Cookbook #1 (Sally, Immortal)

Here is my T110 save, continued from my T70 save.

Comments and a lot of questions tomorrow morning.

 

Change of (voting) system

Hmm how to start..
some feedback has been going towards peoples finding it difficult when deciding on voting,
a bit of tension resulted from disagreement on what approaches are more interesting,
and i realize i might have tried too hard for an "organized" cookbook system.

Sampsa's comment woke me up, with some days delay (cleaning up his room lol)
For losing my temper there i apologize.
But anyways, we are still learning on this, new approach..

Everybody (not restricted to those who submitted saves anymore) can now give recommendations.
"I really like how (player name) did this.." type of feedback.
If you especially like one game, you can give a high recommendation.

After some time i will look thru all feedback, note all high rec's,
and put together those games that will move on.
So all voting "pressure" on me.

I want to see if peoples enjoy our games more again if you can focus on playing or discussing only,
without voting thoughts on your mind.
We had only 7 players this round.

I am also extending this one by 2 days,
in case some of you feel more like joining again now.
Those were our 16 games you can pick from Saves

 

Well, 7 players is still a few.
I think that a problem is that many people (myself included) really like openings and the first few turns.

I'm abit worried that we lost many of the strong players in this round though, their input is needed (at least for me) to improve.

 

Thanks for the extension, I'll try to play, been ill...

 

I'll also try to get a save in tonight sometime.

 

Continued from my T70, which was from mscellaneous's T40 T45.

 

Sampsa, for playing after being ill.

Can start discussing & observing games now,
but you can also still submit new ones tomorrow (Swordnboard ?)

(with new rules and not so many saves, i see little reason in holding up ssshhh or close playing already)
Considering if we should take a break until next round, after holidays (xmas, new year..).

Saves

krikav
Olafeson
Samuel_996
Powerfaker
c^3
Tonny
floydmcw
Sampsa

 

About my save. I just continued to expand like a mad dog. Pyramids went really early so I did not get any failgold at all.
I was behind in tech and had no chance getting IW in time, so I dashed into the jungle and settled on one of the gems for the happines.

Had cottaged pretty much everything, and I'm quite proud that I'm at the top or almost at the top for "worked tiles".
Saved up cash to reach alfa, both since noone of them seemed interested in trading, and also I really need to be able to build research.

However, at the middle of teching toward alfa shaka raised his red fist, and I had to grab archery in a hurry. Walled up a hill city with a river as a natural moat up in the jungle and waited for the hammer to drop, was abit dissapointed when he declared on Qin instead!

 

My game

Spoiler :

Mids micro was pretty perfect by some miracle (T80).



Fogbusting micro in the north was not perfect as a barb archer appeared and had to cold whip a warrior next turn to not risk losing my shiny Mids. Went alpha with the help of failgold as the screenshot shows, but it turned out horribly as Qin went that route, too. Shaka won't trade at cautious, so biggest value was building . Should have gifted Shaka a city obv, but panicked and went meditation to gift it. +3 for fair trade, +1 for peace, -2 for being a prick so still cautious... T92 or so +1 for OB and +1 for resource trades kicked in (gifted stone+horse for 10T, too) and finally got IW for alpha and felt a lot safer. Somehow was too slow to the gems site, I guess I was busy watching my cottages grow or something. Pretty happy with the way I handled southern 5-city cluster, lots of tile swapping to grow in bursts and work as many cottages as possible, assigning specialists mostly at -cap. Didn't dare to run any priests.

Got this cute idea of using Mids GE-points, ran scientists there asap and the -lottery gave me an engineer. OK, bulbed machinery on the way to optics/astro, although crossbow-war was kinda tempting as Shaka got GLH. I'm secretly hoping to get another engineer, as that tempts engineering bulb and treb war. If GS, astro double bulb will be in 550AD 620AD, though 1-bulb and half manual research is faster I guess.

No idea why Shaka hasn't attacked Qin at cautious, sharing very long border. He's pleased with me and I'm not land target. Missing the gems site had a silver lining.

 

Okay now that we can discuss:

Spoiler :

My save was a lot slower to start Pyramids than others, with only 94 hammers invested. 6 chops and 8 turns later, I was one turn away from Pyramids, AND I could 2-whip them.

=> Question 1: Should I have whipped them? I didn't, because there's a penalty whipping wonders and because I was planning to whip a Madrassa immediately after.

Does the math work like this: 60 hammers base from 2-whip +100% stone - 50% whip penalty = 90 hammers?

I founded Najran for fish on T81, that was kind of a slog since I had to build a monument with a GH mine then wait 10 turns for the pop.

On T85 I got Alpha. Shaka wouldn't trade. Mao would trade Alpha for IW and hunting (I had no beakers invested in either).

=> Question 2: Was this a good trade? It seemed greedy/risky to invest beakers trying to get IW+Sailing.

IW exposed an oddity I'd never noticed. I had planned to pasture the pigs as soon as the stone city popped borders -- yes, you can pasture jungle pigs. But I didn't get around too it cause my workers were chopping the world's largest geometric solid. When I got IW, I was no longer able to pasture pigs without clearing jungle.

On T91 Shaka converted to Conf (which Mao had founded). Unfortunately Conf never spread to me.

T93 I founded the gems/sugar city (living dangerously, I beat shaka by a couple turns -- should have had a settler out earlier).

T97 I got a GE.

T98 I founded a city next to iron/silk, it hurt my econ but I didn't want Shaka settling there and getting easy access to my soft underbelly.

T100 Shaka went into war mode. He had a 5-unit stack. I frantically whipped archers and walls. Also I had been considering a hill city for him to suicide into and when he declared on T103 I was able to sneak the settler in and found it.

=> Question 3: What can I do about this? I gifted Shaka wheat as soon as I could. But he was pleased with Mao due to shared religion, and the religion never spread to me.

Anyway, I'm not in any serious danger now, I chopped a lot of axes, archers, spears, swords. My stone city is so productive ...

=> Question 4: What do you do when you can't 2-whip? Should I just 1-whip occasionally?

T110 I got Currency. Am planning to build more swords and take Shaka's nearest city.

 

@floydmcw

Spoiler :

I think whip penalty is -100% for world wonders and -50% for national wonders. You should avoid whipping directly into a wonder (and use whip overflow) if possible.

Yep I also got it late, but at that point it being not very useful for 20 turns is not as bad as it would be earlier, as you have other cities contributing.

I would've just taken IW for alpha (don't like to take very cheap techs for free when unnecessary) and gifted Shaka alpha for relations. Getting Shaka to pleased should be a big priority, even if it doesn't grant immunity.

That is not correct.

Spoiler :

It's under my culture, no IW (as Qin will trade it to me ), build pasture is greyed out. What you can do however, is build a camp on jungled phant.

Confu will auto-spread to you eventually, if you have road connection to both of them. Via sailing trade network the probability is lower.

Gift enough techs or gift a city, then beg at pleased (for hunting for example, rest of archery, begging a -resource can work). However, him attacking you pre-catapults is not very bad even. Walled archers can hold everything and he's just donating you GG-points. I gifted crab immediately when available and stone+horse later for a brief while after Mids was done. It takes 50T of total gifted resource turns (so gifting 3 resources takes 50/3=17T) to get +1 relations, capped at +2. These gifts also count towards "fair trade".

If a city doesn't have a lot of food, 1-pop whips are ok, otherwise I'd just find a way to 2-pop whip like OF into archer/axe, put 1-9 into a sword, 2-pop whip, OF into something, repeat.

I'm not sure if gearing up for pre-catapult war is a good idea now, I mean sure if you can take a city easily why not, but the emphasis should be on getting a tech lead and then warring.

 

@floydmcw

Spoiler :

When I'm very tempted to do 2pop or 1pop whips of crucial wonders if that makes me get them one turn earlier. The mids here is such a wonder and I would gladly put those citizens on the chopping block for securing them if I was so close.
This goes abit into my philosophy of "dormant hammers". When you are two turns away from pyramids, all the tech into masonry, the workerturns spent quarrying and chopping and all the hammers into pyramids are still dormant. It's the last little whip that unleashes all that stagnant potential.

Regarding Alfa <-> Hunting+IW trade, depends... I rather not trade for hunting since it moves you closer to "We fear you are becomming too advanced", and having hunting+archery for later can also enable a nice trick.
Say you know that you can trade for maths at T130, and the only thing you lack for your double-astro bulb is math+calendar.
You can then with 100% research tech hunting at T127, then 100% on archery at T128 and then priesthood at T129. Then you trade for math and finish calendar in one turn since you have stacked up massive beaker overflow.

Having small techs left to tech is also beneficial pre-currency to beg for, as sampsa mention.

But in the current game, I'm not sure how much problems "We fear advance" can cause, I don't think there will be much trading really.
Also, getting closer to archery might have been the prudent thing to do in your situation.

@sampsa

Spoiler :

I'm amazed at your situation.
It's VERY educational to compare this save of yours with mine where I just continued expansion at full tilt.
I'm at 3 more cities and get 14 more commerce from working tiles, but I'm just ages behind in tech.
The extra cottage maturation that I might get is more than offset by any single one of these factors: GPP generation, failgold from colossus, Rep-beakers or sooner astro traderoutes.


Being that ahead in tech and already grasping for optics is more than enough compensation for some jungle gems.
I'm guessing that you would have gone with an academy if you got a GSci?

 

Mids

Spoiler :

I feel like some got pretty unlucky here and some got lucky.

Mids built:
T74 Qin Shi Huang (Krikav)
T75 Samuel, Qin Shi Huang (c^3)
T76 -
T77 Powerfaker
T78 floydmcw
T79 Olafeson, sampsa, Qin Shi Huang (Tonny)

Even though I knew Qin likes to go for Mids, those dates are pretty early. I think happiness is a big issue for those who missed it, and rep are certainly nice to have. At least we beat the unmet civs 8-0.

Shaka

Spoiler :

I never considered diplo to be my biggest virtue, but it looks like most players did nothing to please Shaka. Well, in many cases I guess Shaka declared before not much could be done, and it's certainly not a disaster that he suicides some troops. Still I'd be very worried about safety in many saves. Krikav was the only one to gift a city I think? Pretty sure it's a good choice.

 

@krikav

Spoiler :

Yep, things turned out really well. I think the biggest difference to many saves was getting a lot of value from failgold, getting the Mids and then growing core cities to happy cap. Those few turns spent growing on non-riverside cottages (or plains riverside cottages) are paying off and having bigger cities transforms to many units when the war phase begins.

You certainly over-extended which slows things down, but at least diplo is safe so nothing should really threaten you long term. I like the on top of gems settle, even if it underlines how desperate your situation was for happiness.

Those rep specialists in big cities are indeed nothing to sneeze at. I'm making 70 at 0% slider while built research is only 7, meaning specs are creating 63pt. And then there will be bulbs on top of that. I'm kind of kicking myself for the Colossus failgold though and should have built Moai in multiple cities instead (just forgot Moai existed ). Why? Because I'm not sure Colossus will be built before I'm at astro. Pretty sure all progress towards Colossus is just lost then, no failgold. I guess Qin, being IND will build it once I trade him the tech. Christianity was founded when Oracle was built, so no help from there I'm afraid.

I'm not a huge fan of academies anymore, unless it's deity when the game will last longer. I think just saving for astro double bulb would have been my choice. I'm guessing it would be around 300AD in that case.

 

In a rush, so just a quick reply.
Diplo is very important, getting DoW by shaka here early likely won't kill you, but the worst thing about that DoW, is that you need to defend, while Qin is just left to his own business.
Shaka won't declare on Qin when he is tied up with you. And if he starts getting some war success... well you are in for a marathon. :|

I was probably in one of the best situation to afford a git city, because I was slamming into the happycap more than others, and I couldn't really settle more marginal cities... I was in -GPT at 0% research for some time.
I settled the city "Happy shaka" on a spot which isn't really good, but will function well when I conquer it later on in the game.
It's also located inbetween qin and shaka, to further fire them up at each other.

Was dissapointed that I couldn't get liberated bonus with shaka, but I could with qin. Still I gave it to Shaka since he is Shaka.

Don't recal if it was enough to get him to pleased, or if I was at pleased for some turns before having to turn him down when he asked me to join his crusade against Qin.

 

Quick overview of my save:

Spoiler :

full empire overview:

Spoiler :

closer look at core:

Spoiler :

tech:

Spoiler :

Managed to get Mids the earliest of the saves, though have to thank Mscellaneous for that as his t45 provides the option for a super accelerated Mids. Couldn't squeeze in any TGW failgold but Stonehenge went almost comically late so I got something like 110g from that. Shaka placed a city at my northern border to claim the double gem/sugar while killing almost all the spots which could have claimed the seafood. There is still one tile where a new seafood city can be settled, but I won't be doing that any time soon. I dropped my own city to contest the gems and have secured one inside my own borders. I also claimed the wheat/double sugar spot in the NW. At the time, the plan had been to settle even as far as the northern marble and make a play for MoM, but Shaka got that spot before I could get a settler up there. Still, I think Calendar has merits: those sugars will support Rep specialists in a few turns' time.

Going forward, I'm pursuing a fairly standard Lib -> Cuirs path. Can't see it being too difficult on IMM unless Shaka gives me a headache (I haven't got the +1 from resource trades yet but it must be coming soon). Hopefully Qin - who has just founded Confucianism - might spread it to all of us. If not, I might be able to find a culture hole to wedge a settler in Shaka's backyard.

Settle-wise, one settler is on the way to the silk/iron city and will claim that next turn. It has a ton of forests and enough lakeside grasslands to grow decently. I'm probably going to let Damascus grow to size 6 again and then whip out another Settler to finally claim the fish city 1N3W of the capital, which will get online very quickly with an artist once I take my first dip into Caste System (yay, SPI!). I'll probably irrigate all the grasslands north of that city, too, and have it work on specialists (maybe merchants?) since Najran (3N of capital) is doing so well at maturing the capital's cottages. Once I get to CS and the capital takes back those cottages (not that far away) Najran will also transition to farms on its dry grasslands and will be able to work its hills. So I can see myself needing 1 or 2 more workers in the next 10 turns as well. Ultimately, by the time I get to Lib -> MT I should have a nice Bur-cap with lots of high food cities all around it and room for whipping in the north as well. My tech pace is pretty nice and if I get a religion, Pacifism+Caste will allow me a good amount of GS-points for the Edu-bulb (I used my first one for an Academy in the capital, which explains my good beaker rate but might be a bad move? Not sure. I agree with sampsa that Academies are no longer a compulsory move.)

 

@Samuel_996 Well played!

Regarding academy...
Now, in my own save, I'm stuck at 10% research rate, but speaking from the perspective of a save that didn't overextend horribly and instead has pyramids and has some techrate going I'm all for academy in this capital, which imho should hold all of the empires cottages.
Rest of cities should either focus on food and run merchants, or hammers and build wealth if need be.
The academy gives you an edge techwise early which is what matter to get the upper hand on this continent, and it has lasting value later on when you need to tackle the others.
Being SPI, getting universities up eventually with slavery+OR, and then building oxford with stone is also possible. So if all war plans should fail, you can still get teching up and flee into space.

 

Some great writeups & comments,
this game should have good value for peoples who want to learn something by watching others play and discussing their games
I will look at your saves later when i have more time.

 

@Samuel_996 (dunno why I use spoilers, but whatever)

Spoiler :

Your save is aesthetically very pleasing, and the tech rate is fantastic. The only thing I'm a bit worried about is safety with Shaka.

I know that this is not the popular opinion, but what I mean by not liking academies on immortal and lower is that it's often kind of an overkill to tech "deep" into the tech tree. In most games, things like liberalism and cuirassiers are not needed, not to mention Oxford... My respect for immortal AI clearly isn't very high and I think trebs are enough to conquer most maps if things go well. Well, that and the ability to reach all AIs. So since I don't like to do a lot of teching, the value of an academy can't be very high for me and I much rather take ~1600 from bulb or run a golden age.

I do understand that many players don't go for the fastest win, but value other factors.

 

Both of these are very impressive in terms of tech, expansion, and cottage development - especially when taking into account that you gave up the gems. It's also interesting to see 2 top-tier saves going for the 2 "meta" paths in this situation: astro bulb and lib cuirs. Compared to the private fish game y'all are probably in a better position, but I'm gonna wait for this cookbook to finish before spoiling anything else. Perhaps I should rethink my policy of forswearing non-riverside non-fin cottages...