Emperor Fail #2

[comet]

Alright, after my last attempt went rather poorly, let's play another game here and hopefully avoid some of the mistakes that derailed the last game (see here for the last attempt).

I've now played about 5 or 6 emperor games and have 2 wins so far. All have been on the same settings, same as last game which we'll use again here.

Settings are Pangaea/Standard, No Huts/Events, Epic Speed, Random Civ.

We draw Gilgamesh of Sumeria. Here's the start:



Decent start here, with wet corn and solid production potential. Looks like the southern most hill should be reachable by land. SiP will be coastal, fresh water, and solid production, especially if we have a hidden resource 1W. Not seeing any reason to not SiP here; heading east loses us 2 hills most likely and picks up a desert; I prefer not to settle 1W in case theres a horse or iron or copper there, 1SW loses corn and 1NW likely is only an improvement if there's something super cool 3W of my settler. So we'll likely send warrior 1SW just to be sure, but most likely end up SiP. Capital will be solid production site so we'll need to find a good food site for GP farm and some commerce.

Likely AH first here to keep our initial worker busy, then mining > bw. Worst case, if we don't find anything we can improve immediately beyond corn/cow, we start with wheel and can spend some turns roading while we wait for BW.

 

[goldys_lackey]

Lots of coast and lack of riverside in your capital. Non-Fin leader. I would be eyeballing TGL right off the bat.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Depending on your neighbors:

Vulture rush!

 

[comet]

Alright played to 550 BC. Here's how it's going so far.

SiP, and reveal another plains/cow, but unfortunately that 4th hill to the south will require sailing/galley to improve



The city will be nice production though, with 4 hills + 2 plain/cows and enough food to support it, plus very likely some hidden resource 1W. However, we'll need to find some commerce from somewhere. Great Lighthouse is definitely an option, especially with such a strong production capital and a reasonable amount of forests. Although honestly I have very limited experience with that wonder; it's a bit unclear to me just how much it ends up helping.

Initial research is AH > Mining > BW

Warrior goes around scouting and we quickly find two things, one good and one (possibly) bad. First, there's quite a nice commerce site not too far away with plenty of floodplains + 2 gold + copper. On the down side, we are kinda boxed in by Peter and Pacal. Depending on how aggressively they expand towards me, it may be difficult to peacefully settle more than 4 cities. On the bright side, we have nearby copper and horses in our capital's BFC.

So immediately our plans turn to rushing. I'm not much of a fan of axe rushing unless we're exceptionally close to an opponent. Even with vultures, I'm definitely more comfortable here with a HA rush and we should have both the early production and commerce to support a strong one. Even better, we get cheaper courthouses and only require priesthood for them, which I surely can trade for, especially with MM in the game.

Here's a look at the surrounding land, with some city sites marked:



Cities are marked in order I plan to settle.

C1: Obviously a commerce site, with dual gold and flood plains, but production won't be that terrible with the plains/copper. To support both golds + copper, we need +3 food, which we can get from farmed FP + a regular (cottage) FP. For early growth we'll probably farm 2 FP then switch one to a cottage. At 5 pop we can pull 10 hammers while still working both golds + a cottage FP to help support the costs we'll incur when we go war mode and maybe keep our research moving a bit.

C2: Our capital has 6 (!) 3 hammer tiles available early on and can work all 6 and *still* have a food surplus. But we'd still want another strong production site for a HA rush since C1 is mediocre production at best. Our happiness cap will be 5; C2 lets us work 4 mines + pig for some strong production (a solid 15 hammers; not quite the 19 our capital will be putting out, but still nice)

C3: I won't settle this before we go to war, but with Calendar + IW it'll be a nice commerce site (there's a grassland/jungle/gems 1S2W of the site, the resource bubble got cut off in the ss) eventually. I'm not sure when to settle this, but with the corn it'll be able to quickly grow onto the nice commerce tiles when I do.

Meanwhile, as I'm scouting Peter, one of his workers happens to be right next to my warrior, and though it's cheesy, I can't resist stealing it. I pillage a farm along the way before he sends an archer towards me and I take the peace.

Second city is founded in 2550 BC at C1. Thanks to peter's worker, this gets improved somewhat quickly. Order is: farm FP x2, mine gold x2, cottage FP, mine copper. We start working both farmed FPs, grow onto both gold mines, then switch to 1 farm FP, 1 cottage FP, and the gold/copper at pop 5. No whips used; granary/library/barracks built by hand, not sure if this is optimal, but I just hate whipping off any of those tiles.

Third city is founded in 2050 BC at C2. Obviously pigs get improved first, then mines thrown up as we also road to Pacal for trade routes. We work a sub-optimal tile briefly (grassland forest) to grow faster to 5 so we can work all the mines. No whips used here either; food isn't great and we have plenty of hammers and forests. No library built here, just barracks/granary.

As for our capital, we chop a library (perhaps it would be better to whip?) then immediately begin running 2 scientists. With so many forests and high hammers here, we easily get necessary infrastructure up quickly and begin building silly things while running scientists, like vultures and chariots until we can switch to research, til we need stables.

Research order is pottery > writing > alphabet. Our GS bulbs math for better chops and trade fodder since we have a fair amount of techs we need to pick up.

Peter remains annoyed from the earlier declaration and won't open borders or trade (same with Toku for obvious reasons), but fortunately the other civs are plenty accommodating as we trade around a bit and pick up a bunch of techs, most importantly priesthood for Ziggurats, Archery (for HAs, duh!), and Iron Working, as we begin to research Horseback Riding. We find Iron in Kish's BFC, but it really won't change anything until we can increase our happiness cap; we can pull an extra hammer until our food fills up. All our infrastructure is ready at this point, so we can safely run research in all 3 cities to speed along the process. Peter will be the first target because, uh, well I don't like him. Well, he's fairly useless to me since he won't trade with me or open borders, plus he has only one metal and it's close to my borders so I should be able to easily pillage it with a vulture or two and camp there and run over him easily.

Here's how we look after Horseback Riding finishes:



Some saved up chops while building research make for some quick stables being built. Admittedly messed up and put a few through before bulbing math, doh! Capital still has plenty of forests to chop though, so we should be able to very quickly put out a nice sized HA force.

As we're doing this, Pacal actually settles the Dye/Corn/Gem site for us. At first I was somewhat upset but since we're going to be warring him after Peter anyway, I suppose it actually saves us a settler, so thanks Pacal!

During this time, we're not using any whips. I described the city setup above and you can see it in the save as well; I'm just not sure where we could efficiently use the whip here. To be honest, I've actually used 0 whips so far this entire game, which I'm guessing is a mistake. Sometimes I have trouble seeing when whipping is efficient outside of the obvious situations. Suffice to say, we'll likely be whipping plenty in the cities we capture, especially to get our Ziggurats up.

Anyway, by 550 BC, we are ready to declare on Peter. Here's how we look:



We've got 12 HA's that can hit Novgorod (which is on a hill though no spearmen there) the turn we declare. We have 2 vultures ready to move onto his iron to prevent spearmen from being built. Btw, camping on the Iron is enough to prevent production, correct? I don't have to actually pillage it, and can leave it up so I don't have to build a new mine/road later? Let me know if that's wrong.

Lack of open borders means we don't have totally up-to-date and accurate maps of his land, but our early excursions into his land give us most of what we need. I suppose there's a small chance he's got an iron or copper somewhere off into the west that I haven't scouted, but I doubt it.

Meanwhile, we send a chariot to begin scouting Pacal, our next target (which I admittedly should have done a long time ago; being boxed in there was minimal fogbusting needed).

Here's the tech and demographic standings:





Nothing crazy here; We have the biggest army and the most hammers, which shouldn't be surprising.

I will say, in general this map was very easy and quite inviting for this type of rush; everything up to this point seems pretty straightforward to me. The difficulty of course will be recovering when my economy crashes as I go to war. Being Gilgamesh is immensely useful though since I won't need CoL.

Moving forward, the biggest issues to me seem to be:

- How quickly can I get Currency, or how quickly will I need it to keep my economy afloat?

- Do I keep every city I take? On Monarch I always did but perhaps it's wiser to raze some marginal city sites to help my maintenance costs.

- When do I turn off HA production? Pacal will have holkans and I can't stop him from building them, so I'll likely need a solid number of HAs to take him. I don't think it'll be a problem to take his cities, but it will likely be costlier than I'd like.

- How do I handle the diplo situation post-war? Don't know for sure yet but it appears Sury/Charlemagne will be my closest neighbors and Buddhist, with Toku/MM further and Hindu. MM and Charley like me from trades, Toku is Toku and Sury likes me less since he likes Peter, and will like me even less afterwards. Toku and Sury also won't like me hitting Pacal. The biggest issue I see is keeping Sury off me while I'm rebuilding my economy. I'll likely have to switch to his religion to keep him off annoyed, but then Toku will surely dislike me. It appears that Toku is further away though, so that seems to be the way to go.

In any case, I imagine Peter will fall quite easily, and Pacal less so, but the main challenge for me here will be recovering my economy, keeping up in tech, and keeping Toku or Sury from DoWing me while I rebuild.

 

[Tempesta13]

Looks like if you went for his capital first you could hit it on 2nd turn of the war. That would also take out his iron since it won't be within his borders anymore. Especially if that city isn't on a hill I think that's the way to go - knock his production down a lot right away.

Splitting up is always risky but you could even try 10 HA's going for capital while the two Vultures and 2-3 HA's go for Novgorod. It's on a hill though so I wouldn't risk it unless it's only archers (3 or less) there.

I'd go all 12 at capital just to be safe. 2 turns movement, declare on the 3rd turn, hit capital on 4th turn.

Since he has 6 cities and you want to attack Pacal too I'd consider taking the closest 3, getting peace for some tech/gold and going for Pacal earlier. Pacal will only have 4 cities after you take the one he settled next to your capital. That would give you 11 cities - then work on getting happiness resources and code of laws and finish Peter off later. With only 3 cities and no metal you could probably just go back with left over HA's at like 500 AD since it looks like he won't get to Feudalism ever.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay HA rush at the ready.

Did you whip your cities to speed up the rush?? 550bc HA rush start for emperor with 2 gold resources is rather slow. Your third city is too far west for me. That Mayan city should never of been allowed.

I would certainly attack the capital first. I would also pillage all his copper/iron/horse too. I wouldn't worry too much about the mine. Better to pillage than holding back 2 vultures from the assault.

The important thing is to knock out his capital quickly before he adds 3-4 more units to it. If he builds 2-3 spears he might become a pain although HA odds will still be okay in numbers vs spears.

 

[comet]

Okay obviously I should be 2-pop whipping HAs here except in commerce city. I don't know why I don't do these things; I'm aware it's what's most efficient here but it's not quite habit for me yet so I tend to overlook them. Doing so earlier would have cut down on the number of turns until I was ready to declare.

Third city definitely should have been placed 1E of where it is. It's pretty obvious to me now when I look at it, I'm not sure why I placed it where it was. Probably a symptom of playing rather fast (usually play RTS games) and not quite at the point where I can always make the right decisions on the fly, but it'll come with time hopefully.

Consensus seems to be go for capital first. I can reach Moscow in 3 turns from where my HA currently are; Peter would have 2 turns to throw some makeshift extra forces together, 1 more than if I repositioned first, but I'll hit Moscow 1 turn quicker this way. Since vultures can sit on the Iron right away, he shouldn't be able to make any spears. Whipping an extra archer shouldn't matter, and I can reach Moscow with the vultures same turn as the HAs.

Problem I'm seeing is that Peter's land isn't particularly great. Moscow is a strong production city but he doesn't appear to have any good commerce cities. My economy will definitely be living off capture city gold until I can get to Pacal. Pacal's capital has developed cottages on riverside dye which is nice, but it's a hill city with walls so it's gonna be costly to take. Losses could be high enough that my whole attack could fizzle out after taking it, but I don't see myself having any other options at this point.

Post-war it looks like I'll need to run a fair number of specialists to get anything done, which is something I'm not particularly comfortable with. So I think it'll be a challenge for me to stay competitive in this game post-war but I'll do my best.

 

[comet]

Alright, here's warring, through to 10 AD.

We declare next turn and take the 'long' route to Moscow. Peter has a better defense at Novgorod; Moscow is poorly defended when we get there.



Even with some poor luck on combat rolls, Moscow falls easily. We take Novgorod next, which is a pain being a hill city with multiple archers, but whatever. Finally, we take Rostov, south of Moscow and it's marble. All in all, it goes fairly well. Peter tends to whip out chariots for defense rather than archers, and none of his cities have more than 4 defenders.

We end the war after taking those 3 cities; I easily could have taken his others but want to hit Pacal sooner rather than later. Not sure if this is the right move. Peter won't give me Aesthetics for peace yet, so I'm forced to settle for Meditation. Perhaps it would have been better to take the 2 cities west of Moscow and try to get Aesthetics.

These are our new cities:



Peter has left us plenty of forests to help get our infrastructure up. Unfortunately, we captured 0 workers, I guess that's part of the pain of not taking all his cities. So for now we can just send our own workers there but we'll need more for sure if we don't take a bunch from Pacal.

Anyway, we start trying to whip/chop ziggurats ASAP in our new cities and reposition for Pacal. We can hit his capital (walled and on a hill) 1 turn after we declare. We declare right after our next whip cycle comes through. Scouting him 2 turns earlier we see 1 archer, 1 holkan, 1 axe. Definitely quite manageable.

We declare, and when we're ready to hit Mutal, we are shocked and amazed to find it even less defended than it was just a few turns ago as he has moved his Holkan out of the capital and did not whip anything extra.



Suffice to say, 16 HAs is enough to take 2 defenders, even with hill + 60% culture bonus. His remaining cities field no more than 3 defenders, though we do have to deal with the occasional Holkan. All in all, we easily withstand a few bad rolls (50%+ odds where we die and do no damage multiple times) and leave him with one city, at which point he'll offer either CoL or Construction.

Foolishly, we take Construction, thinking CoL is useless to us since we're Sumeria and can make Zigs with Priesthood. Big mistake as CoL was a monopoly tech while most everyone had construction.

Meanwhile, Sury demands we stop trading with MM, his worst enemy. Though I like tech trading with MM, he'll forgive and forget eventually, and I absolutely do not want a war with Sury right now, so we agree. Sure enough, Sury goes WHEOOHRN next turn. We send a HA into his territory and find his stack chilling in a city near Mutal, which worries me, but I can't imagine he'll declare on anyone but MM after I agreed to stop trading with him. We keep it watching his stack just to be safe.

Here's our land after taking most of Maya:



We're sitting at 11 cities, soon to be 12 after we take that barb city. We have gems, wine, silk, gold, and dye for happiness, and marble so we can maybe get some wonders! Production switched back to economy after it became clear we had Maya on lock; we are close to getting MoM in our capital and have begun trying to make up the large worker deficit we accumulated by picking up 9 new cities and a whopping 0 workers. We've picked up a reasonable amount of gold from conquering and can reach Aesthetics (which only Peter has) on deficit research.

Hopefully we can also reach Literature first for TGL, though it's fine if Peter beats us to Literature as long as he doesn't trade it around as he's no threat to beat me to it I would think, now that I have his marble.

For now, we just need to get our economy track ASAP and play nice with Sury. We'll likely go Buddhism, and hopefully avoid a Toku DoW, which may not be easy, but he is somewhat far so perhaps we can get away with it. It'll take a little to get the economy really going due to our bad worker deficit, but the land isn't bad and 12 cities is plenty sufficient to get to a point where we can take Sury. Meanwhile, we are happy to see Sury's stack heading west, presumably after MM.

Here's tech situation and demographics:



(really should have taken CoL from Pacal, doh!)



Moving forward, here's the next set of challenges I see:

- What do we do with Pacal/Peter? We could likely take either of them out without much difficulty, especially Pacal, but perhaps it's not worth it at the moment.

- Can we keep Sury/Toku from DoWing us? Sury for sure is more dangerous as he's so close, so we'll likely just kiss his butt and hope Toku doesn't get jealous. Of course, there's perhaps another option: we know Sury is about to declare on MM. We could instead suck up to Toku and backstab Sury. The issue there is that we surely won't take more than 2 cities or so without killing our economy completely, and he'll be quite likely to declare on us later on. I'm not sure we can weaken him enough for it not to be an issue if he declares on us in the medieval era or so.

- When's the proper time to go offensive again on Sury? I know a lot of people like Cuirassiers but I have very limited experience with them. Usually I end up with Cavalry, but obviously that requires a pretty strong research base, and most likely winning Liberalism. Whether or not that's reasonable depends on how quickly the economy gets turned around, though I am perhaps helped by a seemingly imminent war between Sury and MM, unless it means someone like Charly running away with the tech lead.

- Where's my GP farm? I don't even know how Mutal is a legal starting site as it has one plain/cow and no other food. Moscow has 1 corn and 1 FP and that's it. It look like it'll have to be my capital, which isn't that great really with 1 corn and a bunch of 3 food tiles. It's also a terribly Buro capital and I probably have to move my capital (never done it before!) to Eridu. As for swapping civics, I am *hoping* to get the GA from Music still, and hopefully win MoM also which would be nice.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay had a look at save. I think some of the marginal costly cities could of been razed. -8/-10 cost at size 1 is not good. Ziggurts are a nice answer to this.

I wonder if gifting Mayapan back to mayans would help the economy. It is not a great city really and would free up 15-16 gold a turn. Puts a bit more culture pressure on Sury too.

workers. 11 cities 7 workers???? Not nearly enough!!! You need 5-6 more really. I suggest declaring on Russia to steal his 3-4 roaming workers. Raze any captured cities perhaps. Or take peace once 3-4 captured.

Economy at 0% science you are +2 gold a turn and 0 science beakers a turn. A slight issue. So what to do??? many of your cities are size 1-7. Quite small for this date. You have very few worked cottages too. Gifting the city may help here.

Be very wary of Sury. If he gets HBR he will have a UU phant that can pick off mounted units. His stack could be an issue. Hopefully he is going for Mansa.

You could adopt a religion of Toku but you do this at risk of upsetting Sury.

GP farm. Capital looks obvious choice. Irrigate and run specialists.

 

[Abegweit]

This HA "rush" is just silly. You have an awesome UU with no counter. Why would you not use it a thousand+ years earlier than HAs?

 

[vranasm]

This HA "rush" is just silly. You have an awesome UU with no counter. Why would you not use it a thousand+ years earlier than HAs?

you need currency before capturing first 2 neighbors this game.

When I tested this I was quicker with HA's and attacked Russia around 850 BC, but wasn't close enough to currency and didn't got it from capture gold.
Attacked Maya around 500 BC as 2nd target and met more holkans then comet and still didn't get currency and basically abandon the game...

was nice to have ~12 cities, but without currency there is no future.
Maybe going PH and whipping zigurats could save the game, but I was running like -30 gpt at 0% slider at the time.

 

[Seraiel]

Oracle Currency :>

 

[comet]

Yeah I have limited experience with axe (or vulture) rushing so it's not something I feel comfortable doing on a difficulty level I can't consistently beat yet. I'm a lot more comfortable with using HAs, and relying on currency/CoL (or priesthood here) to recover economy after conquest. I get that it seems inefficient to ignore the advantages the UU provides here but it's not something I feel comfortable enough with to be successful on a challenging difficulty level for me. Regardless, at least the UB has some nice synergy with HAs here.

In any case, I agree with Gumbolt that I have some pretty marginal cities here. The maintenance costs here feel ridiculous compared to Monarch I feel like I never razed or gifted cities on Monarch even if they were sub-par but I definitely see why it makes sense here.

It's also really annoying that I captured 0 workers since I left both targets with cities. Camping Peter or Pacal's borders and hoping to pick off a wayward worker stack seems like a good idea.

 

[Abegweit]

you need currency before capturing first 2 neighbors this game.

Ummm. No you don't.

When I tested this I was quicker with HA's and attacked Russia around 850 BC, but wasn't close enough to currency and didn't got it from capture gold.
Attacked Maya around 500 BC as 2nd target and met more holkans then comet and still didn't get currency and basically abandon the game...

When I tested it, both neighbours were dead by 1000BC.

was nice to have ~12 cities, but without currency there is no future.
Maybe going PH and whipping zigurats could save the game, but I was running like -30 gpt at 0% slider at the time.

Yes. Maybe it could. Moving the capital to somewhere more central also helps. As does avoiding pointless research of HR.

 

[Gumbolt]

Abegweit makes some good points. This is Emperor so it should not be impossible. The Ai were really quite close so vultures were ideal. Axe/vulture rushes are still possible even on deity level.

Was HBR needed?? Perhaps not on this map but I won't knock comet for trying an HA rush. On immortal level these can be great as HA have a good survival chance against archers/axes/spears. His HA rush should of been ready by at least 850bc or earlier. If you start a war earlier the AI will have 1-2 less cities too.

I agree the UU would of made an excellent early attacker. As Abegweit said 2 Ai dead by 1000bc. I assume he used vultures.

I think capturing too many marginal cities that could of been back filled later on was a mistake. Don't be afraid to raze poor cities. On plus side using HA to take down two Ai and cripple them is a good thing. I am sure this will be the first of many HA rushes.

On the game by gifting the marginal Mutal city it frees up 14 gold a turn. Although you risk a small Ai vassel later on. Better to have razed the city in the first place.

Yes not capturing all the Ai cities mean you don't get the workers. Perhaps stealing workers on first turn of war would of helped too.

Overall you learn the game by playing it. How many newbies even consider an HA rush on most games they play?? Yeah this was not a perfect start to a game but you can still win this game.

Just take on the advice you are given and learn.

 

[dlgang]

Sorry to come in the middle. I tried to download the game and got a message like "version 302 expected version 301 or lower" What do I need to do in order to play the game?

 

[Gumbolt]

Sorry to come in the middle. I tried to download the game and got a message like "version 302 expected version 301 or lower" What do I need to do in order to play the game?

Are you using the latest Firaxis patch? 3.19?

 

[comet]

Sorry if I'm being a bit unclear. I've HA rushed lots of times before (on Monarch). Actually, I probably HA rush more than I should, but it's something I'm fairly used to doing. On the other hand, I've axe (or vulture or whatever) rushed one time ever, and it was just a really perfect situation to do so. I can see the arguments for why this would be a good situation to do so but the one time I did it I literally had no other options (really close AI with very awesome capital while I had good production capital, good 2nd city production, copper, and boxed in by said AI).

Anyway, I'm apparently slow on getting to HAs so there's definitely something to improve there anyway. Part of it is lack of whips, but I'm wondering, am I not supposed to tech alphabet? I usually tech alphabet to trade for hunting/archery and some other stuff. I could see where you can skip it here though because you're more likely to be able to rely on AIs getting it; on lower levels you'll get to HBR before most AIs have alphabet it seems.

In any case, finished playing this out today. End up with a 1465 AD Domination victory, but I have to say, a LOT of things kinda fell into place to make things fairly easy by the end. Here's how things went:

Last time we left off, Sury was WHEOOHRN just after we agreed to stop trading with MM. We assume he's going after MM, and follow his stack. My scouting had been limited to Pacal/Peter mostly in the beginning; now that they're non-factors, we (somewhat belatedly) get to scouting the rest of the map, and actually MM doesn't border Sury. Instead we find he's going after Toku:



Considering these are the two AIs I am most concerned about, I think this is good for me, as long as one AI doesn't totally over-run the other.

Meanwhile, we gift back Mayapan to the Mayans to cut our costs a bit, as the city has Silk (or Sugar, I forget) and nothing else useful. We've picked up Marble from Peter, so it would be nice to pick up some wonders here, with some pretty decent production cities. Tech path is Aesthetics > Literature > Music. We have major maintenance issues atm, and a large worker deficit, but the land isn't bad and whipping up some Ziggurats will greatly help our economic situation. In the mean time, we can use our gold from conquering to get us to at least Aesthetics.

We get MoM built in our capital, then go for Parthenon in Moscow. Only Peter has Aesthetics but he's not much of a threat to get any wonders. The plan is to get TGL in our capital, then put up national epic, use the GA from Music to switch into caste and run a whole bunch of scientists. Our capital has great production, so we hopefully can end up with 2 wonders + national epic quickly. We'll switch our capital to the FP/dual gold site for Buro bonus.

For our newly captures cities, I am really just never sure how to best improve the land when I get it ~1 AD. There's a decent amount of riverside, so I end up using a lot of cottages, though I don't like putting them up so late. There is a good amount of forests left around them, so at least infrastructure will get up quickly.

We consider stealing workers from Peter, but don't ever see an opportunity to take more than 1 or 2, and don't risk the bad relations with Sury, who is barely at cautious with me for now, especially after I refuse to declare on Toku (perhaps I should have). Sury's war has reached a stalemate seemingly after he takes the initial city and eventually they make peace. Peter got dragged in by Sury and soon loses a city to Toku after Sury pulls out, which actually frees up some culture pressure from him in one of my former Mayan cities, which is cool.

We end up losing Music somehow. Thought we had a clear lead as the only one with literature, but I forgot we can't see what MM has since he won't talk to us after we stopped trading with him. Anyway, it's okay, we'll instead just use a GS for the golden age to swap civics. It'll delay our academy in the dual gold/future bureau cap site but not by much with national epic + TGL + parthenon. We also go for Sistine Chapel to help with the culture pressure from Peter/Sury. Moscow is especially under pressure as I left Peter with 2 cities near it... probably should have just taken the whole peninsula but hopefully Sistine Chapel will fix the problems.

We go for civil service after music, so we can fit the Bureaucracy swap into our golden age. We end up switching into HR/OR/Buro/Caste and Buddhism (Sury/Charley's religion). I'm pretty happy with how our land is developing and the AI tech rate is relatively slow with Sury and Toku fighting, and most of the AIs disliking MM. So we should be able to get Liberalism first and we can look to go offensive with rifling. Pacal ends up founding Taoism, but he's no threat to win Liberalism, so I don't mind.

Pacal ends up vassaling to Sury, but he's so small I really don't care. Sury is kind enough to build the AP for us, so we get that awesome hammer bonus. Charley votes for us in the election so we won't even have to worry about votes when we go warring.

Sury and Toku go back to war again at some point (Toku declares on Sury this time) while we're happy to sit back and try to get a tech lead. We win Liberalism in not exactly record time, and take Nationalism, immediately starting for Taj Mahal. Gotta love the extra long golden ages!



From here, the course of action is getting to Military Tradition/Rifling ASAP. MM is fair game to trade with again as Sury hates Toku more while they are warring, so we can pick up guilds, gunpowder and banking from him and get engineering from charley. We go printing press > replaceable parts > rifling > military tradition. Once we got those techs, we'll cut the slider and use gold to upgrade our old HAs to cavalry, and switch into better war civics (nationhood, theocracy). However, that civic swap will make Sury unhappy. I'd like to take Peter's two cities by Moscow first, draft them endlessly (along with Moscow, my globe city, and probably spread some more around randomly) before we turn to Sury/Pacal. It should only take a few turns, but to avoid Peter bringing Sury in, we beg 10 gold off Sury for peace before we civic swap.

We run into some huge luck here as just as we finish MT, MM has somehow gotten hold of like 3k gold (great merchant from economics probably) and we happily trade MT for all his gold and optics, letting us immediately upgrade our old HAs to Cavalry. We get peace from Sury, swap into Nationhood/Theocracy, but don't start drafting heavily yet. We'd like to get to Steel still, and we're also in the middle of a golden age, 30 turns from Taj Mahal + popping a GA/GS. Our cities switch to Cavalry production. We declare on Peter; our stack is still just our old HAs but he has nothing that can deal with Cavalry.



We take Peter's two cities near Moscow and let him cap with his island city. We quickly start to reposition for Sury/Pacal. We draft at least once in every city, and frequently from Moscow, sending all our drafted rifles towards Pacal's cities for now, and leaving our Cavalry for Sury.

As we're preparing for Sury, we are incredibly lucky to find Sury declare on Toku. His cities have 3-4 medieval era defenders, no chance to stop Cavalry, though he does have Chichen Itza in his capital. With his stack occupied, we can declare with a relatively small stack:



And some conscripted rifles to take Pacal's two cities, before heading towards Sury:



With Sury occupied with Toku, our Cavalry can pretty much just march city to city and capture it easily; Sury does not even have Gunpowder yet. Sury offers to capitulate rather quickly, but we let the war drag on; maybe he can hurt Toku's stack for us!

Sure enough, we find Sury's stack defending a hill city near Toku's borders, with Toku's stack laying siege to it. We laugh hysterically when we watch Toku's stack burn in flames trying to take the city, though he weakens it enough for us to march in easily and finish the job.

Meanwhile, MM has become quite friendly with us and offers to vassal to us, even as we're at war with Sury. With no real downside, we accept, then immediately demand he stops trading with everyone else

Sury has just 1 city left now and Toku's power rating just dropped from like 1.4 to 2.7 after suiciding on Sury's hill city. We let Sury cap and immediately declare on Toku. Backwards and without a stack, Toku can't even stop stacks of like 6 Cavalry, so we take a bunch of cities in a few turns and reach the domination limit.







In the end, the game turns out to be quite easy as the diplo situation simply could not have worked out better for me. Sury and Toku, the two biggest military threats to me, spend most of the game fighting each other, including right before I'm about to declare on Sury. Everyone mostly hates MM and doesn't utilize him for trades; the tech rate is slow. Charley just kinda sits there. I don't even know what he did all game other than spread Buddhism to my cities.

With the tech rate slow and the dangerous AI busy with each other, it ends up being simple to gain a tech lead and backstab Sury while he's busy. Would have been more challenging if the AIs liked each other more, or if they hadn't held each other to such a stalemate.

Still, a win is a win, though the map did feel fairly easy, and was nicely set up for something I am pretty comfortable doing. Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback, definitely feel like I'm learning a lot and happy to keep trying to progress my game.

Throwing on a save of somewhere around liberalism or so, just cuz it feels like I should attach a save to a report.

 

[Gumbolt]

See even with a late HA rush you have walked this. That gifted city prolly did you no harm either. You probably could of taken the map with just curs.

Sury going for Toku was a good thing really. Never trust an Ai to go after who you think they will.

I tried this map to 1000bc with vultures taking out Russians and Mutal. Took 1 of Surys five cities before I ran out of steam. Only had 4 cities at this point. 3 of which were capitals. My units really needed to heal and I took a few losses on the way. Oh I noticed at start the blue cirle 1w of settler and moved the warrior to investigate. You would of found a corn. I settled 1w.

Albegweit was right on the strategy here. I suspect he probably took out 3-4 Ai with vultures. I had no issue gold wise. The Ai were up to alphabet and other basic techs come 1000bc.

Probably won't play it out as not much to learn from it. I have room for 3-4+ more cities and could quite easily keep the war going.

Anyway nice win Comet!!! Don't take the critism too hard as you can clearly win on this level.

 

[Abegweit]

I tried this map to 1000bc with vultures taking out Russians and Mutal. Took 1 of Surys five cities before I ran out of steam. Only had 4 cities at this point. 3 of which were capitals. My units really needed to heal and I took a few losses on the way. Oh I noticed at start the blue cirle 1w of settler and moved the warrior to investigate. You would of found a corn. I settled 1w.

You don't need the corn. The capital has plenty of food as it is. And, not surprisingly, you settled on a resource.

Abegweit was right on the strategy here. I suspect he probably took out 3-4 Ai with vultures. I had no issue gold wise. The Ai were up to alphabet and other basic techs come 1000bc.

Naw. I kept the cities so I had to stop. I had eight cities at 1000BC, 3 I built myself, 3 I took from the Russians and 2 from the Maya. I hit strike as I was closing in on Mutal but the Zigs were coming on board so I managed, barely, to stay positive between them and the war plunder. I limped into Currency with scientists everywhere and then at that point the game was pretty much over.

Anyway nice win Comet!!! Don't take the critism too hard as you can clearly win on this level.

Indeed. That's an awesome score