Role Play Challenge: Return of the Great Khan, An open RPC game

Started by teching Agriculture and build a worker.

Went Masonry next, hooked the stone up real fast. While hooking stone up build 2 warriors and a settler.

Sent settler southeast along the river, and by luck settled with the horses within the small square of the city.

Built/chopped the Great Wall fast as I found Industrious Ramses to our north. Shaka is immediately east and mys go.

Teched mining and BW showing copper in the BFC. Chopped out a rushing force of axes/spears/chariots but too late to fully swamp Shaka.

Weakened Shaka, declared peace as he sent a counter attack stack.

Reattacked the Zulu and went straight for his capital which we took. After that we picked off his cities, destroying him just before 500BC. One down 16 to go!

While attackign we built/chopped the pyramids in the capital, switched to representation. Also adopted Hinduism, the most popular religion.

Trading like a fiend. Got a GSpy which we settled and directed all eps to Ramses. The Great Khan is looking northward to expand next!

Mouch more raw chaos.

Egypt is destroyed and we have Thebes and resettle another city.

Got DoWed by Ragnar/Hannibal/Joao. Joao is the strongest as evidensed by his arrogant demands and top dog status.

With Fuedalism and adopting vassalage we are puming out 11 XP units, 15 XP keshiks from the capital.

Waiting to expand a bit then possibly cripple Ragnar more.

I forsee knights and guilds are the absolute critical step here.

Moved the settler 1S, because I dont want to miss the river, but unfortunately missed the copper. Started with worker and agriculture of course. The first 2 huts pop for scouts and I did some good expolration and poped more huts. Gold, warriors, maps and the most important AH. When the worker was done, I went for settler immediately, because if I dont act fast, I'll lose the horses to Shaka.

Myst, Mining, Masonry. BW next. The capital builds warrior, warrior, worker, The Wall, chariot spam. Shaka builds a city very close to our second city, This is an insult to Khan and he send 8 chariots to him. Well he has copper and build... axemen Umunglovolu(or whatever) is protected by axeman and archer. We raze the city without loses and decide to make a visit to Ulundi. Shakas captiol is protected by 2 archers and 1 axeman, but now he doesn't have acces to copper. We take the city at the price of 3 chariots. Ulundi is a very nice city. There is one more city west of Ulundi, which is protected by a single unpromoted archer. Of course we raze it. 1800 BC Shaka is no more! Well, copper in the starting position and.... chariot rush

Meet everyone, Isabella founded Buddhism, Saladin- Hinduism and they are neighbours. It's going to be funny. Hammurabi founded Judaism. There isn't a dominant religion, so we dont accept any yet, but it seems that Judaism is the most popular. Build The Pyramids, addopted representation and expand to 7 cities. We have access to stone and marble and very high happy cap. Gold, silver, fur, ivory, silk, spices, wine. We have Horesback riding and spam Keshiks for Ramesess. I think he will be the next. Karakorum will make a curve to Great Library, when we finish Literature in few turns. The specialist economy is up and running. We are number 1 in score and in power as well, but the game will be difficult, no doubts.

Ah forgot to mention, we popped a spy, he is settled in Karakorum.

Settled in place. Decided Shaka would be my friend. Egypt settled the landbridge to my north, so I declared and stacked 2 warriors on the hill just to panic him while I built my 2nd city (NE, 2gold, rice, marble). Razed his new city with a lucky attack with my first axe, settled replacement 1 tile off (giving me a canal between seas, and promptly getting the knowledge in the ruins discovery event). My combat1, cover1 Axe was on a wooded hill headed for Thebes when a barb archer attacked him. And won!


After some pillaging (and troop mismanagment on my part), I took Thebes, Egypt is no more. Chopped GW and Pyramids in kaka, switched to Rep.

Hammarabi spammed Judaism everywhere (and built the shrine), I'm in it with him, shaka, joao, qin, huyna, chalemange, hannibal and latecomer washington (he was getting pummeled, switched, which seems to have saved his life).

Izzy has buddhism, including saladin, ghandi, and SittingBull (who swapped out of Judaism late)

Korea and Ragnar are the lone hindus.

Liz and Maya are confused. Except Pacal fell down to a combined arms effort from me, hammurabi, and shaka. I own his capital, rest is razed, we are all pushing on liz now. I built Ning-Hsia on the SW landbridge after I razed the first Mayan town, giving me horses, clams, and access to the ocean. My keshiks, catapults and elephants are hunting down Liz now.

Huyana built the AP, I have control. I built GL, MoM, NE, and a couple other wonders in Thebes. HE in Kakarokum, 4 settled generals (and lost out on Zeus by 1 turn)

Korea declared on me recently. I razed one bordertown N of Thebes and took a pile of gold for peace. I'm doing all right on power, tho lots of it is paper (walls and barracks everywhere), and leading the score chart. Research has been at 100% for a long time, financed by selling techs to all my friends, and I'm starting to get some specialists going finally.

My first GP was an engineer, I immediately burned him on MC. Academy in Thebes, Artist (burned on GA, 24turns!), and just got the free artist for music. Think I'm in the liberalism race.

Well, we start with copper. I know this because I almost always beeling bronzeworking to do choprexing. Shaka becomes the victim, getting city after city sacked until he is no more:



Ok. I only kept ulundi. I HATE THIS RULE. It's stupid and wastes a ton of hammers . I'll go into detail later about it, as I was able to settle all these city sites.
In addition to GW, I grabbed stonehenge and the pyramids. It was easy enough to get these with stone. That's really about all that happened by 500 BC, prepping for war with Egypt to the north next.



I'd take thebes then take peace. Stupid rules.

More happened for me in this one. I declared war about 10 times or something . Mostly on Sal.

Here's my empire at 25 AD:



Only thing worth mentioning about it is that I built and stole a LOT of workers. That will help.



Since I "discovered" that Sal was next to the Zulu and in a heathen religion, I decided to go after them. This is the invasion plan, and part of the reason Keshiks are on par with praetorians. That is, if you're not restricted to raze useful cities constantly. Anyway, I'm sniping the capitol like that then pincering the nearby cities afterwards.

yeah, so basically I've been playing like an !@#$, taking a city or two, then taking cease fire, then repeating the process. Major diplo hits, easy wars. Actually the diplo hits for doing it to a heathen aren't so bad , which is why I chose arabia.



After I took and razed all his good cities (had to spam settlers to get them as soon as I took/razed, this slowed my military production down, cost me tons of pop in whipped hammers, and lost some sites to AI settlers), I took peace. I then went after Egypt again:



Running Bureaucracy, with 2 settled GG's and heroic epic means I get a level 4 keshik every turn. Spamtacular. Egypt, despite being more advanced and even fielding maces/longbows, was sliced through like nothing. Here's their lands at 1000 AD



The war is still ongoing but they're damaged so badly they won't recover. Portugal and carthage declared on me but i've not seen much other than stray archers. I'd be more than happy to smack their stupid stacks down in my territory for GG's if they want to oblige though.

Eastern lands @ 1000 AD



Western lands @ 1000 AD



And finally 1000 AD tech race:



I've been fighting all game but deficit research and cottage spam have allowed me to stay in the lib race. It's me vs Ghandi, hope I can come away with it. I will take nationalism with liberalism if I can get it, then I will go after military tradition and try to trade for gunpowder to double up my troop strength. I have enough decent production cities that marching 12 strength units should let me capture most of the western part of the world.

ONE MORE TIME:

I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE having to raze every !#@$ing city. It's ok if it's unimproved or in a bad spot. Razing 9 pop cities with improvements, even if they lack wonders/capitol stats/shrines, IS FOOLISH. I can whip that pop for infrastructure. Important infrastructure, like courthouses. I can use it for more military when pressed. Hell, I can just use it to work improved tiles. Not in this game though. It's not like I'm in a bad position or can't win without keeping the cities/building with settlers, but doing this repeatedly is really, REALLY annoying. Even moreso than needing double legendary culture with france, this is the most annoying RPC rule ever . I'd seriously have another 6-10 cities by now if you put all those hammers into troops that I had to use on settlers, accounted for the 2 city sites I lost to AI expansion, and the fact that I had to delay taking cities if I didn't have a settler ready. This RPC might have been meant to showcase keshiks and the mongolian power, but this rule really slows them down . I'm going to take a break from this one and work at it slowly so the frustration doesn't overtake me.

Starting tech path was mining/AH (popped from hut)/bronze/Ag/masonry, and starting build order was warrior/worker. When the bronze popped I immediately chopped/whipped a barracks and axes. I sent the first one (C1Cover) toward Shaka to scout out the rush, and just as I got to his border a met an archer/settler coming out for his first city. This was too good of an opportunity to refuse. I killed the archer, sent the worker home, and camped on the forest hill next to his capital. My axe was wounded, but he only had a single archer defending and hadn't gotten to slavery yet. I healed one turn and was at 4.6 strength, giving about 46% chance, so I rolled the dice. The gods of war were smiling on me then (but they can be oh so fickle, as we know) and Shaka was off to the great elephant graveyard and I had my second city. (not sure of the date, but pre-2000BC for sure). I then rexed out to seal off the land. First grabbed the gold/jumbo city north of Ulundi, added another in between, then the horses SE of Karakorum, coastal city to the west blocking off the Maya, and finally the silver city S of Ulundi once I had CoL. First build after Shaka's departure was GW, then a settler of 2, 'Mids. Switched to Rep, build Libs and ran 2 scientists in every city I could. I popped a GE and used him to grab HG (I was late and wasn't sure I could get it -- and Huayna suddenly had a load of gold so he must have been close). I now have abundant and . I built the Oracle, took CoL, founded Confu, and sent the missionary to Rameses. He converted, as did Liz, Pacal, and Ghandi. Used a GP later to build the shrine. I got DoW'd a few times (mostly Joao - he's been a pest after I told him where to shove his demands) but nothing I couldn't handle easily with keshiks. I later added the GL. I'm up to about 450AD, #1 in score and power, and looking for my next victim (Rameses). I'm running a profit at 60% on the research slider, just got CS and switched to caste (workshops), bureaucracy, OR (4 turns of anarchy - arrrgh).

I'm not sure where to head at this point. My first thought was to head up a path I seldom take - feud/guilds for lbows (defense) and knights (offense), instead of going for the Lib race (I'm the only one with Lit, but Liz and Joao both have Phil, nobody has paper). Normally I'd get Lib, take Nat and research gunpowder/chem/steel/MS and then go nuts with cannons/grens while researching rifling and MilTrad. Any advice from the peanut gallery?

Another question I have re:knights. I'm assuming that keshiks upgraded to knights lose their "ignore terrain" bonus. True? Otherwise, they would really be overpowering.

Finally, I could use some advice on keshiks. I'm planning to build the Mongol Hoard (TM) and use spies to drop defenses (I settled my GSpy from the GW). How do keshiks hold up against spears? I'd probably promote half of them to C1/shock/C2, and the other half to Flanking/Flanking2/C1, but I'd appreciate hearing from anyone (TMIT, are you there? ) who had experience using them.