Emperor Cookbook Shaka

[Steve250]

Gumbolt's choke is certainly one of the most interesting saves, however I'm not certain it really achieved all that much. Because of the map outlay it hasn't allowed any additional land to be secured compared with any of the other saves, which is generally one of the main reasons for a choke. He's been slowed down certainly, but taking out his protective archers on a hill, particularly if he gets walls there before getting enough enough axes will be a hard slog.

And of course if you make peace now, you'll have trouble with trading and relations with gilg in the future. Slowing him down may also of had the side effect of giving Kublai more room to expand, perhaps making one stronger opponent instead of 2 average ones. Of course I'm just playing Devils advocate and haven't decided which saves to vote for yet

 

[smitsk00]

@ Nares

Do those 3 grassland tile really make you want to keep that city as your capital? This site was never a keeper and by moving onto the wines, you hurt your next best option.

 

[smitsk00]

I can't believe how many people are seriously talking about a rush! There's no way we're ever gonna do it. There's not enough production, hilled protective archers with walls will be impossible to take down before catapults, it'll cost 3-4 axes each and Gil will spam a bunch of them. I'm all for a pin, but IMO a rush has no chance to succeed. Even if we can keep him to his 3 current cities, a pin will be very expensive in unit maintenance and will slow our research considerably.

Some of us thought about the production issue, but get no love from the cottage mongers.

 

[smitsk00]

At the end of the day, with giggles next door (he will attack if we don't), Copper is King. This narrows my choices down to saves with copper or those that will have it soon: kossin, WFU, Kbo,Huerfanista, pawelo, Gumbolt, pholtz, and myself.

kossin and kbo: sorry the slow tech situation eliminates both.

pholtz: as I said earlier, I am wary of your production potential.

pawelo: built for an early rush that won't work, but good job at getting it ready!

I dislike diplo vics, so giggles will have to be killed eventually. Best bet is beating him to contruction, while keeping him weak. Therefore:

#1 Gumbolt
#2 WFU03 (GO DEACS!)
#3 Huerfanista

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Soirana]

But we have very poor land, and there's no telling how much he has.

Absolute nonsense. Land is mostly okay.

 

[/solar/]

1st: Dualmaster. Never played a cookbook before so have no qualms about using the GL 'again'. Plus I think I would find it more helpful to play out a peaceful start to a victory on a map like this.

2nd: Gumbolt. Obvious reasons. If we want to take the game to gilga early this is by far the best save for it.

3rd: Huerfanista. Hard to say though, lots of save that are fairly even. Has some decent techs, and the GP could be useful I guess.

 

[Gumbolt]

With Impis we might be able to continually worker steal from Gilga. I suspect we can still steal another 2-3 workers from him. The danger we could face is the Mongols dow us. Although Gilga will need something to bribe him with.

 

[Gumbolt]

You forgot me.

I think its fairly clear which save is the best. In order to do well we have to go on the offensive. There isn't enough land to just sit back and tech. If we don't have any iron then we'll probably have to wait untill gunpowder which seems way to long a time for shaka to turtle for with only about 6 cities. The best situation to be in is to have done as much to gilga at this point as possible.

I'll vote tomorrow when I've had a chance to look at all the saves.

My mistake I will add you to list of saves. We will close voting strictly at 6pm GMT Monday. We are behind a day from the usual schedule.

How would people here consider using a standard immortal map for next cookbook? As we are using the best saves it would seem like emperor saves anyway. Just an idol thought.

 

[Solon70]

#1 Gumbolt because even though I don't know how to follow up on a start like this, I would like to learn!

#2 Huerfanista because he found the only solution to the crab-crab-copper site... although I may be overrating the importance of having an optimal city there.

#3 Dualmaster because of the GLH, nuff said.

Some interesting starts and this was a good learning experience for me, and hopefully for others.

 

[cripp7]

1. Gumbolt
2. dualmaster
3. Huernfanista

 

[Gumbolt]

Current vote scores after 14 votes.

Gumbolt 36
Dualmaster 16
Huerfanista 14
WFU03 10
Kossin 8

Overall theres 8 votes left. A final 2 votes would give a clear winner.

Personally I would like to see us learn to win Emperor without the TGLhouse. Although I dont Dualmaster save could be a stronger save due to the extra trade routes.

WFO did get gold. The copper and crabs city would need a monument to be useful. Without Stone Henge this seems a tough ask.

Huerfanista - His Stone henge gambit seemed a good idea. I do wonder if he could of got a religion. No one really tried it seems. Not even sure if the city is a great location or not.

Kossin seems set up for a rush but no fish. I dont doubt the warmonger inside her. I think Soirana probably placed that copper to taunt us!!!

 

[Gumbolt]

First place clearly goes to Gumbolt for being the aggressive bastard that he is and smacking around Giggles early.

I dont mind being one them. Its what Shaka would expect of anyone playing him. I did actually take your comment as a compliment. We cant all be like Ghandi and hope our religion converts the known world.

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[Gumbolt]

On the voting front if not all people vote we could close the round early. I will take opinions on this.

On another matter. It would be interesting playing a cookbook with the intention of a peaceful start. I tend to find when you do a early rush on a AI it gives your game a huge boost. Yes its good to know how to be a good war monger. Its also good to know how to set up specialist or commerce economy whilst rexxing peacefully.

My hardest games on Emperor have been where the Ai start 14-20 or so tiles away in a place where rushing is not the obvious option. This is especially true when starting near a financial/imperialist. Or a creative leader with copper in the BFC. Justin with gold and copper can tech and expand crazily.

Low sea levels can really up the difficulty of a save too. The downside of the cookbook is you cant force someone to play peacefully. Someone is always going to build axes/ sword/ chariots/ elephants and wipe out an AI. The other extreme is having a save where the GLH/Mids are used to give a huge starting advantage. Then again these all parts of the game.

You would need a save that had space to allow a peaceful rex. The Napolean save somewhat did this but you do reach a year when the rush becomes too irresitable. Elephant rushes and HA rushes were in full flow on that Cookbook.

 

[kossin]

Close the round early, I can't fathom your save being outvoted.

Peaceful start: last cookbook we did not rush so...

Low sea levels is a no in my book, we'd rather just play an Immortal Cookbook on standard settings. It lags more too.

Really, if some players find this too easy, there's 2 options:
the Immortal Cookbook (currently run by Soirana)
a Succession Game with variants (which I'd be willing to join/start if there's interest!)

 

[Nares]

Edited

 

[huerfanista]

After beating the war drum myself, my current thinking is that this is going to be a very tough game to win via early war (it's pretty obvious that we'll be playing from Gumbolt's save). If Gilga has some cities that are not on hills, we may be able to take a couple of them with axes (swords would be better - maybe we should tech aesthetics and trade for IW?), but realistically we have no hope of taking down Uruk with axes - there'll be too many archers in a hilled (and probably walled) capital with high cultural D. Unit maintenance will be a problem. We'll probably need 3 axes/impis per city to do a proper choke. I think there's a real need to put a hold on any more cities on our mainland, or our research will be in the toilet along with Gilga's. This could be complicated by any religions founded on the continent - we'll have to hope that they spread to us or we could be on the short end of a religious war. One of the peaceful saves would certainly have been easier to play from, although I don't know about getting to a VC.

Well, I'm counting on you emperor warmongers to show me how to win this.

BTW, does anyone else think that this map looks like Shaka started isolated on a small continent and a land bridge was WB'd in.

 

[MaximumPain]

You could have a game (not this one but a future one) where there are 2 divergent paths chosen one of peace and one of war. Players could then chose which path to follow. Problem is that sometimes you must make war and that can set up a political situation that causes more wars and so on and so on....

My problem is that I like to fight and my strategy's mostly have that in mind at some point. If I start peaceful its only because I dont see a good chance of a successful war or dont want to piss off the AI to early. When playing two levels above my normal difficulty such as this game I was scared to get in Gils face as a protective with a nice early UU that is a counter to Shaka Zulu's Impis.