ALC Game 14 Pre-Game Show: Playing as Kublai

[NaZdReG]

Sisuitil,

do a little research on futurehermits gambits. one of them has proved amazing to me when playing as egypt or other creative leaders.

for this gambit you would research masonry rather early, and drop the great wall ASAP. then tech to writing, and drop a library in the same city. run 2 scientists and prey for an engineer. (you can manipulate the specialists so you end up with atleast 50% on the engineer if you are watchful) if you DO pop the engineer you get free pyramids out of the deal usually. an academy or free tech pop from the scientist wouldn't be bad either.
tech path?? hmm tough to say but I'd probably go ARCHERY (why bother with warriors and you need it anyway) AG, AH, masonry, writing, HBR, mining, bronze etc. you might want to move mining up, depending on the layout of your starting terrain etc.

without that gambit you should still do well, but the wall is cheap enough that I hope it warrants consideration. and if you do happen to get the pyramids, the flood of keshiks under police state should level atleast 1 civ, and make for a great transition into a SE.

NaZ

 

[Validator]

...in my off-line games as Carthage, I experienced the greatest success by neglecting the UU.

I've found the same thing when playing Carthage. Even though Keshiks are a stronger unit than Numidian Cavalry they are still based on one of the most useless units. It seems that you face a decision as to whether you want to play Kublai in the best possible fashion by ignoring his UU, or try to stay with the theme of the ALCs by trying to make the best possible use of all of Kublai's assets including the UU.

If you do decide to pursue Keshiks early I would recommend you review the start of the Carthage ALC and try to avoid the mistakes you made there. I think you're really going to need to plan on researching HBR yourself as I think it will be unlikely that you'll be able to trade for it in time to make use of the Keshiks. Also you'll need to accept that you're going to have to research HBR and Archery before other techs that are more generally useful.

I also wouldn't rate Gers very high. Stables give the extra XP needed for newly built mounted units to get a second promotion. The extra XPs from Gers doesn't give any additional promotions off the bat, it just makes you 2 XP closer to the third promotion. Considering that mounted units overall aren't the most useful offensive units I'm not sure that focusing on them is the way to go. Remember that if you're building mounted units you won't be building your "free Combat 1" melee and gunpowder units.

 

[carl corey]

Every single time I have played as the Mongolians, I have never been able to get horses hooked up in time to use the Keshik effectively. Hope you have better luck than me.

In my current game I have horses right outside the capital's fat cross (a further expansion took them) and I put a second city to work them. But I still won't probably use them since two of the three neighbors are far away and I haven't even found the third's capital! I'm not isolated, but I'm not far from that as far as fighting is concerned...

 

[cabert]

I only played mongols for my very first game, 1 1/2 years ago...
So I don't qualify as an experimented player with them.
Still some facts :
the cons for a HBR rush
- true, HA and their declinations don't shine too much in the city taking departement
- keshiks can't swim (duh!)
- copper + hunting is enough to build a spearman = keshik killers
the pros :
- look at the GotMs fastest conquest. Each month there is a guy rushing armies of HA (or impies ) because their fast speed more than makes up for their lack of strength.
- fractal maps can be pangea like
- barracks + ger + vassalage + theocracy = 11 XP for mounted units!
- you're not playing the mongols if you don't build hordes
- with the creative trait, you don't need any cultural building. What to build? keshiks!
- large pillaging manoeuvers can fund your research, + pillaging the copper is enough to remove any spearman threat
- no unit is better at pillaging than the keshik

 

[Strato]

If the aim of the ALC is to exploit the leader's characteristics, then wouldn't it be true to say that horseback riding should be researched? After all, the UU and the UB are both there, and KK is partly aggressive. The usual may be to avoid using Keshiks, but why not try and go against the norm, see what comes out of it. Given the fact its a collective group of minds at work, there could even be some sort of usefulness to be had with the Keshiks and the Ger to help other players along the way. Be adventurous sir.

Just my own two cents.

 

[carl corey]

- fractal maps can be pangea like

A little less than half of my fractal maps are pangeas in disguise, on a little less than half I have an isolated start, and veeeery few are continent-like with a few islands here and there. I'd suggest re-rolling an isolated start here so we can at least have the option of using Keshiks!

 

[Melon Head]

As far as playing Kublai goes, I'd typically just play him as a normal Agg/Cre leader. Do some ReX, build up to a construction rush if you have ivory (gers, cats, and 'phants? nice combo) otherwise grab maces for an attack.

On the other hand, you can try to exploit KK's UU. This is more difficult, because HBR is expensive and HAs kinda suck. The big benefit of the mongolian UU is that it ignores terrain movement penalties. Look back to ALC 13; you did very, very well against Mongolia in the beginning because you pillaged all of the strategic (and other) resources, crippling that civ and leaving the land free for the taking. If you want to use the UU, I'd do something similar. You could even switch from chariots to HAs in mid-war, as the UU comes a touch later than most early wars. If you wait too long, pillaging becomes risky since the AI tends to grab some spearmen.

Once you do that, I'd try to bootstrap your economy into a quick mace rush as well. I doubt you can pull it off terribly well, simply because 2 separate early wars are difficult to manage effectively, but if you go to a primarily SE, relying on your cheap libraries, you might be able to manage it. That sets you up nicely with lots of land (back-filling is important here, too; be agressive in city placement since creative gives you time to wait and back fill) so you have a chance at the tech race later in the game, where you don't have any big advantages.

 

[oyzar]

@ NaZdReG that was pretty much ment for philo leaders. I actually did it with GW + oracle once then built pyramids(ofc this polluted GPP afterwards but i had tons of them so...). As for general strategy I would rex out asap using cultural to it greatest effect then take over neightbours when i encounter them. If you do this early enough its pretty easy to rush with keishiks. Combat two keishiks or god forbid combat 1/cover against arcers is actually better than axemen at taking cities. The -10% against cities are just a balance issue i think they are still great at attacking. That said you do run into the problem that any spearmen totaly destroy you.
My plan for using traits and uu to greatest effect would be something like:
Rex out asap using the cultural +2 to claim loads of land asap without worrying about myst or obelisks. Hopefully find horses or bronxe nearby and rush a neighbour while getting writing after worker techs. Destroy one neightbour and whip in libraries. Tech to alpabet and trade up the religious path(hopefully) and research COL with sceintists in almost all cities. Of course if you fing fold silver or gems you probably dont even need to get to col asap and can just tech through math -> currency or something(currency is also great for giving you insane amounts of gold through trading with AI so you can keep the research at 100% for quite a while).

 

[Welnic]

If you need someone to look at a save to check for isolation I could do that. Or I could just generate a game and check it. Just let me know the go/no go criteria. Or I could come up with those myself just to make it more of a mystery.

 

[Binky123]

I've never really found kublai's aggressive trait to work well with his UB and UU. I would rather make axemen with a free combat I if I'm going to be conquering someone early and HBR is an expensive tech...

Although if you start by ivory, you could make some nice elefants. Ger + barracks + Great general is +10, and +30% str elefants are really mean in the early game

Anyways these threads are great

 

[NaZdReG]

oyzar,

origionally the strat (which I can't find on the forums anymore.. futurehermit if you see this do you have a link??) was ment for india being phi/spi. he and I worked it out to adapt it to egypt, running priests super early off of the obelisk which actually worked out really well. it takes a bit longer than a philo leader.. but that is actually balanced by the fact that creative gets 1/2 off of the library. 45 hammers saved at that point in the game is quite a few turns. 8-10 if you follow that tech path. more than makes up for the # of extra turns required to generate the 1st great person. in a way philo makes it harder to get the GE, the whole trick is to balance the # of GPP coming from the wonder and the lower # of turns the scientists get so you have atleast a 50% chance on the engineer.

worst case scenario you are safe from barbs, have GE points in the capitol which is never a bad thing, and atleast a shot at the pyramids. meanwhile running 2 scientists will shave multiple turns off of the cost of HBR.

ultimately its up to sisuitil if he wants to run the gambit, but since kublai gets no econ traits I would recommend it. if he does happen to get the pyramids out of the deal the production bonus from police state should equal a rather nice hoard to deal with his neighbors.

NaZ

 

[Joxer]

It seems to become a toss-up. Yes you made easy work of KK last game plundering his resources and crippling him. But he then bee-lined to feudalism and upgraded to LBmen. He was already down to 1-2 cities and so the upgrade was not helpful and still was crushed.

But if we are building keshiks and not CR axemen/swordsmen it will be tough work for the ponies taking down the cities. Only the true Golden Horde could take them down. (mass cats + mass keshiks)

 

[carl corey]

Here's the link to futurehermit's thread: OMG! Futurehermit's Gandhi Opening on Emperor

It's in my subscriptions for future use.

 

[Pogel]

I'd like to see an attempt to exploit the Keshik. In one game, I tried to do it but ran into trouble taking out my neighbour's capital. In retrospect I should have hit the capital first and worked backwards (possible using the Keshik's mobility, and Creative would help get the captured capital on-libe quickly). Something to consider.

 

[LucyDuke]

I'd also like to see the Keshiks get a workout. The purpose of the ALC is to showcase what makes each leader unique, right? Sure, the Keshiks are shared with the other Khan, but outside of Mongolia they're easy to overlook. That doesn't help anyone playing Mongolia. I've never made much use of Keshiks and along with everyone else, I'd like to see them actually used. If they're ignored here, they're never going to get the spotlight. One campaign is enough - there's no need to rely on them exclusively, just put them to some use.

That would make an early war more likely, which kind of flies in the face of the rex advocation. True that Creative makes aggressive expansion easy, but combining aggresive early expansion with an early war gets cripplingly expensive. The Creative trait is just as useful in popping newly-conquered cities as it is in popping new cities, so I don't see it necessary to plant and capture a ton of cities. I'd say grab the best sites, especially where you can deny resources to rivals, but hold back and let the AI build the filler cities for you.

 

[Preston85]

You've won every ALC so far so I say go hell for leather, Keshek rush enmasse even if it isn't the best choice.

Your mongal, when did they build anything? Play the character even if it means losing!

 

[Nonobots]

(Note that I'm not talking from experience but speculating from what I understand. Correct me if needed.)

Horse archers have a bad rep because the HBR tech is a dead end, expensive and horse archers make bad city raiders. The fact that HBR unlocks both the UB and UU of the mongols more than make up for those failings I think.

Horse archers are one of the best pillagers, Keshiks' movement advantage makes them even better at it. Kublai's charismatic trait makes him more tolerant of war weariness and will allow - on top of the ger's XP bonus - for fast promotions of Keshiks.

Keshiks could be a major source of income from pillaging, free Kublai from the obligation to build his own workers and make it so all the neighbors are able to do is pile archers in unimproved cities.

You just have to follow with a few catapults and swordmen to pick the cities at your own pace.

... thoughts?

 

[carl corey]

Kublai is aggressive, not charismatic. Aside from that, you have some good points. The big problem would be the AI settling one of his cities on top of a resource. I've seen even capitals on iron/copper so we'd of course have to be careful who we attack.

Of course, after all this talk Sisiutil might end up on a continent with Shaka and Alex.....

 

[Torvoni]

1. find horses
2. build Keshiks
3. ...
4. profit

 

[GeneralGab]

I agree with Preston85: you've won all your ALCs, and you don't seem to be having much trouble at Monarch. Try something risky and go for Horseback Riding! I'd like to see the keshik get lots of use, even if it's just to pillage your enemies to set them back. You can power your research by pillaging a lot, like you did last game. It also sets back your opponent. With the fast movement, you can deny lots of resources to your opponents, ensuring they can't build spearmen.