Lib>rifling on imm... now how to win?

OK so here's the sitch... Been having a great time with mansa financial, FP capital, bur, kong miao I got by oracling COL and now I beat the AI to lib. I think I am going for rifling but not sure yet.
I am thinking I will get rifling, switch to some unit-promoting civics as well as slavery, and then try to conquer washington w/ a ton of catapults and rifles. But I'm a bit afraid since he is already at steel. I would go for the weakling Isabella... but oops, she already got vassaled by Joao *balls*
Is going for washington the right idea? Is this approach too little too late? Will slavery be enough to pump out the units I need? How many catapults should I bring? I am thinking of putting tech at 0% for a while. Am I missing any techs I need before going to war?
The save is attached. Thanks for the input yo

you are missing nationalism

draft riflemen

invade washington

Use trebs instead of cats and while warring beeline Steel for cannons.

The question is - what your opponents have? Longbows? Mass whip / draft rifles and go for them!

Yep, i would whip and draft rifles from all cities except the nice bureau cap and the HE city. Take out anyone that you can that doesn't have rifles while teching towards Steel. Once you get cannons you don't really even need to research another tech. Cannons can take out everything up to and including Infantry.

Izuul said:

Yep, i would whip and draft rifles from all cities except the nice bureau cap and the HE city. Take out anyone that you can that doesn't have rifles while teching towards Steel. Once you get cannons you don't really even need to research another tech. Cannons can take out everything up to and including Infantry.

Click to expand...

And with rifle guarding cannons, you don't have to worry about Calvary in this case.

K so I'm going to want nationalism first off to get drafting, then the second concern is going engineering>chemisty>steel. That's going to take a while, unless I immediately trade joao printing press for engineering, which scares me since it gets everyone closer to rifling. I wonder if I self-tech nationalism, at that point later in history maybe people will be more willing to trade engineering. But I'd rather immediately start building trebs so that I can have all that production out of the way once I start drafting. Time is definitely of the essence. And I haven't even built HE yet, heh... I'm a little rusty right now after having to quit for a while after too many retina-scorching civ marathons. What might be a proposed order of operations here? Trade for engineering, self-tech nationalism, then start teching/trading to steel? Or, self-tech nationalism and then self-tech engineering>chem>steel? Going all self-tech would slow the other civs down a bit overall but I need to make sure I can get a roll going on washington as quickly as possible

you can trade engineering right away for the movement bonus, then self tech nationalism, don't bother with steel.

after that draft riflemen (about 20) then attack washington without siege(gunpowder units ignore walls and castle, so it's really just the 60% culture defense that you have to worry about); this would be A LOT easier if you had generated a great spy then you can use it to do city revolt espionage missions.

I'd go for nationalism an engineering for first attack then just use capture gold to tech to steel.

While mass drafting is really very powerful, in some games I prefer prebuild CR 2 or CR 3 macemen and upgrade them. They have very very good survival rate even without bombarding.

Im not a huge fan on drafting. On levels up to deity I normally have strong economy, and enough money to start a blitzkrieg at next turn after getting rifling, as my army of macemen + trebs is ready at the border.

Upgrading maces for CR rifles is preferable, but it also requires some planning and I'm not sure that he's done that here.

yeah... not nearly that much planning took place. So, an update: After taking the advice given, building a 20-rifle army and going to war with washington, he's now willing to capitulate (but won't give me any tech besides divine right).

OK so here's what I'm thinking, I'll try to take him down to just his two smallest cities (even though one is sandwiched between some of my newly-taken cities- he just built LA, its culture won't stand a chance) and then take his vassalage. In the meantime, let my overall population grow back a bit until I finish self-teching assembly line. Then it's back to drafting and whipping, this time around for infantry. Then go for Isabella.

I'm building iron works>HE in chicago but I'm starting to feel like that could be a bad idea bc I have no other cities with as much food and I feel like I should be trying to get a solid great person farm somewhere? Would like input on this. Also I'm using Gao in the north specifically for missionary spamming for kong miao and now I also have the dai miao.

Eventually I hope to dominate, or if I can take the AP from Isabella, maybe a diplo victory. Maybe. Thoughts? Is there a more effective/less risky way to win this game? Should I be worrying about a great person farm? How am I going to keep my economy up? The cottage economy is slowing down at this point in history. I had to suffer defying the 'stop the war against washington' resolution twice and that sucked... What to do next and what could I have done better?

Save attached.

@dylan vassal will trade everything thing except cities with you once they are capitulated. and they are going to research whatever the tech you ask hence adding a good tech partner. so, accept the capitulation asap and move on to next target.

keep drafting riflemen, even in the capital; no cannons...then wipe washington off the map, he's not much of use now

also if i were you, i'd trade rifling for astronomy + democracy + MT + communism right now -> build workshops in washington's land

Conflicting advice and a thorny decision between Amao (capitulate now) vs CivNoobie (kill, no cap).

Would be interesting to see some in depth discussion like we see popping up around here over this very issue.

I've had a few capitulation options stolen from me by AI-AI peacevassal mechanics. This is not my idea of fun.


Also consider, with 1-move units you'll probably take 3-4 turns to take each city if you don't stop to heal, etc,. Not sure x more cities is worth 3x more turns at some point in the future than a vassal is now. You can Liberate cities to streamline your economy and move on to your next civ target very quickly. Cap--> declare can help keep your units effective as your window of opportunity starts to close.

Ignoring the peacevassal problem the decision probably has more to do with finish dates than with whether or not you can win the particular game. Get screwed by this mechanic a few times and you'll RANT a la TMIT over it. Truly a broken mechanic.

Looked savegame. Woah, I really can not help You much in this situation. Imo this game depends on luck only right now. Your cities are small, and army is also small. As I see it, its only a question of will You make some "backstab" plan to grab the victory somehow or will be attacked by anyone (at the moment most likely cyrus).

Thats why im not a huge fan of drafting/whipping. Imo Your civ is overwhipped.

Ofc Im far from being best player here and many disagree...

If I breakout with a small empire I'll take quite a few cities from my first target to get a good base. Beyond that quick capitulations are often best to press your advantage and take out as many AI as possible before your tech lead vanishes. You can still selectively keep certain cities.

PS: I also noticed Isabella is basically rdy to DoW Cyrus, maybe You should vassal Washington and make an ally against cyrus.

Also, I would try to scout what army Cyrus has right now. The others are quite safe if they continue to share the religion.

Oh gosh yeah I HATE IT when my enemy gets vassaled by someone else and then all the sudden I'm at war with some huge civ. That alone is motivation to vassal washington immediately.
I'll take the advice to trade rifling away to everyone to catch up in tech, and in the meantime push towards assembly line. that won't be fun though, it could take like 20 turns, or at the very very least 15 if i get a ton of gold somehow. Then I'll start building infantry. I'll be scouting cyrus and isabella to see where ill send my forces to and will start looking at possible diplo triangles either way

ok so i took washington as a vassal and got MT from him (but then everyone gave me WFYABTA). Then I was thinking self-teching assembly line to go for either isabella or cyrus. OK so, Isabella has an army of cavalry, which rifles can beat but she can spread out so quickly, that would be scary. Another up I have on her is that she has far fewer cities and no vassal, so I can produce more than her. So it seems plausible, but I'd be scared for my border cities, and sending too many defenses to them might thin out my army, and so in the meantime, I wouldn't be able to take many of her cities. Maybe.
Then there's cyrus. Cyrus already has machine guns, which is bad news. Plus he has more cities than me, so even if doesn't have a huge army at the moment, he could easily make a machine gun wall that would just screw my whole rifle attack thing, and even infantry wouldn't be ideal. The one case against cyrus is that I miiight be able to bring isabella in with me by giving her steam power. But that's questionable. Very risky.
THEN I HAD ANOTHER IDEA. Can I get a cultural victory here? I have 11 cities and 4 religions and have only birthed 3 great people thus far. It's the 1500s. I could stop building iron works in chicago and instead build national epic and start birthing artists w/ caste system.
What is most likely to be a winning strategy at this point?
Save attached