The Emperor Masters' Challenge 3 (on Warlords)

I really can't say how soon we are going to attack or whether we can get Saladin to join us. All this have to be decided as we play along. As it is, I don't know how long we need to get the copper online and how long copper city needs before it can start producing units at a decent pace or when Washington can join in.

If we are suddenly attacked before we can get copper online, at least we build/whip chariots as an emergency measure. It's unlikely that Brennus or Saladin would invade with more than several archers/axes/chariots anytime soon.

Anyway, I might be able to play further tonight.

IMHO you need to build a garrison then another settler ASAP (having whipped so hard, makes building a settler right away a not so good idea : no growth)

There's still unhappines right now so we can't grow to next size yet.

Aelf,

played a shadow game. being not philo you are right about the ge points, but the merchants would be a HUGE boon in the long run and fit into a "trade" strategy because of the several thousand gold they can pull in during a single run.

but given your opinion of great people, lets save this particular discussion for the next game?? perhaps use it to abuse the GP system no?

NaZ

By the way, running a parallel game I was in the same situation of stealing the worker (exactly same position). Well, I did, and an archer appeared form a 'hidden road' SE of the worker and killed my warr/worker couple.
And, what is worse, and I don't know if it has something to do with being at war, but I imagine it does: by 2600b, Saladin had settled a city, not like in this game on the E, but 1 tile WEST of marble, so he'closer to my empire. Then, forget about marble.
So, the consequences of sealing the woker were:
- Lost the worker and an additional warrior
- Lost the marble
- Gained an enemy

In general, I think that we should try to be peaceful until we have our wonders and some units to mess around with, and I think we can get units and build our wonders and expand slightly, all at the same time. The city with the pigs had two hills, right? That city and possibly the location immediately south of WA could be early unit production cities since they have the food to support mines right off the bat. I'm too lazy to scroll back and look at the pics but from what I remember the copper city doesn't have great food resources so it would take some time to be anything but a resource city. If we churn out a good amount of axemen/chariots/archers/what-have-you, the AI probably won't just decide to randomly declare war and we can declare it at our leisure once we have a decent stack. I agree with the general consensus here and certainly don't think one worker is worth starting a war over.

Looking forward to the next update, keep up the good work aelf! This "group consensus" style is interesting.

I've played the third round. I'll post the update tonight when I get home.

Glad to know that we didn't miss out on much by not snagging that worker


EDIT: My plans have been cancelled/postponed, so I may be posting the update soon.

Round 3: 1560BC - 400BC

Quite a long round this time. Picking up from where we left the game, I decided, as agreed, to research Sailing next so that we could build the Great Lighthouse asap.

Then, prompted by Cabert's comment, I looked at Washington to see if there's anything that we could do better with its build. It was still unhappy, so it certainly couldn't grow its whipped population back yet. But I decided to grow the city's pop to the point of increase, so that we could grow it back immediately when the unhappines wore off:



We had a forest regrow near Washington (the one NE of the corn):



That's a good sign to whip the Great Lighthouse in the capital

Shortly after chopping a monument in New York, Saladin's border did expand and claim the marble:



I guess he beat us to it. This meant war... a culture war. I decided to pick up Writing next so that we could chop for a library in New York asap and fight for control of the marble.

In 1000 BC (a nice year, isn't it? ), copper city was finally founded:



Washington was building a worker for it in between receiving chops for the lighthouse/Great Lighthouse:



And we finally got the pigs pastured in New York:



The city would grow and build its barracks in 4 turns. Writing would be discovered in 5. I thought, why not get Writing completed in 4 turns as well so that New York could start on a library immediately? So I went to Washington and made some adjustments:



Now things would be in perfect timing. The arrangement in Washington would only remain as long as it took to get Writing researched in 4 turns from this date.

Anyway, we got a good look at the Celtic homeland after we signed Open Borders with Brennus:



His capital seemed... under-developed. When our scout went NW to explore further, it was revealed that there was no quarry on the marble. Someone's been having problems with barbs, eh? I'm glad we built the Great Wall instead of him.

Back to the domestic scene, with one or two chops, Washington didn't need many turns to build the Great Lighthouse, even while it was still focusing on growth:



All hail Industrious! The plan would be the same as that of the Great Wall. Within several turns, aided by another chop or two, Washington would be grown to next size and then whip two pop (including the unhappy one) immediately to complete the wonder.

By the way, after Writing, I happily began researching Pottery for cottages. Fortunately, one turn later, I remembered that we needed Polytheism for the ToA and promptly made the change.

The time came to prepare for the Great Whip once more:



Our early-game plans were falling into place. All that remained was to build the ToA with a GE.

[to be continued in the next post...]

G'day Aelf

I have been lurking for a while now and it's time to come out. First, thanks for doing these great threads. Second, the only problem with building the GL in Washington is you risk popping a GM instead of a GE. Odds are in your favour so let's keep fingers crossed.

[continued from previous post]

And so we built the Great Lighthouse in Washington:



I love this wonder movie. I even found myself motivated to load one turn before that just to watch the movie again Maybe it's the nice dancing flame that blazes on the tower at dusk. Ooo, nice fire...

And, thanks to the wonder, we were quite close to generating our GE for the ToA:



That's only 5 turns away. There's the small chance of a merchant appearing, but I'm hoping the RNG wouldn't be mean to us...

After whipping the library, New York was on the point of growing into unhappiness:



Good time to whip an axe. I think it should be the policy in New York for some time to come: Grow beyond max size after unhappiness wears off and whip another axe/spear while building others conventionally. That way, it can contribute significantly to creating a sizeable army within a relatively short time.

And a GE was indeed born in Washington Time to build the ToA:



Take a look at the trade routes we have in Washington alone. They were increased by the Great Lighthouse once our worker at New York connected us to Arabia. If you look at the previous screenshot, we were running at 60% science. In this screenshot, we were running at 80%. A testament to the early game potential of the trade route economy! Anyway, for comparison, take a look at the trade route values after we had the ToA up.

And...



The first time I've built this wonder. I like the background music in the video.

The trade route values went up...



By more than double! If we were already reaping rewards this early, think of what we could be getting later.

Meanwhile, Saladin had converted to Judaism, Brennus' current state religion (what's wrong with him? ). Judaism spread to New York, and after thinking for a while, I adopted it. It seemed increasingly unlikely that Saladin would found his own religion soon. Why risk getting attacked by the AIs in the meantime? It may turn out that we are going to attack Saladin first, anyway. He built a city on one of our prospected sites (south of Washington), and evidently he has a Madrassa (which is +4 culture and has caused his borders to expand again!) in the city SE of New York so we can't win the culture war. He's definitely much more annoying than Brennus now.

Anyway, this is about where I stopped playing, after researching the rest of Pottery (whose research time was cut by half thanks to our trade routes). What shall we research next? Alphabet is tempting for tech trading before we go to war with somebody and hence eliminate further possibilities of trade with that civ. Or we could research IW for iron. Or Maths and head towards Construction (but our neighbours should already have it by now, so we can trade for it instead).

Here are the maps of the continent (excluding parts of our land) that our scout managed to draw before he died to a barb:





As you can see, the Arabs are beginning to encroach on our borders and space is getting limited. I think there's only one viable site that we can settle now:



Coastal, beside a river and claims the stone and wines. Should we build a settler and send him there, or just go to war with a neighbour for expansion? And which neighbour? If we build a large enough army quickly, maybe we can take Mecca and the Arab cities west of it before Saladin gets longbowmen.

Any thoughts?

I can Hear the sound of a The Horn of War Echo-ing in the future lol

Brennus is settling his cities quite strangely... is he trying to cut off Saladin to the unclaimed land to the north or is he settler spamming???

Dam Washington's pumping out Culture at 20CP per turn You'll probably the most cultured Civ in the game by now LOL. It's also almost expanding to it's 4th ring what are the chances of it culture flipping Camiledunum???

It has stone so you could give it a go, besides it's coastal so bringing in thebig cash. Too bad Saladin didn;t turned out to be the ally, but the opponent. Problem is he is protective and is building up culture. It's gonna cost a whole lot of axes to capture those 2 city's. Is it worth it? You need a war for sure, cause you need breathing space. Can you scout Saladin's primary city's? I am still undecided to mass kamikaze axes or wait for swords and cats. Brennus is building walls being his UB. Those city's are also hard to take without cats.

You would kill for some warchariots with flanking against Saladin huh

I think it's time to count the amount of defenders and the amount of axes needed. Now it's actualy a pity all the land is covered and barbs are prob. rare. We could use the fast XP being charimatic. Thinking about it I am leaning towards a fast axe attack. You prob. can't win the whole war, but might take 2 city's. Normally I would wait I think, but if he got longbows (and he prob. beelines to it, making a gamble for christianity on the way) we are screwed. The coastal/trade strategy seems to work out well, but you need more city's before moving on and Saladin has a few nice coastal city's.

kniteowl said:

Dam Washington's pumping out Culture at 20CP per turn You'll probably the most cultured Civ in the game by now LOL. It's also almost expanding to it's 4th ring what are the chances of it culture flipping Camiledunum???

Click to expand...

Yes, I think it will flip for sure. No city can beat the culture pressing of a capital (with wonders).

Well, since you seem to want to go to war against Saladin maybe researching IW and building a few Swords would help. You could try researching the Alphabet after you start the war so that you could extort some techs from him when you make peace. But yeah, that's likely going to make you lose trading opportunities with Brennus too because you're attacking his friend... Waiting for both Alphabet and IW might be a little too long.

what do you think of the colossus?

For war, my guess is construction. You lose the culture war = his culture is strong!
Be it from trade or research, you need construction. And CoL soon.

Protective is going to be tough to crack, but I think we can at least take 2 cities or take 1 and raze 1 with 10-12 axes that are reinforced with a few more along the way. If we wait till cats, Saladin will probably have longbows already.

Brennus is expanding a lot, but his cities didn't seem to be developed much the last time we checked. I think Saladin looks like a very attractive target indeed. I guess enough wonder-building and let's get down to the most vital business of the state - war.

aelf said:

Brennus is expanding a lot, but his cities didn't seem to be developed much the last time we checked. I think Saladin looks like a very attractive target indeed. I guess enough wonder-building and let's get down to the most vital business of the state - war.

Click to expand...

If Sally's to be the target (and the way the game's developing, it looks like he has to be), I'd be inclined to send my axes against Damascus first (I assume that's the city in the fog east of New York) and then press straight on to Mecca. If you can raze/capture both of those, he'll basically be finished as a threat in this game.

I think the key to this war is getting it finished as quickly as possible before Brennus gets himself involved. Axes vs protective archers won't be pretty, but if you outnumber the defenders 3:1 you should be OK. Since you're charismatic, promotions are cheaper and closer, which could be beneficial. Is it worth sending a few axes up the combat 1 => cover promotion path rather than heading for CR1 and 2 initially?

patagonia said:

Since you're charismatic, promotions are cheaper and closer, which could be beneficial. Is it worth sending a few axes up the combat 1 => cover promotion path rather than heading for CR1 and 2 initially?

Click to expand...

Where did you guys get the idea that Roosevelt is Charismatic? voek mentioned that too.

industrious and organized is good too
just build 4 axes per archer

aelf said:

Where did you guys get the idea that Roosevelt is Charismatic? voek mentioned that too.

Click to expand...

Oops

Should have known you weren't charismatic by the happy cap.

I was just going on what voek said