1000BC     The Struggle Heats Up

By the time the first 3000 years had passed, I had managed to set up a decent core of cities behind strong lines of defense. While there was still a great deal of land back behind the line to settle, I was in excellent position to make sure that my whole subcontinent would be exclusively Chinese. My recurring fear of the early game was the other civs putting cities back behind my lines and opening up a two-front war. In any case, by 1000BC my civ looked like this:

The only city I've founded since the last screen shot is Xinjian, but there is another settler on the way to settle by the silks in the east. Shanghai is also at work on another settler, since there was plenty of room for more of them at this point. You can see on my minimap that I now have knowledge of Persia's territory map; not that it does much good, but at least I know they are somewhere far to the west. Most of my attacking units, which at this point in time were archers, were holed up in Tsingtao defending against Iroquois aggression. The screenshot was taken at a quiet moment, but there was no way to predict when a serious threat would emerge from the fog. I badly needed to hook up one of the two iron locations you can see before the AI civs I had just contacted started bringing the heat; I knew it was only a matter of time until they did.

Chengdu was founded in 925BC by the plains wheat tile and the silks. I would use it to produce workers or settlers for a very long time using that high-food tile to full benefit. I made a note in 775BC that I had killed my first American unit - or, to put it another way, my first non-Iroquois unit. By this time, I was starting to see a steady stream of foreign units; instead of an attack every couple of turns, I was seeing units every turn in small numbers. I founded Hangchow in 730BC to bring the iron in the northeast under my control, which greatly aided my efforts to defend Tsingtao. I upgraded one or two warriors to swords later when in tough pinches to save myself.

690BC was a major turning point in the early part of my game. On that turn a Mongol scout appeared to the north of my civ, the front that had seen virtually no action throughout the game. Naturally I had to talk to him, and when I did so I discovered that Temujin had contacts with other civs that I didn't have - and I had contacts with civs that HE didn't have. Ordinarily, this would be a wonderful chance to broker contact between two groups of civs that obviously hadn't met one another, but here in this game my opportunities were considerably more limited. However, I was still able to make some very lucrative trades: Mathematics @monopoly price for Mysticism and Writing. Then Currency @ monopoly price for Code of Laws and Philosophy. It was a real shame that the Mongols lacked Map Making, so I couldn't get their world map even though I had plenty to trade for (I also lacked Map Making at this time). With that round of deals over, it was time for WAR! But in checking the diplomatic status with the Mongols, I noticed that I now had contact with the Babylonians as well. Huh? Someone must have traded them contact with me. I sent them Philosophy for Literature and then declared on Hammurabi as well. Phew! That was a good round of trades, and also the last one I would get to do in this game. Only two more civs to contact at this point.

I've pointed out the Mongol scout who made the whole flurry of trading possible, as well as introducing me to what would become the northern AI opponents. You can also see the units north of Tsingtao who used their movement to attack and kill some enemy units this turn. The recent addition of iron due to the founding of Hangchow is also the reason why only one city is working on swords at the moment. And of course Nanking is at work on the Forbidden Palace already; even though that spot is right next to my capital, a FP there will allow me to have a very strong and uncorrupted core in my backline cities. With crucial wonders like the Pyramids and Great Library to rush, I didn't want to waste an early one on the Forbidden Palace, or - even worse - be deprived of a Forbidden Palace should the leaders be slow in appearing. Putting the FP in Nanking was a strong move that greatly aided me throughout the game once it completed.

Speaking of leaders, only two turns later one of my elite archers popped my very first one of the game! Say hello to K'uang-yin, he's about to speed along the construction of a big triangular thing:

There was no doubt about using the first leader on the Pyramids. At the time, I only had a granary in one city (Shanghai) and since this was a pangea map, the value of free granaries in all cities for all time was just too much to ignore. The wisdom of putting it in a frontline city like Tsintao could be questioned, but there it served two purposes; first, its nominal role as a wonder, and second by providing a free cutural building so Tsingtao would expand its borders. I was heavily strapped for cash throughout the early parts of the game, and certainly couldn't spare money for a temple rush at a monstrous 200g. For that matter, I was in despotism here and couldn't cash rush things at all! And if anything else, it just gave me another reason to make sure that my city wasn't captured. I would put a lot of wonders in frontline cities throughout the game to take advantage of their free culture, and save me some much-needed cash.

By this time I was ready to push out to the ivory and the horses in the northwest with a new frontline city. Just two turns before I was about to do so, the Iroquois settled right next to where I was going to put my city! Hiawatha must have also known about the horses + ivory location and wanted it for himself, even though that settlement was nowhere close to his other cities. Well I was not about to stand for this! A city that exposed with no way to reinforce it was toast. I captured and autorazed Centralia in 530BC, the first foreign city of the game to fall to me:

I refounded a new city there on the same turn, in 530BC, but on the hill tile south of where Centralia had been. Tientsin would thus be much more easily defended than the Iroquois city which had preceded it. Looking at that picture though, you may notice that I now have the territory map of another civ on my minimap. That was the territory of the Japanese, who had contacted me in 570BC on the F4 screen. I was just a tiny bit short of the money needed to buy his world map, which was extremely painful for me to accept. By adding only 1gpt I could get his map of the world, but the rules of Always War forbid the player from doing this. Dang it - I don't want to have to play out this whole game in the dark! But rules are rules, and so I went away empty-handed with only Tokugawa's territory map. At least I knew that he was somewhere to the north of me; aside from Persia and Japan though, I really had no idea where any of the other civs were located, other than vague directions like "north" and "west". I had no idea what the shape of the continent we were on looked like, for that matter.

India was now the only civ I had yet to contact. It wasn't until a turn or two later that I really looked at the map of Japanese cities and noticed something shocking: take a look at the city names of those Japanese ones:

Hmmm, let's see, we have Kyoto, Tokyo, Edo, Osaka... DELHI?! Oh my goodness, the Japanese have control of the Indian capital city! They must be fighting each other, and Gandhi is getting some rough treatment! Was India actually dead? A check of F10 proved that he was not, but India must have been in seriously bad shape. This could only benefit me in the long run, so I was extremely glad to see the AI civs fighting amongst themselves. As for India, as time passed I began to long for them to contact me so I could get their world map and finally see where everyone was located. It would be some time yet before I found G-man though!

To get back to the main narrative, I founded Tatung and Macao in my backlands in 530BC and 430BC, respectively. All that empty land was finally starting to fill up with cities, if small ones which would take some time to get up to size. Polytheism was discovered in 430BC (I got it first, but of course there was no one I could trade with!) and research began on Monarchy so I could get out of despotism. I noted in 410BC that I killed my first Persian units, as the international flavor of the conflict began to increase. 290BC was the first year that I faced attacks from four different civs, consisting of Iroquois, American, Persian, and Mongol foes. I noted in 270BC that I was seeing constant streams of enemy units for the first time, as when there was a gap from the forces of one civ, the units of another civ would step in to take their place. 250BC thus marks a good place to end this chapter, as the forces of the civs I had contacted in the past finally began to reach me in significant numbers. The next fifty or so turns would be the most crucial ones in the game; could I hold my lines against the other eight civs and continue expanding, or would they break through and end my effort? At this point I honestly did not know, and that made the game very exciting indeed!

Just as I did with my last Always Way game, I've kept a tally of the total number of kills recorded in the entire game. I tried to be as precise as possible, and though there are undoubtedly some errors, the numbers should be accurate to within about 5% of the actual totals. The table should give a pretty good indication of who I was fighting at what time, and also of the ratio of my losses to overall kills. Unlike my previous table, all the entries in this one will be at exact 25-turn intervals to make comparisons easier, from 750BC to 250BC to 250AD to 500AD and so on. Hope you find it interesting!

A couple of interesting details jump out right away from this first table. You can see that most of my early fighting was done against the Iroquois, but then starting about 750BC the number of units that they sent towards me suddenly greatly decreased. I saw barely anything at all from them in the years between 750-250BC. I wouldn't know the reason for this until watching the postgame replay... The Americans and Persians had stepped it up though and greatly increased the forces they sent after me. My losses dropped dramatically after 750BC as well; this was due to the fact that I was now able to use swords instead of archers on the attack (greatly cutting down on losses) and that I had started to get some catapults in place near high-conflict regions. This was to be crucial for my success in the game, but more on that later. (I didn't bother to put the civs who hadn't sent any units against me yet on this first table, to avoid cluttering up the details. They will be added in only too soon for my liking...)