Emperor Cookbook Shaka

[Gumbolt]

More in-depth discussion on strategy would help keep everyone on the same page. Consider cutting the rounds in half, or at least the first round. Discussing what to do about our land and Gilgamesh would have been more pertinent 50 turns ago than discussing the success of your rush v. the success of the GLH.

Basically, it could be more educational if we're all taking a similar approach. It would highlight more subtle differences in gameplay. For example, how to settle that Copper best could have been a great discussion if we were all planning on rushing.

That would be interesting if everyone wanted to play the same strategy. I think this map was designed to slow down Shaka. He would walk over a religious Ai that played peacefully. Then again this would restrict gameplay and flare for people to try something different. I think the cookbook should be kept different to a walkthrough style of thread.

For me its fascinating to see how different players have placed their cities and the different approaches to early builds and techs. In a way the voting part should encourage debate and disicussion on how people have played. You could change round lengths but its nice for a player to stamp his mark on a round.

For instance I liked the way Heur's Stone Henge save worked out a way to use the copper and the sea resources. When I was planning a copper city I looked at that city location and just thought this site will take 30+ turns to reach size 2 before i can whip it or build a monument and my settler moved on.

Having looked back I can now see a great capital site east of my current spot.

I think if people just say 1st A 2nd B 3rd C you learn less. That being said this round with 22 saves has given a chance for some real debate.


Anyway i think Kossin is right we should close the voting and start the next round. The fact my save was winning has not influenced this decision. It is unlikely that everyone would of voted anyway by tomorrow.

Let me do a post and we'll start the next round.

 

[MaximumPain]

I agree that your save should take the round considering the vote lead you have. If this were an American election it would have been called

Lets roll!

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay closing shop early on this round as there is a clear point leader.

My votes

3 points to Dual 2 to Heur and 1 to WFU.

Current vote scores after 15 votes.

Gumbolt 36
Dualmaster 19
Huerfanista 16
WFU03 11
Kossin 8

Congratulations to Gumbolt (Me) the winner of this round!!!

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 1500bc-400ad. Lets get playing people.

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

Gumbolts 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- Playing
Round 3: 400 AD - 1100 AD- upcoming
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

 

[pholtz]

The main problem I think, is not that we can or cannot take Gil's cities, but what do we do with them? If we raze, the third civ.. forget who, will just expand more. If we conquer we run the risk of stagnating our economy. It will be interesting to see how this is handled by everyone.

 

[kossin]

Round 2 - to 400AD

Spoiler :

Boy was the start fun! I got bored a bit later toward the end and several cities got neglected as a result.

Economy is crashed at the start, Writing is still far off. I set my workers to Cottage things up to survive while building more Axes.

I had to MM cities so that I did not go on Strike a lot of times

Once Writing was in, I built a few Libraries and ran some scientists. Techs were Fishing>Sailing with Trade Routes in mind.

I kept Gilgamesh's copper pillaged and captured some more workers while harassing his Archers with an Impi.
Once I had 11 Axes, it was time to start the real war.

Since Uruk was heavily fortified, I went straight pass it to this city:

Which was razed because Economy was still in the trash.

Reinforcements found this city only protected by 1 Archer:

I also took his copper city but forgot to picture it apparently. (Too lazy to go in autosaves atm).

Then, in true stupid AI fashion, Gilgamesh took all but 2 archers out of Uruk to send at me. I had Axes nearby that killed his ''SoD''.

Since my units were weak, I did not want to chance luck, so I took a quick Cease Fire to heal up.

I redeclared 3 turns later, to find this

Expected result:

With the gold, I researched Alphabet in a hurry at 100%. I also sent a few guys exploring and found this guy:

A pain to kill but a good friend that spreads religion.

I traded Alphabet for Mathematics and IW (no images).

Most cities were then set to build research while heading to Currency (unfortunately, KK also went this route so I only got 1 tech out of it).

At this point, the economy was fixed and I kinda got bored.

Researched CS next and moved the Palace to the second city (finishes this turn), uMgungundlovu as it can work quite a few cottages. I spawned 2 GS this round, the first was settled here and the second made an Academy.

Took a trade for 100 gold+Masonry with KK and placed research on Construction as a placeholder. If they are willing to trade it, then Paper or something else should be researched instead.

Why Construction you ask? Look:

They both have room for a bazzillion cities. Plus we'll have Elephants so we can make a good dent here. While KK has more power, he is the natural target : more aggressive, still might DoW us at pleased, Charlemagne might move to Friendly somewhere in the future and this

Yea, looks like we're getting the GLH after all

Some informative screenshots in the spoiler below.

Spoiler :

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[kossin]

I had the evening off and could have played it hours ago actually!
There are definitely several warriors that can be deleted, but with the amount of units incoming, a crash is pretty inevitable.

 

[pawelo]

@Kossin

Spoiler :

Same result but eco-wise much worse.
Got sloppy...
Also, as I'm playing without Bug I tend to forgot the tech-trades.
for your state of the union

 

[Gumbolt]

Its worrying three people have viewed Kossin save before posting theirs!! It would be nice to see some people play this save peacefully. Although i suspect Gilga's demise is inevitable.

 

[cabert]

Its worrying three people have viewed Kossin save before posting theirs!! It would be nice to see some people play this save peacefully. Although i suspect Gilga's demise is inevitable.

peacefully?
you seem to forget the save you gave us was in the middle of a war...

here is my game, before I check Kossin's save.
I overplayed a turn, so I reloaded the autosave from 400 AD.

Spoiler :

Quick writeup:
on the initial turn, science was at 30%, no gold in store, no writing in, no fishing

My goal was to keep pillaging to fund at least a bit of research.
Gilgamesh was helping, by continuously improving land within reach .

After I while, when I had a nice number of axes in his territory, he sent a SoD towards the blocker I made with the settler we had on the initial save (one more city sure didn't help science, but I like fish). I promoted my axes with cover and whipped his stack away.
That left his capital with 1 (yes one!) archer vs the 4 axes I had nearby.
I took it and kept it.

on the science front I went for writing (duh!), whipped a few libraies, went for fishing, then maths, I lightbulbed alphabet, and traded a bit.

I razed a few cities on the trail, kept his pig/iron city (hi Kmadcandy) then sued for peace.

I teched for MC, for the colossus, and construction for catapults.
Soon time to resume war.

 

[kossin]

@Cabert

Spoiler :

Bulbing Alphabet/Mathematics and lower-end techs is usually not a good use of the GS, was your economy in the shambles? Settling is usually better in these cases. Interesting idea about The Colossus, it could work to some extent given the amount of water on the map.

 

[pawelo]

@Gumbolt
Don’t worry for the views – I have played my round roughly at the same time as Kossin, just haven’t had the time to post my report

Short report – we have more than 20 games going so I’ll do it ‘à la Cabert’

Spoiler :

One simple statement resumes this whole round :
The AI is too dumb for its own good
Plain and simple, however true. Only things giving AI a winning chance are – huge bonuses Emp and up ( especially on Deity ), poor human starting location, bad luck and sloppy human play.

With this in my, the goal was to continue hurting Gilgamesh while building up the stack to take over his empire.
So Writing was the first goal. Eco-wise, I focused on cottages, libraries & Ikhandas – researched was mainly done by Sci specialists. I also discovered that we might have an early shot on FP – with 8 Ikhandas we can go for it.
Built up many (many many) axes to replace quite obsolete warriors. During this war, Gilgamesh offered me several warriors, and let me kill his archers happily in the open on many occasions, making sure my axes get CR promotions (plus Cover of course).
First hit was pig-iron city of Kish that I’ve razed in T129. With the raze money, I got to IW and detected iron pretty much everywhere on the map.
Side-comment – it looks like someone has extensively played with the WorldBuilder
Next I went for Eridu, the ivory-cow-copper-wine location, which I kept – good city and blocking purposes vs KK.
The final wave, composed of swords – one of which was GGen CR3 guy – took the remaining cities – first Uruk, kept of course, then razed northern Lagash and southern corn location Ur. War finished lately – in turn 171 – could have been much faster on an afterthought.
Got currency for cash – eco hurts badly. On my way to Construction – KK should go down next
Settled the isthmus city and a southern blocker on double gem & corn.
Cities building up and going markets for cash.
Scouted almost the whole continent.
Nine cities up, research is still a little bit painful but recovering.

Happy to have wiped Gilgamesh – great and funny round
But…

Kossin did much better – I got sloppy in many ways:

- Built too much units and finished disbanding several of them to get the eco back on track
- Self-researched Currency and missed the trading window – still no Alpha (bad bad bad!)
- Let Charlemagne settle the pig city – more space for him, should have kept Kish maybe ?
- Let the war continue for a far too long time, should have built a neat SoD and finish it faster instead of roaming around happily capturing workers and killing archers.

Anyway, screenies to follow – no image posting @work.
Well no save posting neither

To be completed soon.

 

[WFU03]

Its worrying three people have viewed Kossin save before posting theirs!! It would be nice to see some people play this save peacefully. Although i suspect Gilga's demise is inevitable.

Yeah, you did leave us in the middle of a war if I recall. I might try the peaceful route once I give the save a good look-over though.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yeah, you did leave us in the middle of a war if I recall. I might try the peaceful route once I give the save a good look-over though.

Spoiler :

I have taking the offensive method. Need a break as my head is killing me. I do fear this round will bring out the warmongers in many here. I think the key to this round is fishing and writing for economy. I dont think we will see any stone or marble till we reach another continent. Its fair to say the neighbours are nasty warmongers.

 

[shyuhe]

I played this map as a shadow to 400 AD, and I think Soirana outdid himself designing this map. It's quite an interesting layout. Finishing off Gilgamesh will not be the end on this map

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler :

I have completed my round.

It was a torrid affair on the brink of strike 90% of the time. It seems we have 1-2 too many cities for a rush really. That and being on a continent with 2 imperialist Ai thugs.

I lost many units wiping Gilga from the face of the planet. Thankfully only facing archers made the job slightly easier.

The danger was KK and HRG back filling his land. Soirana is evil when it comes to making maps. Loving the ideas though in terms of the map. Its like a mini adventure playing out the maps.

I managed to pop 1 GS which I used in 400ad for philosophy. it would appear no other Ai has this yet.

I have started a war against the mongols as they took the ivory, copper and were about to lay another problematic city. I need to block them off. I tried to build the GLH but was thawted a few turns before completion.

In terms of tech trade I suspect if we tech 2-3 turns of construction we will soon have phants. A new war is in progress. I have seen no stack from KK yet. Perhaps he doesnt have one?

In terms of my save I am in dire need of court houses. I also need to lay the gems city asap.

 

[Gumbolt]

Spoiler :

Overall looking at Cabert and Kossin saves. Kossin managed to wipe out gilga and has used court houses and has a great tech rate. The new palace makes huge sense. I wonder if Gilga old capital would of been a good site?

Cabert has left a weak Gilga and has a reasonable science.

Overall I think I built far too many cities for this to be a classic rush save. I wont be suprised to see a few people build the Great Light House. Its still very possible even with a rush. I was only 2-3 turns short.

 

[cabert]

@gumbolt

Spoiler :

wow, you seem to like the 0% science!

@kossin

Spoiler :

I lightbulbed alphabet on a time where I didn't want to build more troops (0% science and losing money = not a time for more units). So I could build science towards currency.
I self researched maths, in order to get currency, and lightbulbing alpha opened up a few "good" trades, including sueing for peace with gilgamesh.
I don't think I played it all very well, but lightbulbing certainly wasn't a mistake. I agree that on a general basis you're better off with an academy, but what good is an academy when you're at 0% science?

I'm not sure finishing gilgamesh is such a good thing. In my game he's so weak he's hardly a factor, but he's a trading partner nonetheless and he prevented charlie and kublai from snapping more land.
I think I'm in a winning position, and I guess you're too, although I have the feeling your AI opponents are stronger than mine.
However, I think your save is superior to mine, because of CS already in which is just worth more beakers than MC.
I didn't check the infra in place, but I guess you have all the courthouses and such in place.

 

[Gumbolt]

@gumbolt

Spoiler :

wow, you seem to like the 0% science!

@kossin

Spoiler :

I lightbulbed alphabet on a time where I didn't want to build more troops (0% science and losing money = not a time for more units). So I could build science towards currency.
I self researched maths, in order to get currency, and lightbulbing alpha opened up a few "good" trades, including sueing for peace with gilgamesh.
I don't think I played it all very well, but lightbulbing certainly wasn't a mistake. I agree that on a general basis you're better off with an academy, but what good is an academy when you're at 0% science?

I'm not sure finishing gilgamesh is such a good thing. In my game he's so weak he's hardly a factor, but he's a trading partner nonetheless and he prevented charlie and kublai from snapping more land.
I think I'm in a winning position, and I guess you're too, although I have the feeling your AI opponents are stronger than mine.
However, I think your save is superior to mine, because of CS already in which is just worth more beakers than MC.
I didn't check the infra in place, but I guess you have all the courthouses and such in place.

Spoiler :

I guess instead of trying to tech alphabet I should of gone for COL but I was missing quite a few tech. Getting Alphabet allowed me to trade for IW, Archery and a number of other techs. Asthetics was also useful for trades. I do have Philosophy and once Courthouses are in place i am in good stead. If i part tech construction I should be able to trade this with HRG and begin a phant rush.

Tech wise I am still quite in this game. KK capital has the great lighthouse so would be worth capturing!!.

 

[WFU03]

Haven't looked at the other saves yet, but I'm not a huge fan of mine.

Spoiler :

I couldn't ever really get my economy back on track after Gumbolt's save. Gilga is a non-factor, but still there on life-support. Khan and Charlemagne are big worries at this point though.