Emperor Cookbook Shaka

[pawelo]

Save and screenie updated in my last post.

@Gumbolt

Spoiler :

I agree on your conclusion - too many cities Anyway, the Philo shot was

@cabert

Spoiler :

Too bad Gilgamesh is still alive, anyway good shot too.

@Kossin

Spoiler :

Great shot, some more things in my post.
Got too sloppy, otherwise this was the result I was pursuing

 

[smitsk00]

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.

Spoiler :

Yep. I got impatient and played my own save through 1 AD (BTW I missed the mids and was short of what I thought I coud accomplish by about 30 turns)

Gonna sit out this round and try to get a winning save in for G-Major 61, which has been a bit time consuming.

 

[Steve250]

400ad report

Spoiler :

I continued the war against gilg, building axes and running scientists to keep the research crawling along once libraries became available. I managed to capture one of the cities on flat ground first. Then after building some more axes I maneuvered the axes around until the ai, in typical stupidity moved a bunch of archers out of the capital.
I took peace after that as gilg still had 2 more hill cities with walls left.

Just been trying to get the economy back on track since then, with courthouses and markets/wealth building. Managed to get Confucianism holy city so the other ais probably aren't that advanced.

Having looked at the other saves I think Kossin's save is going to be very hard to top, managing to completely kill off gilg and a very powerful economy to go with it.

@Gumbolt

Spoiler :

I'm just curious as to why you declared on Kublai? Seems like a rather strange move with your economy the way it is.

 

[huerfanista]

400AD save:

Spoiler :

I don't have any shots of the early action in this round, but it wasn't very exciting. Gumbolt left Ulundi with a chop going into an impi on his first turn of production, so I cracked the whip for 2 pop (yes, I know about the penalty for the 1st turn whip) to get 2 impis out back-back. I sent them to reinforce the lonely W2 warrior camped outside of Uruk. The first one went straight to the copper and found a mine, which he pillaged ASAP. It must have been freshly completed, because no vultures were produced. Whew!

I tried to micro carefully, and I succeeded for a while. I carefully counted hammers to get optimal whips, and avoided putting any cities into unhappiness. I also liberated a lot of axemen from the trees in our neighborhood. Once I had a good stack of about a dozen, I sent them to Uruk. Research had been turned off at the beginning of the round to accumulate to pay for the unit maintenance during this phase, and it's a good thing I did. When the stack arrived in theater, I sent them directly to the copper city and captured it with about 1 axe per archer losses (he had 3 archers defending). I healed up and moved everyone back towards Uruk except for a wounded axe and medic1 impi. Gil immediately moved 4 archers out of Uruk to try to retake this city (the axe and impis were healed and killed them all), which gave me the opening I was waiting for. With only 3 archers defending, it fell easily, with about 4 axes lost, in 725BC:

All of my attacks followed the same pattern: The first wave of attackers were promoted to cover for the best odds against archers. The remainder were promoted CR. The pig city SW of Uruk was next, defended by 3 archers. I razed this city, planning to resettle some green land a little farther west. Unfortunately, Gil had snuck a settler past my to the southern coast to claim the corn, but instead of settling to claim the gems, he just had a bunch of hills. I had to wait for a fresh stack of cannon (or archer) fodder to arrive from the homeland, but the end result was the same:

This city was also razed, and I moved the settler that Gumbolt provided to where it could claim the corn and 2 gems. I kept settlers stationed with an axe escort at the double gem and pig-corn sites, and stationed an impi south of the pig-corn spot to see when BK would move a settler up there. Maintenance at this point was right on the hairy edge of going to strike, and it prevented me from running more than a couple of scientists in the libraries that I rushed out at the end of the war. I settled both cities when the HRE settler showed up.

In 305AD hinduism spread to us. Since both BK and Kublai are hindus, I converted ASAP:

I finally finished researching alphabet in 400AD

and immediately made the following trades with BK and Kublai:

Tech trading sitch:

Relations with the neighbors:

Active deals:

The Zulu populace:

Cities - Uruk:

uMgungundlovu:

Ulundi:

Nobamba:

Eridu:

A shot of the zulu empire:

And finally, our research to date:

Research is currently set to aesthetics, which is probably the best trade bait if we want to go peaceful for a while. It has no turns of research into it yet. I've done no scouting of either Kublai or BK's land - I couldn't afford to have any impis outside our borders (yes, it was that tight until very recently), but they can quickly scout out the neighbors now that finances are starting to settle a bit. The borders have just popped in the gem city, so they will be online soon. I was just about to send a slew of workers there at the end of the round.

View attachment Huerfanista Shaka cookbook AD-0400.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[huerfanista]

For those who've played already:

Spoiler :

I obviously have a long way to go to master emperor. I'm amazed at how much research many of you were able to accomplish during the war. I shut off research right from the start and set all cities to *axes, but it certainly seems like this was sub-optimal (to say the least). It'll be interesting to look at some of the other saves. Kossin's in particular seems to stand out. And Gumbolt certainly seems to have a need to scratch the old war itch.

 

[Nares]

to 400AD

EDIT: I'm removing my save.

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Solon70]

When I voted for Gumbolt's save I said that I hadn't played many positions like this one so I wanted the experience. I've done many early rushes, but I've never really gotten comfortable expanding to the point where the economy totally crashes. So a learning experience it was!

Spoiler :

Honestly, I didn't even know how to begin this round. Am I supposed to take peace sometime soon? Am I supposed to keep his copper pillaged with a couple units while I peacefully expand? Am I supposed to build units for total war in order to wipe out Gil altogether?

Normally, I'd choose the latter, but the PRO trait had me worried. Soooo many units needed in order to take out those archers on a hill. Finally I decided I'd go with total war anyway, expecting to fail but figuring I'd at least learn something. Funny thing is, from glancing over a few of the saves just now, seemed like my strategy was just fine (which surprises me) but my tactics ended up lacking. Okay, so I learned something, just not what I expected to learn.

So I started off building axes and a couple Impis, and escorting those stolen workers home. On the way home they roaded the path to Gil in hopes that a great many troops would soon be invading. In 1150 BC I met Charlie, somewhere to the south of Gil.

With a little stack of 8 units or so I went roaming around Gil's lands looking for an easy target. My economy was really stretched, I had to micromanage something fierce just to grab a couple more commerce tiles and keep my gold from running out. Every once in a while, just as I thought I was broke for sure, I'd manage to pillage something for a little spare change. Once writing finished in 950 BC, I quickly got a library up in the capital and started one in the southern city as well. At times those scientists were the only research in the entire kingdom! I also made a small army of workers that unleashed cottage spam on everything green - not that I could grow my cities or anything, but they ran out of stuff to do.

After much tedious army building, I finally captured Gil's southwestern city in 470BC. I decided to keep it because it had the nice pig tile and seemed like a convenient base of operations - only problem is, without Sailing it wasn't hooked up to my trade network yet. Meanwhile Confucianism was founded while I was still plugging away at Alphabet. Hmm. Finally, at what seemed like a ridiculously late date:

Also, about this time I popped my first GS and used it to bulb Math. Okay, now we're in business. This whole time I'm trying to restrain myself from just giving up because I feel hopelessly behind... but backfilling techs is a wonderful thing, as it turns out. First, let's see what Gil will give up for peace:

Okay, that works for me. Then to see what I can get for Math:

And Kublai traded me IW for it... a pretty nice haul I'd say. Looks like Gil has plenty of iron, only he doesn't know it. I kept checking the tech screen to make sure he hadn't researched IW yet. Meanwhile, Charlie finished the key expansion tech I was looking for - Monarchy! Now all I have to do is trade him for it...

Argh! Nothing else to trade with. So I started researching Monarchy myself, checking every turn to see if I had enough beakers in it for Charlie to do the deal. Finally around 40AD we worked the swap of Alphabet for Monarchy, and my cities can grow at last!

Also, that same turn my peace treaty with Gil ran out, and I immediately DoW on him again to see if I could keep the copper pillaged. Back home I had mined iron and was building swords in hopes of finally taking down those cities on hills. Gil only managed to build one vulture before I pillaged his copper again, and it promptly killed itself on one of my swords. I took my stack to the SE of his capital and razed a couple cities, and the stack returned to his capital just in time to meet a new group of swords I'd built up north. Unfortunately, Gil seemed to have built another city somewhere that I couldn't locate. Maybe it's on another landmass via galley?

Kublai came a-begging:

I decided to give it to him because I couldn't afford any more trouble. One error in judgment is that I never got around to converting to Hindu - no downside since everyone is already there. Someone somewhere built the AP in Buddhism though. As the turnset came to a close in 400AD, I had a big stack at the gates of Uruk, ready to cripple Gil once and for all. The world:

Cities:

7 cities, soon to be 8 once I take Uruk. Still some room to expand, but not sure I can since I'm still working on Currency and lack CoL. Demographics screen shows I'm lagging quite a bit behind:

Still, seems like I might have a playable position... not that I expect anyone will want to play it! Since I've never won at Emperor I'm not too disappointed, but the obvious problem is that that war went on and on and on. At normal speed a war like that would have taken us straight into the Middle Ages.

So what did I learn? I need to develop a singleminded focus on building units when it's wartime, because overwhelming force is the key to winning battles and getting back to building. I always seem to underestimate how many units I need, which means I send them into battle in dribs and drabs, I decide I need more so I wait around for the next wave of reinforcements, and so on. What I see other people doing is making a judgment about how many units they need (I guess that comes with experience), patiently building that stack within their borders, and only unleashing the war machine once it's good and ready to go. I'd be in a much better position this game if I could have finished the war 20 turns ago.

 

[kossin]

@Nares

Spoiler :

The island city, Nongoma, gets 2 trade routes of 3 commerce instantly upon settling (after Currency). It has 5.44 upkeep cost so imo it's instantly profitable. Moreover, since Kublai has the GLH, better me than him. If my save is taken, I plan on an elepult war with KK to weaken him and take Karakorum for the GLH, all our cities except 2 are coastal. Moreover, these AIs aren't particularly known for their fast teching so in the unlikely case that it favors them more than I, it allows for more trade options which is good like you pointed out.

 

[Ambro]

I gave it a go and even decided that I'd try the peaceful option, not a tactical choice I just thought it might be interesting to try out (and what I'd planned in the first round with my save). I was wrong...

Just as a disclaimer; it's not the saves fault that I found this round dull. It was completely my approach to it which I just kept compunding by doing silly things, might even replay it some time to try it properly.

Spoiler :

You may notice my save isn't here. I didn't lose or even lose any ground on the AI, I managed to sustain peace, tech, meet charlamagne, settle the island, am looking likely to get the great library (several turns off but I don't think anyone else has teched Lit although guessing a bit due to not knowing everyone) and am teching music hoping to get the great artist (KK beat me by 2 turns to Code of Laws to found Confucianism but then again I wasn't racing and I can see his tech situation so he at least isn't going to stop me).

Game looks winnable from where I am but it would be a dull dull game (culture victory seems a decent choice but I think I'd go crazy waiting for it). Getting economy back on track after the war was a bit of a trial and due to slow teching and limited build options resulted in about 4 million workers being built. Probably should have waited a couple of turns before using the settler that we had at the start to keep economy alive a couple more turns, was also a bit slow to get rid of obsolete/unecessary units. Used peace with gilgamesh to teleport the settlers closer to home by running them around to the second warrior (only had to dodge one archer I think). The other continent (presume it is another continent anyway) has the AP so uncerimonius end to game is possible, darn buddhists.

Good news is that KK is on his own with confucianism but both hinduism and confucianism has spread to us so we can choose which side we want and spread them about for future free religion. Finally got a happy resource from wine after teching monarchy (and traded a cow for some cash). No-one has gone into wheoohrn mode so far and everyone else hates each other instead of us it seems.

I'd taken a copy of Kossins save to compare after I finished mine and frankly his just looks better by a mile. While he less techs he actually has a better tech rate, more land, troops, stuff for his cities and workers to build, resources to use and trade and I'd spent the last 20 odd turns just hitting enter on my game so I'm not sure I'd actually play it if it got through (moot point as it wouldn't, I got bored and plonked some horrible cities down out of spite so I really don't think anyone would want to try and develop those as well as a city with no production which I've set off on a 300 odd turn build project).

Sorry for lack of screens, I took some but I don't want to remind myself of all the crazy things I did in the end. Definately going to go with what I feel like I should be doing next time rather than force myself to play a strange tactic.

@Kossin

Spoiler :

Liking your save. Should be nice to play from if it gets picked. Lots still to do on it but it seems a strong position to me. Not overly fond of being wedged between two civs usually but it should work well to when fighting KK. Shame he didn't found and switch to Confucianism like he did in my game (although that might make it a bit too easy if you can gaurantee Charlamagne being on your side).

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[kossin]

@Nares

Spoiler :

Good points, I had still not realized that a city could be used as a Trade Route by more cities than the amount of Trade Routes it itself has. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[huerfanista]

After studying some of the other saves, I decided to replay this round to see whether i actually learned anything. Much better this time:

Spoiler :

Instead of shutting off research, I scrounged around for some additional to speed it up a bit, then built 3 libraries (using whip overflow from axes so that I could accomplish 2 things at once). This actually got me alphabet at a much earlier date, which led to better trades and enabled me to build research once I had the military situation in hand. I played to 415AD and just finished MC (chopping a forge and colossus in Uruk), I already have currency, construction, calendar, CoL, and started research on CS. If I was playing further from this save (which I might once subsequent rounds of the cookbook are done) I'd head for machinery next. I'd start a phants/cat war with Kublai, later switching to maces/cats, then maces/trebs for BK. Capital would be moved to Uruk once colossus is done (it has a settled GG and is by far the best production city).

tech:

land:

Lots of good production cities coming online, which will get courts/forges and then start building units.

Any critiques would be most welcome from you emperors out there. I feel like I've learned a lot already.

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Solon70]

huerfanista, nice going on the 2nd attempt! Maybe I should try that exercise myself. One comment:

Spoiler :

On my first try, I made the mistake of settling the western corn city right away, which put a lot of unneeded stress on the economy. You seem to have taken the opposite approach of never settling it at all! I think it's worth building, I like the spot 2S of the corn for coastal access. It can run 4 cottages and has pretty solid production, even though units that get built there have a long way to travel. I mostly just ran the cottages full-time.

 

[huerfanista]

huerfanista, nice going on the 2nd attempt! Maybe I should try that exercise myself. One comment:

Spoiler :

On my first try, I made the mistake of settling the western corn city right away, which put a lot of unneeded stress on the economy. You seem to have taken the opposite approach of never settling it at all! I think it's worth building, I like the spot 2S of the corn for coastal access. It can run 4 cottages and has pretty solid production, even though units that get built there have a long way to travel. I mostly just ran the cottages full-time.

Spoiler :

Well, I guess I was just too paranoid about the economy. It's definitely worth settling at some point, but I probably wouldn't do it until CoL came in and courthouses had stabilized the economy. By the end of the round I was already thinking of the zulu homeland as a provincial backwater. I used that settler to claim the double gems spot near Charlemagne.

 

[pawelo]

@huerfanista

Nice second shot!

Spoiler :

What is the shape of your Sumeria part ? Can't see the save until later this evening

 

[Gumbolt]

For those who've played already:

Spoiler :

I obviously have a long way to go to master emperor. I'm amazed at how much research many of you were able to accomplish during the war. I shut off research right from the start and set all cities to *axes, but it certainly seems like this was sub-optimal (to say the least). It'll be interesting to look at some of the other saves. Kossin's in particular seems to stand out. And Gumbolt certainly seems to have a need to scratch the old war itch.

A few questions have been put my way.

Spoiler :

Okay I had an itch!!! KK had built two cities grabbing the copper and the ivory and was about to settle a third city. I took the decision to use my excess units to destroy his cities crippling me with culture. My scouting Impi had found no real stack anyway.

My war has destroyed 2 cities and destroyed a stack of three that had a settler. Like Kossin I plan for a phants war. Perhaps i could of used some court houses. lol

I wonder if my save at 1500bc would of been better if it just had 2-3 cities. The downside being that the copper city was never going to be great however it was placed.

Still the save has certainly tested some of you on how to manage a crippled economy. Thats not a bad thing!!

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[huerfanista]

@huerfanista

Nice second shot!

Spoiler :

What is the shape of your Sumeria part ? Can't see the save until later this evening

Spoiler :

I corrected the duplicated screenshot, so you should be able to see the eastern lands now. I didn't attach a save, since it's a replay. I can attach one if you want to look at it, though.

Yeah, it was a major improvement over the first shot. It's still nowhere close to Kossin's, which looks to me like the one to beat so far. Gotta say that I'm really glad I decided to try this game, even though it's beyond my pay grade. I'm learning a lot.