King of the World #7: Saladin

Let's start with the tech situation:



Military Science isn't a big deal, but our lack of Democracy is starting to hurt. We need Emancipation sooner rather than later.

The Diplomacy screen:



We're running out of friends. Pretty much down to the English, Germans, and Mali. And Roosevelt. But he's kind of a nonfactor, even on his nonfactor of a continent.

A look at our military:



Regular, erm, "turnover" on the front lines has kept our forces fairly modern. The Warrior is chillin' in Mecca, and most of those Longbows represent the Ankara buffer.

And how it stacks up against the world:



Not bad, if I do say so, myself. I think that once we pound the Khan enough to win peace, it's time to build up for our grand push through Europe.

Our hemisphere:



And a few relevant close-up maps.

East Asia:



I can't wait to crush Zhou but, sadly, Hattie managed to sneak a second city into southeastern Australia. Ah, well. She's not exactly a factor in world politics anymore.

The Russian front:



We've pretty much crushed Catherine. When war comes against Frederick, though, I worry about those German garbage cities to the north. We'll have to either take them or leave our northern flank exposed.

And, finally, Europe:



It's interesting how England is being carved up. It looks like Parisian culture forced a flip of London, which is always fun.

So, what do you all think? Build up and hit Rome?

Here's the save:

you'll be under a lot of cultural pressure from Berlin, Just look at what its doing to Paris, its actually winning tiles. So Imagine what it's doing to Roman Antium. Caesar is Politically isolated, but I'd still prefer a unification of the eastern and western stacks and A hit on Berlin by the west and the Northern Baltic countries by the eastern stack.

Get Khan to make peace for 10 turns, by taking Samarkand, walk through Frederik's lands to attack the Baltic states. The Western stack can take Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and then look to Caesar. Building a 3rd stack in Ankara, for reinforcement/relief and wipe out Persia with that.

Kudos Neal!! This went much better than i thought. I was worried Cathy was going to put up a real fight! Anyways Freddy is going to be a threat throughout the rest of the game. You pretty much control Asia. Japan is the only country that still has its core left. Focus on Europe. Rebuild and regroup. ARGGG a 110xp GG CALVARY DIED!!! I've never even had a unit near 50xp!!! ARG!!!! Doesn't matter that much though, you'll be getting a lot more GG's soon anyway.

Now about Europe. If you can take out Freddy before he gets rifling. He's lacking two of the most important techs ever. Rifling and Steam Power. Rebuild and quickly go after him. If he can get Assembly Line and his UB the war will be 10x harder. Crush him now!

Have your experienced stack take his core 2 cities and he will be crippled. March around north and he's gone in Europe, i noticed that he has some cities in Africa. What im worried about is his massive amount of vassals. MM will be your 2nd highest priority. You have some of your best cities right next to his land! Cyrus and Hatty are useless along with the french as well. Although you may want to take this chance and take Zhou once and for all.

One more thing, Whats up with St.Petes culture? Shouldn't it be swamped by Roman culture? Why is Cumae acting like its still under pressure. The same goes with the northern German cities. They seem established. Shouldn't they be claiming more land?

The city borders don't get re-established until a few turns later. It's part of the game design, although I'm not sure why.

To say the truth the German army looks to me extremely unimpressive ( lbows in a lot of units, most with muskets..... grens as top defenders .... ). I would strike him as soon as you can have more cannons and some MG.

Just 2 things:
-Why the spy in Cairo? Do you really want to have a GSpy in 28 turns ( 32% now ) ?
-Privateer in Muscat? Me confused

@Stewie 0416. Technically Fred has all the techs he needs for chewing up a stack: steel for cannons to weaken rifles and cav through collateral and miltrad for cuirassiers to kill cannon through flanking. After that muskets and grenadiers are all he needs.

The AI generally doesn't have the sophisticated war-fighting algorithms to use them properly but that's a different issue.

re: Germany vs. Rome- I think you all may be right. Germany is about as weak as it's going to get right now. I just don't want to see those Longbows upgrade to Rifles before my eyes. You know they will. And war with Germany means war on all fronts. Cyrus has been building his army for millenia justg waiting for an opportunity to retake Persepolis. And I suspect that Hattie's army is no slouch, either, despite her low position on the totem pole.

re: Culture- Cultural pressure stops when you control all the cities. Things are coming to a head, now. The next round will probably be war with Caesar, and the round after that will be the War to End All Wars with Germany. Or the other way around.

re: The Spy in Cairo- A Great Spy wouldn't be a bad thing. I've got a Merchant and a Scientist hanging out in India, so that would complete a potential Golden Age Trio. And until then, I think the Espionage points are nice to have.

re: Auitzotl- Yeah, I came this close to reloading, but I figured I'd stick it out. He was really useful. Even against overwhelming odds, his huge withdraw chance made him almost impossible to kill. I guess the emphasis is on "almost."

re: the Privateer- My navy consists of a Caravel and a Galleon. I wanted to build more boats. A couple of Privateers pillaging the New World would be a bad thing?

A couple of privateers would be useful, but only one is close to useless. My point was about you being only making one privateeer..... 2 cities making privateers would allow you to send a pair of privateers faster than relying in that wonderful desert city to make both.

About the GSpy... It was not a accusation, only a request for clearing up that point.

I still think it is time to strike Fred.

Neal said:

A couple of Privateers pillaging the New World would be a bad thing?

Click to expand...

"You've completed the great work '1001 Arabian Nights'!

The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad: Sinbad and the Pirates of the Caribbean"

Man this is an odd map. Hatty in North Korea, is that Ghengis in the former English Islamic holy city in Sweeden? Issy sitting on three separate shrine cities and Louis taking over London via culture.

Crazy.

I think that if you changed every city build to cavalry you would triple the number of cav that you have now in about 10 turns. You have a huge production advantage over Germany. If you use it relentlessly it will be game over very quickly. Use those rifles to secure your border cities while you blitz through europe. Fred's vassals will leave him faster than rats running from a sinking ship. This is a 2 civ game right now (you and Fred), so "be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."

Hmm... Not a bad plan, Huerfanista. Mercilessly build Cavalry and draft Riflemen. Let the economy crash. Reduce the population to nothing. Once Frederick is down for the count, we can rebuild without real opposition.

... I dunno. I don't think I have the cajones to try that. I'm too cautious

Neal said:

Hmm... Not a bad plan, Huerfanista. Mercilessly build Cavalry and draft Riflemen. Let the economy crash. Reduce the population to nothing. Once Frederick is down for the count, we can rebuild without real opposition.

... I dunno. I don't think I have the cajones to try that. I'm too cautious

Click to expand...

I understand why you wouldn't want to try something that risky in the main game, maybe branch off history with an "experimental" side round, giving yourself full liberty to reload if it crashes and burns.

Joshua368 said:

I understand why you wouldn't want to try something that risky in the main game, maybe branch off history with an "experimental" side round, giving yourself full liberty to reload if it crashes and burns.

Click to expand...

How about one of you lurker 'cowboys' try that?

The two elements left in this game are destroying Fred and mopping up. It probably doesn't matter too much which way round you do it. The longer you leave Fred the more powerful he becomes (and his UU and UB come into play). However you also become more powerful (land is power etc etc) and your power will probably increase faster than his.

Well, I would be afraid to try it right now, with Frederick potentially so close to Rifling. My inclination would be to wait for Assembly Line and then immediately attack. Usually, your Infantry are up against Riflemen for quite a while. In the war, you should focus on Frederick. Take his core quickly (you're really close to Berlin), and his Vassals will start abandoning him.

In this round, we exiled the Romans to Norway. Caesar salad with iceberg lettuce, indeed.

I started out by trading Divine Right and Nationalism to Montezuma in exchange for Military Science and 60 gold. Something's wrong when Monty still has something to offer in the 17th century!

I sent my Pacific Cavalry regiments northwest to attack Mongolia's new capital:





I probably should have razed it, but it'll come in handy later. Maybe.

For the moment, it was time to the Khan run off and play:



Not much of a severance package, but my Eastern army was pretty much done for. Heck, even my other super-Great-General-Cavalry-number-one-okay (My mega-medic) fell in the battle for Turfan.

Besides, I had bigger fish to fry:



You can see the terror in his face. Yeah, thanks for playing, Julie.

Ravenna was quickly overwhelmed:





Siege? We don't need no stinkin' siege! Especially when dealing with a crap garrison like that.

Up north, the remnants of the Russian army took Cumae:



In Scandinavia, meanwhile, taking Nottingham from Genghis was starting to look like a bad investment:



Eesh. So I did what any eminent statesman would do: I decided that it wasn't my problem:



So, in a matter of a couple of turns, that city went from Mongolian to Arabian to English to (after Julie swooped in) Roman. The people of Nottingham must be sick and tired of politics.

By the time my troops reached Antium, I still didn't have any siege. But who needs Cannons when you have redheads?





Now that's a city worth taking!

After that, it was on to the real prize: Rome. Yeah, for this one, I needed to bring some big guns to the party:





Soon, I will be pope! Then let all others tremble before me and despair! And Rome is looking like an amazing military depot with all those Generals.

Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and conquest. With all my troops at the front, I'd left my Russian cities a little underdefended. I had one Rifleman defending St. Petersburg, and that apparently wasn't enough:



It was easily retaken, but the theater and Madrassa were put to the torch.

In 1690, I made a trade with everyone's favorite techmonger:



That kind of favored the Mali, but not too badly.

I also finished off Rome's last "real" city:





And let Caesar give me his last noncapital outpost:



What is his last redoubt? Where is his new palace? You guessed it- Nottingham.

Communism gave me a couple of great benefits. State Property saved me about 170 gold per turn, which is nothing to sneeze at. And the Great Spy, when combined with the Scientist and Engineer chilling out in India, allowed me to enter into a third Golden Age:



So here's a look at southern Europe:



Yeah, leaving Athens to France was apparently a bad idea. But, as with most mistakes, it can be rectified. This Golden Age is all about getting Infantry and maybe Artillery to lead up to war with Germany. Now, I don't know if this will be a final war of annihilation, but the way I see it, we have five major objectives:

1) Retake Athens. Ravenna and the Italian cities cannot thrive under French pressure.

2) Take Zhou. Yeah, Hattie has a city down in Australia, and she's not a real factor in world politics, but with Zhou taken, she can be effectively ignored forever. And her culture is cramping China's style.

3 and 4) Take Hamburg and Berlin. Those are the German core. Taking those doesn't quite cripple Frederick, but it would certainly knock him down a few pegs.

5) Take Paris. Once again, Paris is invaluable in its own right (especially with all the Wonders Louis builds there). Additionally, Parisian culture is a juggernaut that can only be countered with military force.

In addition, though, we will need to withstand assaults on the Russian territories by the German fringe and on Persepolis from the Persian remnant, in addition to possible assaults out of Zhou and Mali. So I'm thinking a few Machine Guns might not be a bad investment.

Here's a big-picture look at the hemisphere:



And the power graph:



Wow. Monty's military is... impressive. Of course, how much of that is his 1,482 Catapults and 2,836 Axemen, I have no idea. But we are a solid number two.

Science:



I need to see what Liz wants for Democracy. My peeps are starting to complain about Emancipation.

Diplomacy:



Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I'll just eat worms. Or grind everybody into dust beneath my jackbooted heel.

And, finally, the in-game representation of said heel:



I'm a little spread out. My main advantage is in production. I've got a bunch of Cannons in Antium, along with some Cavalry and Riflemen. Railroads are also starting to spring up, so distance is no longer the obstacle it used to be. So... any advice?

I'm thinking I'll spend the Golden Age drafting and building Infantry, and later upgrading Cannons to Artillery. Athens is relatively isolated, so that seems to be our first viable target. This is the climax of the game (unless we end up having to wrestle Monty into submission), so any suggestions would be appreciated.

The save:

Wow, this is good! My advice would be to get rid of Louis XIV first and make the passage of units from Arabia into Europe more easily, and then strike Frederick's city of Berlin with those units from the Paris conquest. You may also want to consider building a few ships if possible and inserting them near the edge of Europe to take London.

Are you still gunning for Domination? How close will your new holdings get you? I'm sure its still quite a ways, though. Also, you're going to have to wipe out Spain as well as I'm sure Issy's shrine cities are all well cultured and will pinch Rome's tiles.

Germany has 4 vassals so his power is a bit puffed up.

fight a defensive war in Africa and Ukraine. Main thrust to go through Turkey. Try and shrink Germany fast to knock off his vassals and take seperate peace as needed.

Priority #3 should be #1.