CC Skipper I: Mineless Khan

[carl corey]

Welcome to the Skipper series, comprising six games that show the effects of completely skipping one of the first-level techs: Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism and Mining. In order to avoid random chances of getting these techs I'm going to disable huts in all of them. "Internet" is out of the question too, although I'm not sure whether I can even reach it in most of these games! The original (short) discussion was inspired by the one in Mad Scientist's RPC summary and can be found in the Skipping techs thread.

The first game will skip one of the most needed techs, Mining. It might not look like much at first, but it means that production won't come from mines, chopping OR slavery. To make things even out a bit I asked RRRaskolnikov to check the map for nearby horses, so hordes of Keshiks it is, for the leader is the mighty mineless Genghis Khan.

And here is the starting position:

One additional rule: I will have to pillage all mines before the cities that have them in the fat cross come out of revolt.

I'll attach the save if anyone wants to shadow this. It's a Monarch, Pangaea, Standard size, Epic speed game.

 

[madscientist]

WOW!!!! Even I would not have tried this! You understand you have to basically conquer the world with Kesiks and catapults until Gunpowder. And only then can you get Muskets as the top military units.

So.........

No trebs (Engineering requires Machinery which requires MC which requires BW)
No Knights (You need iron)
No Melee units (You need mining)
No Crossbows (again iron)
No rifling (You need Printing Press, which needs Machinery)

On the positive side you have the Mighty Khan. Do him proud!

 

[Soirana]

g3 muskets are not bad either. I would have gone with unrestricted... probably charismatic with Mongolia...

Signing in anyway.

Edit: I made some thinking - hitting someone with Mids is top priority...

 

[UWHabs]

Sounds like fun. Can't wait to see how this goes.

 

[javidbing]

WOW!!!! Even I would not have tried this! You understand you have to basically conquer the world with Kesiks and catapults until Gunpowder. And only then can you get Muskets as the top military units.

So.........

No trebs (Engineering requires Machinery which requires MC which requires BW)
No Knights (You need iron)
No Melee units (You need mining)
No Crossbows (again iron)
No rifling (You need Printing Press, which needs Machinery)

On the positive side you have the Mighty Khan. Do him proud!

you can build cities on resources so you if you have a well placed iron you can settle on it for extra units.

 

[r_rolo1]

Or use quarries .... masonry does not require mining

 

[Soirana]

you can build cities on resources so you if you have a well placed iron you can settle on it for extra units.

I would settle even crap placed city to be honest. But you need technology to get resource

 

[futurehermit]

Figures that you would get a start that screams BW

Should be an interesting one, for sure.

 

[UWHabs]

Unfortunately without BW and iron working, you won't even see where iron or copper are, except for those mysterious grassland mines in ennemy territory...

 

[Phil725]

I would advise going the standard Mongolia path. AH, HBR, archery, take out as many AI's as possible.

I'm not sure that you'll be as limited offensively as it appears. Can you still trade for iron without IW? If you can, you can use all mounted units throughout all of the eras. For someone like me who uses nothing but mounted units anyway, your not limited too much.

If you can't trade for iron, then I would just beeline RP for lumbermills and rifles after keshiks are obsolete. I would suggest cavalry/spies, since rifles aren't great without at least trebs.

 

[Soirana]

I am afraid lumbermills out of question too. [Stops whining and goes playing]

 

[javidbing]

I would settle even crap placed city to be honest. But you need technology to get resource

OH yeah im a complete dolt No mining no BW/IW, I read Mineless Khan as meaning can't build mines, should probably read the OP posts more often

 

[UWHabs]

I would advise going the standard Mongolia path. AH, HBR, archery, take out as many AI's as possible.

I'm not sure that you'll be as limited offensively as it appears. Can you still trade for iron without IW? If you can, you can use all mounted units throughout all of the eras. For someone like me who uses nothing but mounted units anyway, your not limited too much.

If you can't trade for iron, then I would just beeline RP for lumbermills and rifles after keshiks are obsolete. I would suggest cavalry/spies, since rifles aren't great without at least trebs.

You can trade for iron, but the problem is you still need techs like iron working to build swordsmen, or machinery to build crossbowmen.

One thing is I think you're going to run out of techs pretty fast. If the game's not over by gunpowder, you might not actually have any techs to research.

 

[Soirana]

to 1050 BC or end of War number one... Had one question... Why, oh why we don't choose creative Cubla instead his crazy granddaddy?

Spoiler :

Tech path - Agri/AH, Pottery [to speed up process]/ HBR/Archery
Later on - Masonry/Meditation/Priesthood

I found some horses, so dropped few cities. Actually did settlers at size two so no imperialistic bonus.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Well, I choosed to go into pottery as i believe HBR needs speed up. Libraries were simply to expensive so no scientists... I probably could have found city near pigs as they remained unworked most of time...

Since our glorious leader despises mine, we had to search for way to get some production going.

Spoiler :

Soon i had gers and first Keshik looking for entrance into Roman land

Spoiler :

Well, my cities were making Keshik per 6 turns at best... Once i had about five...

Spoiler :

And that salad lover started braging about praets. Mine was soon razed and Cumae captured...
Hate to say but i reloaded as i somehow managed to burn it... Well, call me "cheater" if you like.

Well, i went towards rome hoping to see fortified praetorian and...

Spoiler :

No praets, no spears. [well, okay that iron mine was functional for two turns at best.]

Heroic act of getting second city was good enough to get GG which i attached to Keshik to create supermedic.

Few turns later [one wave of reinforce and bit of healing] later I took final Roman city...

Spoiler :

So far not bad. Got rid of Rome, captured GW [lots of spy points potentialy. sweet.]

Also it looks like smallish world as i am approaching ten percent know...

Well, the question is who is next... I was thinking of leaving away Korean, so i'd probably want to hit Justinian... Unluckily i have no idea about his metal situation...

Zara picked Alpha recently, while i can drop Oracle at cost of 1.5 Keshik. I could get CoL - while i hardly imagine how i will build curthauses, but caste would let me get GPP without these expensive libraries... Also it would serve as trade fodder.

Probably should have burned Antium but i am not reloading again... Given amount of troops Asoka usually builds, i could hope to kill Justinian [somehow] and when strike on India... This could leave me to enough land for fional push with drafted muskets
[i do imagine - lib for nationalism [probably bulb on paper, philo, education and lib itself] while self researching gunpowder manually]

 

[Airey]

Nice, will be following this tread. Have fun.

It would be funny if the forest/jungle grew on to your horse tile :O

 

[Soirana]

You can trade for iron, but the problem is you still need techs like iron working to build swordsmen, or machinery to build crossbowmen.

Let me think. Knights... no requires mining to get to guilds... Cavalry no goes through replacables...

Curraisiers! Yes, if i can trade for iron. These are good but very expensive. I'd rather draft muskets and use cats and spies with them...

Well, G3 musket looks good on paper but i do not imagine getting lots of these...

I do imagine vassals could provide some resources. In particular i imagine happiness being a problem... No gold/gems/silver no chance to chop jungle over calendar resources...

 

[Phil725]

Yeah I forgot that rifling/RP is out of the question for a number of reasons, at least there won't be any unhealthiness in the capital. That's reassuring that you can trade for iron though, if my game isn't over by keshiks I'll probably skip muskets and just go through lib to MT.

Anyway, played to 10AD

Spoiler :

Settled in place, tech path was AH, HBR, archery. I settled Beshbalik to the right, claiming horses. I met all the neighbors, and decided on JC for a first target. I'm not sure who the best person is to go after first, I don't think it makes much of a difference.

My rush got slowed down by some untimely events (pasture destroyed, road washed away, barracks monsooned away,) but I was ready to declare on JC in 1350BC.

Antium was guarded by 2 archers with no culture defense and no hill, so I took it with no losses and moved onto Rome. Rome was guarded by a prat and an archer. Silly JC, keshiks aren't afraid of prats. I lost one keshik taking his capital. From there I moved up to take Cumae once my units had healed. And finally moved down to take his last city:

There was a mine in one of JC's cities, but to stay honest to the challenge, I worked other tiles until I got a chance to pillage it.

I took a few turns to heal up my troops before deciding who to hit next. A quick check of the top 5 cities showed that Stonehenge was in Asoka's capital. Free border pops when we can't whip or chop monuments? Thank you very much.

Taking Delhi was rough. It was guarded by 2 spears, a sword and an archer at 60% defense. I brought just enough units though, and took out the last defender with my super medic. I put the war on hold there to reinforce my stack before moving on his last 2 cities. I pillaged his metal (not sure what it was, but it was a 6 hammer mine, so it was something,) so he couldn't defend with anything other than archers. A few turns later, Asoka is dead:

You can see in that picture that I was losing 20 gpt at 100% gold, so I had to rearrange my cities to work more commerce. I got the deficit down to -6, which means I'll easily avoid strike. Soon after that Justinian finally helped me out by researching alphabet:

That let me build research in my two Mongolian cities to get to CoL and currency in a reasonable amount of time, as well as letting me trade HBR around for everything I skipped. I founded Confucianism ~200BC, unfortunately, I never realized how expensive courthouses are when you can't whip or chop them.

Nothing else of interest for the rest of the round, just more righting of the economy. Here is my land at 10AD:

In a normal game I would move my capital to Cumae for bureaucracy, but since I can't chop out the gems and a lot of that riverside grassland, I'll just have to run cottages on the tiles I can. Asoka was nice enough to build wineries on the 3 riverside wine tiles in Vijayanagar. It seems like I don't get the happiness until monarchy, but those are some nice tiles to work to avoid striking.

I guess the plan is to build courthouse, barracks, ger everywhere, and then just spam keshiks until the game ends. Justinian is the next to go, and I think WK after that. Tech pace is pretty slow in this game, so maybe I can win before longbows become a problem. If WK gets them I may just attack anyway, keshiks can handle a few of them here and there.

Boudica is wrecking Zara, already taking 2 cities off of him, so he's done. The wonder pace in this game is abysmally bad. Asoka built SH and the Oracle at reasonable times, besides that, the only other wonder that was built was TGW by Boudica in 300BC. The Pyramids will probably end up going sometime in the modern era. Tech pace isn't great either.

It's always a good sign when your near the tech lead when you purposely destroy your economy, and haven't even recovered it yet.

And statistics so far.

14 keshiks to conquer 7 AI cities before 10AD. Its a good thing neither of the Mongolians are org, because that would be the most broken leader in the game.

 

[DMOC]

Carl-

I'd settle in place right now even though it's not the best location for an early capital. If there's a great floodplains/grasslands site with no forests around, cottage that city and get it as your capital ASAP.

 

[Soirana]

just for sake of interest...

How you build palace on unforested grassland/floodplains?

 

[futurehermit]

So many forests...