Dr kossin #34

^^
They changed leaderheads between Vanilla and BTS for Qin and KK.

Nice round kossin. Shaka is a sob, I hope he doesn't bring his stack your way too soon. I noticed you built a lot of farms, have you been running specialists in the cities outside your capital?

Every time I run specialists, I get pissed because every other turn or so the computer always takes away scientists in favor of spies or whatnot. Is there a way to stop the computer from changing my specialists?

Farms were mostly for whipping and growing, although I did use a few of them for specialists since I was in Caste for a while. You want to make cities useful as soon as possible, and the faster they grow the faster they're useful. Even if you want to cottage them, it's more effective to farm first and then start cottaging.

Kossin - In my game at 1 AD the Chinese are the only ones doing research, I think he just finished engineering and no one else even has metal casting including me. Oracle went at 700 BC or so. 2 AIs have aesthetics, no one has literature.

With financial and so many rivers I was surprised by your play, especially delaying so long taking the barb city on the river and settling the fp river to the north. I'll definitely finish this one to see how the two end games look, though Shaka lost his war in my game...

Round 3

I switched research to Economics, which I wound up getting first. The Merchant was sent to Ulundi, which contained the Temple of Artemis... for a 1700 gold trade mission.

I also triggered a Golden Age from a Great Person I'd been farming for this purpose. It helped the building of Cannons and made civic switching easy for drafting.

I made a lot of trades with mostly everyone, such as:


Meanwhile, Gilgamesh was assembling an army across the river... I wasn't idle and was massing my own on the other side. When I deemed my SoD sufficient, I declared war and let him bring his SoD next to my SoD.


After 3 cannons and my SoD, here's the pieces left:


Naturally, he would get Magic Rifles before I got to his first city.

Meanwhile, Shaka DoW'd Ragnar (I kept begging 10 gold for a long long time).


Despite facing Protective Rifles, numbers and cannons were on my side.


The Zulu-Viking war was still raging on. Glad I wasn't at that end of the map!


I kept my armies busy, advancing slowly but surely in Sumerian lands.


Eventually, Shaka had to back off of the fight with Ragnar as he was facing Infantry with Cavalry and Rifles = not good.

Suleiman OTOH was busy planning a war of his own. I'd been monitoring his buildup just north of me. Since I was busy fighting Gilgamesh, I couldn't be bothered reinforcing my flank.


That freed my hands and allowed me to keep facing the regular garrisons in just about every city of Gilgamesh.


Moving on...


Shaka had moved up to Friendly recently, which opened up trading with him.


I finished off Gilgamesh with Infantry added to the mix.


A new look at Shaka's SoD.


Diplo manipulation...


Shaka's stack in Viking land:


With Ragnar's troops busy on the other side of the map, there's no doubt that Shaka will walk over him. Facing a tough end game, I decided to call it quits and end now.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Post-game

A bit unexpected and anti-climatic but it's a win nonetheless. Every time you manipulate Shaka to Friendly without warring deserves a Diplomatic Win I say! ...or maybe not.

Some statistics.


I decided to get this victory now when I saw Qin moving around with Mech Infantry... yea he's pretty fast.

However I'm not quite done with this game. There will be at least 1 bonus round where I'll go for total conquest, now that the game is won which means I don't have to worry about Culture/Space attempts.

Grashopa said:

Kossin - In my game at 1 AD the Chinese are the only ones doing research, I think he just finished engineering and no one else even has metal casting including me. Oracle went at 700 BC or so. 2 AIs have aesthetics, no one has literature.

With financial and so many rivers I was surprised by your play, especially delaying so long taking the barb city on the river and settling the fp river to the north. I'll definitely finish this one to see how the two end games look, though Shaka lost his war in my game...

Click to expand...

It certainly looks like it's working out pretty well for you. I was a bit skeptic because of barbarians and wanted to secure horses earlier as a result. Maybe not as effective but perhaps less boring

I might try this one again from scratch to see how it unfolds after the extra round.

LOL @ Shaka's 49 cavalry in his stack at the end there

It seems the AI teched very fast in this game, would have been very difficult to pull out space or domination from here. I'd certainly like to see someone try though.

Haha thats not a win - though with all the neighbors its an obvious choice I like the map type, you should run another round with inland sea.

The AI is really really slow in my game, perhaps they pick it up as happy infrastructure becomes buildable. I assume the AI can't take advantage of HR on a happy constrained map like this.

Grashopa said:

Haha thats not a win - though with all the neighbors its an obvious choice I like the map type, you should run another round with inland sea.

Click to expand...

Which is why I'm doing an extra round:
-for fun
-for thanking Shaka of causing me so many losses
-to prove I'd have won even without AP

Actually I was thinking of doing the next Deity University with Inland_Sea... it should definitely be interesting! But yea, it's pretty fun since you can actually research in the beginning rather than play catchup for 100 turns. Probably will play another one with this in the future.

kossin said:

Round 2
A few more trades...

Click to expand...

Paper for Engineering+ and Feudalism+?

edit: Oh, you had self-researched most of them. I didn't look at the screenshots carefully.

Qin teched pretty impressively. Mech infantry in the 1500's? That's like a warlords deity time. How close is he to launching?

Qin is really crazy. Is it possible here to win without AP (assuming the voting as "none")? At least UN diplomatic win. Probably to beat Suleiman when Shaka beats Rangar. And then together beat Qin.

Nice game kossin. I don't think I manipulate foreign relations enough because I never even get to be an option in the AP elections.

Were you drafting or just building all those riflemen?

Drafted them mostly.
~~~
Currently playing the extra round... every turn takes forever

A bird in hand is a bird in hand. If getting barbed out didn't prompt further play why should the AP? You earned this one.

Bonus Round A

Seeing as Suleiman was pretty backwards (Rifles and Catapults?), I decided to annex him.


So, here I find myself, almost 2 eras behind the AI that will not trade with me (thanks to taking a vassal). What's the fastest way to catch up?


So how did it work out?


Reaping the rewards...


What a profitable year...

How are the AI's stacks now?


A few more techs...


QSH was gunning for space. As you might imagine, I had more than enough to prevent him from launching. However I decided to let him launch to see the actual date he would launch:

Damn. I've never seen Espionage used like that, that's awesome!

Bonus Round B

I started off by stealing another tech, which helped the health situation considerably.


Qin had just accepted Ragnar as a vassal, which had brought him in a fight against Shaka. While Qin won the skirmish and greatly reduced Shaka's power, he captured one city and his SoD was trapped there (the war was stopped by UN). Nonetheless, he still had plenty of units moving about. Once I had about 80 units, I hit him. I also had 27 Jet Fighters via Carriers and some 20 Stealth Bombers.


Apparently, this is the only shot I have of my SoD from this era.


It was only a matter of time...


That freed my hands for Shaka/Napoleon. Throughout the round I'd been gifting Suleiman techs so that he was up to par to help in the fight... that was why I kept him alive.... that and less micro for me! I merged my 2 stacks together and sent that to Shaka. Everything else was sent to Napoleon.

A look at my opposition....


The turn of the DoW. Note that Babanago is filled with 27 Jet Fighters, a lot of Stealth Bombers, and Qin's SoD.


Naturally Shaka moved all he had close by. Then I moved my SoD in his land... and what do you know, he cowered back and turtled down in his cities, just at the sight


The next turn...


That was enough for him.


On the other side, Stealth Bombers and my secondary SoD made short work of Napoleon's units as well.


At this point, the game is really over.


~~~~~~~~~~Post-game
I hope this finish is more fitting
Once you get safely to the Renaissance era, there's usually at least one way to win, you just have to decide how and try it. If you have as many cities as the AI, you can win any way as the human uses his cities in a better fashion, despite the big disadvantages.

Some final screenshots...


Next game starts tomorrow, see you then!

That's great! Especially that trojan city. I've seen this the second time (first time in Duckweed's last challenge game at Island_map against team AI), and i both cases it works perfect.