Empire of Cards - No Metal Challenge 2

[shyuhe]

Storming on through here... I've lost a few cossacks at the cost of speed. I'm taking cities faster than the catapults can catch up! Stupid 1 movement units I've taken peace with Qin (he offered DR, but since that would leave bronze working as the only tech left to research, I declined). I've moved on to attacking Khan now. I see something very very tasty:

Spoiler :

It's pyramids! Hurray police state! +25% military production!

Khan is pretty much gassed. Cossacks destroy cavalry, hands down. 18 + 50% bonus vs. 15 = ... very dead horsies. Saladin doesn't have horses so I didn't attack him yet. Toku does have horses, but no MT yet (he just finished nationalism in my turn set). He has his hands full, but I don't think he's dumb enough to attack us given the power disparity:

So... a few more cities to wipe off from Khan, and then I think we should just stream into Toku afterwards. We will hopefully be in police state by then Saladin doesn't have horses, so he won't be a threat any time soon (he has to go all the way up to rifling to get a decent counter, and cossacks + pinch can beat rifles anyways).

Roster:
shyuhe just played
yena UP
Mowque awol
tycoonist (on deck)
Ralph_Jackson
redemption438

The AI is definitely putting up more of a fight than on noble (not surprisingly), but vanilla cossacks are still a tad too strong, it seems. It takes 3-4 pikes/elephants to take down one cossack, whereas two pikes could probably take down a cavalry.

 

[yena]

Looking good. I have the save and will play tomorrow. I haven't really looked at the current situation, but during my previous turn I (roughly) estimated that we didn't need to touch Japan if we took the other territory. Now it seem that only Saladin is able to put up a fight, and I don't doubt that we can crush him, probably with less effort than taking on Japan. So maybe we should attack Saladin instead of Tokugawa? I will consider this decision more seriously when I play tomorrow, but I would appreciate arguments for and against until then. If the team says Tokugawa, then Tokugawa it is.

 

[shyuhe]

the only reason why I suggest Toku is because our troops our heading that way, and torching his cities will pop our borders more. We don't have open borders with him so our troops have to go the long way to get back to Saladin... he also doesn't have MT, but saly has no horses... I think Toku techs slower = better chance that he won't hit rifling any time soon. What do the others think?

 

[tycoonist]

I'm back and ready to fight!!!

looks like i missed a lot of the waring.... good stuff

@ruff-hi: didn't notice this, i will be more careful with the renaming etc.

 

[yena]

In my turn set I lost two cossacks and gained 5 cities. In the end I decided to attack Japan since the army was already in position, and they don't have cavalry yet.

Spoiler :

1565 Moving troops
1570 Karakorum falls, 207 gold and pyramids! Turfan, 159 gold
1575 Samarqand falls, gives 97 gold, and New Sarai, 234 gold
BT: Japan takes Old Sarai, and Mongolia is no more
1580 Changing civics to Police state
1585 DOW on Japan, moving forces towards Edo
BT: Saladin demands that we convert to Christianity. Our relations are decent and we are much stronger, so I think it is safe to decline.
1590 Cossack kills Japanese grenadier eek outside Orleans.
1595 Moving troops in position outside Edo
1600 Killing all defenders in Edo except for one lousy cat... an no cossack left in range!
1605 Edo falls, yielding 243 gold. I kill a counter-attack stack of 3 grenadiers, 1 elephant and 1 LB.

1610 Killing all but one defender in Old Sarai. Moving army into Edo for healing.

Japan is going down

We now have 40% of land area against Saladin with 24%.

The obvious way forward seems to be to push for Kyoto with the army in Edo, once it is healed. We also have a decent stack in Guangzhou which could be used either against Saladin or Frederick, but it makes little sense to declare war only on Germany unless we are prepared to raze Cologne which is deep in Arabian territory.

The defences in Damascus and Cologne:

And the save
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/109417/Empire_of_Cards_2_AD-1610.Civ4SavedGame

 

[shyuhe]

I don't know which is a better target... Toku is clearly more militarily advanced, but Saladin has more land now... I still think Toku is a little better of a target since more of our new cities are culturally pressured by Toku (and capturing/razing will free up land faster). I guess that's the next player's call though. Tycoonist, have fun!

 

[tycoonist]

got it... play tommorrow

 

[tycoonist]

the military is quite impressive in its quantity, as i would later discover it was also quite effective at taking out a few cossacks. these i probably shouldn't have lost but sometimes, in need of haste, one has to ignore some standard military procedures. before they died, they did their jobs...

Cities captured on Japanese front:

1615 - Old Sarai (burnt)

1625 - Kyoto

1635 - Satsuma

1655 - Tokyo, Osaka, Nara

1660 - Nagoya

However that was not all:

1640 - Frankfurt (razed)

1650 - Cologne (razed)

that totals 9 cities, 6 kept, 3 razed. Not bad

in other news, Great Artist burnt with Great Scientist for a Golden Age. this brought us up into the green at +120. by the end of conquesting, this had fallen to +80. 3 turns remain on GA.

on the last turn spotted "A Certain Trigger" (tell me if you get the reference)

just remember not to press enter if you want to kill them. Cossacks nearby...

state of the world in 1660:

the save:

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Ok Got iot, will play and report tomorrow pushing through towards domination conquest.

Thanks for the pointer re Qin's settler Tycoonist - very helpful.

Cheers

Happy Easter - now to gorge on chocolate.

Ralph

 

[yena]

Looks like I may never play in this game again

I see that Paris will build the Taj Mahal next turn, but we are already in a GA. What will happen then? I think it would be better to remove workers so that the Taj is built three turns later, when the current GA ends.

 

[tycoonist]

good point about the GA, forgot about the taj mahal

 

[shyuhe]

the years of a GA from the Taj will just tack on to the end of the current GA. I'm actually more worried that we're going to finish researching DR, which will lead to the unfortunate consequence that... we'll be researching BW!!!! Definitely a situation we want to avoid - so fire all those scientists!

Conquest is going to be a little harder since we'll need galleys to finish Toku off. I think domination is the way to go - Qin has two cities on the east coast if I remember that we can also grab, before we swing back to the western front to finish things off. It looks like this is wrapping up nicely though

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

Well I started out thinking I should do some Micro Managing then realised my mistake. With 36 Cossacks who needs MM lets just go for the throat. The only time I did pay attention was when cities needed a Border Pop, when running an artist for a turn or two is much better than building a Theatre.

Anyway – Plan was very simple troops in the East finish off Toku, Take Qin’s cities then look to see if I can sneak troops onto Toku’s island to finish him off.

For this reasons I dial in a Galley at Lyons. If troops have been preloaded it can move them next to the coast and unload them onto Toku’s island, the galley may die next turn but the troops are safe.

Of course we will get domination before conquest but it feels right to finish him off.

Kill Qin’s longbow pair and settler as we declare war.

Turn 1-2.

New troops and western front forces are split into invasion groups to strike north towards Damascus Baghdad and Guangzhou in a few turns when we are ready. With Guangzhou we will own all the Holy Cities – nice touch!!

Meanwhile in the east we assault Kagoshima and take it, The Taj Mahal comes in extending our Golden Age.

Ironically a Barb City pops in the FOW. From now on we are pushing for Domination so keep every city we take.

Umm Qin has Grenadiers – but they are still just a tasty snack for Cossacks

Turn 3 Barb city (Chinook falls). Manage to sneak 2 Cavalry onto Tokus Island as planned. Amazingly Toku’s caravel cant reach the Galley so it survives to send 2 more over in a couple fo turns to guarantee finishing Toku.

Turn 4 We declare on Saladin – yes we are at war with everyone but who cares.

Turn 5 Ghuzz falls, Izumo Falls

Turn 6 Nagoya falls (Toku is no more) and with our sneak attack we capture Baghdad and Damascus!!

Turn 7 Guangzhou falls, umm Saladin has Riflemen but he wont have time to build enough to stop our Cossack onslaught. His small counterattack stack of mainly Camel Archers and catapults is easily destroyed.

And at 1695 here is the just press enter save so you can register the game in your HOF.

 

[tycoonist]

woohoo (whoops and cheers for the stupidest empire ever.) an empire with no wood, iron or bronze... just foolish, but way cool. the timeline map is awesome. the cossack conquest was just awesomely fast. the funniest graph are the score, power, production, crops, and even culture. just don't look at the gnp (turns out the lack of metals means hardly any coinage...)

thanks guys for a great game and my first domination victory on monarch

 

[yena]

Great game, so much better than the previous attempt. Could we do it without the over-powered cossacks? I think the answer is yes, but it would obviously be slower.

Anyone up for a new SG? If we can win a monarch game without metals we should be able to take on a standard emperor game next.

 

[shyuhe]

Nice job team I told you that you could handle a monarch SG tycoonist

With this equation for a domination victory (beeline a liberalism slingshot to cossacks), I think you can win almost any game at monarch or below (if it's a pangea). I understand why they nerfed cossacks from strength 18 down to 15 in warlords As for doing this challenge without cossacks, I think it'll be a little harder. While cossacks may allow for a no-metal win on emperor, I think without them, you'll be limited to monarch (just because normal cavalry have such a hard time against CG rifles).

I would be more than willing to play another SG but I will be on summer vacation soon and I will not be able to play any turnsets at that point (or at least it will be very unlikely as I will only have my laptop which can't handle civ 4). I'll just be a dedicated lurker after early-mid May

Here are some options that I can think of for another SG:
1) try this variant on emperor (tempting, but I would like to hold off on this until after summer as I'd like to be around for the whole game).

2) an emperor game with some other settings? Open to suggestions on this one.

3) This is a funny variant I came up with a few weeks ago. How about worldbuilding a map so that each civ starts with 2 ICBM's at the start of the game, to be used however they please? I don't know what level would be appropriate for this, but I imagine global warming will be a serious problem and it may make for some interesting consequences... I will try running some test maps tonight to see what level would be appropriate.

Edit regarding #3. The AI will indeed launch the nukes, but they'll just launch them straight at our capital (which is good and bad). Basically, it makes any declaration of war very risky (plus global warming!).

 

[tycoonist]

as good as that was, i am not up to playing an emperor game, I'm afraid. but you can work on convincing me again...

however, option 3 sounds fun but maybe needs tuning a little. i am quite scared we will get nuked immediately (which we will if we declare war). this makes war impossible until SDI or UN forbids nukes. unless we can guarantee taking all their cities in one turn, but this is highly unlikely.

so you could run a variant that a nuke is launched at a small, desert island in the ocean (which we can worldbuild). this would make global warming a problem...

 

[yena]

My best emperor domination wins have been fairly similar to these games, with the main trust being a huge cavalry attack in the late medieval age (I've never played Russians in my own games). The difference is of course that metals will improve the finances quite a bit. I think that we (including tychoonist) can pull of a emperor game.

Re the ICBM variant: why not declare asap, let them nuke the capital, and then move the palace somewhere far away? How bad will the global warning be? Actually I'm not too interested in these anachronistic scenarios, so I'd prefer something else, for instance an unusual map type. The new world map is quite fun on higher levels, given a decent start position.

 

[shyuhe]

well, I've thought about it a little more and I don't think it'l be fair if I start another SG for the time being, as I won't be around to play any in another few weeks and I doubt the SG will finish by then. I'll start another no metal challenge after the summer though and I'll probably be lurking some threads. Have fun guys

 

[yena]

I went ahead and started a new SG game for you all to enjoy until the next metal challenge attempt. I suggested a Terra map, but the rest is up for discussion. Please join the fun.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=216668