The Emperor Masters' Challenge 3 (on Warlords)

Might as well keep trying for liberalism and see if anyone on the other continent wants to give us engineering. If we don't get a GS it'll be dicey but we've invested our time in this path so switching gears now might not be worth it.

Have you considered switching to Caste system if we are not going to whip? This allows us some more specialists in cities that are as yet unequipped to handle them.

Also: do we want to finish off saladin? The city site below washington has some good food resources (if we were running caste system a city there could provide some scientists) and baghdad is taking up a lot of space.

I'd say our latest deadline for declaring war on Brennus is around 1500. He'll have gunpowder (or be close to it) by then I'm guessing. More worrying, he'll have knights soon so Pikemen will be important, making engineering even more of a goal. For our part, we should have amassed a decent trebuchet army by then.

edit: lightbulbing engineering would be a good idea.

I haven't openned up the save yet (I will have a look at it tonight), otherwise I would offer more confident advice. But here are my gut feelings.

1. RE tech situatuion: Who on the other continent has paper? The AI doesn't often prefer education or paper. If you have a monopoly on paper I'd hold it until you are close to finishing education. In this case you should also go for Liberalism.

2. What is the diplomatic sitaution? I see Stalin is Taoist. Ghandi and Mehmed couldn't be also. You will have to start choosing potential friends very soon, particularly if you want trade routes. I'd even lok for an opportunity to start a war on the other continent through bribery. You may be able to do this with Education/Liberalism. You need to slow up their teching, especially when you go to war with Brennus.

3. I still don't think you should go to war with Brennus until you get Astronomy. Your economy currently relies heavily on trade routes with Brennus; I'd expect to lose the race to Liberalism if you cut off the hand that feeds you. It would be interesting to do the maths at this stage and see what percentage of your income is derieved through trade routes.

4. Don't plan to go to war with Brennus intending to patch things up so that he will trade with you afterwards. I have found Brennus to be stingy with those he doesn't like. You will have to remain Jewish to keep open borders after the war. I would think that going free religion would be better for trade routes in the long run, with intercontinental trading partners. If you remain Jewish for long, you may lose trade with someone on the other continent all for the sake of trading with a small backward Brennus - and that even when you eventually want to own the continent!

5. RE Engineering: I personally think it is an all or nothing race to Liberalism atm. In the meanwhile, build up your economy mixed with a healthy stream of maces and other units. If you get to Education first and feel it is safe to delay Liberalism for a couple of turns, lightbulb Enginerring with your GE and finish researching it. Then start building trebs and pikes while finishing off the Liberalism race. Once you have astronomy, you will be ready to declare war.

A very delicate situation at the moment. Run another scientist in Washington and hope for a GS. I may make more comments (or alter previous ones) when I open up the save tonight.

Stay on target for Liberalism. Even if you don't get a GS, I think you have a good chance. You should be building your army towards the conquest of Brennus, planning to declare as soon as possible after Astronomy.

Also, you seem to have a disturbing lack of cottages. The screenshots from Washington, New York and Philadelphia all show you working unimproved forests or coastal tiles. Washington is running +5 food even though you don't want it to grow any more. Switch some basic farms and unimproved tiles to plains cottages. Sure they start kind of poor, but they'll grow up into late game powerhouses.

peace,
lilnev

Agree,

stay on the course for liberalism. free astronomy would rock. double check who has paper.. keep them from the pre-reqs but if one civ gets it immediately trade it off.. then watch the same for education.

get some tech out of saladin if you can, best way to do that would be to take his capitol.. leaving him only that stupid city to the south of your empire. he would likely trade tech at that point to keep himself alive.

as soon as WW backs off.. procede to start taking out brennus. someone better than myself should produce a dot map to see if a couple of settlers need to follow the warband to PROMPTLY resettle in the correct location.. last thing we need is new enemies by taking their cities off of the continent.

in a comparative sense, would you agree that focusing on the trade income has infact put you BEHIND in research.. more in line with the first EMC.. rather than the religious path??? compare current year vs some time close to that from the previous challenge and see how far up the tech tree you are. would be useful insight.. ultimately commerce is devoted towards research so net beakers per turn is all that really matters in that regard. though once you get international trade routes your research might slingshot forward if you take the time to build up your coastal cities to magnify their use.

thats all I got for now

NaZ

It is hard to compare strategies accurately by simply comparing advancement at certain dates because the map is different. A dryer continent means more plains and less grassland. It is harder to cottage up, there is less growth for pop rush and harder to support mining hills. Aelf lamented that he had no markets: this cannot only be due to game speed but also due to terrain.

One way to make up for current lack of cottages is to lighbulb techs with GPs. It seems that the game is going in that direction atm.

lilnev said:

Also, you seem to have a disturbing lack of cottages. The screenshots from Washington, New York and Philadelphia all show you working unimproved forests or coastal tiles.

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I know cottages are good, but we still have time. Remember the post-Emancipation boom in the first Challenge? Also, we've been whipping a lot for production so food was of a higher importance till quite recently. And the terrain, as Godel has pointed out, didn't help with this.

Well, as you can see, we've begun to lay down more cottages. However, we can't just focus on working all cottages now. Forest tiles give hammers when there are no hills around, and we need hammers to build all those buildings and units. The coastal tiles being worked are the result of my trying to balance the needs of research and of growing cottages for the future, not the result of negligence. We are trying to win the Liberalism race, remember? Switching from all the 2C coastal tiles to 1C cottages now would slow down our research.

lilnev said:

Washington is running +5 food even though you don't want it to grow any more. Switch some basic farms and unimproved tiles to plains cottages. Sure they start kind of poor, but they'll grow up into late game powerhouses.

Click to expand...

But why wouldn't we want Washington to grow anymore? It can still grow. And now that I think of it, I think it would be good to whip units out later by letting some of our cities grow into unhappiness and then whipping for 2 pop each time. We can more quickly amass an army to use against Brennus that way.

Anyway, everybody on the other continent except Mehmed has Paper. It's a close race to Liberalism. We better pray for a GS next if we want to win

About the trade routes, more is to come after we get Astronomy. There might be a dry spell when the AIs adopt Mercantilism, but when Free Market comes into the picture, I imagine we can only benefit. As it is, Washington is getting 26C from trade routes every turn, which accounts for half of its base commerce. On a map where the shortage of grassland has been an obstacle to putting down many cottages, this strategy could in fact be a saving grace, especially at this stage where Washington is most the crucial city due to Bureaucracy.

aelf said:

Anyway, everybody on the other continent except Mehmed has Paper. It's a close race to Liberalism. We better pray for a GS next if we want to win

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Then trade paper to Mehmed and Brennus as soon as you can for their gold so that you can run research at a deficit for a while. These guys can already trade maps with the other civs anyway, so it will not put your circumnavigation hopes it greater risk. Hire two scientists in Washington for the next couple of turns to increase your chances of a GS. Every little bit could help.

You can also get Feudalism from Brennus for Philosophy. See if he will throw in his gold here and you will be able to save paper for another trade (e.g. when Brennus gets Engineering, lightbulb part of Engineering and trade him paper for the rest of Engineering).

I think you should micromanage of some of your cities, esp Washington and Mecca as they both have academies. If you work both silk plantations in Mecca it gives you an extra 8 commerce and shaves one turn off education. Then rearrange your workforce to time the building of the market with the growth of the city. After the Liberalism race is over, wean yourself off the silk and work cottages there instead for greater long term benefit.

If you don't get the GS, what will you do? In this case it is quite possible that you won't get Liberalism first. You could try anyway and hope that the AIs compete for the free GM with economics. Or you could research Astronomy. One thing is certain: with Astronomy you will get a huge boost to your economy. A number of your cities currently have 4 trade routes with only 1gpt for each. Can't wait to see tha change!

aelf said:

About the trade routes, more is to come after we get Astronomy. There might be a dry spell when the AIs adopt Mercantilism, but when Free Market comes into the picture, I imagine we can only benefit. As it is, Washington is getting 26C from trade routes every turn, which accounts for half of its base commerce. On a map where the shortage of grassland has been an obstacle to putting down many cottages, this strategy could in fact be a saving grace, especially at this stage where Washington is most the crucial city due to Bureaucracy.

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The GLH was built in the "Saladin immortal no cotages SG" and the trade routes it generated proved to be a saving grace of that game.

FYI, the cultural borders; look at all that overlap


Vienne would seem to be the target after astro is in...

Somebody asked if combat settlers would be needed to keep the others at bay. I don't think so. There's a nice set of ruins on west coast that begs for a city after we raze one of Brennus. I'll revist this with a screenie when we get closer to war.

Godel said:

Then trade paper to Mehmed and Brennus as soon as you can for their gold so that you can run research at a deficit for a while. These guys can already trade maps with the other civs anyway, so it will not put your circumnavigation hopes it greater risk.

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Besides trading maps they can build Sankore University. A wonder I seems to build quit often like the GL, simply because it's possible and gives *free* beakers, gotta love that. Don't like to have my enemy have it.

Stalin has already built the Sangkore University so that option to increase research is gone.

Here are some more ideas that can help win the Liberalism race.

1) Settle the GE in Washington. The extra beakers and hammers will help win the Liberalism race rather than put 1112 beakers towards Engineering that needs 1560 at present. Later they will help build units and speed research on techs you choose. You can research or trade for Engineering after winning the Liberalism race.

2) Build research in key cities. The best 4 cities can currently build Washington 17 beakers, New York 17, Boston 10 and Mecca 10 = 54 beakers. Current research is 204 beakers so that would give a 25% increase in research rate and could knock several turns off the race

3) Alternatively, build gold in key cities and use the increased gold to raise the research slider. This actually produces more beakers than building research directly since the research multipliers are better in most cities than the gold ones. Actually we are building our first 2 markets so this is obviously true

4) Raise gold from some other source such as trading techs or extortion from Saladin and use that to finance research at a higher rate.

5) Produce a GS from Washington. That needs 600 GPP and we currently have 469 and are producing 42 per turn... so that's 4 turns to get the GP. We have a 44% chance of a GS being what we get ... let's get lucky. Running another scientist for at least 1 turn will reduce the time to 3 turns and slightly increase the chance of a GS.

Any or all of those methods can help us win the race. Note we can make a lot better use of commerce when we convert to beakers than making gold. How much is quite easy to establish.

Let's look at what we make with the research slider set to differnt %. Currently we have 70% we get 205 beakers and 60 gold totalling 265 income

At 100% we get 286 beakers and 5 gold totalling 291 income
At 0% we get 16 beakers and 190 gold totalling 206 income

So our commerce can give us +270 beakers or +185 gold. This means our commerce is about 46% more efficient at generating beakers than it is at generating gold. Therefore, option 3 (building gold) is better than option 2 (building research) until we are gaining gold each turn with the research slider at 100% since it effectively converts gold to beakers at a 1.46 to 1 ratio.

You have some good ideas there, Uncle JJ. I like the build wealth method, but unfortunately we do have units and buildings to build. Not sure if that is really viable right now.

Trading Philosophy to Brennus doesn't look like a good deal because he wants either Paper or Compass with it. That would probably mean giving extra beakers away. But he could be researching Philosophy himself right now, in which case that might actually be the better deal.

Admiral Kutzov, what about the cultural border overlap? I don't think we should keep all the Celtic cities anyway.

aelf said:

You have some good ideas there, Uncle JJ. I like the build wealth method, but unfortunately we do have units and buildings to build. Not sure if that is really viable right now.

Trading Philosophy to Brennus doesn't look like a good deal because he wants either Paper or Compass with it. That would probably mean giving extra beakers away. But he could be researching Philosophy himself right now, in which case that might actually be the better deal.

Admiral Kutzov, what about the cultural border overlap? I don't think we should keep all the Celtic cities anyway.

Click to expand...

just give paper away!
It's senseless to hold on it now that most of your rivals have it.

I've played Round 8. There are some interesting developments, so stay tuned for the update tomorrow

Round 8: 1290AD - 1400AD

In this round, the questions that we faced in the previous round were answered.

First, we made a trade with Brennus:



These were techs that almost everyone else had and would not directly increase his military strength anyway.

I also sold Paper to Mehmed, as recommended:



A very low price, but everyone except Saladin had it now anyway. And making this deal gave us a +2 from him right away for "fair and forthright" trading relations. Fair? Please

Then, following UncleJJ's advice, I settled the GE in our capital:



If the extra beakers would help us get to Liberalism first, this was worth it. Indeed, it shaved a turn off Education immediately. We could always trade for Engineering later (especially with the free tech as a bargaining chip) and there were no wonders worth rushing right now. The extra hammers are good under Bureaucracy as well.

Also to help us achieve this short term objective, I added another scientist in Washington:



This would cause the next GP to be born in 3 turns instead of 4 and would increase the chances of getting a GS, which is the type of GP we needed to lightbulb Education to start on Liberalism earlier and hopefully beat everybody else.

Next, I considered our other (although less important) short term objective of winning the circumnavigation race. Gandhi was willing to trade his world map to us for this price:



Just the amount of gold Mehmed gave us for Paper. That's a small price to pay for getting the circumnavigation bonus. One good turn begets another, I guess

Gandhi's map revealed to us his entire continent:



It looks like the last AI is Shaka. Their continent is certainly more developed than ours. The map also gave us a route around the world. We won the circumnavigation race, guys! One short term objective down, one more to go

I made another deal with Brennus:



More gpt to help us keep our research rate as high as possible for the Liberalism race. I went a step further and got Washington to build Wealth after the market. As UncleJJ has pointed out, this would help by allowing us to raise our science rate, and since commerce-related beaker multipliers (eg. Academy and library) were readily available raising the science rate would give us more beakers than building Research (read post #410 for an analysis on this). With the extra Bureaucracy hammers, this gambit is most effective when done in the capital, as you can see here:



24 extra gpt when building Wealth there. Not bad at all. This allowed us to raise our science rate to 90%. The other cities, however, would continue building units and improvements. The former were especially important in view of the impending war of expansion against Brennus.

Anyway, our next GP was due on the next turn, so I set our research to 0% for this turn. If it was going to be a GS, we would be lightbulbing Education. I didn't want to risk wasting beakers by researching more than the amount of beakers that the lightbulb would not be giving us. Also, we could use the extra cash from this turn to upgrade one of our CR3 axes to a maceman.

And, indeed, we got a GS:



Now winning the Liberalism race might be more than just a dream. After the lightbulb, we needed just one more turn to discover Education.

We met Shaka on the next turn:



He was about as advanced as anybody on his continent. But, most importantly, he didn't have Education yet. And neither did anyone else:



So would that mean our winning the Liberalism race?

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

Allways so exciting to get here midround! On another note it might be worth it to trade away education after you have gotten a sufficient lead on liberalism. And trade for engineering from brennus?

[continued from previous post]

We made yet another trade with Brennus the moment an opportunity presented itself:



Theology would be helpful for the building of an army to fight this very Celt with. And everyone else except Saladin had Philosophy anyway.

I didn't switch to Theocracy immediately, though. It's a better idea to wait till after discovering Liberalism before spending a turn in anarchy. In the meantime, we could queue units till we switch in order to benefit from Theocracy as much as possible.

And it turned out that we did win the Liberalism race:



Astronomy as the free tech, FTW

Just take look at what that did to our trade routes:



Drooling yet? Wait till we build a castle as well.

Speaking of which, I traded for Engineering from the guy who gave the best deal possible:



Not sure why Mehmed is suddenly willing to trade. Maybe WFYABTA is beginning to wear off. Anyway, that wasn't a bad deal.

I tried to see if Gandhi would make a decent trade for Education as well, with no luck:



It seems the old fellow is researching it himself. I haven't agreed to the deal. What do you think of it? Mehmed might sell the tech to his friend Shaka, with whom we are not friendly enough to trade techs, but he is not in the same faction as Gandhi so the latter probably can't trade with him for it.

This is where I stopped playing. Besides the deal with Gandhi, a few other things need to be decided on. First, should we switch to Theocracy?



We are not building that many more units, so we could simply switch to Free Religion now.

And what should we research next? Printing Press? We don't have many towns and villages. I'm tempted to research Nationalism -> Constitution -> Democracy for Representation and Emancipation, but I'm not sure how useful those would be either. Researching towards Chemistry for grenadiers is another idea, but Chemistry would obsolete the ToA. Any suggestions?

Our power rating is still low:



Way below Brennus. I wonder why. We have several maces (including 2 CR3 maces upgraded from axes) and catapults now, ready to declare war once we get a few trebuchets out. I guess Brennus could be hiding a lot of longbows and maces in his core cities. Do we need xbows to guard against his macemen?

And this is how advanced we are:



Which is not to say very. Well, at any rate, only Mehmed has Education. But we can only trade it to Gandhi and Brennus for something. And I don't like the idea of giving an expensive tech that gives access to Gunpowder to the Celt. I don't think trading Astronomy away right now is a good idea either. Nobody else has it, but we don't want them to have galleons that soon, do we? Especially as we might be freeing up some land on our continent when we conquer the Celts.

These are the resource trades that we've negotiated:



Any that you think is a bad idea?

Finally, this is the map of our continent for an overview:



Which Celtic city should we grab first? Or should we march to Baghdad first? Our forces are concentrated at Khurasan right now. By the way, if we go for Baghdad, I'm tempted to raze the city and settle one tile east or SE to grab a clam resource. Otherwise, Baghdad will just be another food poor city.

Our next objective is continental domination. Nobody except Saladin is pleased with Brennus (although he has only met Stalin so far), so we don't have to worry about the diplomatic aspect of it yet.

Is there any reason to keep Saladin around now that you have contact with the other continent? Likewise with Brennus. But remember: the more towns you have, the less the newer towns will benefit from trade routes.

Nicely done Our position is much improved and Brennus has to give us room to expand and resources. Over the next 200 years or so I suggest this sequence of conquest; War1 on Brennus to take the southern parts of his land, War2 with Saladin to take Bombay (unfortunately Kufah means splitting the forces but he only has a longbow and spear) but he can be eliminated, War3 with Brennus to conquer him or vassalise.

War1 should aim to take the southern cities and resources Brennus has at Durnovaria, Tolossa and Verlamion and perhaps Bogacum or Vienne. That should leave us much stronger and with a better shape to the empire. After taking what we can and WW begins to bite we should make peace. We should be able to trade with Brennus and get open borders since we have big +modifiers and only get a -3 for war. I would keep all his cities as razing will further lower our diplomatic relations, and they are not that badly placed.

War2 should be easy and profitable. Bombay (chain irrigated) and Kufah (using our sheep and horses) could be good cities.

War3 depends what technologies we have and the diplomatic situation... but we should expect to dominate the whole of our continent taking Brennus's capital and other good and profitable cities and all resources we need. We might Vassalise him or leave him weakened.

Development: Medina desperately needs food to grow and work the iron. We should farm the grasslands west (currently a cottage) and east (jungle) of the city by chain irrigating through the silk to the lake. Medina will need to build a university to allow Oxford U to be built in a reasonable time. Several forests around Medina could be cleared for extra hammers. Boston needs farms to provide food for slavery to build the army. Once we are compelled to take Scientific Method, if we research Biology these cities will thrive.

Research: We have a problem with researching along the bottom of the tech tree, Chemistry obsoletes the ToA, Corporation obsoletes the Great Lighthouse and as usual Scientific Method obsoletes the G Library and monastries. We can probably do without Grenadiers until at least Brennus gets them and without Frigates until the other continent comes calling on our shores. Galleons can sink the older ships of Brennus and Saladin.

Another route (avoiding the techs that obsoletes our Trading theme) could be Nationalism, Gunpowder (trade?), Music(traded), Military Tradition. That gives Cavalry and Muskets (that could be drafted) for a decisive advantage over Brennus.
We could also develop an economic strategy, researching (or trading for)Guilds, then Banking and Economics for the free GM and Free Market trade route. Or we could go for Nationalism, Constitution and Democracy (needs Printing Press).

Finally, we have the route to Rifling and drafting rifles to overwhelm Brennus in War3. Note Replaceable parts needs Banking so you may as well get that first or trade for it and Guilds.

So it seems there are a lot of other options, although I nearly always go from Gunpowder to Chemistry, here with the ToA providing major income you have a good excuse for trying out these options and delaying Chemistry.

Well done. I think the key question now is, can we kill Brennus with the tech we have or do we need an upgrade? I'm inclined to think we can kill him with trebs and maces, if we bring enough. If so, there's no urgency in military techs, and the choice is between Nationalism-Constitution-PP(traded?)-Democracy and Guilds-Banking-Economics. I wouldn't count on the GM from Econ. Mehmed now has Ed and Guilds; I'd bet he's got Banking and has already started on Econ. If trebs and maces aren't going to cut it against Brennus, then either cavalry or rifles becomes the goal. I think Chemistry should be delayed as much as possible (until naval warfare demands it).

In terms of war strategy, I'd be inclined to make the first move against Brennus, claiming the southern 3 cities as UncleJJ recommends, and then evaluate the situation. It might be that his larger cities will be smothering those culturally, and the best thing to do is press on to Vienne and the capital. Good times.

I wouldn't make the Ghandi trade. There's simply nothing in it, and you let him start on his next tech several turns faster. And I agree that you shouldn't trade away Astronomy, at least not for a good long while.

Longer term, keep an eye on Stalin. He's the tech leader, and not that far from rifles. If you get a chance, try to provoke a war between him and Shaka -- his neighbor of a different religion, and the current power leader.

peace,
lilnev

Thanks for more useful advice, UncleJJ, especially on our war strategy. But with regards to irrigating Boston, Medina or New York, you needn't worry. The chain farming projects are underway and have begun to make a difference in Boston and New York. I wonder if we need a few more workers, though.

lilnev said:

I'm inclined to think we can kill him with trebs and maces, if we bring enough. If so, there's no urgency in military techs, and the choice is between Nationalism-Constitution-PP(traded?)-Democracy and Guilds-Banking-Economics. I wouldn't count on the GM from Econ. Mehmed now has Ed and Guilds; I'd bet he's got Banking and has already started on Econ. If trebs and maces aren't going to cut it against Brennus, then either cavalry or rifles becomes the goal. I think Chemistry should be delayed as much as possible (until naval warfare demands it).

Click to expand...

Well, as it is trebs pwn all cities, so we could simply spam trebs. At least for our first campaign.

I agree that going for the free GM from Economics isn't a good idea looking at the situation. I think I'll take the suggestion of beelining for either MT or Rifling.

lilnev said:

Longer term, keep an eye on Stalin. He's the tech leader, and not that far from rifles. If you get a chance, try to provoke a war between him and Shaka -- his neighbor of a different religion, and the current power leader.

Click to expand...

This is an excellent idea. A good use for Education now, I suppose. I'll take a look at the save to see if it's possible.

EDIT: Unfortunately, nobody is willing to declare war on Stalin. Shaka is Stalin's friend, and worst enemy Mehmed says he would have nothing to gain. Don't even talk about Gandhi. But we can bribe Shaka to attack Mehmed with Education. Should we do that? By the way, we've gotten -4 from Stalin for trading with Mehmed, so we better watch out for the Russian.