Yelü Chucai's surprising ascent

Below is the save with a few thumbnails.

Nothing extraordinary. Whipping and chopping, occasional trade, occasional decline to trade.

I have stopped here, because it's worth considering whether we continue building the army or it's better to start with some troop movement and invade Sal ASAP due to his dispersal of own troops. I think we won't have a better opportunity since he already has LBs.
Techwise we have the CoL and are three turns away from CS.
Productionwise we have 7 WE and 12 cats, a few more in the making. I guess, we are a couple of OFs from NE. I have done the trick with OR -> Miss - > back to Pagan.
Tradewise I have traded fish to Asoka for fur and corn to Peter for 5gpt. Refused to trade wine for gold to WK, as well as to trade CoL for HBR. There are at least two more AIs (WK and Asoka iirc) that have it, but I somehow preferred to hope to trade CS and CoL, if necessary, for HBR, Mach, Feud, Music and $ in a few turns.
Saladin built Colossus.
I would consider allocating 4 WEs to the Eastern Province, where there are 2 groups of Sal's Sword+Axe, a cat and a WE to look after the Axe+Settler and Spear in the Cenral part, and start war right after we achieve this (in combination with chopping a forest by Sal and moving the warrior from Kara to one of the Eastern cities to free a char for back up.) There are four big cities of Sal to take, with Medina - however enticing with the shrine in it - to be taken by a back-up force that will support the leftovers from the main thrust and of the mop-up ops. For now, there are 2-3 units in each city of Sal (with the exception of Mecca, of course, where there are half-a-dozen.)

All coming along nicely I'd suggest - good stuff.

I'd say we're not far off getting ready to strike. As far as I can understand the XML data, there is some chance that Peter or Qin could be bribed into war against us by Saladin (can be bribed at 'Pleased') but they're both more advanced than Saladin, Saladin's currently only got 20 in his bank account (so I'm not sure what he'd use for a bribe), and they like us more. Having only had a cursory look at the game, I'd suggest we can seriously look at a DoW on Arabia in the next turnset.

We're six turns from our next Great Scientist ... we do have the option of a Philosophy bulb and in likelihood nabbing Taoism and a monopoly tech' if we wanted. Merging the Great Scientist in Karakorum presents another option, as does leveraging the Scientists in Uzbek by building an Academy there. So there's some options for consideration.

Also - we could look at trading Civil Service for Machinery and Feudalism and whatever else might be of appeal in a few turns.

1. Bribing: I have read somewhere that the gold shown on the screen is only part of the gold available to the AIs, hence their getting techs they shouldn't have without money, which, BTW, shows that the hidden money is quite a lot. Ergo, Sal's bribing is not out of the question. I have thought of our bribing Peter, but CoL is not enough, and then, I'd rather prefer not to get him in the war as we are not going to sweep Sal, it seems.
2. DoWing next turn: quite possible but I'd hate to lose our Eastern Province, so precautionary measures should be taken, imho. (BTW, do we first close borders to see where Sal's units are placed therefrom?!) It would have been nice to have culture pops in both Eastern cities before DoWing, but that won't happen if we don't get Judaism spreadout there. I wouldn't lose a cat to repeat the trick with a missionary, I think, except if we do it in the Gem City after the first culture pop or whenever a missionary can be whipped there, presumably after the start of fishing and at quite a cost (no-gem working). Please, don't forget our workers by Sal's borders as well. Otherwise, I do agree that the end of next TS is the time to invade.
3. Bulbing Philo: I thought about it with the GrSc at hand but dismissed it for getting less than the full ~1.6K bulbs, on the one hand, and remembering Lymond'shint that it's faster to get to LIB thru EdU first - using the unis to faster research PHILO. I am not sure about whether to build an academy in the NE city with a GLIB in it, but would assume that in a longish game it would be better to have focused merging of GrSC in KARA which seems destined for the time being to be the science generator.

A short review of my TS:
200 AD (t0): switch to OR, switch to missionary in Uzbek
225 AD (t1): scouting, chopping
AI turn: WK-> Vassalage, GrArt bfal, Sal builds Colossus
250 AD (t2): CoL>CS, GrSc (Maxwell), move GrSc to Kara, Research set at 100%; Fish traded for Fur to Asoka; INFO: WK and Asoka have CoL, Sal's cities visited have Archer+Spear
AI turn: GrEng bfal
275 AD (t3): Besh: Cat>Cat, Acad built in Kara, Missionary whipped in Uzbek, WE whipped in Turfan; INFO: Sal has connected the baked horse in his NW
300 AD (t4): Turfan: WE>WE, Uzbek: Miss>NE; INFO: Asoka has CS, WK has Machinery
325 AD (t5): Besh: Cat>Cat, Cimmerian: WE>Cat, Judaism spread in Ning-hsia, Return to Paganism,
AI turn: WK offers Gold for Wine - declined, Sal offers HBR+$70 for CoL - declined
350 AD (t6): 1-Mio-mark reached
AI turn: Sal>Vassalage, Asoka gets GrPr,
375 AD (t7): Besh: Cat>Cat, Turfan: WE>WE, Cimmerian: Cat>WE, Corn to Peter for 5gpt; INFO: Cyrus has Cats, 3 Swords in Medina (one later moved and I lost his track)
400 AD (t8): Visigoth: Grannary>CH, Kara: WE>Cat, Cat whip in Uzbek; INFO: Sal has HAs
425 AD (t9): Besh: Cat>Cat; INFO: notice taken of the two groups of Sal's Sword+Axe roaming in our East, Peter wants Wine+Horse+5gpt for his Marble - sorry, too much for me
AI turn: Qin>Vassalage+OR
450 AD (t10): Besh: Cat>WE (as sparing some WEs to take care of Sal's armies in our East has been considered necessary, otherwise it might be better to continue producing Cats in Besh, and add some more somewhere else in view of Sal's LBs), Turfan: WE>WE, Cimmerian: WE>WE; INFO: Qin>Vass+OR, Sal's LBs in all visited cities (in couples with an Archer), Qin has the Ko-....

Got it.

I'd swop Uzbek to ele and whip it, whip ele in Karakorum. Sal has two axe/sword combos in the east, if we attack w ele sword will defend as stronger unit, leaving chariot to attack axe (w bonus) so we only need 2 eles and 2 chariots (already there).

Whip Cimmerian to the ground.

I'd trade CoL now for Hbr, Ph, cash and goodwill.

I'd bulb philosophy to make it less attractive to AIs (unless its gone in next 6 turns).

I'm thining of declaring in 3-4 turns.

We can trade wine to cyrus for 4gpt.

pigswill said:

I'd swop Uzbek to ele and whip it, whip ele in Karakorum. Sal has two axe/sword combos in the east, if we attack w ele sword will defend as stronger unit, leaving chariot to attack axe (w bonus) so we only need 2 eles and 2 chariots (already there).

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Very good point!

pigswill said:

I'd trade CoL now for Hbr, Ph, cash and goodwill.

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I was considering this with regard to Sal (pre-war squeeze-out) but thought it not worth the risk of spreading around this tech on the road to LIB, especially that HBR is not dearly needed as already discussed. Not sure the other 'goodies' are also worth the acceleration in AI research to be suffered.

pigswill said:

I'd bulb philosophy to make it less attractive to AIs (unless its gone in next 6 turns).

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I'd rather refrain from doing this for the reasons I have already stated, and the more so that you don't intend to trade PHI at all.

pigswill said:

I'm thining of declaring in 3-4 turns.

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IIRC, you'd need 9 cats to lower city defences and at least two-three suicidal cats per city to soften the LBs so that not to lose WEs (which will also be needed for defence, and even more so that Sal has HAs), so - looking at the three cities to conquer without stops on the way - you'd need about 15 cats (and at least one more to deal with the spear in the central part + a WE just in case Sal switches the guard of the settler there from Axe to Spear. I'd also get the medics upfront and in the stack, and the workers away from Sal, as noted earlier. I'd also have at least an additional WE in the EAST "just in case", Sid's a nasty guy imho.

pigswill said:

We can trade wine to cyrus for 4gpt.

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That seems a bit cheap to my struggling mind.

Good luck with the campaign!

I'm happy with your approach pigswill.

I'd not trade in Priesthood at the moment due to WFYABTA; Qin Shi Huang is on the lowest WFYABTA threshold tier, with only Peter having a high threshold. That technology is so cheap that I'd self-research it and save prospective trades for later on (e.g. Machinery, Feudalism ... how willing are we to trade Civil Service?).

I'm OK to get Horseback Riding, but there was less support for it by others on the roster.

Philosophy bulb is fine by me. Unfortunately with the religious divide in the game, I'd be hesitant to pick a faith until we're in a position of strength, and as such, adopting Pacifism seems a while away. It's a good trading chip if we're not pursuing the Liberalism slingshot, and it goes a long way to lifting our chances of scoring the Liberalism slingshot if we do want to take our chances.

I trust your judgment on when to attack.

450 t0. Wine to Cyrus for 4 gpt (it may be cheap but can be cancelled in 10t if a better offer is available).

500. Col to Qin for Hbr, 130g.

520. CS in, paper next. Switch to burro.
CS to Peter for feud.
CS+100g to Qin for machinery.
Beg 80g from Asoka.
Beg 70g from Cyrus.
Beg 50g from Sal.
Declare on Sal.

540 Capture Basra (lose 3 cats).

580. GS bulbs philosophy, Taoism in Visigoth (ooh culture).

620 Capture Kufah (lose 2 cats, ele).

640 Asoka builds Sistine.

660 Asoka builds Notre Dame

We have small stack SW of Damascus but wrong side of the river. Sal's got a sword 2SW of Kara, he also has a settler party (settler, axe, spear) looking for a spot in the west, last seen in Persia. Non-one's wheoorn atm.

edit: btw we have iron, we also traded gems to Asoka (or was it Qin?) for happy gold. Also our 6xp medic scout is in Beshbalik waiting to become a 26xp supermedic scout.

Well, allow me to be the first to say "Nice one".

I must say, Hinduism's looking tempting, but I'd like to see someone DoW Wang before we go there.

I kinda like the idea of taking/razing Khurasan before attacking Damascus from its south east to get around that 'river problem'.

Furthermore, I'm a bit wary/surprised that Saladin's PowerChart isn't worse than as reported by the graphs.

Anyway - at this point I think we have to take out all of the cities on the landmass, and cap him after we take Baghdad, as anything less and I'm suspecting we'll run into cultural pressure problems, especially in Mecca.

Thank you for those kind words .

I forgot to mention I've been chain irrigating towards Beshbalik.

I'd also reckon go for Khurasan. I'm not sure about razing despite its relative naffness given the number of AI settlers I've seen looking for a place to call home.

At some point in the next TS it may be worth considering caste instead of slavery to speed up a GS for education.

This is a got it. I will have a look later and post thoughts and PPP tomorrow...

Grrr!!!! My whole PPP disappeared due to expired token. In essence, continue the war. Take his Southern cities esp the Jew holy city (Medina I think) before capping Sal. I'm going to upgrade the warrior in Basra to spear since there are a few HA's on the way. That's about it in a nutshell...

Personally I'd like to clear Saladin off the landmass ...

He has founded at least one city on an island, so I'd be inclined to cap him (or just make peace) once we take his core empire provided the roster agrees. I'd prefer not to be dealing with fear of cities flipping and border pressure from our own vassal if we can avoid it.

If the war goes horribly and a clean slate seems unlikely, or we end up with an unexpected DoW from somewhere or other, then I'd pause and discuss.

If Cam's suggestion is doable, it would be nice to follow it to the happy end.

So I played. I didn't finish wrapping up the continent and I think I may have made an occasional boo boo... Such as building elephants instead of maces here and there

I missioned some troops around and hit enter, landing Paper:



WK made an offer which I refused:



Asoka also made an offer for trade which I declined as I am working on the assumption that we are working towards Liberalism:



I did make a resource trade with Peter which brings the build of the NE down a few turns:



Cyrus is a sneaky sneaky snake in the grass:



I made this tech trade with Asoka, mailnly for the cash, enabling us to tech to Edu at 100% :



Finally, two of Sal's cities had fallen to our armies and reinforcements are incoming. They are assembling outside Mecca where Sal has a number of forces to kill:



We popped both a GG (attached to chariot for super medic which is with our stack) and a GS. I stopped here to hand the game over.

OK ... got it!

Wang's WHEOOHRN, but he's 'annoyed' with several AIs, and merely 'cautious' with us. Looks like we'll need a few turns yet before taking on Mecca.

I'll put together a PPP, but happy to hear the roster's thoughts in the meantime.

I won't be able to play till next Tuesday, so, please, allow me a skip or a switch - whatever works best for the team.

My two cents: I'd finish Sal as fast as possible, if possible. I'd not go for a pause in the war with Sal till WK declares on us, if he will. I'd continue pumping military units that might be needed for either defending against WK, or attacking him if he gets involved in a fight.

Stables would be nice to throw in where possible, it seems, as we might wish going after MilTrad upon getting Liberalism.

I agree with FR on the defenders. I reckon the incoming support troops should be sufficient to take the rest of Sal's cities. I would also consider trying to trade for Theo and swapping to Hindu+Theocracy to get better defenders out.

Had a look at the save. Continue war w Saladin, wipe out mainland then peace not vassal, maybe consider a couple of galleys to capture his island city later. We need more cats not more maces imho.
Generally ease off on the whip and get cities growing again. Kara should be working cottages not mines. Settle GS in Kara. Uzbek needs a replacement WB.
Trades: deer to Asoka for 8gpt, cancel wine deal with Cyrus, change to wine for 6gpt. Maybe think about philo trades once education is in.

The replacement WB is en route to Uzbek IIRC.