Charlemange Challenge

[krikav]

Making a separate thread to not take up too much space in Lains thread, but want to discuss this game:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/post-a-tough-deity-map-for-me-to-play.620140/page-37#post-16037797

Spoiler Starting screen :

How would you consider this start...?

How I did:

Spoiler T60 :

Moved scout NE and then SE, saw stone.
I wanted to save the green hill the settler was standing on, as they are nice with imp. It did look like more floodplains further south, but I didn't want to leave the early fur and the stone so I moved 1N again.
I think multiple possibilites are valid here.

Early scouting indicates Mehmed close by.
I go mining->bw here. Agriculture for the lone floodplain doesn't look nice, and neither does AH early on for the PH-sheep, which is probably best mined.
I need some settlers out early, and one for Mehmed too which is one of the more dangerous AIs around with 10/10 unitprob (more than Monty). However he does not plot at pleased, so he got to have a settler asap.

Barbs have almost been a non-issue. There is an archer in the north-east and a warrior in the south-west, worker mined sheep and the hill and have been chopping since.

I was torn between settling on the PH, but decided to settle 2N of the oasis instead, that gets the oasis and two floodplains, and it's insta-connected and commerce will be hard. Just reaching pottery will be a challenge.

I had hopes that his scout would have killed that barb warrior, but he just bypassed it.
I toyed with the idea to try and steal his marble, but it's the capitals third ring, so that is unlikely to succed.
2S of rice can reach an ocean fish and would be nice.

This is a nice trick to find out where the AIs cities are. You can cue up move with shift, and then the "settle village" button will get grayed out if a AI city is close by that tile.
It isn't here, so I move down and gift this settler to him, hopefully saving my life.
Vienna is going to get a settler to above 55/100 and I'll keep a watchfull eye for approaching settlers and if a party arrives I can 1pop whip it and settle shorly after.

Or so I thought. the sneaky bastard speeded past my lookouts with a chariot-escorted settler. :|
Vienna will pop borders in a turn which might confuse him, so I whip and try to steal the spot.

But no, that didn't deter him.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T60 situation+save :

Pottery is just finished, I have 3 workers now and one will finish in capital in 4 turns, the one in Prage will be finished with a chop soon.
I have a settler to spare too.
I think the first spot I should settle is SE of the stone. Sharing the wheat with Prague who has floodplains/oasis already is nice, and it would deter Mehmed from settling toward me. He has Iron and might get funny ideas settling close to my wheat or my stone.

Not sure if I should just go AH->Writing and try to get an economy going, or if I should try to make a late attempt at pyramids. (TGW is built).
It sure looks like semi-iso, as Mehmed is putting all his points on me, so I probably want to go toward Astro. Mehmed will stay calm as long as I keep him pleased, but it will be hard to get him to friendly too, unless I can find 3 more spots to gift him more cities... But not sure I want to pay that price either.
I think early callendar is in the cards, the incenses are very good tiles and together with the spices thats two more happines.

It might make sense to not make a optics/astro beeline, but instead try to get confu or tao?
Capital could make for quite a burocapital I think.

But then again... I have quite alot of resources so getting astro trades would also be nice.
I'm more confident in pure iso than in semi-iso it seems.

 

[Nick723]

Spoiler :

I agree, I find semi-iso more challenging than iso, particularly with a non squishy neighbour. The competition for land means you’re much less in control than you are iso.

Good work so far getting him to pleased - I hate gifting cities but I think here it was the right move. You could argue whether you could have waited a bit but I guess this way you know you’re safe early?

I think go for pyramids. So long as you can get a decent amount of failgold it’ll be net worth it, never mind the pyramids themselves (although obviously that would be preferable)?

Regarding city placement, what about 1W of iron? I don’t think on its own this would give border tensions, and it would open up options for killing Mehmed later on (and who knows, it might even be his only source of iron)!

 

[krikav]

@Nick723

Spoiler :

In hindsight, perhaps I should have waited untill I knew I could have secured that fish-spot, but yeah it's the differance between life and death. Every turn I was cautious with him I was rolling a die.
He has 70 NoWarProb at cautious, and thus he is as calm as they come, but still...
Attitude declarations:

Spoiler :

Yeah, probably it's best to go masonry, getting only a few chops into them probably means more to the developmen than reaching writing abit faster.
Not sure about finish them even if the opportunity arises though.. Not much food around. And 500 gold is 500gold.
But even with little food, rep helps alot, and police state later on is also super helpful.
But getting them is probably not on the table anyway, just getting to masonry alone will probably take almost 10 turns?

Settling next to the iron sound good actually! In first ring stealing it is probably possible, although it will likely take a loooong time. That was his second city and it popped borders pretty fast.
But securing iron is nice even if it comes late.
Border tension is a non-factor as long as it doesn't get too extreme, and I'm sure I can at least gift him one more city when I can afford later on and then I could push borders all I like. Thanks for that!

 

[Major Tom]

Thanks for the save and your write ups, Krikav. Enjoy reading them.

Spoiler :

Played to turn 57. My third city is SE stone. Mehmed stole that cow spot.
Did you gift him fur to get him pleased?
Hoping to keep him calm and will soon start chopping Pyramids (got masonry but not pottery yet.)
Optics, astronomy sure in the cards. Hope to survive until whipping/drafting strong stuff is possible and wipe him out.

 

[krikav]

@Major Tom

Spoiler :

Nice to have you on board!
Would be fun to see some screenshot.

Where did you settle capital? What tech path? Where did you settle city#2 and when?
Losing the cow spot is even worse than losing the fish spot as I did, have you cut him off so he doesn't take the fish spot just south too?

I have this one on hold right now (just started playing NC271).
I did not gift Fur, or any other resource. I would consider giving him health since he wouldn't benefit from that, but happines resource would help him alot so I don't think that would be worth it in most circumstances.
I did gift him a city, that is enough (+4 fair trade +1city liberation), if you gift yet another it becomes +3 city liberation, it's +1.5 per city rounded down.

 

[Major Tom]

Spoiler :

City gift fireproof but I didn’t see any on the screenshot. Perhaps way south?

A little busy to do proper write up. Just want to be onboard.
Went agriculture and ah, then mining, bw. Wheels and masonry. Ready for pottery or writing, writing for open borders and resource gifting. Will miss granaries in the meantime, but they won’t keep me alive if I can’t get him to pleased before he gets a stack. But perhaps a major error.

Will claim fish spot in 4-5 turns included the walk.
I settled #2 se of stone. Would not miss the wheat stone to AI.
So after fish spot there are room for 3-4 more cities. Half decent land but food is not great to power rep specialists. At least there will be happiness.
Will go the lower part of tech three. Chemistry and cannons is one option after Astro.

 

[krikav]

@Major Tom

Spoiler :

Yepp, city gift is as far south/east I could get, it's visible on the screenshots from T54-T58 something. The settler is named "TRIBUTE" and the city gifted is named "Happy Mehmed"

Prioritizing wheat spot is probably good. I set myself up for the risk that he would settle the wheat in first ring when I settled with it in second ring.

Agri->AH, I don't know.. Abit questionable. Probably good for growth but that likely made city#2 and city#3 slower, I went mining->BW, mined sheep+grassland hill and then just made settlers at pop2, those two tiles got a nice even 8H and was good with the imp bonus. Worker just chopped after that.
Made it somewhat easy to afford settlement+gift, but it hurt the economy though.

 

[Major Tom]

@krikav

Spoiler :

I did the same scout move as you turn 0. Seeing the stone I decided to go all in for Pyramids. Farm everything. Therefore agriculture first to also get discount for AH. Always curious about horses too...
Aligned well with worker, farmed floodplain then perfect timed for pasture to sheep. Could also improve squirrel on hill for occasional extra hammers and coins. Not bad yield there. So three useful tiles. Then chopping and whipping.
But, If I don’t get those pyramids the whole strategy is a fail.

By the way I SIP, happy with plenty of forests. Didn’t you burn that forest and a turn?

 

[Major Tom]

Spoiler :

So I got the Pyramids turn 79 but got invaded turn 89. Open borders and massive resource gifts didn’t get him to pleased in time. Seems that only solution is city gift. Or Could have turtled in from beginning with some defence. But a gamble is a gamble. On to another game.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Patch version is different. Is there a world builder save for this map? I want to try something stupid.

 

[krikav]

Sure thing! Here is a worldbuilder save.
Don't forget to add archery to barbs.

 

[Pangaea]

Alt+G

 

[Nick723]

Spoiler :

I had a go at this. My cunning plan was to build the great wall, go for judaism and then use that to get him to pleased. Use the great spy to catch up on techs with the holy city bonus.

What could possibly go wrong?

Spoiler :

I don't have a good feel for what a 'normal' Judaism date is, but this felt quite early.

I did continue, but once I got sucked into an endless war of him killing himself against my archers without much long term prospects for either of us, I called it a day.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity normal speed played to T90 (625 BC). Not too interested in finishing.

Spoiler :

The plan is to keep attacking the Ottomans until the spit out alphabet. The plan is then to build research to code of laws and make use of the Rathaus. I read the spoilers after this session. Why pyramids? There's barely enough food for cottages.

Gifting cities? There's barely enough room for my own. The buggers settled right into my face.

 

[krikav]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Wow! Thats seriously impressive, taking on a 10/10 unitprob guy with HAs from that position.

You are somewhat right about pyramids I think, but the benefits are many, you can get a raised happycap pre-calendar, and that can be sweet.
And still, even if you are just running 2 scientists in 2 cities, and 1 in two more, thats still alot of beakers.
Then the later benefit is police state during some later warfare, and thats always really nice.

Comes down to opportunity cost really, from my position I don't really see many other good things to build.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Just for academic enquiry with @krikav, I played a few more turns, up to T102 (325BC). I am still confused about why...

Spoiler :

... a peaceful approach of gifting cities would be better in this case.

In my game, I agreed to peace after giving away horseback riding. 3 built cities, 5 captured, room to backfill 3 more for a total of 11. I couldn't take Istanbul because they had walls. Actually most of their cities had walls.

If I played standard style, it will be pyramids and land for 5 cities max (you have to gift 2 away), but faster astronomy. The issue is, I then have to break out with cuirassiers to fight their longbows or muskets, which is basically the same as horse archers against archers and swordsmen. Except by that point it will be our 5 cities against like 15 or something.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T92 :

The settler for the spot that Mehmed stole south did settle here to steal the iron, and it does look like it will eventually succeed, thanks for the tip!
I went AH->Masonry->Writing, capital really needed the sheep to get up in population, and the cow down south was staring angrily at me for contemplating masonry first. Also laid down some grassland cottages.

Some whips and chops for failgold in pyramids.

I realized I could get the pyramids if I whipped the library, so I did try that. I was really expecting them to be built in a distant land though.

But no, now at T92 it does look like I'll get them.
I got room for two decent cities for the fishes, but settling one by the incense is probably good too as it's so close.
Could pack in two more further toward mehmed but thats likely just a bad idea.
Finishing pyras would get me 442 failgold, and just waiting would give me 942, despite their abit lower utility here I still think they are worth more than the gold itself.

CoL was late, so i think I'll do a sprint through CoL which I think Mehmed is unlikely to go for, he just finished poly and I think he is going toward monarchy next.
Will get another settler out to gift him to bump up liberation from +1 to +3.
Will hire scientists as soon as possible and I think bulbing philosophy would be nice.
I think my best bet here is to just try to develop the capital really good and either lib astro or trade for it.
Think I need to reach cannons to get the upper hand of Mehmed.

 

[krikav]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Nice that you started to play just when I finished that Gilga game and went back to this!
I'm not saying peaceful is better, you seem to be doing very good there!
Settling north and securing 3 furs in capital gave you alot of teching power quickly, I like that move.

It's just that Mehmed is usually no pushover, and messing with him can be problematic. He builds a ton of units and here he got metal super quick too.

That he doesn't plot at pleased also contributes to the appeal of a peaceful approach. Pay 67 hammers and then have, nothing to fear at all.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@krikav I think I see the merit in your approach now. I need to pay more attention to the technical rules of the game. Gives me more tools at my arsenal.