NC LCXVI Suleiman of the Ottomans

So Shaka turns out to be very close indeed. I really have to have that gold spot, though.

I briefly considered axe rushing him as he didn't seem to have copper, but then a cursory inspection of Ulundi revealed that it was on a hill and that his land didn't really seem worth taking. So I went the ass-kissing route instead.

Ah, this looks like a nice spot!




And on the next turn:



Tee hee! I'm a swine. Shaka is pleased in spite of this cruel trick I played on him, the trusting fool. Of course, he can still DoW me, so perhaps the last laugh will be on me...

Speaking of barbs, there were a lot of them. My axemen developed huge biceps from all the strenuous hacking they had to do. HE was unlocked very early.



Even a bruiser like Shak was not immune to barb intrusion.



I had to literally bludgeon my way through the hordes of barbs to get my settlers out.





At first I assumed that Cathy must have awesome land (I haven't seen it yet) as she was teching like a beast. I did manage to be first to Aesthetics, luckily, because commerce is unspectacular. The capital makes a superb settler pump, however.



Later I discover that Napoloeon (gulp) is the tech leader and is presumably trading with her.

The religious picture was somewhat grim. To the north Monty and my pal Shaka were Buddhist. To the west Cathy and Napoleon went Hindu, placing me in a quandry. Other religions also appeared in my cities. Hammy was Jewish, earning him the hatred of everybody (as if his peaceweight wasn't enough among this bunch), and Zara wasn't much more popular with Confucianism.

I decided to sit on the fence, built the SP, and revolted into Free Religion.

Meanwhile, returning to the barbs:



FOUR barb cities. I'm whipping swords to go and take one or two (or four?).

My empire's doing okay, despite the mediocre land. Hammams are up in most cities for a juicy +2 happy.

Things got worrying for a while when Monty and pleased Shak both went WHEOOHRN,
but Monty attacked Zara and I saw a Zulu stack heading that way too.



I'm not out of the woods yet as Napoleon is gearing up for a fight as well, but I'm pretty sure he's not after me as I acquiesced to his demand for ivory.

Game plan is to struggle along in a slow-teching sort of way, beat up some barbs, and probably have a look at whether Cathy is worth exterminating.

One. We have a whack of land to the west between Catherine, always a good target, with the possibility of horses and wine. Two. If we take out Shaka we would, I suspect, be soon embroiled in a protracted war with Montezuma. In the alternative we can build three military cities to the north and a fine science city to the west. Nothing wrong with your strategic suggestion but it requires a rather rapid decision on the victory condition.

As planned, I got some barb cities.



Alas, Cathy got the best one.



The GS you see popping in the above screenshot was used to bulb Philosophy.

Monty and Zara fought a non-decisive war and made peace. Monty is currently not at war or WHEOOHRN. I might have to get him embroiled in some mischief just for safety's sake, because an idle Monty is a dangerous thing.

Predictably, Hammy came under attack from a triple alliance of Napoleon, Katyushka and Shak. He looked like he was in trouble over there. This was at least partially my fault since I was supplying France with war elephants.

I should have intervened with a peace bribe, but I didn't and inevitably Napoleon capped him. I may live to regret this obvious error. Napoleon is a threat to get rolling, he's already teching impressively and has a large empire.

Razed the last of the barb settlements as it was pretty useless, but it gave me another worker.



There is now an uneasy peace as nobody is warring. It can't last. I have Cathy and Shak at pleased. Monty was pleased for a while but he's slipped to cautious, as is Bonaparte, although he hates Zara.

I lost the Music race to Napoleon. That artist would have been nice for a GA to switch civics and get some GPP.

I'm running Caste to try to bulb my way to Lib since I don't have NE or the Great Library (Napoleon got that too) and I have Bureau running in my cottageless and no-commerce capital! It's getting the HE. Gonna be that kind of a map with all the heavyweights we have around here. I foresee violence in the future.

I wouldnt have rushed cathy or shaka early, for 2 reasons -> I considered axe rushing shaka myself, but decided hilled 40% cities vs a unit pump like him could only slow me down in the long run, and after taking his cities assuming i could get them, id just have more crappy land, and one less tech partner/attack dog. I wouldnt have attacked cathy with anything less than HA's being so far away, and she techs so fast on this map with her religious cities and wonder whoring that it probably wouldnt have gone well - and even if it did, the distance cost for her cities would have been 10+ easy, in every one of them, it would have collasped my economy after 3 cities. Also theres plenty of room to expand to 8-9 cities anyway. I ended up chopping out mids but not using them properly - > im just not capable of farming everything and relying on specialists, i always figure i NEED to get some cottages running to pay for wars later, the rep happy faces were nice though, and i did run specialists for a time.. All in all id like to see some elepults s/s's though, i feel like its possible to get a solid elepult going, i really wanted to go for an engineering rush but i picked up fishing by accident and figured that cannons would be more efficient, could rid the map of shaka, and maybe whip some courthouses... it might cause a loss of the lib race, but thats hardly an issue if you have 15-16 cities and everyone else is sitting at 8.

You have Shaka close, apart from that a fair amount of land so Barbs will be a problem for a while. 8 axes can take out the annoying neighbour and then deal with the Barbs for you .....

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by doing that though, youd give cathy twice as many cities almost certainly... she imperialistic and so are you, by giving up those early settlers to the west to take shaka, you expand to the east, and give her extra cities. Add to that, for the price of 2-3 to 1 ratio of axemen you need to take each of shakas cities in stupid places, youd probably have been better off just pumping out settlers, i did end up getting dow'd by him, so maybe it would have been interesting to worker steal from him or something neat like that. Itd be hard to keep him weak for long enough to matter though.

@nihl that 475ad s/s looks good though, on your way to a very early lib for this map, you'll probably have a guaranteed win, cathy didnt even bother going for lib in my game, but maybe thats because she had paya, she went for democracy, then scientific method, didnt even bother with edu. I wonder how having that early gold affected your early game, surprised shaka didnt dow on you at pleased, this starting spot is by and far the closest to him, and even at pleased it makes a good target for him. I lol'd at the dead city you gifted haha. I really do think i expanded too quickly, i was in a real hurry to get some of those spots to the west so i could cottage spam, but with 7-8 maintance a turn before currency, it put a real hurt on me.

blunderwonder said:

by [rushing Shaka] though, youd give cathy twice as many cities almost certainly... she imperialistic and so are you, by giving up those early settlers to the west to take shaka, you expand to the east, and give her extra cities. Add to that, for the price of 2-3 to 1 ratio of axemen you need to take each of shakas cities in stupid places, youd probably have been better off just pumping out settlers, i did end up getting dow'd by him, so maybe it would have been interesting to worker steal from him or something neat like that. Itd be hard to keep him weak for long enough to matter though.

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Well I worker stole and 8 axes were enough to take him out - and you need troops for Barbarian duty anyway, you're going to have to deal with him eventually so why not do it before he really gets started?


@GGS - Not convinced I've decided anything yet, I can keep building axes and look for more targets, wait for elepults for more military adventures or settle down in all that space and go for culture, space or diplomatic wins?

So the temptation to try something silly and have some fun got the better of me. I decided to set up a janissary draft!

Now, to make this effective you really need 1) a strong bureau cap; 2) a high food city; and 3) some marble. I had none of these, so my janissary draft was going to be several centuries too late to really work, but screw it, it might be good for a chuckle anyway.

Bearing this in mind, I settled for a boring old Lib Nationalism.


Then things got messy:


A classic Shaka move! Checking an autosave from the previous turn, he had just dropped to Cautious and immediately started plotting - for one turn.

I had made the most fundamental of civ mistakes - I took my eye off Shaka for a second.

Here they come:


My warrior did the sensible thing, running away as fast as his faeces-burdened loincloth would allow, so Edirne bacame Zulu on the next turn without a struggle.

Fortuitously, I had just done two things: teched gunpowder, and built the HE, so I was able to field test my janissaries. The results were nothing short of spectacular. They absolutely pwned everything Shaka had, taking no casualties. He marched a stack of a dozen or so up to Istanbul, which was producing approximately one unit per turn, and they all died. Then I went on the offensive.



Meanwhile, my constant monitoring of the AIs revealed that Napoleon was WHEOOHRN. Really must reinstall BUG one of these days. Next turn, though, he asked for 150 gold, so I'm safe for a few turns. A DoW at that point could have been fatal.

I completely deforested the corner of the map to build this:



Supported by a couple of newly invented trebuchets, the Sultan's army liberated Edirne.



This was just in the nick of time, because in the meantime Shaka had executed an unexpectedly devious tactical manoeuvre and snuck a stack in the back door!



I was saved from even greater disaster by recapturing Edirne, as this added to the loss of dozens of units made Shaka finally amenable to parley (he was refusing to talk up until now).

Well, the game is starting to go my way, in a manner of speaking. I whipped my cities to basically nothing though, I managed to keep all the unhappy citizens dead lol, and i still havnt needed to use the culture slider yet, but for 90% of this buildup/war period, most of my cities, except for HE city, have been at size 2-6, globe theatre has payed for itself 100x over now lol... I dont usually go for this cannon thing but that city has been putting out units like mad... it has begun to need 2 turns to grow back sometimes now though, and thats my fault because i whipped some cannons also, probably should have just let it be my draft center.

I finally hit rifling, which i can thank cathy for, she gave me ~1500 gold for lib, which with my GM gold basically payed for rifling, and will stave off strike for awhile, i dow'd on her the turn after and bribed shaka in for some old techs, he suicided his stack, he had no siege though, so it was a pretty big waste of his units , gave me a quick city though. My economy is awful shape now though. Like 80-90 unit costs, + 20-30 unit supply, and a bunch of size 4 cities is no good. I did manage to take quite a bit of gold capturing cities though, and i screwed up when i got banking, forgot to whip a bank in my 1 good commerce city, i will rectify that shortly though, i took pretty much 60% of the wonders this game by taking 1 city, including a 39gpt buddhist shrine, ill whip a bank in there also first chance i get, its likely to be in revolt for most of the game though

You'll also see an s/s in there of perhaps the best thing to happen for me this game... Nappy declared on zara, which is sweet cause nappys my next target, and he has a monty sized stack of cuirs and muskets i saw at the edge of one of cathys cities, and theyve just kept streaming through. cuir's that would wreck my cannons, and musketmen that would also wreck my cannons. Im at rifling so i could probably make it work either way, but i dont actually have the gold to upgrade any real number of rifles because ill need it to avoid strikes, ill just have to draft them. Hopefully i can wrap up most of the rest of the game without infantry, because id have a tough time getting there, also cathy isnt being as kind with the trades as i thought, but with dye + theatres in every city now, UB in some, and plenty of resources + temples and state religion and now notre dame, i should be able to whip/draft like mad again. I have 54 cannons, and only 40ish janissaries, with 5-6 rifles on the way though, im probably going to switch 1/2 of my cities over to rifles or cuirs soon though, or wealth depending. I grabbed sankore, and statue of liberty, so rep + statue, and buddhist temples in every city, is like a free 75 beakers a turn + the actual payout of the specialists. Im certain nappy has a huge stack, he was at war with hammi for most of the game, and after vassaling him, and to declare on zara it must be massive. Im gonna get my army to his border and declare, i figure 2 move muskets and cuirs probably will be in the middle of zaras territory in no time flat so i shouldnt have to worry much about it making it back to me, just have to dow before he can cap zara, which im sure could happen if i wait too long. Ill probably have to take most of nappys city to get him to cap though, because of the vassal.

Im going to wait to bribe shaka, i could bribe him on monty right now, and i may do that instead, those 2 will go at awhile while i take care of the rest of the map. Ill probably be in rep the rest of the game, i have enough happy faces with <10 pop, to not even worry about the -6 im getting from war. I also didnt capture the AP city, so its possible i could win a religous victory if i get lucky, i have like 230 votes, everyone else has less than 50 or so. about 1/2 of my janissaries are drill 2 now, so they barely even get hurt most of the time. It took a solid 15 turns to go from dow to cap though, most of it spent moving and healing, it feels slow... I thought id have to wait longer though for units to arrive at the border, but ive only lost 2-3 cannons, and like 1 janissary, so maybe it wont be as big an issue i as i thought. Have 2 nice stacks, 2 super medics.

Id love to get into SP, even in my own cities the distance cost is awful

just having trouble figuring out how you did it with 8 axes lol, it normally cost me an insane amount to get a city with axes vs cg archers, especially with cultural defense, I suppose an axe rush could work though, you start with bronze and plenty of forest. Still not sure Id even want shakas land, i didnt want to be any closer to monty anyway lol. I wasnt saying that a rush wasnt workable, just that there was so much room to expand, with IMP, it seems like building settlers is just as good, and you could claim better land than shakas. the -1 diplo hit from declaring on him isnt so hot on this map either. Aside from the BC dow on me, he hasnt bothered me much, and actually turned into the one reliable trading partner ive had.

an axe rush on Immortal.

As expected, trying to take out hill capital Shaka looks pretty suicidal.



Made a second worker, chopped all forests. Nine axes plus one more at home to defend against the plentiful barbs.

I feel sorry for those axemen, for I fear that none of them will come back alive.

Maybe if you put 2-3 warriors in front of them, you can lure some of them out... Thats probably more than he figures he needs + with his silly bravery, you can probably double your odds, or maybe just take some of his other cities .. I may try an axe rush also, now im curious too.

/e
just occured to me, if my rush looks like that its going to go bad... Hill promoted archer + fortified in hill city with 40% culture is 115% + 1 first strike, thats 6str vs basically 6str with 1 in 5 free r

This time I managed to get away with a worker steal, which was unexpected as Shaka usually has an archer escorting his worker. He did, then his archer wandered off and I grabbed the worker. Then I also killed a scout and got peace.

With the extra worker I was able to road and chop a little better. I also attacked a little sooner.





Interesting result. I had always sort of felt that worker stealing, although it clearly cripples your victim, also put them into a very defensive mindset, resulting in more archers. Apparently not. I also attacked a couple of turns sooner. Better still would have been to attack before turn 50 which is when the second border pop happens.

Well the last s/s's left off as cathy cappd i believe, i ended up declaring on nappy as soon as i got to his border, i also bribed shaka to dow on monty, because monty was plotting probaby on zara, who was already busy with nappy. Nappy was a pushover lol... i ended up getting 3 cities, and cathy snagged 1 on her own as well, and he capped, never even saw a stack of his, hammi cappd the same turn, it took 5-6 turns to get zaras border, he cap'd after 2 cities, then another 3-4 turns to montys borders, he took awhile, it was like 3-4 cities, but they were pretty spread in weird directions and i had to heal quite a bit. Finally it was time for shaka who was the worse of them all lol, i basically had to exterminate him before he would vassal.

What the s/s's dont show is how my economy went from -110gpt to +110gpt at 0%slider because of SP, which i got from cathy around 2 turns after she cap'd, for steel+rifling combo. I also whipp'd 6 banks out, because i had figured id be at 0% science the rest of the game, boy was wrong With SP, and proper banks, + captured zaras wonder and sankore. all those buddhist temples were putting out +1happy +2 hammers +2 gold and +2 beakers a turn lol pretty snazy. I ended up teching biology before i finished steam because i needed to grow so i could whip more banks. AT some point in nappys territory, i realized the game was over, so i switched everyone from cannons to wealth except for kremlin in my HE, and cannons my GT city. After all that i was getting something like 900gpt at 0%, and 1500beakers at 100%. It was lookin pretty good. Never did have to upgrade to infantry or artillery, both of which i had by the end of the game, Had assembly for awhile, took me a bit to finally get artillery off of cathy though. I didnt lose many units, it got to be annoying though, as I was slowly trudging through territory, and id be taking cities that only had 2-3 defenders in them, vs my stacks it was kind of underwhelming. Finally at the end they did see a real battle, shaka suicided like 10 rifles, 10 cavs, and a bunch of grens onto one of them, lost quite a few but there was 2 or 3 stacks at that point. Crappy score, and a long game lol, was more fun than i thought itd be though towards the end, i meant to s/s my globe city, it was at something like 900 turns of whip/draft anger lol. Monty had a huge stack as well, but i guess he didnt bother to fight me with it, he brought all those cuirs for shaka though, but they just sat there as his 3 catapaults took turns dropping cultural defense by 4% a turn lol. Had shaka been more of a pain, and had nappy not taken his stack after zara, i think my 1695 date would have been alot worse, and it was already pretty slow, but it was a big map to walk around. Heres my final s/s's and save.

Cant see on the stats s/s, but all total, i had 3 GM's, 3 GS's, 1 Great prophet, 1 great artist, and 1 great engineer, 2x 8 turn golden ages, and no NE.







What a weak score for all that work, not that there was much micro after after i finished bureaucracy









Uh oh shaka, back door

Uh oh shaka, front door





Cant believe nappy was such a pushover

also learned that oromo warriors are pretty great uu's.. wouldnt mind using those some time in place of these janissaries, and 2, an military instructor only adds 1 xp if your drafting, and 3 - if an oromo warrior with drill 3 is sitting in an 80% defense city, with cg1, its much better for him to take drill 2 and 3, than add another 20% with cg2 lol, those drill guys were tearin me up for a bit. Last but not least, SP is the best economic civic ever

Settled 1N and expanded toward Shaka. Edirne one away from the three immediate elephants. Bursa WWS of the pig. Ankara EES of the fish. Konya is the science city NE of the copper. Samsun went for health NW of the sheep.

The early techs were AH, hunting, archery, mining, BW with fishing from a hut. The other huts provided some gold. The opening builds were warrior, warrior, worker.

All of the competitors have been met although only the Zulu, Aztecs and Russians have been located. The Ottomans will organize a strong army and hopefully support resource-based expansion with wonder failure cash.

I swore a bloody oath of vengeance on Shaka, and it has been fulfilled. I took a couple of cities and capped him with my janissary-trebuchet stack, with almost no losses.

I decided to finally go Hindu, since the Buddhists clearly weren't going to be my friends. Used the Taj golden age to revolt to OR, spread Hinduism everywhere and build AP buildings for bonus hammers. My diplo position is now relatively secure.

Unfortunately, Napoleon and Cathy are teching away furiously and I'm behind them, although I'm in the lead on the scoreboard. I'm currently beating up Montezuma, who has Grenadiers against my janissaries...took two cities from him.

It's been an ugly game. Not sure if I'll persevere to the bitter end. I'm four turns from rifles and Shaka is teching Military science for me, and I have the production base to pump out units until domination, should I feel motivated to actually bother.

Hang on, bad start? This start is AMAZING! Ivory to the east, a settler is on the way to found a FIVE ivory city, copper 1E of the settler, good land around the capital. I hope Egypt isn't there, I want to call the city Elephantine! The copper should help take care of the barbs and Shaka.

Building Kremlin with stone. Training rifles and grenadiers, steel in three turns. Then I can finish off Monty. I'm number one in production already and I'm not even whipping or drafting at the moment.

Napoleon is doing what he's done all game, and leading the tech race easily. He should get infantry soon and he's been WHEOOHRN for centuries while sitting on this ever increasing army:



A little disturbing, but I've kept him at pleased while he hates Zara. I have no diea why he doesn't attack, he could crush him instantly.

A game like this would be beyond saving on deity, but this is functionally won on Immortal since I can outproduce everybody and crush them all from here.

What the s/s's dont show is how my economy went from -110gpt to +110gpt at 0%slider because of SP, which i got from cathy around 2 turns after she cap'd, for steel+rifling combo. I also whipp'd 6 banks out, because i had figured id be at 0% science the rest of the game, boy was wrong With SP, and proper banks, + captured zaras wonder and sankore. all those buddhist temples were putting out +1happy +2 hammers +2 gold and +2 beakers a turn lol pretty snazy.

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Yeah I love the post war recovery. Score or no score that was a good game and date.