ALC Game #10: India/Asoka

I'd second aelf's point about the space race, and add that if you have the production to consider a Domination win, you have enough production to crank out space ship parts. If your GNP is that high, with the lead you have I can't see Churchill catching up and getting more than the Thrusters and Casings finished. Or is that the difference between Noble and Monarch?

If you're no longer worried about relations with Churchill, you can also simply make peace with Ragnar now, then declare war again ten turns later. The Diplomatic penalty is the same, but you'll also get a couple extra turns at the better civics. War weariness shouldn't be an issue, since the war will only be two or three turns at most. The only reason to vassalize Ragnar is for the happiness bonus, but that doesn't seem like it's a problem.

If you decide on Domination, I'll opine that the chances are good that Isabella will renounce her bondage, and you might be able to use her as a landing pad for a war against Churchill and Alex. I could be wrong, but in my games voluntary vassalage doesn't last very long. But on a personal note, I'd like to read the discussion about the finer points of winning a space race that the better players here could have. It's my favorite victory (a holdover from starting with Civ2, I suspect), and learning how to shave a few turns off would be nice. It's your game Sisiutil, though, so do what you will.

Sisuitil,

finish off ragnar, the unhappiness in his old cities will be a bigger hurt than the potential happiness gain from having a vassal. then I would advocate space race, if for no other reason than just to see it happen

make good use of your spies, and start producing spaceship parts like there's no tomorrow.

in a smaller production city I suppose you could use OR to spread your religion to the other continent, especially to isabella who then might be willing to break off with churchill and vassalize to you instead. not to mention the increase in GNP.

NaZ

I'd reckon finish off Ragnar; probably raze the last two cities rather than keep them (assuming that's not the only source of uranium in the world).
Then cottages or workshops in your continent and head for space. Managing workers is a bit tedious but nowhere near as time consuming as managing stacks of units.

I'd keep the 2 cities on the northern island, Workshop all the land tiles, I assume your going to retain State property, build Drydocks in the 2 cities and produce Submarines non stop ONLY from the 2 cities and use them as Submarine pens

Give the subs' the flanking promotion 1, 2 and 3 ?? if possible, you now have a unit with 80% + withdrawl chance on attack, these little babies can take out Destroyers, battleships and are EXCELLENT sentries.

Now, you can Space race, Nuclear war fare, coastal invasion, or anything, no worrries about naval incursions, air patrols to cover coast and subs with withdrawl and sentry (+1 visual).

But as you tend to micromanage warfare so much, *or so you say*, , Me I just attack and wear it, space race maybe best.

But if your so tired from micomanaging, won't the space race endurance race exhust you more

Sisiutil said:

I'm number one in almost every category, except... huh. Population? What gives there? According to the victory condition screen, I have a greater % of the world's population than Churchill, but here, I'm apparently #2 in that regard. Anyone care to explain that to me?

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I believe that the population measured under victory conditions are population points, just like the score is measured, while the population measured under demographics are people.

For example, ten population points spread out over three cities has more people than twelve population points spread out over six cities.

If space race it is, here is my single advice :
- emancipation can grow your cottages to town very fast, provided you build those damn cottages! If you want to cottage spam a city, there is no waiting, it's "now or never".
In my opinion, this large scale cottaging is priority.
How many workers do you have? 30? That's 10 cottages per turn = 1 city every turn. How many cities did you capture and are cottage spamable?
I'd say something like 10 (hard to tell from a high flying view). Most already have the cottages they need, I assume.
So you could cottage spam the former japanese cities first while Ragnar's ex cities come out of revolt. This could take up to 10 turns, with a partial worker force towards railroading your territory.
After that, you have all the time needed to specialize a few (4 is a magical number for me, but I'm no space specialist) production cities.
IMHO, you need one wonder builder (apollo program possibly there, but mostly Space Elevator), and 3 big parts builders.
Casings and thrusters can be built in secondary cities :
mature cottages under US provide enough hammers for those (especially for the casings, that are buildable over a long period).
- tech wise i suggest (humbly) computers->robotics->satellites->fiber optics->fusion,
Unless you already are building the apollo program, I suggest leaving it to a "secondary" production city(= not the best production city, but a good one), letting you main production city going for the Space Elevator in just a few turns.
This path opens up a nice option of $rushing laboratories (provided you leave a bit of your commerce going towards money, or just build wealth) before starting to build any part = better teching, faster building.

But that's just my non expert opinion, and I still favour a quick military win.
(15/20 turns from now, you would be master of the world if I'm not mistaken : once your new cities jump out of revolt, you will be at 55% land or more)

one more thing : if you have some commerce in your new cities, a few turns of 10% culture may be enough to get the border expansion in your new cities.
Also $rushing theatres will allow you to assign artists as free specialist there.
Alternatively, you can also run caste system for the next 10/15 turns and just run many artists where needed (no reason to let them starve doing nothing, is there? better to die singing and dancing)

See? That's the "sugar and spice" I want from Isabella! Get your minds out of the gutter, will you?

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At least you didn't say anything about the sugar and spice regarding wanting some pie...now, how exactly DO you climb out of this gutter? I can't see over the rim I'm so far down in it.

Editing with my for the round coming up when the boss leaves the room.

Edit: Frankly, I don't think vassalizing Ragnar will make a difference either way with the condition he's in. The happiness won't be a big problem once you're out of war, especially if you do start cottage spamming like Cabert's suggested (extra commerce = theater rushing in his old cities if you need to). The captured wonders will help with the happiness issue too, if I remember the ones you snagged correctly. Cabert's tech suggestions sound good to me, but I tend to get off-track in my teching sometimes in late game so I don't know if that's the kind of support he's looking for. At this point I think you're primed for space - I'd have a couple transports - two, maybe 3 - set up so that you can ferry spies rapidly across in case they get caught. You know the drill probably, one tranny at his continent, one at yours, build new spy and swap transports so you always have one at the ready for the next spy backup. But really, you don't have to worry about Churchill beating you even if you're close to parity in tech, which you're not. Spies make the difference - blow up one stupid mine in a production city's fat cross and you can add a dozen turns to the length of time he'll need to build that part. Now, 4 spies and the cottage-commerce you're getting = Churchill's economy in a recession. Someone said before, you don't even need to sabotage the actual production - just wrecking mines/watermills, etc. is good enough. And yeah, much less micro'ing with your workers and a few spies than a bunch of military stacks.

What are your tech tree priorities for space race? I tend to get a bit confused when I get into the modern age, simply because I so rarely go for space race victories that I don't really have a good handle on which techs are most important; obviously Space Elevator is nice, and Apollo is required, but other techs....meh. I just don't beeline well then, unless I want modern armor or mech inf, and you don't need either of those in quantity for a space race win.

Thanks.

deleted

Round 15: to 1938 AD

In a way, the real competition a Civ player has when you're in a commanding position in the end game is against yourself. The AI is rarely in a position to challenge you, and often does not. So you're really just trying to finish as quickly as possible, and maybe milk your score, to see how you fare in your personal hall of fame.

To that end, I founded a few cities in the end game, starting with this one:



What's funny is we talked about founding this city very early on, and I just managed to get to it now, when the game's almost done! It actually grew to a decent size by the end, about 9 pop IIRC, helped immeasurably by that wheat tile. The goal of this and the two additional cities I founded late was to grow my population to max out the end-game score. In retrospect, I should have founded the last two cities much earlier (one of 'em never made it past 1 pop), but I had other things on my mind.

Such as the space race! I was mindful of aelf chiding me about my use of the earlier Great Engineer for the Three Gorges Dam when I coulda and shoulda saved him for the Space Elevator. A good point, and one I'll remember in the future. My next great person came out of Tokyo:



That was a little surprising--I was expecting a Great Prophet, based upon the numbers--but not disappointing. My plan was to save this GP, whichever type he turned out to be, for a possible golden age to pump up my space race research and production.

Before I got my next GP, however, I had to finish up the conflict with Ragnar. My amphibious force had to sail all the way from the southern shores of the continent to the north, so it took some time, but the Marines eventually had their say:





...and Ragnar was no more. I kept both cities, what the heck--more pop for score milking, and no opportunity for the AI to set up shop in my northern back yard.

Those final attacks earned me my next (and last) Great General, mainly because I used ships to remove the defensive bonus of those last two cities, but I made minimal use of Artillery and none of Bombers to weaken the defenders. So the Marines were usually facing 80% odds, good enough to win (which I think they all did) while earning plenty of XPs. I sent the GG to Madras:



I used him for a military academy. Earlier, just before and during the war with Ragnar, I had wanted to make Madras my second military city. But it was experiencing mounting unhappiness and health issues and needed several civilian builds to keep it productive. As a result, the capital, Delhi, wound up filling that role of 2nd military city, with a military academy and an instructor. It turned out okay, but since Delhi was also my main science (Oxford) and commerce (shrine + Wall Street) city, it probably wasn't optimal. At the time, however, Delhi had the infrastructure to stay happy and healthy while churning out units at a decent rate, and so it got the nod. I eventually built the Red Cross in Madras as well, and it became devoted to churning out my deterrent force of ships and, later, Mechanized Infantry.

With the war against Ragnar over, it was time to change civics for the last time in the game:



All designed to max out production and research, as well as take advantage of the many wonders I had captured such as the Kremlin. I didn't really cottage spam as much as Cabert recommended. I had a few cities with riverside tiles, and they would produce as much gold as a hamlet in the same spot immediately, as well as boosting production for space ship parts, so I tended to go that route. As cities ran out of needed or helpful builds, I began to build Wealth in order to boost the research slider, which climbed from 80% to 90% to 100% for the last few turns.

As far as research goes, it may not have been optimal for the space race either. My choices were complicated by the fact that I had captured all three wonders that would be made obsolete by Computers! (U. of Sankore, Spiral Minaret, and Angkor Wat) I usually don't hesitate to acquire a tech that obsoletes a wonder, but dang, three of 'em? Eventually, though, I realized that it was high time. In fact, I should have (and usually do) bee-line to Computers first, so I can get those Laboratories in place for their research and space ship part building bonus. As it was, the route I took was Satellites -> Computers -> Fiber Optics -> Robotics -> Fusion -> Refrigeration -> Genetics -> Ecology. Looking back, I probably should have gotten Computers first, then Satellites and Robotics to get going on the Space Elevator a little earlier.

Fortunately, despite my slightly-less-than-optimal tech path, I was extremely lucky with my Great People. The next one appeared in Patak:



YES!! A Great Engineer to help with the Space Elevator, which I decided to build in Bursa (Kyoto and Satsuma were busy with other space ship parts, Bangalore and Madras with military). Now I needed another Great Person for a golden age. The next one would appear in my GP Farm, Lahore:



Uh-oh. The leading candidate there was a Great Artist, thanks to all those GA wonders. Two Great Artists do not a Golden Age make; you need two different kinds of Great People. I wished I'd obtained that Great Prophet from Kyoto. I kept my fingers crossed that the game would continue to be perverse and not give me the top-rated GP. If worse came to worst and I had two Great Artists, I'd use the Great Engineer from Fusion to start the Golden Age.

My luck held:



Can you believe that? Another Great Engineer--and one turn before I'd get a third one! I started the Golden Age immediately. On the next turn...



This GE I sent to Bursa to finish the Space Elevator.



Yeah, it only had 3 turns to go, but I had several space ship parts under way, and a saved turn is grist for the mill in the adjusted final score.

A few turns later, in 1935, I had all my techs in place and only three parts left to complete. Production powerhouse Kyoto would finish the Engine in 1 turn, while Satsuma had 3 turns to go for the Stasis Chamber, and former Viking city Sigtuna (which I'd transformed into a production city by replacing its farms with waterwheels and workshops) had as many to go for the Life Support:



So it was really just a matter of playing out the last three turns, during which I micromanaged my cities, putting specialists back to work on food-rich tiles to max out my population. In 1938...



I hate to rub it in, but the victory was just a little sweeter this time because some of you thought the game was lost in the early rounds. But I can't get too cocky, because the same community told me what I had to do to perform the course correction that pulled India's economy out of the doldrums. But we can discuss that in more detail in the post mortem, which is next.

Below is the saved game file from the turn just before the winning one:

Post-Mortem

First, a few screen shots. Maps to start off with:





Score, for the entire game:



Power, for the entire game:



And power over the last 100 years (just to include that wonderful spike of mine before attacking Ragnar. Hee hee!)



You can see how my power leveled off once I saw I had more than enough units to finish Ragnar; I started focusing on civilian builds. Then, to ensure I had a sufficient deterrent force to ward off interlopers, I started building units and climbed again. Churchill, meanwhile, stayed focused on getting it up. Er, his power rating, that is. More unfortunate imagery, sorry. It seemed surprising, since he had little to fear on his own continent. So maybe he was deterring me like I was deterring him.

Demographics:



#1 in everything but soldiers.

Top 5 Cities and Wonders:



Churchill really went to town with the wonders, didn't he? No wonder I was so convinced there was an industrious civ on the other continent. As it turned out, he just had stone (and marble too, I think). But I managed to get two cities into the top 5!

Statistics:



Nearly 23 hours! A long game, what with all the micromanagement of cities and especially modern military units. Can you imagine how much longer it would have taken if I'd invaded Churchill? Nah. It was time to put this one in the bag, kiddies.

Victory conditions:



I was pretty close with the land area. I probably could have just taken some of Alexander's and/or Isabella's cities, or both, and won via domination. I actually had further to go in population than land area. That's what using the whip well into the late game will get you.

And my final score:



Not too bad for a leader who is, I think, very much underrated, and for a game some felt was lost.

Speaking of which, let's do a little analysis, starting with my own bit of mea culpa. I recall getting thrown for a loop by the extraordinarily high happiness limits I had in my cities early in the game. Between the early religion, early forges, lucky mine strikes for forge-induced happiness, Monarchy, and so on, I shook of the usual early game growth limits. And it threw me off. I'm used to whipping extensively in the early game to build units and infrastructure and deal with unhappiness. I kept doing that even though I didn't need to get rid of citizens, in fact, I needed to keep them to get my cottages growing. And I needed more of those, too, but didn't spam them because, again, I was used to keeping my city sizes small, so I was loathe to improve tiles that wouldn't be worked right away.

I also got distracted by early metal casting and started building forges (which are NOT cheap for Asoka) and forgetting about courthouses and lighthouses (which ARE cheap for him). Again, I was acting from habit rather than strategic thinking--I'm used to prioritizing forges for the happiness boost (unnecessary this time, at least that early) and to help with buildings like courthouses.

In some respects, then, I was not making optimal use of my leader's traits. Fortunately, I think my decision to got through this game more slowly than previous ALCs paid off. The community caught the mistakes in time and I was able, with everyone's helpful suggestions, to make the necessary adjustments to my builds. It obviously postponed the wars against Tokugawa and Ragnar, and there I was also helped by founding and spreading that early religion to keep my brothers of the faith happy with me so they didn't attack when I was at my lowest.

Also, I made sure I didn't make the same mistake with factories, the new cheap building for Organized: I got those suckers in place as soon as they were available. That also helped with my late-game surge.

If I didn't make optimal use of Asoka's cheap buildings, I think I did make good use of the spiritual trait. I probably change civics too often normally, so playing as a spiritual leader is a real treat. I think I mentioned it before, but I'll say it again. I think Asoka has two traits with some of the best synergy of any trait combination in the game. He can run any civics he wants anytime he wants--because they're cheap and anarchy-free. Well, he has to research them first, but you get my point. Next time I play as Asoka I may go after the Pyramids if I have stone, just so he can switch to all the government civics throughout the game.

I also have to give high marks to his unique building. It came along at the perfect time, just as I was warring with Japan. I built Mausoleums during the war with Japan, and had them in place when I started warring with the Vikings. As a result, war weariness was kept low--I don't think I ever had to push the cultural slider higher than 20% to deal with it. Since Asoka doesn't have the financial advantages of a leader with that trait, that was a blessing.

What about the Fast Workers? Well, they're invaluable in the early and mid-game, but much less so by the late game when most of the tiles have been improved and/or are easily accessible. Still, you could say that about Workers overall. It's nice that they don't become obsolete, even though their usefulness diminishes over time. Another thing that may have thrown me off, however, is India's lack of a military UU (the only civ in the game without one, IIRC). I'm used to bee-lining to the required tech and planning my wars around use of the unit.

Overall, then, a successful game, but one that reminds us to prioritize builds and adjust overall strategies based upon all elements of your leader's traits--including their cheap buildings--and to adjust your gameplay to the fluid situation of the game rather than just relying upon habits.

I look forward to your comments, of course.

Congrats on your win, you tackled the improved AI pretty well. Not perfect, of course, but perfection is nigh unachievable. That's part of what makes this game so long-lasting....you can always look back and say "I should've done x before y, or I should've done c sooner," etc. etc. You never can manage to do everything perfect, so it's further encouragement to keep playing and get better.

As for Asoka...he's a very good leader, and I think he doesn't get the credit he deserves because he seems kinda bland. Spiritual and Organized are more effective than they are exciting, and I'm sure some put off by the lack of a military UU. To add to it, he also happens to be stuck with builder extrordinaire, Gandhi, who weighs in at Spi/Ind and now Phi/Spi, both superb combinations for peaceful players. But, perhaps, that is Asoka's strength...he doesn't particularly excel at many things, but he can really do everything competently, and that's a strength in itself. The UB is also nice...it improves upon a building that isn't normally very useful, so in a way, it expands India's building options even more than most.

Ok, enough about this game...whose next? Brennus? I think you'd like him. He'll probably remind you of that first game with Monty more than a little bit. Underrated, underappreciated, and with an unfairly maligned UU. UB ain't much to right home about, unfortunately...but those traits are killer. You try a charismatic leader yet?

Congrats, Sisiutil, on another great game. Take a few accolades for pulling this one out of the fire (though certainly not at the last minute). Though, as you're riding the chariot down the main thoroughfare: "Remember, thou art mortal! Remember, thou art mortal!"

Lance of Llanwy said:

Ok, enough about this game...whose next? Brennus? I think you'd like him. He'll probably remind you of that first game with Monty more than a little bit. Underrated, underappreciated, and with an unfairly maligned UU. UB ain't much to right home about, unfortunately...but those traits are killer. You try a charismatic leader yet?

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Near as I can figure, Tokugawa is up next. Talk about a fun military game: Aggressive and Protective. Wait until you get Grenadiers with Combat 1 and Drill 1 automatically, not to mention that they'll be upgraded from CRIII Samurai. May I humbly suggest that you plan to subjugate the gaijin of the world to Japan's superior conquering armies? In other words: start out planning for conquest and go for it as fast and as hard as you can.

Well played. Taking out Mehmed early was probably key. Possibly not enough growth and not enough cottages were the weakest elements (but you've already identified that).
Tokugawa should be a different kind of game so look forward to seeing that.

I'll join my voice to the congrats!
Beating the new AI to space on monarch is quite an achievement (although you had killed all real competitors, and were playing the toughest one ).

just a little nitpicking : You're at 55% land, just as I said you'd be. If there is a save somewhere, I'll try a domination win from the previous turnset.
This is not a criticism, I think you did it the hard way, so it's more like for you.

My analysis on this game :
- spiritual and organized is a great combination, like you said (especially late game, with many optimizing options)
- conquering one's continent is still a very effective move. More so when you start on the biggest one
- good diplomacy game kept you safe when you needed to be (lots of improvement in this area since hatchepetsuh, don't you think?)
- fast workers? you didn't write much about them, but I have the feeling you'll regret them in your next game...

Well done!
It is the best fun to read threads like this during work and to have mind occupied with all different problems for growing civilization.
What I would personally to see would be elimination. Never before I had this one, always domination/space victory was standing before, especially domination. Should one only raze cities to preserve domination victory? That's kinda harder, because other civ's would be resettling on burned places...

Guardian_PL said:

Well done!
It is the best fun to read threads like this during work and to have mind occupied with all different problems for growing civilization.
What I would personally to see would be elimination. Never before I had this one, always domination/space victory was standing before, especially domination. Should one only raze cities to preserve domination victory? That's kinda harder, because other civ's would be resettling on burned places...

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In warlords, you can vassalize everyone and have the conquest victory .

Sisiutil,

I think you could have viably traversed an alternate path by keeping Mehmed as a friend, at least early on, and going after Ragnar first. But whether that would have been better, who knows?

Will you start another game before the year ends?

I'm going to take some time off. This game took a l-o-o-o-o-ng time--I started it in early November! I'd like to enjoy the holidays, do some writing, play some off-line games.

So I don't think I'll start the next ALC until the new year (though I reserve the right to change my mind, especially if I get bored over the holidays). I'm also thinking of changing things up a little and abandoning my anal retentive alphabetic progression through the available civilizations. Several people have suggested that I play a game as one of the leaders new to Warlords. In addition, with aelf's recent comments in his current EMC game regarding the over-emphasis on war in the expansion pack and its patch, I was thinking of trying to play a more peaceful game, just to see if he's right. (Not purely peaceful--just, you know, relatively more peaceful than usual. )

What does everyone think of trying to take Hannibal and the Carthaginians to a diplomatic, cultural, or space race win?

Well, the current EMC already has the aim of being as peaceful as possible. I think you should play to exploit the traits of whichever leader you're playing. I think you already know that, but I'd like to point out that war or peace should be secondary to the main purpose. But that's just my opinion