aelf
Ashen One
Sorry for the long silence. I've been devoting most of my time to a project, making writing an update inconvenient. Now that most of the project is done, I am working on the next update. It should be done in a day or two.
The Immortal Challenge 4: Flight of the Phoenix
- Thread starter aelf
- Start date
Fetch
When in doubt, reboot.
Aelf- this is the first of your games I've been reading. You can be sure I'll play catch-up and read the others. They're very well done. As for Shaka, won't he just capitulate to Kahn at the first opportunity? Better take what you can get (take more cities) and be ready to watch your back with the huge Mongol army crouched at your door.
Neato
Dog Culture Advisor
If this works, you should definitely make the go for Liberalism with the GS. I almost think getting Calendar is more important than the city at this point, if Shaka won't hand them both over.
aelf
Ashen One
Round 7: 950AD - 1232AD
This round is basically the exciting race towards Liberalism. With at least another civilization in the running and quite possibly ahead, getting there first is far from certain.
We needed Calendar to lightbulb Liberalism, so I decided to try and get it from Shaka for the peace treaty instead of the city he offered, hoping to wrangle some other tech from him in the deal as well. Unfortunately, he wouldn't agree. Since we couldn't afford to waste precious turns researching Calendar, I decided to take the deal after all:
At least it comes with a fair bit of gold to help our research.
Then, having to decide where to plant our GG, I took a look at the list of our cities and settled on the second most productive one, Ankara:
This is our designated HE city. uMgungundlovu would probably overtake it eventually, but since the former had a lot of catching up to do in terms of building infrastructure, it would be sometime before it can be used to produce units. So the GG was turned into a GMI at Ankara. Janissaries have to be built from scratch, and it would be useful to have some that start off with an extra promotion.
And I decided not to revolt to Bureaucracy. Yes. You are probably asking why. I just thought that, since we were racing for Liberalism, Free Speech would be available soon anyway, and as such going through 1 turn of anarchy then was probably not worth it. It would be really sad if we had happened to lose the Liberalism race by 1 turn because of anarchy. Yes, I know now that the commerce and production gained from Bureaucracy over time might have more than made up for it, but for some reason I just decided not to do it at that time. Maybe it's because I'm too wary of anarchy.
Now, you might feel a bit too incensed at this. I felt so too after I finished playing the round. If you don't want to wait for an answer on whether this was such a horrible move, read the spoiler now. Otherwise, maybe read it when you've reached the end of the update.
Several turns later, we got our next GS:
Naturally, he was used to lightbulb Education.
Then we finally met our competitor:
Uh-oh. Looks like someone got to Education before us. The pressure was really coming on now.
Fortunately, the next guy we met wasn't so advanced:
At least we might only have 1 competitor. There might just be hope that Huayna would go for Economics instead of Liberalism...
And then, as we were researching Compass to allow our next GS to research Liberalism, I heard the dreadful sound of...
Huayna circumnavigating the globe. Well, there was still hope. So far.
Anyway, you might ask why not just research Liberalism then. Well, since lightbulbing gives more beakers than Compass is worth, it's clear that researching Compass was better.
Then, Nodwengu, Shaka's proposed gift city experienced an Ottoman revolt:
No wonder Shaka was so keen on giving it away. Well, we took a tech instead, and now the city might just be ours anyway. Heh, heh.
After Compass was done, we researched a few turns of Liberalism to reach the amount of beakers that I calculated would allow a GS to lightbulb the tech immediately without losing more than a handful of beakers. Then, we researched Gunpowder for 1-2 turns while waiting for our GS to be born. Finally, he was:
The message that Liberalism had been researched had not appeared so far, so here goes...
Success! Of course, we picked Nationalism as the free tech. Genghis already had Gunpowder, though, so we can't afford to delay too long.
[continued in the next post...]
This round is basically the exciting race towards Liberalism. With at least another civilization in the running and quite possibly ahead, getting there first is far from certain.
We needed Calendar to lightbulb Liberalism, so I decided to try and get it from Shaka for the peace treaty instead of the city he offered, hoping to wrangle some other tech from him in the deal as well. Unfortunately, he wouldn't agree. Since we couldn't afford to waste precious turns researching Calendar, I decided to take the deal after all:
At least it comes with a fair bit of gold to help our research.
Then, having to decide where to plant our GG, I took a look at the list of our cities and settled on the second most productive one, Ankara:
This is our designated HE city. uMgungundlovu would probably overtake it eventually, but since the former had a lot of catching up to do in terms of building infrastructure, it would be sometime before it can be used to produce units. So the GG was turned into a GMI at Ankara. Janissaries have to be built from scratch, and it would be useful to have some that start off with an extra promotion.
And I decided not to revolt to Bureaucracy. Yes. You are probably asking why. I just thought that, since we were racing for Liberalism, Free Speech would be available soon anyway, and as such going through 1 turn of anarchy then was probably not worth it. It would be really sad if we had happened to lose the Liberalism race by 1 turn because of anarchy. Yes, I know now that the commerce and production gained from Bureaucracy over time might have more than made up for it, but for some reason I just decided not to do it at that time. Maybe it's because I'm too wary of anarchy.
Now, you might feel a bit too incensed at this. I felt so too after I finished playing the round. If you don't want to wait for an answer on whether this was such a horrible move, read the spoiler now. Otherwise, maybe read it when you've reached the end of the update.
Spoiler :
Several turns later, we got our next GS:
Naturally, he was used to lightbulb Education.
Then we finally met our competitor:
Uh-oh. Looks like someone got to Education before us. The pressure was really coming on now.
Fortunately, the next guy we met wasn't so advanced:
At least we might only have 1 competitor. There might just be hope that Huayna would go for Economics instead of Liberalism...
And then, as we were researching Compass to allow our next GS to research Liberalism, I heard the dreadful sound of...
Huayna circumnavigating the globe. Well, there was still hope. So far.
Anyway, you might ask why not just research Liberalism then. Well, since lightbulbing gives more beakers than Compass is worth, it's clear that researching Compass was better.
Then, Nodwengu, Shaka's proposed gift city experienced an Ottoman revolt:
No wonder Shaka was so keen on giving it away. Well, we took a tech instead, and now the city might just be ours anyway. Heh, heh.
After Compass was done, we researched a few turns of Liberalism to reach the amount of beakers that I calculated would allow a GS to lightbulb the tech immediately without losing more than a handful of beakers. Then, we researched Gunpowder for 1-2 turns while waiting for our GS to be born. Finally, he was:
The message that Liberalism had been researched had not appeared so far, so here goes...
Success! Of course, we picked Nationalism as the free tech. Genghis already had Gunpowder, though, so we can't afford to delay too long.
[continued in the next post...]
aelf
Ashen One
[continued from previous post]
Now that the race is over, I felt safe enough to trade techs, so I approached Roosevelt, who was in the best position to trade with:
Yup. That's a pretty good deal. Feudalism and Machinery in one fell swoop, with some gold thrown into the deal.
And I decided to switch to Free Speech in the meantime to help consolidate our borders:
The town bonus isn't worth much right now, but +100% to culture is pretty good considering a lot of our land wasn't ours. Switching to Nationalism now is a little pointless, since we don't even have Gunpowder yet, and I don't know if we are planning to do more than one round of drafting in most cities (which we would do shortly before the next war). Might as well benefit from Free Speech first. And benefit we did:
Great! We welcome the noble people of Nodwengu. Haven't we always told them that Shaka isn't cool?
Then we made a trade with Genghis:
Since he already had Gunpowder, giving him Education wasn't such a bad thing. I know that put him one step closer to Rifling, but on our part we could use Engineering for better roads and trebuchets, and there was no one else we could get it from.
We also made another trade with Roosevelt:
That helped speed up the research of Gunpowder, aside from being an all-round useful tech. Knights, especially, might come in handy. The trade also gave us a map of the other continent.
I ended the round as we discovered Gunpowder. This is the current tech situation:
Most of our techs showing up there we have on Shaka. We have Liberalism and Nationalism on Genghis, and that's it. Yes, it's quite worrying that Genghis has Printing Press already, but I doubt he will have Rifling that soon. If we are fast, we should be able to catch him before that. But we might have to be really fast.
Speaking of which, we should take a look at the power graph:
We are not anywhere near Genghis, but we only just began our troop build up, with some cities going to churn out trebs and our HE city building (relatively) veteran Janissaries. I think we should look towards mass-drafting Janissaries within several turns and declaring within the next 10 turns. I've sent a HA to scout out Genghis, and from the little that I've seen, I don't think he has that many units that can seriously threaten our UU. But I've yet to see his capital.
Here's an overview of our continent:
I'm thinking of going for Beshebalik (holy city to boot) and then hitting Karakorum with our SOD. If we can take it, it should weaken Genghis terribly and divide his empire into two. Which city we take after that would depend on the situation, methinks. The problem is it's quite a long march from Beshebalik to Karakorum, giving Khan plenty of time to reinforce. And being in the middle might be quite a dangerous position.
And here's the other continent, courtesy of Roosevelt:
Roosy is the power here, but Monty has also been a conqueror with the Greek cities. The funny thing is Athens is the Buddhist holy city, and I don't doubt that Monty is hence Buddhist and at loggerheads with Roosevelt (the latter has 3 Aztec cities after all). It could be why Roosy is not so advanced. Too bad he isn't Christian for a 3-sided war. Oh, well. At least Huayna is the small peaceful and advanced civ. Better than the big conquering and advanced civ. We should watch out for Roosy, though, since he might eventually prevail completely over Monty.
What should we research next? Would Drama for theatres be a bit too late and of marginal benefit? Or should we go for Music and then MT for cavalry, assuming we want to go all out for war? Or is the Printing Press, Replaceable Parts and Rifling route to be preferred, since it offers economic bonuses as well, although it takes longer to get to rifles? Then again, there is Chemistry and Steel, which is a very good option. That said, Drama can be researched first before we move on to any one of the other options.
We are moving towards a precarious but exciting phase of the game. Your comments will be very helpful
Now that the race is over, I felt safe enough to trade techs, so I approached Roosevelt, who was in the best position to trade with:
Yup. That's a pretty good deal. Feudalism and Machinery in one fell swoop, with some gold thrown into the deal.
And I decided to switch to Free Speech in the meantime to help consolidate our borders:
The town bonus isn't worth much right now, but +100% to culture is pretty good considering a lot of our land wasn't ours. Switching to Nationalism now is a little pointless, since we don't even have Gunpowder yet, and I don't know if we are planning to do more than one round of drafting in most cities (which we would do shortly before the next war). Might as well benefit from Free Speech first. And benefit we did:
Great! We welcome the noble people of Nodwengu. Haven't we always told them that Shaka isn't cool?
Then we made a trade with Genghis:
Since he already had Gunpowder, giving him Education wasn't such a bad thing. I know that put him one step closer to Rifling, but on our part we could use Engineering for better roads and trebuchets, and there was no one else we could get it from.
We also made another trade with Roosevelt:
That helped speed up the research of Gunpowder, aside from being an all-round useful tech. Knights, especially, might come in handy. The trade also gave us a map of the other continent.
I ended the round as we discovered Gunpowder. This is the current tech situation:
Most of our techs showing up there we have on Shaka. We have Liberalism and Nationalism on Genghis, and that's it. Yes, it's quite worrying that Genghis has Printing Press already, but I doubt he will have Rifling that soon. If we are fast, we should be able to catch him before that. But we might have to be really fast.
Speaking of which, we should take a look at the power graph:
We are not anywhere near Genghis, but we only just began our troop build up, with some cities going to churn out trebs and our HE city building (relatively) veteran Janissaries. I think we should look towards mass-drafting Janissaries within several turns and declaring within the next 10 turns. I've sent a HA to scout out Genghis, and from the little that I've seen, I don't think he has that many units that can seriously threaten our UU. But I've yet to see his capital.
Here's an overview of our continent:
I'm thinking of going for Beshebalik (holy city to boot) and then hitting Karakorum with our SOD. If we can take it, it should weaken Genghis terribly and divide his empire into two. Which city we take after that would depend on the situation, methinks. The problem is it's quite a long march from Beshebalik to Karakorum, giving Khan plenty of time to reinforce. And being in the middle might be quite a dangerous position.
And here's the other continent, courtesy of Roosevelt:
Roosy is the power here, but Monty has also been a conqueror with the Greek cities. The funny thing is Athens is the Buddhist holy city, and I don't doubt that Monty is hence Buddhist and at loggerheads with Roosevelt (the latter has 3 Aztec cities after all). It could be why Roosy is not so advanced. Too bad he isn't Christian for a 3-sided war. Oh, well. At least Huayna is the small peaceful and advanced civ. Better than the big conquering and advanced civ. We should watch out for Roosy, though, since he might eventually prevail completely over Monty.
What should we research next? Would Drama for theatres be a bit too late and of marginal benefit? Or should we go for Music and then MT for cavalry, assuming we want to go all out for war? Or is the Printing Press, Replaceable Parts and Rifling route to be preferred, since it offers economic bonuses as well, although it takes longer to get to rifles? Then again, there is Chemistry and Steel, which is a very good option. That said, Drama can be researched first before we move on to any one of the other options.
We are moving towards a precarious but exciting phase of the game. Your comments will be very helpful
aelf
Ashen One
Probably just vassalize. By then the game would have moved on to the phase where we need to focus on competing with the other continent.
@ aelf
Can't say to much because I never played at this level with warlords but mass drafting/building Jans and taking out Genghis seems a good plan.
From there it depends on what victory type you want. I'd probably go for a space victory. Looks like a lot of land on the other continent if you go for domination and with Monte there a lot of troops to beat.
Interesting reading whatever you decide.
Can't say to much because I never played at this level with warlords but mass drafting/building Jans and taking out Genghis seems a good plan.
From there it depends on what victory type you want. I'd probably go for a space victory. Looks like a lot of land on the other continent if you go for domination and with Monte there a lot of troops to beat.
Interesting reading whatever you decide.
aelf
Ashen One
Nobody has anything more to say?
Neato
Dog Culture Advisor
Hey aelf -
What a great round! Great post-Lib trades too. Good show.
Just to clarify, are you ignoring Shaka for this war? Not that he seems like he'd be much of a threat, but there's the possibility he might team up with Genghis anyway and cause further annoyance...
Also, definitely go for Beshebalik first, after that though I'm a little stumped. I can't really see the resources on your continent, but if you're planning on vassalizing Genghis, I guess it technically doesn't matter, because his resources will be as good as yours.
Maybe taking some of his high commerce and/or coastal cities for gold and beakers (perhaps those cities in the east) or high pop and/or high production cities for slaves and hammers (perhaps the cities to the west)...
I'm not sure though. It depends on whether or not we're planning on invading the other continent or if we're thinking about throwing everything we have to get to space...
What a great round! Great post-Lib trades too. Good show.
Just to clarify, are you ignoring Shaka for this war? Not that he seems like he'd be much of a threat, but there's the possibility he might team up with Genghis anyway and cause further annoyance...
Also, definitely go for Beshebalik first, after that though I'm a little stumped. I can't really see the resources on your continent, but if you're planning on vassalizing Genghis, I guess it technically doesn't matter, because his resources will be as good as yours.
Maybe taking some of his high commerce and/or coastal cities for gold and beakers (perhaps those cities in the east) or high pop and/or high production cities for slaves and hammers (perhaps the cities to the west)...I'm not sure though. It depends on whether or not we're planning on invading the other continent or if we're thinking about throwing everything we have to get to space...
aelf
Ashen One
Thanks!
I'm afraid domination is out of the question. With Roosevelt like that, I don't think invading the other continent is a good idea. It would probably have to be either space or diplomatic.
I'm afraid domination is out of the question. With Roosevelt like that, I don't think invading the other continent is a good idea. It would probably have to be either space or diplomatic.
InvisibleStalke
Emperor
War against Ghengis is going to be brutal. Me I would probably take Shaka out completely first and wait a little for Ghengis. Maybe with his numerical superiority it might be good to go cannons first and let him attack you. If you can destroy his attack with cannons and then march on his capital using Janisseries as your city attackers it might work.
aelf
Ashen One
I guess reconaissance will provide the answer. If we don't see stacks of offensive units waiting in Khan's cities, I think it will be better if we strike soon to neutralise his growing power.
I think that when your first stack has left for Karakorum, getting more units to that stack will be dangerous, you could try opening a second front in the east, taking the size 5 and 11 cities there. They seem to be closest to your borders.
It seems Genghis is going for Rifling, so you might want to go for Chemistry.
It seems Genghis is going for Rifling, so you might want to go for Chemistry.
Aggressive (combat 1) + Barracks (3 exp) + Theocracy/Vassalage (2 exp) I suppose.
Neato
Dog Culture Advisor
I think this makes sense and is probably the most doable course of action. I keep forgetting this is Warlords and that's why there's no espionage, but you definitely need to scout Genghis out so we can what he's got going on. Chemistry may be more valuable than cannons if the Mongol gets rifles.
Also, still: Shaka. Is he even a threat? Might he team up with Genghis? I'm not an Immortal kind of guy, so I'm not clear on the politics the AI might be playing, but last I knew Shaka and Genghis were still buddy-buddy.
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