ALC Game #10: India/Asoka

[Sisiutil]

Well, the current EMC already has the aim of being as peaceful as possible. I think you should play to exploit the traits of whichever leader you're playing. I think you already know that, but I'd like to point out that war or peace should be secondary to the main purpose. But that's just my opinion

That's why I thought Hannibal might be good for the approach I'm suggesting. (Ramesses and Wang Kon would be even better, but you got to them before I did, and I don't want to be repetitive. ) He's Financial, so right there, you've got an advantage for keeping up in techs for cultural or space race. His UU is an early one, so we could war early to secure enough territory and then settle back and build. We might still war--Charismatic's low-cost promotions invite it--but more to gain or keep an advantage rather than complete conquest, I'm thinking, unless the game necessitates it. I haven't explored the vassal system much so far.

What I'm thinking of is trying to use war as a tactic rather than as an overall strategy, which is what I've been doing in almost every ALC. I feel like I'm getting in a rut and want to try something different. I looked at Tokugawa and his traits and despaired: "Great, another game filled with centuries of endless warfare". Because, really, how else would you leverage Protective and Aggressive except with war? (Plus his UB sucks.)

 

[blueco]

Congrats Sisiutil! Well played as allways!

I hope you change your mind about when WE will be able to enjoy the next ALC.
Hannibal and a culture game would be much fun. Correct me if I am wrong but during the ALC serie you only pulled a culture victory off once, the Victoria game, and it would be great fun to see it again. A space race victory would suit Hannibal´s traits well. You will have a strong economy and the means to build highly populated cities and should give you a techlead pretty early.

 

[Eggolas]

That's why I thought Hannibal might be good for the approach I'm suggesting. (Ramesses and Wang Kon would be even better, but you got to them before I did, and I don't want to be repetitive. ) He's Financial, so right there, you've got an advantage for keeping up in techs for cultural or space race. His UU is an early one, so we could war early to secure enough territory and then settle back and build. We might still war--Charismatic's low-cost promotions invite it--but more to gain or keep an advantage rather than complete conquest, I'm thinking, unless the game necessitates it. I haven't explored the vassal system much so far.

What I'm thinking of is trying to use war as a tactic rather than as an overall strategy, which is what I've been doing in almost every ALC. I feel like I'm getting in a rut and want to try something different. I looked at Tokugawa and his traits and despaired: "Great, another game filled with centuries of endless warfare". Because, really, how else would you leverage Protective and Aggressive except with war? (Plus his UB sucks.)

I have played Hannibal about as often since the patch as any other leader and I've found that I'm often playing a different type of game with him. Because of financial, the early happiness benefit of Charismatic, and the UB, the games have followed a "trade route" path to victory. The early paths to currency and construction can be very advantageous when paired with some Ivory (what would Hannibal be without elephants?).

Might I suggest a different map this time? Perhaps it is time for a large archipelago with snaky continents, or . . . lots of islands? The game really does lend itself to different strategies with different maps.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

Mmm, that's a good idea, to keep things fresh. I vote Snaky Continents, personally. Low Sea level, just to ensure there's plenty of room. It would be pretty different, but still applicable to your standard continent fare that way. A standard Archipeleago is basically a win in shrink-wrap for Hannibal...

As for Hannibal...well, he's incredibly flexible, and if you haven't played with him yet Sisiutil, I'm sure you'll love him. He does peace and war very well, and seems great for a warrior-builder like yourself. Doing a more traditional cultural victory(given, of course, the map generator doesn't put you in the loony bin) would be a good tutorial, with, of course, a little war in the beginning so the optimal city count can be reached easily

 

[Syndrome Zed]

As Guiness is so fond of saying...BRILLIANT!

Nice "comeback" win. Of everything you did in this game, I think what you did best was combine your own instincts with the advice of the community. Had you stuck with your own instincts alone, your economy might have recovered too late for you to pull out a win. Had you gone only with the community, you'd have :suicide: when a number of people had thought the game was unwinnable. We're always talking about synergy of traits, UB's, etc., and you managed to create a powerful synergy of the traits of "Instinct" and "Open to Advice".

I'll join my voice to the congrats!
Beating the new AI to space on monarch is quite an achievement (although you had killed all real competitors, and were playing the toughest one ).

just a little nitpicking : You're at 55% land, just as I said you'd be. If there is a save somewhere, I'll try a domination win from the previous turnset.
This is not a criticism, I think you did it the hard way, so it's more like for you.

While I usually agree with Cabert, I think in this case the Domination vic would have been the harder of the two after all. Between Churchill's having so many left over promoted units on his continent from the Alex-Isabella campaigns, and your having to ship most of your units by transport (and of course some by airlift as the airports came online), it would have been slower slogging to pick up the last scraps of land/pop. Of course, he may prove me wrong if he finds a save to play out.

EDIT: I like Hannibal for a cultural vic - I used him for that myself a few games ago on the patched warlords. Only prince level, fractal map (my first culture game with the patch, so I stepped back a notch), but he's (maybe surprisingly) pretty good for culture and teching, and I think I wound up with only one defensive war all game (ahh, that Monty ).

 

[flamingzaroc121]

well, alphabetically Toku is next, and one thing you could do with him, is beeline to gunpowder, and make use of his thrice promoted gunpowder units

 

[ratrangerm]

Just wanted to say I really enjoyed going through this thread (as long as it took to get caught up, with reading done during a four-day span) and it really helped me in many stages with tactics I can try in my own games.

My compliments to Sisutil.

 

[Sisiutil]

well, alphabetically Toku is next, and one thing you could do with him, is beeline to gunpowder, and make use of his thrice promoted gunpowder units

Don't worry, we'll come back to Toku. I just want a break from constant war. Guess I'm shell-shocked.

 

[Melon Head]

Very well done. Congrats on the win, sisiutil; it was well executed.

A note about being behind earlier in the game. While some of the complaints were valid, and you were worse off than usual in the EMC's, a fair bit of the complaining was about your low GNP. GNP is only a good indicator if you're running a cottage-economy, because iirc, the GNP equals the sum of the commerce produced by all your cities. You can load up an OCC to check, if you like. Similarly, production is the sum of the hammers produced by all your cities. These are important values, but if you're running a specialist economy, as I think your were (it's been a while since I read the early part of this thread) then GNP in fact ignores most of your economy, which is focused on beaker production in the form of lightbulbs and beakers.

 

[cabert]

Of everything you did in this game, I think what you did best was combine your own instincts with the advice of the community. Had you stuck with your own instincts alone, your economy might have recovered too late for you to pull out a win. Had you gone only with the community, you'd have :suicide: when a number of people had thought the game was unwinnable. We're always talking about synergy of traits, UB's, etc., and you managed to create a powerful synergy of the traits of "Instinct" and "Open to Advice".

Who's going to mod Sisiutil as a new leader with those traits?
But I really want to second that. It's not easy to take the good part of so many given advices and to still hold your own ground.
There is a thread with democracy games, here we have an enlightened dictator .

I may nitpick some moves, but one thing must be said, those threads are great to read!

 

[pigswill]

Why not play Tok as a peaceful tech-trading leader? Protective ain't really a warrior trait. Aggressive is useful for early war which you're probably planning on anyway. Constant warfare is not trait-driven but a habit. You played lots of warfare with Asoka who doesn't have obvious wargaming traits so that line of argument doesn't really apply.

 

[uncarved block]

Well, if the goal is to play less popular leaders, Hannibal doesn't sound as if he fits the bill. I tried a game with him last night, and even without leveraging his UU or UB (don't drink and civ!), managed to cruise to an easy tech lead. It would certainly be an easy peaceful victory, but I'm unsure how many detractors the Carthaginian has here at CFC.

OTOH, Mehmed is not so popular, and would also lend himself to more of a peaceful game-- the UU doesn't come until Gunpowder, which is a fair distance down the tree. Organized and Expansive are also some of the less popular traits, and seeing them put to good use might be highly informative. It's your choice, but thought I'd throw that out for Sisiutil to think about during the break.

Congratulations on the win, and thanks to everyone who gave pointers on winning via space race.

 

[flamingzaroc121]

also about Mehmed, Exp has been improved, and you may find it useful to get workers faster

 

[patagonia]

also about Mehmed, Exp has been improved, and you may find it useful to get workers faster

The problem with the improvement to Exp (like the Imp settler building bonus) is that it only applies to hammers and the bulk of early worker/settler production tends to be done with food. Perhaps it'd be unbalancing if it was a straight 50% bonus, but at the moment it's a fairly weak boost to either trait early in the game.

Mehmed is a good leader mind you. The Hammam is one of the better UBs out there.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The problem with the improvement to Exp (like the Imp settler building bonus) is that it only applies to hammers and the bulk of early worker/settler production tends to be done with food.

Honest John: There's just one problem: it causes oppression!
Molly: That's no problem

 

[KMadCandy]

great game and very fun and informative write-up, as i've come to expect!

seconding (thirding?) the words above about how you combine your own instincts with the advice in here in a great way. and you do so well explaining why you do things, and asking questions, and admitting from your mistakes so we can learn from them. you are my hero. no, wait, you're like a great general, you give me free exp

i <3 spiritual and fast workers and played a lot of early games as gandhi (i tend to be a builder not a warmonger). but even with all my spiritual trait games i learned from your tactics here, particularly the trick of starting to build units, (sometimes more than one in a queue and changing the order to get the timing right), and making sure that none finish until after you change to vassalage/theo at just the right time to spit them out. clever, and seems obvious once i read it.

i learn a lot from the 'what victory should we go for at this point, what seems achievable?' discussions in these ALC threads. if i do start wars early on, if i start to lose i just sigh and start another game. often i start with a goal in mind (sometimes i start with cultural as a goal, the other day i did an always peace domination game that was very odd but fun). i generally get to a point where it's like 'ok clearly X is the way to go from this point' and don't have to have that debate over which way to win, partly due to me being a wuss and playing at lower difficulty. it's fun to see that decision-making and debating happen.

everyone who asks questions and gives advice in these threads helps me a ton. a big thank you to all!

and now i'm off to read the huayna thread. i don't think i ever did read it. i had fun game playing him the other day and want to see how you used him. i don't think i'd tried financial and i really liked it, interested to see what you did with his traits and lovely beautiful UB.

[ps to sis: today i finished a game with as catherine (vanilla) aiming for cultural victory from the start. i won, but it was really odd, 5 opponents and me, pangeaea and epic, but there were no wars at ALL the entire game! of course i was at warlord (i think, whichever is one level lower than noble) so it's easier but that part surprised me. i liked her traits very much, but wow, the shock of 'what??? 3 turns of anarchy to make this many changes at once???' was killer. particularly since i'd been following this thread, it made me soooooo miss spiritual! you know that i'm trying very hard to break my reloading habit. but in those cases, i saved it then changed civics and passed turns until anarchy was over to see if i could afford the change to my research and gold situation. all you can see before the change is how much the new civic combination itself will cost you in gold of course. my halo's getting rusty oops!]

 

[Sisiutil]

[ps to sis: today i finished a game with as catherine (vanilla) aiming for cultural victory from the start. i won, but it was really odd, 5 opponents and me, pangeaea and epic, but there were no wars at ALL the entire game! of course i was at warlord (i think, whichever is one level lower than noble) so it's easier but that part surprised me. i liked her traits very much, but wow, the shock of 'what??? 3 turns of anarchy to make this many changes at once???' was killer. particularly since i'd been following this thread, it made me soooooo miss spiritual! you know that i'm trying very hard to break my reloading habit. but in those cases, i saved it then changed civics and passed turns until anarchy was over to see if i could afford the change to my research and gold situation. all you can see before the change is how much the new civic combination itself will cost you in gold of course. my halo's getting rusty oops!]

Thanks for all the compliments. As for civics changes, after a while, you'll get better at estimating what your science and gold sitch will be before you make the change--and no, you don't have to play with a calculator beside your keyboard. A quick count of how many towns you have, for example, will tell you if a switch to Free Speech will be worthwhile; checking how many specialists you're running (or can afford to run) will tell you if you should consider changing to Representation, or what you'll lose by leaving it; and so on.

I have to give some more thought to which leader to use for the next game; pigswill made some good points and seems to understand the approach I'd like to take. In the meantime, I'm enjoying an off-line game--let me just say that I think Ramesses rocks and is going to join Caesar and Elizabeth as one of my favourite leaders.

 

[flamingzaroc121]

i know you havent been posting because of the holidays...... but

BUMP

 

[Sisiutil]

Of course I've been posting, just not in an ALC thread. This one's obviously done like dinner.

I'll start the next game sometime this week, promise.

 

[flamingzaroc121]

okay, so if you are doing Mehmed dont go completely peaceful, but if you dont want war, then try to wait till gunpowder and go to war with jannisaries.