The Emperor Masters' Challenge 2 (on Warlords)

aelf said:
Why? Please elaborate.

vassals cost you + give a bad modifier to all other civs, so if you want a friend it's a bad idea.


How do you do that? No matter how I tried I couldn't get her to give more than the 3 gpt she has. And she has no resources I can demand.
If you trade on of your corns for her 3 gpt, she will lower her tech slider and you will be able to sell her another useless (because you have more than 1) ressource. She needs strategical ressources too, if you want her to build conquistadores vs saladin. She's naked now. You're her protector, giving her all she needs.
Also, don't care about her teching. She needs 29 turns for engineering:mischief:
 
Actually she'll give you X gpt (in this case 3) for each resource you give her. Sell her the first one, 3 or 2 more gpt become available and so on until they reach a certain limit (not sure how it is calculated). The problem with this system is that usually a war-time vassal will be quite devastated so he won't be likely to have a huge gpt available. I've had a peace-time vassal give me 22 gpt for a resource, but never a war-time one that payed that much.

Usually a war-time vassal just presses your cultural borders and there's not much you can do about it. Luckily, she can't press you right now. But take anything you can get: trade for gold modifiers, open borders, peace, etc, if you ever want her to accept trading a tech with you, otherwise you're just going to have an annoyed and untouchable AI in the game. Consider how long it will take her to research what you want, in the state she's in you might as well research the tech yourself anyway...
 
cabert said:
disclaimer : i'm a monarch level player, and i like the underdog fights. Don't pay too much attention to my advice ;)

You dispense good advice. Don't worry :)

cabert said:
vassals cost you + give a bad modifier to all other civs, so if you want a friend it's a bad idea.

I've already weighed that in. Anyway, some time in the future we can (in addition to having adopted whoever's favourite civic for some time) switch to Free Religion (we're Spiritual so we can easily revert after that) if we want to bribe Mehmed or Gandhi to declare war on Saladin/Mao. Negating the different religion penalty should make up for the -1 we get from having a vassal.

cabert said:
If you trade on of your corns for her 3 gpt, she will lower her tech slider and you will be able to sell her another useless (because you have more than 1) ressource.

carl corey said:
Actually she'll give you X gpt (in this case 3) for each resource you give her. Sell her the first one, 3 or 2 more gpt become available and so on until they reach a certain limit (not sure how it is calculated).

Thanks for the info. I'll do that.

cabert said:
She's naked now. You're her protector, giving her all she needs.

That just sounds wrong :mischief:
 
aelf said:
Anyway, for some odd reason, furious Isabella asked for open borders: ... Is such behaviour characteristic of a vassal?

Yes. As the game goes on, you'll quickly tire of her repeated requests for open borders. I don't know why they ask, because there's really no reason for you to agree. I guess you could maybe get a trade route, but you already have visibility in her cities and free run of her territory. I can't imagine that the 1 to 5 cities a typical vassal has is going to make a huge trade route difference.

I guess I'm going to need to search the Warlords forum for this ... does anyone understand how the resource demands work? In my latest game, Hannibal was my capitulation vassal from around the maceman era forward. He immediately agreed to give me marble and on the following turn I demanded deer and he acquiesced. Several centuries later he got silver from a new settlement, and I demanded that too. He agreed, but on the following turn he cut off my supply of venison. I demanded that he reconsider, but he refused, and that didn't start a war. The manual seems quite clear on this.

The master has the right to demand access to any resource under vassal control, even if it is their only one. However, there is one catch. If the vassal refuses to pay this tribute, the agreement immediately ends and a state of war automatically results between the two parties.

So what happened in my game? Hannibal refused to give me deer, but there was no war. Was he getting some kind of credit for the marble he was still exporting? Am I only allowed to get one free resource from my vassal?

After a while, I realised that she was too backward. She wouldn't be able to resist any army sent by Saladin, and no matter what it would be in our interest that she holds out as long as possible when the war comes. So I decided to help her out a little:

I think this can often be a good idea with a vassal. The only risk, of course, is that they'll trade the technology to someone else, but you (and I) will come to that in a moment. If you choose the gifted technologies carefully, you might be able to get her researching some obscure side path that you don't care about. Her research will be painfully slow, but if it's something you aren't going to get to for 20 turns anyway, it might help. Note, however, that you don't seem to automatically learn what your vassal knows, and I don't think they're required to trade it to you. That seems strange.

By the way, that little clause that required her to stop trading with Huayna was to prevent her from disseminating those techs to our future victim.

I hope that doesn't backfire. I've had lousy luck with "Stop trading with" agreements. They seem to be right back trading the next turn, or at least the next time I remember to check. I think the AI's get so many built in diplomatic bonuses with each other (just for being AI's) that the embargo doesn't necessarily permanently damage relations.

I'm not sure if angry vassals are willing to trade, though. Could I at least extort it from her? If neither are possible, what's the point of asking them to research something?

I already addressed this partially before I read that part of your reply. Anyway, in my experience, no. Angry vassals are not usually willing to trade, and you can't extort the technology. I have no idea what the point is of asking them to research something. :confused: After I tried getting Hannibal to learn Guilds for me, I gave up and let him research whatever he wanted. I guess it didn't matter much though, since he was still working on Civil Service when I won my Diplomatic victory. :D
 
Dr Elmer Jiggle, the vassal system as it is right now is clearly broken and not compatible with what the manual says. There's a patch coming out soon, hopefully it will fix some of these bugs, though I'm worried after what I've read here. (there was a post on the home page about it a while ago)
 
carl corey said:
Dr Elmer Jiggle, the vassal system as it is right now is clearly broken and not compatible with what the manual says.

I know there are lots of weird glitches with vassals, but I hadn't realized this was one of them. I found some information on the Warlords forum that seems to imply that if you're persistent enough about a resource demand, it will eventually lead to war. Evidently they're allowed to give you a little sass without declaring war, but if you really want to put the hammer down, you can. Depending on which rumors you believe, it may or may not take a few turns of repeating the demand. It's not clear to me whether this is a bug or just bad documentation.
 
I have watched and followed but not contributed lately and for that I apologize.

Aelf.. obviously the path of following the holy words strengthened overall research rate and has let you catch up to the ai much quicker than the previous challenge. I hope this proves the point of the religious strat!!!

will be eagerly watching the rest of the game

NaZ
 
Aelf remember you have got to choose sides any time now. If you keep trading with Ghandi and Mehemet, the Dark side will hate you for it, like Mao does. Incredible he still exists btw. He misses some techs, but is strong in power. Good for bribing... His GNP isn't too bad either, strangly enough.

What path will you chose? The road of the peaceful advanced Hindu's or the holy road of power from the Christians.

The easiest way would be to chose the Ghandi-path. He is peaceful and wants to trade, but that requires you have actual something to trade. The tech screen only says so much, do you feel you are getting up there? Do you think you can beeline to some tech first?

About the tech path, don;t forget about the Hooverdam, it will be great for the Spacerace. Kremlin might also be nice, but space parts can't be bought, so only if you need to develop a lot and/or need lots of units. Communisme is liked by the AI, but seldom researched. Idea?
 
Well, our we don't have many options right now. Saladin and Mao hate us for trading with their enemies, and it's not likely to change. The best bet is bribing Mehmed/Gandhi to go to war with Saladin/Mao. That might be accomplished by switching to one of their favourite civics (US or Vassalage) for a some time and adopting Free Religion for a few turns. That would cancel most of the negative modifiers and add several positive ones, enough to make them quite pleased at least. Of course, that's assuming we've managed to catch up somewhat.

About asking Isabella to stop trading with HC backfiring, Dr Elmer made a good point there, but I haven't given her any really dangerous techs. At most Huayna can draft more longbows (maybe muskets) to defend himself, and that's not very impressive. I want to be able to gift Isabella Chemistry on the turn we declare war so that she can build some grenadiers to defend herself (and she can't trade with HC during the war, can she? He will be wiped out by the end of it).

Anyway, I am not sure I want to diminish Isabella's gpt at the moment. She might need some money for upgrades later. If she takes part of Saladin's attention away from us and manages to survive (so Saladin doesn't get more cities), she would've served her main purpose as a vassal well.
 
voek said:
About the tech path, don;t forget about the Hooverdam, it will be great for the Spacerace. Kremlin might also be nice, but space parts can't be bought, so only if you need to develop a lot and/or need lots of units.

I think coal plants are still a better bet. Three Gorges Dam is expensive and is a wonder the AI loves to build, so I doubt we can get it. Kremlin is not really necessary, and we don't have stone to help build it. Space Elevator is more important than anything else. We must have an Ironworks city before we get Robotics, which we want/need to get to as quickly as possible.
 
aelf said:
I think coal plants are still a better bet. Three Gorges Dam is expensive and is a wonder the AI loves to build, so I doubt we can get it. Kremlin is not really necessary, and we don't have stone to help build it. Space Elevator is more important than anything else. We must have an Ironworks city before we get Robotics, which we want/need to get to as quickly as possible.

Agree on the Kremlin, but not on Three Gorges. Don't know if the AI realy likes it, but if you can reach the tech first combined with the fact you need to build it in a city next to a city, you will have a good chance. Wonders with a prequiste are often more viable to build before the AI does. However, the Space Elevator is the most important of course.

Most often I use the combo: Ironworks =) Kremlin, US, buy rush factories all over, build Three Gorges faster, have super productions city's on the continent =) more research (convert hammers) =) faster Space Elevator. Don't know if this is doable at this point, just to explain my choises.

Why are so fixated to help Izzy survive btw? Who cares if she get overrun? Recapture the city. If you spare her the GNP, what's the point in having a vassal either. It might not be very ethical, but it's game, screw the vassals if they don't add value. :) I doubt Saladin will go for Izzy and wherever he lands, you should be able to wipe out his landing force with cannons etc. She is giving you the negative modifier anyway.
 
voek said:
Why are so fixated to help Izzy survive btw? Who cares if she get overrun? Recapture the city. If you spare her the GNP, what's the point in having a vassal either. It might not be very ethical, but it's game, screw the vassals if they don't add value. :) I doubt Saladin will go for Izzy and wherever he lands, you should be able to wipe out his landing force with cannons etc. She is giving you the negative modifier anyway.

This is just an idea I am exploring. I do find that the AI tends to get distracted when fighting another civ besides yours. I guess it's not imperative that she survives, but I reckon it's better that Saladin doesn't get a foothold so near our continent. And recapturing her cities from him after she's wiped out may not be cost effective. -1 diplomatic modifier isn't that great if you aren't counting on a diplomatic win.
 
No the -1 isn't big, but at the moment you need a lot more positive modifiers then you have got at this moment. But if you think you will have something to offer to ghandi/mehemet (do you think Ghandi ever will attack anybody?) in a while, it isn't that important, but the reason why I didn't like Izzy being a vazal is because I don't see her adding much value to your empire. How much gnp are you extorting?

Anyway the most important goal at this moment is getting back in the tech race and being prepared for an invasion. I would build mostly cannons/arty for stack killing on the spot. How is your GP status? Do you have a good GPfarm by now? Also important for Golden Age during race. You already have that artist and since you need two different kind of GP's it might be good to have an artist anyway at the end. It's difficult to give any more practical advice since you mostly need to build up further and hope you are getting back on top for now. Could you post a tech tree screeny plz?
 
Sorry. Been busy. But it's coming up. It's going to be a long one (30 screenshots at the last count!).
 
Round 15: 1732AD - 1810AD

This round is actually short, but owing the events that occured in it, this update is going to be very long. I typed some 'storyline' bits into the update. You might have to read them to get a complete picture of what happened. Enjoy!

The Oceanic Crusades (1764AD-1806AD), two separate wars fought against the Egyptian Empire by the two Christian powers, Arabia and China, so called because the wars were conducted over the Axis Ocean.

The Arabs declared war on Egypt in 1732 on the grounds that for 6 years, Egypt had refused to agree to an embargo against the Ottomans, the Arabs' perennial enemies. Domestically, the Arab religious council, the Arab ruling body, called it a holy war against the "treacherous" Confucianist infidels who were friends to the "demonic" Hindus. But when the Egyptian Senate learned of the planned Arab invasion, it declared Egypt a religiously tolerant kingdom, bringing the status of the people of other faiths to the same level as that of the majority Confucianists and Buddhists. This move proved to be a major diplomatic coup, discrediting the Arab cause even in the Arab hinterland and helped bring the Ottomans into the war on the side of the Egyptians.

The first interesting thing that happened in this round:



Of course, I declined to do so, and this was probably the last straw for the Arabs.

Anyway, it turned out that Isabella was indeed not going to trade Compass to us:



I guess asking your vassal to research something is only really useful the case of a voluntary vassal or if you want to prevent your vassal from researching a key military technology that would strengthen him/her considerably.

Gandhi came to us with a request of his own:



To make him happy, I agreed. He became pleased with us. I think I took the opportunity to rush buy a building somewhere. Of course, our research suffered in the meantime, but I was planning to switch back to Representation when I could.

Isabella had her turn of making a request, or rather a demand, strangely enough:



Sorry, dear. You are in no position to ask for anything.

Then, as I was about to re-adopt Representation, I noticed something:



It had begun! And not on our timing :eek: This called for emergency measures:



I decided to stay in US and switched to Free Religion in the hope that Gandhi would be friendly enough to assist us when the Arabs declare on the next turn. We also switched to Nationalism to be able to draft some riflemen in Gaul to help defend it.

The Arabs landed on the next turn and it was war:



I drafted one rifleman in Gaul and hoped for the best. And Gandhi was being a bastard about the war:



My hatred for the in-game manifestation of this pacifist is renewed. I remember the days when he was friendly but refused to lift a finger to help me against a mutual enemy that attacked me. Sounds familiar?

Mehmed, however, was a different story:



I didn't even adopt Vassalage. He was only cautious and he agreed to help us for a relatively low price of 550 gold :clap: It could be that he wanted to go to war against the Arabs eventually anyway. Phew!

When the Arabs declared war, the Egpytians siezed the opportunity to declare war on the Incas, allies of the Arabs on the Egyptian continent, and marched the bulk of their army, long prepared for a "final attack" on the Confucianist "Inca separatists", to the Inca capital in the north. This war has often been considered an extension of the First Oceanic Crusade, but lately historians have begun calling it the Last Egyptian-Inca War. This war brought an end to the Inca state on the Egyptian continent, bringing to a close a conflict that had begun in the dawn of civilization and had transcended religious and ethnic differences.

I made sure Isabella was little stronger in case Saladin attacked her, and in the process I asked her for enough gold to be able to rush buy an additional rifleman in Gaul on top of bribing Mehmed:



And, yes, it was a good opportunity to finish what we started with the Incas:



The Arab invasion force, borne on a fleet of frigates and galleons far more advanced than the few Egyptian caravels, landed unimpeded on the tip of the Gallic Peninsula in the east of the Egyptian continent. However, despite the relative weakness of Egyptian military presence in that region, Arab assaults on Gaul were not successful and the remaining Arab Ansar Cavalry went instead to pillage the Gallic countryside, burning towns and villages and comitting a dozen atrocities (see: The Rape of the Gallic Country). In doing so, the Arab force separated itself into detachments, which proved to be a grave mistake as it enabled the Egyptians to counterattack with their conscript Rifle Militia and destroy the Arab detachments one by one.

The Arab navy, meanwhile, blockaded Gaul and imprisoned or killed any Egyptian fishermen caught in the open sea. This and the Ansars' pillaging of the Gallic pig farms caused catastrophic famine in Gaul. More than half of the city's inhabitants were either killed in the fighting or starved to death during the Crusades.

The two or three Arab cavalry that attacked Gaul either retreated or died. The rest, and those who retreated, spread out to pillage the improvements around Gaul:



Perfect opportunity to counterattack with our rifles. Stupid AI tactics. Their rifleman was destroyed by our grenadier.

Meanwhile, our next GP was born in Memphis once again:



I sent him to Madrid, our commerce city, to be a superspecialist and add to our income. I had hoped for another GS, but it looks like our chances of getting one were diminishing.

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

The failure of the Arab invasion and fierce fighting with the Ottomans on their own continent soon brought the Arab Crusade to an end. Only the Arab navy remained active in Egpyt, continuing the blockade until 1794, when a peace treaty was signed between Arabia and Egypt in which the Arabs agreed to pay the Egyptians 190 pounds of gold and provide them with Arab maps. The war with the Ottomans, however, continued until peace was finally signed in 1796 under Egyptian auspices. Some historians have argued that it was not in Egypt's interest to let their wartime allies crush the Arabs and become stronger, and hence the Senate had decided to bribe the Ottomans to end the war. The latter only gained the Arab city of Kufah.

You lose, Saladin:



Through him, we could finally get a glimpse of the other continent.

On the next turn, we finished researching Assembly Line, the first in the world to do so :goodjob: I decided to shop around with it:



This wasn't a very equal trade, but he wouldn't give us Astronomy or MT with it and the other two techs together aren't as good as Steel and 1280 gold. Astronomy would obsolette Colossus immediately and MT is of no great value to us. At least the gold would allow us to run 100% research for quite a while and make up for the turns of research lost raising money to rush buy or upgrade troops (a few pikes to riflemen).

Mehmed was not willing to give any tech for it, probably since he was close to researching it himself, but we made a deal out of it anyway:



At least that would stop him from conquering more Arab cities and becoming a rival too strong to compete against. The additional gold would allow us to run 100% research even longer.

Anyway, I haven't mentioned that we were at war against Mao too.

When Egypt invaded the Inca kingdom, the Inca emperor sought the help of the Chinese by pledging himself as vassal to the Chinese Consul. Although the Chinese declared war on the Egyptian Empire, it was not until 1782 that they sent troops to the the Egyptian continent. Before that, Chinese war efforts consisted of a small blockade on the tiny fishing town of Vitoria in the south of the continent. In 1782, however, Gaul found itself besieged once again.

I tried to get Gandhi to declare on Mao, but he was being a bastard again:



Our 'friend', the bald freak. Gandhi will be my no.1 enemy in subsequent games. He has earned his way there in my books.

Since Indian help was not forthcoming, I decided to switch back to Representation:



We needed to speed up our research again. We stayed in Nationalism, though, as the Chinese might land anytime and anywhere. And eventually they did:



The Chinese sent more cavalry than the Arabs did, as well as cannons. However, they did not send a single infantry battalion, which proved to be their grave mistake as the Egyptian Rifle Militia and a few regular battalions were able to destroy the Chinese cavalry as soon they landed. The Chinese could only bombard Gaul with their cannons, which were destroyed in the Egyptian counterattack. Subsequently, the Chinese, like the Arabs, could only maintain a naval blockade on the city. The blockade was the only instance of Arab-Chinese cooperation in the Crusades for, although the two Christian powers were traditionally allies, they had not assisted each other in these wars.

Fortunately, I kept a few riflemen waiting between Gaul and Thebes, in case Mao landed his troops near any of these two cities. He had been bombarding Vitoria with a frigate to the south, but I reckon we could lose afford to lose one or two small cities there if it came to it. Priority for protection went to our major cities, and fortunately that policy wasn't a mistake. When he landed, we were able to take out all his cavalry immediately and he was left with two cannons:



They died in the subsequent scuicide attacks on Gaul. By then, however, we could no longer delay the population of Gaul from starving to death due to the naval blockade.

Once it was evident that Arab and Chinese attempts at invasion had failed and peace between the Ottomans and the Arabs had been brokered, the Egyptian Empire reneged on its promises of religious freedom and announced that Confucianism was again its state religion, in the hopes of re-employing the vast Confucianist institutions to help in scientific research and industrialisation. Religious persecution, however, did not return in any significant form, and religious minorities effectively enjoyed the same status as the Buddhist half of the Egyptian population, although their numbers continued to be negligible.

We went back to using the twin religious wonders to help with research:



We adopted OR to help with infrastructure building, especially since we were starting on factories at this point.

The Crusades officially ended in 1806 when the Chinese, having lost their invasion force and failed in preventing the virtual destruction of the Inca kingdom (the Inca emperor renounced his vassal status when Egyptian forces were marching on the last Inca city on the Egyptian continent and offered to capitulate to the Egyptians), signed the Peace of Kolhapur with the Egyptians, in which they agreed to pay the latter 300 pounds of gold with a small bi-annual interest and provide the latter with Chinese maps.

Realising his end was nigh, HC, like Izzy before him, offered to capitulate:



This time, however, I've learned better and refused (Isabella had not played any significant role in the war). Anyway, we still had one more Inca city on the continent at that time.

HC had to renounce his vassal status to Mao before he could offer to capitulate, I think, so Mao, having nothing else to fight for, agreed to sign peace:



We've effectively won the war :king:

After the last Inca city on the continent fell, I tried to extort techs from HC, who had the luxury of being given all these advanced techs as a vassal to Mao:



Unfortunately, he wouldn't give us any. And he had nothing else to offer. Oh, well.

The conclusion of the Crusades have often been viewed as a major victory for the Egpytians, despite the huge amount of money spent fighting the wars, more because of the conquest of the continental Inca lands than anything else. Close to 100,000 Egyptians were killed or maimed in the Gallic Peninsula alone during the Crusades, and they have remained a painful reminder of the brutality of war ever since (see: the Gallic War Memorial).

I stopped playing as soon as the wars ended. I hope we haven't fallen further behind Gandhi, who managed to stay out of the wars. Right now, we have to research the Astronomy and Scientific Method branch in the tech tree to get to Industrialism.

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

The power graph:



Saladin ruined himself in the war and we've become stronger due to spamming riflemen and conquering more territories. The others, though, are still way above us. I guess Gandhi and Mehmed just upgraded their troops to Infantry, but Mao?

This is how advanced we are relative to the rest of the world:



Looks like what it was like after the previous round, doesn't it? But Fascism and MT are not needed. The others we can research in fewer than 10 turns each. I'm thinking of aiming for Industrialism asap and then getting Rocketry to start on the Apollo Program (which Gandhi, by the way, has completed). After that it would be straight for Robotics, start on the Space Elevator and hope that we can build it and launch our ship before Gandhi. When should Biology be researched, though? Or should it be traded for?

This is our active trades screen:



See, at least we are getting quite a lot of gpt from Isabella. Any deals you think are harmful to us?

The map of our continent and the southern islands:



We've conquered whatever we can conquer on our continent. I think the southern islands are not cost-effective to invade and maintain. Maybe we could raze the last Inca city, that's all. Subsequently, any major war will probably only be fought with Gandhi to slow him down in the space race.

Map of the other continent:



Now the question boils down to this: Are we larger enough than any of them (especially Gandhi) to catch up and win? Diplomatic victory is not quite possible, so it will have to be a space victory.

Now it's time for me to stop typing and you to begin ;)
 
aelf said:
I guess asking your vassal to research something is only really useful the case of a voluntary vassal or if you want to prevent your vassal from researching a key military technology that would strengthen him/her considerably.

I think so, which is disappointing, though it can be very useful in that situation. If I have any concerns about my vassal becoming too powerful, it's fun to send them down some wild goose chase of a research path that takes them 50 to 100 turns per technology.

Isabella had her turn of making a request, or rather a demand, strangely enough:
...
Sorry, dear. You are in no position to ask for anything.

This is a real pet peeve of mine -- the way the AI will ask for ridiculous favors. They really ought to put a sanity check on those where they'll only ask for something that they would offer to you if the tables were turned. Or at least something that they would almost but not quite offer to you if the tables were turned.

In my current game, Saladin has twice asked me for a gift of a technology that nobody else in the game knew and when he had technologies that he could theoretically have traded me but that he was unwilling to part with. That just seems unfair.

I wouldn't even mind if I thought the AI played the same game with the other AI's, but have you ever seen a "+1 you helped us out" or "-1 you refused to help us" in AI to AI relations? I haven't. As far as I can tell it's purely an AI vs. human thing, and that qualifies as abuse in my book.
 
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