Home - Adventure Thirty-two - Home

Adventure Thirty-two: Friendly Takeover

This is the story of my game of Civilization IV Adventure Thirty-two from Realms Beyond Civilization.


Okay, this is a crazy setup. There's about a million different ways to go on the scoring.

Now, the single biggest prizes are 100 points for each corporation founded before 1 AD (plus they also score 50 points each at 1500 AD.) This boils down to this challenge: generate the most Great People before 1 AD, prophets and spies don't count.

The best way to do that is Pacifism + Caste System. And the Oracle will be incredibly cheap to build with Marble and our Industrious trait, so we're definitely going somewhere with that. Pacifism can be reached in one of two ways: either by acquiring Philosophy, or building Shwedagon Paya. The only realistic way to get Philosophy with significant time before 1 AD is to Oracle it, but I have other plans for that wonder. (Lightbulbing Philosophy would mean we wasted a Great Scientist that could otherwise found Standard Ethanol.) And once the Gold became visible on the first turn, Shwedagon Paya seemed much easier.

Now, Pacifism + Caste works for three types of corporate founders, but not an Engineer. And Creative Constructions would be a great prize, as usually the strongest cultural corporation on a pangaea, towards the cultural victory that we'll naturally target. I shall target Metal Casting with the Oracle, in order to whip a forge and run an Engineer.

Enter the Pyramids, which will help every part of this game plan. Representation will work splendidly with the Caste specialists, speeding research to Writing and Aesthetics. The Great Engineer points plus Forge engineer should spawn a Great Engineer in time before 1 AD. And the happy cap from Representation will help my cities grow and recover in the economy after the 1 AD threshold.

Now, one wrinkle in the plan is that the Oracle and Shwedagon Paya go for Great Prophet points. Since my capital will have to be the Pyramids builder, and I want to keep its GE pool pure, the Oracle and Shwed must go in an off-capital city together. It may spawn a Great Prophet; if it does, that's a Golden Age for yet more GPP before 1 AD.

Finally, while we're at Aesthetics and possess Marble, build the Parthenon too.

See how it all fits together? Here's a recap:

1. Research to Bronze Working, Pottery, Priesthood, Masonry (to quarry the marble)
2. Oracle in a second city, for Metal Casting
3. Whip forge and build Pyramids in my capital
4. Research Writing, Aesthetics, Code of Laws
5. Build Shwed Paya, and Parthenon if possible
6. Adopt Pacifism + Caste System
7. Run lots of specialists
8. Found lots of corporations!

The TPS Report