Emperor Cookbook - Napoleon!!

[Gumbolt]

Sorry, stuck on a laptop for the next few days that can't run Civ4. Don't wait on my vote.

Thanks for letting us know.

 

[pnp_dredd]

1. Gumbolt
2. Ignorant Teacher
3. kossin

I looked mainly at number of cities and then tech rate. It's time to knuckle down and build a tech lead, perhaps just 1-2 more settlers but no more than that. Unlikely that we'll have a successful war until we use our tech lead to get gunpowder units.

 

[Gumbolt]

You have till i have voted to cast your vote. 10 or so mins tops.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okies my vores are as follows.

1st Teel - Yes a good Liberalism grab. Although an early French UU might be better with nationhood.

2nd Kossin I liked the fact Kossin was only one to have phants/catapults up and roaming about ready for an early assault. I think this was at the expense of expansion as China had grabbed the Marble city and the barb city down south. 143 BPT at 70% was matching the best saves. Well on course for lib grab.

3rd PNP. Again good tech rate but you are slow on Gr Lib build. You could be beaten to this. Not sure SW wonder will help too much. Useful though.

Other thoughts.

IT. A good GP farm setup up with the wonders but your BPT at 62 is really low. Not sure why this was so low. A lot of wonders though. You had a good stack to take barb city. (I waited for China to attack barb city then rolled in once job done for me. China used 1 swords. I attacked with 2 chariots to take out final archer. )

Steve - 86 BPT at 40% was low. 0.4vs Mao could mean an attack sooner or later. Not sure why you were building the 2nd market when you need settlers for trade routes.

Leon had a reasonable rex but his science rate is below 100BPT.

Jumbled. Slow rex really but northen isle is settled.

 

[Gumbolt]

The results for this round including Cripps who didnt submit a round. (let him off as he took place in first round)

Teelman 12
Pnp_Dredd 9
Steve250 6
IT 5
Leonwill 5
Gumbolt 3
Kossin 3

This makes Teelman the winner of this round. Congratulation to him. It would be useful if people gave reasons for their voting in the next round. I was suprised some saves didnt get more votes.

The next round will be played over the next 4-5 days with voting over Friday- Sunday.
The round will finish Friday time 1800hr GMT.

The next round will be played from 400ad-1100ad. Lets get playing people.

Here is the winning save to be used for the next round:

Teelman Save!!!

Please ensure when you post save you rename with your name.

Round 0: The starting save -
Round 1: 4000 BC - 1500 BC- Completed
Round 2: 1500 BC - 400 AD- Completed
Round 3: 400 AD - 1100 AD- Playing
Round 4: 1100 AD - 1500 AD - upcoming
Round 5: 1500 AD - 1700 AD - upcoming
Round 6: 1700 AD - 1820 AD - upcoming
Round 7: 1820 AD - 2050 AD - upcoming

 

[cripp7]

Spoiler :

Sorry about missing the last round, thanks Gumbolt for giving me a pass. So here's the next round.

400AD - Trade with WvO Mono>230

415AD - Mao demands HBR, no..

430AD - Hinduism FIDL, 2 turns from Philo

475AD - Philo

565AD - Paper

580AD - Lib FIDL!!

595AD - GS born, bulb Edu to 4 turns

655AD - Education

685AD - (missed screen) Trade Mao CS+Cal>Feud

820AD - Toaism FIDL

835AD - Trade JC banana>gems and beg 6gpt

870AD - Gunpoweder

880AD - Trade WvO Construction+60>Paper

950AD - Trade Mao Machinary>Paper+375

1040AD - Liberalism revolt to FR

1100AD - Slider to 0% currently teching Nationalism

 

[Lenowill]

Spoiler :

Just finished playing my round for 400 AD through 1100 AD. Had a few surprises. Managed to start a nice war with WvO and grab one of his towns with plenty of SoD leftover to grab more. Mao also declared on me but is willing to pay me 25g for peace due to my having Musketeers, which tear stuff up. Just finished researching Nationalism, so Nationhood is now an option. Good times.

On the downside, Liberalism was researched at a very early date by someone on the other continent. I'm thinking we need to gain more land and possibly some vassals if we're going to be able to compete with that level of teching. More soon.

 

[kossin]

Save here, leaving for work now so I'll post up details tomorrow.

Edit: my bad, I thought we were playing 100-turns rounds so I had played till the 300th turn rather than the year mark.

Spoiler :

We have Iron!!! Popped a source close to Paris. Cannon war is now possible.

Not much to say this round, pretty uneventful. Built 3 universities, unfortunately one city is lagging behind, it'll be whipped ASAP and then UOxford can start in Paris. Will revolt to Caste after whipping to try and generate a few GP, hopefully another GS for an Academy in Paris.

Decided to build 3 cities on the island for extra commerce routes, each with a food resource.

Also built the bananas/incense city by the large inlake.

Techs went Philo>Edu>Lib (even if we missed it, Free Religion is good since no religion came to our land mass)>Construction+Mono (trade)>Machinery>PP>Nationalism to take a shot at Taj. Even if we miss it the fail gold will be good.

From here, the goal is: tech Democracy (Emancipation/US), backfill up to Optics, research Astronomy to find the crazy techer on the other side (Lib in 585 AD on Emperor, seriously!!). Building Harbors will boost trade routes furthermore. Getting to Economics too would be good for Free Market. More trade routes goodies.

Some pictures.

City overview

Demographics - we're closing in the insane techer

South of the empire

Foreign Advisor

Resources

Trade Screen

 

[Lenowill]

Eep. You played 300 Years too far, kossin.

 

[Gumbolt]

Save here, leaving for work now so I'll post up details tomorrow.

1100ad!!! Did you save it prior to 1400ad?

 

[Lenowill]

Or perhaps an autosave from 1060 or so that you could play forward to 1100. *nods*

(And yeah, I'll get my file and some screenies up as soon as I can, have work to do for now.)

 

[Gumbolt]

I have no problems with an autosave from 1060 being used. Without events not much should change from the 2 saves.

 

[Teelman]

Wow I didnt think my save would be used but thanks guys for the compliments!!! I will continue my round in the next few days after work.

 

[Gumbolt]

Wow I didnt think my save would be used but thanks guys for the compliments!!! I will continue my round in the next few days after work.

It was one of the strongest techwise and you had quickest route to liberalism/gunpowder out of the lot. Be an interesting game to play now. That is unless someone DOW's. Still that is the luck of the draw sometimes on these saves.

 

[Nares]

1100AD (shadow)

Spoiler :

I shadowed this round (after lurking the last two), and just wanted to throw out a few features of my game.

Liberalism fell extremely early, as it did for others. Clearly unavoidable.

No relgions. Finally, WvO founded Hinduism (off of DR).

No metals; only one thing to do then.

I teched Philosophy->Nationalism->Machinery->Guilds->Gunpowder->Paper->Printing Press(1 turn). I traded Philosophy for Feudalism and Monotheism plus 30 gold.

I got a GS from Orleans eventually, which I used to build an academy in Paris. Otherwise, I tried to avoid specialists and push growth.

I managed to lose the fur city to WvO because I took too long getting there. I used the first settler (after taking some detours for a market) for the incense. Eventually, I got around to building another. But by the time it got to the island, WvO had settled on the southern fur. So, I settled the whales, and now begins a culture struggle I'll surely lose.

Mao is completely backwards. Like, totally backwards. I'm going to run right through him between drafting, gunpowder and two movement points. Only one of his cities is on a hill, and it can easily be taken last. I might even run some spies to really stick it to him.

The idea, of course, is that we're going to get stomped by the other continent at this rate. A 580AD Liberalism is usually a bad sign. The only way to solve that is to get more land.

 

[Lenowill]

All right, time for my description.

Spoiler :

My screenshots can be found here: http://www.projecthowler.com/civ4ad1100EmpCookNap.html

Teched forward. REXed the island in two additional places including a town that will take advantage of the Whale with optics. Also added a coastal expansion south of the capital to work the banana, incense, and two hills.

Didn't win the Philosophy religion. DIDN'T win Liberalism (!!!) at a remarkably early date despite bulbing through a hunk of Education.

At that point I realized there HAS to be a techmonger on the other continent, and that same techmonger most likely has a ridiculous economy and is going to keep doing the Runaway Tech Lead maneuver unless we find some means of keeping parity. Our current size and available land won't allow us to compete well enough for my liking. How can we fix that? Well ... Willem Van Oranje sure has a lot of nice land ... and not a lot of defenders ...

I went into heavy-duty Whip mode for Barracks, Stables where appropriate, and units ... while picking up Construction, Gunpowder, and yes, the beloved Nationalism!

I finished researching Nationalism just this turn, and we now can go for Engineering (+1 road movement) or Feudalism (enables Capitulation, which may be useful in the wars that are coming up). Not wanting to let our Unique Unit advantage stall out for even a moment, I scouted WvO's territory, saw that he was underdefended, assembled a modest SoD that makes use of our many Chariots from earlier, and declared on him. His nearest city fell within a few turns with little ado, and some of his Catapults and Chariot in the field got mopped up by our two-movement Musketeers!

Meanwhile, I kept up the whipping in the western cities and was rewarded with a few muskets over there ... just in time for Mao Zedong to DoW us and try to grab some land. Surprise! Musket beats Cho-Ko-Nu! I killed a few of his units and started assembling a secondary SoD along his border (on a hilltop) which we can later leverage either to take come of his cities, or just to keep him on lockdown so he can't cause problems.

The save file I'm posting is set to steamroll Willem van Oranje using drafted Musketmeers and Catapults and anything else we need to throw at him. The only unit he can quickly research his way to (and fight us at full parity with) would be Knights, but he only has one source of Horse, and it is very easily Pillaged from where we're standing right now. His Iron is less easy to get rid of, but doable considering the base STR and mobility of our UU muskets.

My save has a lot of other strengths worth mentioning here. For one, there are numerous options of play available to whoever picks it up, which should lead to some very interesting different takes on how the war plays out. We're still in Bureaucracy at the moment but JUST got Nationalism and can switch to Nationhood for the power that is Drafting. We have plenty of excess Happy resources and comparatively little Food resources in most cities, which makes fairly heavy drafting viable in the short term to create the necessary unit numbers to finish or cripple Willem's empire and maybe a chunk of Mao's. Maybe more, heh.

Due to his initial rush failing miserably, Mao is willing to pay us 25g for peace, which could be useful for enabling us to focus alllll of our energy on Willem during those turns of peace. Julius Caesar is also willing to be bribed into war against either Mao or Willem if we pay him (an admittedly steep price of) Nationalism or Education.

WvO is also tending in the direction of wanting peace, but (from a coldhearted game-winning standpoint, mind you--which I don't always play from but will do for the sake of this very Non-RP'd challenge) we really need to steamroll him a bit more before we do that. At least take all of his cities outside of his personal peninsula (on the continental heartlands that are so yummy for farming/cottaging later on). If we could Vassalize WvO that would rock, but just flat out taking all of his land would be a good alternative. He has good, cottage-worthy land with plenty of Iron access which will help us out later.

The initial siege against WvO's first city was quite fortunate in terms of casualties (we only lost two units if memory serves, although one of them sadly was a Medic war elephant. The other was a catapult). This leaves our army ready to keep beating WvO up.

I highly recommend staying on the move swiftly throughout the war with WvO, drafting units to keep up our advance, and knocking out his cities on the continental heartland as fast as possible so that he doesn't have time to respond very much. The sooner this war is over, the better. We have access to Universities now but don't currently have time to build many of them, so waging war fast and then moving into peace growth will be preferable to keep up on tech and hopefully catch up to the AI who is gunning ahead of us.

I did make some boo-boos. Due to wanting to focus on the war 100%, I auto'd a good number of workers to Build Trade Network (which doesn't seem to have done any harm yet) and also auto'd the governors again. I kept a fairly good eye on most of them, but I realized I'd been letting Tours run a Spy again instead of scientists, and so on, and had to keep forcibly removing that specialist every time it grew. On the plus side, if it does give us a GSpy later, we can always use it to infiltrate someone and steal a tech or two.

Whatever we decide, I notice that the other saves so far have opted for peace. With due respect, I don't think peace is the best option here. We _need_ more land if we're going to be able to compete on research late-game---just what my gut is telling me. If someone got Lib that early, then the other continent is probably (1) super friendly among the people who matter and (2) super commerce-heavy for that person who got Liberalism. In all of the times I've played on emperor I've never seen an AI get Lib that early. We've got our underrated UU and the flexible mobility that it offers, plus an Organized leader. Let's rock!

Take care, everyone! My save is attached for in-depth examination.

For the France!

 

[kossin]

Sorry for playing too far, I explained it in my post which I now fixed. I keep every autosave from every turn for the game I currently play. I can skip the next round if you want me to, I got some knowledge on tech paths and the other landmass...

 

[Gumbolt]

Sorry for playing too far, I explained it in my post which I now fixed. I keep every autosave from every turn for the game I currently play. I can skip the next round if you want me to, I got some knowledge on tech paths and the other landmass...

I doubt it will help too much that knowledge. If your save wins the round it wont be an issue. I have no issue with you playing in next round.

 

[Soirana]

Spoiler :

Didn't win the Philosophy religion. DIDN'T win Liberalism (!!!) at a remarkably early date despite bulbing through a hunk of Education.

The key was actually to bulb Philo... Once religion is blocked it lowers chances of AI going that route. Bulbing Edu is more for getting faster Oxford....

I believe destiny of Lib is more or less solved in 400AD save.... That is part of best ball system used, you can't choose how other continent goes. And AI advancement for Lib is rather random, depends on what GP they get from their unclean pools and what they do with them...

 

[Lenowill]

Spoiler :

Aye, I usually bulb Philo AND toss a bulb on Education, but I'm used to playing a Phi leader which is conducive to that. In this run from 400AD, the second GS didn't pop out in time to bulb Philo and had to be used for Ed anyway. But them's the choices we make.