ALC Game 16: Persia/Cyrus

[jerVL/kg]

I came to a simple conclusion.

I suck at the Specialist Economy.

I wouldn't beat yourself up just yet. You're keeping pace technologically with HC, which is commendable. Naturally, your methods could use a little work (like revolting to Caste/Pacifism earlier, and building either the Parthenon or the Pyramids) but I think you're doing okay. (I should mention that I'm pretty weak at the SE myself -- every time I've run a Specialist economy it's been completely by accident...and I won't even nitpick the decision to run OR w/o a state religion, I've done that myself as well!!!)

On the other hand...gifting Engineering to GK...WTH were you thinking?????? Alright, alright, he can't build pikes w/o Iron, but you better make damn sure HC isn't trading Iron to him...

It also would've been a good idea to send your free missionary to GK's capital -- even though he's discovered Christianity since then, it's my experience that an AI likes to stick with whatever religion he's got in his capital. He probably would've converted eventually, but by that time his land will be your land.

I think it's a foregone conclusion that you need to attack GK ASAP, for all the reasons already stated. I would also consider trading Education for Drama/Banking or Banking/Compass (but don't trade if you can't get more than two techs) since HC will almost certainly go for Economics instead of Liberalism -- but this means you'll have to research Liberalism immediately. (Trading Edu to Genghis for Music or Compass would also be a good idea...just don't give him Guilds, for heaven's sake!!!!!)

Maybe it means I'll never graduate beyond Monarch level with Civ IV, but you know what? I'm finding Monarch is my level.

Good for you! I believe it's imperative for everyone to stick with the difficulty they're most comfortable with, forget all this bullplop about "My Level Is Higher Than Your Level Nyah Nyah!!" That's why I stick with Prince -- I've tried Monarch, but it's too much of a struggle to remain competitive. I prefer to have a dominant leading position in all my games, but at the same time I like when it's a challenge to maintain that dominant lead. And Prince suits that just fine.

 

[Tristam29]

If you really think Huyana Capac is building up for war, then you're going to want to be careful with those westernmost cities in any war you declare against Genghis Khan. Although it is unlikely since you are friendly, you are down in the power rankings and it's quite possible that he would attack you. Plus, you'll take a diplomacy hit with whichever one you don't declare war on. That might make it easier to fall into a dual front war.

Another reason to leave a few extra troops there is that even if the Incans declare war on Spain, you'll want to be able to take advantage of any lucky break in that war to backstab Capac.

 

[Melon Head]

My (very, very) limited understanding of the SE is that you don't try to run scientists and build and whip simultaneously. The SE's advantage is it's ability to switch between those three options. So what you do is you take a break and run scientists for a round. In that round dyou really do not get much built. You might slow-build a granary or a barracks here or there, but the focus is on either catching up in science or in getting a great person for a bee-ling move which you trade. Then you switch all those scientists OFF of being a scientists and either whip them or assign them to mines (I'd recommend mines), where they can then be productive and build ou an army. So in this case, after getting construction and machinery, you would have stopped running scientists in almost all of your cities (save perhaps a GP farm), and then build constantly. I would only have whipped your populace right before the war was about to start, to finish off the last wave of troops.

This does mean that you would have fallen behind in tech a bit while building your army. That's okay though, as you cannot be ahead in both tech and military simultaneously at the higher difficulty levels. Anyways, after putting together an army, you would then deploy it to accomplish a limited set of goals (look a Aelf's recent Immortal Challenges - he'll often declare war on Rome to take two or three cities. Not much). Meanshile you rebuild your populace and and decide whether the next round is a research, builing, or military round.

Again, most of this is a little theortical, as I haven't been able to pull of consistent wins at Monarch in any way, shape, or form, but I think that's how it works.

 

[Mu'min]

first off i like to say thanks for the great ALC series, it has really helped me improve my game.

secondly, a word of warning. Be careful if you are going up against someone with pikemen, they make a lethal offensive unit against mounted troops, and aren't just for defense. I am invading mongolia, under kublai, at the moment and have lost more than a few experienced camel archers to surprise attacks from pikemen. They would appear from nowhere kill a camel and dissappear again. I hunted them down and kiled them easily enough but at the end of the day i was losing camels and he was just losing pikemen . I will have to approach his next city with more caution - i just took his capital after a long fight, 6+ longbows are a tough combo.

Otherwise, go after GK, his land is closer to your capital and would be more useful than HC, but guard against HC doggie piling you. Then build the forbiden palace or the other one down near your border with HC before taking him on.

Great game good luck with it.

 

[CivSetä]

GK is obvious choice. But why did you gave him engineering!!!! You'll face pikes now! Better build some maces too...

I think HC won't attack you, IIRC only Cathy can attack when friendly. So there is war coming between HC and Izzy, which means that you don't worry about two front war. I would still hurry attacking HC too, kill GK fast and move on to your next opponent. HC will waste most of his units on Izzy, so his western cities are probably weakly defended. Just keep building more units, and don't wait MT. Let CRII trebs be your new immortals.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Giving away engineering to a target sounds bonkers to me too, 3 movement on roads for the defenders (6 for horsies).

 

[Porphyrius]

I 've been lurking the ALC threads quite a while, and i must say they are an excellent read.

I doubt poor implementation of SE is your problem here. More likely its poor focus. When one has war in his agenda, he'd better build up his military quickly to the level he can take a few cities. Building, research and whatelse will just have to wait a bit. By trying to balance everything out you let the AI take diplomatic inititive, choosing his wars etc before you are ready to act.

Also it seems folks around here are to attached to unit quality and forget quantity. Sure one can wait and beeline to armor or even nukes, but swords, catapults and so on do the job nicely and much earlier if you FOCUS on making enough of them. Adding variety with elephants, xbows, maces etc to your forces looks nice on paper, but theres all the time you spend researching and building "ivory" cities you waste.

Anyhow, at least you see the time for war has come. As for who, rewars scale with difficulty. HC is tougher, but offing him essentialy wins the game sooner or later. Double war fronts is definitely a worry with an agressive neighbor. The trick though is not to keep GK pleased, rather to bribe him to a war with Izzy. Last but not least consider this, borders with GK are about one city wide -and include defendable terain- while the border with HC is very extensive, thus impossible to bottleneck to a stale amd minimize being pillaged.

GK lacks iron for pikes but the road bonus and the trebs will likely cost you if you face him before gunpowder era. Just what happens when lack of focus gives the AI diplomatic initiative.​

 

[futurehermit]

I see my advice has continued to go by the wayside

HC has banking. That is a sign to me that an AI is heading toward Rifling. I imagine that HC will have rifling by the time you are ready to invade him with cavalry--if you delay until after attacking Genghis.

If you look at my recommendations throughout this thread, I recommended building relations with Genghis by any and all means possible while hitting HC before he gets to develop his empire.

Instead, we have HC friendly and Genghis a threat. You should really have been looking to be 2-on-1 with Genghis vs. HC. That would leave you with no threat to your continent.

Now HC continues to be a threat. I would say if you do attack Genghis (which I have been against since day 1) then you will be looking at trying to leverage a larger empire against HC, which can be difficult if he uses his financial trait to get a tech advantage on you. I would say you don't want to delay lightbulbing chemistry because you will need grens vs. HC. In fact I would say that is more of a priority than going for cav since genghis has pikes and HC will have rifling. Grens > all of that.

If you had been running a CE I would suggest taking out Genghis and going for space race while keeping HC at war with whoever, since the game is dragging on a bit for a domination win (where has been the warfare since early on?). But with SE and a large continent you really would have an easier time with domination, esp with HC as a competitor.

my 2 cents.

 

[Pe Ell]

I say it's time to kill a Khan.

I don't see why getting rid of HC is such a rush, he's not that far ahead and Izzy will be keeping him busy a while, hopefully... Better get rid of that big warmongerer at your back.

 

[Badesumofu]

Charismatic is rapidly becoming one of ym favorite traits, apart from being an excellent war-mongering trait, it's just fun to create super-units. While Agg may be a better choice for pumping out a large number of pretty-good units, Cha is the best for creating a small number of super-units. I've been meaning to try Cyrus for a while now, because Imp has a lot of synergy with Cha (and not much with anything else). To create true Super-Units, you need Warlords. The 20 XP is nice, but it's leadership, and the ability to upgrade the unit without going back down to 10 XP that really enable the creation of Super-Units.

Cha and Imp also both benefit from being constantly at war. The more you war, the more GGs and XPs you get. You're going to lose Warlords in the feild, and regularly if you use them effectively (only using them at 99.99% sort of defies the point of having them - just a decent unit could probably win that battle). It hurts to lose them, especialyl highly-promoted ones, and I find I have to slap myself as I reach for the reload option. The units that survive, though, can become truly amazing units. You will find yourself easily busting cities that would have looked impossible in the past. It may take balls of steal to risk a Super-Unit at moderate odds (like 90%, that's actually a very good chance of losing) but you'll be producing so many Super-Units, that you can afford to lose a few.

So, how does this affect the current situation? Attack GK first, as yuou've observed, you don't risk a 2-front war that way, which could be too much. Kill him, but do it fast. Find the top handful of units from the war, attatch GGs to the, give them leadership (and make sure to give them combat promos, getting him to combat VI is the surest way to ensure he has a long life-span, a combat VI unit has no major weakness) and then use your new super-army to bust up Huayna.

The trick will be to eliminate Gengis, (or at least neutralise him) before Huayna makes any inroads with Issy. You want to put him into a 2-front war, while ensuring that you're own Northern Front is mostly safe. There's a good chance he'll vassailse Gengis, so I'd seriously consider vassalising him yourself. It's not hard to get vassals to like you. Gift him lots of techs, resources, convert him to your religion, and build up mutual millitary struggle. You should be looking at +4 for 'fair' trade relations; +2 for resource supply; +1 for sharing technological advances; +4-6 for mutual millitary struggle; and the religion modifier, not sure how much Gengis cares about that.

You should be able to get Issy to talk as well if you can build up a mutual millitary struggle bonus with her, but I think she cares more about religion, so perhaps you'll just have to hope that she stays at war with HC. IIRC, she tends to be somewhat difficult to make peace with, so perhaps you can trap HC ino a two-front war for an extended period, and bust him up with GG-led Super-Units.

That's my view of your situation, and how I'd approach it, were I you. I'll be interested to see how the next rounds play out regardless, though.

Edit: re: SE, I never go into a game with a pre-meditated plan to go for an SE. If I get myself some high-food cities, and the 'mids, then I'll run a lot of specialists. Not because I've decided to go for an SE, but because they will get me more science then anything else. I also try to generate a lot of GSes early, to put acadamies in my main science cities, I find that makes a huge difference for the entire game. In nearly all my games, a high percentage of my beakers come from a small percentage of my cities. If I put acadamies in those cities, my science output increases substantially. Then again, if you're behind in tech at the time you get the GS, it makes more sense to lightbulb something no one has, and trade it to catch up. If you aleady have a lead, I find it makes more sense to ensure you hold on to it by building acadamies. Sorry, I'm now rambling. The point was, don't worry too much about the SE. Build cottages in places where they'll give the most beakers. My economies almost always end up as hybrids of some kind.

 

[Killroyan]

Looking forward to the KABOOM!!! Lots of high level units in qeue. This is going to be fun. First question however is, is the war with Izzy also redlined with HC. If not, then send him to attack Izzy and you can choose either to take out Khan or HC. If HC sends his stacks to Izzy you can backstab him hard, but always remember that you also have a backstabber in Khan. So I agree with the majority to take out GK first. You have to watch out for GK vassalising to HC because then you will have a full blown war on your hands. So either finish him quickly or vassalize him yourself.

Then when you get nationalism/military tradition/gunpowder run over HC with all your cavalry. Take that HC (although there is a chance that he will have riflemen also by then). Tough choices. Good luck.

 

[Porphyrius]

... Find the top handful of units from the war, attatch GGs to the, give them leadership (and make sure to give them combat promos, getting him to combat VI is the surest way to ensure he has a long life-span, a combat VI unit has no major weakness) and then use your new super-army to bust up Huayna. ...

No major weakness, but no strength either. For me the core philosophy of an offensive war is to take enemy cities quickly, so units with CR promotion and cover meant to go city busting are preferable IMHO. Most flexible and good all-around units end up used only as support if at all, and units built just in case are quite a waste of hammers and gold.



BTW i took a glance at the last save. Seems GK is willing to be bribed to war with Izzy - and that also looks to be the only war bribe available to you right now Sisiutil. Bribing so is highly advised and be quick, GK doesnt mean friendship with those sieges, more likely bussines...

Unforunately, both GK and HC appear to have (well protected in their flanks) iron and Pikes - 3 square moving on roads Pikes mind you... I guess you have to depend almost exclusively on trebs and maces for city busting. HC land looks way appealing to pass up. My advice is to strike swiftly at HC prioritizing MachuPichu and Huamanga plus pillaging the border iron so he falls back on longbows and sieges. He'd also lose half his heavy production cities. The drawback of course is quite enormous borders encouraging pillaging.

 

[Sisiutil]

I thought I explained the bit about Engineering. Khan was likely researching it on his own, and if I DOW'd, he'd bee-line it anyway. And at the time, his power rating was much higher than mine (it still is, but that will change in about 3-5 turns).

Okay. Just as an experiment, I went back to an auto-save. I converted to Hinduism as I did above, then Christian Khan showed up asking for Engineering. Again. I'll say this for him, he's persistent. This time, I turned him down. BOOM! He declared war immediately, and this was when I was just starting to put units in the build queues.

Long story short, I really don't think I had much choice at the time. Believe me, it was one of the longest, hardest stares I've ever given a civ screen. Regardless, suffice it to say that I wasn't planning to attack Khan (yes, I've decided he's the logical target) with Knights alone even if he didn't have Pikes. Except when you have a huge tech advantage (such as Cavalry versus Longbowmen), mounted units are not the greatest for taking cities. Knights are great for protecting stacks, pillaging, anti-pillaging, and as counters to Crossbowmen. For taking cities, I'll be relying on Macemen and Trebuchets--SOP.

I'll try to play and post the next round tonight.

 

[Kev]

I've been after Khan since earlier, but despite even your last post I'm starting to waver in favor of HC....

Yes, HC is friendly now, but if you declare on Khan I think you'll take a bit of a hit diplomatically since they are so pleased with one another. Further, if HC declares on Izzy, then he could probably shop around for some help - perhaps forcing you to declare on her as well. You could fight a phony war to keep him on your side, I guess... Still, if he is distracted on one front why not bribe GK to hit Izzy and go for HC. Perhaps with fewer troops on your side of the territory you might be able to pillage his metals. Ah well, I think either target is legitimate and will net some long-term gains.

With regard to techs, I know everyone likes to get Cavs on board, but in my most recent Monarch game I came across an interesting gambit. I found that I was well ahead in terms of getting Liberalism, so I branched off to discover something else before I had to finish it. I went with gunpowder (quicker to get to than Nationalism and more useful in the short term), and so when I finished Liberalism I was able to receive CHEMISTRY for free. Yes, cavs are nice - especially with your current veteran horse units. However, you will need Music, Gunpowder, Nationalism and then Military Tradition to get there. Getting Chemistry so quickly allowed me to field Grens right away, and Chem also opened up steel immediately. Yes, it meant pushing back the date for cavalry a fair amount, but having quick grens along with fairly quick cannons was great. It also meant pushing back Nationalism for drafting, so keep that in mind as well.

I'm not sure if there is something I'm missing or a tech you don't have that would allow this, but it was a pretty good deal. Worked great for the Vikings and I was able to upgrade a host of amphibious, CR Berzerkers. Perhaps not so great here but still an option.

 

[civ4legs]

With regard to techs, I know everyone likes to get Cavs on board, but in my most recent Monarch game I came across an interesting gambit. I found that I was well ahead in terms of getting Liberalism, so I branched off to discover something else before I had to finish it. I went with gunpowder (quicker to get to than Nationalism and more useful in the short term), and so when I finished Liberalism I was able to receive CHEMISTRY for free. Yes, cavs are nice - especially with your current veteran horse units. However, you will need Music, Gunpowder, Nationalism and then Military Tradition to get there. Getting Chemistry so quickly allowed me to field Grens right away, and Chem also opened up steel immediately. Yes, it meant pushing back the date for cavalry a fair amount, but having quick grens along with fairly quick cannons was great. It also meant pushing back Nationalism for drafting, so keep that in mind as well.

I have done the same thing a couple times, and it works VERY well (assuming that you can see ALL the civs in the game, and can ensure that you don't get beaten to Lib while you detour). Plus, I invariably have a bunch of macemen with CR that I want to upgrade to grens, and I find grenadiers FAR more useful than cavalry for taking cities, especially with the cannons that follow so close behind

 

[Hero]

I always go for Chemistry if I can. In this game, though, Cavalry upgraded from Immortals may be more 'Cyrus-ish'.

 

[Sisiutil]

I always go for Chemistry if I can. In this game, though, Cavalry upgraded from Immortals may be more 'Cyrus-ish'.

Perhaps if I'd done more warring and had more veteran Immortals. In this game, the Liberalism/Chemistry gambit is looking very attractive. The pre-requisites for Chemistry are Gunpowder and Engineering, so I have the latter. Having both Guilds and Education would make Gunpowder a little cheaper, and a few Musketmen wouldn't suck either.

At the moment, I can't check the game--I can't remember how much longer before I get my next GS to use towards Education.

On a side note, regarding using GS to help lightbulb Liberalism--that strikes mes as a risky gambit in certain games; you have to bypass Machinery, which means leaving aside Engineering. Given the AI's love of mounted units, I'm not sure how wise it is to not be able to build the best pre-gunpowder counter to them. Not to mention those handy Trebs and the +1 road movement. I'm not saying I'd never do it, but the situation would have to be right--basically, if the likelihood of war is almost nil. Such as if there's one religion on the whole continent, or I have the continent to myself by then.

 

[futurehermit]

Chemistry is the best choice imho. Cav are going to have a short lifespan with HC en route to rifling, if he's not there already. Long story short, you've left HC alone for too long. Now even if you hit Genghis first you're going to face a difficult showdown with HC, who is going to continue to tech well (Issy is no serious threat to him).

It is possible that you could win space race with your land + Chinese land + Mongolian land > HC's land.

 

[CivSetä]

I agree warring HC with grenadiers, he is probably close to the rifling then. GK has to be eliminated first, DoW is only a question of time otherwise, IMHO.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

In hindsight, crushing HC should've been an earlier priority, but I'm afraid our chestnuts are already in the fire. Declaring on Huayna now will make Genghis even angrier, and the rich and more advanced HC will have no shortage of incentives to get Genghis in the war on HIS side, which would be the worst case scenario. With Izzy and being the friendly chap he is, HC is unlikely(IMO) to declare on you, but I believe it was you yourself who said in one of these threads that a HC left in peace will grow into a huge problem. I just think it's too late to nip it in the bud. Think of it this way....you'll be facing what promises to be a challenging and epic clash.

Oh, and be sure to get some caravels out when you have time. You'll need trade partners to keep up with HC...