Dr kossin #23

Close borders till you can get that land, he won't DOW you with saladin on his back, and by the time he does you can have your army ready, already catered to whatever units he has. As a bonus you'll avoid the offensive war weariness penalty while you clean his clock!
 
Looks like a very strong position now, lots of available land and a decent tech situation. One thing I'm realising is that the powerful pre-1AD techrates I see people get on deity are partly down to the speed that the AI techs - a lot of available trades very early. Pre-chopping is something I should use more often too, 300BC Great Library is very effective, earlier that wonder comes the better it is I think. Cavalry war on wang looks like the best option, he hates saladin too so should be solid diplo wise.
Strong beaker showing pre-AD on Deity are indeed due to the AI being much more helpful when comparing to say, Monarch~Immortal. On the lower levels however, having lower maintenance means you can do much better, providing the map allows it of course. Having a long river and a Financial leader also helps.


Yes, this term is pure genius indeed :mischief: :rolleyes:

To close borders or get a thorn city in your backside is a good question... AFAIK you will still have foreign TRs through him even with closed borders so maybe it is indeed worth it. At least the Horse spot is 100% safe.

If you get exclusive on all that backyard land, you're in for smooth sailing for this game unless something really drastic happens. Though, considering it's Deity, drastic things happen on a regular basis.
It'd be pretty funny to replace the "cow glitch" with "obsolete start" :lol:
Closing borders with WK will lose me a few commerce from his cities but trade can cross closed borders (not warring borders however).

Close borders till you can get that land, he won't DOW you with saladin on his back, and by the time he does you can have your army ready, already catered to whatever units he has. As a bonus you'll avoid the offensive war weariness penalty while you clean his clock!

I fully expect Saladin to re-declare war, or at the very least go into war mode once the peace treaty expires. I might have to decline helping into wars a few times but I should be safe for a while for the moment.

~~~

Looking at the save again, I think Wang will get the AP. This is good as I have Judaism in almost every city so i can get the hammer boost easily for my mostly commerce cities thus far. The one worrisome thing however is the possibility for a declare war on the infidels should Saladin not have Judaism in any of his cities.

Regardless, I'll spread Hinduism around a bit. Organized Religion would be nice with Forges - it'll be up for trade once The Colossus is built. Otherwise, Pacifism is an interesting option for Nidaros.

Other than that, cities just need some time to develop themselves. A few more workers for chain irrigation and possibly more cities to the east won't hurt.
 
>>Other than that, cities just need some time to develop themselves
ahh work the proper tiles in the wine city.

Close the borders, one captured city is over 100-120 gold, so the commerce lost doesn't matter that much.
 
>>Other than that, cities just need some time to develop themselves
ahh work the proper tiles in the wine city.

Close the borders, one captured city is over 100-120 gold, so the commerce lost doesn't matter that much.
Yep, I did that on the first turn.

Played until turn 150 - 800AD, I'll post a report after dinner.
 
Round 3

I started the round by making a few tiles adjustments and closing borders with Wang Kon to prevent him from capturing the barb city.
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As I thought, he wound up building the AP.
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Saladin also had a city with the religion. Good good.



Unfortunately for me, I had just recently re-opened borders with Augustus and couldn't close them back when he sent a stack through my borders. I lost the first barb city as a result.
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To thank him however, I pillage the wheat and the road that was in his BFC.

As Civil Service was almost done, I fired up a Golden Age to allow some anarchy-free civic switches.
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Bureaucracy+Pacifism for the duration of the Golden Age and then Organized Religion after the Golden Age.

As techs lost their monopoly, I was pretty much forced to trade them or get nothing in return.
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The second barb city however, was mine. In the process, I also unlocked the Heroic Epic.
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Razed... on top of a wheat?


The next Great Scientist would finish Education for me.
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WK was willing to re-open borders somewhere down the line so I took it. Voting for him as AP resident might have had something to do with it though.
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More trades...
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Saladin got to the heathen once more... I had to kindly refuse his offer to join him.
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He was doing pretty well by himself regardless.

Until the AP stopped the war...



I was a bit surprised Taj Mahal went in 800AD. Obviously, taking the religion from Philosophy doesn't delay Deity AIs for too long...
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A few more trades before ending the round...
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Which brings us to 800AD. A round of whipping infrastructure and beelining Liberalism mostly. I delayed settling the eastern land a bit but settlers are being built for that purpose now.
I'm a bit uncertain how to settle the horses?
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Techs
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Diplo
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Demographics. Someone out there is doing pretty darned well in GNP.
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There seems to be some land directly east of us. Is it the other continent or simply a small island?
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As for Liberalism payoff, I'm not sure what I can get. If it was obvious our continent was well ahead (it isn't at all, Sankore was built in 300s overseas) I could delay it some more for something nicer than Nationalism or Printing Press. Replaceable Parts would certainly be nice but I fear it's a bit too far off. (PP, Guilds, Banking).
I can part bulb PP next turn and possibly get Guilds in a trade after that. Banking doesn't cost too much either so I'd estimate at least 5 turns to pull that one off.
An alternative is Chemistry or Astronomy.
It's pretty risky in any case =\

Next round will probably focus on getting a military edge and then spamming units to acquire some developed land. The whole continent I'm sitting on has some pretty nice land in general.
 
Round 4

I went ahead and played some more. As predicted, this was a military buildup and then some.

I decided to immediately finish Liberalism. The risk of losing it to someone overseas was pretty great and while the immediate payoff wasn't fantastic, it's better than nothing.

I hit enter and I get further confirmation that this was a good move, we're the most backwards!
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Anyway, I chose Printing Press as a freebie to increase research.
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It also happens to be a great trading chip.
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I had a Caravel go overseas to meet the competition. No doubt trade opportunities would be there.
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Augustus is a good trader and I use that to my advantage.
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I beelined Economics from there for the Great Merchant to make a trade mission.
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Wang Kon was starting to be a cultural pain to my northern cities. I planned a Rifles/Canons war to get rid of him ASAP. This called for heavy trading.
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This one allowed for intercontinental trade routes which helps the economy quite a bit, especially in a time of war.



Heroic Epic went in Tonsberg and Globe Theater in Roskilde. Time to start drafting and whipping.
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Shaka usually has his hands busy. He duked it out with Pacal for a while and his next target was Augustus.
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This was my last trade of the round. I missed out on another one later as I waited 1 turn too much and the opportunity was gone.
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This was my initial SoD. I might have gone for more units but Saladin had been killing his units before an AP forced peace.
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Bombard
Suicide a few canons
Mop up with Rifles

Result:
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No shrine??? I need to generate a prophet somehow.



He's gone by 1440AD.



Cost of the war: 12 canons, 6 rifles. Man, was it worth it.
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You can see most of my rifles were drafted (currently 41, built 14...)


So where does that leave me technologically? Not too bad nut not great.
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Diplomacy
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I think I'll disrupt whatever Pacal's doing. He's teching fast and this might slow him down for a while.
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I think my next target should be Augustus and then Saladin after that. I do have more than enough land to win space at this point but I'd like to get some experience at intercontinental warfare on deity.

From the looks of it, most of Gilgamesh's cities are coastal which would make him a good invasion point.
Pacal has a tendency to bend the knee quite easily so he'd be next.
Shaka of course is the unit spammer. Not sure if I'll be able to get to him before winning but it'd be interesting to see for certain.

Nukes+submarines would make a short job of it probably, but I'm getting too far ahead.

Augustus: Infantry+Canons/Artillery. It might also be good enough to tackle Saladin after him, but I can always research towards Bombers to make it even easier. Need more canons if I'm going to move on him any soon however.
 
I hope that you'll invade Giggles before I decide to do some intercontinental invasions myself. I've got close to zero experience with it and could use some ideas. Great job killing Wang though, taking out Augustus seems like the next best step. Does he have any wonders? :lol: Augustus loves wonders, so it wouldn't suprise me if you captured some decent ones.
 
Looking good, I always wonder why higher level players than myself seem to be able to get an army out and complete the war hundreds of years faster than I ever can. Something I need to work on, this series is helping pick up a few things certainly.
 
I hope that you'll invade Giggles before I decide to do some intercontinental invasions myself. I've got close to zero experience with it and could use some ideas. Great job killing Wang though, taking out Augustus seems like the next best step. Does he have any wonders? :lol: Augustus loves wonders, so it wouldn't suprise me if you captured some decent ones.
Actually, he only has 5 wonders: Pyramids, MoM, SoL, Angkor Wat and Notre Dame. Should be a good haul. My only worry about going to war right away is he's 1 tech away from Machine Guns, which will make capture a whole lot harder. I might get Factories up in the meantime and wait for Artillery.

Looking good, I always wonder why higher level players than myself seem to be able to get an army out and complete the war hundreds of years faster than I ever can. Something I need to work on, this series is helping pick up a few things certainly.
Sacrifice research at the cost of units. Gives more land earlier which gives more research.

~~~

I've focused espionage on Pacal (he settled a marginal city on my landmass). I can possibly steal several techs from him at a not too heavy price... considering I don't have that much to trade right now and I've started hitting the trade limit. He's also 1 tech away from Artillery so it could speed up things.
 
Sacrifice research at the cost of units. Gives more land earlier which gives more research.

More specifically things like Drafting in the Globe city and those with high :), whipping the the others, 0% :science:, occasionally building wealth in :hammers: cities to upgrade good obsolete units.

Those are a few things I've seen :goodjob:
 
Building wealth to upgrade or rush buy is pretty appalling.
You'd like to just build new units instead. Imagine each hammer you get there is converted to gold then... you need 3 times gold to convert into hammers (+ initial cost!) to upgrade...

Building wealth is good to sponsor the sliders but not really to upgrade unless in dire need.
 
Building wealth to upgrade or rush buy is pretty appalling.
You'd like to just build new units instead. Imagine each hammer you get there is converted to gold then... you need 3 times gold to convert into hammers (+ initial cost!) to upgrade...

Building wealth is good to sponsor the sliders but not really to upgrade unless in dire need.

We might have different qualifications of "good obsolete units." I.e a lvl 6 maceman (berserker?) with Medic II+CRIII -> rifleman to have 2 cities build wealth for one turn (presumable you're in the black already at 0% slider!) instead of hammer seems worth it to me. Maybe not for an aggressive civ that can easily crank out lvl 2/3 units..

I generally don't promote but there are advantages to having a couple supertroops in your stack
 
Round 5

I actually changed my mind regarding warfare. It would take a long long time to slug through all those Deity AIs and I was eager to finish the game. Space was the quickest way to achieve that given the diplo situation.

I started off by setting Shaka on Pacal to slow him down somewhat as proposed yesterday.

The round was mostly trades/improve land+cities/espionage.

Trades to get back in the circle:
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Once Communism was in I did a major civic switch.
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Shaka didn't prove too useful. Granted that he was fighting with backward units but hey, you expect Shaka to at least amount to something!
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I built some of the espionage buildings and went to work on Pacal.
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Augustus was once again a good trade partner.
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I did manage to squeeze in a Great Prophet but at this point it was pretty marginal.
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Some more trades... moving towards Computers.
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I was first to Computers and this was a mandatory build for the spoils.
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I would get all the techs left on the tree except for 3 of them from The Internet.


The earlier focus on espionage made it easier to start sabotaging Pacal's space attempt.
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And again.
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I had saved up 2 Great People for the late space push. The Golden Age was great and lasted until launch time.
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Birka ended up being my Ironworks city. It had a lot of riverside tiles I started building an Engine there.
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You can't whip, rush buy or Great Engineer rush space parts, but you can chop trees into them! This saved 1 turn on the building time. (4 -> 3)
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I get to launch first, having sabotaged Pacal's faster attempt.
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Having some left over EPs, I sabotage him up some more.
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I guess he wasn't too happy with it though...
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Too bad he was late hehe, as you can see through the window in the last screenshot.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Post-game

Statistics
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Mandatory revenge on Pacal...
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A difficult first 50 turns to this game due partly to a bad read (Bronze Working could be delayed somewhat) and abundant barbs. The midgame was fairly easy however with so many cities to be settled, which lead to a rather easy war against Wang Kon.

The Space Race wasn't very threatening, the AI is just bad at sabotaging and protecting themselves. Pacal's idea to settle a city on my landmass made this way easier.
Had he gone for Culture however, I'd have needed to take arms up and go deal with him.

So, that's it for this game, see you in the next game, as usual, tomorrow!
 
Wow, AIs avoided Computers and instead opted to give you Satellites, Adv. Flight, Rocketry, Ecology etc straight away through the Internet? :crazyeye: Nice break there. Anyway, solid game and GJ :goodjob:
 
Can't believe how many techs you got form the internet there haha :goodjob:

Looking forwards to the next game.
 
Great read, and holy nice landmass.
An easy to land starve protective WK, who flouts the continental religeon, thus making him everybody's worst enemy.
Well done!
 
Well done Kossin. I had a similar experience 4 games ago where giggles settled a dumb city on my continent. It makes things so easy espionage-wise and I also sabotaged for the space win. Great game, it is just a shame pascal didn't try to go cultural. (A shame that we didn't have intercontinental deity slugfest) THAT can be hell. I lost once when that happened. I didn't quite anticipate about 100 mobile arty pieces on the other continent. Even drill 4(for seige resistance) mech inf fell to them, just too many.
 
Wow, nice game, and very fast playing. :D How do you find the time for a round a day?
Sometime's it's pretty hard actually. I cut on sleep and play less and less offline games sadly =\
I space the rounds when I can. A lot of the time I'll save 4~5 times for a single round.

Wow, AIs avoided Computers and instead opted to give you Satellites, Adv. Flight, Rocketry, Ecology etc straight away through the Internet? :crazyeye: Nice break there. Anyway, solid game and GJ :goodjob:
I was ready at any time to steal Computers from Pacal if he headed there. The others were really lagging compared to him.

Can't believe how many techs you got form the internet there haha :goodjob:

Looking forwards to the next game.
Yea, well The Internet pretty much guarantees you a great shot at winning Space.

Great read, and holy nice landmass.
An easy to land starve protective WK, who flouts the continental religeon, thus making him everybody's worst enemy.
Well done!
Thanks :)

Well done Kossin. I had a similar experience 4 games ago where giggles settled a dumb city on my continent. It makes things so easy espionage-wise and I also sabotaged for the space win. Great game, it is just a shame pascal didn't try to go cultural. (A shame that we didn't have intercontinental deity slugfest) THAT can be hell. I lost once when that happened. I didn't quite anticipate about 100 mobile arty pieces on the other continent. Even drill 4(for seige resistance) mech inf fell to them, just too many.
I contemplated for a long time going for Domination/Conquest here at the start of round 5. I dunno why but I felt like going Space here rather than stretching the game for 2~3 more rounds. It does take a lot more time.
I find nukes are the best way to deal with the massive Deity AI stacks. I've rarely seen much survive 4 nukes. I'd have gone Tacticals+Subs probably on Gilgamesh first and Pacal would have eventually collapsed, but it would have taken quite a while to ship all those units.
Nevertheless, I'll try to get a late warfare round... Domination/Conquest in a game soon hopefully! Shaka being next, if the land/opponents allow it, it's as good a time as any.
 
We might have different qualifications of "good obsolete units." I.e a lvl 6 maceman (berserker?) with Medic II+CRIII -> rifleman to have 2 cities
Having medic + CR is just a huge mistake on its own. You want medic (3) on a scout or a chariot unless you are so confident you can get m3/w3 but on deity i'd not count on such a feat.
Upgrading a few elite units might be wort but generally it's done w/ the gold you capture. That's not an always war game that you need a (few) super-heroes. This is why you draft.
Also you don't want (usually) to have a medieval war on deity.
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Again, a very good control of the game. It was not a difficult map (hence I expected the conquest, probably going laser and storming the AIs, I have some issue w/ the nukes). However, I lost it after 2 loses vs barbs (96.5% and 97%). Did you move the capital next to Pacal's city?
 
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