Cookbook discussion thread (Game A Sillyman)

[Whisker]

Continued to pursue suicide by unfeasible pulping dreams and chose t60 save by @Imploding as that was best one economically, from those that had not yet reached pottery. Surprisingly I’m still alive and in relative decent position.

Spoiler T105 :

8 cities, 36 pop, 2 settler on standby.

6 / 8 cities have libraries and the remaining are building them.

Barbarian city Ainu, I did not want but Shaka would have taken it next turn and I did not him any closer to me.

Abused hell out of imperialist, I have ‘liberated our cities’ diplo bonus with Shaka, Ragnar and William. Sitting Bull will get his come next turn.

When writing was finished 3 out of six rivals met already had alphabet, so I decided to go aesthetics instead. I was first to and traded it around to get bunch of minor techs I was missing. Some turns before reaching aesthetics I also did something I almost never do, I used my first GS to pulp mathematics. I really would have loved to save him for the pulp path, but commerce was failing and trading iron working from Ragnar and clearing my gem tiles was easiest way out of the hole (after maybe trading for pottery, but let’s not go there).



How to continue.

Since I was first to aesthetics that means all those juicy aest wonders + Great Library are still not build. Also Pyramids have not been build. I would be tempted to move our settler squatting on that copper + fish spot inland and settle on the marble just outside our borders. Question is will our economy be able to handle one more city?

We also have lots of forest around that spot so we could quite easily be able to chop wonders of our choice. There some forest left around capital also, so we could get a wonder there too. Maybe try to get GL in capital and Pyramids at the new marble site? Global +50% GPP from Parthenon also sounds nice considering our pulping strategy.

There is option of putting 1 turn in monarchy and trade aest or alpha for that from Asoka or Victoria. But do we want that? If we try to get Pyramids, maybe not. This also affects if we want to revolt to organized religion (hammer bonus for wonders) now or turn later after we also have monarchy.

To reach our pulping goal we need either theology or CoL and CC. First is only one tech away and considerably cheaper latter is far more useful. After that self tech paper, double pulp edu and partially pulp gunpowder. Need to avoid pottery, fishing and meditation as those open other pulp lines we do not want.
We have one GS waiting and next one will come in 14 turns. Next one after that we have to wait 22 turns unless we get CoL or Parthenon before that. Ugh pulping the math really slowed us down. I really wonder if we should have self teched iron working to get gems online faster and only then go for aest?



Other mistakes:
I’ve had a settler sitting on that copper + fish spot for at least 20 turns outside our borders thus costing us some upkeep.

Hopefully someone will take the challenge and try this stupid pulp path out.

 

[Tonny]

I'd like to see shorter turnsets since I'm a veeery sloooooow player.
Furthermore setting up a good strat for anyone to take over is also interesting. The same is true for a bad setup and see how the "better" players can salvage it.

 

[Pangaea]

Think I agree with that. I was thinking about shorter turnsets too. Playing to after 1000AD, people can probably win the game by then.

But maybe that is what was done in the past, and interest still dropped off? Don't know what would be best, but from my perspective it would be better with shorter turnsets I think. Takes a long time when you get more cities and the empire grows. I know some people can play through whole games to the industrial era in mere hours, but I tend to take more than that just to 1AD. Often much more.

Would something like 30-40 turns be too little?

 

[5tephen]

Better late than never for my random thoughts up to T60!

Thank you to Fippy for hosting and everyone who shared a save. It's been really useful to look at everybody's saves and compare them to my own; time is far too short to analyse them all as much as they deserve.

Spoiler :

I'm still undecideded as to whether to play from Dorhin or Shakabrade's saves. I consider these two and SillyGoat's to be the strongest (though my analysis may be flawed!) It looks like there will already be a few people trying SillyGoat's so to keep it interesting I'll play one of the others. I was tempted to try @Whisker gunpowder bulb but I'm a bit pushed for time and I would need to think very hard about a strategy I've never tried. Dorhin seems to be in a better tech situation but I like Shakabrade's exploration and positioning of units.

In comparison to my own save it looks like the best saves have got better economies and map exploration. In my opinion the best saves have writing in or very nearly in, the saves without writing or pottery look more difficult to take forwards. I didn't think of failgolding stonehenge. The lesson I never learn is not to gamble too much - I really wanted that gold up and running early but detouring to mining before pottery looks like a mistake in comparison to better saves. Without sufficient map control enabling me to even put the city near the gold once I did get mining, I sacrificed the good trying for the perfect!

It looks like an early worker steal was very powerful and I will value this more highly in future.

@Nick723 to set reminders in Bug Mod you can use 'Alt+M.' Your analysis of several saves was very helpful.

I'm a bit conflicted about archery being good or bad? It was never going to provide the best save but there are at least 3 saves that are quite likely to lose a city and archery does considerably reduce this chance. It looks like skilled fogbusting or early copper can negate this but applying it to my own games I'm not sure if I'm good enough to risk it...

Something that is better about a fair few games than mine is exploration - I'm guessing warriors followed AI scouts around as my concern with exploring before having spare axes and archers is feeding warriors to barbarians?

 

[5tephen]

Shorter turnsets would suit me - I've made disastrous progress since T60!

Spoiler T105 of Shakabrade's game :

I'm really quite embarrassed by my effort - I ran out of time to play earlier and have clicked through too many turns without a good plan and over-expanded hard. I've only acquired one tech in the last 45 turns (writing) and my recovery plan of bulb mathematics and trade for alphabet has gone wrong as AI slow to alphabet or not wanting to trade... I have 13 cities but in retrospect I'd have been better delaying expansion south until I had iron working and alphabet. I even lost one of my new cities to a barbarian archer which did at least get the economy to a point that I could get writing. I suspect the game is still winnable if war can be avoided until I have alphabet but what was a very well setup game has been completely trashed!

Spoiler :

 

[drewisfat]

Personally I like larger turnsets as it can be very hard to drop your save before you've had a chance to put your gameplan into motion.

 

[Powerfaker]

@5tephen
I don't find this save bad at all.
All these cities make it very likeable. You have gran+lib in lots of places. No issues with your neighbours.

The tech situation is awkward but you're not in a sinkhole. A few adjustments will lift you to postitive gold + a few more scientists to raise tech rate a bit. This can all be done immediately. A few roads to get more foreign TR too.
I would hurry to masonry first and try to burn a lot of forests into ToA for failgold while it's still there. I noticed you're also halfway Aest (or maybe Shakabrade did ). Finish that and you can trade for at least alpha.
You will have 3 GS in ± 17 turns and you have the engineering line available All you need is Math and Constr on top of the above.

So this save needs some repairwork but it looks very hopeful. I would rate it the best of the rest behind @Qactus and @Pangaea and I may very well pick this one.

 

[5tephen]

@Powerfaker, thanks for the advice. It's good to have a fresh perspective.

Spoiler :

Trade routes to more neighbours is an excellent suggestion and I hadn't considered ToA failgold - probably could have started that if no beakers in aesthetics/alphabet.

I haven't been running any more scientists as struggling to break even at 0%. I panicked halfway to aesthetics as it was taking forever and I wanted to be able to build research with alphabet. In hindsight I wonder if I should have self teched IW to use the gems and quite a lot of riverside grass tiles empire wide.

I was beginning to consider whether to save the GS for cuirassiers - original thought plan was to ease off on tech whilst expanding and accumulate GS to bulb an engineering rush but crashed economy before writing so will be slower to this than planned but once some techs can be traded for the cottages will hopefully start paying off...

 

[Qactus]

Question for everybody, what would be your preferred amount of turns for the next set?
Was thinking about a long one (~60 turns) so you can fully execute strats or directions...

I'd be in favor of short turnsets. 60 is fine for the very first turnset, but later on turns are getting longer, especially when units have to be moved. Last round had 45 turns which was nice. Being interrupted by the timer while in the middle of some special plan can always happen, but in that case we can always write it down for the next player to consider.

 

[dorhin]

Spoiler Played shakabrades game :

It was a bit hard for me to find my way into the game, more difficult than I thought to continue someone elses game.
I expanded to 9 cities rather soon and surprisingly found my economy in bad shape Built more cottages and ran Great Scientists mainly to keep up.
At some point I decided that I would go cuirassier rush, mainly because there was so much good land available for settling peacefully.
Shaka started plotting at 875BC but declared on Ashoka
The economy is now pretty much consolidated I guess, the Great library will be finished in 2 turns and music in 4-5 turns. Overall the game should be pretty straight forward from now, the main downsides I see:

Religion has spread rather late to me and I didn't choose/spread a state religion yet
Diplomatic situation is a bit tense due to SB, he demanded corn at some point which I happily gave but now he is annoyed again because of border tension.

 

[Pangaea]

@dorhin

Spoiler :

Looks very solid, again. You probably haven't had open borders with SBull very long (not +1 yet), but one way to fairly easily increase diplo over time is to gift away resources. You have plenty of extra health (in cities) in this game, so can quite carelessly gift him deer, sheep and fur. I don't particularly like to gift away happy resources, but with 4 resources you'll fairly quickly get +2 with him here, so that could work. I'm not sure how many turns is required, but the bonus increases faster the more resources you trade. Soon-ish you'll get +1 for open borders too, at which point he'll possibly because cautious again.

IIRC I did this with some AIs in the game I submitted, and it does help.

Plus, with the religious distribution in this game, you'll quickly build up relations that way too (though not with SB)

 

[shakabrade]

Sorry, too much (unpaid) overtime IRL to take this turnset. Did anyone think about gifting some cities for Diplo? With IMP it is dirt cheap and you can gift a city to SB between you and Shaka to make attack on you almost impossible and, more importantly, give 2 cities to tech leader and get him to Friendly for free techs.

 

[Whisker]

@shakabrade Check my report at top of page 4.

 

[Fippy]

Okay we have 11 new saves from round 2.
A relatively big decline from the first set, which makes me think some peoples would prefer if they can play their own.

For round 3 you can play your own game now, and will stay this way until it's over
(ofc you can still take a different save too)
Please remember everybody that you can join in (or back in) for any round, no restrictions here..pick a save and gogo.

Let's use 45 turns again (until T150).
New round will be announced next Friday (11th)

Snowbird (Gressulf)
SillyGoat (Benginal)
Powerfaker (SillyGoat)
Benginal (Jnebbe)
Pangaea (SillyGoat)
Qactus (SillyGoat)
Edarga (5tephen)
Whisker (Powerfaker)
5tephen (Shakabrade)
Tonny (SillyGoat)
Dorhin (Shakabrade)

Sillygoat's game was very popular, being picked 4x.
Cheers to you for an excellent first round
Shakabrade 2x.

Oops wrong thread..oh well now we have it twice

 

[Powerfaker]

@5tephen
Realized (and had to check) ToA requires Polytheism. So getting the techs and failgold can probably not be doen fast enough.

 

[Snowbird]

Spoiler :

Played 5tehpen from Shakabrade...
Overall, I was surprised in how bad some saves were economically... I mean I played second round from less than stellar save and result was better than some playing from SillyGoat save...
For this particular save
13 saves with ~8 librearries is not a crash, very worst case scenario one can use GScientist for golden age to undig himself.
on T0 deleted some units and canceled worker (there are 10 already, half doing not really important stuff), juggled some tiles - I think hired some extra scientists and worked fur. That put economy in green (+4gold at 0% and 30 research). In cap I ordered a settler, probably a gift to... don't know maybe Ragnar to get him to pleased and get few trades in?
Second thing was making road to Willem. I checked later on worldbuilder one section of road gives ~6 gold per turnm through traderoutes, that is really more important than any other stuff workers were doing.
I switched back to Aesthetics and sent unit in Shaka lands to search for the last AI. Without knowledge I would probably searched behind Willem (Willem was missing more espionage points than Shaka, and Ragnar was named as worst enemy of Asoka).
t108 -found Asoka
t109 - finished Aesthetics, got Alpha +25 gold from Willem. Apparently Asoka is pissed due to trades, go figure. Got IW+Masonry from Wicky, time to improve gems, whipped settler.
t111 - got maths from Asoka, teching Currency
t115 - with three liberations got Shaka and Ragnar to pleased and SB to cautious. From this save earlish war is clearly not an option. 1 turn at partial slider to currency, traded for Willem's dye, both gems mined. So ~10 turns to dig out.
T116 begged 50 gold from Shaka and Ragnar...Oh, apprently flipped fthe fish too... need fishing.
T118 - literature start on Great library
t124 - Buiult Glib, traded Literature for part teched Calendar
400AD Shaka captured SB city...
800AD Liberalism won, 1 turn to printing press, the first Cuirassier is built, plenty of others ready to be whipped. There is a peace deal with Sahaka and Willem is a natural target. It should be pretty standard horse stomp from here.
The rest of it was plain boring managament stuff. I think I could have done it at least 150 years faster if I really cared for that (should have produced at least one GM during golden age for example).
I probably will not be around for the remaining set(s), pretty sure nobody will miss that.

If there are any doubts, I propose 4 part being till the glorious end.

 

[shakabrade]

@shakabrade Check my report at top of page 4.

Sorry, @Whisker for not paying better attention.

Spoiler :

You almost overdid it . City gifting is extremely powerful diplo tool but on Pangaea you really have short window of opportunity to find city spots you can gift. I really like to make some low peaceweight AI a land target instead of me, but you need to invest early and usually it is painful.

@5tephen W

Spoiler :

ow, your economy looks like one after a HA rush , but if you focus on libraries, getting Currency ASAP, all gpt trades you can get, getting all trade routes, you can consolidate for a later push with some tech trading and research/wealth building. What could help you are golden ages or bulbing Compass to trade it around. You are likely to skip some infra if you go to cuirs (probably will not be able to get all Forges in time), but it is still doable. It is just that for the next 35-40T you can't do too much outside your economy, no units allowed. Use Caste to pop Great Merchant for a mission to Temple of Artemis city.

@dorhin

Spoiler :

Very strong position. I like what you did there. You are to hit more than 300bpt on 1AD which is my internal measure of satisfying performance. You can play and your name is very similar to Doshin. Nomen est omen.

 

[Benginal]

Couldn't win by turn 150, although I'm sure it's possible from Qactus(SillyGoat)'s save.

Spoiler :

It was basically just Panzer General at the end. Very fun! Thanks for putting us in such a strong position @Qactus and @SillyGoat

Turn 110: Engineering in
Turn 114: Declare on Willem
Turn 121: Willem Capitulates
Turn 131: Ragnar Capitulates
Turn 132: Sitting Bull Capitulates
Turn 142: Shaka Capitulates
Turn 153: Asoka Capitulates
Turn 160: Victoria Capitulates

 

[dorhin]

Spoiler Shakabrade :

Thank you, glad to hear that you enjoy how I carried on your game, you had already set up the empire really nicely

Spoiler Benginal :

Nice one, 1000AD victory

Spoiler :

I am still undecided which save to pick, probably either the one of Pangaea or Qactus as I don't do engineering rushes too often and would like to improve my game in that field. The save by Powerfaker is in my opinion the strongest one for a Cuirassier rush, good expansion and currency already in. 5tephens save is also intriguing, as I enjoy fixing the economy after expanding too much (happens to me most of the time as well).

Spoiler Fippy :

Thank you for organizing this, playing these games is a welcome challenge! Especially having to play other peoples games requires a lot more thought process than usual and helps you (or rather me) learning to adopt to new situations

 

[dorhin]

Spoiler Played from Pangaeas save :

I couldn't resist to finish this game, at T150 Shaka had just vassaled and only Ashoka, with whon I was at war, and Victoria were left. India was a lot more stubborn than expected, had to capture 3 cities for him to give in, final finish date was 1060AD (the image was taken before pressing end turn to finish the game.

I messed up in the beginning of the turnset: my plan would have been to bulb engineering and gather as much gold as possible, build catapults and upgrade them to trebuchets the same turn that engineering was in. Well, apparently one cannot upgrade catapults to trebuchets, learned something new there So I had >1000 gold and ~10 catapults that I couldn't upgrade and had just declard war on Willelm. Luckily, he was rather weak and despite his cities being built on hills he succumbed relatively quickly to my catapults. After capturing two cities, I realized that I didn't have feudalism for vassaling, traded for the minor religious techs and self-teched feudalism (luckily, there was quite some gold in my account due to not being able to upgrade the catapults, so things turned out quite well in the end). Once feudalism was in, Willelm capitulated immediately.
Next target was Ragnar, for whom I had the trebuchets in place already. He gave in quickly, same for SB and Shaka who posed no threat at all.

You had set up the game really nicely Pangaea, all there was left to do was to whip an army and go to war. The AIs were really backward, you managed to get all relevant techs despite not trading too much, nice job

Really nice game, was also by far the fastest victory date for me so far (by 260 years).