Hello everyone, this is a series that emphasizes the (somewhat controversial) use of the Apostolic Palace as either the player's tool of destruction, or victory. This series is intended to highlight the strategic choices that go into diplomacy, as well as religious manipulation to strengthen one's position (or win!). The default difficulty in the series, for now:

- Emperor, Epic Speed, Ancient Era
- Standard Size Shuffle Map: Random Climate, Random Sea Level

As host of the series, I won't be putting anything in spoilers. I will place the scenario file in the first post of these threads. You are welcome to shadow, I only ask that you place shadow games in spoilers if you wish to share them with fellow forumers. Additionally, you are welcome to play these games out in any manner that suits you - attempting to show up my AP skills, show other victory conditions are more/less challenging given the map, or just because you haven't had a domination win in a while!

Our leader:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/shaka0000.jpg

Back in my poll prior to APG II, Washington won, with a tie for second place between Justinian and Shaka. In that poll I actually voted for Washington. To pick between these two remaining leaders for APG III (didn't feel like a new poll), I decided to do a tiebreaker - SHAKA! I picked him because for the purposes of an AP game he's slightly harder (though a monster regardless), and because Shaka is usually a one-trick dude. Don't worry, there is likely to be plenty of war (though it does depend).

The UU has mixed opinions (I like it but using it might be hard - we'll see), the UB is one of the better ones in the game.

Our start:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/Start0000.jpg

Fairly standard. As we don't start with fishing I will probably save that for another city. Settling in place seems ok - there's even a good chance at metal here.

I don't think in 2 games so far I've seen a single shadow game. In theory people check these out and hopefully learn from them, so I'll still post them. I'll put the autosave up for those interested, if you want to use different settings (I disabled random events and huts) then change it yourself :p. I'm not the burger king or charlie or something. If you do shadow just post it in spoilers...whether or not you go with AP in shadow games makes no difference to me ;).

183292

Shaka's not that hard for an AP win. You simply vassal several civilizations with the AP religion and make them vote for you. That would be the Shaka way to win an AP victory :D

I'll possibly shadow this one, though I'll play Shaka like Shaka... which means WAR!!!

Shadow, 4000 BC - 1275 AD (!!!)



[img=http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9440/shaka1ve0.th.jpg] (http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shaka1ve0.jpg)

Well, at least the liberalism race is in the pocket. I took Nationalism: I have marble, the other continent is fighting so I might as well try a run at the Taj Mahal. I'll take that 15-turn golden age, thank you very much.

I did not build the MoM, though, I have Gilgamesh to thank for that. Thank you for building wonders while you're at war, idiot. :D

Declared on Gilgamesh in 220 AD, took 6 cities from him. I needed the happiness resources. Unless you manage to pull off a crazy REX and beat Gilgamesh to the gems and calendar resources, you get no happy resources. I went for early Monarchy and a religion to try to keep the happy cap up a bit.

This continent has Cyrus to the far north and Gilgamesh in between. Since Cyrus won't attack at pleased, I converted to Taoism when he did. Gil has voluntary vassaled to him after getting destroyed by the Zulu armies. (Though 1 turn after the war, so I haven't been fighting with Cyrus... yet ;) ) The spoils of Gil's war also yielded me this nice unit...

[img=http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8563/shaka2qb0.th.jpg] (http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shaka2qb0.jpg)

I haven't met the other continent yet, but Great Generals have been spawning over there like crazy so it sure as hell isn't peaceful. Religion is spread fairly evenly between Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Oddly enough, the number one religion is Confucianism. Which I founded but never spread. :rolleyes:

Bumped for you so you don't forget :p

EDIT: Bah. Epic speed... Maybe I'll shadow anyway though it'll take me 10~ hours ;)
Either way I'm following closely..
I agree with Paulus, winning by "diplomation" would be appropriate for Shaka. In place, IMO, worker, tech Mining -> BW or AH.

Yeah I apologize for the delay. Round 1 coming tonight or tomorrow. I DID forget about it, but those AP threads that popped up reminded me, then I put links in my sig, so now it'll be hard to ;).

Which in turn reminds me that I still need to give that game a proper ending. :D

Spoiler info regarding my shadow game, until +/- 1720 AD:

Letting Gilgamesh vassal himself to Cyrus ranks as one of the biggest strategical blunders I have ever made in a game. Thanks to this, I got bogged down in an rifle/cannon war with Cyrus (and a Gilgamesh who's not quite so dead as I hoped) because I needed the extra land to compete with the other continent, where Hannibal is slowly starting to run away with things despite being involved in several wars.

The wars on the other continent were mostly the doing of Ragnar, although Hannibal joined in against both Gandhi and Victoria. Gandhi is the usual wimp and vassaled to Hannibal, Victoria is still holding out (redcoats ftw!) but I fear she won't stand long against him either.

Letting Gil vassal himself put back victory a hundred years. If I catch Hannibal before he heads to space, that is.

Round I - A square peg with a Round Hole!

Shaka's answer? Sharpen the peg! Let's begin.

4000 Settle in place. 2 food an coastal isn't worth crying over and I don't see anything else to deal with. Opening techs are BW and mysticism. We are starting with a warrior here to help exploration.
3900 There is marble nearby. Marble-tipped spears? Oh my.
3575 Religions are going late. Hindu went in 3625, and Buddhism hasn't yet...
3475 I meet Cyrus. Kewl - this guy <3's defensive pacts and isn't overtly aggressive. Even though he should be.
3425 I meet Gilgamesh and he's pretty close:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/3425gilgaclose0000.jpg

Not an ideal rush target either :(. That's ok. I'll try to wall him off.
3350 I lost my scout to a barbarian panther attacking me in the jungle from off the screen. Barb animals are my least favorite thing in this game, narrowly beating out random events. Honestly, I feel they are unrealistic AND have no place in it.
3200 I still have the warrior I built hugging the other coastline, and I now have a worker. I'm building a 2nd...I intend to chop out SH asap.
3100 Revolt to slavery. Oh yeah, we have copper! SH committal weakens the feasibility of an early rush. The fact that the only AI near me is Gilgamesh ends any notions of it, especially because I can see that I am not alone in having copper :(.
3050 I lose my warrior to a lion. 1000 men with clubs get killed by lions. The lions dug a hole (in the hill no less) and covered it. The warriors fell in because the lions made it only cave in when the exact weight of 1000 warriors or more passed over it. They then consumed the warriors as they climbed out, I guess (animals should have about .1 str, imo).
3000 I whipped out my 2nd worker (no sense working unimproved tiles), 8 turns on mysticism so I'll put a chop or two into some warriors and a settler.
2850 Make that an impi, I guess :rolleyes:
2800 Or not. I have mysticism, so going SH. Next tech is AH because I have cows.
2450 I have AH so going wheel/pottery/writing next
2425 I have SH - Yay for early prophet points and easier expansion.
2200 My settler is out - I'm going to block a little bit but nothing spectacular - despite gilga's proximity the way the land is should make 8-10 peaceful cities far from impossible, and I can work the shaka builder angle for a bit before I start smelling blood. Note: Nobody on my continent has religion!
2100 I found my 2nd city:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/21002ndcity0000.jpg

Floodplains = commerce but they'll let me work a few hills too. Should help.
2025 I see gilgamesh beat me to the copper east of my 2nd city. I will place a city over there next to wall off the southern area for myself, first the axes fogbust however!
1775 I have pottery so I'm going writing
1425 I put my 3rd city where I said I would - plains hill south of Gilgamesh. This will seal him from going further south once the border pops (nice with SH here).
1300 I have writing. I will now pick up the pre-reqs for Theology, then try to get confuc (allowing me to manipulate my close friends here).
1100 City #4 is put closer to Ulundi - The deer/fish site. I consider this to be my poor man's CE GP farm, after I get my prophet, that is ;).
700 City #5 Settled again near gilgamesh - it has access to horse and a lot of riverside, so will probably function mostly towards commerce although it's true purpose is blocking for now.
650 Oracle is built. Had I known it would go THIS late I'd have oracled theology directly, but that's pretty chancy :(.
575 I have my prophet but not the techs yet. Time to start running scientists.
260 Yay! I have a huge lead on the AP now:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/260bctheo0000.jpg

I'm also taking a shot at CoL, hoping to get that or Taoism. Point here being to see which spreads to our neighbors and then build the AP in the other.

125 I trade gilga deer for gems. :) cap is important as my side threads have indicated, and I'm delaying monarchy more than I would due to the religion constraints of the AP. This trade will alleviate that a little bit (religion helps with the :) cap directly too thankfully).
95 Man, using 5 cover axes I barely cut down a hill barb city at the NW of my empire. No wonder gilgamesh hadn't taken it :(. It's coastal - shares corn with the horse city and has pigs of its own. I keep it because if I don't I'd lose the site to sumeria most likely also. Gold to deficit research CoL!
35 BC - Cyrus is christian now.
20 I get to CoL first! This is a double-barreled awesome. Religious control and courthouses - looking very good now! Except...it instant spreads to gilgamesh. I have some choices here, but basically I need to either quickly convert one of them to a universal religion, or gear for war.
205 Cyrus goes confucian...ok...so do I!!!
220 CoL to Cyrus for math/archery.
235 Revolt to HR

I stop this segment in 250 AD.

I have 6 cities, and room for about 4 more useful ones. More importantly, I've cleared some important AP hurdles - namely getting 2 religions, and building the AP in a religion nobody is running. Techwise I'm a bit slow, kind of the nature of doing this in a dedicated fashion. After currency/bureaucracy and cities growing it will shoot up quite a bit - probably have about 150 BPT by 800 AD. Not a world record but it will get me to optics and maybe help me win this.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/250adsouth0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/250adnorth0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/250ADTech0000.jpg

184347

Bump!

:D ;) :D

I lost all my saves a long time ago. Indeed, this one seems to be posted however.

This is the next game I play/finish/post. Probably by tonight ;). Now, if I can just remember what I was doing! Actually it's pretty easy to see - they're all Confucian and I have Christianity. More coming...

Yay!


(Thanks rolo)

Holy thread necromancy Rolo!

This was actually quite a fun game to play... though I played it Shaka-style rather than the AP approach.

Paulus, ppl should not keep links in their sigs to games they do not plan to finish with the tag "ongoing"... you know, someone may even think they are really still active and bump them ;)

235 - This was a long time ago! Man, how I sucked :p. Onward!
325 - I revolt to caste. It's time to work on tech.
625 - FINALLY get Civil Service and revolt to bur. I also trade CS to Cyrus for alpha, IW, and HBR
685 - I revolt to Christianity to complete:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/685AP0000.jpg

715 - Theology to Cyrus for construction and some gold
745 - Back to confucianism
805 - Theology to gilga for currency, civil service and 180 gold for feudalism (I'm going to run vassalage since Cyrus likes it)
930 - Alphabet (!) and some gold to gilgamesh for calendar. Where are the other ais?! I start banking small amounts of gold so that I can gift it for OB.
1040 - I've spread most of both confucianism and christianity to my island. Four AIs remain, meaning I'll be needing 4 caravels. The first missionary will of course go to someone who doesn't whore religions. The last 3 will hit simultaneously. Both Cyrus and Gilga are friendly, as I am in their religion (confuc.) and favorite civic (vassalage/HR)
1060 - Optics! Time to meet n greet after stuffing caravels full o missionary.
1080 - Crappy empire but set for victory!:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1080cyrus0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1080gilga0000.jpg
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1080me0000.jpg

1250 - Caravels meet vicky and nab OB. She's capitulated to hannibal. A pleased Gandhi is his voluntary vassal too! I buy vicky's map since she's small and backwards. Ragnar's the only guy left.
1275 - Meet the AP, vicky:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1275vickyc0000.jpg

1285 - Vikings OB
1330 - Missionaries failed to spread to rag and hannibal, forcing me to go another round. Gandhi is last because I will need 3 for him probably and he will spam them ASAP once he gets it in one city. I don't want this.
1350 - AGAIN, in BOTH cities the missionary fails. This is ridiculous, it's 1 religion in 1 city and 2 in the other. Vicky is starting to spread the AP too, meaning I have to be careful to ensure enough votes.
1400 - Vikings and carthage both have it now.
1505 - Vicky spreading was kind of bad luck. Failing 3 straight spreads to my friendly allies to get AP power up? REALLY bad luck. Timing is important with this - if other AIs spread I will lose because of travel time/bad spread luck :(.
1615 - Another failed spread to a 1 religion city :(. 8 times in 100 years.
1660 - Winning missionary fails to spread in gandhi's land of course.
1712 - BOMBARD BOMBAY WITH MISSIONARIES:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1712missionaries0000.jpg

First one succeeds :mad:.
And FINALLY:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/APG%20Shaka/1736AP0000.jpg

Unless there is further interest expressed, it's likely this 3rd installment of the AP Gauntlet will close the series. The general idea in all 3 games was similar - build the AP in a unique religion and manipulate diplomacy to win.

Of course, there's always the chance I'll play a walkthrough with one final scenario occurring - the AI beating us to the AP ;).

Thanks for reviving this thread, I have always shunned the AP since I never bothered to understand how it worked. Maybe you could do a Noble's Club geared toward an AP victory.

It'd be hard. To force the AP, just oracle/bulb/tech theo early/first, and try to get the AP in a religion no AI has. Then - never run that religion after building the AP, just run stuff that makes people like you. This will work at most difficulties, but on occasion bad luck will hit and you'll have to go to war. Keep in mind that's not a TERRIBLE thing as you'll have access to religion and a xp civic.

Really the sticky part is diplo - not the AP itself.

I could probably do a better job if I played from the beginning. When I started this game months ago I wasn't nearly as strong as a player.

Congrats TMIT, yes you considerably improved your game during the last couple of months/hundreds of games ;). So are you up to a no-cheese AP win = not a coward pope of a minority religion / do not change state religion after completing the AP?

Congrats TMIT, yes you considerably improved your game during the last couple of months/hundreds of games ;). So are you up to a no-cheese AP win = not a coward pope of a minority religion / do not change state religion after completing the AP?

(thoughts to self: 100's? Maybe it's true after playing 16 for Hof last weekend plus the Strat + Tips games :rolleyes:)

Heh..."non-cheese" AP takes one of two things: massive diplo luck or vassals :devil:.

The latter vastly resembles my typical lonely hearts club game and even a lot of the other series - except I usually use the UN because it takes less effort in that scenario (less vote % needed, all the warring means someone is probably close to it, etc etc.). This is even how I got my first non-cheese-AP win and is probably my top victory condition in frequency.

A mass vassal push where they're forced into FR or just whatever state religion I do have (assuming I don't get the AP) would work, but if the AP is in MY religion, it's just going to be obnoxious. Spread religion everywhere, and vassals start voting for themselves and crap like that. Of course you could still do it but you might as well just trip domination with the effort required :rolleyes: - not much to learn from that except standard play for most of the game!

Am I up for it? On emperor certainly (I was very iffy on emperor during this series). I'm terribly erratic on immortal and hardly in a position to "show others how its done" on that difficulty just yet!

I think the AP itself has great potential to shape diplo "luck" (open borders, stop trading, declare war on heathens, stop war, assign cities) - I still haven't seen a game demonstrating all of this nicely, working through to the final goal of a diplo win. Of course this requires to be in control of the AP (which should be built by yourself) - so this is where it gets tricky to choose the right religion (which you should not change afterwards) or it might require special effort to prepare the religious situation in the game with Missionaries and espionage to accomplish success / avoid disaster. Emperor would be fine.

By diplo luck I was referring to early spreads and wars, as well as what civs are in the game. You need a whopping 75% vote for AP, and if you build it in everyone's religion you need to overcome somebody voting for for himself. This means unless there's a large degree of civ size imbalance, you need to get just about the ENTIRE WORLD other than your opponent to vote for you. Can this be done? Certainly, in some games. In others, there will be too much accumulation of worst enemies, like/dislike, or swapping into FR to make this fun.

Sure, I could probably do it on a map like this one or APG II, where I could just use my continent to routinely DoW the others in succession, until they're all vassals. On a map like izzy's in APG I the voting would be extremely erratic and difficult to control without just basic domination ability (kind of like how it turned out even with the "cheese approach". Which reminds me of the "hibernating AP", which to my knowledge remains a problem even now.

So it can be done, but it's a bit chance and takes a LOT more work than I'm willing to put forth for what I feel isn't an optimal use of the AP or optimal strategy in general - I'll leave it to someone else if they want a full on majority religion AP force game. I'd rather build units ;).