ALC Game 14: Mongolia/Kublai Khan

[Galileo44]

Any chance of popping a Great Artist soon for a land grab?

 

[Sisiutil]

Any chance of popping a Great Artist soon for a land grab?

Extremely doubtful. I haven't been cultivating GA points in this game at all.

 

[Mehmed100]

I think the game is in the bag. Take over Germany and be done with it. This has been one entertaining game. Keep up the warmongering!

P.S. After this, which is the next leader you are going to put to the test in an ALC?

 

[Kietharr]

Hm, what will the next ALC be? I'd like to see how you work with Shaka personally, he's becoming my new favorite and i've been working on moving up to monarch with him, unless you're going to try to finish off the original leaders before beyond the sword adds 16 more

 

[Sisiutil]

As I recall, I was gonna play as Mehmed next (after M for Mongolia is O for Ottoman, since there's no one with N).

Gunpowder bee-line, anyone?

Frankly, though, if they want to emulate the Ottoman empire accurately, the UU should be a corrupt civil servant who requires constant bribes (baksheesh) to get anything done...

 

[ratrangerm]

I echo pretty much what everyone else says. Just go invade Germany and take as much as you need to claim your domination victory. That's about it.

 

[uncarved block]

Heh. It's too bad Monty is so far away. He's got just about as much land as Bismarck, but taking him out would be so much more . . satisfying. Not that the laughing German has never messed with me, but taking down the game's lunatic soothes my soul.

Great Merchant economy? Well, it certainly would be different than the usual Scientist or Prophet tracks, and ToA and Colossus are easier Wonders to snag than some others. If money is the key element to Civ4, then it certainly bears a closer look. Could be trouble on an isolated start, but you should know you're alone by the time you really have to make those decisions.

If Mehmed is the next leader, that would be the only argument against moving up a level, because he's got such great builder traits. If you can smoke the game anywhere close to this using peace (well, mostly) instead of war, there's no reason to fight below your weight, as it were.

 

[Sisiutil]

I echo pretty much what everyone else says. Just go invade Germany and take as much as you need to claim your domination victory. That's about it.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm gonna do. I'll probably not stop attacking Germany until either I win or 10 turns goes by and Bizzy's willing to roll over and be my b***h.

 

[Rancid Sushi]

yeah, everyone has said it already. This game is so over. Conquering Germany will be like Geico on roofies: so easy, even a cave man can screw it.

 

[cabert]

just one advice :
you don't need anymore research.
Push the culture slider to 100% and enjoy the finish.

 

[Killroyan]

Damn that was a fast conquest of england!!! I tried to crack Korea last night and had the bad luck that Wang Kon just researched rifling when I invaded. CD, drill rifles >>>>>>>>>>> CD longbowmen. Oh how I envy you. I lost 25 units in taking his most important city.

Well the game is in the bag. Impressive play and with the lessons learned from this I am going to get my first monarch win on Warlords. Good stuff Sisi.

 

[clblabin]

First of all, I am NO expert, and I've never presumed to post a long strategy-related post before. I'm just a prince-level lurker on the ALCs (started out as a noble-level lurker so a big THANK YOU to Sistuil and everybody here). But Sistuil mentioned a Great Merchant Economy, at first jokingly, then more seriously, and I did have an interesting experience running something like that -- but in a very different situation from the Kublai game. This is more in the spirit of offering my experience for better players to chew on than giving any actual advice. I will leave it up to my betters to decide if it has any use at all for a game like this one. My game was unusual.

What I actually used couldn't really be called a GME, because it didn't rely exclusively on the GMs. But the GMs were the biggest part of it, followed closely by Great Lighthouse-provided, habor-enhanced trade routes and Colossus-enhanced water tiles. I'll call it the WE, for "Water Economy," since it required exclusively coastal building.

Since it's long and only tangentally related to the current game, I'll put it in a spoiler, so you can skip past it if you wish. But, if you're interested....

Spoiler :

A recent game saw me as Wang Kon (huge/fractal/18 civs) trapped on little 3-tile wide peninsula on the northern end of the continent, consisting mostly of plains and hills with a little grassland and tundra, but lots of seafood off the coast. I was able to found only two real cities (plus one more-or-less useless one to grab copper and a whale and one more size 1 city on the bottleneck of the peninsula). There was also a small continent 1 sea tile away where I built two more decent coastal cities; but America started on it and claimed the vast majority. In sum, I was forced to build only along the coast.

So to my south I had Saladin, who was small but quickly loaded with protective archers (and vassalized himself to numerous more powerful civs as soon as he could). To the east was Roosevelt, with a much larger empire and much better land. Shaka attempted to invade me twice, and twice MY protective archers and my hwachas in that little garrison city saved me. But a war of expansion was just not an option in the early part of the game. In sum, I had to find a peaceful way to keep up until I was in a better position to strike.

That's the situation in which I stumbled upon the WE. The point is, I snagged the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus, I whipped a castle in all of my cities for the extra route, harbors for the trade bonus, and markets for the specialists, (thank God I had so much seafood to help me whip and run merchants) and I sent my steady flow of GMs out on trade missions to keep the slider running at or near 100% science. I only worked a few cottages, because there was just no place to put them. For the most part I was working water tiles. My little Korean Peninsula DID have marble, so I got the Great Library too, which of course helped my science (I didn't pop many GSs, though, as it happened; the GMs kept coming). With judicious trading, I kept roughly even tech-wise with the most advanced AIs, some of whom were 4 times my size or bigger. At last (not until a little after AD 1000, if I recall) I was able to build/upgrade an army big enough to take out Roosevelt, then I intervened in a war on the third continent which started out as a nail-biter but finished with me conquering Egypt, vassalizing Monty, and taking half of Hannibal's cities. By that point I had plenty of land and was transitioning from this unusual economy to an orthodox CE in my newly conquered territories. Finally, I won a space victory.

Wish I had some screenshots, but I didn't save the game frequently (I kept expecting to die and move on to the next game), but I hope you can see the WE really saved me. Like I said, I really hadn't planned on it. If I had, I would have pulled out all the stops to build the ToA as well.

Mind you, this was just on the Prince level, so it might for whatever reason not have been viable higher up. And it was under VERY unusual starting circumstances -- lots of water, lots of seafood, little good land, neighbors too powerful for early war, lots of neighbors to trade with. I would not have thought to go this route in a more normal situation.

But when your start calls for you to hug the coastline, and you're feeling pinned in, I think it could be very viable. A Financial leader is probably a must. I think Wang Kon (Protective for cheap castles) or Hannibal (with the cothons) are the two best. Elizabeth could pump out the GMs faster, so she might be good for such a scenario, too. For Mansa it would be viable, but he has a good chance to get an early shrine, making such economic gymnastics unneccesary. Playing as Huyana would help you get the required wonders, and Ragnar would be fine too, but those two could probably just fight their way out of such a situation. Starting with fishing is also helpful.

Some final notes:

1) Castles, a much-maligned building, really shined in this game. True, they have a short life span, but that just meant I had to prioritize Engineering to get them ASAP. And they obsolete with Economics, but Economics gives you Free Market, which I switched over to immediately. So what they really did was give me the equivalent of FM shortly after I discovered Engineering.

2) The wonder obsoletions really hit me hard, epecially for the Colossus. Ironically, the WE is well suited to a pangaea or (like I had) an almost-pangaea fractal kind of map where you can comfortably delay Astronomy for a little while. But you've got to make your move eventually, and start conquering actual LAND.

3) Another thing that I didn't mention before, but which made this game so odd, is how few workers I built. You just don't need too many until later; you're working the sea and running specialists.

Yikes, that was long. To sum up: based solely on my one game and my limited capabilities, the WE struck me as a sort of mini-SE for Financial leaders with little cottageable land. For a non-Financial civ, I would have run a regular old SE, but this seemed like a waste for Wang Kon. If nothing else, it's taught me not to despair, as I used to, when I get a water-heavy start.

 

[Syndrome Zed]

@Rancid Sushi - Niiiiiice line

@Sisiutil - Congrats once again! And as Robert Plant once sang, "Bring it on home, to me baaaby"

Oh, and feel free to send any Baksheesh you feel necessary for historical accuracy my way - just ring me up at 1-800-555-2ZED.

 

[Tyrant Roger]

Someone referred to the Better AI Mod and the new Expansion Packet in an earlier post. Where can I go to find information about both?

 

[Uncle Istvan]

What a beautifully played game. And we were all so worried after all of the moving the settler. Goes to show what huts can do.
Anyway, I smell a move to emperor. You have absolutely crushed the last few games, and I'd like to see if we can't wreck on emperor too.

 

[Sisiutil]

What a beautifully played game. And we were all so worried after all of the moving the settler. Goes to show what huts can do.
Anyway, I smell a move to emperor. You have absolutely crushed the last few games, and I'd like to see if we can't wreck on emperor too.

And ironically, I never did get around to building a city on the original starting site. It seemed pointless once border expansions claimed the territory.

 

[Yakk]

BetterAI: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245

 

[Nials]

Hate to sound like a broken record, but Biz is going to get steam rolled.

Congratulations on the win!

 

[CivSetä]

Great game, looks soo easy!

Why don't you step up a ladder?

 

[pigswill]

I guess you'll have a choice between whipping theatres and employing artists or revolting to caste and running artist specialists, in conjunction with running high culture slider that should speed up the finish by a few turns.