Civ 5: Conquering Caesar (Part 2)

The ongoing plan now is to continue my conquering ways, growing my empire as much as possible while trying to manage my happiness which, of course, goes down with every conquered city. The plan is to only keep cities that have resources or happiness infrastructure and back-fill the gaps as happiness allows.

So as soon as my mounted army arrives on the English border, I declare war on Elizabeth in 675 BC.

Three Horsemen are enough to immediately capture Hastings. Then as my army moves on to Nottingham, Catherine also declares war on Elizabeth. She's also attacking Nottingham, and helps me out by eventually bringing it down into the red allowing me to capture it the following turn.

In the process I see Catherine's forces are fairly insignificant and the Russian cities must be close by, so if I can win this war with Elizabeth quickly, I'll be targeting Catherine next.

There's no resistance as my forces take York except for Elizabeth begging for peace. As the Horsemen advance on London, I finally hook up my iron in Neapolis and start on building Roman Legions.

I capture Elizabeth's final city, London, in 425 BC (10 turns of war); and as I prepare for the attack against Catherine, I begin researching towards Chivalry so that I can eventually upgrade my elite Horsemen.

I've also spent gold to form an alliance with Copenhagen for its fur luxury and iron resource; and have started constructing a lot of buildings in my cities, particularly the happiness buildings, Circuses and Colosseums.

I've found the Russian civilization is to the south-east of the old English civilization. With my happiness finally back to positive levels, in 300 BC I declare war on Catherine and my Horsemen ride in to immediately capture the Russian city of Rostov.

My horsemen then try to advance on to Novgorod just east of Rostov but across a mountain range. Only a single difficult pass traverses the range, and some careful manoeuvering is required to limit casualties to a single Horsemen. But the hit and run capabilities of the Horsemen eventually whittle away all of Catherine's Spearmen, and so Novgorod falls.

Both the Genoa and Copenhagen alliances run out at the same time and I only have the gold to renew the alliance with Copenhagen. Fortunately though, the size of my empire (which is all connected by roads into my trade network) means I'm bringing in a sizable sum each turn and it's not long before I can rebuy my alliance with Genoa.

I've obtained just 1 social policy in the Honor tree, and as the costs for social policies escalate with each city captured, I look at an alternative and so start Rome building the Oracle for its free social policy.

Meanwhile the Horsemen capture the northernmost Russian city of Yekaterinburg. I lose a Horseman while scouting out the rest of the Russian civilization, but the rest of the Horsemen take Moscow, the Russian capital, with no more resistance.

The 2 Legions I've built with my initial iron finally reach the front, giving my army a boost it didn't really need. The army consists of 3 Horsemen, 2 Legions and a Chariot Archer, and they advance on St Petersburg, clearing out a solitary defending Spearman.

It's not all good as even as I capture and raze St Petersburg, the Oracle is built in a faraway land, beating me to it by 3 turns. I'm also down to -12 happiness and desperately looking around for extra sources of happiness, hooking up and trading for luxuries as soon as I'm able.

Yaroslavl' is finally captured in 175 AD, eliminating Catherine after a 19 turn war.

Peace again, and since I don't even know where Harun al-Rashid or the recently met Washington of America and Genghis Khan of the Mongols are located, I use up one of the Great Generals that was produced during the war to trigger an 8 turn Golden Age. It's primary benefit is to push along the production of those happiness buildings and develop my new under-developed conquests.

With all the infrastructure already completed in Rome, I start building the Chichen Itza there (+50% Golden Age length), though I'm uncertain how many Golden Ages I can reasonably expect considering my happiness problems. Still, it's the best of the wonders still available.

Just as my Golden Age ends, I get the next social policy in the Honor tree, Military Caste, which reduces unhappiness in garrisoned cities. To help the happiness situation, my army disperses amongst the conquered cities.

And then an exploring Horseman finds the Arabian city of Damascus. Spotting that it has a low city strength, and with Chivalry having just been researched, I feel confident that I can quickly conquer Arabia. However I need to reassemble and rebuild my army, upgrade Horsemen to Knights and move them past the isthmus occupied by Monaco who is already unhappy with me.

But another vulnerable civilization; how can I resist? A Roman isn't cut out for the life of a farmer - there will be war again soon.

Continued in Part 3