ALC Game #24: Hammurabi/Babylon

Just checked the diplo modifiers for religion: The heathen religion penalty for Saladin is 4, for Darius it's 2 which is acceptable, you can get him up to pleased with ease(It rhymes lol). Also, the shared bonus is 7 for sal, 6 for Darius. Do I need to say wich I'd prefer?

Excellent round. When I saw your unimproved capital using forested hills to build a rush I saw a gloomy horizon. But you somehow were able to take Zara's first two cities while they only had two Archers. Amazing. I've never seen anything like it, even on Emperor.

I would not be too worried about your economy. You have promoted troops (though it sounds like the better long-term choice of City Raider was not invested in) which should be put to use taking more cities. As long as you have an intelligent tech path and stop when you're facing Longbows early warring never needs to stop. Not that I'm advising you to plan to conquer Saladin, but if he choses to declare war on you because you switch to Christianity, then it'd be a good way to lower your support costs and weaken a rival.

Edit: Horseback Riding is not on the intelligent tech path, and I'm not sure how throwing beakers into it helps your game at all. The 3 techs for empire = Writing, Currency, and Code of Laws.

Rubbaduck said:

Just checked the diplo modifiers for religion: The heathen religion penalty for Saladin is 4, for Darius it's 2 which is acceptable, you can get him up to pleased with ease(It rhymes lol). Also, the shared bonus is 7 for sal, 6 for Darius. Do I need to say wich I'd prefer?

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Further to this, you gain no benefit from OB with Darius until you've scouted out where he is for overseas trade routes (assuming he's not on your continent). Making that deal with him again after Sal had asked you to cancel trade was asking for trouble.

It adds further inconsistency, but I'd cancel OB with him unilaterally until either you've scouted out his location, or alphabet's in and you want to trade techs. By having OB with him now, he'll be benefiting from intercontinental trade with you, but not the other way around. He's already got feudalism, why give him any more help?

Edit: In terms of tech, I'd be using the cash to race through CoL and currency. Grabbing aesthetics/literature for trade-bait loses some of its appeal since you've only got Saladin to trade with low-risk (Ragnar's not chummy enough yet and trading with Darius will increase the risk of early war with Arabia (and a possible Viking dogpile) before you've had the chance to rebuild your economy). However, you've got marble which means GLib/NE in the capital would be sweet with all that food and production. You could also make a decent amount of for further deficit research by part-building the Parthenon/SoZ and letting the AI complete them.

You really need to get the trade routes with Sal up so Islam can spread to you. Also, stop trading with Darius ASAP to prevent even more diplo hits with Ragnar or Sal.

Islam can't spread to him right now as all his cities already have Christianity. So we'll have to wait for missionaries.

Good round, Sisiutil. The only thing I don't really agree with is researching Horseback Riding. After an early rush, considering that you now have 5 cities, research is going to be a problem. I'd rather get Alphabet as soon as I can, and follow up with Currency and CoL. If nobody else researches Alphabet you'll have at least that one to trade. Plus with Alphabet you can build research, which means the cities in which you have built everything else don't need to build units that will just drag your research down even more.

Since you have Marble and probably require Mansonry in order to use it, I suggest you go for Aesthetics, the AI tend to ignore that tech so it'd good trading fodder then Poly and Literature Tech for the Great Library (sped up by Marble), Which should help help you alot on the tech front with extra GS for Bulbing.

I know Currency & COL is important to improve your economy but chances are the AI may already have them and the question is, do yo uwant to research techs th AI already has?

I'd be tempted not to discard relations with Darius, given that he's very likely to be one of the tech leaders of this game. Personally, I would favour keeping Darius happy as long as you think you can safely do so, to trade with him later. Alphabet really shouldn't be that far away.

Currency and Code of Laws are key techs to get at this point. There's no point in waiting to trade with the AI for them - get them ASAP yourself to get your economy back up and running.

Sisiutil said:

Nonsense! I lost another Combat I/Cover Axe, but my second attacker with the same promotions got luck against 68% odds or thereabouts. (You may have noticed that the second Archer lacked both promotions and a fortify bonus.) So I had a City Raider capture the city in the third attack.

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While the promotions of these archers are visible, you can't tell anything about the fortification bonus from this screenshot, as it only gives you the in-depth info on the unit you are going to attack first. For a more obvious example, notice how only the top archer is said to have "1 first strike".

Anyone notice how all three early religions popped up close to Sis'? It should be easy to make a friend once religion spreads (Question: Is Darius as Missionary-happy as Saladin, Hatty or Isabella? And besides, he perhaps has neighbors on his own continent to worry about...?)

Your long-time friend should of course be Darius. Saladin needs to develop very cold, dead hands eventually, so he will give you his cities voluntarily.

I think what this game has shown so far is that getting Zara as a neighbor is a boon, not a curse. He's lousy at early city defense, and often prepares a very nice little kingdom for you to take over. He and his culture only becomes a problem if you don't kill him until he is dead, as amply shown by Saladin (interestingly, this would probably happen again this game, if Sis-Bab wasn't there)...

Finally, what about Ragnar? Is he stuck with a icy tundra capital, or what?

Nice work on the warfare.

I think you'd have been better off going for writing/sailing rather than pottery/writing. Writing and libraries early on not only give you the beakers but also the early GS production to catch up on techs. You could probably have used your third WB to explore (they're effectively immune from barbs until they encounter barb galleys which are later in the game) and you'd probably have had trade routes with Sal and Dar already.

If the NW barb city is still available it might be worth taking because among other things it won't have a religion.

Get sailing so that when you take the barb city, you immediately open trade routes with Saladin and have a religion-free city at the same time. (Alternatively, burn the worker turns building a road to his borders.)

Axeman voodoo, indeed. That was an awesome round and it gets an extra gold star in my book for describing in detail the process of kicking Zara's butt. This is already turning out to be one of the most instructional ALCs I've read.

Regarding the two cities, I agree with the strategy for both. Found the eastern one quickly or Saladin will claim it. Park some can openers by the western one until it reaches size 2 or Saladin brings his own troops.

I'm actually happy that diplomacy is a bit screwy this round. I'm curious how you dig your way out of that because my games often end up like this. What I would probably do at this point is adopt Darius' religion and prepare for some pointy stick diplomacy versus Saladin. Like you've said, you really don't have much to build besides libraries at this point anyway, so you may as well build up your army, right? It's not like you can be buddy buddy with Saladin anyway, he's your closest neighbor now.

Due to your economic state you'll probably 1) be running a specialist economy for a while and 2) be the low man on the tech pole. Cottages will get you out of the hole, but GLH might not be a bad target to help with research and GPP. You also need some trading fodder and aesthetics is as good as it gets at this point. Hopefully Darius will be a pal and grab alphabet for you. Or is it a bad idea on immortal to be aiming for GLH while preparing for war? Hmmm...

I wonder if you should have kept that Lilabela city in the tundra, which won't help generate income in the near future. Maybe you should have persued that gold city to the east with a settler, thereby closing off the southern peninsula from Sal. Another barb city would likely appear for future promotions for your idle troops.

@Sis: Still reading but you mentioned that you were surprised that Zara did not whip out extra defenders. From all your previous comments he never switched into Slavery and thus could not whip even if he wanted to....

Well, yeah. What he probably meant was that he was surprised that he didn't switch and whip defenders.

the surprising thing is that he didn't make the swap to slavery, he had teched through IW, so he obviously was able to.. (there's a mine on an "empty" plains tile where S razed Addis Ababa = iron)

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Zara has had bronze working for a very long time, actually. He certainly had it 2200BC or so (after the 3rd update), but I suspect he actually did have it long before that (didn't check it).

He was doing really stupid things. First of all, he kept expanding like hell, but he had like 1 archer per city, some 2, but the capital that was two steps away from enemy borders had 2 archers all the way. He was actually building the oracle (maybe that's why he didn't make the switch to slavery? but he wasn't too close either...). He had like one chariot the time I checked and wasn't building any more.

(Yea I was monitoring him for a few turns in a shadow game)

I think all his strategy was a big bluff. He just kept expanding and tried to get away with building no military. Kinda strange an AI would do that.

I'd be willing to bet Ragnar is doing something foolish like building Moai statues way too early or something. Elephants I think are going to be your friend in eating Saladin and perhaps Ragnar later on, though Darius could be in a real position to completely run away with the game, if he is coastal isolated.

I suggest the following:

1. Tech fishing for trade; later currency, code of laws

2. Position strong force near barb city to act when needed

3. Send settler and escort to gold on east coast, but settle only when necessary

4. Build libraries and scientists

Keep the arabs happy; the others are too far away to be an immediate threat.

5. REX the southern part of the continent when your economy allows.

6. Kill Sal when the time is ripe.

Viola! [All this advice should be taken with a shaker of salt since I just one my first Immortal victory last night by going into space. My next door neighbor, Pericles, had twice my land, twice my population, and four times my army. Thankfully, we were both devout Islamists or I would have been dead. I don't think I have ever won a game before while being so far back in all the key demographic criteria.]

If you converted a lot of Saladin's cities to Christianity, would he convert? That would be nice leverage to use against Ragnar (and perhaps Darius), and it means that you would get extra gold from the shrine.