The Sinister Scheme of Dr. Fu Manchu

Cam_H said:

I think that 'light apricot' culture is Korea, not Russia.

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Thank you, Dr!

Cam_H said:

Roosevelt {developmental} and Stalin {conflict-oriented} tension is to be expected. Although it includes BtS leaders, see peaceweight.pdf where leaders at the extreme ends of the chart tend not to 'get along' from the outset. This whole thing is kind of messy to explain, and I'm not sure if you have a handle on this 'peaceweight', 'warmonger respect', 'base attitude' etc. stuff already or not.

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Thank you very much! Excellent stuff! I think I have already an idea about the warmonger respect, and I think I can guess reasonably well what is the base attitude. I don't understand how the peaceweight distribution actually works, but my guess is that it is added - jointly with the WR - to the BA. I'll google this and may come up with requests for additional help later on... One that may be not a stupid one right now is the following: are these the only hidden AI behaviour modifiers?

hehehe... If that is Korea, do I feel another early axe rush coming on?

I'll have a look at the save in a bit and comment.

woopdeedoo said:

hehehe... If that is Korea, do I feel another early axe rush coming on?

I'll have a look at the save in a bit and comment.

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12 tiles axe rush is big no-no.

We have around us land for at least 5 cities with all of them being spectacularly good (time to learn proper rex! Ah completely forgot that I plan to make the rexercise video for like 3 weeks).

I am thinking about constr beeline. I am not sure. In Warlords siege can kill units?

vranasm said:

12 tiles axe rush is big no-no.

We have around us land for at least 5 cities with all of them being spectacularly good (time to learn proper rex! Ah completely forgot that I plan to make the rexercise video for like 3 weeks).

I am thinking about constr beeline. I am not sure. In Warlords siege can kill units?

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Had a look at the save and you are right. Sorry, I tend to get excited at the idea of war Now one question I have, and please excuse my ignorance here, but is it normal for water tiles to have so much ? 3 per tile?

Fu Manchu is Financial - tiles yielding at least 2 receive +1.

Cam_H said:

Fu Manchu is Financial - tiles yielding at least 2 receive +1.

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Right. Of course. Thanks Cam

That's OK.

Maybe Horse Archer rush though?

@vranasm ... 'yes'; Hwachas can kill units and capture cities.

yesterday I experienced with early horse archer rush with MM (on marathon though), going completely broke around 1k BC...ehm

That's why I would prefer cat rush since we will be soooo close to currency ;-). And with cats killing units should be really "no brainer" (being them resourceless and our UU) and anyway I wanted to do something new ;-).

FiveRings said:

are these the only hidden AI behaviour modifiers?

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This whole thing is quite a science, but there is a small randomising effect as well for every game.

I suppose the gist of what I'm outlining is that AI-to-AI tribe relations are affected by this peaceweight scale where you tend to see 'conflict-oriented' tribes at one end, a 'balanced' group, and more 'developmental' tribes at the other end of the scale, and that in the early game there's a bit of angst between groups at either end.

(You'll recall Kubai Kahn's {Wang Kon's} unpopularity in our last game with all of those conflict-oriented leaders {Ragnar, Catherine, Huyana Capac, Louis XIV, Tokugawa} as another example).

vranasm said:

That's why I would prefer cat rush since we will be soooo close to currency ;-). And with cats killing units should be really "no brainer" (being them resourceless and our UU) and anyway I wanted to do something new ;-).

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Nice (at very least) to use our unique unit! I'll go with the flow if everyone else is happy enough to go with Hwachas.

Kwacha rush!? Sounds fascinating, but even less realistic that the HA assault. First, it won't be a rush, as we'll need to research construction, which requieres much more research to reach, than BW (and mainly for the reason of the culture defense-bonus, and the longer time-span of the AI research). Second, we won't be very inclined to chop forests, will we (BTW, this also almost nullifies the advantage of getting to construction via math-learning)? Third, kwachas seem to be as slow as the axes, if I am not mistaken. So, the 12-tile No-No is still here. Kwachas are also somewaht more expensive than the cats, iirc.
The only advantage of K- vs A-rush seems to be the somewhat smaller number of units that need to be produced.

Nice to phantacise, but the odds are against a successful kwacha rush, it seems to me. Especially if the opponent has HA already, and that seems easier to research than our UU.

All that said, (1) this is a learning experience to me so I am really curious how this might be managed and how it will turn arnound, and (2) I ... don't see a better use of our UU, anyway... But do we really need to approach it as a "rush"? Looks like the usual cat-fueled war to me...and maybe it's better to approach it as such...

Well, please replace all "k"-s in Kwacha, and all "ph" in fantasies...., sorry, Cam!

the cat rush is "rush" just ... well leave it as that. It's actually not really rush.

the rush there means we will beeline construction over other tech paths.

5 city breakout is pretty standard (6-city renessaince breakouts being the most popular on higher levels).

Those 12 tiles are not due to the 12 turns to arrive to borders, but because the 12 tiles maintenance without currency will basically kill your economy for nothing.

With 5 city empire we will have secured nice commerce base, we have enough time to make roads towards enemy (and we will want to do because of trade routes anyway) and we will have good enough time after teching constr to get the ultimate anti-crash tech

btw useful videos by me about crash recovery:

on monarch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI6f9tIcFd4
on noble (take over from someones save in one of NC games): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY9rLYIXy3U

edit:
beware both videos are 1 hour +- long and with horrible czech accent ;-) and tough to understand at times (I suppose :-D)

FiveRings said:

Well, please replace all "k"-s in Kwacha, and all "ph" in fantasies...., sorry, Cam!

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I'm reading this post, and I'm thinking "Has he learnt nothing yet ... about spell checking!?!?!"

vranasm said:

and with horrible czech accent ;-) and tough to understand at times (I suppose :-D)

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Well at least you don't go on and on about Dingos and Koalas and Kangaroos like some others!

So... erm, is it me next? PPP? Anyone?

vranasm said:

the cat rush is "rush" just ... well leave it as that. It's actually not really rush.

the rush there means we will beeline construction over other tech paths.

5 city breakout is pretty standard (6-city renessaince breakouts being the most popular on higher levels).

With 5 city empire we will have secured nice commerce base, we have enough time to make roads towards enemy (and we will want to do because of trade routes anyway) and we will have good enough time after teching constr to get the ultimate anti-crash tech

btw useful videos by me about crash recovery:

on monarch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI6f9tIcFd4
on noble (take over from someones save in one of NC games): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY9rLYIXy3U

edit:
beware both videos are 1 hour +- long and with horrible czech accent ;-) and tough to understand at times (I suppose :-D)

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Thank you very much, V! I guess I will be in BIG trouble - I am much better at writing, than at oral comprehension, and this gets a high negative multiplier usually, when a non-English accent is thrown in - esp a non-English British, no offence meant - but I'll give the videaos a try... and I like those experience-based observations and rules-of-thumb, I DO

vranasm said:

Those 12 tiles are not due to the 12 turns to arrive to borders, but because the 12 tiles maintenance without currency will basically kill your economy for nothing.

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That's an essential point, but you could always raze everything but the capital....and a shrine ... or two....

However, this seems to imply an important strategic point to ourlong-term thinking: if we can't raze the other-Korean cities - as the scenario seems to imply - then (but also in the case we CAN raze them, just less so) we need to be settling in the direction of other-Korea as much as possible....

Cam_H said:

I'm reading this post, and I'm thinking "Has he learnt nothing yet ... about spell checking!?!?!"

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What can I say ...

Oh, those Dingoes!!

See ... you're learning already.

'Yes' woopdeedoo ... it's you.

PPP? I guess complete current Warrior build, and then another, then a Settler. Tech' The Wheel > Pottery > Bronze? Mine the bare Grassland Hill and Farm another Floodplain before Cottages I guess.

I have also heard that the chariot rushes are not less effective than the axe rushes... I am in favor of a fast settler, settling the dot that gives us the bunch or resources in our East and launching a chariot rush at other-Korea! No, not indeed: I think that whipping - and it seems to be an important element of any rush, as does chopping - is not the way to go if you are setting up a cottage economy.

But I am still in favor of faster settling that dot again to have access to the fast moving unit - for defence and further recon, and then fast settling the FP valley.

I am not sure we'll need the BW for Slavery, or for axes, but revealing copper would be nice, so, if we are not having a different beelining - from the one suggested by V - I would go for currency+CoL after an immediate BW, using the latter and the revealed Cu to fine-tune the further settling - and to keep open the option of whipping.

oh come on... forget at all rushing at this map. It's not viable. I guess civ would need some deep article about when NOT to rush. This is clearly map for "not to rush".

I would prefer the cats war since it will be for me very different from the things in BtS (there siege can't kill), but whatever, we can make usual renassaince breakout too.

With the land around there is no hurry for taking "better" land since our land seems to me actually very good (you had lucky hand Cam even if the start seemed sucky)

And btw when we're at chariot rushes they are not viable against protective civs (like at all) 1 hill city can eat around 12 chariots with only 2 defending archers.

Another thing is that good attack date for chariot (more important), axe rush is around T60...

btw when we're at it we could Oracle->constr (it has not brutal prereqs), but I am not sure what are typical dates for Oracle on Monarch.

Benginal in one of the Emperor games at S&T did at typical Oracle date (1400BC), but I think it was with gold in BFC.

vranasm said:

btw when we're at it we could Oracle->constr (it has not brutal prereqs), but I am not sure what are typical dates for Oracle on Monarch.

Benginal in one of the Emperor games at S&T did at typical Oracle date (1400BC), but I think it was with gold in BFC.

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Oracle will take too long w/o marble and with our current production base and will ruin any further expansion.

I am also tempted by the hwatcha war and by V's idea of Or>Co to help with this. If 1400BC is the date to have it, though.... This is approx 60 turns, of which we need something like 25-30 to get to Or - if we still go thru Pottery, and I don't see how we can drop it from our tech line - and then we can barely clinch the Or without chopping and whipping it - if at all. I'll try to calculate the approximate # of turns of Oracle production, if somebody else besides V supports the idea.