Nobles' Club CII: Gilgamesh of Sumeria

The Japanese War started in 800 AD and Tokugawa capitulated with two small cities in 1060, so Summeria ended the era with a dozen decent cities. Uruk added the National Epic; Eridu the Heroic Epic.

Summeria is number one in soldiers/land/population and fine in techs. The opposition is equally divided between Egyptian Buddhism and Persian Hinduism. The home team is running no state, representation, bureaucracy, caste system. Preparations are nearly complete for a Russian War which should be a walk in the park. Domination looks like the best victory condition.

As I've said, I'm not much of a warmonger, but I stuck this one out hoping I'd eventually get better at it. Victoria unvassaled from Caesar after I razed her biggest remaining city (York); I finished her off as quickly as my west coast cavalry could heal up. I had to take Rome before JC would capitulate, and he had cavalry by that point and a huge stack protecting Rome. My ancient-but-upgraded army joined with relatively new cavalry to take it. I lost a lot of cavalry before I realized my CR III riflemen were better attackers.

I think I'd have had an easier time psychologically if I'd build an overpowering cavalry army but I attacked a little sooner because I've usually attacked "too late" in the past. In a similar veid, if I'd managed to build more cuirassiers the first time around, maybe I could have crushed JC without needing a peace treaty and before he got cavalry.

AP victory vote came up the same turn I beat Rome; Cyrus was the only candidate despite my having spread Judaism widely, but if I recall correctly my problem was not switching to the AP religion.

I got lucky, I got Mining from a hut then a couple of golds.
Researched BW, then went on a Vulture rush.
With 6 vulture stack I went to Stalin and kept his capital.
Next was Caesar, then Vicky and Persians. So long for the west part of the map.
While crushing English and Persians, I was building an other stack of 7 Vulture to go after Toku.
He was still owning one city, while other civs were already have three, lazy guy
The west stack was making its way back to my cities while Toku got wiped out, with some losses on my side.
Both stacks and reinforcements joined near Moscow, and headed straight to Egyptians. Bye Hathy.

I must confess that I didn't enjoyed winning like that. It was too easy to rush them when they had only warriors and archers. I lost a couple of units on Japan since they has axemen, and 3 to Egyptians due to chariot.
I may retry it without rushing most of them.

Can't remember certain techpaths because it's been a few days, but it was basically building mids, expand to 7 cities peacefully thanks to toku being slowed down by two barb cities appearing and attempting wonders. Everybody was buddhist at some point but if you have characters like julius in the game, there will be no lovefest. While most of the world was busy fighting i teched to lib and took MT for a cuir-breakout. Started with Julius because he had vassaled Stalin and started to become dangerous, then viccy, cyrus, toku and finally hatty who had grens and cannons at that point but being in culture mode she never got to rifling which made the final push alot easier.

The Russian War commenced in 1270; instantly, Hatshepsut and Victoria declared on Rome - magic. The four-city Russian Empire was incorporated in 1470.

On the next turn Sumeria won Liberalism by one turn, a Great Engineer popped for the Taj Mahal and the golden age. The cultural pressure on two of the former Russian holdings was intense and in 1590 Sumeria invaded Egypt, led by cuirassiers which the opposition cannot match. The western border remains well-defended. This looks like a long war to build land points for a domination victory.

Great early map, managed to settle quite aggressively and box in stalin making him my first target, mixture of vultures + HA for a quick war gaining 3 cities to my empire. Then I marched my army back around and took out Tokugawa not long after adding 5 decent cities. Then I had to tech quite a bit as I was behind JC and most of the other leaders, grabbed feudalism and Hatty peace vassaled to me, not gonna complain lol.

After about 20 turns JC got mad he hadn't declared on anyone yet and decided to fight me, I hate playing vs JC and knew eventually we'd fight so all my border cities towards JC were all hill cities with walls, he had no chance and I lost very few troops in comparison, while I managed to build up an army of Trebs/Maces/Knights and vassaled JC. Rest of the game was easy because Victoria and Pacal had been fighting most of the game, so I waited to get healed and upgraded a few Cuirs and took 2 of Victoria's cities, including her capital which made her cap to me and giving me the win, next map going to try a higher difficulty. Thanks for the game ;d

This era was all war all the time. A one-city Egypt capitulated in 1750. Rome joined the system in 1795 after losing a single city. The English redcoats could not match the Sumerian infantry and their defeat brought the victory. Monarch remains a struggle but it does force sharper strategic decision making.

SIP, I normally do - choosing good city sites is not a great stength of mine but this one looked fine.

Sent warrior off to scout, he popped a Scout from the hut to the W in the Mountains!

Bumped into Stalin in 3760 BC, hmm. I normally play peaceful games but Gilgamesh + Vultures???

Techs: Pottery -> Mining -> BW -> AH -> My -> Med (Going for the UB) -> Masonry (just noticed the stone d'oh!!) -> Priesthood -> Hunting -> Writing

Basically Worker Techs, UB and heading for writing.

When I saw the stone I thought about going for Stonehenge but as a Creative leader you don't really need it. As it turned out I let Stalin build it for me before I captured Moscow

Build orders were: Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Warrior -> Settler -> Barracks -> Worker -> Vulture*

Founded Eridu 2E of the Ivory and started building a Barracks then Vultures.

Really debated where to put the 3rd city, worried about Tokugawa to my East so went 6E of my capital, not sure that was the best place though??

With 11 Vultures (was meant to be 10 but I miscounted lol) - all with City Raider I we started on the march South to Russia. A few bad pieces of luck but we captured Moscow and St. Petesburg and destroyed Novgorod but only have 4 Vultures left now.

Still we have a nice big piece of land to work with now. Traded Mysticism to Cyrus for Archery as Barbs are a bit of a nuisance - once destoyed my copper mine, getting some defensive units up now.

I've stopped at this stage as I contemplate what comes next - build more vultures and head E to Japan perhaps. My natural inclination is to consolidate (I'm more of a builder type) but I'm thinking those Vultures might have another kill or 2 in them (they'll definitely need to take out that Barbarian city to the SE).



Any hints appreciated - I've not looked at any of the spoilers in here.

Very nice work on taking down Stalin. He is a pain to keep happy diplomatically and is fairly aggressive. The sooner he is out of the picture, the better. Excellent job taking care of him.

There is almost never a reason to build stonehenge, even when not creative. I even go so far as to skip mysticism entirely (unless I want to Oracle something with Marble available), preferring to settle food in first circle and getting border pops via libraries. Other means of getting border pops include religion and running artists if you get an early Caste System via Oracling it, making monuments and the henge a dead-end hammer-sink. Henge for failgold though, is great. The first wonder you should think of when you see stone is Pyramids. That's actually quite useful and early Representation civic can be very powerful.

When planning on rushing with an early Unique Unit, I generally prefer not to settle more than two cities at most and all the hammers are invested in the unit. That third city you settled doesn't actually block Toku. It leads to Tundra. If anything, you want him to settle the Tundra and make ice lollies all game while you aggressively settle towards the equator for calendar resources. It is also a bit too far for my tastes. A better blocking city, if you really want to get ambitious and ignore maintenance expenses is somewhere touching the impassable mountains to the south. (I can't tell you an exact square to settle as the resource bubbles are off and I don't remember the food placement). You are creative, so border pops to block him off are easy enough to get.

Archery is unnecessary, unless you want to Horse Archer rush some one. Vultures make them redundant. Generally, archery is not necessary unless the map sticks you with no early metals at all.

If Oracle is on the table, I will push for it and try to get currency or Code of Laws. (In my own game, I picked up Currency.) Pyramids are of course a very good thing to aim for.

So I took your advice and built the Pyramids

I have also taken out Hatty now but am in a war with Julius Caesar. Techwise I'm not in great shape (although the others haven't overtaken me as much as I feared) and my economy is shot - lots of Egyptian pillaging before I killed their Civ.

Lie of the land is below - I'm thinking the sensible thing to do is try and get peace with Julius, consolidate my Empire, rebuild my economy, I'll probably send my Army to take out Japan while I do that. I think my Vultures will just about manage that but my next war needs to be fought with more advanced weapons.

Another possibility is to switch tacks now I have all this land and build, build, build looking towards Space. As I've said that's my normal inclination but I'm quite enjoying this war malarkey

My Capital etc:-


Moscow under siege:-


Elphantine (the last Egyptian Civ at the very bottom of the map):-

You adopted Representation, but you are only running two scientists. You don't have a granary or library in your capital. They need to be whipped ASAP and scientists should be hired to take advantage of Rep. (Whip granary first). Whip libraries and granaries in cities that don't have them, too.

You have far too many archers. Julius Caesar's Unique Unit is the Praetorian. A swordsman that has uber strength. Your UU is the Vulture that is an axeman with bonus against melee units (which Praetorians are). You should be building Vultures and spears for the chariots and Prat combo JC is attacking you with.

Victoria will declare on JC if you give her Machinery. She will throw in Polytheism too. Take it. This will distract JC from you and ruin Viccy and JC's relationship. (You need people to hate each other since everyone is Hindu to not become the target of their collective anger when you decide to put them down one by one)

Eridu is unhappy and working unimproved tiles. Whip the market there and start working hills to get the Vultures out quicker.

It is usually not a good idea to build cottages on plains tiles. Not even grasslands that aren't riverside are too appealing outside of the cap. (Financial leaders tend to be an exception to this). Plains are better served by Workshops and non grassland riverside tiles usually should get farms after you can spread irrigation via the Civil Service tech.

Hold tight against JC, sue for peace when he will talk again and then get yourself out of the economic dog house by stopping unit production in all the cities. (Keep building in one just to have insurance against Toku). Work cottages and scientists to push research. Cottage all the non-hill, non food tiles in cap and trade for, or tech Civil Service and adopt Bureaucracy.

Cyrus will give you 5 gold per turn for wheat and Tokugawa 2 for corn. Take these trades. You should be ok as you have a nice shrine. Get Viccy and JC tied up and once you get the economy going, you can easily crush them all.

Don't bother sending spies to Toku unless it is to cause revolts in his cities for taking them without the culture defence bonus during war. He is not going anywhere fast tech wise, so no point in trying to steal from him or screw up his cities.

Tokugawa decalred on me next turn lol

I fought off a huge attack on Moscow with my newly minted Spearmen as well as my main Vulture battle group.

When Caesar was ready to talk I was surprised that he offered me money for peace


Update:-
Tokugawa is now vassalised, economy is recovering, teching is going OK. Army is healing it's wounds before the revenge on Caesar

Caesar was a tough nut to crack but once I took Rome he was a goner and soon capitulated.

Ended up fighting both Elizabeth and Cyrus - and Liz wouldn't capitulate as she was frightened of Cyrus!! Asked for peace and Cyrus offered one of his cities, Liz capitulated as soon as I was at peace.

Fully intended to wipe out Cyrus as well but realised I was very close to a Domination win, so over the 10 turns of peace rushed out 5 Settlers and got a Domination win 1 turn after it expired.

Victory is mine:-


Most of these Wonders I didn't actually build


Some nice kills:-



And my score:-

A 3 city HA rush by teching Mining/BW/Hunting/AH/Writing/HBR/Archery/Bulb Math/Alpha/Currency. Got 9 HA at 1200BC w/ all cities having barracks/stable. @ 800 BC I have 14 HA and 8 total cities. I might take 1 or 2 more in the next few turns but the rest of the cities look poor. Probably just settle spam good sites while teching the bottom half of tech tree using CS irrigation/WS and win early.