Yelü Chucai's surprising ascent

Apologies. I have been a little bit ill again and was away from my machine since Friday. Consider this a got it. I will check the save and post PPP in a little bit.

So I had another look at the save and think that the next set will be relatively quiet. We have a decent stockpile of monies and can upgrade all our rifles to infantry. This will up our power rating a lot and get us in a position to DoW Cyrus. Also, I am inclined to trade Fascism to QSH for 2k to carry on our upgrade missions. Keep teching military techs and go for gold...

Relatively peaceful turnset. Started by upgrading our SoD and trading to QSH as follows:



In 1790 Peter made a very arrogant demand:



I declined and then Bio came in:



I chose Rockets as the next tech. The cash spend seems to have been worth it as our power jump shows:



I changed a lot of "Wealth" builds to military builds and our influx of cash dropped significantly but we are still bringing in monies at 60%. About 35.

On a side note, I call up Peter to see what he has for trade and saw this fearsome message:



In 1802, Cyrus completes Broadway . We were 3 turns away.
I up research to 90% at -320 so we can get rocketry in 1 turn.

I hit enter and we are flung into the modern era with the research of:



Next I queue Combustion.

It seems that the little conflict between WK and Cyrus isn't completely bogus:



Peter is willing to go to war with Cyrus:



Out of the blue, Asoka dials us up and offers the following:



I accept his offer.



Flight is next. I end my turnset a little earlier because I think we should consider the following:
Close borders with Cyrus to get his wandering troops out of our cities.
Take the Peter deal and dogpile Cyrus. Alternatively, wait until Peter asks us to join the war to get the diplo bonus(which I don't think we need right now anyways).

We also need to decide where we would like the Forbidden Palace. Mecca maybe? Or one of the Southern Korean cities?

Is there a save?

pigswill said:

Is there a save?

Click to expand...

I attached the save but closed the window too soon

I think the time to attack is now... in case I haven't mentioned that yet...

For some reason, most likely user stupidity, my Pentagon splash screen is not in the report nor the fact that we completed it. Sorry. We also finished the Pentagon...

Thanks for the report woopdeedoo, and I hope you're feeling better. I hope to play on Friday, so to keep things moving ...

PPP:

I agree that we should attack, but note that we have very vulnerable border cities and run a real risk of loss should there be a counter-strike in our south.

I am attracted by State Property, but I'm reluctant to self-research Communism given it's already so widely known (but seriously would consider it nonetheless). Civics-wise, Free Speech would be more beneficial economically than Bureaucracy but we'd lose our significant diplomatic bonus with both Peter (+3) and Qin Shi Huang (+6). Nationhood could be good too. Right now though, I'm not sure we should compromise our diplomatic position with the Russians and Chinese, so I'd stick with Bureaucracy.

I'm not sure why we've not opened borders with Asoka - I'd suggest that we do that for more foreign trade routes.

I'd like for us to have more Factories and Coal Plants up, but I guess our focus has got to be on spamming units until our business with Persia is done.

I terms of attack, I'd go Arbella > Ecbatana > Susa. It's a shame Persepolis isn't closer to us; it has some nice WoWs.

It'd be my preference to keep Russia out of the war, as Russia's big enough as it is without Peter enlarging his empire further.

I'd appreciate thoughts on the above and any other input. I'm not sure on the roster's preferred technology path, and for me, most notably whether we should self-research Communism completely, or partially and trade for it with Fascism, or disregard it. I'm open to any wacky ideas here, such as pursuing Fission for the bomb, but the more conservative options of Flight (incl. Gunships) and Industrialism are likely to serve us well.

In terms of city builds, I'd press on with units by-and-large, but depending upon our losses, I'd slip in some Factories and Coal Plants here-and-there. As before, our border cities are fragile if attacked by way of counter-strike, so I'd like units to be available for that contingency.

If we can get communism in trade that'll be good, may help to part research it.

In warlords artillery don't really need anything else so after current round of infantry I'd build artillery everywhere. We could do with a way of rapidly boosting production, maybe even slavery/policestate for 5 turns or so followed possibly by US/emancipation.

With railroads we only need one stack to defend the south from counter attacks.

WK will disappear in the next few turns.

Thanks for that.

Two or three rounds of Slavery occurred to me too before slipping back to Emancipation, but I thought that the roster wouldn't 'buy it'. I also just wasn't sure where we were going in terms of State Property. I could whack in Police State too to the short-term civic switch.

Good point on Artillery.

Cam_H said:

FiveRings,

I've got 'fairly' ecclectic music tastes, but coincidently Kashmir was the last song that I downloaded onto my iPod! Black Sabbath ... "lighter"?

Click to expand...

Kashmir is good but sounds decadent to me. I like the #1 thru #5, Whole-Lotta-Love, Black-Dog type of, with Since I've Been Loving You on top. The LZ Live in NY in 1975 might be a good summing-up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bwVMItDRo&feature=related. Although the studio recordings sound better to me than the lives.

I like copters and dislike bombs, somehow. Part-researching Communism and trading for Fascism sounds so right...
I agree on arty but would really like to throw in those modern productive facilities using Slavery. I myself always overstep the right measure of the building spree, but am sure you'd make it work.
Trade with Asoka might lower our standing with Peter, it seems, and I would avoid anything raising the chances for a Cyrus-Peter combo.

Unfortunately I missed your comments above as I was playing (I've played 9 turns, but fine to hand it over). Things have gone generally well; we have Cyrus in a position where he's prepared to capitulate, and I'm confident that if we keep on with this war instead that we can take Susa in three or four turns with little resistance.

We did regrettably lose quite a number of 70%+ odds battles. The population got whipped fairly hard, and now is also suffering from war-weariness. I was unsure about whether to begin Mount Rushmore or not. We have a shiny new Great General. Soon to pop another Great Person out of Uzbek.

We captured Arbela, we lost Wonsan, we regained Wonsan the next turn and also took out Cyrus's stack of over 30 units (SAMs and Artillery), and just taken Ecbatana (later than hoped because our own stack was very beaten up and needed healing).

I did self-research Communism, as we couldn't get a decent trade for it, but that was the only tech' we acquired. We also renegotiated a few trade deals. We also used that loitering Settler.

I'll flesh out this post with a report later, but I've pretty well covered the gist of it other than we added a lot of Artillery.

Pictures:

Ooooh gooodie! Will have a look at the save later and comment some more but so far is looking nice

Thanks - glad it doesn't look too bad. Domestically things aren't great, with low and unhappy populations, but they'll grow out of it ... they always do.

I forgot to post this!:

Had a quick look. My inclination is to cap Cyrus and return his cities, heal up and add even more artillery then go for Peter asap (?3-5 turns). Maybe build Rushmore and go for police state. Once Peter is beaten up we've won and we're close to being able to beat Peter up so economy and research don't matter as long as we avoid a strike.

Thanks for your thoughts.

I think we should take Susa and then cap' Persia. I'm not sure why we would want to hand back cities (deja vu?).

I'm very divided on Mount Rushmore, so I'm pleased to see some clear support for it.

I was hoping that we could win without declaring on Russia, but I fear that even if we take Persia and China, we'll still possibly fall a bit short.

Reasons for handing cities back. i) Makes Cyrus useful ii) buffer vs Peter, hope to fight the war mainly in Persia. Peter's power is higher than ours but a big chunk of it will be tied up in garrisons.

The power graph says it all, thanks for bringing us closer to the win, Cam!

I agree with Pigswill on the general thrust: continue pumping artillery, go after Peter after capping Cyrus and healing.

I am somewhat divided on Mt Rushmore: I have seen games where the happiness cap crashed and they were discontinued at the verge of winning. So I'd spend some precious time and resources on building it, just in case. We are not competing for the highest score, are we?!

Cam, I'd be able to look at the save only later in the evening, ie not earlier than 10 hours from now, so you might as well do your #10 turn, or cap Cyrus, if you'd like to and have the time.

FiveRings,

I'm quite happy to hand it over here.

My view on what to do about Persia is quite different from pigswill's: I'm generally an advocate of 'cap asap and move on' but feel that Susa is likely to be very gettable and quite a decent city. From that point, I'd get Cyrus to capitulate. The lay of the land is quite unusual, with Persia squeezing cities in all kinds of strange places (something not so prevalent in BtS, but it happens a bit in vanilla and Warlords), and I think that Rostov puts a clear barrier between Persia's core empire and his eastern fringe cities in strange spots. I think that in order to maximise our %ge land, that we should grasp that east Persian area. pigswill has laid out his reasons as to why we shouldn't pursue Susa and hand back Ecbatana, which I'll let everyone else make the call on. I am assuming that pigswill and I both agree to keep Arabela and Wonsan.

I should point out that Peter is boasting of fielding Tanks. Upgrading a few Cavalry to Gunships should form part of our approach. Unfortunately the AI loves SAMs, so we'll probably have to take some punishment as we try to beat up the enemy Tanks and Artillery. I'd consider Radio after Flight for Bombers, and hopefully Cyrus can help us out with Industrialism.

I'm fine if you wanted to swap out of Factory builds. In most cases there's only been zero or one turn put into them, and if something else was considered higher priority - that's fine.

I'd look for somewhere to put Mount Rushmore in light of pigswill's support for it. I was surprised how much unhappiness was caused through the relatively short Persian conflict, especially given that our losses weren't atrocious. Typically we'd just swing the culture slider up, but we're also wanting our technological progress to continue and cash for some select upgrades.

Please note that we have 63 Artillery, which should be adequate, and I'm a bit worried that we need some Gunpowder troops, and will be benefiting from some Gunships and Fighters. I don't often get to a point of using a lot of Gunships, but I've found Flanking promotions to be quite handy, and Blitz is great when you can get it.

We shouldn't (I hope) get backstabbed by Qin because of our 'Friendly' status when we attack Russia, but we'll take a diplo' hit from 'You declared war on our friend', which might slide us down to 'Pleased'. Hopefully we'll be OK.

Thanks for the input, Cam!

I tend to like your approach to the war with Cyrus better than Pigswill's

I don't very well understand the need of bombers: I don't think they are a powerful unit esp. when SAM is around. Do we look at Stealth aircraft?