ALC Game 16: Persia/Cyrus

[flamingzaroc121]

yeah i would say go after HC butas soon as you do he will try to sign peace with izzy and send all his troops over which may be dangerous so make sure you bring enough archers or something equivilent to defend your new cities

 

[BlueSoxSWJ]

I'd say you need to build up military for a while, then make a decision based on how the war is going. If Isabella and HC fight to a draw and are just weakening each other, take out GK. If Isabella is getting steamrolled, letting HC go for now might let him get too advanced. I know you probably want more specific advice than this, but I really do think the better decision will be much clearer in about 10-20 turns.

 

[Whitefire]

You should think about researching Drama, and how that will fit into your tech path. The culture slider is important for an SE. I would suggest you snag that after you finish Civil Service (which should come after Construction). The irrigation from CS will allow you to spread farms and grow faster. With Caste System, the culture slider, irrigation and Hereditary Rule, you will be able to have huge number of Scientists and Merchants running your economy.

However, I would hold off on that civics switch until you also get Philosophy for Pacifism and kill either Huyana. Switching to Caste System will come at the cost of Slavery, so units will take much longer to build. Also, basic infrastructure is best setup via Slavery.

 

[Maydrock]

Finish off Genghis while Huayna is distracted with Izzy. Genghis is going to attack you, he has now where to go but toward you; so take the fight to him. Get construction, then attack him with cats and immortals. Even if you don't completely finish him off with them, you can deliver a leathal blow that he will not be able to recover from.

I don't think it will be Huayna asking you to join the war effort, but Izzy. Join up with Izzy, but just repel borders on your western flank. That will take enough pressure of Izzy that she will be able to stay in the fight and keep Huayna from getting to far ahead. Eventually when you attack Huayna, you will still have a good trading partner.

 

[lukep]

dont build up mil yet. your rivals are pretty weak

You have some (you could have more) experienced mounted units. From there, beeline to cavalery.

In the meantime start really the SE. You have to run scientists and farms not only in capital, but all cities with decent amoount of food.

Civil Services is then a priority

 

[Rancid Sushi]

Well, Genghis isn't that much stronger than you, so you probably have some time to build up your economy more. Watch the power chart closely and build up your forces if Khanny Bravo starts to spike in power. I would alternate building units in every city for now as they come online and start paying for themselves. This way you'll have time to build more workers, farms, and libraries while still being prepared for war.

 

[cabert]

what military would you build now? swordsmen?

I think you should build forges while teching to construction, then build cats cats cats. May as well use what you learn, don't you think?
edit : you could build wealth or research while waiting for MC.

 

[patagonia]

dont build up mil yet. your rivals are pretty weak

You have some (you could have more) experienced mounted units. From there, beeline to cavalery.

In the meantime start really the SE. You have to run scientists and farms not only in capital, but all cities with decent amoount of food.

Civil Services is then a priority

I second this. Skip to the end if you can't be bothered to read the long, rambling bit...

You're in no position to declare on anybody. You have no cats (don't even know construction), no elephants (Huayna does and they'll eat your Immortals) and no swords. With Huayna and Isabella both likely researching Feudalism due to the gamedate and war they're in, the only realistic target is Genghis, but you've far more important things to be doing than getting bogged down trying to take some walled cities off him with no siege support.

The most intelligent option from here would be harnessing the power of the SE to slingshot cavalry as early as possible, mass-upgrade your immortals and go on the rampage. Against AI longbows and pikes they don't even need siege support to tear through cities.

To do that you need farms, not cottages.

Goth should not be cottaged!
If you do go to war with Genghis (inevitable), it's going to get pillaged rotten. It's got huge food potential so can run LOTS of scientists under caste system, and it's also a great ironworks spot if the game lasts that long. There are other sources of dye and gems you'll have by then making it workshop/watermill a-go-go.

Guangzhou should also be farmed once CS is in for chain irrigation as that's another place that can run a lot of scientists under caste system.

Speaking of scientists, the academy was probably a mistake. For quick cavalry you need to avoid machinery and bulb philosophy, paper, education and then liberalism yourself, whilst researching nationalism, music (if you can't trade philosophy for it) and gunpowder. You can then bag military tradition as the free tech and use education as trade-bait to backfill everything you skipped (it'll still be too early for any AIs to have it as they'll be preoccupied with the bottom part of the tech tree working through guilds and banking) before unleashing your horde. That means having a stockpile of 5 GS, ideally in the time it'll take you to self-research CS and Nationalism. Since you have no religion in your 4 best food cities and running Taoism would seriously tick-off your two potential friends (Huayna or Izzy), pacifism isn't going to help much unless you get busy with some Hindu missionaries.

With pacifism, the capital alone can generate 46GPP (100% scientist - even at the current size, you can run 5 just by abandoning the mines; growing will allow you to run as many whilst keeping that production once CS is in) which will seriously speed up the rate at which you can slingshot yourself up the tech tree. If you do go for Military Tradition from Liberalism, the next targets are constitution and then biology, since that combined with representation (and/or nationalism) will give you the beaker and drafting power to keep ahead of the pack as GS become progressively less valuable. GS can bulb printing press, chemistry and scientific method, all of which are on the way to biology, which makes the tech tree much shorter than it appears to a standard CE.

Settling Jumboville (sounds silly, but directly on the jumbos is probably best for that fishing village) is a good idea. I'd keep Machu Picchu when the time comes as it's actually a well positioned city. Desert copper is a pretty poor tile in the grand scheme of things so missing out on the ability to work it really isn't worth the raze/rebuild of a large mature city.

============

So to recap:

Farm EVERYWHERE, especially Goth and Guangzhou (once CS is in) as they're two good food cities that can run a lot of caste system scientists.

Spread Hinduism once Beijing's finished it's monastery. Priorities are the capital, Shanghai, Goth and Guangzhou - your four best food cities.

Once you've bulbed philosophy with your next GS, revolt to pacifism and caste system (will doing 2 civics at once help on epic?). You'll need another turn of anarchy to pick a religion (either Hindu, which means you're friends with Huayna, not Izzy; or Tao, which means you're friends with nobody).

You'll potentially have 4 GS farms, so once you've got a scientist from one, fire all the specialists there to rapidly grow towards the happy/health cap, then rehire them and either grow-slow or stagnate.

Beijing's got the best hammer potential at the moment in terms of HE locations. Beshbalik and/or Guangzhou will be good naval bases further down the line once state property etc are available. With drydocks, having a coastal HE really isn't necessary.

 

[cabert]

i disagree slightly with patagonia.
you could
- relocate the palace to goth and leave your cottages there (bureaucracy, here we come!)
- build HE in persepolis

for the rest, I agree

 

[patagonia]

i disagree slightly with patagonia.
you could
- relocate the palace to goth and leave your cottages there (bureaucracy, here we come!)
- build HE in persepolis

for the rest, I agree

Fair point. I hadn't considered relocating the capital, but it's definitely an option. It'll raise distance maintenance slightly in the short term, but would make the eventual push into Mongolia easier to absorb and the extra bureaucracy-related commerce you'd gain from the land up there will soften the blow considerably.

In fact, you'd probably be better off with those dyes and gems available.

 

[lukep]

i disagree slightly with patagonia.
you could
- relocate the palace to goth and leave your cottages there (bureaucracy, here we come!)
- build HE in persepolis

for the rest, I agree

I disagre strongly as the legal civic you want in that case is nationhood not bureaucracy

Cirrus+early cavalry+nationhood = rule the world.

run merchants if needed, they are almost as good as scientist

 

[cabert]

I disagre strongly as the legal civic you want in that case is nationhood not bureaucracy

Cirrus+early cavalry+nationhood = rule the world.

run merchants if needed, they are almost as good as scientist

what do you expect to draft?
musketmen?

 

[lukep]

yes. they are perfect as support troops and defenders

 

[kniteowl]

You know even without a Religion, IF you switch to Organized Religion Civic you can build Missionaries as long as there is a religion of that missionary in that city.

It's really up to you do you want to save a turn of anarchy and gold from not running a high cost civic

OR

Switch to Organized Religion Civic and Quickly Build Missionaries to spread to your cities and save a few turns not building a Monastery, if I were either Organized or Spiritual this choice would be a lot easier.

Stay with Slavery until Constitution for Representation Civic then switch to Cast System and Representation at once, CS won't be that powerful until Representation is available. Besides you're not behind in tech yet there's no hurry therefore Production takes Priority.

Since your not running CSys (Cast System, CS reminds me of Civil Service) You should hurry and build Markets and Forges in your Cities to run Merchant and Engineer, remember you can light bulb Constitution with GMs ( you need at least 3 of them to Light bulb all of Constitution, I believe That tech cost around 2800 Beakers on Monarch,I don't remember, a GM will bulb a 1000ish beakers to a tech).

Note: Remember to Ignore Guilds or your GMs will light bulb Banking => Economics => Corporation Route

And Forges for Engineers... well you'll always have a use for Great Engineers.

Hurry up And Pick a Religion soon, you'll want to run Pacifism ASAP. The longer you delay Pacifism, the longer it will take you create that next GP.

Diplomatically about Religion, I'd switch to Bud and make HC Happy and deny having any wars with Isa deny trade Embargoes with Isa because the Positive Modifiers from same religion should cancel the negatives from no trading and not warring and Prepare a Pre-emptive strike on Khan, you know there will be a war between you two sooner or later."

Problem with this is you'd only have HC to trade with as Isa will be Annoyed with you and you're at war with Khan.

If you can Produce GS fast enough, after bulbing Education you can probably Bulb Optics if you have Compass and Machinery, if you ignore machinery you can bulb Liberalism.

I'd personally research to Construction, then Civil Service then Machinery (Maceman!) then Compass and Optics and find trading partners soon. IF you decide to play your diplomatic cards this way.

Also if you're playing the Specialist Econ, try to keep all your GP cities producing GPPs at the same or around the same rate because if one city is over producing GPP, that city alone will will be producing GPs most of the game (the minor cities will probably only produce 3-4 GPs max throughout the entire game) and you're better off playing CE having one GP Farm. With a SE you want to spread your GPPs evenly. Any Cities unable to do so, become Production Cities building up your military or Research/Gold if you can't handle the unit Cost.

Well I'm probably not clear in what I'm saying, this article probably says it better

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=142704&highlight=Great+People

The first Post a bit confusing if you look at the graphs in the second post you'll understand.

Note Don't build National Epic that's only for a GP Farm, with the SE you're better off spreading you GPPs

 

[oyzar]

trade for monotheism? Not using your UU optimaly... No construction before monarchy/metalcasting(??) in what should be a warmonger game? Working forest titles in a comerce city when you can work cottages??

 

[Kev]

I've not had great success while trying to run an SE in my own games thus far, so I'll leave all that to those that can pull them off and learn along.

However, I would like to get that Jumbo city up and running quickly. With construction on the horizon, cats and elephants (with some metal-unit support) will do well against the likes of Khan and his unique unit. They will also upgrade to cavs when the time comes. I do like the idea of taking the Mongol out as a priority and allowing the ability to make the Inca border the only line in the next war that is fought.

 

[Charou]

trade for monotheism?

He traded for money and to butter up his relationship with GK. not for the tech itself. opens up another trade : litterature.

Not using your UU optimaly...

Depends how you see it. He could have crippled maybe another civ with them.
But that means less hammers in infrastructure and settlers. Which were needed for staging the next phase.

No construction before monarchy/metalcasting(??) in what should be a warmonger game?

Do you go to war without adressing the happiness issue ? Monarchy is a must have. MC before construction, mmm ... tough to judge.

Working forest titles in a comerce city when you can work cottages??

So what ? You're looking at a snapshot. You know better I think.
Sisiutil reassign citizens regularly, as pretty much everyone at monarch and higher difficulties.

 

[cabert]

trade for monotheism? Not using your UU optimaly... No construction before monarchy/metalcasting(??) in what should be a warmonger game? Working forest titles in a comerce city when you can work cottages??

He traded for money and to butter up his relationship with GK. not for the tech itself. opens up another trade : litterature.

Depends how you see it. He could have crippled maybe another civ with them.
But that means less hammers in infrastructure and settlers. Which were needed for staging the next phase.

it's not exactly that.
He could have deadly crippled HC at this point.

Spoiler shadow game :

didn't play very far in my shadow, but I did just that, killing china, cutting inca lands in 2, taking machu pichu (size 13!).
I then sued for peace and got somthing (can't remember what) for it

I don't know about you guys, but when I see one of those, i want them crippled before they're out of reach:
- huyna
- gandhi
- FdR
- brennus
- hannibal

MM also becomes a threat, but he trades well + he is a chicken, so I let him live.

Do you go to war without adressing the happiness issue ? Monarchy is a must have. MC before construction, mmm ... tough to judge.

yes, I go to war without adressing the happiness issue.
Then I sue for peace for monarchy .

So what ? You're looking at a snapshot. You know better I think.
Sisiutil reassign citizens regularly, as pretty much everyone at monarch and higher difficulties.

could be.
I still have the feeling that canada's national hero is a bit disturbed... Not totally focused on the game I think.

 

[Charou]

Well, he has been doing his ALC for more than a year.
Payback time ?

Anyway, I'd rather have RL spoiling my civ time than the other way round. I'd rather... yes
I feel like I have to repeat it, because it's not quite what usually happens.

 

[Charou]

I don't know about you guys, but when I see one of those, i want them crippled before they're out of reach:
- huyna
- gandhi
- FdR
- brennus
- hannibal

I try to act the same as you about those leaders.
But I never understood why Brennus almost always has the best score (except when isolated ) in my monarch games.
What makes him such a threat and potentiel early winner ??
by the way, his UU or UB are not valid answers !!