Adventures of the Vietnamese (I)

[hoplitejoe]

Needs more city spamming.

 

[12tn2]

Needs more city spamming.

No, there're desert tiles in the south east and a mountain chain near the center of the map which effectively limits our expansion. We may only need one more city to fulfill the plan, you'll see.
The year of 685BC saw the achievement of two techs: one by our own research, and one by a wonder:

The Oracle completed! Hochiminh city built it in five turns ! The Vietnamese don't have marble, but their leader being Industrious really helped here. Combine with a forest chopping, the Buddhist holy city was able to do it within the period of two whips! You can see that lovely tiny wonder under our warrior's ass He will protect it at all cost, cause if he ever fall down it can give some really pain
The technology to choose was obvious: we did built the Oracle only to get Machinery! Now it will be just some more turns for the Vietnamese to mine that iron tile, and An Duong Vuong will be able to pump No lien chau endlessly from his cities. The other tech we also researched this turn was... can you guess it? Construction. The combination of Catapults and No lien chau can be devastating, we'll see With these two advanced techs, the Vietnamese can do bunch of things now. Our workers can put watermills everywhere in Hochiminh city BFC and make it a hammer powerhouse (it can indeed build a forge in one turn this very turn, thanks to An's industrious trait). Or put windmills on Hanoi's hills and benefit from increased beakers. Or to build Colosseums in those cities and make them real metropolitans. Options are numerous...
Qin Shi Huang himself did had a part in the events of this year. He converted to Judaism – bah, An was saving Monotheism for his fourth city (he wanted to grab the gold and incense in the south east to leverage the use of his forges). No problem, the Vietnamese can go for Christianity, they are in a position to choose from now on , not the Chinese...

 

[12tn2]

Shocking news came in between turns: our great scout has been killed Rest in peace, Son Tinh. We'll avenge it for you. Now the Vietnamese have established an archer network that no one can sneak in, and every barb kill from now on will be to commemorate our very first explorer.
With our base being safe from attacks, let's see where we stand compared to the arch enemy: Qin Shi Huang.

Quite impressive, eh? The Vietnamese lead in every category, except for Approval rate and Life expectancy (which actually indicate the happiness and healthiness exploit level of the leaders – and An Duong Vuong is doing it good ). Our GNP is more than half as many again as Qin's. Production is three times and crop yield is twice as bigger! That explains why the score of Vietnam empire almost doubles that of the Chinese.
Oh, and did you notice that our people have abandon their faith again? An is going to settle his fourth city of Hải Phòng, and he has timed the invention of Theology to match with it. Being Spiritual is really fun here By juggling between faith and notfaith, we can ensure each city to at least expand its border to its need with ease.
Vietnam's soldier count is way more than China's, and that's just without any cats or No lien chau produced! That high number comes from our abundant archers, created to protect the empire from raging barbs. But it also put strains on our stock, we'll run out of gold in six turns! (but we've run at 100% from the start, that's good enough thanks to (again) Son Tinh the great scout). An will have to seriously consider this issue if he want to march his large troops across the map and wage a war so far from home in the future...

 

[hoplitejoe]

Poor scout

 

[strijder20]

That big mammal you mentioned is far inferior comparing to a metal or horse It allows only one unit and can be easily countered, while the others offer wider choices.

Ooh, I wouldn't say that in the Strategy and Tips/General Discussions forum if I was you... War Elephants are by far the strongest unit of that era.

Try to keep your archer units a little farther from your borders: they'll help spawn-busting.

Anyway, very nice story, keep up the good work.

 

[12tn2]

Ooh, I wouldn't say that in the Strategy and Tips/General Discussions forum if I was you... War Elephants are by far the strongest unit of that era.
Try to keep your archer units a little farther from your borders: they'll help spawn-busting.
Anyway, very nice story, keep up the good work.

Yes I agree with you for that era But still, ivory won't help building wonders faster, so I'll stick with my opinion for some time
About the archer issue: we're trying to do the best, but now our empire is a little too scattered (you'll see), and sticking with only the border already requires a considerable amount of archers. Anyway, rest assured that I'll try to keep you all entertained
The last turns saw the founding of both Haiphong and Christianity. Let's have a look at the Vietnamese empire before it turns into a huge wartime military unit pump:

A nice mix of pink and purple color spreads all over the west side of the map Hanoi, Hochiminh city and Danang are producing Swordmen and Spearmen (the only threat to our No lien chau is the Horse archer, and we don't know whether Qin Shi Huang has horse or not, so these units are just for the bad case). Anyway, they're just auxiliary troops so An Duong Vuong chose to build them early. The main forces of No lien chau and Catapults will be mass produced when Feudalism (and therefore Vassalage) finally arrive in three turns. Mind you, now we're already in the civic of Theocracy Haiphong is just in its beginning phase, and with the majority of tiles are desert, it won't be contributing much in term of hammers. However, the three (yes, three!) happiness it brings to the other cities of the Vietnamese empire is respectable (apart from the incense, the hill tile that one of our workers is standing actually contains gold, and An has built forges in all of his matured cities – he's Industrious, after all ).
On the top left of the screen, you can see a Chinese warrior. Qin has finally made his way to us (that's the work Son Tinh the mountain god has done some thousand years ago ). It's a small pleasure when An found that all of his cities are not visible to Qin's craving eyes. You can also notice a Christian missionary is heading toward the edge of the map. He's no use to the Vietnamese because they're Buddha followers, but An Duong Vuong the smart still found a job for him – patrolling the few fog tiles on the left – before Danang's border finally covers them

 

[12tn2]

Now with the AD years approaching, An Duong Vuong decided to give Qin a call and saw if he can make a final attempt to maintain the peace (the Vietnamese are peace loving people, you know ):

The Chinese leader was so annoyed with us that An could just barely managed to persuade him to get to the table. “All right, let's hear it then.” - Qin Shi Huang reluctantly grumbled. An Duong Vuong tried to get Open borders with him in the hope to ameliorate their relation over time, but the Chinese guy refused point-blank. Our leader then tried to tempt him with a fair trade – An even proposed some Vietnamese cities in the terms - but Qin, being a rapacious exploiter, demand to take them for free (?). Look at his face! How can he be willing to give something with such a facial expression? He didn't put anything on the table All of his options are bathed with the red color of war and aggression!
“Then soon the war has to break out – it can't be helped”, thought An. He secretly looked at the Chinese land to figure out Qin's evil plan. The Vietnamese leader couldn't guess where his opponent's third city of Guangzhou is, but he's pretty sure that Shanghai is located near that source of iron. “My troops will give it a close look, then ” - An smiled and said farewell to Qin Shi Huang.
With an inevitable war coming, An Duong Vuong is so bothered by a problem: the distance is too large. His army will have to spend hundreds of years just to get across the map to Qin – that's not to mention waves of barbs will wait them mid-way (last turn a barbarian swordsman spawned and killed one of our archers ). Taking too long and the Chinese may have been more than ready with their modern tech units when our old fashioned troops arrives ...

 

[12tn2]

The decision of An Duong Vuong to build Haiphong in the middle of the desert is proved worthy and lucid – we've found another type of precious stones in the city:

Nice pop Now Haiphong is possessing three happiness resources, which in turn give the Vietnamese five more smiling Besides, Hanoi's border has expanded about a dozen turns ago, but we didn't found out that we can finally access the ivory tile until 90BC. No problem, An Duong Vuong has sent a worker there and a camp will appear soon. Then the Vietnamese will be swimming in happiness! It's only the health that can pose a problem, but another worker of us is now cutting his way through the jungle to a banana tile (covered by Hochiminh city's culture) and will be able to help a bit.
Meanwhile, our men are still fighting their way to reach Qin Shi Huang's land. The north wing troops (Hanoi and Danang) have passed the ridgelines at the center of the map, but the right flank army (from Hochiminh city, and maybe Haiphong in the future) have made little progress, since the southern gateway is now clustered with barbarians (you can see from the event log). All of our men there are now wounded and have to stop to heal. This can make An's plan of gathering at the rendezvous fail Maybe the Vietnamese should march some of their newly created troops at Hanoi toward the south-east to get it balanced...
Civil service will due in turn 78, and it will grant Danang one more food from the corn. Now we're running out of techs to research! All the needed ones to launch this No lien chau era war have been done. What to invent next is a little unnecessary. Maybe we should go for Engineering, the one extra road movement can never hurt

 

[strijder20]

5 happiness? Indeed a good city that is
Good luck with the war!
And uhh, I think you forget the main advantage of Engineering: Trebuchets rip through everything pre-longbows, and are still very decent afterwards.

 

[12tn2]

5 happiness? Indeed a good city that is
Good luck with the war!
And uhh, I think you forget the main advantage of Engineering: Trebuchets rip through everything pre-longbows, and are still very decent afterwards.

Yes we were even surprised with what Haiphong can bring to us
And uhm, I think you forget the main background of this showdown: it's Vanilla
Finally, in the AD years, we have spotted a barb city in this Raging barbarian map (does being more aggressive slow down their city founding or what?):

And that city's name is Illinois I thought it would be a little warmer and more populated than this Again, Illinois shows how stupid the barbarians (in this case, American ) can be when it comes to city placement. The left tile of this city is way more ideal, with dear in the first ring, horse in the second ring – and it still has the silver! Unless there're some resources in the fog, Illinois can hardly expand and prosperous. Anyway, the Vietnamese troops will raze it in the next turns and earn some money to fuel their empire – two warrior defenders are just a dream for any invasion (we still haven't seen any barb archer now yet!).
On the upper left of the picture you can see the northern passage from the west to the east of the map. It's three tile wide and is cleared by one of our archer. By shuffling between that lake side tile and the hill tile on its right, he have kept us from barb spawning for quite some time (from my own experience, any fogged tile will need at least two turns of – well, fog – to be able to spawn any barbarian, so this archer guy is effectively preventing it by letting those tiles free of check for only one turn).
In the lower right conner, you'll see that Qin Shi Huang has got Code of laws and Confucianism. Quite a impressive move, considering his score is just half that of An Duong Vuong. He's Financial after all So, the more delay to the upcoming war, the more tough the Chinese will be. The Vietnamese have to be quicker...

 

[12tn2]

On the northern front, the Vietnamese have done well and seized Illinois without any lost, but the reward for it was disappointing – razing that barb city yielded us six (!?) gold. Now here's a picture of the southern passage which is famous for its difficulty:

Our troops had been struggled to get pass those arrowed tiles for several turns Battles with the barbarians were intense, since they usually came two-guys-in-a-tile and some-tiles-next-to-each-other at the same time! But we have finally pierced that bottleneck and are now advancing steadily toward the land of the Chinese. More barb swordsmen sometimes appeared, just like this guy you see on the right, but they will be handled without fail (the spearman in the jungle is actually covered by a No lien chau ). Nevertheless, the Vietnamese army had to spread wide to prevent further interceptions from these raging barbarians. Meanwhile, two of our workers are busy roading to the east in order to make this great troop rotation faster (should've done that earlier, but they were so busy with other projects).
We have move on to Guilds researching. This tech will grant An Duong Vuong and his people the ability to build grocers (now the health of our cities is having a hard time running after happiness ). And we have bananas and silk! Some of you who have keen eyes may have noticed that the elephant tile is now camped (nice ), and Hanoi is producing a maceman. On the other hand, Haiphong is still in its developing curve and is now building a library. With gold, gems and incense, it's obvious that the city has to improve its research output first. But, now do we really need this bonus in beakers??

 

[hoplitejoe]

Science important! MOAR BEAKERS!

 

[12tn2]

Science important! MOAR BEAKERS!

No, four cities are enough. More and we'll miss this window of No lien chau ^^
In the last several decades, An Duong Vuong noticed a sharp fall of Qin Shi Huang's score point. The Vietnamese leader was afraid that his numerous troops have been spotted and have rose Qin's suspicions, so the Chinese are performing a large scale whipping to deal with the threat. It turned out all unexpectedly:

Wow wow wow! Quite an impressive job by those unlearned, gross but effective guys! Qin Shi Huang must be really mad with this He has indeed placed his second city near the iron source, just like An's guessing (remember what he thought after the failed negotiation?), but one tile north west of our leader's dot to take advantage of the hill's defense bonus. But even with it, the Chinese leader couldn't hold it against the rage of the barbarian king. Oh, did you see that little star on the upper right of the Judaism sign? That's right, Shanghai is the Jew's holy city Its culture level must have been at least 60% before the capturing, so either these barbs were so excellent, or Qin Shi Huang sucked badly at his battles Anyway, Shanghai will come out of resistance and immediately expand to 20% next turn, so An Duong Vuong is going to give this spearman two Woodsmans promotions and park him near the city in the hope to lure that nasty swordsman out to an uphill battle (he may be great at city attacking, but challenging a Woodsmans II guy is a different story ) and kill the remaining warrior next. An doesn't know if they are aggressive enough to leave the city, but this is a Raging barbarian map, right? Let's just hope that the scenario will work
I remember one of the SOTD pictures is of a holy city captured by the barbarians, and it got five star rating and many comments about how rare it can be. Well, we saw it again here At least for me it's not that unusual It's also very nice to see the little Stonehenge standing under the Barbarian flag's shadow And are those buildings which have pyramid-shaped roofs Jewish temple and monastery, in Chinese style? Stupid Qin, he's infatuated with religions and abandoned his army. And that's the consequence...
Anyway, the war is going to break out soon now that we've reached (former) Chinese border, and I'd like to share this match with everybody. Anyone who feels like it, take a try and see if you can do it better than me, or just follow a different route to achieve victory...

 

[12tn2]

The fall of Shanghai has led An Duong Vuong to an important decision. By losing a holy city, Qin Shi Huang has proved to be weak and backward to the Vietnamese leader, and he probably has run out of reserve troops. Thus, despite his army are not gathered, An went for a fast and sudden attack right into the Chinese capital using only his six vanguard units:

The turn before the declaration, two Chinese warriors moved next to Shanghai in the hope to recapture it, and also next to one of our No lien chau Just to our liking An Duong Vuong ordered his unit to take the chance and grab these 'gifts', and that's why this No lien chau is one step late for the siege, as you can see. On the battlefield, the Vietnamese have three catapults, two No lien chau and one severely wounded spearman (he has Woodsmans II, remember?) whom can attack the next turn. In this year of 620, we have bombarded Beijing from 60% defense bonus down to 21% using two Accuracy and one unpromoted cats. And what Qin Shi Huang has in his city? There were two archers, and a cat has appear this very turn – it's the reason why our troops separated into four tiles to avoid possible collateral damage. If two of the Vietnamese cats are tied with bombarding next turn, An will have only three and merely a half units to attack (that spearman has only 0.8 strength, after an unnecessary attempt to kill a barb warrior in the forest tile – and he has no promotions left But who knows, he may be our critical trump card). If our leader choose to let only one cat reduce the defense, Beijing will still have 6%, but we will then have one more attempt for the kill. Hmm, tough choice for him here ...
Aside from that, we have also razed another barb city lately. Its yield was 4 gold And got the (pretty useless) Horseback riding from a late village. By the way, it's fun to see Qin being tortured by a barb (two if our spearman didn't act too aggressively) this late in the game

 

[hoplitejoe]

Good thing his capital is not on a hill.

 

[12tn2]

Good thing his capital is not on a hill.

Yep, lucky for us. Qin was so greedy and stupid in sticking with his lake tiles
Well, our severely wounded spearman was actually our trump card! During his turn, Qin Shi Huang has ordered his only catapult to go out killing the Vietnamese Woodmans guy, and made his capital more vulnerable than ever with just two archers left (Motherland cites you, unnamed spearman)! Then the capturing was not really a challenge anymore – we had four superior units, and all of them can inflict collateral damage! The first No lien chau died, but the two following attacks were successful, and thus the capital was burned to the ground “No remnants of those cunning Chinese can be spared!” - An Duong Vuong ordered The razing gave us 153 gold – nice enough.
In a desperate act against his situation, Qin moved a settler, whom was protected by two archers, toward the Vietnamese (?) in the hope of partly compensating his land losses. How stupid Our cats skillfully lured these guys into An's prepared trap:

Haha, the Chinese emperor had no choice but to settle in place This is the picture right before our troops used Nanjing as a training ground. Once again it's four vs. two, just like Beijing, and this newborn city was burned in the same year with the Chinese capital. What a tragic and transient story of an one turn city And once again the combination of No lien chau and cats took the credit – did I say they're devastating?
After these two victories, the Vietnamese army will head south east to the last citadel of Qin Shi Huang, Guangzhou. Gunpowder will be done in four turns, but we may not be able to train any musketmen at all, due to the game is possibly ended then

 

[12tn2]

As the Vietnamese army were marching to the Chinese's new capital of Guangzhou, Qin's attitude toward us has changed to Furious. The reason was quite straightforward: we have razed two of his cities in about four turns after the war started! An Duong Vuong can understand his rival's feelings now that our score is more than four times of the Chinese, and Vietnamese's four cities dominate the Top 5 cities chart, while Guangzhou is pathetically at the bottom with three pops Haiphong – our newest settlement – even reached its limit with nine pops and became starved (that's partly thanks to the Hanging garden completed this turn )! What a miraculous development – in about 40 turns this city managed to finish six buildings, became one of the Vietnamese money powerhouses, brought us five happiness and got to the maximum population From that single instance, it's so easy to see why An Duong Vuong is winning Meanwhile, Da Nang has been devoted to hammer and has been pumping units like crazy – see them?

That's Qin Shi Huang in his gasping moment. Our catapult have reduced the defense to 0% while waiting the main force to come for the kill. Guangzhou has horses, but too bad the Chinese people couldn't use them. In fact, it might have been tortured by the barbarian to such an extend that there're no improvements, and a barb warrior even attacked our spear from the jungle tile the very last turn! On the top left of that picture you can see the remaining of a barb city the Vietnamese razed just some turns ago, and that will also be the fate of this citadel at the end of this turn. Our swordsman initiated the attack and killed that City garrison archer, and the Chinese leader was left with only one bodyguard. Then by an field order from An Duong Vuong, our powerful No lien chau rushed forward and unleashed his rain of arrows.
Qin was shot at least twelve times.

 

[12tn2]

So that was the end of the Chinese empire! What a memorable match. The Vietnamese has managed to overcome many difficulties and achieve triumph. Qin Shi Huang met his fate despite of having all three resources of copper, iron and horses. He possessed many advantageous conditions, but was unable to bring them into play and eventually had to face the consequence of his inability.
On the other hand, a bow to An Duong Vuong, under his lead, our empire has defeated not only the powerful Chinese, but also the mighty barbarian state (in the turn of victory declaring, our troops have actually destroyed the holy city of Shanghai. They're no match for the Vietnamese at this stage of the game! And thus there's no remnants of the Chinese left on the map ) Though we have to admit that there's some luck with us (a super early settler helped shorten the match considerably), but hey, luck only comes to the strong, right? This achievement is thanks to the hardworking and valorous Vietnamese people, they have built a powerful empire while still having to defend everything from barbarian invasions from everywhere.
And as usual, to continue the 'tradition' of one picture per post, I'd like to introduce a bonus screenshot from this game. And it's a little unusual:

Noticed the weirdness yet? Yeah, it's the combat odds, of 100.1%. More than absolute domination This image again represents the overwhelming strength of the awesome Nỏ liên châu – the Vietnamese Unique unit. Fear the power of them!
Finally, I'd like to say my thanks to all of you, who have followed and supported my civilization and its story to the end. The adventure of An Dương Vương stops here, but a new episode of Việt Nam with a new leader will come soon

 

[hoplitejoe]

Maybe next time make it harder

 

[12tn2]

Yeah next time maybe it'll be Noble. Look forward to my games!