King of the World #4: Mansa Musa

Finally caught up. Nice to see this game wasn't the pushover the last game was.

RE another game: I surely don't want to see JC, I'd rather see saladin or cyrus. I find an american civ would be quite boring.

How much does a declaration of war cost (in terms of diplomatic points)? 6, right?

Why not make peace with the Pharaoh, and turn around and hit Catherine hard?

Paris is within reach, so move your troops over and take it. It has good land and could help with a Space Race. The AP will take care of the war anyways, and you're not violating any moral codes since Catherine's a backstabbing whore anyways...

Normally, a declaration of war is -3.

If I'm not mistaken Catherine owns at least half of the world. Mansa Musa isn't exactly a military powerhouse at the moment.

Joshua368 said:

If I'm not mistaken Catherine owns at least half of the world. Mansa Musa isn't exactly a military powerhouse at the moment.

Click to expand...

True. But it's not like war is going to be long or painful. Just a surgical strike to take Paris, and that's it. Nothing further. Paris can be a launching ground for an attack on England, and the AP will (probably) stop the war before it goes anywhere.

Since the declaration of war is -3, Catherine will go from Friendly to Pleased at worst. That can be easily be rectified by gifting her gold or something. You won't get any diplomatic demerits with her vassals.

Uh... Catherine's the Pope. She's not going to pull the plug on the war if a) I take away one of her conquests and b) I'm looking juicy, myself.

I'm currently in the midst of playing the next round, checking to see if Mining Inc is worth my time. I've never really messed with Corporations before....

Well okay, so that's good and all, but looking at the world map, buddhism doesn't seem very well spread, most of the world is hindu. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there may be a dozen buddhist cities tops. Probably won't be worth the effort...

edit: missed neal's post

A relatively peaceful round, in which we restored our population, restored our good name on the world stage, and continued the task of bending South America to our collective wills.

We started out by crushing Roosevelt's "invasion force" (Remember the Crossbow and the two Trebuchets? Yeah, them).



There was an Apostolic vote to assign the Chinese city of Ning-hsia to the Mongols. Hey, Qin is a player, while Genghis is an also-ran. Anything that tilts the balance of power Mongolia's way is fine by me. The motion passed. A similar vote for another Chinese city happened later, which Qin Shi Huang defied.

In 1765, we founded our third and fourth South American cities (both coastal, this time!):





These were quite the economic drains, at least at first, but after a while I went through our fellow leaders and reworked some deals, getting cash for resources and for old techs.

Before that could happen, though, I had to buy off the Americans:



... 15 gold? What are you, Dr. Evil? Sure, fine. Consider that your tip.

Soon, with Courthouses popping up across the empire and even the occasional Jail and Security Bureau, I was finally able to assign real Espionage points:



Our expeditionary force, fresh off scattering the expeditionary force of our pal Roosevelt, found one of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold:



Not much gold, but it saved me a Settler and scored three Workers, so it was good enough.

Soon enough, the Priests running in Timbuktu paid off, birthing us a Great Prophet. He quickly caught a boat to Madrid and built what should have been there all along:



We earned another Great Prophet in Memphis, who founded the Taoist shrine. So both of those religions are currently being spread by cities with nothing better to do.

Here, in the early 19th century, I shined up my crown, made my mustache extra greasy and went glad-handing:













I also signed Defensive Pacts with both Catherine and Saladin (To prevent some jerk- I'm lookin' at you, Asoka and Roosevelt- from crashing our rebulding round) and got a bargain on Roman relations:



In South America, meanwhile, veterans of the Egyptian War were instrumental in pacifying the countryside:





No workers, but a complimentary Mint left by the maid.

We also received fantastic news in Awlil (remember? The city that should have been coastal?):



32 gold? For 3 population!? That's what I call a bargain.

Our Defensive Pact buddy Saladin decided to be kind of a jerk:



I guess it's a good thing that he's wasting EPs, but that's still a rotten thing to do.

Oh, and the astute observer will note that I'm down from a four-digit treasury to a two-. Yeah, I upgraded all of our Macemen to Infantry. Gave us quite a boost to the old power rating:



And here's the rest of the boring stuff:









Troops are converging on Bactrian as we speak.

So, as you can see, we are once again a genuine world power. Now might be the time to make another try at Thebes, or we could stay the course and trust in what we have to win us victory. Another war would likely erase much of our short-term gains, but, long-term, it could be worth it. Though there's not much long-term left at this point.

Oh, and we have a Great Engineer that can found Mining Inc. for us. Should I?

Thoughts?

How many cities does Hapshepsut have left? Two? How is she still teching so fast, did she just break free from Asoka?

She isn't directly tied to anyone... you might want to take her out in a quick strike just to get rid of the threat. Asoka's fall enough away so that you could probably finish the job before his army can. At any rate, you'd have to do it before she gets tanks and planes. Not a major war, just something quick and deadly if you think it'd be worth removing the threat. Doesn't solve the serious problem of Asoka... hopefully you can beat him to space.

You are going to space, right? I don't really see many other options... there's no way you could beat Catherine's vassal armies diplomatically, or otherwise. If you are going space, I'd found mining inc for the production boost, unless you're really low on metals.

Unless you plan on using state property and a workshop/watermill spam in south America to get the production you need for a space ship, I'd definitely found Mining Inc.

South American cities don't need culture really, since you're not competing with any AI for the land. Just build culture to get the first border pop and then focus on health and production modifiers. They can build wealth/research when they run out of those. There's probably not long enough for science/wealth multipliers to pay-off over there unless you go cottage-crazy.

I'd focus on getting FP finished ASAP (flip into US for a few turns to rush-buy it if you've got enough happiness) as with that many cities colony maintenance will really be dragging your economy down at the moment.

Neal, I would also recommend using an option ingame (via the OPTIONS tab) that shows how many turns left a city has to build something in parenthesis, since it makes (at least the viewer's) job easier to judge how much production you have.

Way to role-play Mansa Musa's tech-whoring ... looks like things are really back on track. Get 2-3 watermill/workshop cities up in the amazon, and you will have the production for a space race win.

As for war, I think you can win without it. But what are Hatty's defenses like in Thebes? And how much infrastructure are you lacking in your top cities currently? If you don't have key buildings waiting when you finish the levees, and her defenses can be breached with infantry/cannons, I say go for it (just Thebes, then sue for peace).

A quick round, but an eventful one. We finally got Hattie off our backs for good.

We started out by transitioning to a war economy (though not war civics):



And we dedicated 90% of those new Espionage points to our Egyptian neighbors.

Here you can also see that Thebes, while well-defended, was not quite unassailable. It was some distance away, allowing for inevitable reinforcement, but such is life.

In 1842, after rounds of rushing cannons and building up an espionage nest egg, I finally felt as if we were ready to let slip the dogs of war:





Man, look at her face. She knows what's coming.

Never ones to leave well enough alone, those meddlesome Americans decided to jump in:



Hmph. So now I had a two-front war. At the very least, I wouldn't be able to focus my South American economy solely on infrastructure.

This next screenshot shows a few things:



Firstly, I finally founded my Moai city on what I believe is supposed to be the Falklands. The whales make it worthwhile, I think. Secondly, Pope Cathy I, while not going so far as to declare a Crusade, at least agrees that Roosevelt is no good. Finally, yes, Hattie did send a few piddly stacks against my cities (An Infantry here, a Cavalry-Trebuchet stack there...).

In 1848, a singer-songwriter in Djenne commemorated our many great battles:



"Cause I'm proud to be a Malinesian,
Where at least I know I'm free!
And I won't forget the Skirmishers who died,
To give that right to me!"

And somehow Roosevelt managed to sneak an odd little force into Africa:



... Where did he even get Elephants?

That was quickly dispatched, but more than a little disturbing.

With my stack in place, it was time to make the magic happen:



And, of course, the game hates me, so she failed. I know this by now, though, and had a backup in place:



Meanwhile, in South America, the Americans blithered something about a "Monroe Doctrine" and backed it up with Macemen!



Anyway, in the real theater of war, the Cannons suicided to Collateral Damage the defenders, and my City Raider Infantry knocked out the stronger ones. On turn two, reinforcements showed up and Thebes' cultural defense reappeared, but...







They weren't enough.

And Hattie waved the white flag:



Which is all I'd really wanted, anyway.

So, with that, things returned to normal:





I even got that Super Medic:



So here's the world:







Great success! So now, I guess, the question is, do we crush Washington for its temerity? Or just shoot for the stars?

You can always send a punitive expedition and make some damage, but a full fledged ocupation of Roosevelt territory may not pay up in the remaining 200 turns of game....

Good to see you captured that barb city in Argentina. if it is where it think it is, it will be a major settler/worker pump for the S. American development due to the major food output

Well done, Neal. Now you just need to get the Central Amazon cleared and watermilled/workshopped, and the space win will be yours. If the Incan culture is a problem, you probably can raze or capture their cities with little difficulty. I think a war against the Americans, as r_rolo says, would just be punitive at this point.

I don't know about the value of claiming the Central Amazon, myself. I think we have plenty of land along the coast, and one or two cities just wouldn't be worth launching an assault on the combined forces of the Inca and the surprisingly mild Aztecs (I think Monty's actually gone Free Religion!), not to mention the effort of clearing all that jungle. Maybe I'm just being lazy, but all that investment just doesn't seem like it's going to pay off this late in the game.

One thing I will say, I think we're done sending techs to Catherine. She is now officially The Competition (tm).

It still pays..... if you settle the 20 riverside grassland site, you'll get the most profitable/productive city in the world ( depending of cottages or watermills aproach )

Man, what did you do to tick off Roosevelt so bad?

As everyone's saying a naval assault on Roosevelt at this point in the game wouldn't be worthwhile. He's no threat. Of course you will have to have revenge at some point... probably nuke him back to the stone age one turn before your space ship lands, that's always fun against jerks like him.

Whow, I had quite a lot to read up on.
Good to see you took this game into your own hands through military force.

I think a space race is your best option. Maybe you can try to stir up some wars between the bigger players?

so, whens the next update coming up?