Role Play Challenge: LawlEss Hammurabi and the Battle of the Warlords II

Welcome to the second attempt at lawless Hammarabi and the Battle of the warlords! Same rules and settings as the first attempt, hopefully I can do Hammurabi honor this time. These games are meant to be fun and educational. In this game we are on a Pangea Map with all of the Leaders that have the Aggressive Trait, with the aggressive AI option on! A true battle filled game, if for nothing else survival! Also an excellent chance to see how well we can play out a game removing one of the key techs in teh game, Code of Laws!

Now you all may have heard of Hammurabi and his written Code of Laws. Let old Mad Scientist set the record straight, that is a load of hogwash! Hammarabi was a lawless warrior who cared little for laws! He cared little for any sort of court system, and war weariness was something to tolerate. Lawgiver? HA! How about blood thirsty conqueror who believes in a survival of the strongest mentality!

So game conditions!

Map: Pangea, pressed shoreline, tropical, Agressive AI turned on.
Marathon speed, Monarch difficulty.

Opponants (All those with the Agressive trait)

Montezuma
Stalin
Ghengis
Ragnar
Alexander
Boudica
Shaka
Tokugawa

Which brings us to 2 extra leaders on a standard map! Close nit indeed!

Rules
1) We cannot tech Code of Laws, not get it via trade.
2) Civic limitations: Any government, Vassalage or Nationhood, Slavery, Any economic civic, Theocracy.
3) Hammarabi cannot accept vassals (he is too much of a Lawless free spirit to accept that stuff), and he cannot ever build any espionage buildings (including ep producing wonders, like the GW). What he captures is another thing although if he ever accidently gets a GSpy, he can only be used as a permanent "scout". Also, he cannot build spies.
4) He cannot do anything to affect War Weriness. Thus no Police State from the pyramids, no jails, etc... Finally, He can never adjust the culture slider as he is Lawless and NOT a cultured guy!

Otherwise he can run a normal game (CE or SE as the game unfolds.)

Our Lawless leader!



And the start



Well not the best start. I considered a regen here but the hell with it. These RPCs go with what we are given out! So we start with the wheel and agriculture, what first??

Settle 1 north, get those pigs.

offhand i'd be taking a bet on metal beneath the warrior (or prehaps east of cows, looks like no forest there, with forests around it)

i'd settle in place and start with another warrior for more scouting followed by a worker

mining-bronzeworking first ... if copper's close by then Animal husbandry, if not Hunting-archery first

by grapping the pigs he lose fresh water, and a hill 2s1w from the settler

If you settle we can see more of the surroundings, which would make clear whether agri or the wheel should go first. Also, maybe there's some nice resources not far away, so a regen might not be neccesary.

Either way, settle most of your cities on hills, if I'm not mistaken, in the last game, all the cities except your capital weren't, hills give another 25% defence, and bowmen start with +25% hill defence. Add the two and your bowmen get another 50%, which should make life hard on invading melee units. Chances of winning against CR swords or axes are much higher settling on hills.

Another benefit is that you can then go for guerilla promotions, which give 20% at the first level and 30% on the second, as opposed to the garrison which give 20% and 25%, although for flexibility, going for garrison might be better.

Anyway, settle on hills, and build city walls. With agg AI's your bound to face some forces at your city gates anyway, as we've seen in the last game.

1 N to get the pigs would be a good start.

One north for the pigs seems to make the most sense, pigs are awesome. Sure you lose the fresh water health but a harbor but you can just leave some forests standing to make up for that. Let's see what's out there!

move your warrior one E and see what extra you would get from settling north, i'm undecided as to whether it would be a good idea to settle 1N though otherwise the pigs will probably be wasted

capital location looks ok, you have your back to the sea so at most you should only border 2/3 AIs at the start

initial techs maybe AH gets you some resources and possibly horses/ mining & BW for axes: taking out an early AI might be game winning

it looks like there's a hill 1S of those pigs.

I'd consider NE. You might get better tiles and forests to the east. There's 2 sea tiles, but that won't be a factor for a long time.

I would try the forested hill that's 1N 2E of you; inland capitol means more tiles to work, you still get the benefit of pigs and cows, and the spices are not a big loss as by the time you get calendar you'll have another city there. The only issues I can see are possible desert (unlikely though given all the grassland there), losing a possible metal site in that bare grassland, and wasting a turn (although on marathon that's not as huge a loss as usual).

Went a little nuts and played a shadow for 250 turns with my chosen starting position.

Wouldn't you want to add Kublai in the game, since he is also Aggressive?

DMOC said:

Wouldn't you want to add Kublai in the game, since he is also Aggressive?

Click to expand...

my guess is that there allready is one Khan ...

Lawless Hammurabi II: Part I

Well, a very tight situation and perhaps a major consequence of settling the initial spot! Still, nothing to worry that much about as we have the UU to hold things down for now!

To start where did we settle???



Pigs are hard to pass up! However, we may regret this decision!

Very quickly we meet 2 Ais





Who are VERY close.



Stalin SW while Ragnar is due east. And not much land for either to settle except in our direction!

How did we proceeed?

Tech: AH/hunting/Archery/Mining/BW. Perhaps mining/Archery before hunting/archery would have been better.

Build order: worker/warrior/Barracks/Bowman/Bowman/Bowman/Settler/Bowman

And we popped 168 gold from the lone goody hut we got.

After teching AH we find



2 Horses within Stalins sphere of influence. We also found another SE of Ragnar and...

Well before that





With the Tatooed lady



Being Due south! Shaka is directly east of her.

So basically we have a nice clear region right inbetween four of us!

We exploredfurther south and found



And



Well Shaka and Monty were the early religion founders. Note to oneself, adopt a religion and make friends this time!

We dropped our Second city right in between Ragnar and Stalin



Hopefully Ragnar is cut off enough to take him down early.

Now back to the horses. we finally explored that dismal penninsula west of our capital, low and behold!



Nothing else to benefit a city here, but at least we have early horses!

We meet the last thug, er I mean leader



And after teching BW



Dammit, and really inconvenient place! If we settled in place we would have it after the border pop. If we teched mining/BW first we would have settled city 2 there! Well, not enough to daunt our scoundral leader!

So I have IW setup to tech right now. I forsee 2 more cities, coastal to claim the copper and then the horses. Means we shall need fishing/sailing sooner than mysticism, pottery, writing!

Plus I am fairly certain we need to war pretty early here!

2S of bronze looks a good city site.

I'd settle 1 SW of copper then raze St P when you attack, it probably makes stalin your number 1 target now

Sian said:

my guess is that there allready is one Khan ...

Click to expand...

Yes, but add both.

DMOC said:

Yes, but add both.

Click to expand...

probably a bit late now, hopefully Mad won't have to restart

1SW of the copper would be a good place, but since Ragnar would be your first target, you would need to get some culture going there in the form of a monument or a library. There's at least 4 forest tiles that will add hammers to that city, so wall+monument there won't be too hard to get. Another option is on top of it, you can work the spices and the elephants. St. Petersburg isn't in a bad spot, it has dye a food resource and it shares horses with Moscow.

Settling SW of the copper would mean you only get 1 city between your capital and Moscow, I think there's room for two there.

I would advise going for masonry next, since walls will provide an easy early powerboost, and there aren't many hills to settle on top of; bowmen vs. swordsmen isn't a good fight without either hills or wall before cultural defence shores up your defence a bit.

DMOC said:

Wouldn't you want to add Kublai in the game, since he is also Aggressive?

Click to expand...

He has a lower ibuildunitprob and a higher peaceweight than most if not all of the leaders in this. He doesn't build any more units than washington!