Cookbook #1 (Sally, Immortal)

KayKay good to know.

 

New round starts

Going with some and spirit,
i will make 5 saves available for this round.

1. Sampsa gets My's top recommendation.

2. Powerfaker gets My's creative play

3. Olafeson for being interesting.

4. Samuel_996 very solid but also dangerous

5. Floydmcw can certainly do well.

Please play until Turn 160 this time.
Suggested deadline: January 5th, considering holiday season.

 

This is gonna be interesting. Some people are gonna attack, others are gonna get attacked! We’ll see how this plays out soon enough...

 

Managed to play to t160 before my New Years' vacation tomorrow. Hopefully back in time to chip in with the discussion!

 

T160 save, moved on with my own earlier save.

 

I played from Sampsas save.

 

Out of the 5 saves we could pick from, Shaka had already provided DoW in 3 of them.

 

T160 save from my earlier T110 save.

 

Shaka thanks everybody who submits a game

Spoiler :

 

Deadline also passed here, can start chatting

Our games:
Samuel_996
Powerfaker
krikav
floydmcw

Bit low activity sadly, very likely that we will re-start playing here fast.

 

Well, the early game is most important, and likely generates more activity.
And also we can't expect too much over the hollidays I supose.

 

I played from @sampsa 's save, I liked the prospect of an early optics/astro to get the full view quicker. And I wasn't too eager to pick a save where I already was in a war with Shaka.

Spoiler :

I traded away MC quickly for diploboost and for some tech, can't remember which. Mostly because I wanted Qin to build colossus asap for failgold.
I ssettled Khurasan where I did, because it had so much forests, chopped a forge asap as soon as I had math, with the intent of building another colossus there for even more failgold.
The turn the forge was done however, shaka had built the colossus, quite a suprise!

So I build moai there instead, and finished them in our southern crab/whale-city.


Continued to work cottages in capital and mostly tried to ignore cottages elsewhere, tried to grow to happy-cap everywhere which was quite a challenge.
4 caravels where whipped direcly at optics to meet the AIs asap.

When I had the full picture I made the call that it was unneccesery to go for cuirs and that I could hit early enough with knights to make a serious difference.
So it was off to guilds and then massive whipping with police-state+vassalage <3

Tech situation:


Plan is to hit Shaka hard and take as many cities as is cost efficient before he gets pikes.
Qin is ready to be bribed against Shaka for guilds+optics+CS, but the price will go down as soon as I declare.

Army is standing by:

Holy city with shrine, spy ready to blow up walls.

I think this is his main stack, in an unwalled city.

Sorry for not remembering to build a road NW of this group!! Yayoi won't fall untill T161. :<


Units:

I think these 35 camels are enough, and it could be wise to just switch back to teching when we declare. Music isn't gone yet. Only competition is Isabella, but she is down to 3 cities and recently vassaled. And Qin, which is going for Engineering.
But it could be that just continue whipping and completely rolling over shaka is the best thing to do because...

Shaka has built GLH, and that would be very nice to have. It's in his capital far north though, so more camels are needed to get that.
Also noteworthy is that Qin has MoM.



Julius and Boudica has both made a demand/request which I obliged with, so we enjoy a +1 bonus and +4fair trade with them.
Once the attack on our homeland slows down, it could be an option to just ship the units over to either monty or boudica, whomever seems most behind at the moment, while we tech toward cuirs.
Boudica is close by, and almost all her cities are on flatland, and I think it will be quite possible to get julius in on the fun as well.

I think I would wait with Qin untill later, sice Itza is adding that annoying bonus everywhere on top of his PRO.
He is already friendly and will become ever more so with the shared war against Shaka, and later with bourocracy.

 

Comments on my own game.
Small write up.

Spoiler :

Confu spreads to Damascus my no1 GP city, so decided to go CoL+Philo first. Medina, my other GP city gets Confu too.
In the meantime the war with Zulu went cold, just piling up units, until I had enough of it and gave him Curr for peace 250AD. (switch to Paci, delete all chariots). His stack of ±20 units is still there in the nearest city 1000AD.
Now headed for Astro => MC-steal, Mach bulb, and eventually Astro double bulb 640AD.
CivS and Eng next (bureau and gives me something to prepare for later, ie trebs). In the meantime all other civs are met. Circumnavigation
At this point I felt like I had to decide going for rifles or cuirs. Then I noticed nobody had even Aest yet, so the GA from Music was still available and went this route, ergo chose the cuir line. Thought I could get up HE too, forgot I didn’t have a 10XP unit (brrr).
Last part Paper and 1T from Edu with help of GS bulb.
I got most of my tech trade using Compass. Only Qin got something better, Philo for Feud. Nice trade gold too. Unfortunately last couple of turns I lost a gems and sugar tile due to culture, which squeezes my happy cap a bit.

Future Plans.

Spoiler :

Currently ± 15 turns / 3 techs away from cuirs, a GS underway that will pick up PP on the side, a GArt ready to start a GA. Will Lib => Nat next and switch to FreeR, move on teching MT. Thinking of trading PP once I have it for Guilds to Qin => can start some camels while MT is not in yet + cheaper GunP.
Economy power can be used for war efforts after all techs are in, so I’m thinking of a switch to US for town hammers and rushbuy rather than whip. I have no experience with imploding my empire with massive whipping, so I prefer to stick with something more consistent long term and maybe a bit slower startup.
First (self initiated) war can start another ± 10-15 turns later I would expect (1250-1300AD).

@krikav
I noticed the 3 packs of camels in your save. I think you did a good job there to be the only one who is ready for war right now. Mind you, I have no idea if you can end this game with camels and/or keep the flow of new recruits high enough after this massive whip effort. Anyway, I am interested to see how this would turn out.

 

@Powerfaker I'm looking closer at our two saves now.

Reading this:
"I have no experience with imploding my empire with massive whipping, so I prefer to stick with something more consistent long term and maybe a bit slower startup."
"I have no idea if you can end this game with camels and/or keep the flow of new recruits high enough after this massive whip effort."

It seems to me, that you are abit uncomfortable with making sharp turns with your empire and dramatically decreasing your techrate in favour of military buildup.
This could be an area of development.

Just to dispell any fears of that a whipping effort crushes your economy, I did a T160 swap of my own save back to growth+economy mode with tileswapping and civics change.
Pre:

Spoiler :

Post:

Spoiler :

So at any time it's possible to instantly boost research rate by 50%.
And if one just spends 5-10 turns growing abit I don't think it would be that far behind the nice rate that you have:

Spoiler :

It's very good to have a technological advantage, and if you have that in a war effort you benefit greatly. But the benefit of being so to say... "two steps up" in technology doesn't give you that much more compared with just being ahead.
I'm convinced that you will be able to win with cuirs in 15-30 turns time, but it could be that it's with massive overkill.
The reason (as I see it) that we so often reach for cuirs and cannons/rifles etc is not because it's something magical about these units. It's just because it's most often at that point in time in the game where it's easiest to get that technological/military edge that you need to wage a successful profitable war.
If an opportunity presents itself to get that edge in some earlier time, I think one should take it.
Here in this game I think the land was so good and we got so much help by pyramids that there was no need to wait further, and that knights would do the trick.

Grabbing cities and land from other civs seem to give such a crazy boost in this game, that I have grown more and more fond of warfare as a means of securing a win, such that I wage war at intervals.
Previously I viewed warfare rather as something I did in the end of a game to turn a won position into a victory.

That being said, I am too very interested to see how these two aproaches would compare. I might have a too optimistic view of how fast and easy landgrabbing will be here, or perhaps I'm underestimating Qin/Boudi/Julius and they might steamroll ahead way quicker than I anticipate if I throw myself into a war with Shaka?

 

@Powerfaker
A mino thing about your writeup/save:

Spoiler :

Unfortunately last couple of turns I lost a gems and sugar tile due to culture, which squeezes my happy cap a bit.

You are trading away 4 happy resources (gem,gold, silk, whale) and you could if you want trade for 2 more (wine+sugar), so you could boost your happy with 6 if you want to.
I saw that you where running artists at the two bordercities to gain back gem/sugar.
Here again, I believe the best way to handle borderpressure is to wage war.


It's nice gold-trades you got though, and I really like your economy. Are you sure that it makes sense to lib nationalism or even MT here? Feels like there could be bigger prizes to pick... Perhaps steel?

Also, i would like to hear more about how you handled and will handle great people and their generation.
When I started from the last save I saw that the techrate was ok enough, so I decided to go for a half-bulb of astro, instead of waiting for the second scientist to get earlier astronomy.
I then used the second scientist for an academy.

Now I don't pay much attention to the points. Wondering if the GArtist would be any good.. Noting that I could get a Gperson of my own easily in 6 turns, or starve out one much earlier.
Wondering what to bulb, if anything. Or if it would be just best to wait untill I have Qins MoM and just chain a very long GA once the empire is larger.

 

Some notes on my game (please comment on anything especially the parts marked with **):

Spoiler :

I played from my T110 save. I was at war with Shaka but not in a lot of danger. Finished Currency on T110 and popped a Great Engineer a few turns earlier.

Taking feedback to heart I whipped a madrassa in Baghdad (which made a lot of sense as it had run out of good tiles) and made a road connection to Mao (to help Confucianism spread). Also I switched a lot of cities to wealth.

** My plan was to tech to Optics, meet some civs who were better at trading, and set up for Lib-ing cuirs.

I bulbed most of Mach with my GE, and gave Shaka Curr for peace (then I was able to sell him Mysticism for $30).

On T125 a GS was born and became an academy in Mecca.

T132 Optics was done and I upgraded two triremes.

T137-138 I met Bouda and Monty. Monty's not a bad trader for a psycho. I was able to backfill cheap techs.

** Confucianism finally spread to me but I didn't want to annoy the last two civs I was about to meet so I didn't switch to it.

Shaka went into war mode a couple turns after that. Well, shared religion is only +1 for him anyway.
By this time I had met everyone and traded for Constr and Monarchy. Also I remembered that I should build a work boat for whales , and noticed that no one had Music or was even close. Slow tech rate! (Taoism wouldn't be discovered till T149.)

Shaka declared on T143 with a big stack that included 6 or 7 cats. This was scary but a lot of things went right for me:
- He put the stack on a bare hill instead of in the jungle.
- He targeted the hill blocker city.
- He suicided some of his HAs while bombarding that city.

On T145 I slammed some catapults into his stack and whittled it down. (Also I traded for Feud.) He attacked the next turn with only 3 full strength catapults and it was a disaster for him. PRO + hill city = no joke.

T147 got Music, its Great Artist, and circumnavigation. I started a GA and sort of ignored Shaka, teching CS -> Paper -> Edu (with one bulb). T155 gave Shaka Aes for peace.

** I built HE in Baghdad and NE in Mecca. I didn't like putting it in my capital but there aren't any other good high-food cities.

At T160 Edu is done, map has been sold to Shaka, Mao, and another GE just spawned.

 

@floydmcw
Some quick answers before looking at your save.

Here it doesn't really matter, but it's worth to keep in mind that your scientists bulb beakers like this: scientist bulb = 1500 + 3*population_size. I think the other types are also dependent on total population too, so if you are going to whip and bulb close to each other, bulb first and whip after.


Giving Shaka currency, @Powerfaker did the same thing. Currency is probably the tech that I would least want to give an AI. Since it dramatically increases his techrate. I would rather give him things like construction and HBR.
How do you reason around this?


Confu - we are spi, so really you can (and probably should) jump in and out of different religions as it fits. If shaka+qin was confu I would be that too, to lower the risk of annoying DoWs.
If there is some trade I need to do with say Isabella in this game, just give her 10 gold the turn you meet her. She will become pleased and you can trade.
The "Our trade relations have been fair" is calculated on how much extra you have given them in trades, divided by the number of turns you have known each other.
Shaka is +4 for shared religon which is quite high. (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-illustrated-1-know-your-enemy.478563/page-3#post-11931803)
or is it +3?? (http://www.acloudfor4.com/civ4tools/LeadersPersonalityMatrixRevolutions.aspx)
If he has the holy city (he had in my game) it's up one more. But it takes some time.


I wouldn't build NE in a city that won't run specialists for almost all the time.
The problem isn't really (imho) how many specialists the city can run at maximum, so the food isn't the only important factor here.
My capital will want to grow almost all the time, and having 2-3 specailists running there at all times make this really problematic.
Could be better to just place NE in a city that doesn't have other obligations, and is quite fine with running 3 specialists for the rest of the game. Tundra cities can fall into this category for example.
Another option is to just wait and place NE in a conqured city with a bunch of wonders.

 

Good comments guys, you certainly keep this going

I started looking at saves too, my opinions (in submitted order)
Samuel_996

Spoiler :

3 turns from Cuirs, Lib won.
No pre-built units for upgrading, but with police state and big cities whipping Cuirs should be no biggie.
Nice GP generation, Astro can be bulbed later as well?
Game looks in very good shape

Powerfaker

Spoiler :

Astro & GLH yay. Qin at friendly will trade guilds, nice one.
He will also trade banking then, i would consider Rifling lib here.

There's only 1 really expensive tech before Rifling with RP, if you can take it with Lib & partly bulb PP, and Qin feeds you other techs
(i think it's very likely that he will get either Gunpowder or Natio later for you too, and would use him as full trading partner without worries of giving techs away)
Meanwhile i would sell some smaller techs for gold, like Aest to Shaka for 80g and Boudi for 70g, Monty Literature and so on.

Picking up krikav's comments, after Rifling & MT you could shut down research and play until conquest or domi with Cavs and Rifles.
Some Trebs could be useful, but overall i would focus on maximum research (golden age also available) until at least Rifling, and would skip Cuirs cos you can probably trade for some techs meanwhile that you otherwise would research yourself.

krikav

Spoiler :

Was thinking about writing more, but let's just have fun with Camels bonus points for doing something different, no doubt.

floydmcw

Spoiler :

I think you had lots of fun with your game, some parts could be described as builder mentality..but i would consider it slightly unfair if i go into detail there, thinking about what could have been done better and so on.
Surely get 150g from Shaka for Lit, and keep an eye on selling more cheap techs

 

With a limited amount (but very interesting..!) games,
and many comments already being made, let's start..
a new round
(we can keep discussing your games meanwhile, but i think it's good if we also start playing again quickly)

All 4 saves are available for this round ofc, voting or excluding one makes very little sense here.
Next stop: turn 230 (70 more)
Will think about a deadline later, not sure yet.

Games can be found here, if anybody wants to join in again:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cookbook-1-sally-immortal.638637/page-22#post-15323328

 

Good or bad? No need for positive feedback, but if I'm doing something bad I really want to know about it. I have huge problems with not seeing my own errors.

 

Did not look into detail, but can do

Spoiler :

Attacking Yayoi this way seems questionable, walls and 2 longbows + Impi that can move in + some minor units.
Imo the Camels there should be with your 2 other stacks.

Nodwengu on a hill but with only 1 longbow and 3 units total, attackable after declaring
I give hill cities priority if they are weakly defended, more units in there later can be annoying.
+ Nodwengu is central and could be annoying for moving units around, while Yayoi would be isolated and unimportant for culture.

I think Damascus could have kept 2 scientists, unless you are fine with an Engi.