Capitulate or destroy Kublai?

[5tephen]

I'm a fairly consistent immortal player but yet to win deity or even be close. This is my best deity effort so far but I'm uncertain what to do next with regards to my war with Kublai Khan. Any advice would be really welcome including to tell me I've already lost but I'm yet to realise it!

The situation is that I was in an early war with Brennus with a partially succesful immortal rush. Brennus vassaled to Kublai after the war. AIs haven't been very friendly to each other so tech trading has been limited. The disadvantage of my early war was that I was blocked in on a peninsula behind closed borders and didn't meet Asoka until late who would probably have been my best trading partner.

Lacking iron for curraisers, I libbed steel having built an army of elephants and trebuchets. Bribed Isabella on Kublai and Tokugawa on Isabella and eliminated Brennus. Saladin joined in against Kublai and helpfully wiped out his entire stack minus 3 catapults in his capital allowing me to take it with 3 elephants. At this point everyone else has made peace, my economy is in ruins and I have the choice of capitulating Kublai or wiping him out.

I'm leaning towards capitulation of Kublai and giving him back Karakorum to prevent having to garrison half my army there to keep it from revolting. After that I was thinking of upgrading my trebuchets and seeing if I could take Saladin down rifles and all with an ultimate goal of Asoka building the UN - priority techs would therefore be biology and communism - followed by rifling. Would aim to get banking +/- calendar for peace with Kublai.

Is my plan realistic? Should I eliminate Kublai? I've attached my current save and the starting save in case anybody is interested.

Spoiler Screenshot of map :

Spoiler Units built :

 

[5tephen]

Hoping to have some time to play on on this this evening. Any thoughts?

Can anyone at a similar level be tempted? @dankok8 @Jellybug

 

[Fippy]

Good plan, you already have enuf cities.
Get RP from Sal for Steel (after banking from Kublai), gift to Kublai and have him research Rifling for you.
Meanwhile you can focus on getting as much gold as possible, and with Rifles + Cannons you should have no trouble cos there are no runaway AIs.
I would not attack anyone before, no need to put yourself at risk before having solid defenders for your cannons.

 

[5tephen]

Thanks. I wouldn't have thought of trading steel as don't want to face cannons but as you say, better to protect my own cannons with rifles.

I'll update on my success or failure later!

 

[dankok8]

Cap Kublai because it seems all of his remaining cities are culturally pressured by other neighbors. If you don't keep large garrisons they will flip over anyways. Better to have them under your vassal. Karakorum and Beshbalik will be under serious cultural pressure from Saladin so garrison some units there and whip Theatres and Libraries when the city comes out of revolt. Anyways, your game is as good as won. With 14 cities, you can run over any remaining civ with your production edge. To help fix the economy disband some old units like Warriors, Immortals, and Galleys/Triremes. Spain is teching well but is behind in military tech right now.

As for playing the map, I don't like playing a spoiled map where I already saw someone play through. If you want to post a fresh map I think we can all play!

 

[5tephen]

First deity victory...

Spoiler :

After so many hours battling deity, I'm surprised how easy it was from the point of my last save. Gifted all my elephants to Kublai figuring he'd upgrade them to Cuirraissiers/Cavalry saving me upkeep costs in the interim and figuring I couldn't afford MT. Traded for RP as suggested. I got Kublai to tech biology though so traded for this and self-teched rifling.

Asoka started plotting and realising I was in a militarily strong position I changed my mind on diplomatic victory and went for conquest. I've used them before but hadn't previously realised quite how strong communism and biology are - massive supply line of cannons and riflemen meant Asoka, Saladin, Isabella and finally Tokugawa fell with ease.

I've still got a long, long way to go to master this game but over a decade on from starting, I'm really thrilled to win a deity game. Thanks to everyone on this site for all the help so far - if you've posted even semi-regularly over the last 3 years or so I've read and tried to learn from your input.