Nobles' Club LI: Mao Zedong of China

Custom Continents, 2 continents, medium sea level, random opponents. Most desert became plains and I made sure AIs had metals and otherwise decent-looking starts -- though given the way things went this weekend, my somewhat flakey brain may have missed something. Swapped us with one of the AIs.

Edit (7 june, about 11am EST): there is a small bug in the maps. It's not too big a deal, but you might want to wait a bit. I will edit the maps and repost later today, but am a little rushed at the moment.

When I loaded this map, a small 5x5 patch of terrain was demasked to the northeast, on the coast. Is this where you swapped us from?

Great starting position, and after settling, I didn't regret it.

Went Worker > Warrior > Settler.

Tech path was: Hunting > (Mysticism hut pop) > Wheel > Pottery (which was also hut popped halfway through) > BW > AH > Meditation > Masonry > Priesthood.

Other huts popped about 150 gold total.

I settled Shanghai to the northeast, putting the Pigs, Copper, and Corn(? might be Rice, I forget) in its BFC. This will be my primary production city.

After roaming around for a bit and concluding that the continent was sparsely populated, I decided build the Oracle for Code of Laws and early Courthouses, in order to facilitate quick expansion and land gobbling. Around that time I ran into the Babylonians and the Spanish. No idea where Hammurabi is, but I know Isabella is to my east.

I set up Guangzhou out to the far east to cut off Isabella and maybe set up a decent GP farm. It's got Pigs and Corn (or Rice again, I always forget), lots of floodplains, decent production, and Gold as a bonus (maybe a secondary money city, if I never run Caste System).

Right now the plan is to ignore the more military-centered techs and go for Bureaucracy, then set up my capital as a beaker producer. All the while I'm going to try to expand as rapidly as possible and grab land before anyone else does. Perhaps a Liberalism -> Rifling techpath if I feel like making lots of war.

Explored the continent and found Hammurabi to the West and Isabella to the East. Beijing has built Stonehenge and is now mostly producing workers and settlers until I can raise the happy cap. Shanghai is my main unit production city and Guangzhou a blocking city to keep Hammurabi from expanding South. At the same time I have two settlers heading East to block Isabella, I'm also toying with the idea of attacking Isabella as at 800bc she hasn't built a second city so I'm assuming she has been busy building wonders?? In addition to this Madrid is the Buddhist holy city and a Great Prophet appeared there several turns ago. I have an axeman heading to take a look at what defences she has there.



If I can keep the AI confined to the tundra and ice in the north whilst expanding south I should be able to build a comfortable tech lead and sizeable army to take them down later (or sooner in the case of Spanish depending on what forces are in Madrid, cultural defences alone are putting me off this idea though so probably will wait for cats first)

I'm playing at Emperor Plus but due to the amount of land, barbs can be a problem. With close by stone, GW is a good play and, of course, the Oracle/Mids for the early Machinery ploy.

... in case iron is not available for the solid UU.

Click to expand...

My usual policy is to make sure resources for UUs are not too far away; if they're not in the original BFC, I put it in place for a 2nd or 3rd city.

First, ^$#&* these $*^#& barbs!!!! Is this a function of the large continent, or a function of moving up to a higher level? Swarms and swarms compared to what I am accustomed to. If I were to reroll this game I would have gone GW...the barbs have really set me back. Partly because I settled my cities in a big string to wall off land.

I settled in place, then went worker-warrior-settler-Stonehenge. This was my tech path: Hunting>Mysticism (big continent, wanted SH to help block land)>BW>Masonry(marble)>wheel>Pottery>AH. After that I quit counting, but I got oracle for MC.

I maybe should have gone GW, with all the barbs! I have to keep up an all-round defense against them, because I have that string of cities and lots of empty land on all sides. Anyhow, Izzy founded Judaism and spread it to me, plus with the founding of Guangzhou I had pretty much cut her off. She, Pericles, and I are all Jews, and with SH I popped a GP. Time to take Madrid and found a shrine! I noticed she didn't have metals from what I could see, so once I had about 10 axemen not on barb duty I swarmed her. It was easy until I got to madrid, I took the 2 towns in the way without loss. Madrid had walls by this point, so it ate about 7 of my 10 axes before I took it. I think this might be my new GP city...look at all that food! You could run like 8 specialists off of 4 foodies damn near. Guangzhou was founded with this purpose in mind, but proved very difficult to improve, with the constant influx of barbs from south, west, and north.


By pzschrek at 2010-06-07

AS you can see, Izzy lives with a tundra city, but since madrid ate my axemen, I made peace for a couple techs.

Techwise has been great...I have at least a few more than anyone I have met yet.

Pericles got the Magellan bonus, damn him. I am ahead of him comfortably, to my surprise, so that must mean you dont need oceangoing to sail around the world.

I had a roaring good start (I mean, the capital location? ZOMG!), but am starting to bog a bit. My research has slowed, but i am at least keeping steadily ahead of the ai. Its about to slow a lot more!

Future expansion plans. Red sites indicate imminent settle sites, whites are follow on. THe quicker I get down there the quicker I can start getting rid of barbs. Will probably settle toward Hammurabi for the wine, then southwest/south. The site for the city SW of Beijing is suboptimal...i pretty much settled it as a conservative wall to keep hammy from cutting under me while i dealt with izzy. Looks like I could have been more agressive. Oh well...hindsight.


By pzschrek at 2010-06-07

Now it's on to rex this continent until my econ dies, most likely. The only thing that could put a big hook in my craw is if Hammy DOWed me...I don't have a good strike force since all my men are spread to hell and gone fighting barbs, and with REXing most new production will go to supporting the cities I am making.


This is my entire AO in 40 AD. Onward and upward.


By pzschrek at 2010-06-07

The hordes of barbarians are due to the amount of vacant land available. They did make the early stages challenging, but it sounds like you did fine.

Switch religion to make Hammy happy, or just get ready for the eventual war. He's safe once at Pleased, but you're going to need a boost to get there.

There is so much land that it's hard to maintain the economy. I'm a thousand or so years later, and still haven't built all the cities I could nor have I finished off either Spain or Babylon yet. There's a LOT of land on this map.

Big land with big map? oh jesus i feel that i will definitely overexpand with totally overcrash...
will look to the map now... just thinking about diff... just cant get hang of monarch lately :-( maybe something easier...like chieftain would do me good i think!

I SIPed, went for worker techs. mixed there masonry, built Great Wall to have save borders.
Beelined Literature for GL which I got with some chopping around cap (btw cap seems like strong prod. city at least in the beginning).

Placed some cities, didnt crashed so badly as I expected. Got 6 good cities in good positions (I hope!).
3 settlers on the way, one of screenshots shows proposed positions.
No one teched Alphabet so that's tough to say where I stand.
I plan to get Monarchy now (have wine resource for happy), grow cities a bit. Would be great to get IW, probably from some trades after AIs open trade.

Diplomacy is not good. I at first went with Hindu from Hammu, but Izzy is another religion so i had to switch out of state religion to not get early Dow, for which I am not prepared.
So the plan should be after I get those settlers out, in the western potential unit pumps amass some axemem force.
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No Monarchy yet? What have you been teching? (note that I'm not sure what year I got Monarchy...)

I'm guessing you crashed harder than I did, because you spread out farther. On the plus side, that allowed you to block Hammy and Izzy better. Your tech rate looks OK IMO, and six cities are about what I manage by 5BC (I can't get the hang of 10 city REX yet) but your army seems very small. Of course, I didn't build the GW, so I had to build more troops.

However, a couple of problems I see. First, too few workers. You are 1:1 with cities right now, and will be running 1:1.5 (rather than the recommended 1.5:1) when you plant those other three cities.

Second, three cities at once?!?!?! And I assume in those locations? You're going to bottom out your economy for sure if you do that. Build closer in to cut distance maintenance at a minimum (1 NW of Beijing to work the Corn and Wine would be better than the most distant location, due to maintenance. Also, move the one South of Nanjing 1N to get the Horses, that's worth more than the Dye atm). If you already have CoL, you MIGHT survive a mass city build like that, but if you don't (and don't have currency as well to build Wealth) I'm guessing you're hosed if you build all three.

Settled in place, with a view to making the capital a Commerce/Production city.

Build order:
Worker, Worker, Settler, Worker

Tech path:
Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Hunting, Writing, Archery, Masonry, Mysticism, Iron Working, Fishing.

OK, now I know what you'll say. Exploration of the land has been really poor. I started out following a trail of goodie huts which lead me to Isabella. Not being too far away I plotted a course to destroy her. The land mass looks like a reasonable size and I don't want to be sandwiched between too many AI if I can help it.

Brief summary of events:
Turn 0/500 (4000 BC) Beijing founded
Turn 12/500 (3520 BC) Contact made: Spanish Empire
Turn 32/500 (2720 BC) Tribal village results: The Wheel
Turn 36/500 (2560 BC) Shanghai founded
Turn 44/500 (2240 BC) Contact made: Babylonian Empire
Turn 64/500 (1440 BC) Guangzhou founded
Turn 113/500 (50 BC) Spanish Empire has been eliminated

For a change I actually had enough Axemen to take out the enemy in one go. The first two cities I kept, the 3rd was razed. The Spanish capital even had the Oracle, score!

And whilst not trying for it, I founded Confucianism in 225 BC

Plans for the future, make $$$, build an army, maybe take out Hammurabi, we'll see. I'd like a conquest victory, never had one on Prince and I think I've got room to make it happen.

And some screen shots...


The world as I know it:


Foreign Advisor


The war dented my power chart but with the number of barbs spawning I'll have to rebuild it or be crushed.

I missed a few updates along the way...

So far the game has been very peaceful. Quite a few barbarians died, but only one war that recently ended against Izzy. I'm consolidating and will renew the war when the 10 turns of Peace end.

Here's the empire:



I'll be expanding further into Izzy's territory starting in a few turns. Unfortunately, she's already got a couple of cities off the continent so it'll be a pain to wipe her out. I may settle for Madrid and Toledo, and then capitulate her.

And the city list:


Hinduism is the AP religion, but I only have it in four cities so I'm working on spreading it a bit. I also really need to get some more cities building Wealth, but as you can see below I can afford to slow down my tech rate. I also really need to get some Courthouses done, so that I can build the FP in Madrid after I take it.

Current Civics:


I don't have any GP to burn for a GA, and with the tech lead I have on Izzy I'm not worried about maxing the quality of my troops. I may not have another GA until Nationalism and the Taj Mahal.

Foreign Relations:


War is raging everywhere but my continent, and with Hammy my good buddy I've got a free hand to take out Izzy. I'll get Hammy later.

Tech Race:


I'm so far ahead it is sad. I'm one turn from Liberalism, and currently backfilling techs while I wait for these guys to sort of catch up.

Tech Tree:


After Banking, I may do Economics for the free GM, since I really could use either the GA or the money. Then most likely Gunpowder, by which time I'll probably need to finish Liberalism.

Religions:


I'm running Hinduism as my State Religion to keep Hammy happy, but as you can see I need to spread it. Since it is the AP religion, I want it in every city of mine.

VCs:


BK and Cathy really aren't that far ahead it size, they just have vassals.

Demographics:


I'm doing OK here, though I was #1 in population for most of the game and need to regain that status, as well as in GNP.

Wonders:


Hammy has been busy building them for me. I'll thank him later...

Key Cities:


I've been a bit indecisive on infrastructure for Beijing, and it shows. I'll probably convert it to a production city as time goes on.



Shanghai is my main military production city, as you can see. I should let it grow a bit...



My other main production city.

So far, I think this game is well in hand. Comments and Questions?

Settled in place.
Research went hunt.>masonry>BW>Myst.
Build order is worker>warrior>warrior>settler
My initial warrior is doing exploring. Wow, this place is big. I don't even meet any other civs until 2925BC, when a warrior from Hammurabi shows up near my borders. I make contact with Isabella in 2325BC. Those appear to be the only two on my contintent. A good thing about the space is that I get alot of huts and alot of gold from the huts.

It will be hard to keep barbarians away, meaning the GW is definitely a good idea. Also, I see stone. So second city will be next to the stone, and I'll try for GW. Second city is built 1N of the Stone, and immediately starts on GW.

Reasearch continues with Wheel>Pottery>AH.
Beijing continues with worker>warrior>settler.
Suddenly it dawns on me that I am going to need culture (originally I was thinking of SH, but decided on GW instead), so I go for Poly>Mono, since I already have masonry.
GW is built in 2025BC. I discover Monotheism and found Judiasm in 1850BC. I convert, and shortly switch to slavery and OR.
Third city is founded 6E of Beijing, and begins building barracks.
I decide to go for the Oracle, so I build roads to connect Shanghai to Beijing (which has marble) and go for priest>writing>math.
Oracle is built in 1150, and I get MC. I also found my fourth city east of Beijing.
I finish math and start on currency.
Beijing has a library and has started to run two scientist specialists.
Screenshots:

1. I should have built my third city further east near the gold. I've lost that spot (and resource) now to Isabella. It would have been easier to later put city #5 where I put city #3 than to do it in reverse. Oh well. That's why we play these learning games, right?

2. I still need better focus on early techs. I should have delayed Pottery and AH until after Mono. I was lucky that I got it before someone else. Arguably, I still don't need AH. And, I may have made the wrong choice from Oracle (see below).

3. Is it too early to start thinking about a cultural victory? I have never done one without a philosophical leader, but the Chinese UB should help. None of the other early religions were founded near me. Judiasm has already spread to Babylon, and I plan to spread it some to Spain. I could maintain harmony and peace while I rex to 9 cities, which should be plenty. Also, Nanjing looks to be a decent great person farm.

On the downside, I should have actually made this decision sooner. I definitely will want to go to CoL rather than currency, to get Confusinism and if I miss getting it first, I will regret not using the Oracle to discover it rather than MC. Also, my first great person is going to be most likely a Spy, and I really do not know how to fit that into a cultural victory (maybe a Golden Age to switch civics when its time). If it turns out to be a great prophet instead, that would help, as I could build a Shrine or bulb, but the odds are against it. My second great person will be a scientist, and I will have the tough choice between bulbing philosohpy to get taoism, or building the academy.

I have not yet read anybody else's posts. I am looking forward to going back and seeing what choices other people made by this time.

Normally I agree on AH, but in this case, I had no animals to pasture in any of the BFCs of my first three cities, and the fourth city has not yet grown into it. If I was trying to be first for mono (and I was), I should probably have delayed both of those at least a little. However, in this case, no harm, no foul.