game. After being beaten by Alex in Epic 7, I felt I had to "close the circle" and try this game playing my former opponent. This is normal speed (not easier than epic), archipelago (involving naval battles... not my speciality), a 6CC (never tried a limited city challenge, except for some odd OCCs), with heavy restrictions on improvements, and no chance to early wonders (wonder if that was a consequence of the CS slingshot debate?). Since walls will be the first building, it would be wise to limit military and concentrate on the infra. For this, organized religion looks like the way to go, so I may push in that direction early. Sailing is also a high priority, as I want to settle the 6 cities as fast as possible. The traits are very much useless "thanks" to the variant rules... Maybe philosophical will be nice after all.

The game part 1: Opening

Just opening the save, I have a big question: where's food? The food resource doesn't show up, so if it's still there (I can't believe Sirian has taken it away though!), it must be on either the two southern land tiles (one of which looks like tundra, ouch), or on the west sea. I'd want to move my settler east, to gain one and probably two hills, but to run them I definitely need a 4 food tile. That southern fogged tile looks like grassland, but it has a strange stain... I bet the food is there. I move the scout and reveal TWO food resources! None of which is within my city radius. Only one tile is uncovered yet, Sirian will better have left the food there because I'm going to move the settler east. And... the gamble pays off! The food is there as predicted, plus we gain fish!

I believe my move was right, looking forward to see how people deal with this . There is room for another good city west now, with sheep and fish. Athens starts on a workboat, of course. Research on agriculture, to have the corn farmed ASAP, and this ends my first turn. Phew!
After agriculture completes, I choose mining/masonry as my research path. We need to get those walls up fast! The granary and lighthouse are important, and we must have them early. My scout completes (almost) the exploration of my island, and the choice for my second city isn't easy:

The green dot looks promising as a GP farm, is a channel, and it grabs a hill for some production; the red dot can spam 7 cottages, and still have a food surplus, but its base production is 6; the blue dot grabs the all-important gold, but can't work it together with all the plains. Unless up north there's some food, however, it's the only city that can work gold with food surplus. In the south, the yellow and cyan dots look weak, but there's room for improvement. As soon as the workboat finishes, I order up a worker, to get up some mines and a nice farm on the corn. The worker and masonry complete on the same turn, I choose a warrior (happiness) and sailing. Since the production in the capital will be quite good, and I can't build wonders, I might as well build up a navy here. Bronze Working is next, I'm on my way to forges already! As the walls complete I pick a settler, and time it to finish one turn after BW, so I can have one more option before choosing. And when I discover BW... I have copper right under my feet, in Athens. This will be good if things get rough, as it can't be pillaged. It also adds one production to my capital. I think it's a good thing to have founded there, overall . In the end, I decide for the red dot. Oh, I also revolt so slavery, of course.

Sparta starts on... walls of course. With granaries coming in soon, I need to put them up fast. Athens finishes a galley, which will explore the surroundings. Then a Phalanx and another galley, before starting another settler. My intention is to put him south of the sheep. My galley exploring the NW discovers a very small border, which I can't reveal right now, but it looks like purple, could it be Caesar?

*Lighting this border with paint shop pro reveals that the tonality was the orange of Russia, but it was really hard to tell in the fog*
I discover pottery, and decide to pick writing: I want a scientific boost soon, because I'm not going the religious path, and I'm heading to metal casting soon, for obvious purposes . The next turn, I change my mind I need AH first, for the pigs and sheep!
I found Thermopylae in 1240 BC, starting walls.

My island is fully occupied now, and half of my cities are already founded. The 1-tile island which could have grabbed gold doesn't have any food, but there's some nice land in the north, with rice and ivory. Happiness is badly needed, I may go for confucianism because I'm not going to keep my cities at size 5 for the whole game. The reddish border I saw before turns out to be Catherine of Russia - this game is a constant deja-vu: first Alex from epic 7, now Cathy from adv. 12. Cathy is bad news, because she's financial on archipelago, though she can defend herself very well... I only hope there will be many wars with the other AIs! AH reveals horses in the radius of Sparta, which is actually having bad happiness problems: after whipping both walls and granary, it's capped at size 2. I really need happiness, where can I get it? Cathy has got 2 ivory, but I don't have nothing to trade at the moment. That gold needs culture level 3 from Sparta (maybe that wasn't the best location), I'm either going for a religion (all three early ones already grabbed, so it would be confucianism), or for some nice civics. I decide to start on the Pyramids in Sparta then. It won't take long, what's a little 437 turns after all??? . It's only a placeholder for the library, don't worry. So CoL is now beelined, Athens starts an early library after having produced a settler. The lands to the north are sweet, too bad I only have 3 cities left.