[BTS] Crashmon Shadow Game 2 :- Emperor

[crashmon]

Turn 52 :- Developments

• Sent the Axeman east and map has a surprising turn for us, makes next city spot interesting

Spoiler Saladin :

• There is a peninsula to the South East, where Sally is
• This means going East is now a Prio, to box him off
• Have started settler in York as well also
• So we have Sally East, Wang west (it looks like), and all others north
• Asoka has writing as well, not traded with him yet.

So thoughs, how does this impact us

 

[krikav]

Probably ocean fish 2N2E of gold.

 

[Nick723]

Hey - a few thoughts

I wouldn’t worry too much about boxing people off in this case. I’d say generally this is applicable only when you are in a real contest for land or if you plan to play peacefully the full game. Here, even if Sally takes the spot to the east, you still have plenty of room for city 4, and then your cities 5-8 might all be Indian ones anyway!

For the 4th city I prefer going west for horses / sheep, but others may disagree.

I don’t like the settler build in York right now. I’d rather grow to size 4 first before thinking about next build, it maybe that you 4->2 pop whip a granary and then regrow on cottages.

Minor point but Nottingham isn’t working the farm.

 

[sampsa]

Agree with Nick - blocking is not important at all. Maybe if there is a beautiful spot you should race there before the AI does, but I don't think you should block for the sake of not getting boxed in or boxing an AI in. Some marginal/decent spot I'd just let the AI have and take it later i.e. I'd just focus on settling the sites with the biggest immediate benefit.

I wouldn't start a settler in York. I'd go barracks until you have pottery (2T) and start a granary. No urgent need for settler IMO and whipping settlers/workers with granary is much more efficient than slow building them. Not a great city to get a settler out anyway, perhaps just grow big asap to work max amount of cottages.

I really think you should keep the governor on to stop making silly oversights like not working the improved tile. Just turn it on, emphasize on and you are good to go.

Spoiler :

I would probably not finish this axe at least until necessary btw, and just start putting to a granary when available.

As Krikav hints, you should really move the axe on gold to see if there is ocean fish. I think the next city can go sheep-horse, 3E of cap or claim the SE-corn. I think I kinda like 3E now, clearly highest and you are ready for cottages.

 

[NightOnEarth]

Now this is realy a surprise, Saladin is to the east. I was under the impression that you've met him SW of London (t18, the remarkable assembly of four ambassadors). In the meanwhile, borders of London have expanded a second time, shielding the NE a bit more. Korea settled already east of the sheep, as you can see. Asoka and Wang Kon have already built three cities. Probably this means that you're not in a hurry to fill the gaps.

IMHO, you could shift your spawn busters a bit, especially the guy SE of London. Barbarians cannot spawn in a 2-tile radius of units AND in fogless areas, if I'm correct. I would post the guy 1 SW from the corn, thus revealing more terrain. I would also shift the western units. I even have the bold idea of letting the warrior in York scout a little on Asoka's border, or is that a bit overboard?

Maybe it's time to think about how to get the second ring around your cities. No religion spreads to you (which may be good in a diplomatic sense). Does it make sense to think about mysticism and then masonry as the next technologies? Then you could build momuments in those cities where it would be advantageous. Furthermore you could improve the stone to have the opportunity for failgold or the pyramids, there is still enough forest left to chop.

The experts here may contradict me, but i would start to worry about the economy. The slider is at 50% and a fourth city will lower it further. Now would be cottage time for me, especially since the gold is probably not directly available.

I'm grateful that you share your game with us. It is really entertaining, challenging and I'm improving my skills.

 

[Anysense]

I'd rather like to have more food - dry corn, hill pigs and four floodplains is not enough unless you intend to axe/HA rush someone. I doubt you get decent data for elepult here, may be with a Math bulb. Leaving the corn to Saladin is probably too generous, and being protective he does not make good first target. Although if I remember correctly there was a more interesting spot with grassland sheep somewhere to the west.

 

[sampsa]

I think the choices are:

1. try to grab more land in both east and west, which means likely peaceful play until cuirs or so
2. leave them for the AIs and focus on getting for the elepult attack against Asoka (maybe 5th city 3N2E of cap due to fp+river, or just remain at 4)
3. something in between of these

My general civ-strategy advice would be not to pick the "in between" very often. Pick a strategy and execute it in the most efficient fashion. One thing to think about is whether to try to get Asoka build those Mids or build it yourself. I'm afraid elepult comes a bit too soon for capturing Mids.

 

[crashmon]

Yea, I will post update later, but I need help on diplo aspects of my game, so I want to try and focus on that a little. I'm playing a side game alongside this one, which looked like I was winning easily, but made a couple of mistakes which has turned that game from an easy win into a really hard slog (basically while I was vassaling my nearist neighbour, another strong civ vassaled two other weaker civs who was near me in tech, so the Cuirs rush I had planned has now had to turn into a Cannon / Infranty rush, as I could not prevent them getting rifling, and he had several huge stacks of heavily promoted Phants / Rifles which I burned most of my cannons / cavs killing).

Continents Maps are I find more challenging that Pangea maps, luckily this one is Pangea, but I need to polish up my Diplo game in terms of preventing one Civ from getting too powerful in vassaling others when they on the other side of the world. On the plus side on the other game I've been playing, I have now learned how a cuirs rush can go wrong

So in Summary, I need to enhance my Diplo skills significally if I'm going to be able to step up to Emperor

 

[sampsa]

So in Summary, I need to enhance my Diplo skills significally if I'm going to be able to step up to Emperor

I think having decent killing skills mostly overrides the need of diplo skills. What kind of diplo skills even exist? Don't piss off everyone (unless you can) and that's about it.

 

[NightOnEarth]

Diplo, I too regard this topic as a challenge. You may know this thread
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/triangle-diplomacy.157242/
I found # 16 and # 47 particularly interesting to start with.

The other day krikav impressed me in BOTM 207 with a diplomatic victory through an AP election with (for me) incredibly positive relationships with four other civilizations. Perhaps he can say something about this and about diplo in general.

But Diplo also assumes that you know what the others are up to. You have open borders with Asoka (and Mehmet). Maybe it's time to pay him a visit - with a quick scout. In general, it is still a bit early for diplo, I think. The two religions do not seem to have spread yet. Where are the opponents and what resources are available to them? Yes, I think I would send out one or two scouts now.

 

[crashmon]

I think having decent killing skills mostly overrides the need of diplo skills. What kind of diplo skills even exist? Don't piss off everyone (unless you can) and that's about it.

Not Diplo in terms of pissing people off, Diplo more on stopping one civ vassalling others, while your armies are targetting another civ.

Basically what happened was I had conquered my Continent, and Dutch, India, Maya, and Sally on another continent. I was cuirs rushing Willem, but while I was doing that Sally vassaled Pacal and Gandhi. When I went for Gandhi after vassalling Willem, I ran into several Huge 20+ stacks of heavily promoted Saladin Elephants and Camal Archers, which tore a lot of units out of my army (I was killing 2 for 1, but considering I was having to deal with this, and Ghandi longbows as well), even wilth 40+ units, and a train of others coming on ships, I just lost too many to conquer quickly enough. I did get Cav's and took a few more Indian cities, but Sally had 12 cities, and I needed to go through India to get to him, and by the time I got to him, Pacal had also teched Rifles, traded it to Sally, so now I had stacks of Rifles I was coming up on...

I now have Cannons, and they don't so I can start again, but having to change from building Cav's to Cannons has slowed me down somewhat, also Pacal had Statue of Zeus, so I had a ton of War unhappiness which I had not planned for.

I have 10 turns of Peace now, about 30 Cannons, and I should only need to take 2 cities to break Pacal out from Sally, and then it should get easier, but what seemed a simple Cuirs rush turned into a large slog, all because I did not bribe Sally off Pacal at the correct time to stop him Vassalling (too focused on Willem and keeping the others happy). I also killed most of Sallys stacks as well, so I think the war is probably won, but it should have been won like 50 turns ago if I had bribed Sally at the right time.

Anyway thats another game, won't happen here I don't think, as this map is a Pangea, and I won't be stuck ferrying around large amounts of troops

 

[sampsa]

I understand. What you are talking about is some diplomatic tactics to possibly prevent unfavourable conditions. However, I really don't think any of that is necessary to beat emperor or even immortal, barring some extremely weak land and/or very favourable conditions for a runaway AI. On deity understanding these mechanics becomes somewhat important already, because AIs become much more capable of inflicting real damage.

I think the main focus should be in managing your own empire as that's not only the most important thing, but also a skill you need in every game no matter what the conditions are. The most important thing concerning AIs is likely the trading game.

 

[crashmon]

I'm also trying not to be tilted at Sally right now in this game.. I was so tempted to play this game last night, built like 10 axes, and go chomp on him, but cooler head ruled the day

 

[krikav]

@NightOnEarth
I had to go back and check. botm207 was that Boudica game, and most everyone was in the same religion there which helps.
Other than that, it's just to stack up the positive diplomatic modifiers (somewhat easy), and avoid getting negative hits (abit harder).
It's a skill that I think need experience to build up, unless you want to obsess about looking in tables.
When I see Hammy and Shaka in the same game, I know they will hate each other without having to look their peaceweight up. And if I see an AI that I can't remember the peaceweight of, that AI is in the middle of the pack almost always.

What I do is to avoid trading with AIs that some other AIs hate, so that I won't get asked to stop trading with them. If I want to trade some resources anyway I renegotiate the deals every 10 turns (can't be asked to stop in that case).
That avoids the "You refused to stop trading with our worst enemy".

Then when the AIs start a war, it can be nice to beg and get peace traties with one or both of them, to avoid having "You refused to help us with war".

 

[krikav]

@crashmon
"I had conquered my Continent". If you succeeded with that, it shouldn't matter much what happends on the other continent.
Not every win is a smooth and efficient one. It's rare on maps with multiple continents, especially on higher difficulties.

Things that are worth to keep an eye out for is if some AI is lacking iron or other strategic resources. Then it can be good to prop them up abit.
Or feed a weakling some military tech to keep them safe.
Ofcourse it can be annoying to gift away feudalism, gunpowder or rifling to someone who you want to attack, but sometimes thats what you have to do, to avoid having them as a vassal to a stronger target.
It can also make sense to pay for peace, but thats risky as they are free to redeclare at any moment really, and you make the bully stronger with that approach.

Against behemoths with vassals, siege is almost always the way to go. Even if you play skillfully and abuse ceasefires things can quickly go sour with cuirs.

 

[Fippy]

Mounted is often about numbers, but even more about speed.
If a point comes where you notice things are getting tricky, you can switch out of war mode (and use your remaining units for security).
They can also kill AI stacks with ease often, their siege will be flanked out and they usually put random units together that are partly too weak on open field.
With their main stack(s) destroyed big AIs can still be controlled, it's how AIs operate They target one city, then build up another stack and so on.

Elepult should have a long opportunity window on Emp, longbows are not the end here.
Ends with Engineering prolly?

 

[pigswill]

Maybe you could consider elepult vs Saladin. He's a major pain if he gets feudalism (CG2/3 LBs ain't fun), gets you a little corner to yourself and Asoka ain't going to be a major threat anyway.

 

[Anysense]

It is unknown whether Saladin has anything good. Besides, he is in the corner. You can't go on to the next target after you've finished him. Don't forget that it is Normal speed, not Marathon - you can't afford to spend 10 turns moving your army back and forth. On the other hand, Asoka is close, soft, in the middle of the continent and he definitely has some juicy land. I don't know why anyone would bother looking for a better first victim.

 

[coanda]

Asoka is 7 spaces away. Saladin is at least 12 spaces away, and that's if you're seeing his capital culture (given that the warrior which headed east immediately didn't bump into his scout, my guess would be that's his second city in which case probably 15+ spaces away. An extra 6-10 turns moving your catapults to his capital is a pretty significant delay. Because (as you note) he's Protective, his units defend better. Because he founded a religion, he's probably at 500 culture by the time your catapults arrive but Asoka with no founded religion would hopefully still be in the 100-500 range (less cultural defense, fewer catapults needed or less time sieging). Because Saladin is more of a unit-spammer than Asoka, he probably simply has more units defending his capital.

After you succeed with the (slower, more expensive) elepult attack on him, you've taken cities that due to their distance are more expensive to maintain and harder on your worker management, plus leaving York much weaker than it would be if it could share tiles with Delhi. So your economy ends up worse. Your army, which has spent 15-20 turns walking off to the edge of the world, is now so far out of position that you may have zero opportunity to even think about hitting another victim before Renaissance tech. And diplomatically you're giving Isabella free reign to spread Buddhism to everyone, which decreases the chances you can get a "shared military struggle" dogpile war boosting your relations to friendly with some AIs so you can start buying their monopoly techs off them and immediately selling those techs to all their neighbors.

 

[crashmon]

Just to be clear, I have no plan to attack Sally first .... Just got trolled by him in another game I played.....

But I do want to grab the land to the East (the city 3E of London). I will post next update tomorrow, took a little break from Civ today