Going back to the Civ5 well again ~

By Brant Guillory, GrogDude

Click images to enlarge

So we’ve knocked out 33% of our nearest neighbor’s potential population and production, then had him bribing us to back off. But we’ve barely explored the rock we’re on and it’s time to go looking around.

First Naval Unit
Since we’ve got a barracks in every city, we open up with a free promotion. This is our first naval exploration unit, so we’re going with mobility. Some folks might argue for the sentry promotion to see further without having to travel as far, but I prefer to be able to close and kill folks faster if we have to.

Prepare for blast off!
pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat

Seriously?
Dude. Don’t put a bitch-slap target on your top hat.

Howdy, Flyboy
Nice to meet you! When I get back to the main map, you’ll see his capital appear toward the right side after we swapped embassies.

Computationilismist time
Ah, progress…

More Auto-exploring
We’re going to hope this guy doesn’t channel his Idiot Scout Dude ancestors from Carthage.

Wide-Angle View
I’m a fan of checking in on the wide-angle views to see the big picture.  Here I’ve shaded the hexes to denote political boundaries.   Once my cities fill out their allotted territory, they’ll be a nice, substantial unified block of territory.  The problem, of course, is that there’s some nice resources over in the triangle between Colombo, Pulias, and Turku, and it would’ve been nice to plant a city over there.  Hindsight and all that…

Checking on Victory Conditions
I’m leading one, second in another, and getting clobbered in 2 more.  It’s still early, but clearly I’ve got room to improve.

I’m picking up another social policy
Going maintenance free for my burgeoning army, so that if I do have to expand for the inevitable rematch with Pulias, I’ve got the ability to absorb it in the treasury.

Howdy Mr Clinton
Hands off the wimmenfolk, please.

More Technology
And, queue flyboys!

Another City-State
There’s a bunch of them out there.  Here’s another.  City-states, quite frankly, become sacrificial lambs quite often in this scenario, as its the only way you’ve got to add more cities to your empire.  (That’s called “foreshadowing” kids!)

Damned Canadians!
But there were a few city-states that wanted the hobo encampment ejected, so off they go.

Winning Friends and Influencing People
By killing the people they asked you to kill

Science, bitches!
I need Eruptives to reveal Luboric (“uranium” to people with no sense of alternative vocabularies) on the map, and build both my battleships and landships.  Meanwhile, you’ll notice on the right, there’s more units cranking out for a combination of exploration and local defense.

Tweaking Production
Now that I’ve got a few ships in the water, I’m converting Turku back to domestic-focused production.

More Domestic Production
Ditto in the capital.  And watch the Brandenburg Gate, as the free general is important.

Ah, shit.
I’ve got 3 spies sitting around twiddling their fingers, because I’ve totally forgotten to assign them once I started meeting people.  I’m an idiot.

Gettouttahere!
I’m launching them to the 3 other nations I’ve met, just as a starting point.

Oy Vey
My people are not happy.  And I didn’t even ship them out to Philadelphia or anything!

Next time?  Meet more people and open up the map some more.

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