TSG17 Game in Progress

Welcome to the TSG17 Game in Progress thread. This thread is used to discuss the game once you've started playing. There are no reading or posting restrictions as such (apart from normal decency), although we encourage players to use the spoiler tags for screenshots. Here you can post questions related to the game and share your achievements/anger/frustration/victories while you play. Please remember that we are running a family friendly site, so express anger or frustration with this in mind.

Please use this thread to discuss your goals for the game and your opening moves through about the first 80 to 100 turns. How did your planning change to make adjustments for the many changes in the recent patch?
- What Social Policies did you choose and why?
- What tech path did you follow?
- Did you try to build any wonders?
- How soon did you start your wars and did you find the Keshik useful?

Once you've completed the game, head over to the TSG17 After Action Report thread.

This isn't only difficult but also a bad map for conquering early on. Montezuma is the only in range, he has the better warriors, and in my case, the terrain advantage. Only one city state in sight as well, which is nearly unconquerable because of terrain.

I planned this to puppet a lot with few cities myself, but i'm spreading out myself now because it just won't work with attacking. Happiness problem there since i teched on military, so calendar was late.

Also i hate city+archer+trireme. The boats shouldn't be able to stay in the city with the archer there, they're both military after all.

Turn 112: decided to research iron for the time being, it is of course at the one spot i cannot reach with my cities and do not want to settle on...

first game for me on immortal. very difficult push thru montezuma, took from turn 100 to 150 then siam dow. 30 turns into that war i have just barely managed to beat him back by getting some caravels to pick him off while he swam over to me. looking forward to seeing how others do so i can learn a thing or two.

Going very well for me so far. I took 4 expos relatively quick, maintaining a small defense force of 2 or 3 archers and 1 or 2 chariots. Monte dowd me a few turns before I popped my Liberty GS for Chivalry. My first attack was to swim through the city state, and land in the southern part of Monte's territory. I took 3 cities including his cap (which had Pyramids, Hanging Garden, and the Chitchen Itza! :O) at which point I let him give me all his gold for a 10 turn peace treaty. My plan now is to flat buy a courthouse in his cap, then keep pushing. Im building my first caravel now so well see what happens after I finish off Monte.

i am not doing that well. Monte DOWed me arounf turn 65 and we have been slugging it out for last 50 turns. I lost half my army (1 warrior) at one point, when his 3rd wave was going for my cap. I have a liberty GS ready to pop chivalry as soon as i produce few horses/chariots to upgrade and i am planning to go on offence. He managed to spam 5 cities so far so i will have to take some happiness hits burning down the useless ones.

i did manage to get GL and ally Monaco who have been very efficient at moving down Monte's archers and jags. i keep bumping against happy cap all the time, no time to build happieness buildings i guess.

I'm with Thio on this one regarding the start. What an uphill battle!

Just declared war on Monte on turn 65 with 1 scout, 1 archer, 2 warriors, and 4 chariot archers. Hoping to promote the chariots a bunch and upgrade them to +1 range, indirect-fire, double-tap Keshiks later on for some medieval artillery action. Gonna be a stiff fight though, and those Jaguars are certainly creeping me out...

Pushing on Moscow now, so far Aztecs, Japan, and Siam all have their caps down. I could easily turn this to a sci vic but rules are rules I think the key for me was settling my first city on the land bridge area that separates Monte's land from mine. This prevented him from settling in my direction and let me freely settle my land when I pleased.

Well, I've played 250 turns, not sure if I will continue. Signs I knew I was in trouble:

(1) Great Library going turn 62 (not to me I might add)
(2) Caravels showing up in 300AD

I managed to meet everybody early enough based on what I had to sell and how much cash I had for RAs. They ended up coming to me at convenient times. I knew Monty would come after me and it was nice of him to wait until after turn 60. Even with a decent military Monty still came to get some. We fought for approx 130 turns. I puppeted a city he built north of me to get some iron, razed a city near my eastern border and managed to take the city west of his capital which had lots of buildings and a wonder in it. However, things took a bad turn there.

I worked by rear-end off to make friends with every other person on the map and I didn't ally any city states (this should have helped with Alex and Siam). The research prowess of the other AIs was such that I had to have research agreements with everybody other than Monty just to try to keep up.

Sadly, right around the time I was approaching Monty's capital and about to really gain a foothold in the game I got double betrayed by Siam and Russia. I have to say it was a good move on their part. They slowed me down terribly, ruined my research agreements, cost me units, took a city that I had to retake, and forced me to make peace with Monty before I took his capital. Basically ruined my game.

I dealt with all attacks, made peace with everybody, and adopted a defensive stance. With my Honor SPs I had all the defensive buildings and I took the Tradition SP that makes your units free in a city and strengthen its defense. I tried to recreate a friendly relationship with everyone and research agree my way back into contention and gear for a Cultural VC.

Sadly by turn 250 I was only half way thru the Renassiance. Askia was three times my score and an era ahead, Alex was double my score and an era ahead. On turn 250 Monty ruined yet another Research Agreement and DOWed me again. I saved and quit.

I had to build a third settler to get my hands on horses, built first downstream river, now -6 happiness on turn 116, missed Great Lib but just managed to build Stonehenge, I have only met Monty and Alexander, but he doesn't want the extra Silk I got. Friend with Monaco.
Tough

barefooter said:

I had to build a third settler to get my hands on horses, built first downstream river, now -6 happiness on turn 116, missed Great Lib but just managed to build Stonehenge, I have only met Monty and Alexander, but he doesn't want the extra Silk I got. Friend with Monaco.
Tough

Click to expand...

Gah, got fed up, reloaded a save (so I will not submit any results)

barefooter said:

Gah, got fed up, reloaded a save (so I will not submit any results)

Click to expand...

There were several battles that had me wanting to reload. Lost two warriors to barbs and several units to monty. Its so hard to resist isn't it

Don't want to reload.. want to restart and try for science or diplomacy victory

any other victory would be relatively easy, given the map. the land mass is making domination that wee bit harder and its less suited to the UI.

Around turn 150 and hopelessly stuck in a war against Monty. Russia backstabbed me but after losing few boats and a scout sued for even peace. Lost most of my army trying to take Monty cap. Every time I got it down to red and moved my melee units across the river to take it, he counterattacked with 3-4 units he was hiding somewhere and wiped my advance troops out. He's got musket men now and I am not any closer to taking his cap, and losing tech advantage.

What's the fastest path to double tap keshik?

little tip: bomb the city down to 1 hp then use a scout to cross the river and attack in the same turn; monty won't have any time to counter with units behind the city.

likewise, finding this setup hard going. Played up to turn 188. Have taken down Tenochtitlan after a joint DoW with Siam...2nd war with monty I think. I've got rifles now after bulbing the tech...but just what I'm going to do with them...not too sure, Siam is #1 in strength and Sukhothai is size 28! I may leave that nut till last to crack. Almost to caravels and scouting the rest of the world.... We'll see how it goes.

Aaronius said:

There were several battles that had me wanting to reload. Lost two warriors to barbs and several units to monty. Its so hard to resist isn't it

Click to expand...

Yes, yes it is, lol. I failed to resist the urge on one of the previous TSGs and summarily disqualified myself. ;( Fortunately I'm holding on to this one! Barely...

I lost more chariot archers than I can remember while taking down Monte, but finally claimed his capital on turn 133. He'd built the Great Wall there, which horribly compounded the existing difficulties with terrain.

Catherine DOW'd out of nowhere while I was fighting Monte, so I decided to float the brigade over to take her down next. Ramkhamhaeng decided this would be a great opportunity to invade my newly acquired cities, and showed up at my doorstep with several elephants, archers, and swordsmen while I had nothing to defend. My panic has quickly turned to laughter though as he's made some tragically stupid tactical decisions, losing roughly half of his army (6 or 7 units) to my lone trireme while attempting to get a naval surround on Tenochtitlan. Pretty sure I'm going to be able to hold off the rest with city defense and a single Keshik. lol.

Prospects are looking good at the moment, since said Keshiks are in full swing on the Russian front, and just now getting their range and indirect fire upgrades. Only wish I had more of them so I could go beat up Alex too before he gets riflemen. I got carried away with building wonders after my initial army was assembled and have fallen pretty far behind on unit production. Probably my biggest macro blunder so far.

This is a brutal challenge. Glad to find myself amongst the living! (Though of course it's not over yet)

This is so far above my normal game level. About turn 175. Conquered and puppeted Monaco to use as a beach head against Monty. Taken a couple of his cities around his capital with UU and pikes, but the surrounding terrain is proving a problem now. Am way behind on tech, but will persevere for now.

I'm curious as to when people are getting keshiks. Ideally you want them before turn 100 (or even turn 90), but that's not going to happen in my game. I was able to get the GL to start by chopping 3 forest tiles, but it still took a while. The main problem is poor production in the capitol. I decided to settle 2 additional cities (near horses to east and sw) for a science boost rather than trying to build the NC early. It would have taken forever to build the NC with the low production and no more forests to chop. Similarly, hard building HS will take a long time, so I will probably end up researching all techs up to Chivalry and then use the GS from Liberty tree finisher to pop Chivalry. This will give me keshiks around turn 110. Hopefully I can grab the HS and PT later as the AI don't seem to be building many wonders.

Monty DoWed me early (on turn 43) but his troops didn't show up until much later as he was also fighting Siam. They were easily dispatched with a few chariot archers. I was able to trade one of my silk to Cathy for 5 iron, so I may take a few swords and chariot archers to get an earlier start on Monty before I have keshiks.

This map is much better suited for a science victory.

RedRover57 said:

I'm curious as to when people are getting keshiks. Ideally you want them before turn 100 (or even turn 90), but that's not going to happen in my game. I was able to get the GL to start by chopping 3 forest tiles, but it still took a while. The main problem is poor production in the capitol. I decided to settle 2 additional cities (near horses to east and sw) for a science boost rather than trying to build the NC early. It would have taken forever to build the NC with the low production and no more forests to chop. Similarly, hard building HS will take a long time, so I will probably end up researching all techs up to Chivalry and then use the GS from Liberty tree finisher to pop Chivalry. This will give me keshiks around turn 110. Hopefully I can grab the HS and PT later as the AI don't seem to be building many wonders.

Monty DoWed me early (on turn 43) but his troops didn't show up until much later as he was also fighting Siam. They were easily dispatched with a few chariot archers. I was able to trade one of my silk to Cathy for 5 iron, so I may take a few swords and chariot archers to get an earlier start on Monty before I have keshiks.

This map is much better suited for a science victory.

Click to expand...

I got mine around turn 125, which was definitely a bit late. Hopefully they'll remain viable for a while yet.

You're definitely right about the lack of production in the capital. I'm finally getting those hill tiles to the northwest and building mines on them, so hopefully that will help some. At least the population there is good from all those river farms. Still debating whether to build the heroic epic and ironworks in the capital like I usually do or in Beshbalik, which has much higher production (built on the hills in the southwest). May even plant a great engineer from the Hagia Sophia (should finish around turn 163) along the river in Karakorum to solve the production problems. I've got Keshiks, so I'm not in any hurry to research anything in particular from a Porcelein Tower scientist.

Off to play!

My first REAL immortal game try, and it is tough. I tried chopping forests for the Great Library but was still beat by 4 or 5 turns. I used that gold to buy a settler and settled near the horse and pearls to the east. Built libraries and then the National College in the capital, which took near forever with little production. I blockaded Monty at the bottleneck above Monaco and was ready to take a city when Russia backstabbed me and I had to rush back to save my second city. This was a large setback, but I eventually was able to get peace with her and went on to take 3 of Monty's cities and left him one as to not piss off anyone. Siam was starting to settle my portion of the coninent so I declared war on him even though he had me out-teched by 10+. Keshiks really are dominant though, and I was able to fend off Infantry, Cavalry, and Cannons and take 2 of his cities near my capital and another that he had grabbed from Monty. But the two tile wide entrance to his empire is covered in forest/jungle and it is proving difficult to penetrate even with 5 move Keshiks. All his cities have 50+ defense and the Keshiks are only doing 1 damage per hit. I think I'm going to have to send my army into friendly Russia in order to get to Siam from his west. Still 25+ turns away from the Industrial era though, and Siam is on the brink of the Modern era. This might be a lost cause...