Adventures of the Vietnamese (II)

So the Vietnamese is back with their new adventure! (for our first story, see this link) This time we're going to do it with Đinh Tiên Hoàng. He's the Vietnamese first emperor (all of his predecessors just claimed the title of king). During his time, Vietnam was divided to several regions in a period called 'the disorder of the twelve palatines'. Dinh Tien Hoang made his way from a minor general of one of those forces to the leader, and eventually conquered all other eleven to re-establish the nation of Đại Cồ Việt. Then he rebuilt the country and ordered the minting of Vietnam's very first coins.
In this game we'll face five opponents, all random chosen:

According to requests from the first adventure, this time the difficulty will be one level up - Noble. Great plains map simulates north Vietnam at that time - we have expanded to the sea, and the little lake in the south east of every great plains map is just coincident with our East sea (the sea that's internationally called South China sea nowadays). Small size is suited with six civilizations, and the speed is also the standard Normal. Of course all victory types are enabled, but only two options are checked: Raging barbarians and No tech trading. With this only the strong will be able to prevail - and who will take the advantage in this equal race? Let time answer this question...

Subscribed~ I really enjoyed the first one!

I really enjoyed the first one!

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Tks, nice to hear something like that This one will not disappoint you all, I promise
So off we go! Before the match, I've made an agreement with myself, that unless the Vietnamese start near the sea just like in real world, we'll regenerate. But if the second time still doesn't yield the wanted map, Dinh Tien Hoang and his people will have to live with it. I'm not a fan of regenerating - it's kind of cheat in my point of view, since you can literally avoid all the bad start and do it until you get a perfect one. Thus the first try went like:

Ooohh, our home sweet East sea So we don't need another attempt Our scout has moved from the spice source and revealed another cattle tile. Not a bad position, just a little tight of food in the early game (why all the pigs in the world have to live in jungle is beyond me ). Apart from that piggy one, we'll just have two or three hills to mine, based on my black tile reading. Yeah, hammers are rare but it's not the end of the world. But there's a river (yay!) for Dinh Tien Hoang to unleash his Financial power The bad side of this start is that we're completely surrounded by forest and jungle, which make transportation difficult. That is also the reason our option of moving the settler is very limited - we're like being forced to stay in place! There's little we can do to change our capital's location, thus Hanoi is founded in the same turn
By the way, what do you think about our new flag? I updated it in the latest version of Vietnam mod - VN 1.1. Colorful, eh I've stretched the source image to 4:3, but it seems to be not enough since Civ4 shrank it even more, which made the equilateral star a little thin Don't know the exact ratio to do though - anyone know?

Our scout Lạc Long Quân has scored his first deed! He discovered a tribal village, and after making it disappear forever on the map, brought us 38 gold Wonder what have happened then Actually this is the first time I realize that "better result from tribal village" doesn't need to mean "friendly attitude toward each other"
Soon after that, in turn 4 Mansa Musa's border popped into our Lac Long Quan's face This is so close After greeting him, the scout continued his journey and eventually met another guy:

Hmm, two encounter in the first eight turns. We're being boxed in the south east corner! But nothing we can do for now. Hope Dinh Tien Hoang will have a plan to escape this hole soon
By the way, let's talk about how our leader ended up being Aggressive and Financial. Emperor Dinh (924 - 979AD) exposed his military talent right from his childhood. He usually led his little friends in virtual battles against other villages' children, using reed branches and flowers as flag. In these fights, he made his teammates cross their arms to make a palanquin and sat on it to direct the match - and he always won! When Dinh Tien Hoang grew up, he joined one of the twelve palatines' army, climbed up rapidly in the ranks and eventually took the lead. In less than two years, he defeated all other eleven forces and united Vietnam land. That's Aggressive, right? As an emperor, he ordered the making of Vietnam's oldest money two years after his accession. It was the precedent for the later emperors - nearly all of them minted copper coins modeled after his. Thus Dinh Tien Hoang is the man who laid the foundation of Vietnam's finance history - and that's Financial, right?

Being boxed in may work to your advantage with raging barbs on.

Being boxed in may work to your advantage with raging barbs on.

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Yep, that's right A minor advantage I didn't notice Though I'd prefer open land
During the last hundreds of years, we've been building our first worker. That means no growth, less coins, and the result is that we're staying dead last on the scoreboard:

Pretty sad, eh While our worker was finding his way in the middle of boundless forests to reach the deer tile, Manny, Salad and all other AIs have left us in the dust in every index. Our numbers of food, hammers and coins are being outdistanced by a margin of 3. The Vietnamese soldier count is as low as one third of their opponents' average!! (man, what are they building? Do the AIs have the knowledge of early rushing skill or what? ) The only thing Dinh Tien Hoang is leading (with other four leaders) is his land tiles. From what our scout Lac Long Quan has observed, only Manny doesn't have 21 tiles of land in his BFC - he possesses two lakes. The population count and approval rate also reflect the consequence of our choice to build the worker first. But there's something I can still deduce - of the AIs, one guy has his pop growth later, which means he only has a three food tile in the second ring. Moreover, he's creative - his capital must have expanded at turn 3 for the numbers to match. And the life expectancy also has a surprising fact: despite being at size 2, one civ is still leading us They must be buried in forests for sure

There are good news and bad news for the year of 3280BC. The good news is, Bronze working is now finished! And the bad news is, no we don't have any copper

Judging by the ridiculous amount of resources around the Vietnamese capital (if we had settled one tile south east, we should have had seven of them in the BFC!! ), I have my doubts about our possibility of having copper several turns ago. Now it has come true, and Dinh Tien Hoang can only hope that there's iron somewhere near. Or we'll be screwed (our first adventure is now appearing again in my mind. We narrowly escaped the situation that time).
Oh, another news is that we have met another civ on this map – American (I consider this as a bad news. Meeting in turn 18 is not so early, but did you realize that Washington's unit is a scout? Yeah he must have researched Hunting, and THEN built a scout, and THEN came all the way to see us here. Which means he's darned near us. No, I'm not so darned happy to see him ).
But that's not the last news. As you can see, Manny's warrior has shown his face right next to Hanoi. If this is Multiplayer, it's nearly a disaster. Though our capital cannot be seen from any angle, it'll make any MPer sweat all over his face since he don't know whether that opponent will choose to take the risk of an early attack or not. Fortunately for us, even if that's the case, we'll have our own warrior in the last minute and save us from elimination. Now although Dinh Tien Hoang is sure that Manny has no bad intention, he still want to finish his warrior ASAP – to the extend that he's willing to delay the transition to Slavery for some turns. It's for another race, yet again with Mansa Musa. Sharp-eyed readers, any of you can see it?

Guess it's time to reveal what the Vietnamese and the Malinese was racing for. As some of you might have noticed, there's actually a tribal village just south of that deer tile outside our border (it's just two tiles away from Lac Long Quan's starting position! Too bad we couldn't see it at that time and when Hanoi's cultural border finally uncovered it, the scout was in a far far away land. Still, I think no one would visit the village sooner than us if he played this very map, because when you know you start in the south east and have an unforested tile next to your scout, it's natural to follow that way to the west). Now for the result:

Yes! Got it - with a very tight margin. In fact, both warriors can reach that tile in turn 23, but being human and going first has its own advantages Lucky for us, the American scout didn't come after the Malinese route, or we would end up losing one turn just like this. Phew. Actually we could have used our sole worker to explore this village some turns earlier, but the nasty disaster from the Vietnamese's first adventure prevented Dinh Tien Hoang from risking his very first built unit and follow An Duong Vuong's bitter trail So, nearly exhausted from his rush, our warrior entered the village – and guess what did they give us? Another warrior Not the best thing at all, but we Vietnamese still appreciate. Man, these people must be fascinated by our beautiful colorful flag and decided to follow then
Meanwhile, Dinh Tien Hoang have just used his whip for the first time to produce the country's second worker. Since we're surrounded by forests and especially jungles, this is considered by him as a strong move. We'll need a lot of cutting to widen our way...

Lac Long Quan the scout, after bringing us more gold from two tribal villages (though the quantity was somewhat low), has come to a hilly region where Timbuktu is placed, and between turns two opponents approached:

Ahh, our fellow Asian meanie, Tokugawa. And another lion – it's the third our scout has to face. The very last turn he has just beaten the beast and got wounded, but Dinh Tien Hoang wanted to see the Malinese capital, so he had to move to this hill. Now the lions are hunting him for revenge or what? Since fighting at 0.8 strength is pretty risky, Lac Long Quan is ordered to leave the spot and move to the Japanese guy's tile – it's much safer there to heal
By revealing Timbuktu, the Vietnamese now got some info: Manny had two warriors and a worker in his city. Now combine with the fact that the Malinese has Skirmishers, and their capital is on hill, Dinh Tien Hoang has to accept that there's no chance at all to rush these guys. Even a pillaging war is out of options: this city has way too many hills, and will be more than able to mass produce units to pwn ours. At least our previous analysis is true: Manny actually has two tiles of lakes at Timbuktu.
Talking about the analysis, now the appearance of Japan has led us to a conclusion: the last civilization on this map is the Persian. Remember what I predicted about this last guy? He must be Creative. Examining the starting military numbers, I found that the remaining civ must have 2000 points of it. Among the appropriate civs, only Cyrus has mentioned trait. Thus this last guy is pinned down Right or wrong, we'll see in some hundreds of years ahead...

You land looks kinda sucky resource wise.

You land looks kinda sucky resource wise.

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Yes that's absolutely right. I've never experienced this kind of resource distribution before
Finally, in 2720BC the last civilization in the world has been revealed! Much to the Vietnamese's surprise, it's not Persian at all

Alexander the great backstabber So our prediction was all wrong (sigh). Guess I'll have to practice this kind of calculation more and more then What surprises us more is that the Greek were the founder of Hinduism – never thought Alex would go the religion way before And he's already been hating Saladin the Buddhism practitioner pretty much, to such a degree that he let his option of fighting the Arabian available. Since warring with Alex is absolutely not Dinh Tien Hoang's interest right now, he chose to celebrate the peace. Who knows, this peace may lead to a chaotic dogpile on Salad's head in the future...
While our villager warrior was welcoming the Greek, Lac Long Quan the scout has found the American base. Just like what we thought, it's not far away from the Vietnamese capital. Seems to be a Timbuktu-like spot, with plains, hills and cows (not very good though) and copper (ouch). Looks like Washington with his Financial trait will have quite a hard time leveraging his strength
Our score is now still dead last, but Dinh Tien Hoang expects it to rise in the next 240 years. That's because we're on our way to finish the first settler, and he'll be ready to grab any tile containing metal sources when Iron working finally arrives in six turns. After Bronze working, the Vietnamese stood before two choices of researching The wheel and Pottery for those lovely cottages, or to reveal any iron on the map. And being Agrressive, Dinh Tien Hoang leaned toward the latter option. Hanoi will benefit from many jungle chopping anyway...

Finally the expected turn has arrived with the completion of Iron working! Our settler was ready to head to anywhere having the presence of this valuable metal. And yes there's one:

Uh oh, right at Hanoi And on a tile already mined by one of our diligent workers just one turn ago! Moreover, we gained access to iron right out of the gate by using the river, despite not having The wheel yet. So convenient, even Dinh Tien Hoang had to admit
Now for the waiting settler, what can the Vietnamese do with him? Not founding a city right away is a waste, but... look at our capital. By possessing such a ridiculous density of resources (seven out of the 21-tile BFC, and it's possible to pop more in the future! ), Hanoi has kind of 'collected' them all, and left its large surrounding area with a disappointing resourceless state Finding a reasonable site without overlapping is just an impossible mission. Thus, with very limited options, Dinh Tien Hoang ordered the founding of the Hồ Chí Minh city just three tiles to the west of Hanoi, to take advantage of that pig, and eventually the fur tile. In the future, the Vietnamese second city can act as a cottage buffer for its capital – how handy it is Moreover, Hochiminh city has its own river grassland tiles and can make a good use of them with the help of Dinh Tien Hoang's trait.
With our second city built, let's celebrate in a little feast, since we're the first to do it Don't know if Manny's warrior and Alex's scout do acknowledge this achievement or not, but it's nice to see that Hochiminh city is covered from all prying eyes...

Now let's pay a visit to one of our neighbor's land, the pious nation under Saladin's rule:

Not very resourceful, eh? Our scout Lac Long Quan has done quite a good job of peeping into the holy land of Isl... no, Buddhism. Aside from only four undisclosed tiles, Mecca has no resources whatsoever. But who knows, there may be critical ones in those four important tiles.
Right from the moment of knowing each other, the Arabian and the Vietnamese have been connected in a trade route, since we share the same river (and it really is a long river – it originates from the very edge of this map and flows all the way to the map's only sea). Salad is also the only guy who has more forests than Dinh Tien Hoang – it may not look so many, but there are twelve tiles of them in his BFC Now his empire is covering 37000 square kilometers of land because of Buddhism, thus he's possessing even more forests – it would definitely be a holy land for human players and their chopfest strategy!
Now look at the north west corner. Lac Long Quan was kind of shock when he discovered that region – it's like that land is blessed with food and strategic resources! All a city placed there needs is maybe just Civil service before becoming whatever powerhouse it can be. If Saladin is able to grab that land, he'll become quite a monster...
But Dinh Tien Hoang can't let it happen! Now with Iron in hands, our leader is planning an (not so) early rush to prevent Salad from running away with it. Right now he's completing the barracks, and troops will be produced in the next hundreds of years. The only problem now is that we don't know what Saladin has in his city and how many of them. Not to mention whether he's able to found another city in the next few turns or not...

Map-scripts with edges kinda suck

Map-scripts with edges kinda suck

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Yep, probably. But I think this is more because of the Great plains map script itself. Lucky we didn't choose Huge map, or someone might find his capital buried in countless plains, or worse, hill...
To continue the series of foreign capital analysis, this is a picture of Mansa Musa's first settlement:

Wow... what to say... this place is weirder than ours, we have to admit. Not even one flat grassland tile at all!! Thirteen hills out of his 21 – man, Timbuktu is right on one of the Earth's tectonic faults and the volcanic belt or what?? I've tried counting, there's a lack of 21 foods to get this city to full size That means the Malinese can only get the most out of their capital from windmill era onward! That's really a bad news to Manny, even if he only works all the pathetic plains farms, he'll end up stuck at size 10! What's more, Timbuktu only has limited access to that river – only five tiles will benefit from it – so the early advantage of being Financial is critically severed. There're only two forested tiles in the capital, not enough for even a worker chopping. The Malinese also lack a significant food resource, and two plains cows is just a funny joke when it comes to food issues. But it seems that as a compensation for this bad luck, Timbuktu is blessed with some other kinds of resources. That gems hill is very rich in term of coins, and the only defect is that it contains no food at all Besides, there are Iron and Horse just south of the city. When its culture expands (which is not long, in just about less than ten turns), the Malinese will be able to field some nasty units. Combine with their formidable Skirmishers, at least they'll stay safe from any aggressive intentions Anyway, the condition of Mansa Musa is a perfect example of the importance of food in Civ4. It's clearly better to be blessed with food rather than a bunch of hammers or coins. Hey, maybe that's the reason why the Catholics have to pray before their meals? It seems reasonable...

With more than 2000 years have passed, let's take a look at how good (or bad) all the civilizations of the world have done, economically:

Alexander is currently leading, and overall he has done it quite well right from the start (he must have a commerce resource in his inner ring to get eleven coins out of the gate). No wonder Alex is on the top of the scoreboard. The next candidate for the GNP champion title is Tokugawa. In fact he has reach his peak, which left Alex's in a significant distance, some turns ago. As you can figure it out by looking at the lower left of the above picture, that is due to the riverside gold mine being used in Tokyo (or Kyoto? Dinh Tien Hoang really can't remember all the city naming anagram game of his odd Asian fellow ). This very turn, both Toky's score and coin count fell dramatically, and that must be the result of an aggressive attempt on whipping – what a intelligent guy. As far as we can tell, the Japanese leader is the first opponent to use this lovely tool.
On the other hand, those who are being sinking in the bottom of the board, are Saladin and us The Arabian empire's GNP has only increased a tiny bit, from nine to ten, for just some recent turns – it's kind of lucky for them they still founded Buddhism. But that also makes us wonder what they're concentrating, though. Hope it's not a military buildup, or Dinh Tien Hoang will have a hard time ahead.
In the middle of the pack are Washington and Mansa Musa, competing quite tensely with each other. Right now Washy is leading, and his coins have been increasing steadily. Meanwhile, the Malinese's GNP is not that stiff, it saw some big rise and fall over time. The ascension must be Manny's using of the gems, and thus the decline must be his un-using of that very tile when the call for food became so pressing, then

Let's see if we can figure out what other civilizations are building by this graph or not:

At the deep bottom of the table is the Japanese. What, Dinh Tien Hoang thought these are discipline and hardworking people? Seems like Tokugawa is not very good at compelling his citizens to do the building The second worst is Alexander. It's pretty logical – you can't have high hammers when you're concentrating on coins, and he's leading in term of GNP, remember? What's more, the Greek haven't founded their second city – even Toky has done that! So what Alex is after, then? Becoming a zealot like Isabella?
It's no wonder the ones who are claiming the top positions are Washington and Mansa Musa. Despite having less hills, the Americans are leading the Malinese by a substantial margin, due to having more food to work those hills. Washy has even just settled his third city Wow, really impressive work. Even if we were not going to war, we might still be slower than him. Being Organized really helps here.
And in the middle of the six are, again Saladin and us. The Arabians' production has been steadily rising, and they have just got Medina built! Meanwhile, ours is not that stable – it has been fluctuating like crazy all the time, particularly because of the whipping effect. Now that Hanoi has grew to size 3 and is working the Iron tile, the Vietnamese's hammer count has been pumped up well. We even surpassed the American in the last turn
Meanwhile, nothing too special happened during these years. A barb warrior appeared next to Hochiminh city, and Dinh Tien Hoang has sent our own one there to greet. Let's hope the river will make this 'visit' decisive...

Power chart is more fun!

Power chart is more fun!

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Yep, but for now let's keep it a secret
The Vietnamese pioneering troops have arrived the Arabian cities just in time for Writing and Open borders, and what we found indeed knocked our socks off:

So the Malinese have grabbed the spot!! Right under the nose of Saladin! Duh, Dinh Tien Hoang has forgotten that Mansa Musa is also an opportunist who will never bypass a good site, and he's near that region, too. Shame on you Salad, for letting your neighbor's settler to arrive there before yours, though his distance is nearly doubled. That was just Dinh Tien Hoang's feelings when he first saw the outer ring of Djenne. Upon getting closer, he learned something equally shocking, yet appealing also: Manny's city is guarded by just two warriors! No axemen nor swordsmen, no Skirmishers and yet not even a chariot is used to defend such a powerful city! Hmm, then our emperor's first victim might have changed...
Now let's make some analysis because Dinh Tien Hoang wants to change his target in the last minute. While Djenne's location is somewhat not ideal (lacks fresh water, and we want to place at least two settlements there to make full use of the tiles), the Vietnamese has to capture the city because we won't be able to rush settlers there in case of razing. For our troops to gather and attack at the same time (that axeman on the right has just arrived) the left axeman has waited for two turns outside Djenne destroying a road, and eventually he detected a Skirmisher heading his way (but luckily it's just an escorting guy for a Malinese settler, phew). However, that delay also led to the completion of that copper mine you can see, and now Dinh Tien Hoang is asking himself whether his postponement is a good choice or not, since he don't know what is being built in the city – if another Skirmisher appears in Djenne next turn then his two men attack plan is doomed ...

Great story!