ALC Game 33: Korea / Wang Kon

[Benginal]

Round 9: 1240 AD to 1826 AD (turns 184-283)

Spoiler :

The point of the ALCs is to make the most out of the leader's traits and unique stuff. We've already used the Hwacha to great effect, so now it's time to use Seowons. That could mean late war or space! Suspense! (It's space). I've got the holy cities for Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism.



I was busy spreading around religion and building infrastructure when I got this request.



Why not? Toku can't build ships! I'd keep an eye on it and make sure Zara wasn't taking too many cities. But in the meantime, it's still good to have friends.



Teeeej Maheeeeej



A shot of the empire:



I got a lucky Great Engineer! This was good news since I was planning on incorporating Mining Inc. Corps and large empires work well together.



I think Mining Inc eventually gave my cities +18 hammers.

Going for Biology first for trade bait (not that it would be useful for that) and super farms for faster city growth.



End game civics:



A fairly intuitive civic setting given the number of cottages in my empire, the number of cities getting trade routes and the plan for corps, and the high number of religions I've got going on.

Assembly Line and then Railroad:



Assembly Line for power in the cities and Railroad for better mines and Mining Inc.

Built the Statue of Liberty just for fun.



Wealth building to keep teching high and a few banks so I could build Wall Street. How are the AI doing? Spoiler: (really bad).



I started a Great Person powered golden age and tried for a Great Merchant.





This was a major weakness in my game. I didn't have any cities with pure GM points or indeed enough GP point production. This meant that I missed the GM and therefore was never able to incorporate Sushi. It also meant I wasn't able to start another golden age. I got a bunch of Great Engineers which I settled in Spaceship Part cities. But better Great Person point management would have really helped this game's time.

Rocketry next for Apollo:



Mining Inc:



Wall Street + Mining Inc. + Judaism Shrine city.



Apollo Program in the Ironworks capital.



Superconductors for laboratories:



Broadway:



Hit Musicals were useful. There were still some mining inc. resources hanging around that I hadn't been able to trade for. The musicals gave me the ability to vacuum up those resources and take the rest of the AIs gold.

Spaceship part blitz:







lol:

 

[Benginal]

Post Mortem

Spoiler :

Graphs:



Short version -- I had more cities than everybody else.







Unique Unit: The Hwacha was, as expected, not super. It's only better than the base catapult when it's attacking melee units, which it hardly ever is. I think the city defenders were melee units maybe two or three times. The catapult is already very good, so the unique unit isn't really a super benefit. It's a shame, because the War Wagon, the Korean unique unit in Age of Empires, is super.

Unique Building: Excellent, if applicable. I made it applicable by going for space, which gave the Seowon many turns to be better than the university it replaces. But this particular game could have been over at engineering in which case the Seowon would have been irrelevant.

Traits: Protective actually turned out to be pretty useful. I really was able to not worry at all about border cities. And backstabbing was never a concern, but had it been, quick walls and longbows mean than it's really hard to lose cities. Financial is a one trick pony. But it's a pony that's useful in every game. This game was no exception and I build enough cottages to take advantage of it.

Wang Kon: Overall a very middling leader. He never really got in my way, but he was hardly game changing.

 

[Mack_Jagger]

He he, what? Did I read this correctly? Was there a 3,5 year gap between the post in this thread? Kudos for finishing it though. I miss these great reads. Everybody has left for the new shiny toys in Civ V and BE.