I'm writing this literally hours after finishing Epic 33 (and upon opening the game I note that Civ has been open for all of those hours. At least we know it's stable). If you've read my report for that, you'll know I had, count them, 1 horse and 1 uranium. 7 cities. Randomized resources, Archipeligo, ass end of the world freezing Arctic tundra? Bring it the hell on.

At a guess, iron will not be the resource that's missing. Despite the warning, I'm guessing it's only going to be rare. Also at a guess, the totally abundant one is going to be something rediculous like horses. Or uranium. The one that's missing should be interesting enough to make missing it, well, interesting. I'm going to guess either coal or oil, unless Sirian had Infantry game flashbacks and made it horses. We shall see. It'll be interesting to see how wildly off base I was at the end of all this.

Now. Presuming that histogram/conquest/domination are set to be the only possible victory conditions, we're going to shoot for a histogram win. Why? I haven't done it that way since my Chieftain days. My HoF is lacking.

And I shall now breathe a sigh of relief that I can write pages and pages of report again.

And this is my first time playing the Celts. Should be interesting.

Now, on to the wars.

At any rate, we're a pleasing turquoise color, all the better to blend into the water with. We also got jacked pretty hard in the Land Lottery, too. Sort of like the Gods are sitting around up wherever it is Gods sit around at, and they're like "Well, here's some nice plains, some rolling hills...let's put the Romans there. And here's some nice grasslands, some jungles that in time will have lots of rubber...Aztecs sound good." And so it goes until they're sitting around at the end, and everyone belatedly realizes that wait, we forgot the Celts, and everyone ponders this for a moment, and then one of the lesser Gods, the one everybody picks on from time to time, pipes up and says "Well, there ARE all those polar wastelands just going to waste..." And nobody bothers to correct him by noting that they're called wastelands for a reason, and instead they decide that yes, the polar wastelands sound like a good idea, and why doesn't our young, stupid God just up and be their God, why does he?

And here we are.

Now, being religious Celts, you might expect us to start where the Gods put us. But remember: Our God is a weak and stupid God, the veritable roadkill of Gods. We'll just double-check the starting spot, how about. And yes, it is decided, the Hill by the Lake shall be the starting spot of our new city. And we shall call it Entremont. And we shall disturb the huts of random barbarians, and they shall give us maps. And people shall ponder the idol of our God, and decide that maybe he isn't weak, exactly, maybe he's just a little thin. The Bruce Lee of Gods, maybe. Since sculpting isn't exactly a great art form yet, it's sort of hard to tell.

In any case, the giantly mission-critical thing here is to see if there are resources, and if so, where are they? Bronze working is started.

Hrm. It's the ultimate in fishing villages.

In due course, Alesia is founded, which in an obscure dialect means "Revenge of the Totally Rediculous Fishing Villages."

Some time later...

Well, it's absurdly rich Arctic tundra, anyway. And it's got two luxes on it, which is a lot more than I can say for Epic 33's Persia. Our God may in fact be a rich God.

"The aquatic life in this place is...rich, O God."

1475 BC comes and goes, we acquire Iron Working, and...

Well, looks like I was wrong about that one. I bet this bodes not good for the chances of coal in the world, though.