This is billed as an “extreme” adventure. Playing as Saladin, on a large map, custom continents. All victory types enabled. The variant rule for this game seems innocent enough: we are forbidden from capturing or razing any cities belonging to civs who start on our continent. The thing is, the AI on the other continents start off united into permanent alliances. I have never experienced this before so I did a little digging. Under permanent alliance, all research is shared. So the AI on the other continents will be researching as one as well as fighting as one from the very beginning. Essentially they will be like a single uber-AI with potentially at least double my own production, beakers, population, military, etc. On the bright side, being artificial, they will not have double the fun and excitement!

Oh, yeah, and there’s no tech trading.

An implicit assumption behind these rules (and implied also by the title of the Adventure) is that in order to compete we’ll have to organize the civs on our own continent into a team under a permanent alliance. I’m going to take this as a hint on how to proceed. So, while I have no idea how I’ll win, I do know my goal - to remain at peace and on friendly terms with the civs on my continent and to make for Communism as soon as possible to enable a permament alliance. At some point in between I’ll have to join them in a mutual war or get a defensive alliance. Then with any luck we’ll unite. Just pulling that off seems tough enough, but after that, I also have to win somehow.

I don’t relish the idea of trying to achieve domination or conquest on a large continents map, so a cultural victory might be the way to go. After all, Saladin is one of the best leaders for a cultural victory. The problem with that is it seems to conflict with my more important goal of uniting the continent, which will surely involve a war at some point against two or more opponents at once. Not exactly the kindest circumstance under which to build lots of cathedrals. Diplomatic victory seems equally tricky. In fact, space race might be the best option, assuming I can keep pace in tech. Anyway, I always reserve judgment on these decisions when I begin the game. The course of the game determines so much. And much is also dependent on the map, and especially on who my neighbors are.

Sirian has already started us off with the city founded, a first build in the queue and a research choice: a warrior in Mecca and Polytheism as a first tech. This is precisely what I would have chosen. Warrior first is never a bad idea. And founding an early religion and spreading it to my neighbors is a huge priority in this game. I move the warrior east to a ridgeline, revealing a hut a few tiles away.

BC 3920 – those villagers teach the Arabs Fishing.

This will probably be useful, assuming I find any ocean. I can already see that there’s tundra to the north, so my warrior heads towards another ridge to the south, scouting the perimeter for early settling locations. Down there is another hut, which gives gold. On the same turn, Buddhism is founded in a distant land. Dang, that’s some early Buddhism. This was just the first of many, increasingly worrisome, “dang, that’s an early . . .” moments.

The warrior finishes building in Mecca and heads west. Now I face the first critical decision of the game – what to build next. This decision goes hand in hand with my decision of what to research after Polytheism. I took a long pause at this point and thought about my options. It basically came down to a decision between two paths. 1) I could start on a worker and go with Hunting-Animal Husbandry. With cows and pigs in Mecca’s radius, this seemed like the obvious choice, and no matter what it couldn’t possibly be a wrong move. My second choice was to go for Masonry-Monotheism while working on a settler. This was riskier, but had the potential for greater payoff. At this point in the game I was still thinking it would be smart to go for a cultural victory, in which case having two religions would be extremely helpful. The one drawback to this path would be a significant delay in exploiting Mecca’s resources. But there were other considerations. There was stone to the northeast which would soon be within Mecca’s cultural boundaries, and that might make the pyramids feasible, which could come in handy for rushing wonders later in the game. And whether or not I founded Judaism, I would want to get organized religion pretty quickly – since converting my neighbors was a big priority. Also, I also needed to do a lot of settling, since that was the only way for me to get cities on my own continent. So building a settler made sense. He’d come out before founding Judaism, which means I’d probably have two holy cities – another good thing for a cultural victory.

I spent a long time thinking about all of this before deciding on the Masonry-Monotheism path.

After this critical matter was settled, my new warrior headed west and in 3560 met one of my neighbors.

Well, if it isn’t Alex “Backstabber” the Great. Not only is Alex a leader who tends not to weigh religion heavily, but he’s notorious for being an early attacker. Sometimes being on good terms with him isn’t even enough to deter his aggressiveness. It was at this point that I began to wonder if my cultural victory plan was really going to be feasible.

In 3480 Hinduism was founded in Mecca and I continued on to Masonry-Monotheism.

My eastern warrior found a fantastic location for my settler south of Mecca. There was more stone, pigs, and flood plains – and fish!. He had also discovered some very good, high food locations to the east and my western warrior had seen other good land just west of Mecca. At this point, I was pleased with my decision to go for masonry-monotheism. I decided around now that, culture victory or not, I would make a play for the pyramids and early representation. It would doubtless help to have the crutch of early representation when competing with the hydra-headed AI teams out there. Also, I’ve never really tried to run an early specialist economy before, so I was tempted to try it out. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to test out new strategies in an already unusual variant, but so be it.

In 2880, Medina was founded, and Mecca started working the lake tiles to ensure the founding of Judaism.

Man, she’s close. She seems to be originating on a slim peninsula of land that bottoms out right into my heartland. This affects my plans in several ways. First of all, Catherine is another one who’s known to backstab on occasion and to bully her friends. The special terms of the game now make me reconsider my whole settling plan. I was really hoping to grab this particular city location to the west, at the head of a gulf that split Cathy and Alex’s lands. It had corn, coastal access, and abundant grassland. In a regular game, I would have been excited by having Cathy as a neighbor and would have extra incentive to grab that corn spot as soon as possible. Between the corn city and Medina, I would effectively have cut Cathy off and stunted her expansion. She would probably declare war on me, but I’d wear her down and then take her few cities, eliminating an unwelcome neighbor. But not in this game. I can’t take her cities, and I don’t want to give her a reason to go to war with me, which she’d certainly do if cut off from normal expansion. In fact, I want her to expand. I want both her and Alex to grow into pretty powerful neighbors. I want to be larger and more powerful, but I want strong partners when we finally come together a team. There’s a lot to think about in this game, that’s for sure. Already my entire way of thinking about early strategy was different than normal, which made this game really interesting and challenging from the outset. To cut a long story short, I decided to abandon the west. I’d leave Cathy that corridor for northward expansion. I hadn’t fully explored the east yet, but this being a continents map and having met no other AI, it seemed like I might have it all to myself.

After the warrior, Medina built another to get to size 3 and then started on a worker, who was ready in 2120, the moment I discovered Animal Husbandry and found that I had horses in Mecca’s cultural radius. Those horses would have been a workable tile in the corn city. Thankfully, due to my religiously expanding borders, they were in Mecca’s cultural radius.

You can see what I sacrificed by going with a settler before a worker. Most players will doubtless have had those cows hooked up and some roads built.

My next research path was Mining-Bronze Working. I wanted to get slavery as soon as possible, given the abundance of special food resources that would soon be available in my cities. Mecca started on another settler, to grab a spot to the southeast with floodplains, hills, riverine tiles, gold and forests – another great city site.

During this time, a warrior or two had scouted out the bulk of the west and confirmed that Alex and Cathy were my only neighbors, and that I had free room to expand away from them. In 1760, Cathy converted to Judaism, and I immediately followed suit to get on the best possible terms with her. When I finished Bronze Working, in 1600, I revolted to organized religion and slavery.

I began to try a wonder gamble: Stonehenge in Medina and the Pyramids in Mecca. This was a late Stonehenge, for sure, and I didn’t think I’d get it, but I would soon have stone hooked up and I wanted to try. With a free obelisk and religion my cities would have a much better chance of competing culturally with Cathy’s. Also, a curious thing about this continent – it contains no Calendar resources that I can see. So I could probably keep Stonehenge around for a lot longer than usual. I had also decided that the pyramids would be perfect for this map. Sure, there was a lot of tundra to settle, but the core area in the south was rich in food and would be good for running specialists. Since there was no copper nearby, and since my scouting units come across enough barbarians to suggest that on this map they’d be heavier than usual, I started researching Archery.

In 1560, Damascus was founded.

And here’s a look at the resource situation after Bronze Working:

Copper is distant and there’s not a single calendar resource in sight. It turned out there were dyes to the south, and some others on an offshore island. But all the same, pretty unusual. Stonehenge wouldn’t be obsolete for a long time. Unfortunately, not an abundance of happiness-giving resources. Some gold at Damascus, and a few bits of silver that I wouldn’t be able to access for a long time.

Of course, since I was building wonders in my two developed cities, the barbarians decided that now was the perfect time to come calling.

This shot doesn’t do justice to how difficult the situation was. Damascus was being approached by an archer, and had just a single warrior for defence. The city was founded on a hill, but I was worried. Luckily it was almost size 2, and I intended to poprush another warrior as soon as it grew. Meanwhile, I put an archer in Mecca’s queue so it would have more than just a warrior for defence. One thing was clear. My cities might survive the barbs, but there was going to be some pillaging for sure, and there was no way I was going to prevent all of it with the scant military I had on hand. Either I could stop the barbs from pillaging or I could say goodbye to my wonder gamble. I decided to tough it out and let them pillage.

In 1240 I received startling news that the oracle had been built. Dang, that’s early for monarch. I got really nervous about completing Stonehenge about now. Luckily I had just hooked up the stone; and taking a look inside Medina, I discovered that thanks to the stone and accumulated hammers, I was able to poprush it. I did so without hestitation. Damascus had also reached size 2, so I poprushed the warrior the turn before the archer was about to attack.

I had finished Stonehenge, against all odds. It’s extremely unusual for the Oracle to be built before Stonehenge – this was a lucky break. I put Medina’s spillover hammers towards a barracks. The barb archer before Damascus had died attacking the city, and the other barbs had died attacking Mecca, which now had an archer. Of course, the intruders had managed to pillage my sheep, my horses, and about 5 tiles of road. But my cities were safe.

Here’s the aftermath.

After this first wave, there was a brief respite and my workers came out of their hiding places to start repairing the damage. Of course, this was a perfect time for more barbarians to show up. But Medina began pumping out barrack-ready archers as fast as she could build them, and I started using them to guard resources, especially Mecca’s sheep and the all important horse resource, both of which were very much open to attack. This is half the reason I decided to build a barracks in Medina before churning out the archers. Getting a guerilla archer for the sheep was useful, but more importantly I wanted a strength 1 archer to guard the horses, which were on flatland and totally exposed to barbarian attack.

In 950 BC, Alex converted to Hinduism. Since Cathy was already Jewish, and since Judaism was spreading nicely, I wanted Judaism to be the continental religion. I obviously need to get some missionaries over to Greece, but I’m still dealing with a steady trickle of barbarian archers and my first priority is making sure my resources are safe from pillage.

In 825 BC, Confucianism was founded. Dang, that’s early. I might have expected it to come from the oracle, but that had already been built. In 775, I had enough shields and population accumulated to whip in the pyramids. They were only a couple turns from completion, but I didn’t want to risk missing it by a turn. Also Mecca had grown into unhappiness.

For those interested, my research path after Archery was pottery for granaries, then sailing for coastal religion spread, followed by iron working. I had already unconsciously abandoned the idea of a culture victory. Honestly, it’s not hard to make me abandon the idea of a culture victory. I don’t find them the most exciting of games.

In 675, I learned that Imhotep was born in a foreign land, so someone must have forges. I’m guessing whoever got the oracle snagged metal casting. The next turn, chichen itza was built. There’s no way someone built it between 825 and 675, so they must have used Imhotep on it. That means one of the teams out there had metal casting and code of laws. And I hadn’t even researched writing yet. I was only somewhat consoled by the fact that Judaism appeared to be doing quite well.

Even though I had already scouted most of the continent, there were still little patches of terra incognita on the fringes. I immediately sent the scout to scope out Cathy’s and Alex’s territory, and to do a circuit around the coast so the entire continent would be revealed. The archer continued southward and I marked out that hill north of the horses where the scout was popped as an excellent site for founding a city.