The Emperor Masters' Challenge 2 (on Warlords)

carl corey said:
Edit: About right now: I'm really sick of seeing that (now) useless Divine Right not being traded around for some juicy techs.

I think Mehmed and Saladin both already have Divine Right. One of them definitely does, because if you recall, one of them founded Islam earlier before we were able to, which is why we were concerned about the race for The Spiral Minaret.

Mehmed clearly has Paper, since he has Education. Saladin might not. That's perhaps worth investigating. He can't be holding back all those technologies just because he thinks he's going to build wonders or something. If he could be made to like us more, some of those might open up in exchange for Paper or perhaps for something else we research over the next several turns.

Also, don't forget that there's still one more civilization out there. If you're lucky, you haven't traded with his worst enemy yet (not likely, unfortunately).
 
Cabert, you are a pessimist, aren't you? :)

I haven't been entertaining thoughts of tech trading, more of extorting and going it alone. Unless we switch religion or adopt Free Religion ("But that would go against everything we stand for!" ;)), we probably aren't going to be able to get anyone to trade till somebody else adopts Free Religion. And, looking at the situation we are in, we would have nothing we could possibly trade to them (at least of a long time) anyway. Personally, I'm not positive either, since most of my own games involve extensive tech trading. But since this is pretty much what a religious strategy on Emperor might dictate, so be it. If we can't win this game, at least we can safely say that a religious strategy is not optimal on Emperor most of the time.

Yes, I've been thinking about space race from the start, though until the last few rounds I thought domination might be possible. I wonder how the AIs can still tech up so fast even though they don't like each other, and don't like the look of it at all. But I'm putting my hopes on pure geopolitics. Maybe superior size and output will win in the end. Hmm... How about nuking our space race rivals? :cool:
 
Round 12: 1454AD - 1556AD

Another century went by. By the way, it's purely coincidental that the last few rounds I've been playing are about an Epic century long each.

I decided to research Printing Press next because I realised that Banking needed Guilds, which needed Feudalism. I thought we were better off benefiting from the extra commerce of Printing Press towns earlier and then researching our way to Banking.

Anyway, before we attacked HC again, I took all his money in a trade that was barely useful for him:



At first I wanted to trade him DR since all the wonders had been built. But I noticed that DR is twice as expensive as Paper, and that it leads to Nationalism, which allows drafting. No, I did not want Huayna to have the chance to draft some defenders to annoy me in the future when I'm laying siege to his cities. Paper, on the other hand, opens up Education, which he would take a long time to research (so no Gunpowder for him anytime soon) and which would not give him any new military options.

After getting paid, we attacked him :devil:

Meanwhile, I sent our new prophet to Madrid to build the Mahabodhi:



An immediate +14 gpt. Not bad at all. Our science slider went up to 90%.

Soon enough, the Inca capital, which our army headed straight for, fell to our forces:



It was a costly victory, though. We lost 4 of our catapults to the two longbows.

Eventually, we moved on:



And then we razed the other small city I pointed out in the last round. Our objectives achieved, I checked what HC was willing to pay for peace. I tried this:



He wouldn't give anything more than the gold, the gpt and Feudalism. Ah well, saving 1 turn of research is better than nothing. War weariness was starting to hit us hard, especially since many of our citizens complained about fighting their brothers and sisters in the faith. We needed peace too.

Since I was in the trading screen, I decided to check if Mehmed had anything new to offer:



I was tempted to make this trade. But I thought about it and decided that we did not really need more health since the happiness cap was what prevented most of our cities from growing, so why help Mehmed grow even more powerful?

On the next turn, we met another alien:



He was willing to trade techs with us, but he was so much more advanced that we had nothing to offer him. But I traded pigs for his deer.

Meanwhile, part of our stack that had conquered the Incas made its way to Gaul to capture it:



Check it out. A barb city with towns! This is going to be good.

When we've researched Banking, I immediately made the civics change:



The merchants in the cities that could have them gave us some extra income, while a few cities ran engineers to help with production. This, by the way, is the first time I'm using Mercantilism. It doesn't look that impressive to me as an economic civic, but it makes sense in our situation.

On the same turn, I whipped the Forbidden Palace in Cuzco:



Our economy should be in quite a good shape after all this.

And this is where the round ended. Crucial decision to make #1: What should we research next? Education to get Liberalism for Free Speech? Decision #2: What shall we do with our next great person (Memphis now has mix of both scientist and priest GPPs, with the latter still more likely)? If we get a GS? if we get a GP?

We haven't actually captured Gaul yet. But after that I'm thinking of sending the stack SW to eventually attack Isabella and take the southern part of our continent. Should we start building trebs and prepare for the war?

The routine graphs:



Our GNP is still quite low. Any idea why? The income from Spiral Minaret and merchants is not counted, right?



Gandhi and Mehmed are drastically outstripping us. I hope we are not in trouble.

The tech trading screen:



Hopeless? Almost everyone else is much more advanced than us and we can't trade with anybody to help us catch up (Saladin doesn't have Printing Press, but he doesn't like us).

The map of our continent:



Our empire is growing steadily in size and population. I hope we will be able to catch up eventually and win by space race. Another nail-biter of a game.

Any comments or advice?
 
Mercantilism is better with caste system and representation...
anyway, right now it's better than decentralization, which gives nothing+being spi, it costs you nothing to switch.

I'd go for astronomy as soon as possible, but that's just me.
+ building hordes of trebuchets for blowing away isabella before she is anybody's friend.
 
Capture or build more cities, you're at 90%, that should be way lower :p. BTW I notice Gandhi built a city already, are you to late?
 
aelf said:
Our GNP is still quite low. Any idea why? The income from Spiral Minaret and merchants is not counted, right?

GNP is a very strange number. I've read somewhere what it means, and it didn't make much sense to me. What I think is significant is that yours is very much on the rise. Am I correct that the start of this latest upward trend corresponds to the completion of one of your religious wonders?

Gandhi and Mehmed are drastically outstripping us. I hope we are not in trouble.

They both just had a huge upward spike. That usually means they just researched some key military technology and upgraded a bunch of units. I'd bet on Military Tradition or perhaps Chemistry. The good news, therefore, is that it should hopefully level off soon.

Hopeless?

It will be very interesting to see. One thing that might help you is that as the technology costs increase, the AI's rate of discovery should slow down while yours picks up. If you can get to the point where you're close enough to research something they don't already know, that will make a huge difference.
 
Dr Elmer Jiggle said:
They both just had a huge upward spike. That usually means they just researched some key military technology and upgraded a bunch of units. I'd bet on Military Tradition or perhaps Chemistry. The good news, therefore, is that it should hopefully level off soon.

Yes, you're right. I neglected to mention something. This screenshot shows Gaul:



Note the purple border. Yes, dutch. Gandhi built a city there (which will eventually get culturally overwhelmed by Thebes, I feel). And guess what is guarding the city? Riflemen. It's terrifying :eek:

Well, at least we do have a tech Saladin hasn't gotten round to researching. Hopefully we can see the gap beginning to close up as early as the next round, though it might be hard to tell since we don't know just how advanced they are unless they start having a more advanced unit.

Cabert, why Astronomy? The idea I have is to research towards Liberalism next for Free Speech, and then Constitution and Democracy for Representation and Emancipation respectively. We can then run a strong hybrid economy powered by religion. How's that? After that we can move on. But we might need to get a good military tech for defense some time soon. Chemistry?

In the meantime, I suppose we should prepare to take over Isabella's lands with lots of trebuchets, as Cabert suggested.

I won't be around for the next two days. Keep the discussion going, people. I'll be back on Friday night, and by then we should know how to proceed.
 
You know, what? I just compared the current game to the first Emperor Challenge and realised that we are actually worse off now. In that game we were researching Constitution at about the same period as the end of the last round, and had almost the entire continent under control. And we had people to trade with too.

The only advantage we have now is maybe higher income pre-Free Speech and Emancipation.
 
GNP- The GNP (Gross National Product) is the total of the raw commerce you produce on each turn minus your expenses (city, civic, unit maintenance etc.) Your raw commerce is the gold coins you get from all your worked tiles, the palace, specialists and trade routes. It does not include commerce gained from holy cities and city improvements like markets and banks. When you look at the F2 screen it shows your commerce and income after all the improvements. The commerce figure (left column) also has science commerce which includes the effects of universities etc. However on the F1 screen in the coins column it shows the raw commerce value each city is producing, add these up and subtract you cost and you will get your GNP figure. Therefore it is entirely possible to have a negative GNP but run a profit and continue research at a good pace.

by Robi D in his excellent guide.
 
dutchfire said:
by Robi D in his excellent guide.

Thanks, and that reminds me of what I didn't understand. I get what the formula is calculating, but I don't see why that's useful information. Leaving out shrine income and the effects of buildings is like having the culture graph omit culture from wonders and specialists.
 
aelf said:
Cabert, why Astronomy? The idea I have is to research towards Liberalism next for Free Speech, and then Constitution and Democracy for Representation and Emancipation respectively. We can then run a strong hybrid economy powered by religion. How's that? After that we can move on. But we might need to get a good military tech for defense some time soon. Chemistry?

I assume Cabert wants the big boost in trade. You can switch out of mercantilism after the intercontinental trade routes appear. With three equal sized rivals, they will have two international trade routes per city even if you run mercantilism. Unless you can get Saladin and Mehmed to close borders, mercantilism may not help you catch the AI.

I'm curious how this religious based economy does in a space race. With two shrines, the Spiral Minaret, and Sankore you can get 8 gold and 4 beakers per city until computers. You may be able to run 90 or 100% research in Pacifism. I agree with organized religion to build the temples and monasteries and then pacifism to generate scientists. Lightbulbing a few tradeable techs may let you trade and pass the AIs in the industrial era. Maybe the lower tech path for Astro, Chemistry, Sci Method, Physics after taking final control of your continent. They may be more tradeable than the civic related techs.

There is still a lot of game left and you must have a lot more territory than your rivals. (Have you met the seventh rival? A backward civ alone on a small continent would be great for backtrading the cheap techs.) Once your land is developed you should take a lot less time to research techs than your rivals.
 
RobertTheBruce said:
There is still a lot of game left and you must have a lot more territory than your rivals. (Have you met the seventh rival? A backward civ alone on a small continent would be great for backtrading the cheap techs.) Once your land is developed you should take a lot less time to research techs than your rivals.

Maybe the 7th Civ has already Been eliminated...MAYBE ... hopefully not though... we'll wait and see lol
 
Hehe, told you so Gandhi turned out to be the Hindu founder. My guess is Mehemed has taken over the other unknown civ. If it isn't destroyed it seems to be so weak to be unable to send a caravel to your continent. To bad because, if there is another considerable size AI which isn't Hindu you might again runaway with a dilpo vic. At the moment Space still seems to be the only option.

I think you are for an important breakpoint for choosing friends. Are you gonna hate Saladin or you gonna hate the leaders, Ghandi and Mehemet? Difficult call without knowledge of their world.

You need education asap for universities and Oxford, not to mention for liberalisme (has it been researched already?).

Go whomping Izzy. She should have inferieur units so take her out, you can grow.

Aelf, I wonder what would have happened if you kept 1 of your neighbours as a friend (remember the tough choice in the beginning?)... It's going to be difficult again. They have rifles, you lack the knowledge of horsebackriding... :(

Which choice you will make, it's important to focus.

I can't look into the save, but I think your city's pop. is quit low. You claim hapiness is a problem, but with some hapiness resources, 2 religions and room to press the culture bar that seems strange?

To what extend is Saladin prepared to attack one of your rivals and do you think switching to christianity (in the long run) would give you good relations with him?
 
If the other leaders (especially Saladin) don't like us, what is the reason? It is important to be able to trade techs. And even more important that they don't declare war on us....

So maybe switch civics to Vassalage and Theocracy to make Mehmed and Saladin more happy? If Theology and Feudalism have not yet been researched this could be a reason to give these technologies a priority.

In my current game I was in a comparable situation after doing a lot of warring. Choosing the preferred civics and even adopting the state religion of my strongest neighbour made him offer me a defensive pact that I gratefully accepted. Maybe try something comparable here, too?
 
Well, my plans for today were cancelled, so here I am.

I agree with going after Isabella as soon as possible. We need to expand and grow quickly to catch up.

We can't switch to something other than Confucianism or Buddhism because that would undermine the effects of the twin religious wonders. And we can't switch to Vassalage now because that would cause a significant drop in income with no Bureaucracy bonus and higher civic upkeep. Switching to Theocracy soon makes sense, saving on upkeep and giving units to use on Isabella extra xp, but Saladin will still not like us very much since we have a different religion. Maybe we can eventually trade some techs with him, but that would make Mehmed unhappier. Hmm... decisions.

I'm thinking of researching Education -> Liberalism, then Gunpowder -> Chemistry (for grenadiers so that we are not so defenseless), followed by Nationalism -> Constitution -> Democracy.

I'll take a look at the save and maybe play a game tonight.
 
When you research Philosophy you will probably be able to trade techs with Gandhi. It is really important to have good relations with all other leaders except Isabella. So trade resources, open your borders, give them presents and make them happy!

Try to maintain good relations with both the Christian Saladin and the Hindu friends. Saladin is vital for keeping the Hindus at bay. So if you have to choose: choose Saladin as your friend.
 
Andraeianus I said:
Try to maintain good relations with both the Christian Saladin and the Hindu friends. Saladin is vital for keeping the Hindus at bay. So if you have to choose: choose Saladin as your friend.

But that does come with the risk that we might be casting our lot with a doomed faction (Saladin's) on the other continent.

I've played another round tonight. I'll put the details up another day. Need to get some rest right now :sleep: You can continue to offer your adivce and comments based on the previous round. Not much has changed.
 
Round 13: 1556AD - 1649AD

Actually, I can't say that not much has changed now. There were a few discoveries I made when I loaded the game and played several more turns today. But they will be revealed later.

The round started with the realisation that we could sign an open borders agreement with Gandhi:



Now, I'm not an expert at technical details. It didn't occur to me intially that, since we are running Mercantilism, the open borders might benefit Gandhi in terms of trade routes but not us. What was foremost on my mind was relations, and open borders would give us a small bonus there. The decision is up for your review. Does Mercantilism mean Gandhi cannot benefit from trade routes to our cities either? If that is not true, should we cancel the agreement and sign it again after we stop running Mercantilism?

Anyway, Gaul (the barb city) was duly taken and was soon incorporated into our empire, towns and all:



A couple of turns later, as Huamanga was within one turn of completing all the 3 units in its queue and another city was completing a trebuchet, I decided it was time to make the civics switch:



So Saladin might just become an ally. I guess we'll have to see if he is willing to trade after a while.

When our next GP was born, it turned out that we got a GS after all, despite the fact that the odds of it being another prophet were slightly higher:



Since we were still running Bureaucracy, I used him to build an academy him in Thebes. In retrospect, we would probably benefit more in the long run by settling him in Madrid, our commerce city, but I guess we could always use another GS for that.

In the same turn, it was, once again, time for war:



But wait - before that, I thought I would make a one-sided deal:



Paper was not going to benefit her in any way, especially with our army at her doorstep, ready to conquer most of what was left of her lands :devil:

Our stack headed straight for Cordoba, Isabella's capital, and quickly captured it:



Resistance was minimal, and the only thing that troubled us was a punitive pillaging campaign mounted by a few Spanish chariots near Toledo. It did force us to upgrade a nearby Woodsman II warrior to a mace (I intended to upgrade it to a pike, but clicked on the wrong button :p) as Toledo was defended by axes :)eek:) and the mace subsequently died despite good odds, but the incident did not in any way affect the brisk pace of our invasion.

The fighting produced our second Great General, Sargon!



Now, what should we use this mighty Assyrian for?

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

As the war raged in the south, Huayna, plucking up a courage backed by nothing, had the nerve to make a demand:



I sent his messenger back without a head.

After we captured another Spanish city, Isabella realised her end was nigh:



Personally, I am very cautious towards the vassal system. So far, for me, it has brought nothing but trouble. And certainly, poor as she was, Isabella would not be able to give us anything. If we agreed, we would also be risking war with another civ that saw her as easy prey. Plus the fact that we would have to pay extra upkeep for nothing, it was easy for me to say 'no'.

The last of the major continental Spanish cities soon fell to us:



With no other good targets nearby, I decided to negotiate for peace and get something out of Izzy:



She agreed to give us everything except HBR (and we didn't need that right now). I accepted. So we captured 3 out of the 6 cities she had on the continent. What about the other 3? They were small and insignificant. I would rather let her improve their surroundings and grow them for us before capturing them. As it were, they would only be costing us upkeep.

I had begun to lay down plans for capturing all the remaining Inca cities on our continent next, when I noticed that HC had a defensive pact with Saladin! No wonder he was so brave. But what on earth possessed Saladin to sign that treaty? They did not share the same religion and Huayna could not have offered him anything in return. AI logic is beyond me.

Yes, this is one of the afore-mentioned discoveries that changes things for us. We have to modernise our forces before declaring war on Huayna to defend against Arab interference, and Saladin cannot now be our ally. Looks like we have no choice but to target Izzy's little cities next if we want to continue expanding.

The other discovery was the realisation that we needed Music to build cathedrals. I had forgotten (thought they were enabled by Theology). We had researched Education, Liberalism and Gunpowder, and were currently researching Chemistry. I decided to research Music next to start building cathedrals (need those to offset the removal of the monastery's effects after researching Scientific Method), before going Nationalism -> Constitution -> Democracy. It would take only 2 turns anyway.

Anyway, as I switched to war plan B (attack Izzy again instead), changing the intended position of our stack, Mehmed came looking for a trade again:



This guy is really quite an extrovert, huh? I politely declined because we don't need health resources at the moment and certainly don't need to strengthen him.

That was the last incident of this round. I stopped after researching Chemistry and Music. There are a few decisions we have to make. First, should we switch to Free Speech? We have researched Liberalism for it, but I haven't made up my mind to make the switch. We would probably get more gpt after switching. I suppose now that Thebes doesn't really need the increased hammers for anything important (building a Confucian cathedral right now), we should do so. Our new cities would benefit from the extra culture anyway.

Second, how should we employ our GG? Huamanga hasn't built a unit since we got him. It is currently building a grenadier. If we are going to settle him as another instructor in the city, now is the time to do so. Well, I suppose there is no real benefit from creating a warlord unit. Military academy, anyone? :p

Maybe I've been asking questions I already have answers to. Here's one that I am still thinking about: What should we research after Democracy? The point of getting Liberalism, Constitution and Democracy is to adopt Free Speech, Representation (for the beaker bonus to our regular and Mercantilism specialists) and Emancipation (to solve the mounting discontent and for cottage growth) to help us catch up. I don't know if all of you agree with this research decision, but there wasn't any opposition to the proposal and I guess we are commited to it now. The big question is what should we prioritise next? Should we improve our military and go for Rifling? Or should we go for Steam Power and then Steel and Railroads? Or should we continue focusing on the economy and pick up Corporation (en route to Assembly Line)? Do consider the units and benefits the different techs unlock. I'm inclined towards getting Rifling next, but even if I decide for it, I still don't know which of the other two options to take first.

Here's the GNP graph:



I am beginning to doubt the relevance of this information to this game. I don't know what to say about it anymore. Maybe I should just drop it from the updates?

The power graph:



This graph, at least, is clear. We really need to watch out for Saladin when we decide to declare war on HC again. Upgrading some of our macemen to grenadiers (which will be useful against HC) will probably raise our ratings.

And the map of our continent:



We have most of the continent under control already and can soon get rid of Spanish presence on it. I'm thinking of keeping the Spanish city of Pamplona. It has cows, at least. As for the others, I think we should raze them upon capture. They are worthless and are too close to the Ottoman city (blasted AI :mad:). It looks like there's room for another Ottoman city on our continent after that, but oh well.

This is how we stand in terms of technology:



We don't have anything that either Gandhi or Mehmed doesn't, but we do have a few major techs that Saladin doesn't have. I guess we are beginning to catch up with the other continent :cool:

The diplomatic scene:



As you can see, Saladin and HC have a defensive pact. Nobody is happy with us. Mehmed might like us if we switch to Vassalage, though. Should we do that some time, especially since war with Saladin is likely in the not-too-distant future?

And is there a possibility that we can provoke a war with HC (having him declare war on us instead of the other way round) by angering him further in every possible way? We could switch to Buddhism and keep spamming him with demands he will refuse. If we succeed we would circumvent the nasty defensive pact.

Need your input, as always :)
 
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