ALC Game #22 Take 2: Arabs/Saladin

[Scarredroman]

Can we avoid using civ cliches for one round? Calling a city with one food resource "tailor made for a GPP farm" is okay because exaggeration and enthusiasm are good covers for actual understanding and competance.

That would be the prospect of 6 farmed flood plains. I don't know what else you'd call a pop 7 city with the potential for 31 food and 8 specialists? 'Tailor made GPP farm' is not an exaggeration nor an expression of enthusiasm.

 

[siggboy]

Sorry, but you got Suryavarman all wrong. He is a religious fanatic. And he's very aggressive, and can dow you with a huge stack in the BCs. He's low peaceweight warmonger without warmonger traits. He's a backstabber who will attack at pleased. He's also impossible to keep happy.

In my second attempt at shadowing Joao the Restless, Sury was my best buddy for the entire game. We were like this: crosses fingers. At some point, he loved me more than his own vassal which he had colonized and spun off earlier (that was without having a mutual military struggle even). I was at +23 with him and his colony only +22... that situation reoccured a several times later (at lower absolute diplo numbers because I had to deny him a few favours).

Sury is either your worst nightmare or your best friend as it seems. Of course, a shared religion is a must, and as you've correctly stated you cannot afford to deny him (m)any requests.

Zara Yaqob is relatively easy to get along with.

If you end up having to decide, I would befriend Zara -- he can be a great trading partner, almost as good as Mansa. Apart from that I agree 100% with your portrait of Zara, it matches very well my own experiences with that leader.

 

[slobberinbear]

Ooh. No early rush resources would be a problem, wouldn't it.

I'm thinking that both war and REX are called for in this game, because I think I would want to REX right where Roosevelt would REX. To pull it off, it would call for a VERY early end for Roosevelt, and some serious attention paid to the economy shortly thereafter. The protective trait will be a major contributer here, because I envision stretching the defenses a little thin while building all of the necessary things to support a 5-7 city early empire.

I am not so sure about an early axe war on this map, with these neighbors.

We are a good 20-25 turns from Bronze Working and have no idea where the copper is. Even assuming we could settle a city near copper and hook it up, we're a good 40-50 turns from being able to build our first axeman. By that time, FDR likely has three cities at Emperor, and we're sinking our production into military instead of workers and settlers.

Sisiutil met Zara very fast, as was noted above. That suggests he is closer than we think. Arabia needs to focus on expansion (with closed borders, too) to cut off FDR and Zara. With the Great Wall to cover our backside from barbs, we are freed up to chop and whip out settlers and a minimum defense force, at least until 1000 BC. Early war will probably mean getting out-REXed by Zara.

 

[JTMacc99]

Zara showed up on turn 6 and Roosevelt's capital is at least 10 tiles north, as far as I can tell from your screen shot. So there's no way that he's north of Roosevelt (plus, there's a lot of jungle north, so his scout couldn't have been moving 2 tiles/turn through that). He's likely east or west (not sure where his scout originally showed up), and very close by.

His scout showed up 1 East of the Dye right above the corn. This would put his capital forming almost a perfect triangle with our capital and Washington somewhere NE of the gems.


My experiences with Zara on my own continent have shown him to be serious threat. He grabs a lot of land, he builds nice cities, he techs quickly, and will even declare war on you for more land. The thing is, especially with shared faith, he stays friendly or pleased with you even if you delcared war on him once. This seems to keep him willing to trade techs but his asking prices go way, way up once he sees you as a threat. So, by the time of gunpowder units, it will take a very large army to clear him off your continent and this has bogged me down more than once. (On the other hand, his capital is often wonderiffic by that point in the game.)


Sooo, maybe he's the one who needs to die first. That means, leave the worker, scout the Zulu.

 

[DMOC]

I have to say that I myself would steal the worker - Roosevelt is your easiest and closest target and it would speed up your early game improvements.

Tough luck on getting Zara and Sury. I don't know if anyone else mentioned it, but unlike what you said, Suryavarmann II is very aggressive (he is like Montezuma only techs at 4x the speed) and will have a huge army and tech well and grab lots of land due to the Creative trait. Zara Yaqob, while he isn't as much a threat militarily, he is probably the best AI in the game due to his rapid expansion and high teching speed. My advice would be to just get Roosevelt out of the way as soon as you do some expanding and then takeon Suryavarmann II since he will just be a pain in the neck later.

PS: I f you want an example on how competent the Zara AI is, I decided to run a pangea game and stick a bunch of aggressive civs and Zara together (emperor difficulty) since I was SICK of him constantly being ahead of me in every aspect of the game. Well, I bribed Genghis and Montezuma to war with Zara and also Alexander declared war on Zara, so I thought, Zara wouldn't last very long. But I was wrong--Zara Yaqob managed to fend off a 3 on 1 attack and even teched faster than me in the process. He had 5 cities and I had 7.

 

[Melon Head]

That would be the prospect of 6 farmed flood plains. I don't know what else you'd call a pop 7 city with the potential for 31 food and 8 specialists? 'Tailor made GPP farm' is not an exaggeration nor an expression of enthusiasm.

Actually, that doesn't make a very phenomenal GPP farm. Its principal problem is that it requires too many pop points to work food tiles to get large and generate GPP quickly. A city with 2 fish and a corn/wheat is singificantly better because it can get to the appropriate size very early and then run x specialists and 3 non-specialists. That's a lot easier to reach in the early game, both in terms of time to grow and health/happy cap.

I also always find it's faster to build the requisite library/NE in my GPFs if they're not flood-plain based, as well, just because I can start working hills faster.

Lets compare - 2 fish (+4 food after a lighthouse), and 1 wheat (+3 food if not irrigated). Add the city square (+2 food).
That gets us, at pop 9, 3 workers and 6 specialists, +1 food for a grass hill or growth. If we run 4 workers (1 on a grasslands farm), we can get 7 specialists at size 11.

The flood plain city has 31 food with 7 workers, meaning at size 15 it has 7 workers and 8 specialists. The extra workers are a lot of overhead.

I bet I can get the 3-food city to size 9-11 much faster than the flood plain city can get to size 15, even if I'm one specialist down by comparison. Of course, the size 10 city could work 2 grasslands farms to get to size 13 and 7 specialists, but I'd probably use surplus food/happy for production. It's far rarer to find a 3-food city, so perhaps a 2-food city is a better comparison, but I'd think a 2-food city is a decent GPF, not a tailor-made GPF. The 3-food GPF is also much more steady in the face of war weariness, because it's smaller and so more likely to be below your happy-caps, giving it room to stay working in a war. This is also nice because this step in the game is usually where my nearest enemy has built the SoZ.

The reason getting the GPF up quickly is important is that GPFs are largely useful to generate lots of scientists for a liberalism race, meaning they need to be up and running after you get literature/CoL, but before you get liberalism. That's a relatively narrow window if you're rushing to lib for a nationalism/gunpowder run or something similar.

 

[oldsaxon]

I add my voice to the call to REX (and leave the worker). However, DO NOT ASSUME that the AIs are all to your North. They could just as easily be to your East or West, or someone else entirely could be lurking to the SW. To solve the latter problem, scout. To solve the former, aim to settle the pigs/gems city *first* and another to your West second, *both* before any wonders or any serious military. Chop them.

That way, you've not only blocked the AIs from the South of the continent, you've forged East and West as well in case they're not quite where we suspected. You can backfill later.

 

[Lord Chambers]

That would be the prospect of 6 farmed flood plains. I don't know what else you'd call a pop 7 city with the potential for 31 food and 8 specialists? 'Tailor made GPP farm' is not an exaggeration nor an expression of enthusiasm.

Au contraire mon frere, it is an exaggeration, though a mild one. The city you're proposing has 8 specialists at size 15(7+8). Certainly that is a very good GPP farm. However, how many turns does it require to grow to that size, at how many turns into the game until you have the required happiness and health boosters? Meanwhile occupying a very valuable terrain that could be used very effectively for a cottage, excuse the cliche, monster. Clearly, if one was to tailor-make a GPP farm he would have as much food concentrated on as few tiles as possible. This keeps overhead of non-specialist population low so that more specialists can be supported at any given level of happiness and health while also increasing the efficiency of whipping the few buildings that a hammer-poor GPP farm needs.

Specifically, a city with a fish, pigs, and irrigated wheat would support seven specialists at population 10, tens of turns earlier, while a nearby city could utilize unused tiles around this city with much overlap (in case they're really sweet). I don't need to mention that such a city is relatively rare. More commonly a player has to make due with a less efficient GPP generator. And the city you propose would be one such city. I grant you it may be the best site for a GPP farm on our particular map, but that's not what you said it was, you said it was tailor-made.

Which implies gee willickers, how swell.

I'm really not trying to be your semantics parole officer. But since you responded I figured I'd offer my view in the hopes that someone might find the discussion illuminating somehow.

I also don't mean to take issue with what your comment specifically, but rather enthusiasm and exaggeration in general. I could be the only one to perceive this, but recently people (perhaps only one poster, I don't make lists or anything) have taken to saying the situation, especially early on in the ACL rounds, "screams for _______" or somesuch. Many times, the person is not screaming for some basic principle of a successful approach to civ but rather something completely obvious like "we should build wonders while conquering opponents and settling cities" or something completely wrong like "we should use first strike archers to rush, then research agriculture to rebuild our economy." Yeah lets do it!

Well, I bribed Genghis and Montezuma to war with Zara and also Alexander declared war on Zara, so I thought, Zara wouldn't last very long. But I was wrong--Zara Yaqob managed to fend off a 3 on 1 attack and even teched faster than me in the process. He had 5 cities and I had 7.

Zara Yaqob always gets to Oregon before you.

 

[Sisiutil]

Thanks for the input, I'll try to play and post the next round tonight.

It might be early to dotmap, since we don't know where any of the strategic resources are located. Nevertheless, it's a useful exercise, so long as we all realize that as the resources and more tiles are revealed those cities will likely have to shift.

I recently played an off-line game where my second city had no less than 4 gold mines in its fat cross, but no food resource other than several farmed flood plains. It took awhile to grow large enough to work all of the gold mines, but that city certainly kept my economy afloat. There were scattered gold resources for other cities that also kept them paying for themselves long before CoL and Currency for courthouses and markets. All of which is saying that the city sites to the south will indeed be priorities.

Speaking of priorities, I have several: more exploration, expansion, and probably the Great Wall. All of which means I probably will leave the Settler alone, so I can focus on peaceful pursuits for a little longer.

 

[carl corey]

The problem I see with settling south first is that the border between you and Roosevelt will be all around your capital if he settles towards you. I'd rather limit that with cities east and west of it. The gold mines in the south mean you can afford more than the normal number of cities for this age, but if you'll settle the south first you're likely to miss (some of) the northern cities. On the other hand, blocking the south then settling it will give you a good enough territory to tech peacefully until you get a significant advantage to launch an attack.

By the way, the Great Wall means you don't have to go out of your way to claim strategical resources. You can easily get out a few cities with only a warrior as "defense" even if they don't claim copper or horses. Worry about them later.

 

[johnny_rico]

If in fact, zara and sury are north of FDR, he will be a great buffer for the time being. Being the only civ south of the equator yields all the freedom you need for expansion, it's doubtful anyone will march into the jungle very early to settle but it won't take them long. Iron working is going to be important. Build the Great Wall to fend off the barbs and the pyramids to generate amazing priests with the madrassa.

With the GW and the pyramids, Mecca will be a melting pot of GPP. While a great prophet will be nice, a great scientist to bulb philosophy is very important. The angkor wat is a great wonder for Saladin and if you found Taoism, you'll have your religion and should buy time to build the A_Wat because other AI's will not be as interested in philosophy as a technology. Plus, it opens up pacifism (pretty much a win-win-win situation).

You've also got nice tech tree options as well. You could head south down the metal casting (gold and gems), guilds (UU), and banking (mercantilism) line or the usual calendar, currency, code of laws, civil service --> liberalism. I would try to be as friendly as possible with zara and put all EPs towards him to see what he is researching. He techs fast so if you take a different route, there should be a lot of trades available. He will make gunpowder a priority, it's all a matter of knowing which route he is taking to get there (so you can put your beakers elsewhere).

Anyway, the map is top notch and there is really no need to force any aggression for the time being. I'm not certain about cottaging the capital though. There are gold, gems, and alot of rivers laying around. Plus you'll have access to priests and merchants via caste system. If good relations can be maintained between everybody on the continent, there should be a lot of cash for trade available as well. In running SEs as of late, I've come to find they don't need to be financed by constant conquering. The other thing with your capital is it can a serious hammer machine in the late game with watermills and workshops (IW too). It's always hard paving over towns and if you go with early farms, it will lend itself to more specialists. If for some reason, you don't build the pyramids, the SE may be abandoned but with all the forest, it shoudn't be a problem.

 

[Abegweit]

Speaking of priorities, I have several: more exploration, expansion, and probably the Great Wall. All of which means I probably will leave the Settler alone, so I can focus on peaceful pursuits for a little longer.

This is not an either/or situation. If you want the GW, grab the worker. It will help compensate for your concentration on wonders instead of REXing (not to mention for development; there's a lot of work to do around the capital especially if you prioritise the stone). By upping your power rating, the wonder will help mend relations with Rosie. There's nice synergy there. He's a forgiving chap after all.

The best reason for refusing the worker is the one that Olodune mentioned - direct the man towards wonders instead of military. However, this tactic never seems to work out in my games. Sometimes he goes military anyway and he never seems to build the right ones even if he doesn't. Your call.

In either case, definitely get the Mids. Not doing so with stone in your capital is simply wrong. Especially as the region cries for an SE.

 

[Tyrant Roger]

I second the following strategy: steal worker, hook up stone while building settler, chop Stonehenge, chop GW, settler, chop Mids.

Rex the south, east, and west. Play nice with all until you get calendar and construction and go to war v. Roosevelt.

 

[Sisiutil]

The problem I see with settling south first is that the border between you and Roosevelt will be all around your capital if he settles towards you. I'd rather limit that with cities east and west of it. The gold mines in the south mean you can afford more than the normal number of cities for this age, but if you'll settle the south first you're likely to miss (some of) the northern cities. On the other hand, blocking the south then settling it will give you a good enough territory to tech peacefully until you get a significant advantage to launch an attack.

By the way, the Great Wall means you don't have to go out of your way to claim strategical resources. You can easily get out a few cities with only a warrior as "defense" even if they don't claim copper or horses. Worry about them later.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I'd be settling south first. I definitely see the wisdom in settling east and west to block off the AI's expansion into that southern territory.

The Great Wall would definitely fit into this strategy, as it would allow me to focus on expansion with minimal attention to military at first; meanwhile, the AI civs should be too busy dealing with the initial barb rush to worry about me.

Eventually, though, I'll need protection, most likely from Sury. And directing the barbs at the AI may mean that they have higher-promoted units. Remember, too, that the AI is much more fond of the Cover promotion than humans; this has implications if I'm to rely on Protective Archers/Longbows...

 

[Polobo]

I would forget the GW and focus on expansion to the south. Leave Roosevelt alone and hope that Sury and Zara are somewhat near to him. Like others have said Sury is a zealot and Zara is going to own over half the landmass if you and Roosevelt get distracted.

Pyramids is an excellent wonder but make sure you get a couple of cities founded first that can pickup on REX duties. If you decide to leave unsettled land to the south another AI (either Zara - likely - or maybe one you haven't met yet) WILL SETTLE IT and you will have to deal with two fronts and additional cultural pressure. I would rather setup for rapid peaceful REX on this map and then hold off on the settling if warranted.

While the cities Roosevelt settles for you may not be optimal if he does decide to expand south then you can take them without much effort. If he expands north, and Zara is up there, then he will be helping you keep Zara in check with cities you otherwise couldn't found yourself. Expand east/west/south, leaving room for Roosevelt north of you if he needs it; let him prepare the land and take it once you and him both have calendar.

So, focus on settlers and escorts while scouting to find the shores and the AI then turn it back over to the group think once we know more about what kind of land the AI has available to them.

 

[carl corey]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I'd be settling south first. I definitely see the wisdom in settling east and west to block off the AI's expansion into that southern territory.

The Great Wall would definitely fit into this strategy, as it would allow me to focus on expansion with minimal attention to military at first; meanwhile, the AI civs should be too busy dealing with the initial barb rush to worry about me.

Eventually, though, I'll need protection, most likely from Sury. And directing the barbs at the AI may mean that they have higher-promoted units. Remember, too, that the AI is much more fond of the Cover promotion than humans; this has implications if I'm to rely on Protective Archers/Longbows...

Roger that. It seems like we're on the same page. Can't wait for the update!

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Has anyone ever seen an AI send his garrisson archers to attack your capital after you've stolen a worker? Hell, they won't even attack a fortified warrior without 3 or so extra ones. Steal the worker and don't pretend that your early game relations with him really factor in to any sort of Soviet buffer strategy or whether you found a religion or something later on.

Yes, I have absolutely seen this happen. It's not immediate, but if you choke them long enough and they're not 100% surrounded they'll send an archer stack of death at you. By the time it happens you should have bronze working for axes so it's not always a huge deal, but it could be annoying if you're metalless.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

In my second attempt at shadowing Joao the Restless, Sury was my best buddy for the entire game. We were like this: crosses fingers. At some point, he loved me more than his own vassal which he had colonized and spun off earlier (that was without having a mutual military struggle even). I was at +23 with him and his colony only +22... that situation reoccured a several times later (at lower absolute diplo numbers because I had to deny him a few favours).

Sury is either your worst nightmare or your best friend as it seems. Of course, a shared religion is a must, and as you've correctly stated you cannot afford to deny him (m)any requests.

Yeah, things like that can happen sometimes. I had a game where Kublai and I were the tech leaders, miles ahead of everyone else because he was friendly towards me and we kept trading every new thing either of us teched. Kublai is another civ i almost never try to befriend because like the Alien freak, he also gets -2 from every denial, and fortunately he didn't send too many requests my way. Plus same religion and favorite civic bonuses helped.

 

[brianb1974]

If you haven't exploited the AI's complete inability to deal with a choke, you should try it. The benefits (free workers and easier growth for you) totally outweigh the drawbacks. Don't feel compelled to mount an axerush or change your strategy in any way. Just:

1. Steal the worker and send him to your capital.
2. Take the warrior out exploring for a bit to try to get him (or the other one you made) to woodsman 2. Wolf attacks are 1 free xp, and lions and panthers that attack you on forests are pretty much a free xp. If you feel daring, you can get 3xp for attacking a lion. Risk this, of course, only with a virgin warrior, not one that already has 3-4 xp.
3. Go back to Washington and steal more workers. The AI doesn't understand woodsman 2. His workers will run home if you get next to them, but they'll stay put if you're 2 away, so you just skip through the forest and grab them. Most often, the AI won't even mount a counterattack.
4. That guerilla 2 unit can just camp there and keep stealing workers. You never have to build another one again. You might even have to start executing them if they cost you money and you have nothing for them to do. Camp the warrior on a forest that can see the capital. Every time a worker gets made, take it. The AI won't send the worker out if you are adjacent to the capital, so back off to a spot that neither next to the capital nor next to the tile that the worker is going to go improve (but with forest-assisted access to that tile).
5. The AI will not mount a counterattack for a long, long time unless you build a city right smack next to Washington. He'll just be your b1tch as long as you see fit to keep him alive.

Some people might call this an exploit. They're probably correct.

If you loosen the choke and let a worker live for a while, the AI will make a settler. Even with a warrior, you can usually scare it into staying in the capital (stupid AI). Or you can let it go out and found another city for you.

 

[Bandobras Took]

If you haven't exploited the AI's complete inability to deal with a choke, you should try it. Some people might call this an exploit. They're probably correct.

And therefore you might create a game for the "All Exploit Challenge."