The Emperor Masters' Challenge 4 (Warlords v.208)

aelf said:

I was actually This week has been quite crazy. Be content that I managed to play 2 rounds!

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It's terribly inconvenient, that bodily requirement of 6-8 hours per. You'd think they'd have found a cure for that by now.

Playing computer games should recharge you 2x as good as sleep imo

Round 4: 50BC - 520AD

Doing these updates certainly do not recharge me

Following the recommendations made by a few of you, I decided to still go for lightbulbing Philosophy. We should, therefore, research Drama next. However, one of you mentioned that the alternative route through CoL seems better, and I agree with that. It's a more useful tech, especially since we're likely to go to war and capture some cities soon. To research CoL, however, we needed Priesthood. Researching it ourselves would waste a few turns, so I checked if we could trade for it and start on CoL immediately. I came up with this deal:



Seems like a fair deal to me. We would also be able to hook up the spice and the dye, giving our cities a happiness boost. The only downside is giving Peter access to catapults. But he's likely to research Construction on his own soon anyway. Napoleon already had the tech, so definitely it's not exclusive. There's also the chance that Napoleon might trade it to him.

We explored around the orange site with one of our chariots and discovered Saladin's settler sneaking about:



Looks like the site is some hot real estate. If Saladin settled around there, we would have problems expanding into the area without declaring war on him.

Anyway, when I could no longer keep Seoul below the happiness limit, I whipped away 2 pop to speed up the completion of the Great Library by a few turns. And thus our first wonder in this game was built:



On the same turn, we built the city on the dye:



The most powerful tile it could work was the cow pasture, but Seoul needed to work it, so our little city here had to work the elephant camp. Its first build was a library (changed from the workboat after I took the screenshot) to help expand its borders so that it could work the fish. We would chop to speed it up. It would also help provide a cultural link to the orange site city if and when we decide to settle the latter.

That turn, we also made a profitable tech trade with Saladin:



Literature loses half its value after the Great Library is built. I suspect the AI would think so too, at least to a certain extent. Getting Monotheism and some gold for it at this point was certainly a good deal.

Then I sold Monotheism to Peter for some gold:



Not a lot of money, but I have no doubt the Russian would get it himself soon. Might as well get what we could. And this tech poses little danger to us in the hands of a soon-to-be enemy.

By the way, Saladin seemed to be aiming for a spot around the site we settled instead of the orange site, since his settler went in the direction of the former and then turned back. So, for now, there would be no obvious problem with the Arabs. We can still stick to our largely peaceful aims

After CoL, we researched Meditation (IIRC, in only 1 turn) so that we could lightbulb Philosophy. And we sold the cheap tech to Napoleon for a tidy sum:



This would help us keep our research rate high for the next tech - the powerful CS, on the path to Education and Liberalism.

Several turns later, we got our next GS. Guess what, Taoism had not been founded yet. What luck! You know what we did with the GS:



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

aelf said:

to be continued in the next post...

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Do you know what he's doing there? That's like a cliffhanger right there. That's like a cliffhanger of a cliffhanger.

(A cookie for the first to get the reference, maybe 2 cookies with how I can't seem to remember it right.)

I love how it's 425AD and we haven't attacked anyone yet. For so long I would beat myself up about not having done enough warring by this time, yet after reading through these EMCs I have learned that it is definitely possible to win, even domination, without being war-crazy prior to 1AD. It's helped my games a lot and I no longer quit games like this, in fact I now often win them

[continued from previous post]

Taoism was founded in Pusan to the north:



The unhappiness there must have produced a new brand of philosophy. You know, with people disatisfied with life and all On a more serious note, this was quite a wonderful development. That city is surrounded by coast and riverside grassland. With the Taoist shrine in that city as well, it would be a prime spot for the Wall Street.

Anyway, Pusan whipped the courthouse on that turn and, with new justice being dispensed, discontent promptly disappeared.

With Philosophy and Taoism in the bag, I felt that it was safe to trade CoL away now. Both Saladin and Peter were willing to exhange Currency for Col if we threw in 100 gold as well. I had to be careful not to supply Peter with money to upgrade his troops with and fund a war, though, so I made the deal with Saladin:



Then I traded with Napoleon:



I went to Peter last, hoping to get all his 200+ gold and HBR for CoL. Unfortunately, he was only willing to give us 40 gold with the tech. Well, a tech and some research time gained are better than 130 gold, so I accepted the deal. HBR would allow us to build stables to increase the effectiveness of the elephants we might build in the future (we had already built the elephants that we would initially use against Peter).

Anyway, you might notice that at the end of this round of trading, we recovered most of the gold we paid to Saladin for Currency.

We delayed the switch to Hereditary Rule since CS and Bureaucracy were only a few turns away and we could switch to both of them at the same time. This would reduce anarchy time and allow us to run Bureaucracy as early as possible. The civic is not as good on the new patch due to higher upkeep, but I believe it remains a powerful one, especially with a high commerce capital.

And the time came for the switch:



The difference in our income is appreciable and the projected research time for Paper is slashed. Burecaucracy does not disappoint.

With that, the round ended.

Our stack is right outside Peter's borders, ready to invade:



And we'd get a free worker. By the way, Saladin's worker over there is busy helping us get connected to Russian territory. What's up with that?

The tech situation:



We have CS and Philosophy on everyone except Peter, who has CS. Don't worry about Russian macemen, though. He doesn't even have Metal Casting. Neither do we, by the way. Should we trade with Saladin for it and some gold? We could also trade with Napelon for Feudalism and his gold.

The power graph:



I think Peter just mass upgraded to longbowmen (), hence his jump in power rating. We may need to build more Hwachas in the course of the war than I originally thought. Does the new AI really defend better? Not by a lot, that's for sure, but I don't think we can expect as much a cakewalk as pre-2.08 either.

The map of the known world:



Yes, I know what some of you are going to say. I should've done more exploring. I don't like to build spare units and initially we kept our chariots around to protect against barbs. When the barbs stopped appearing, I simply got into my offline habit of forgetting to explore and relying on maps from the AI later.

I can see our immediate objectives, though: the Moscow-Yekaterinburg-Petrograd triangle. This area is the closest and most useful to us. Moscow is an important objective as the loss of the capital would almost certainly deal a severe blow to an AI empire. Yekaterinburg has stone, which is useful for building the Angkor Wat, and St Petersburg has to be captured to remove heavy cultural pressure on the former two cities.

Yes, we are not heading towards the barb city near the orange site first. I think it's better to attack Peter as early as possible and with full strength. Anyway, we don't have a settler ready to settle that spot immediately, which is important to ensure that Saladin does not conveniently snag the area after the barb city has been destroyed.

Now we need to decide on which techs to pursue next. I'm thinking of Paper to open up Education, although we won't get a GS to lighbulb that tech for some time. We could certainly use some AI maps soon, though.

And, yes, it's 520 AD and we haven't declared war on anyone But we are about to. We'll see how that turns out in the next round.

Any thoughts?

Sisiutil said:

It's terribly inconvenient, that bodily requirement of 6-8 hours per. You'd think they'd have found a cure for that by now.

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You guys get 6 hours a night? I'm lucky when I get 4. Take my advice: Stay in college as long as you can.

Now to see aelf's work....

My limited advice:
1. The war with Peter 1st sounds good, especially with the jump he just made. See if you can scrounge more of his gold over the next couple turns or so, just in case we can keep him to archers if there are some unupped ones still lingering.
2. More hwachas =
3. I like the Education idea, IIRC the saewoon replaces the uni, right? In which case, we loves us some early saewoons.

What ever happened to 50 BC to 50 AD

your last round ends at 50 BC and this one starts at 50 AD

It actually starts at 50BC (look at the first screenshot). He just messed up the numbering in the title.

you are right, it is just confusing

Nice work this round Aelf, very nice.

I'd recommend making those trades for feudalism and MC (unless you think there's any chance of suing Peter for feudalism at some point?).

Yes, paper + education next. Even if we don't get liberalism first, the UB is too nice to pass up especially since I'm assuming we're going for space race victory?

P.S., where is that one Russian city (starts with a Y) in proximity to our orange super-city?

Masterful tech-trading there, by all means continue. And yes, Syndrome Zed (another Canuck, perchance?) is correct--Longbow opposition requires more Hwachas. Every war I get into, I always end up wishing I had more siege units.

As for exploring--all it would have taken was a Scout, which should be dirt-cheap by now. But you almost have paper, so never mind. Unless Saladin and Napoleon turn truculent on you and won't trade their maps.

What did you do with the free Toaist missionary? Use him yet? My recommendation would be to send him to Seoul so you can build a +10% research monastery there.

I'm surprised Buddhism hasn't spread to any of your cities yet! Maybe you need more roads and trade routes. It would be nice to run Organized Religion, but dangerous if you're not Buddhist.

Corrected the error with the date. Sorry about the confusion.

Sisiutil said:

As for exploring--all it would have taken was a Scout, which should be dirt-cheap by now.

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There are always other things to build, you know. Hwachas, elephants, libraries, barrackses, courthouses, Great Library... I could hardly catch my breath building all those necessary stuff.

Sisiutil said:

What did you do with the free Toaist missionary? Use him yet? My recommendation would be to send him to Seoul so you can build a +10% research monastery there.

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He's actually with the stack. You can see him in the screenshot. He will spread Taoism for some quick culture in one of the cities we are going to capture. Maybe Moscow.

Anyway, which tech should we trade away? Philosophy is more exclusive (since Peter already has CS) and allows the AI to research Liberalism, but CS might give Saladin and Napoleon access to maces soon (they might already have Machinery or are close to getting it). With us attacking their religious buddy, one of them may just decide to join in. Maces would give us a problem. Hwachas won't solve it entirely.

aelf said:

There are always other things to build, you know. Hwachas, elephants, libraries, barrackses, courthouses, Great Library... I could hardly catch my breath building all those necessary stuff.

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I'd automate a couple of Chariots for exploration when I start building stronger units and other stuff. This way your map gets more value at map trading, no need to add money/techs.

To be honest, I wouldn't worry that much about maces. Sure, they're dangerous, but not that much so, since your primary army is composed of elephants and hwacha. War elephants cost 60 shields (normal speed) and macemen 70 shields. Yet when fighting each other the only advantage of the macemen is that they get defensive bonuses. This means that if they're attacking your stack, you're ahead on a shield for shield basis. I know that on the higher diffs you need to avoid even trades like that, but I think you can deal with it on a short-term basis.

Incidentally, Hwacha are even better against macemen than you would think. They cost a mere 40 shields, i.e. almost half what a maceman costs, and unpromoted, are equal to macemen. Hwacha have a +50% vs macemen, since they're melee units. My combat math is a touch fuzzy, but I think this means the macemen get a -50% strength, so have a base strength of 4, worse than the hwacha's. And hwacha's are almost half the cost and have collateral damage. Awesome. Plus if the AI is defending in a city, I'd rather see macemen there than longbows, with the hwacha. Longbows get a +25% city defense, as well as a +1 first strike. The city defense bonus puts them equal to maces for defending cities, and the first strike and cheaper cost makes them more effective than maces. On top of that, your hwacha's have a bonus against the maces they don't get against longbows.

All told, I'd do my best to encourage your opponents to build macemen over longbows. Sure, they're scarier if you're on the defensive, or if you get ambushed by an enemy SOD in the open, but as long as you can attack first, the hwacha is the right answer. It's one fo the reasons I think the Koreans will emerge as one of the best, if not the best, new civs. Financial is outstanding, the Seowon is alright, Protective is nifty, and Hwachas are incredible.

Basically the civ has incredible synergy. Hwachas come perfectly placed for a slightly later offensive run, letting you take over semi-developed land from your opponents, and financial means you can go on the offense slightly faster (more tech). After you take a bit of land, you're set to build for the rest of the game; Seowons give you a slightly better university, and protective helps you protect your investment. Financial is just gravy.

The thing about the Seowon is that it doesn't have much flavor, nor does it serve a really unique role. I think this is primarily to tone Korea down. The Zulu, for instance, don't need courthouses as much, or the Persians as much happiness. The Seowon also doesn't give you much flavor, like the roman forums, for instance. Meh. It's not bad, it's just not that great.

But hwacha, on the other hand, I think remain viable all the way up until cannons, as offensive weapons. To be honest, I'm not even all that convinced that trebuchets are better than catapults anymore. They cost twice as many shields. I'd rather have 2 cats than 1 treb, to be honest. It's faster at knocking down enemy culture, and if I take the city in one turn, the promotions given aren't that big a deal. This is especially true if I can run either theocracy or vasselage, and get 5 xp cats out of the gate. at 3 xp, I can understand saving up for some CR 3 trebs, and protecting them. CR 2 vs CR 3 is a jump, but imo not as important as the higher effectiveness of more units.

Plus cats are more versatile; you can weaken an enemy SOD before it retakes a town, or if you have lots of them, you can stick them in a city to help simply outnumber the AI before you get reinforcements...basically I just like cats.

Especially now with castles and walls reducing bombard damage. It used to take 3 accuracy trebs, or 4 accuracy cats. Now it takes 6 accuracy trebs or 8 accuracy cats to knock down all the defenses in one turn. In both cases the cats are cheaper, but the actual number of hammers saved by using cats now is even more significant, and having the spare cats around can just be useful if you have to sacrifice them.

Andrei_V said:

This way your map gets more value at map trading, no need to add money/techs.

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Well, the AI's concept of value really varies from ours. The most I've gotten an AI to pay me is about 100 gold (without him giving his own map), and that's when I had the complete map of the world and it knew almost nuts about the other continent. I got that map from another AI as part of a tech deal earlier, which is usually the case for me.

Melon Head, all your points are true. You gave an excellent analysis However, don't forget that we'd be at war with 2 people in that case. We'd already be losing units to Peter's longbows when we attack his cities. Having to face a stack of macemen from, say, Napoleon as well might not kill the game, but it would be very troublesome and might set us back. That said, I'm actually in favour of trading CS over Philosophy. How dangerous do you think it is to give our neighbours immediate access to Bureaucracy?

I would trade CS. They're going to get it sooner than later anyways and you're going to be doing well enough in tech that it will actually work out well because they'll have good stuff to trade with you. I think winning liberalism is important this game, so I'd hold out on philosophy until you at least have education.

aelf said:

Melon Head, all your points are true. You gave an excellent analysis However, don't forget that we'd be at war with 2 people in that case. We'd already be losing units to Peter's longbows when we attack his cities. Having to face a stack of macemen from, say, Napoleon as well might not kill the game, but it would be very troublesome and might set us back. That said, I'm actually in favour of trading CS over Philosophy. How dangerous do you think it is to give our neighbours immediate access to Bureaucracy?

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Bureaucracy's definitely a powerful civic, but the AI seems to value it far less highly than the human, so they won't necessarily benefit from the bonuses it provides.

How are relations with the Frenchman? Based on the map he's probably in the opposite corner of the continent to you so war with him isn't something to be immediately scared of. It could be worth trading CS with him prior to opening hostilities though, to prevent Peter trying to use the tech to bribe Napoleon in on his side. And speaking of bribes, would France consider being war allies with you against the Russians? That would keep Napoleon occupied and improve relations between the pair of you.

I'd be inclined to trade the tech, as I think the benefits outweigh the risks, and with protective longbows (CG3 off the production line if you run Vassalage) your cities are impregnable until stacks of grenadiers/cavalry start appearing.

Melon Head said:

Hwacha have a +50% vs macemen, since they're melee units. My combat math is a touch fuzzy, but I think this means the macemen get a -50% strength, so have a base strength of 4, worse than the hwacha's.

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Melon, most of your points are very well taken, but the one above is a bit off. In this case (ignoring other modifiers), the effective strength of the mace is 8/(1+.5) = 5.33, just a bit higher than the Hwacha. Check the Combat Articles in the war academy for details.

Sweet round, aelf! I especially like the tech and gold trading. You've set up a nice base for a limited war. Do you have any immediate plans beyond the triad of cities?

How long do you plan on staying away from declaring a religion and running OR or Theo?