Great Generals - test game 1: Charismatic

Round 3: 1200BC - 150AD

At the start of the round Huayna also founded Judaism and adopted Organized Religion. That will cause some problems as he's also Industrious and likely to go for some wonders, namely the Great Library. Didn't cross my mind until later though, so I made a bad move at one point. But let's not anticipate.



I was wondering how come Hatty didn't convert to Hinduism. Well, she seemed to have her own plans: she founded Confucianism. This will make things really weird religion-wise. We'd have to be really careful who we trade with. Hatty, Huayna and Ragnar seemed the best choices so far, so I opened borders with them, hoping for improved relations. I also opened borders with Genghis Khan, for now, to see if we can use him as an unlikely ally in a war against one of his Hindu buddies.



In other news Shaka built the Great Wall. Not sure how or if this changes our future plans, but the screenshot was nice.



I checked and re-checked to see if anyone got Alphabet before us. Guess what: Hannibal was the culprit!



He had quite a few techs on us, probably due to trade. Well, he'll be trimmed down soon anyway, nothing to worry there. I was more worried about him getting Construction, but he didn't have Elephants, so if he builds a couple of Catapults instead of Spearmen who am I to argue? Nevertheless I decided not to trade with him. We'll have other opportunities soon.

As soon as I finished Construction I switched my cities to war production. By the way Nottingham previously built part of the Great Wall, while York did the same with the Pyramids. We'd get quite a pile of money out of that, money we used to keep our research at a high pace.

As said, we started building War Elephants in London and Nottingham and Catapults in York. We were dead last in power but that would be corrected soon enough. And since I mentioned elephants, the only AI other than us that has them is Hatty. It will probably mean she'll be a future ally. If we can get her involved in a war with Shaka it would be just peachy.

Next on our tech list was the Alphabet. I maintained the two Scientists in London for the time being, but once I got Alphabet I switched them to production/food tiles. Here's the tech situation:



We could get Ironworking from either Genghis or Hatty, but since Genghis was a projected victim, I decided on the latter. Unfortunately she's now the worst enemy of both Huayna and Ragnar (who won't trade with me at all), so I went to see Huayna first:



And a turn later I went to Hatty, hoping we'll get Polytheism too, to head for Literature. Alas, it wasn't to be! Despite Math having a greater value than Ironworking she only wanted to give us that tech for it. Or Meditation and Poly, but those could wait.



So, now the big question? Do we have Iron or not? Oh... the Irony...



Yeap, we settled on it. Drat. This is one of the very rare cases where you'd want a barb to come along and raze that city. Grassland Iron lost! Oh well, we'll have to endure that. It helped us build a couple of Axes later on, as Hannibal planted another city close to York, defended only by two Spearmen. Meanwhile our War Elephants started to stack at the Carthaginian border, toward which we also built some roads. Wait, what Carthaginian border?!?



Drat! Either Hannibal was dumb enough to lose the city to barbs, or, what's more likely, Hatty flipped it over! Arrrrgh! We'll need theaters online if we want to ward off Hatty's cultural pressure in the future. That, or Redcoats, whichever comes first.

Now, remember the move I told you about earlier? Check out this trade:



Yes, we get Calendar and Polytheism, but Huayna is one step closer to the Great Library. And with the capital's forests spent on War Elephants I'm really not sure we're going to get it. Oh well, we'll capture it later.

[to be continued...]

[...continued from previous post]

And then it was time for the dogs of war to show their teeth:



Our first victim was the Southern city that I decided to keep. It has access to fish, it has a floodplain nearby, lots of forest and a river. Not capital estate but it will do.



Utica was next. Remember the saying: no battle plan survives contact with the enemy? Well, as it turned out earlier, contact with the allies can also screw you up. Due to Hatty's cultural conquest we were left with keeping Utica. Not a bad city, of course, but it will have to really battle it out to claim and hold the corn. At least we got a plantation, another horse source and a granary inside the city.



Then we encountered our first (and only, so far) Numidian Cavalry near Utica. Short-lived, as one of our War Elephants trampled it under its feet. The Spearmen who was defending the horses got destroyed by a lucky catapult who earned the Accuracy promotion.



Then we came up on Carthage and I started to wonder how the heck the power graph was calculated. See, so far we only lost a warrior who had been exploring Mongolian territory and got owned by a Carthaginian archer. And look at the poor defended Carthage itself:



That Chariot only earned one of the War Elephants another promotion. Then I patiently waited for all my troops to cross the river while the catapults were lowering the defenses. Aaaand of course Hannibal at that exact time choses to upgrade his archers to Longbows. I faced a choice: attack now after catapult bombardment, or wait more turns and spend a catapult for collateral damage. I was afraid Hannibal would pop some more Longbows in there, but I really overestimated him. No reinforcements came and, after a lucky catapult attack:



...and a lost War Elephant, Carthage was ours. Another nearby Chariot meant another promoted War Elephant. But why should I argue?



The fall of Carthage also brought us our first Great General. Or is it Generaless?



Since the whole point of the game is exploring Great General uses I decided to stop the round here. There are still units to move, build queues to decide, but I wanted to get a second opinion on those. I did not make peace with Hannibal yet but I'm seriously considering it. He has two more cities (don't know where one of them is though...) and he might just vassalize to someone else. We don't have Feudalism yet, so he can't come to us. His offer include Horseback Riding and 50 gold, but I haven't tested if he'd part with either Compass or Feudalism (highly unlikely).

Speaking of techs, we made some more trades during the war. We sold Currency to Hatty for Monarchy and gold, and we adopted Hereditary Rule afterward. Then we gave Ragnar Meditation for 160 gold. By now we have quite a full treasury, what with all the gold from conquered cities. This will help us maintain a high research rate as we go for Code of Laws and Bureaucracy.





We also got our Medic I unit in form of a Chariot who took on some barbs coming from the west. So the Medic III option is still open.



Another chariot was dispatched westward to discover the world, as our exploring warrior died earlier by the arrows of a barb archer. By the way, the west-most barbarian city was attacked by the Vikings. Our chariot will try to find if they kept it or razed it. In the second case we'll have to rush a settler there.

That's it for this round. The next post will contain the state of the world but you'll have to wait a bit for it as I don't have the screenshots yet.

Got 'distracted' by my parents. Will post the state of the world in a few minutes.

State of the World: 150AD

Well, we're not last in score anymore. Hannibal took that spot. If we decide to go to war with Shaka he might follow suit.

One of the problems we've got so far is too few workers. We didn't capture any from Hannibal, so we're still with only two for 6 cities now. Fortunately York can whip the Lighthouse for one population than start a worker (we only have three useful tiles there anyway), and York will finish a War Elephant on the next turn and can start on a worker of its own. We're still building the Great Library in the capital at a veeeery slow pace though. I might consider whipping some things into it, like some protective archers, or a lighthouse or something. Otherwise at the current production rate we're never gonna finish it.



We're pretty low on overall production too, but we should get a little better once be improve our land a bit.



We also don't have many friends. I've seen weird things in the relations department. Like AIs being annoyed with each other at +1 relations from years of peace as the only modifier. What gives?!



Anyway, while we got our War Elephants others have been busy with the early Wonders.



No news of the Great Library yet, but some AIs already have Literature. And speaking of techs, here's our situation vis-a-vis some of our neighbors:

- we still have Literature on Huayna, and hopefully we'll finish Code of Laws before him



- Ragnar's a little behind but he won't trade with us so far, so we can't take advantage of that. I'll see if I can do something to change that.



- on the other side of the world, Shaka's pretty much on par with us. He doesn't have Alphabet but most civs have it so it doesn't matter that much. I might even trade it to him if I can get something in return. Right before I attack him...



- Genghis is a bit of a problem. We have nothing on him and, to appease Hatty, we've canceled our Open Borders with him. We might have to expect an attack from his side, but if he's mostly using Keshiks we're good.



We have nothing on Hatty either, but we can get Horseback Riding from Hannibal and we'll finish Code of Laws in a moment, so we'll probably be on par with her.

As for the world, here's a look at the cultural coverage, East and West:





...and the resources we've uncovered:







If anyone is interested in other informative screenshots I'll post them later. I'd follow up with the plans for the next round but there doesn't seem to be much activity here, and I'm a bit hungry.

Nice play so far. I'd say sign peace with Hannibal. He'll vassalize, but that's ok. Next is Shaka imo. You want to cripple him at the very least. Plus if you can take his capital you'll nab a couple wonders, doesn't hurt.

You want to keep warring as much as possible early imo to get some GGs. That may mean drama sooner than later to use the slider to deal with WW a bit. But who knows...

My vote is still for medic 3 first. Maybe 2 medic 3s for 2 stacks...

Don't forget Shaka'll have those pesky Combat 1 Impis. That'll mean your elephants won't be able to destroy 'em so easily. Genghis, on the other hand, will have Keshiks, which your elephants will be able to maul without compunction.

Good point about Shaka vs Genghis. I'm a bit frustrated by the city development part of my game so far. I should have had 2-3 more workers out earlier as my cities are agonizingly undeveloped.

And talking about needing workers: this means that I'll have to delay both growth and building more military units in my cities for a few turns. I don't have much to attack anymore. So I'm really wondering if going for the Medic III Chariot is the way. Shouldn't I promoted as many of my War Elephants as possible? Maybe the catapults too, to give them accuracy. I'd be moving at a slow pace even with the Medic III due to having to wait for cultural defenses to be down. Granted, I'll probably get some more catapults from the capital (whip them into the Great Library), but with walls and religion Shaka's and Genghis's cities will be hard to take.

Later I'll take a look at the save to see how many units we could promote with the Great General. I'm still accepting suggestions for the Medic III, but maybe someone could point me how its better in this case. Anyway, I may end up playing both ways - as I said at the beginning, I want to explore different ways of using the GGs, and this looks like an ideal spot to start the comparison. The other use, namely the settling in the capital, is out of the question. It will probably get Oxford and National Epic, so it won't build many units anyway. I'm not sure where to put the Heroic Epic yet. Carthage is the Hindu holy city, so it will probably get the Wall Street if I can get a Shrine in it. I'll have to see if I commit one city for Heroic Epic & West Point, or if I decide to have the Heroic Epic benefits now and worry about the other wonders later.

I'll also have to see who can I bribe to attack whom. For now I couldn't bribe Genghis anyway since I accepted Hatty's demand to stop trading with him. (I rejected her demand for Construction earlier... Who does she think she is?) So I'm down to Shaka and Hatty. IIRC Hatty is currently "unavailable" but I'll have to look into that. Maybe give her a resource or something to increase the positive attitude. I'll have multiple wineries soon so maybe Hatty will enjoy some of my wine.

CC,

I'm all for the medic 3 with the first GG. It simply reduces the number of turns in any war and is a unit of value for the entire game. Just remember, even though he can upgraded for free, you don't want to do that. Under no cirucmstances do you ever want this unit to be a defender. Keeping your medic well protected and close to the front can be a chore in itself.

It sounds like you're a little disappointed with things such far. It seems that you're trying to forcing a style of play and the map is not being cooperative. My advice, play the best hand with the map you're given. The opportunities for war will arrive. There is no need to rush it. You'll get your GG's one way or another. Something else you can do is declare war and then wait for the AI to send units to you. If you try the same game with Cyrus, build the great wall and do this. You'll have GG's in no time (lends itself to those pillaging stacks I was talking about in another thread).

johnny_rico said:

CC,

I'm all for the medic 3 with the first GG. It simply reduces the number of turns in any war and is a unit of value for the entire game. Just remember, even though he can upgraded for free, you don't want to do that. Under no circumstances do you ever want this unit to be a defender. Keeping your medic well protected and close to the front can be a chore in itself.

Click to expand...

The problem is, we'll be facing Longbows in our next war. With the current promotions we'll need more units to mount a serious attack. While promoting Catapults with Accuracy and some War Elephants to Combat II will reduce the war time because we'll push faster through each city's defenses and we're have more surviving units.

johnny_rico said:

It sounds like you're a little disappointed with things such far. It seems that you're trying to forcing a style of play and the map is not being cooperative. My advice, play the best hand with the map you're given. The opportunities for war will arrive. There is no need to rush it. You'll get your GG's one way or another. Something else you can do is declare war and then wait for the AI to send units to you. If you try the same game with Cyrus, build the great wall and do this. You'll have GG's in no time (lends itself to those pillaging stacks I was talking about in another thread).

Click to expand...

The thing is, we're Charismatic and Protective. Not really great economic techs either of them. So we'll have to rely on a bigger empire to counter Huayna or Hatty. And the best way to achieve a larger empire is through war. You get fully grown cities, with improvements and all. The question is, is a war feasible right now? The first one effectively cost us one War Elephant and we were said to be "nearly equal" in power with Hannibal. So we probably shouldn't be too worried about the AI's "power"...

Hmm, I just realized we haven't even used the Protective trait. We could whip some walls in the Carthaginian cities, and add a couple of Protective archers there in case we go to war with one of Shaka or Genghis and the other one attacks us. Those archers may be low on strength, but with their promotions and being behind walls they can make pretty tough defenders. And I won't mind upgrading some of them to Crossbows and to gunpowder units later on.

Ok, just checked the save and we have a lot of units that are going to get promotions from our last attacks. We have 5 War Elephants (not counting the one in the capital, nor the one being produced in Nottingham), 5 Catapults and 4 Axemen ready for action, provided that they do some healing. So I guess I'll use the GG for the Medic III after all.

By the way, whipping archers to dump the excess in the Great Library is a zero sum on happiness since we're running Hereditary Rule. Which, incidentally, is both Ragnar's and Huayna's favorite civic! We might still get friendly after all. Hatty's in favor of Organized Religion and I even consider switching to it without having a state religion. I know it sounds stupid because of the high upkeep, but if it means having another friend I might just do it.

Now for some good news/bad news all in one: neither Shaka nor Genghis have mounted units. Bad because it means more archers and melee units. Good because we can attack either one and not fear pillaging very much if the other joins the war. Of if we get Hatty to war with the other (she's willing to go against Shaka, but doesn't like us enough) and she asks us to go in the fight.

Looks good so far. There's something you might want to keep in mind as you move into the longbow era, though. I imagine you keep your military units unpromoted until they have to face enemy attack, right? (If not, you may want to - it gives you flexibility before you encounter an enemy, and means if there's a relatively easy fight you can have your units fight it unpromoted then use the promotion to heal up from whatever damage they take) I sometimes give promotions to city defenders even if I normally leave units unpromoted.

You might want to give some of your city defense longbows drill promotions instead of CG promos. It's less effective, sure, but that's not the point. If you do that on the longbows in your more central cities, they'll mostly likely not see combat anyways (given that you're headed towards a midaeval offense, which means a higher military size, which means higher power, whch means fewer AI attacks. And the wars you initiate you'll be going on the offense, which means encountering the enemy in their territory, not yours) so the drill promos won't hurt you. They will, however, really help you if you then upgrade those longbows to redcoats, replacing them with new CG redcoats and moving the drill ones to your offensive army. As charismatic & protective, Drill 3 or 4 is not out of the question. Drill 4 takes a unit with 8 xp. And a drill 4 redcoat is ridiculous. I don't think you can give gunpowder units drill promos normally, so upgrading longbows and/or crossbows is the way to get there. These units make incredible stack defenders while some CR grenadiers clear out enemy units, or they work as excellent clean-up crews on the more damaged enemy units holding out after catapult/cannon attacks and the first CR gren or two. Drill means they'll take far less damage.

Another option is to use crossbows as stack defenders with drill. Very few of them, of course, as the enemy rarely attacks SODs, and so you don't want many, but that's the niche that crossbows fill normally, and the drill promos, particularly in warlords, work even better for it. They take less collateral damage, on the off chance an AI is smart enough to catapult your SOD, and they take less damage if they win a fight, because they're likely to do so with the first strikes drill offers. And they get bonuses against the units the AI tends to counter-attack with. Just don't forget a spear/pike or two in case the AI sends some knights at you, as drill units...well...don't do so well against knights.

Basically, the idea is that you'll be promoting drill units to take advantage of your strengths; charismatic and protective. 8 xp is relatively easy to get a hold of, particularly with your emphasis on GG production, and will make your UU return to levels similar to pre-Warlords ridiculousness.

I just finished round 4. Things didn't really go as planned, as I decided to forgo further wars until we develop our cities a bit more. Some things went our way, some things against us, as usual. We're pretty low on power, but war will come. I promise you. I'll post the update tomorrow.

You must not let Shaka get too powerful. Catas + elephants can take him out.

Round 4: 150AD - 980AD

Remember that barb city that prevented me from having a good gold one? It's still there, taken by Ragnar... I know, I should have taken care of it, but I was too worried about the "power graph" lies telling me I'm on par with Hannibal to use an extra elephant there. Oh well. I think I probably should still build a gold city in a different location.



A couple of turns later, after finishing Code of Laws for possible trades, I made the AI-like switch to Organized Religion without adopting a state religion just to please Hatty. She had already asked me for tribute which I refused and I didn't want to remain without friends. At the current size of my empire I didn't find the increased cost such a problem (OR has high upkeep).



On the war-front I decided that whatever the continuation of the round - war or peace - we need to destroy Hannibal if we can. With that in mind I decided to move my troops South trying to find his cities and only if one of them is on an island ask for peace. He wasn't going to give me more than Horseback Riding and a few bucks, so if I took him out I didn't lose much. My Great General made Medic III of my Chariot, making him more mobile too in the process. (Flanking or Tactics don't help since I'm not going to attack with him)



And later I got lucky. Both Carthaginian cities were there for me to take.



You'll also notice that Ragnar switched to Hereditary Rule too, his favorite civic. Now I had HR in common with Ragnar and Huayna, and OR with Hatty, so this should improve my relations with them. Really important since everybody but Hatty had considered Hannibal as a friend ("-1" diplomatic relations) and Ragnar hates Hatty with whom I still want to trade. By the end of the round sharing those favorite civics would really help offset the negative modifiers and keep the three of them in good moods.

Back to the war, there was a problem: Leptis (right) was founded on Marble and the new capital was directly on top of a copper mine. I could have kept Leptis to try to finish the Great Library faster but decided that one city instead of those two would have more benefits. Maybe I was wrong... Anyway, the two cities fell with a couple of losses on my side (I went up against Longbows now, not mere Archers) and Hannibal was no more.





I also captured five workers in the process which would really speed up my city development. And speaking of cities, Nottingham's iron now has a brother on the mine on top of the nearby hill. That's probably the RNG's way to tell me it's sorry for not giving me copper in the first place.



Back in the peaceful world, Huayna was happily teching toward Theology...



And Ragnar got some bananas as a gift to try to make him like me more. No, really.



Hatty and Genghis were probably both occupied with the Great Library too since both of them had Literature. I tried to speed things up by whipping Archers into it and working plains farms instead of those scientists, but in the end it was all for nothing as Genghis beat me to it.



I was really starting to feel lost there in terms of techs. A war with Genghis was pretty much out of the question as he had one of the two top power graphs in the world. I also couldn't convince anyone to go to war with him so I'd be free to attack Shaka. And if I attacked Shaka I could probably bet a good sum of money that Genghis would retaliate. Or Shaka would vassalize to him. I also couldn't adopt Hinduism to please one of them while I attacked the other since my three friends were not too much into this religion...

So I decided to go for the single path that seemed to give me a winning possibility. I stayed peaceful and went for Liberalism. Yeap, 180 degrees from what we've discussed, but I really didn't think that my undeveloped empire would provide enough hammers to build the huge army needed to go to war and still be safe, AND retain a decent economy.

With that in mind I was first to Civil Service and adopted Bureaucracy, then I researched Philosophy and Paper on my own before my next Great Scientist helped me finish Education.



Then, with the Liberalism race in the bag (nobody had Paper yet) I went to my friends for a few trades:







And a few turns later, thanks to the 100% science slider fueled by war and trade money, I was the first to Liberalism. I chose Nationalism since now I had that Marble online so the Taj Mahal seemed like a good bet.



This is where the round ended. As you see, except for my war against Hannibal there were no other wars. I think Genghis isn't very far from declaring on me, so I kept my task force in Carthage and I'll reinforce it with a few Protective Longbows and a couple of Macemen for an eventual counter-attack.

State of the World post to follow.

You have horses. Stop trading advanced techs and beeline to miltrad/gunpowder. Use cavalry to take out Shaka and Genghis or Ragnar if necessary

Actually I think I'll post the State of the World tomorrow, as it's getting a little late.

futurehermit, I can either get to Military Tradition or Rifling (next GS lightbulbs Printing Press), but I guess Military Tradition is faster. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll need Horseback Riding and Music but I'll research them on my own since any trade would just get me additional but less useful techs in exchange for Education or something, and I don't want to give those up just yet.

Ragnar's pretty far from me (look at the minimap in the last post), but with Cavalry I think both Genghis and Shaka will fall.

Oh, and I forgot the save. I'll add it right away to the end of the round 4 post.

The Taj? To what end?

I think futurehermit's suggestion is good, especially if you're still intent on exploring the GGs.

Well, I'm the first to Nationalism, I have Marble (double production on the Taj), and I don't see how a Golden Age would harm me.

Of course I'm going to pursue Cavalry, but apart from building Research in the capital there's not much it can do to speed things up. And having the free Golden Age while denying it to the AI seems a sensible thing to do. I also don't have the option to build War Elephants and later upgrade them to Cavalry, it will cost me too much and I'd rather spend the money on fueling research toward Redcoats. I'll upgrade those of the War Elephants that are already highly promoted and see about the rest. And in the meantime I'll build some Longbows who will later be upgraded to Redcoats.

State of the World: 980AD

First, a look at what I'm building. Since I got Metal Casting I'm going for a few forges to boost production. I have a decent number of cities all growing at the time which will give me a good production output, especially with the Golden Age that's approaching. By the way, I can shave three turns off on the Taj Mahal by switching from Scientists to plains farms.



I'm also thinking of revolting to Free Religion to boost the research, but I'm not sure I can keep Hatty please if I switch from Organized Religions. She'll only be at +2.



Speaking of relations, here's what my friends and foes think about me:











Shaka's not that much of a problem, being the most behind in techs. Genghis is a little more up-to-date though. Hatty is the leader of the pack, I only have Education, Liberalism & Nationhood on her. She's also the only one trading at the moment unfortunately. I could get a lot of her techs by trading away Education, but she doesn't need Universities to get even more advanced...



Research-wise don't get fooled by the long time it takes to research Military Tradition. Carthage is building a university as we speak and it will likely help with it. And I could also settle my next Great Scientist (provided it's not a lowly artist instead) for some more beakers. So, research is going to be: Gunpowder -> Horseback Riding (1 turn) -> Music -> Military Tradition.



As I said, I'm getting back in the game in terms of production. The even better news is that Shaka and Genghis seem not to do too well in that department.



I'm still powerless though. But my defensive line - Carthage & Utica - is heavily guarder so I don't think I'd have a problem should Genghis get any nasty ideas.



And finally views of the western and eastern part of the continent. I still don't have a map of Hatty's lands, but I'll send a Chariot there to map them out. Same for Shaka as long as I still have Open Borders with him.