Yelü Chucai's surprising ascent

Pre-Play Plan

War vs. Arabia:

As noted earlier, I believe that we're just unable to take Mecca for five turns. Despite the wounded troops he's now got, we simply need more units there. Unfortunately he'll possibly stack troops up if we continue to sit on that adjacent tile to Mecca, so I'm wondering if we shouldn't pull that stack back a tile and take the pressure off until those Cat's and Elephants that aren't at the front lines catch up (?).

Great Scientist:

Merge into Karakorum (+15.75, and +1.75) as suggested by pigswill.

Builds:

Karakorum ... as also noted by pigswill, I'd too like to see this city getting back to is focus on by working the Cottages. With Education nearly in our grasp, a cheap Philosophical University should be a priority. Maybe build Wealth after the Maceman's out but before Education's in. There's a Chariot there that we could use in some fashion.

Beshbalik ... keep churning out the units until the war is done. Sentried Medic Scout could be used in the front lines.

Uzbek ... run another Scientist. Maybe a Forge so we can run an Engineer, or a Market for two Merchants?

Turfan ... continue to produce units. I wouldn't mind both a Barracks and a Courthouse there at some point though. This city could do with more tile improvements (Mines and Farms).

Cimmerian ... I'd go for a Forge next here given we have Gold, Gems, and Silver, and this city is supposed to be a unit pump, but suffering from a lot of whip weariness (which the Forge will offset). I'd consider a Ger after that, before more units, assuming no problems from our Korean chum (there's no build up of troops on our border that we can see). Other choices for this city's build queue could be (a.) a Courthouse given the maintenance it's enduring, or (b.) a Hindu Monastery given that it's the only point from where we can self-generate Hindu Missionaries if we eventually do adopt that faith.

Visigoth ... I'd lose the Scientist, but assume we'll just cottage up this place. I can see a bit of whip-regrow with units if needed, although again, a whipped Forge could work quite well.

Ning-Hsia ... obviously we want to get back to working those Gems next turn. No Lighthouse or Granary here would possibly make these to city improvements priorities assuming that we're no longer scrambling for units, but we should see that production of the Longbow through nonetheless.

Basra ... I'm not too sure on this city's future role, but I guess we just work those Cottages and stagnate at size 5 by working the Iron Mine. I suppose a Library wouldn't be a bad idea.

Kufah ... as per above, this city looks as though its sole purpose was to grab the strategic resource. Its maintenance is getting up, so after this Maceman I'd think about Forge > Courthouse. Chop the Plains Hill Forest and Mine.

Damascus ... Forge > Courthouse depending upon the success / failure of our conflict and whether we need more units first.

Khurasan ... I'm guessing that its maintenance will hurt when its out of revolt, and would consider a Courthouse, or units if they're needed.

Trades:

I'll rework as per pigswill's suggestion in #139.

Tech':

Education > Liberalism.

Well, a bit of a mixed bag I’m afraid:

On the plus side, we took Mecca and with it picked up The Colossus and Arabia’s last source of Iron. Our cities have had some population growth amongst the Forge whips, and we’re not far off popping another Great Person - we can almost choose whether we’d next prefer a Great Engineer out of Karakorum or a Great Scientist out of Uzbek. The Heroic Epic’s nearly done in Cimmerian. Nothing’s changed on the diplomatic landscape other than I turned down a demand from Qin Shi Huang for Philosophy, which dropped us from ‘pleased’ to ‘cautious’. The Liberalism slingshot looks like ours.

On the minus side, we did go through quite a few units; there were four Catapults that didn’t survive the attack on Mecca, and we lost three Maces, a War Elephant, and a Chariot defending Khurasan in an Arabian counter-strike before it fell. I took the city back the next turn and decided to raze it. That pillaging Trireme of Saladin’s took out all of our seafood, but I traded in Optics, upgraded our Trireme to a Caravel, and have just sunk the Arabian Trireme. We’ve got a stack outside of Baghdad, and while it’s not looking especially convincing, it is capable (I think) of taking the city if we’re not too unlucky. One … I should have used the Super Medic in the last round of fighting at Mecca so it could get the Medic III promotion – apologies. War weariness is containable, but it’s nonetheless there.

We could throw units at the Arabian Maceman sitting on the Copper tile and prevent Saladin from building Macemen if that was of interest.

Looking good.

We need more cats for Medina assuming we lose most of them at Damascus.

Question is what do we take from liberalism? I'd definitely trade education and/or philo one turn before lib and the outcome of that will likely affect our lib choice.

Thanks pigswill.

If you're free to do so over the next couple of days, you can swap with FiveRings, who has indicated he's unable to play until Tuesday. If it doesn't suit you - that's fine.

Re. slingshot: I'm thinking Nationalism (on the pathway to Cavalry, Taj Mahal), but open to other ideas.

Got it. Played 3 turns so far. No major upsets. Got Bagdhad, got Lib>Nat. Will continue.

on Baghdad ... I thought that we should be able to take it - but it's good to see 'the deed is done'.

Roster for this turnset:

Played 10 turns up to 1150ad.

1050. Qin demands wine, agreed, plesed.
Peter demands education, refused, still pleased.
Bombarding Baghdad.

1060. Capture Baghdad, lose 3 cats, 1 ele. get a GG. Medic general chariot gets 1xp needed for 26xp. One turn from liberalism. Get trading:
Qin. Wfyabta. Education for 610g.
Cyrus. Education for theo, eng, map.
Peter, Education for music, 310g.

1070. Liberalism>Nationalism. Start miltrad.
Revolt to FR.
We now have 2 supermedics.
Peter. Liberalism for guilds, map, 200g.

1080. Asoka liberalism for banking, map 160g. Asoka beat us to economics.

1090. After specialist micro involving some starvation get GE in karakorum.
Wine to Peter for 3gpt.

1100 zzz

1110 zzz

1120. Peter completes Versailles.
GS in Uzbek, moves to Karakorum.

1130. Bombard Medina (walls and castle for 100%). Whip settler in Mecca (3 pop), starving with 9 unhappy.

1140 Bombard Medina (takes a while to break down defences). Whip CH in Baghdad, whip CH in Mecca. They're a lot smaller but no longer starving or unhappy.

1150. Capture Medina. Lose 3 maces, 5 cats, treb. 2CG3 LBs on a hill are a pain even with 2% defence.

We have a GS and GE in Karakorum. GE obviously for Taj, the next question is when, no-one else has nationalism atm, our cities are smallish and have high WW. GS settle? part bulb PP?

With the loss of Medina Saladin will peace out or even capitulate, with one naff island city he won't make a very useful vassal. Not yet finalised peace options with him.

Bumping up the slider gives us Miltrad next turn. Still need gunpowder for cuirs.

Cyrus has a settler in former Arabia. We have a settler with movement in Mecca. Do we restore Khurasan or take a chance that Cyrus doesn't settle (there are a couple of other places he could also theoretically settle instead).

This is a "got it". Nice work, guys!

I think we need to spend some time to discuss a couple of issues that have been already touched above.

1. Diplo
1.1. Make peace with Sal - after killing the Mace on the Cu Mine - or get the galleys and the units to his island and despatch him? I'd rather do the latter, if WK doesn't get involve in a war during my TS.
1.2. Do we stiffen in the face of unreasonable requests, eg, "be so kind, give me Nat, please", well, with Nat before Taj, the answer seems clear, but what about MilTrad, etc? I'd be refusing despite the precarious state of our defenses, but would like to make sure we are all aware of the risks and willing to take them.
1.3. WK target: agreed with Cam to keep (re-)building forces till - hopefully - someone else declares. But do we put down requests to join somebody from the big guys in a possible war with WK till we are prepared? It would definitely depend on where our stack is, ergo, on 1.1., but do we have some plan here for the case where we don't have a stack ready to assault WK?

2. Civics
2.1. I'd keep FR for some time, as we have some spicy techs still to get (Gun, PP, Astro) but would imagine a change into EXP-providing / milcosts-cutting civics on the brink of starting to pump cavs or soon before that (to get the chars in a better form before upgrading)?

3. Wonders
3.1. I assume that P has raised a good question: when do we fast-build the Taj (my guess is that this will take place in Uzbek)? I see three AI GrEng recently emerged, would be a pity to lose the Taj. On the other hand, the shape of our cities doesn't look optimal right now, so do we take the risk again to postpone the Taj, and for how long? I'd see these possible milestones (order is based both on timespan, starting from shortest, and attractiveness, starting from lowest, at least to my mind): a) peace with Sal, regrowing cities to max cap, Taj; b) peace or no peace, wait till Medina gets out of unhappiness, and gets first culture pop, Taj; c) wait till someone else gets Nat, Taj. The latter could be replaced by a more subtle indicator like amount AIs is prep to pay for Nat, but I am not sure about the latter, as well as what is the cutpoint there.) Any other ideas? Any other preferences? (BTW, I don't get the same screens on Diplo and Tech as Cam. Maybe I need to toggle the options a bit, but am not sure I'll get beyond the standard WL screens.)

4. Production
4.1. I'd rather focus on lib / unis in the conquered cities, we seem to need 4 Unis to get to OU (that would be beyond my TS, but we plan to get it in Kara, yes?)
4.2. I'd also throw in Kers where possible in our original cities, and keep the milunits building up. The question is: LBs or Maces or WEs or Spears? Do we have any pointers as to what AIs' stacks could be comprised of and what might be best to choose for defensive or off/def purposes?

5. Great Persons
5.1. GrEng will be kept for Taj.
5.2. GrSc could bulb PP, as already noted, or get joined to Kara. I think the former is a bit more luring for me, as will get us a boost in economy, and - hopefully - before a GA.

6. Builds
6.1. Theater in Uzbek: does it mean we are planning to build the Globe? there?
6.2. Aqueduct in Kara: any special plans or Grocer unavailable at the time?

7. Improvements:
7.1. A lot to be done, esp in our original territory, but shouldn't we build cottages and not farms around Kara?

I am planning to play tomorrow, and hope to have this sort-of-PPP discussed by then.

In something like 10 hours, and based on feed-back, I might go in further details, too, if needed.

Peace with Sal. We've got a couple of galleys built that can slowly sail around while we send a stack of 8 units (cats and WE/maces) through Russia, redeclare when units are in place
Not too bothered about Sal's mace unless we can take it out this turn, we may have some units with movement left, not sure.

If there are GEs lying around then better to rush Taj straight away, I'd put it in Kara because I don't to mess up Uzbek's gp pool too much. Better a slightly naff free golden age than no golden age at all. The farms around Kara are to provide chain irrigation to Beshbalik iirc.

Techwise I'd head for rifling for cavalry and go for PP>RP first because gunpowder on its own isn't that useful as I don't think we have cuirassiers available in Warlords. If we're going for cavalry then build gers and more WEs because iirc they can be upgraded to cav. I'd use GS to part bulb PP to speed up cavalry and of course boost Kara's cottages.

Move all units not involved in island expedition down south.

Aqueduct in Kara coz grocer not available at the time. I think we should build/whip CHs in Arabia before library/uni. Can't remember why I was building theatre in Uzbek, maybe to relieve potential culture pressure?

This may or may not get to you in time ...

War with Arabia

Personally I don't mind if we cap him or make peace, but I'd not prolong the war. I'm OK if we just make peace - I'd hit that Mace with the Shock Elephant in Medina first though, just to remove it in case he cap's to someone else and we then go to war with the Master and we end up with that rogue Maceman running around our poorly defended turf.

Global War

Nobody's WHEOOHRN, so I guess there's no panic in terms of us being backstabbed while our army is somewhat bruised, battered, and out of position.

Next

Two things ...

(1.) I'd be thinking about prep's for war with Korea. Cavalry is what I have in mind.

(2.) How are we planning to win beyond that? It might make a difference as to whether we go Hindu or not. Asoka's possibly going to go into Free Religion at some point, being his favourite civic, but he's hung in with Hinduism so far.

Taj Mahal

I'd run the Great Engineer up to Turfan, so we can (a.) take a shot at flipping Vladivostok, and (b.) put it in a city that won't pop a Great Person - unless we're going for Cultural - due to the Great Artist points. I think Asoka's got Nationalism - so we could well be in a race (?).

Exotic Foreign Advisor

Menu > Options > HoF2 Tab > Exotic Foreign Advisor

Builds

'Yes' to a sufficient number of Universities > Oxford University in Karakorum.

I'd build Barracks and Gers fairly prolifically in preparation for Wang's demise (in yet another SG!) at the hands of our Cavalry stampede. Get the basics right as well however ... Forges, Granaries, Courthouses, etc.

Best of luck.

OK, both P's and Cam's advise taken to notice. I'd wait till tomorrow for W - maybe there will come another opinion or a clarifying vote where discord of opinions.

I have forgotten the tech part, so:
MilTrad>Gun>PrPr>Astro I'd suggest. (We need Gun, and we don't need Rifles in WL as opposed to BtS.) This assumes that going Astro won't provide us with a trading chip for the PrPr already researched by the AI.

I am also divided between Chars and WEs as the basis of the future Cavs, or part of those. But going to 0% research and upgrading to Cavs might well be beyond my TS, with all those barracks and Gers to build beforehand... And this assumes a strive to dominate or conquer. Or are we going to show our upperhand in diplo games?!?

I'm very open to almost every possible victory condition.

I'd imagine that Domination would be the quickest, but even Cultural would be do-able at this point (especially as we've got one of the best, if not the best suited leaders to that VC). I could be wrong, but Diplomatic would probably need to be done via a Domination-like pathway anyway because of 'the Hinduism thing' - but we'd probably be well served by getting some war bribes happening and breaking up the 'love-fest' if we wanted to take a more political approach to that VC. If we take Korea quickly and savagely, then I'd think that a Spaceship win would be easily achievable as well.

More immediately, I have no problem at a general focus on infrastructure. It'd be nice to just get Cavalry and stampede all of the Pangaea and not worry too much about research, but the AIs are perhaps too close to Rifling to pull that off in time, and I think that we'll need to get into the Modern Era before we win (optimistic - aren't I?!).

As per my post above, I do think it'd be good if we found an agreed stance within the roster on which way we'll go re. Hinduism vs. No State Religion.

This token expired error annoys me... A LOT!

What I wanted to post was (in short) :

Let's do cultural VC, nice change.

GE on TM. Yes, single GP GA in Warlords = Awesome.

Peace Sal, don't cap. crush later as per pigswill.

A calm infrastructure building set - as it might be expected during a GA.
Not a lot to tell:
Killed Sal's Mace, made peace getting his map, moved the 4 sieges (one is a turn behind the main body of the army) 4 Maces and the Chariot-general to his border, the gal is still far from the port of stay of the other one, caravel is moving towards Sal to recon, a couple of turns from there.
Refused DP to Cyrus, and trading of MT for Econ to Asoka.
WK has Grens as does Peter and Qin, almost everybody (but WK?!, not sure) has Knights. We are the sole owner of Cav yet, but would need to return to severe whipping to get an army up soon.
Teched Gun, PrPr, then put research at 0, all WEs are upgraded into Cavs, 3 chars might be upgraded the next three turns or so, the fourth is the General. We'll need garrisons to replace the two chars, one is taken care of by sending a warrior to replace it.
Two cities are already building Cavs, Kara will start in a turn after chopping produces barracks there.
Taj was built in Turfan. GrSc was joined in Kara, and another one might pop up next turn. Two turns of GA to go. I haven't whipped during the GA.
I have moved Cavs and Maces towards the SouthEast, as there seems to be the only Iron Mine I can locate. There is a second Copper mine under one of WK's cities in the Southwest. Don't forget about the HA and something of WK that is trapped in the central part of our territory.
Couldn't sell any techs - very low prices in the market. Considered selling Lib to WK for about $400 but decided it was not worth the risk of getting him closer to Nationalism. Sold corn to Asoka for 7 gpt, decided that getting 3 gpts from Cyrus for a health resource is peanuts but maybe was wrong about it.
Nobody thinks about getting into war.
Save is below.

Nice turnset - good stuff.

I must confess that I'm slightly more 'nervy' about the idea of taking on Wang Kon with a Cavalry hit than I was yesterday: He's now got access to ('Protective') Grenadiers (is it me, or is 1250AD pretty early for an Emperor-level game to face Grenadiers?), has some reasonable garrisons in his cities (numerically at least, but these could be quickly upgraded), and is not quite double us on the PowerChart. Now that both Cyrus and Asoka have gone into Free Religion, the chance of initiating a dogpile on Korea has dropped a notch too.

Right now, I'm starting to think that we have a few pathways, but none are really jumping out at me ...


I do think that the time's right though for the roster to set a direction - esp. on the question of whether a Cultural win is to be pursued in light of the changes we should then make. Views?

Just on the save;

It's not high priority, but we could put a Plantation on that Dye resource south of Karakorum.

Settler in Karakorum?

The proposed war to take Najran ... are we intending to gift, raze, or keep it?

West Point is now available. Beshbalik?

Settler was moved from the North with 2 possible aims, and based on my assessment that in former Sal's lands there are no very attractive sites for a new city: either settle the tip of our cultural penetration into the jungle between the two WK cities, or use to fill in gaps if we need to raze a city of WK.

Besh is OK with me as a unit production centre and no IW possible there, iirc.

I forgot about changing civs into OR which was surely a better way to civic during the GA than FR, and it might still be a better option till the switch to massive army building.

I am biased of course, having invested quite a lot of gold into cavs, but would like to give domination a chance. I am all for the massive invasion into WK. Peter might change his mind about war with WK once he is not so afraid of the latters might, I guess. And WK vassalizing Sal on the turn we declare again, and getting into war with us is a distinct possibilty, it seems.

With hindsight, I should have researched Astro after Gun, upgraded the galleys and the frigate and finished Sal earlier (some gold could have come in from selling banking to Cyrus). Astro could be traded for PrPr and, maybe Chem or Parts. But that's gone, just sharing my annoyance with self having not counted the number of turns to move the second galley round the world...

I also start to think that upgrading chariots might not be such a great idea: too much gold and time and the AI seems to be researching like crazy. I'd use the time till the end of the GA for one upgrade only, maybe, and that to avoid moving cavs to deal with WK's HA in the middle of our map.

(Sorry - I've had troubled getting on to CivFanatics in the last few days).

Ironworks should be possible in time in Beshbalik, even if we go for West Point, at it's 'National Wonderless' at the moment.

I'm fine with Free Religion - I'm not sure which religion we should adopt if we were to choose one to leverage the +25% to buildings through Organised Religion anyway; Hinduism's not widely spread - and it wouldn't please Wang Kon, and anything other than Hinduism could taunt Peter.

I'm not sure if Wang Kon at 'Cautious' would agree to accept Saladin as a vassal if we did DoW Arabia, but I'd imagine that Peter at 'Pleased' might consider it. Then again, Peter's pleased with us too. I'm really not sure as to the interest in wiping out Saladin, but it looks like we're half-committed to that pathway, so I'll go along with it if everyone else wants to. I'd be half-inclined to gift Najran to Peter as it's a potentially costly city that will deliver nothing much to our empire.

I guess that just for clarification; Visigoth to complete its University, and we'd be looking at Baghdad, Mecca, and Damascus for the other 'University-destined' cities for Oxford?

There's an underutilised Worker sleeping in Baghdad btw.

A Grocer in Karakorum could be handy.

I believe woopdeedoo's up, and I'm on deck. We'll go back to the initial roster from there.

Cultural sounds cool as its a victory I rarely pursue.

Even if we're not going for a military victory its always nice to have an army around for 'active defence' so slow building more cavalry would be good though we probably don't need to spend money on upgrading units.

FR helps with research and happy and diplomatically useful for buttering up Asoka who's the current tech leader and getting him up to friendly would be hepful for tech trading.

Thanks pigswill.

FiveRings - can you cope with 'going cultural'? If so - we should get our plans in order ... Mass Media pathway, confirm the three cities, fix civics, etc. In hindsight, I shouldn't have suggested that the Taj goes to Turfan ... I wasn't expecting that we could be going down this pathway. If you really don't want to go down the Cultural VC, please don't hesitate to say so, and we can look at the alternatives.

I am definitely not thrilled by Cultural Victory, and I have never won a game that way. If the team considers this an intriguing way to continue, then I am OK with it, too. However, you should be prepared to incur even more mistakes on my part, I guess.
Sorry about that worker, but I haven't noticed it, and still don't understand the mechanics of workers' suddenly dropping out ofactivity...