So the first match of Game 2 went
really fast. Even though we switched to a slower game speed and a larger map with more AI players, the hybrid turn system (players at peace go all at once, players at war take turns) eliminated wait times, making overall gameplay
much faster. I was about to enter the Renaissance and the World Congress was founded when we had to cut it short. I think last time we were still in the Classical era when the first match ended.
@SciFiFan, you should brush up because at this rate we'll be done in just a few sessions. Naturally, this means a lot happened, including four wars.
I believe our continent is roughly H shaped with a tail pointing east off of the south-east leg. Terra started in the tail as the Earth Kingdom (China, Avatar: The Last Airbender reference), the France AI started at the SE end of the H, west of Terra, Rifraf started in the NW part of the H as the Inca, the Egypt AI started in the SW part of the H, and I (as the United Republic [Venice], another ATLA reference) wound up trapped behind a mountain range with two narrow passes in the NE part of the H with Attila the Hun, one of the most aggressive neighbors you can get. As Venice, I lack the ability to found cities or take direct control of conquered ones. Goodie. Terra and I took a bit to figure out where to found our starting cities because our spawns were iffy, but we got it sorted out eventually.
With the settling settled, we started exploring and found everyone in fairly short order, though it did take a while for Rifraf and Terra to find each other. As it turned out, Attila wasn't so interested in exploring as he was in taking my city, and he founded two other cities to help get it done. Thanks in part to a generous 300 gold contribution from Terra, I was able to scrounge up an army and build some walls. As it turned out, the area around Republic City was extremely defensible with hills and a river and Attila's horde of warriors and battering rams were stopped pretty quickly. The invasion soon turned into a rout, and it became apparent that Attila was trapped with me rather than the other way around. My spearmen and composite bowmen (cutting edge tech for the time) were able to launch a counter invasion of the Hunnic territories, burning Attila's expansion cities and taking his capital city. He managed to settle a colony over by Rifraf, though, so I failed to eliminate him entirely. While all this was going on, I got a Merchant of Venice and bought the city-state directly south of me, bringing me up to a total of three cities. I also managed to pillage enough gold to give Terra his money back.
While things were settling down in my part of the world, Rifraf and Terra weren't quite so lucky as they each discovered themselves dealing with their very own barbarian hordes. Fortunately they were able to shut that down, but as they were cleaning up my very first spy discovered that Napoleon was gearing up to invade me. On top of that, Attila settled a city right at the bridge of the H which would soon allow him to control travel between the eastern and western halves of the continent. Rifraf, meanwhile, was getting rather fed up with Ramesses. Surprisingly, Terra declared war on Napoleon. Meanwhile, I went after Attila again to get his shiny new city and deny him control of the bridge, and Rifraf decided that Ramesses had to go, resulting in three simultaneous unrelated wars involving every nation. We also learned a nice thing about the hybrid turn system here. Since Terra, Rifraf, and I were at peace with each other and Attila, Ramesses, and Napoleon were at peace with each other, we were split into two groups for turns. The AI players would take their turn all together, then the human players would take their turn all together. Basically, the game preserved the simultaneous turns for peace and sequential turns for war in the most efficient way possible, which was quite nice. Anyway, we were all crushing our opponents when sadly my alarm went off and I remembered I had somewhere to be, forcing us to cut the game short for the day.
Additionally, Terra got the Great Wall built at Ba Sing Se, which was quite nice. No Avatar spoilers in this thread, though, please, since Terra's still watching that and hasn't gotten to the end.
