Cookbook discussion thread (Game A Sillyman)

[5tephen]

I followed on from @Qactus' take on @SillyGoat's save.

Spoiler :

I continued to build crossbows as seemed to be the plan but whipped forges ahead of them in the queue and put some more failgold into wonders whilst waiting for a GS. Bulbed engineering and teched feudalism (for vassaling.) Whipped some trebuchets - no issues with happiness and heavy whipping with so many happy resources and forges. DOW'd Sitting Bull T118 who capitulated after a couple of cities - gave back the cities as I thought it would take forever before they did anything useful for me - he really didn't improve his land much... I was going to go for Shaka next on the basis that it would have cost me feudalism to bribe him on someone else, I didn't really want all the AIs having longbows and we weren't friendly enough to beg to stop him being bribed on me if I went for WvO. Change of plan when Ragnar DOW'd WvO who bribed in Shaka and Victoria - I took the opportunity to hit WvO T127 before his tech took off too much - capitulated after ~3 cities which I gave back due to cultural pressures and not really looking like they'd produce anything for my war effort this side of victory. Ragnar next T134 using a secondary stack as Shaka had wiped out whatever his main SoD consisted of - capitulated after 2 cities which I gave back for the same reasoning as WvO cities. Had to pause a turn or two to DOW Shaka T139 as I wanted to use my trebuchets on his units in his cities and he had rudely left units on both the possible city adjacent tiles I could have moved my SoD onto on first turn of the war. After 3 cities Shaka had had enough. Not sure if it's the best strategy or not but again it didn't feel like I could use these cities or needed them for production and I didn't want to leave units in them preventing revolts so I gave them back. Enough of my SoD is in place on Asoka's borders to go again next turn and it looks like he has a minimal army - if it goes well in the first couple of cities, I'd probably split the stack and take out Victoria in the same war for conquest victory.

Spoiler :

I guess as @Snowbird says, part 4 will be the glorious end!

Thanks again for hosting @Fippy - it's been really fun and I feel like I've progressed from playing this. Thanks SillyGoat, Qactus and @shakabrade for the saves which were all really well set up. Thanks to everybody for the feedback and to Snowbird for the write up from my save which I will use to compare how well I could have done from there.

Spoiler Thoughts on experience from this game :

I need to make a good bit of time to go back and compare my decisions with other people's early game decisions to see where I could have set up better and play on from my T60 save to try and replicate Snowbird's progress and decision making from there. I guess the most obvious things I've gathered so far are that:
- I probably overvalue getting as many as possible good city sites early game before my economy can support them; they will pay off eventually but the recovery time delays the ability to go to war and win the game at a decent time
- I'm underutilising failgold
- I need to think a bit more about Heroic Epic - I build it most games but Konya in this game was producing war elephants/crossbows every turn - I settled the same site in my game but almost as an afterthought
- once writing is in I need to consider actively pursuing trade routes to boost my economy

 

[Fippy]