Emperor Cookbook IV: Suryavarman II

[ChrisShaffer]

Spoiler :

Did a lot of trading, focused on buildings, burned a great merchant on a golden age, built Heroic Epic, National Epic and Oxford, settled two Great Scientists. Fought a short nothing war with Suleiman. Never did figure out what to do with that weird little city on the island. Gilgamesh is a monster.

Just started researching Steel. 2139 gold in the bank. Sustainable 70% research rate at 483 and +9 per turn.

Never got any other religion, so I converted to Confucianism during the golden age.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Spoiler :

plattfuss, I had the same experience as RJM. Suleiman attacked the holy city directly from his boats and lost everything. A few turns later, he dropped off two unescorted catapults by the northwestern city and lost them. A few turns after that, he accepted 45 coins for peace.

I've been trading fairly freely with the AI, and despite the religious differences, they are quite happy with me.

 

[Gumbolt]

I am back online now. Bribed a few BT engineers to upgrade line a bit faster. Will have to see if I can make this round in time.

 

[ChromiumL]

I am willing to wait a few hours to see of Gumbolt can finish the round to join us. Otherwise, we will probably start voting in about 12ish hours.


My round:

Spoiler :

I think things went 'fairly' well in this round, other than a stupid little war with Suleiman... He attacked holy city and utterly failed, but I did have to waste some time to build a few military units to defend. Spent about 100 gold on peace. He also bribed Charlemagne into war, but that went nowhere and eventually I got peace for about 20 gold. Towards the end, Suleiman broke off part of his lands into a colony (Justinian ).

Tech: I started out by switching over to Compass for Harbors and used my next GS to finish up education. After that, I went ahead and teched music (for free artist which I used for a golden age) and then philosophy. I was going for liberalism, but I realized that none of the AI even had Paper yet, so figured it was safe to save that for later. I then teched construction, machinery and engineering (mmm, Notre Dame!). I next went along the economy track--guilds, banking, economics (settled GM), and printing press. After that, I debated where to go next, and settled on gunpowder, and am now working on chemistry (6 turns).


Trading: As far as tech trading goes, I decided not to trade any techs with Gilga or Suleiman as they were my greatest competition tech-wise. Mostly I did a lot of trading with persia and got drama, horseback riding, and theology. The only AI with a tech I don't have is Persia, which just discovered divine right. I also did a lot of map trading for big bucks (150-180 gold from each AI) and managed to circumnavigate the globe in the process. I also got some money by trading very very obsolete techs (aesthetics/literature) to Monte. Also got really lucky on a trade with Monte for some happiness resources (wine, furs, sugar) for iron--I figure I am happy if he has iron so that he can use it on his neighbors .

Cities: As far as city building goes, I went ahead and built a city on the southern iron source, then discovered the islands beyond--and settled two more cities on the western islands (one is 2x crabs and horse, the other is 4x (!!!) fish. Still working on getting fishing boats out to all those resources. In my other cities, I built harbors and universities ASAP, and need one more before I can build Oxford. Other than that, it was mostly just building economy/growth type buildings. I am also about half done with Notre Dame (22 more turns). I'm about to finish a ton of banks which should really boost the economy quickly!

Summary: 409 at a sustainable 60% tech rate (+5 ).

 

[Soirana]

Let me ask. It is AD1100 and none of you even attempted to make war?

I hope you will go to the end [goes to buy some cornflakes for next round]

 

[ChromiumL]

No war... I think its daunting to try to war when you are on an island. It just takes so much more time to build up a fleet to transport your units. Maybe it would have been worth it, and I would love to have a foothold on that continent, but we picked a save that didn't have one... so that sort made war less of an option.

 

[Gumbolt]

Let me ask. It is AD1100 and none of you even attempted to make war?

I hope you will go to the end [goes to buy some cornflakes for next round]

Stuck on an island and the 400ad save lacked any real military. That and fact AI is Gilga expanding like crazy. From the saves I have seen he looks like a monster to fend off.

Need to cook and then I might try an attack on the mainland for something different.

It would be interesting if we assigned users different strategies to go for on the best save.

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler :

The trouble with a rush on this game now is the AI have longbowmen and we had no construction. Would take many catapults to break down Gilga cities.

If you can amass a large stack and take it along the icy top of map an inspired attack on his capital is not impossible. I do think he will have a 10-15 stong stack somewhere. We will see in a bit.

One of things that you dont see much on this forum is the debate over beelining nationalism.

With edu and philosophy the door is fully open. No marble though!!

 

[Gumbolt]

I am expecting no votes this round but I wanted to offer something different and appease Soirana.

Spoiler :

I wanted to try and rush Gilga with longbowmen. This is my effort.

All in all it killed the economy. On the plus side I did take 2 cities.

Was good fun rushing with longbowmen.

Perhaps Cannons and gunpowder would of worked better.

Did set up HE in the capital.

 

[ChromiumL]

I think we now have everyone--so lets start voting!

Here are the submitted saves:

KingMorgan

RJM

Plattfuss

ChrisShaffer (zip file)

Chromium


Gumbolt

Lets try to finish up voting by Saturday (3 days from now).

 

[RJM]

ChrisShaffer - great research rate and strong tech position, but Liberalism already discovered
Platfus - good research rate, but weaker tech position
Chromium - good expansion and strong tech position but although the research rate is reasonable it is some way behind the best
Morgan - strong tech position but one of the lowest research rates
Gumbolt - has captured some cities, but low research rate and poor tech position answers Soirana's question

Votes

#1 ChrisShaffer
#2 Platfuss
#3 Chromium

 

[Gumbolt]

In all fairness I pretty much did nothing apart from produce LB and cats in my save. 4 galleys and a trireme too. I think soirana would of landed on continent a bit earlier and attacked with horsemen before the Ai got LB with 100% defence bonus. It took many cats to weaken those long bow. I did take 2 cities and kill most of his 7-8 strong stack including xbow, pike and other units!!!

I will look at the saves tomorrow. I am concerned as to what our actual winning strategy is as Gilga is getting overly powerful on most saves.

 

[RJM]

In all fairness I pretty much did nothing apart from produce LB and cats in my save. 4 galleys and a trireme too. I think soirana would of landed on continent a bit earlier and attacked with horsemen before the Ai got LB with 100% defence bonus. It took many cats to weaken those long bow. I did take 2 cities and kill most of his 7-8 strong stack including xbow, pike and other units!!!

I will look at the saves tomorrow. I am concerned as to what our actual winning strategy is as Gilga is getting overly powerful on most saves.

I can't speak for the others, but I suspect if I had tried attacking, I would have produced a really bad save.

Anyway, I think a space ship victory is a pretty good chance provided we can defend against an inevitable AI attack.

RJM

 

[ChrisShaffer]

#1 RJM
#2 Chromium
#3 Platfuss

 

[plattfuss]

3 pts: Chromium
2 pts: RJM
1 point: Morgan

 

[Gumbolt]

I can't speak for the others, but I suspect if I had tried attacking, I would have produced a really bad save.

Anyway, I think a space ship victory is a pretty good chance provided we can defend against an inevitable AI attack.

RJM

I quite agree on that. The AI longbow mostly has level 3 CG. More planning in the first section would of helped a war but i dont think this was ever our goal on this game. HE in the capital would make a possible steel lib grab work but how soon before gilga has knights. Riflemen might be better option for defence. Iron clads will defend the sea quite well. Maybe even privateers.

I do think we need custom houses asp as this will double the 4 trade routes in each city.

A space win will be a long drawn out affair and I suspect Gilga will start teching faster.

 

[RJM]

A space win will be a long drawn out affair and I suspect Gilga will start teching faster.

Even if he does start teching faster, my experience is that the AI is not very good at the final stages of a space race. Humans tend to be better at optimising the tech path and the construction of space ship components.

RJM

 

[Gumbolt]

Voting


3 pt RJM Best save in many respects. Strong tech position. Ai had no techs to trade. hehe. Oxford Uni likely too. All in all a cannon rifle attack could work here.

2pt Chris Shaffer. Similar in techs but slightly behind RJM i thought. Also the Ai was a bit more advanced. Not sure why you took liberalism so early!

1pt Platfus again had a good research rate but compared to the AI less of an advantage! I did like the HE in the capital.

I didnt think King Morgan or Chrom were quite as good as the other due to tech position or position compared to the AI.

All in all i think RJM did a great job on that round and it would be interesting to see how far we can stretch liberalism? Infantry anyone?

 

[ChromiumL]

This is a little late--sorry about that!

Here are my votes (which are slightly weird in order to avoid a tie):

1st - ChrisShaffer - Strong tech position, and monster tech rate. I wish you would have expanded more, but I think in this case tech may be more important. I think the big thing that separates this save from others is the MASSIVE production power!

2nd - Gumbolt - Nice try with the attack on Gilga - you deserve an A for effort

3rd - RJM - Normally I would have ranked you as 2nd, but that would have created a tie, so I had to change it up a bit. I think your tech position was 'probably' strongest, and I liked the trade you made to monte for all the happiness resources. But, your production was far far behind (like half) of what Chris's was, so I kinda want to play his save so that I can take a closer look at how exactly he did that.

So, that puts the final Tally at:

8 votes for ChrisShaffer
7 votes for RJM
6 votes for Chro
4 votes for Plattfuss
2 votes for Gumbolt
1 vote for KingMorgan

Congratulations Chris! We will be playing from his save. I have to say that I am a bit excited that this game is going past round 3! This round will be played through 1500 AD, and needs to be submitted by Friday the 7th (5 days from now-ish). If we have any weekend players, we can go through Saturday if needed so they have a chance to play.

 

[Gumbolt]

Woot a new round to play. Will see what i can do during the week.

well done to Chris!!!!

I will try to do a more serious next round.

Hmmm longbows with cannons.