King of the World #12: Sitting Bull

Some remarks to an essentially good round:

1. IMHO you let Pacal to soon off the hook. You should have taken his two juicy cities on the NE coast of South America. That would have aided your Navy much, plus they will have oil sooner or later (if I remember right). Also, Pacal will never break free from Vassalage himself. There would be a chance if he would colonize Australia (which he did in my games) - but then he would need your naval tech.

2. Yeah, the other posters were right. You should have spent all your accumulated SpyPoints on Pacal and stole AH and Stuff. Trading it was a waste.

3. Where to begin the Invasion: It is tempting to Attack Aachen. HRE has only 3 cities, and juicy ones by the way. Aachen is close to the sea. Aachen has the buddhist shrine. War against HRE could be short, since he ain't big. But you just can't pull that stunt off. Here's why: Even if you *can* conquer Aachen and hold it or even march on to Prague etc. without beeing pushed back by HRE & the merry buddhist block (slim chance): The city will culture-flip like it ain't no thing. Too many other and different and influantial cities push borders against it. It won't work.
What *could* work is Amsterdam. It could be underdefended (maybe away from continental hot-spots), it can be isolated from reinforcements by your landing party, it has a shrine. Only Utrecht really pushes against it with culture and that is irrelevant since it's your enemies city. War can be short with only Utrecht and The Hague to conquer. Your enemy is already divided by water and The Hague could be your base for the Invasion of the British Isles and Ireland.
Divide and Conquer. Chew the jewish block up bite after bite with short, hard wars against the small nations. Use Shrine to let enemies fuel your eco.

So Holland it is I say. Rename city to New Amsterdam

The city will culture-flip like it ain't no thing.

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Conquered cities don't flip, although they may revolt and be completely useless.

Lone Wolf said:

Conquered cities don't flip, although they may revolt and be completely useless.

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Wrong. Conquered cities don't flip ( you have not checked the the box in the options saying otherwise OFC ) to the previous owner .They can, and will, flip to other players if there is enough cultural pressure. And we all know how Europe is in this map in terms of culture :/

My bad.

You have to watch out if you decide to take on Charlie for the Buddhist Holy City. Looks like he's a vassal to Justinian so you'd have to fight with him on the continent as well. He'll surely get Guilds soon and have Cataphracts running around.

Build wealth in enough cities to run at 100% science, then build research in the remaining cities.

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah I'm a little trigger-happy when it comes to tech trades. In my defense, let me just say that on the Earth map, you have so many potential trading partners that one or two of them are bound to be willing to ignore WFYABTA, whether due to Friendliness or simple memory decay. That said, you're right. Kids, don't try this at home. I'm an idiot.

Regarding Pacal, foreign Caravels are starting to do laps in the Caribbean, so Pacal is no longer the delightfully isolated little brother he used to be. And I learned in the Darius game just how much of a mistake going for those last few cities can be. The last thing I needed was for Pacal to vassalize to Hannibal or something like that. So when he was willing to kiss the ring, I let him.

So what should the big picture plan be at this point? I'm thinking we trade for Printing Press from Boudica, then push the economy all-out to grab Liberalism. As the free tech, we take Astronomy, then build Galleons and hit up the Economics line to really kick things into high gear. This naturally leads us to Replacable Parts and Rifling, rather than the Chemistry-Steel line. But that's just as well, as we have a ton and a half of Dog Soldiers and even a few Macemen milling about the empire. We upgrade those to CR Riflemen, load them (along with some Trebuchets) onto our Galleons, and voila! We have a fearsome invasion force ready to put a hurting on... someone. I still haven't figured out who, yet. I'm thinking Joao. We should probably decide that sooner rather than later so that I can focus the Espionage.

So what do you think?

we have a ton and a half of Dog Soldiers and even a few Macemen milling about the empire. We upgrade those to CR Riflemen, load them (along with some Trebuchets) onto our Galleons, and voila!

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Ummm... I'd go for a draft army, except for a few CR maces. Dogs > rifles will cost you an arm and a leg. You should be able to trade for nationalism.

Neal said:

We have a fearsome invasion force ready to put a hurting on... someone. I still haven't figured out who, yet. I'm thinking Joao. We should probably decide that sooner rather than later so that I can focus the Espionage.

So what do you think?

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Rather than taking on the entire AP Buddhist block which Joao is part of, what about the Jewish Boudica and WvO? You can first invade Ireland and Britain rather than mainland europe. Then do an Overlord invasion to take out the remnants of the Dutch and Celts.

If you want to keep some of those cities, you better research Communism (for the SP civic) ASAP...

hey neal, just a quick question. is there a way to play this scenario with other players on the map (IE not the direct download link in the first post), In your last KotW game you posted the download to the actual scenario, so we could play with the other leaders in that game. did you do that for this one?

Yeah, the scenario is right here.

Why not tech trade with Pacal? He's friendly and your vassal. He should at least be able to defend himself... right? And if he can colonize some islands instead of your enemies so much the better. Plus more targets for your enemies during the future wars.

It would be nice to grab another holy shrine early in the reverse colonization.

Superfun read!

Sitting Bull was on the precipice of winning the Liberalism race, which would surely set off a new age of scientific inquiry, which might even bring the secrets of Astronomy to American shores. The trouble was, the Byzantines and Babylonians were just as close, so the empire would have to dedicate almost all its resources to eking out that extra turn or two.

He began with a few dirty trades:



These ignored his advisors' preference for "home-grown" technology, but Printing Press would allow the Villages and Towns to spread their knowledge more quickly, and Guilds would allow gold-boosting Grocers around the empire, most especially in the financial center of Tenochtitlan. Drama and Horseback Riding were "throw-ins," balancing out deals that would otherwise be overly lopsided. Still, the ability to build Theaters would help in the culture wars with Pacal in Central America, and Horseback Riding would allow us to train Elephants and, later, Knights and Cavalry.

In 1180, after decades of deficit research and an artificial inflation of the Scientist Caste (but no cities wasting hammers on Gold or Research), Sitting Bull was victorious!



Nationalism was tempting, with its promise of the Taj Mahal and the fairly widespread knowledge of Astronomy in the Old World, but in order to be able to compete, Sitting Bull would need intercontinental Trade Routes. Astronomy it was. The immediate effects were, truth be told, fairly subtle, but the ability to trade Corn in rich European markets helped quite a bit.

With the benefits of intercontinental trade realized, the merchants of Islander and Seahawk brought a daring business proposal to Sitting Bull:



He asked for time to consider it, and called a meeting with his advisors. Would such an undertaking be worthwhile? More coastal cities would need to be founded, and the additional four Caravels would be Hammers wasted. If the rewards were great, though...

Liberalism had one more benefit. Sitting Bull was able to trade it to the cantankerous Dutch in exchange for Banking and Theology:



Theology could be used to justify the creation of a Theocratic state, with soldiers, whipped into a religious frenzy, sacrificing everything to bring war to the unbelievers. And Banking would not only further improve the revenue of Tenochtitlan, but it would also allow our Scientists to expand the concept into a larger view of Economics, which could have major implications for the empire, from Customs Houses and Free Market supercharging our Trade Routes to a Great Merchant with any number of uses.

Sitting Bull also became involved in his first Old World brushfire war:



Suryavarman was a total outcast in the international community. Sitting Bull was glad to join the Coalition of the Willing in exchange for a handful of Diplomacy points.

Old World Settlers also made an appearance:



Hannibal was welcome to that frost-bitten hell. The Dog Soldiers retreated from their posts, returning to the warm cities of Islander and Brave.

Finally, in 1240, Native American Scientists made a breakthrough in the field of Economics, spawning a Great Merchant in Cahokia just as a Great Scientist was born in Tenochtitlan:



And that's where I decided to end the round.

I'm awfully tempted to burn the two on a Golden Age to enact some more Civics changes:



Free Speech and Free Market are no-brainers, and a Religious change would also be helpful. Which one, I don't know (Theocracy to get our armies pumping? Pacifism to snag a few more Great People? Free Religion to make friends abroad?), so I'll leave that up to the discussion.

Here's a look at the always-fun Diplomacy web:



As you can see, Sury is not exactly well-liked.

As my Espionage Points accumulate abroad, we can finally start seeing where we stack up in terms of Power:



Better than I'd expected. Of course, once we have access to Rifling, we should make a big jump.

Finally, the Tech Screen:



It wasn't that long ago that we were woefully behind in the tech race. I think we're doing okay at this point.

So... I think the big question is whether a second Golden Age this early on would be prudent. I'm leaning towards yes, if only because of the major Civics changes available to us. Secondly, is the Harbormaster quest worth doing? And finally, I'm currently set to go Replacable Parts-Gunpowder (either through research or trade)-Rifling. If this is a bad plan, now's the time to speak up. This was a short round, but I figured I should check in.

The save:

According to the relevant thread we have

Quest4:
Harbormaster
Prereq: COMPASS AND Map has at least 40% water tiles
Obsolete: STEAM_POWER or STEEL or SCIENTIFIC_METHOD or ARTILLERY
Active/Weight: 25/500
Aim:
Build default number of players for this world size harbors (7 for standard) AND half that number +1 caravels (4 for standard)
Result:
1.All Naval Units gain the Combat 1 promotion
2.All harbors gain +1 gold
3.All Naval Units gain the Navigation 1 promotion

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In this game you will be building a lot of ships and either promotion would be useful. Plus you will want to build harbours and customs houses for the extra trade money. You have astronomy and so those routes will become very valuable and will last the whole game. In your position I would go for it.

As for the civics, I would go FS, FM and FR.

Tech screen != Power chart

Ack! Fixed

Quick advices:
- Focus EP on Hannibal and steal from him. He was kind enough to give you a nice spy theft city, after all
-You can probably get Gunpowder from Willem. Besides that, it looks like there is not much of trades you can do now
-Get a Prophet. The lack of shrined holy cities in this game is mind boggling ( probably because someone got Oracle and Henge ). Aachen, that is the holy city of the budhists ( 30% of the world pop ) is still unshrinned
-The quest is worthy, given that you are planning intercontinental warfare. Having the viking UB benefits is nothing to shun about, for a example
-Besides Justinian, Hammurabi and Wang, no one is even breakfast for you. Get a nice city with enough food, make the Globe, draft some nice rifles and pound europe ( i think that the earlier suggestion of going to the British islands first is a good one ).

I'd say yes to the golden age since you have the civic changes to make.

I wouldn't do the harbormaster quest but see how it's not a bad idea it's just not me.

I like your tech plan.

As stated I'd direct all espionage to Hannibal to steal techs.

How about a couple of scouts in Europe to keep up to date for the invasion.

Overall Ireland/England/Europe seems just as good as other possibilities for invasion.

Let's get a foothold in the old world asap. If a major war breaks out I'd rather them attack a foothold than the fatherland.

I also support going for that Golden Age.