King of the World #4: Mansa Musa

Byblos can also be razed to restore contact with the north. It will probably be better to do it than to raze Giza, because it is a later city and will have less culture defenses

We also control the road from Kumbi Saleh to Timbuktu, so I could always just build a road skirting the northern edge of the desert to add Niani to the network.

Hmm. Take the two Egyptian cities enroute to a Spanish smackdown. You want Madrid before it's taken by someone else.

If possible, find some way of curbing Russian power. Can you convert her to Buddhism and have an AP dogpile?

Possibly a solution for your piss poor production land: Get guilds, switch to caste system and build some workshops on a few grassland tiles. Not as good as mines on hills, but ain't bad either. However you wouldn't be able to keep slavery that way, you could whip away some population first I suppose. Just a thought.

Actually, outside of Timbuktu (which is almost a prototypical high-food/low-production capital), we've got hills. Our difficulty is that, honestly, we lack food to use the hills. We've got plenty of jungles, yes. But most of those are the dreaded Plains Jungles. We have next to no food resources, so we're kind of stuck turning much more of our grasslands into Farms than I would like.

Ah so you're basically losing out on that cottage economy. Well, you need units more than tech it seems to take out hattie.

A question relevant to the series of games, and to anyone playing on the earth map: does anyone know of a full-world image of the huge earth map shipped with CIV, similar to the "atlas" at: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=196624

We asked you for a bunch of screenshots at the beginning of this thread, Neal, when trying to figure out city placement, and it would have been convenient to have a whole-earth image. I guess it is still relevant for this game because you'll want to know where resources are in placing future cities.

In this round, we continue to hang on by our thumbs and I continue to gain respect for just how screwed Mansa Musa is on this map.

I went looking around and discovered something disturbing:



Hattie's got another Settler in West Africa! And she's running out of meaningless desert plots to found cities in! Our second gems are in danger!

So I dipped back into Slavery to rush out a Settler from Timbuktu. I beat Hattie by one turn:



On the tech front, we managed to purchase Philosophy at a pretty steep price:



I wasn't going to give up the Liberalism race without a fight.

Pope Cyrus continued to toy with us, asking for our help in another battle against Genghis Khan and quickly yanking us right back out:



Any idea why he's doing this? This is the second or third time he's boomeranged us in a Mongolian war.

In 1300, I discovered that I had been chasing an impossible dream:



Ah, well. It's not like Education doesn't have its uses, anyway.

Like this, for instance:





Shake it, Cathy.

In 1400, we received the Sports League quest. 11 Stadiums is going to be rough, but if we get some more cities up and running, who knows.

We also discovered that we're relevant, if not dominant:



Meanwhile, what we were really doing this round was building up a force of Macemen and Trebuchets near the Strait of Gibraltar, and a force of Galleys to ferry them to Spain.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one with eyes on the Iberian Pariah:





Damn you, Louis!

No matter. I had a small force heading south to take a juicy barbarian town on the Cape of Good Hope. They were one turn away, when, out of the east...



Damn you, Saladin!

*sigh* So, that's where we stand. Our military ambitions are pretty much thwarted. We have a small army:



But not a lot to do with it other than attacking Hatty. Who needs pruning, anyway.

Here's North Africa:



And South Africa:



And the usual information:



Damn you, WFYABTA! The biggest drawback of being Mansa Musa is that you don't have Mansa Musa to trade with all game long.





Kumbi Saleh is our Heroic Epic city and is pumping out Macemen and Trebs as fast as possible. Other cities are stepping in and contributing what they can.

Of course, we are outgunned:



But not terribly so, especially if you consider how spread out Hatty's troops have to be.

So, what do you all think? How much more in the way of troops do you think we need? This will be a full-scale Medieval war, so we'll be dealing with Longbows, Knights, and Catapults. Hardly the cakewalk we experienced with Tokugawa.

I look forward to our first real war.

I am really amazed at how well you do in these games.

What's Egypt's resource situation? Ivory and Horses for sure. Any metals? If Hatty can't build knights, then the war is pretty much straight offensive, and you don't need to worry about fast invaders plundering your cottages. But it's a long march from your borders to Thebes or Memphis -- key cities you need to stay in this game and knock Egypt out of it. Make sure you have a big stack.

Edit: quickly plop down a city in N. Africa on the plains hill 1 or 2 W of the wheat -- at size 3-4 it will be tied for your third best production city.

Is this on Marathon speed?

Are all the king of the worlds marathon speed?

Nope. All are on Normal Speed. I know that a lot of people here prefer Marathon for Earth18, but my poor little computer chugs so badly in the late-game that I need to speed things up in order to retain my sanity.

I feel you. I'm running a Mac, so my game crashes every 30 turns. >_<

Still, I'd suggest playing on Epic. It's long enough to make it more interesting, but short enough to keep your attention. And the late game doesn't have too many more turns than normal, so it should not kill you. And plus, more game for us.

Anyway, I really think Mali is incredibly screwed on this map. Like, moreso than Mongolia or Greece. They're sandwiched between barb country worse than Siberia and arguably the best Civ on the map, and the starting location, as you've seen, sucks immensely. I don't think this could ever have been a really good game, even with Neal playing.

Right now, I think the best thing you can do is take Eastern Africa ASAP. Send a couple of small stacks at the crap desert cities, too, to keep the Iron flowing to the Capital. If you can take down Egypt, I think you've won. That, and Qin, are pretty much your only competition for Space Race.

Also, you might want to think about going after Saladin next, and grabbing Turkey. That's some of the best production land in the game, except maybe Tibet.

I'm just a Noble player, so take everything I say with a grain of Salt.

I don't know that I warrant all of this praise being lavished upon me, but, heck, I'll take it

Unfortunately, it's all well and good to salivate over nearby high-production cities, but we need troops to do the taking, and those troops require production. One of those chicken-and-egg problems. And while we're scraping by building what we can, our targets are pumping out units galore, even if military buildup isn't their focus. So the cost only gets higher while we wait.

Honestly, I think our goals are going to have to be more modest than they were in the Japan game. It's going to take most if not all of our resources to take out Egypt, and we're probably going to need a long, protracted recovery period.

The only reason we can take out Egypt is because, despite Hattie's lush flood plains, she's nearly as hammer-poor as we are. And, because of that, taking Egypt is going to be a major boon in terms of commerce and resources, but it's not going to help our production woes very much. War with Arabia seems to be to be an end-game proposition if it happens at all.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic. We have gotten breaks in this game, and I'm convinced that we can win. Unlike the last game, though, I'm just not so sure that we will. In a way, that makes this game more exciting. I look forward to it- even if I'm wringing my hands and prophesying doom the whole time.

I guess now you should expect to not end up on top of most things so go for what you can.

Points of Notes, Louis is Jewish, possible bad relations with the Hindu majority, maybe you can take him on in a war.

Secondly, Hatty has to go, she is too dominant. You don't need to destroy her, but consolidate North Arfica if you want to get anywhere. You need a tech advantage, something apperently Hatty has 'cause of the Nile.

Also get that Jungled cleared and get those congo cities upto their best.

Yuo are doing better then I hope giving the slow start. Despite the difference in difficulty I've been in similar positions before where your lack of dominance can begin chocking your chances. You just need to start conqouring Small people and taking on big people bit by bit, damn the diplomacy and let it all snowball.

Basically, Srcew dilpomacy, get a tech advantage, use it to aggressivly cripple your rivals chances of winning.

Ah, I wasn't talking about a war of annihilation. Send a couple of Galleys/Galleons loaded with troops up the Mediterranean to Turkey. Take the cities up there, and maybe Greece to take some pressure off your new cities. Then, when you see the inevitable reclamation stack coming, get a peace treaty. It won't require too many troops, and you get yourself a good troop/spacship factory. You might even consider doing this before the rampage through Egypt.

Of course, this is assuming Saladin owns Turkey. If Greece does, all the better. If Russia *somehow* does, the territory's not worth getting on the wrong side of a super power. If Persia does, somehow, don't even bother. Expand southward.

I'm convinced any game is winnable, even this one. Just take down Egypt (You don't even need to destroy them. Just cripple them.), and only get involved in war if it gives you some good production. Easy.

>_>

<_<

EDIT: Just remember, don't war for the sake of war. A badly planned war would come out worse for you than the enemy.

I'd try to land on Louis' new land.

Y'know what, Dutchfire? That's a great idea. We can't found a new city on Iberia (otherwise, believe me, Isabella would have done it). But I should be looking at Louis' taking Madrid as an opportunity! It's now easier to conquer than ever! Louis is one of the few heathens left on the map, so he doesn't have much in the way of friends, and Madrid is completely without cultural defense right now! And if Paris were to fall (whether by my hand or someone else's), its impact on Madrid would reset to zero!

I think it's time to build a "coalition of the willing."

Think Byblos is bad? Look at Ahkneten.



Oh and i am in agreement about Louis+Mansa= dead Louis! WOOOOO!

All right. Played the round tonight, I'll post it tomorrow. Lemme just say, it feels good to be back in the saddle