A Place In History - Carving an Empire

[frob2900]

Very interesting game, Haika

I must admit I was surprised by you ignoring Mathematics for so long, but given the presence of Dye and relatively ok amounts of health resources, Drama/Calendar for theatre happiness is also a very solid route.

I don't know if I missed anything, but have you got hammams up in the last saves (can't open them at this computer)?

Now that you've got CoL and Mehmeds cheap courthouses, it could be a good idea to get Hammams+Colosseums up and running; with four opponents on continent you could get good trade income before the AI hits mercantilism.

Imho, gunpowder/nationalism (take on of them from liberalism) is the most solid route at this point. I wouldn't worry too much about getting to burn a GS on the liberalism tech itself.. if that gets you nationalism/gunpowder quicker then, ok, but otherwise take the fastest route.

Drafted janissaries just dominate so heavily in my experience (granted, this is mainly on Monarch) that they are probably the number 1 priority for Mehmed at this stage.

Again, very interesting stuff!

 

[Dirk1302]

If you want to lightbulb lib you need calender/compass/metal casting but avoid machinery.

 

[Haika]

As per frob2900's comments, as well as my own inclinations, I went full speed ahead for the nationalism/gunpowder combo.
However, I decided to make an 9 turn pitstop for the key techs Metal Casting, Theology and Drama first. The reason was that I was still waiting on scientists to bulb the greater parts of education and liberalism, and I figured if I self researched them, I would be left with more scientists than I knew what to do with. I think the final result is that I got to powdernation at about the same time as I would have under full speed research.

First decision that popped up was whether or not to build the UoS. It was pretty tempting with stone open, but I recall from a previous thread that UoS only gave its bonuses for temples, and not monasteries. Since I had a grand total of 0 temples, I decided against. Turns out HC conveniently builds it in the near future.

I went to check on the progress of my scientist at Istanbul, and it turns out I already had one there. I am not really sure how I missed his birth, but I went ahead and sent him to enlighten some young minds.

Meanwhile, I sent some slacking catapults to survey HC's defenses.

Spoiler :

Pretty standard for a size 18 city. It's not on a hill, which is a definite plus.

In 900, Toku gets a little bossy, but I saw it as an opportunity to increase relations with little repercussion. In 1050, the same happens for Monty.

Spoiler :

In 1000, something surprising happens. Monty DoWs Tokugawa! I had been more or less expecting JC and Monty to be going at it again in the near future, but I guess you can never really tell with crazy Monty. Naturally, JC dogpiles on afterwards, saving me the techs I was going to bribe him with.

Spoiler :

I had gotten the two scientists as expected out of Tiwanaku and Istanbul. I finished education with Tiwanaku's scientist, and as per Jeff1787's suggestion, I researched compass (3 turns) and bulbed a decent chunk of liberalism with Istanbul's scientist. Since the scientists had finished the heavy lifting towards Lib, I swapped from pac/caste system to theology/slavery and started rolling out catapults. I also noticed a harmless deal with HC, who is now Friendly with me.

Spoiler :

In 1050, Nationalism comes in (via Lib) and in 1060 a caravel shows up flying unknown colors, bringing news of a decidedly powerful civilization overseas ruled by Saladin. I sent him back with a gift of Paper.

Spoiler :

By 1090, Gunpowder was in, so I made a single revolt to nationalism.
Normally, I prefer to do my revolts in sets of two to save anarchy, but the sooner nationalism was in, the sooner we could start rolling out janissaries. In 1100, the first three clumsy muzzle loading infantry were drafted.

I grab engineering from JC in 1150 (An indispensable tech for fighting early wars IMO), and in 1160 I send a replaceable errand boy to deliver the bad news to HC. After taking down the walls, the first janissary was sent against the hilltop city of Vilcabamba.

Spoiler :

Hrmm.. odds were not so good. Nonetheless, he injured his man, and the city fell that turn with no other losses.

Spoiler :

Leaving a pair of garrison Janissaries behind, the rest of the army marched post haste towards Cuzco. They reached the walls by 1200, and were ready to storm in by 1220.

Spoiler :

 

[Haika]

Meanwhile, Monty and JC managed to get their differences sorted out by 1240, ending a 13 turn war. I had really hoped the war would be protracted longer to keep JC busy, and it turns out my fears were not baseless. Since Saladin had already picked up Nationalism, I made a backfilling trade with JC in 1280, which was a good thing, because in 1300 he vassalizes HC and DoWs me!

Spoiler :

Fortunately, I had kept a decent garrison (3 janissaries) in my cities bordering JC, and was able to draft a few extras as well without going into severe happiness debt. I quickly wrapped up the war with HC, only to find out he has a small island city to the north! So there will be no drafting and high unhappiness in the former Incan cities for a while.

Spoiler :

In 1310, the first cavalry rolled in, and I made him a medic 3 with a warlord I had in reserve. I figure there would be protracted warfare from now on, and a medic three would be a big boon.

Spoiler :

The war in the north was going well, as JC was still 1 to 1.5 techs behind, and he had to wade through a fairly thick wall of culture before arriving at a city. I had put 60 hammers into the Taj with the intention of finishing it with a longshot GE born out of Istanbul. On later thought, this was probably a mistake, as the GE could have rushed a useful national wonder like ironworks or Oxford instead of our marble enhanced Taj. On the other hand, the golden age did help getting some more military up and running. After seeing some of JC's knights, I sent a pair of cavalry out for his iron and horses. Naturally it wasn't very hard to repel JC's invasion with superior tech with minimal losses, and by 1390, the bulk of the southern army had arrived in the North.

Spoiler :

With the arrival of the Southern army, the counterattack was set to begin, as detailed in this ridiculous waste-of-time diagram.

Spoiler :

Green army is not currently organized yet. It will be the wave of cavalry coming out of the golden age, as well as straggling catapults and janissaries from the rear lines.
As can be seen, JC still has significant offensive forces, including siege. Therefore, advances will be done carefully to prevent leaving battle groups isolated. 2 Healthy Janissaries as well as the severely injured will be left in recently conquered cities until JC's borders are beaten back.

The domestic advisor as of 1400 and a situation with tech runaway Saladin (all the redded techs are monopolies.

Spoiler :

Normally I really like to have a tech lead, and would make it a priority to recover the lost ground vis a vis Saladin, but I dont think it is necessary in this game. Saladin is fairly friendly towards us, even more so if we switch to free religion, and hostile to the other heathens. I don't think he will be able to launch before we hit domination limit, and because he is so advanced, the other civs won't have techs to offer him in trade. The problem with Saladin is if he decides to suddenly pull a Caesar and vassalize one of the beaten nations, pulling us into a war with him. There are a variety of ways to minimize that possibility, the first option off the top of my head is to trade Saladin Chem (our last tech we have on him) for a trade embargo with Monty/Toku, and snatch up all of the resource trades that fall in the interim.
A civic change to free religion piggybacking mercantilism might be a good idea as well after the GA ends.

I am embarassed to admit that I was so caught up in warmongering that I let domestic issues kind of fall by the wayside during this round. Therefore, our science rate is rather poor (300 during a GA), our research is disorganized (have about 600 beakers in both steel and constitution), and some of our cities are working plains tiles. This is also partially because this is the first time I've used nationhood before, and I was so captivated by the instant soldiers popping up that I may have used it more than I should, although I was careful not to stack unhappiness.

Again, I think there is a crossroads ahead, which is after the current golden age ends, this wave of cavalry is produced, and a last wave of cavalry/janissaries is whipped drafted followed by civic switch to FR and merc. One path is to try and make up the tech lead a bit. This would entail research going towards Cons -> PP -> Democracy, and riding a wave of free scientists (merc + SoL) augmented by representation spread over our large empire to power research. Of course, the war would still progress at a good pace, as the last round of reserves added to our current army should be enough to take Caesar. If going down this path, would generating Great Artists from Istanbul help at all along the Constitution -> Democracy line?

Another path is to just go all in and finish researching steel, after which research is turned off in favor of money to upgrade our current siege to cannons, and whip/draft extensively to push through our continent ASAP. Both paths have their certain charm, and your input would be, as always, greatly appreciated.

The Save at 1400 AD:

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/119916/Haika_AD-1400.CivWarlordsSave

 

[vicawoo]

Definitely constitution. Look at cuzco, that can support a crazy amount of specialists, and it has angkor wat, and an academy. You can lightbulb printing press I think with a scientist from istanbul. You also have university of sangkore, if you want to skip free religion.

Cavalry rush through julius caesar than maybe montezuma will get you domination. Even if he gets rifling, you can still win. Steel doesn't speed things up much compared to trebs. If you need pop, you can consider teching to biology.

 

[oyzar]

Edit: read wrong page..

 

[Haika]

We last left off at war with Caesar and his vassal HC. We had just repelled several of JC's offensive stacks, and our armies are merged and ready to begin moving into JC's territories. I switched the research to Constitution as recommended.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile, JC launched his counterattack. Unfortunately, he had a city close enough to drop troops off near my capital every turn. Fortunately, I had troops rallied there, and JC only dropped pairs of knights. He would do this constantly during our war. Another kind of weedy move was suiciding 5 trebuchets at a lone cavalry deep in his territory.

Spoiler :

Cities started falling according to schedule

Spoiler :

War weariness in this era is pretty severe. Without any of the % based WW reducers, I had no choice but to crank my culture high to keep the residual WW from Mansa Munsa from crippling my cities. Fortunately, Saladin suddenly some attractive deals available. I also revolted to Merc/FR/Rep, which helped my research greatly (up to 500ish from 200).

Spoiler :

1500 was a turning point in the war. HC reneges his vassal status to JC, and decided to join the winnign team. Since he was locked in his little island fortress, I accepted, and immediately war weariness subsided (culture from 40% to 0). I also got his world map from his capitulation deal, which revealed the last civilization (Washington). I gifted him paper to butter him up, then grabbed a few deals.

Spoiler :

In 1535, JC loses his capital after a two turn siege.

Spoiler :

By not running caste system, I had pretty much a crapshoot at my GP farm, and I paid for it by getting a fairly useless Artist. Hoping he would lightbulb democracy, instead all I could get was the useless divine right. I couldnt get anyone to trade me it either, so I put the artist to rest for the time being. Later, I popped a prophet from HC's old capital, and put them to work orchestrating a golden age.

Spoiler :

After cleaning out a few more of Rome's northern cities, the only city left was ensconced in Monty's lands, so I signed a cease fire with JC and DoWed Monty immediately before his borders could expand in JC's land.

Spoiler :

I had gotten democracy, and even though I saw Mehmed had revolted to the democracy civics about ten turns ago, I still went ahead and tried for SoL in my most productive non-HE city. I cut four forests, and built workshops where I could, but sadly it was not enough.

Spoiler :

 

[Haika]

The Aztecs did not put up much of a fight either, and their cities were rolled back pretty quickly. Caesar and Monty were finished off within two turns of each other. They can go argue over territorial boundaries in the afterlife.

Spoiler :

Although Saladin had taken the southern half of the southeastern archipelago, I went to grab the northern city. I guess every little bit helps.

Spoiler :

After a quick check of power levels, the war machine rolls on.

Spoiler :

I took a couple of small cities to shorten my front, then moved my troops in towards Tokyo. I noticed at this point Tokugawa has grenadiers. Although his current ones are upgraded melee troops, I did not savor facing his newly produced protective/str models. Nonetheless I pressed on, took out his stack, then took Tokyo. This turned out to be a potentially disastrous move, as Tokyo was totally swamped by Kyoto's culture, and Toku had a significant stack there, with grenadiers and trebuchets. Next turn, he brought it on, and inflicted significant casualties on our experienced cavalry, including killing medic Robert E. Lee. Fortunately, they acquitted themselves honorably and held the city.

Spoiler :

Washington has been Toku's worst enemy for a while, and he decided to pile on at this point. I figured with the opportunistic Americans being an ocean away, they would not be able to do significant damage to Tokugawa's promoted garrisons. Then, as our stack was parked outside Kyoto several turns later, American cavalry suddenly appear everywhere! Although all they did was pillage and make a mess of things, I was grateful for the coverage, especially as Tokugawa had just upgraded his longbows to riflemen!

Spoiler :

Toku's land was roughly divided in half, with the developed half being on the continent, and several small colonies on a large southern island. I sent an expeditionary force against the island, and it turned out to be a very strange campaign, as he had no roads built anywhere, and there was even an untaken barbarian city. The going was slow against the protective riflemen, but steadily the defenders were rolled back

Spoiler :

Then, after a long and bloody siege against the well defended Japanese capital, the American's true loyalties were revealed.

Spoiler :

Seeing as I had no chance against Washington and Toku, I quickly began consolidating my gains and racing to catch up for a space win.

Spoiler :

Just kidding! Washington had a significant navy in place near our continent, and it spread considerable destruction and fear near the former Aztec lands. However, after whipping and drafting a garrison there, I did not feel like the cities themselves were in danger, and I refocused on Tokugawa.

Spoiler :

 

[Haika]

At this point, I had been managing this war for almost four hours, and my brain was almost completely fried. However, I pressed onwards, and both the island city and the mainland fell at about the same time. After the final city fell, I tipped Washington for his efforts, and waited for the limit to kick in. This is the first domination game I've played where the population and land area went over at about the same time, probably due to heavy drafting/whipping abuse.

Spoiler :

So, that was that. I feel like it was a pretty solid result for my first game on emperor. Although I felt like I had been dealt an extremely strong starting hand with nearby bronze and production cities, and with JC and Monty going at each other like a pair of rabid dogs, the start still had to be ground out into a game, with a lot of tricky situations along the way. Especially the two unexpected capitulations threw off my plans a bit, but I still think the vassal system is quite a good idea, and much better than the computer rolling over and surrendering!

This weekend I went to a local electronics store and picked up Beyond the Sword. I'm looking forward to starting a BTS game this weekend, the update will be on Monday!

Anyways, thanks to everyone who posted. Your replies were very useful during the critical decision points of the game, I just played out the results of that advice. Until next time, (and the expansion!)

 

[mrchadt]

Thankyou for writing up a good game, well played.