freethink
King
But the status quo would show the real conflict which tool place between Chingis and the Turks to his west.
[Feature] Turkic Civilization
- Thread starter Leoreth
- Start date
But the status quo would show the real conflict which tool place between Chingis and the Turks to his west.
Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Playing the Turks (because for some reason they're on the front of my mind right now 
).
I went crazy trying to make the trade connection from China to the Med - until it occurred to me that "controlling" the whole route means cultural control. Every tile of the route needs to be covered by your culture. I had one wretched tile west of Dukhan that was not controlled by anyone. Yep, the road went through that tile.
Edited to add - still playing but it looks to me like my capital will be moving west. I don't want it anywhere near the Mongol spawn. 300 Culture in Orduquent was easy. Next capital - Hmm. I'm playing Marathon and 3k is doable but 15k is a lot. Tempted to go to Samarkand (3k) then to Baghdad for the big one. I'll need to generate some Great Artists though.
Barb spawn in 684 AD was good. Declared war on Japan then acquired 5 Horse Archers and 3 new Orghuz to replace my losses and reinforce the western frontier. This new blood does not bode well for Byzantium.
).I went crazy trying to make the trade connection from China to the Med - until it occurred to me that "controlling" the whole route means cultural control. Every tile of the route needs to be covered by your culture. I had one wretched tile west of Dukhan that was not controlled by anyone. Yep, the road went through that tile.
Edited to add - still playing but it looks to me like my capital will be moving west. I don't want it anywhere near the Mongol spawn. 300 Culture in Orduquent was easy. Next capital - Hmm. I'm playing Marathon and 3k is doable but 15k is a lot. Tempted to go to Samarkand (3k) then to Baghdad for the big one. I'll need to generate some Great Artists though.
Barb spawn in 684 AD was good. Declared war on Japan then acquired 5 Horse Archers and 3 new Orghuz to replace my losses and reinforce the western frontier. This new blood does not bode well for Byzantium.
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Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Some observations on the Turks Settlers map. I was looking at it while thinking over my capitals strategy and where to go to get my area from 5.1% (current) to the required 6%.
For starters it's placing value 3 on water. Every other DoC Settlers map uses 20 on water, since the AI can't settle on water. Not reporting this as a bug since the Settler Maps are mainly for the AI anyway and this doesn't break the game; it is just inconsistent coding and makes it harder for the human eye to debug the map, since lakes and the Black Sea aren't differentiated from the other "AI don't settle here" tiles.
It places value 400 on Iconium. Not a problem, the Seljuks took it historically and if the AI takes Iconium it pretty much guarantees an Ottoman spawn. I nabbed it as a matter of course. But Look at Karakorum, way off in the eastern yellow. 800! That's some prime AI bait.
What happens to the Mongols if (somehow, you know, accidental-like) Karakorum is the Turks capital in 1190 AD? It's a good spot with excellent growth potential, and if it's the Turkic capital then the Mongols can't flip it. I was going to avoid the eastern yellow zone because its in the Mongol flipzone and anything built there will simply feed the Mongols (they're going to get Ordugent, Kashgar and Dukhan anyway and I don't quite like that extension of the flipzone (dChangedBirthArea) that covers Samarkand and Merv), but I've been looking for the best spot for my 2nd capital and I think I've found it. Once the Mongols spawn and if I can stave off their conquerors stacks, time enough then to move the capital to its final home - Iconium perhaps. If I dog-in-the-manger the Mongols and Ottomans by occupying their cores, they are likely to collapse quickly. By the time they respawn I should be well on my way to a "historical" victory!
Edited to add: just noticed that my core is now in Iran per "Turkic core and capital moves to Persia when all of Persia is controlled". Nifty. I was worried about my stability when the Mongols bite off Central Asia, even though I hoped to have hit my 6% land, completed the silk road and divested myself of my excess cities by then to focus on defending the heartland. Silk Road is being a bit slow spreading, even though I have concentrated on linking up every silk, cotton, incense and camel resource in sight - only spread to 4/10 so far. Also, in the 600 AD scenario it's hard to find enough stuff to pillage. I'm sort of following the Independent Workers around India, fighting off their archers and pillaging whatever gets built.
Spoiler Turkic Civ SettlerMap :
For starters it's placing value 3 on water. Every other DoC Settlers map uses 20 on water, since the AI can't settle on water. Not reporting this as a bug since the Settler Maps are mainly for the AI anyway and this doesn't break the game; it is just inconsistent coding and makes it harder for the human eye to debug the map, since lakes and the Black Sea aren't differentiated from the other "AI don't settle here" tiles.
It places value 400 on Iconium. Not a problem, the Seljuks took it historically and if the AI takes Iconium it pretty much guarantees an Ottoman spawn. I nabbed it as a matter of course. But Look at Karakorum, way off in the eastern yellow. 800! That's some prime AI bait.
What happens to the Mongols if (somehow, you know, accidental-like) Karakorum is the Turks capital in 1190 AD? It's a good spot with excellent growth potential, and if it's the Turkic capital then the Mongols can't flip it. I was going to avoid the eastern yellow zone because its in the Mongol flipzone and anything built there will simply feed the Mongols (they're going to get Ordugent, Kashgar and Dukhan anyway and I don't quite like that extension of the flipzone (dChangedBirthArea) that covers Samarkand and Merv), but I've been looking for the best spot for my 2nd capital and I think I've found it. Once the Mongols spawn and if I can stave off their conquerors stacks, time enough then to move the capital to its final home - Iconium perhaps. If I dog-in-the-manger the Mongols and Ottomans by occupying their cores, they are likely to collapse quickly. By the time they respawn I should be well on my way to a "historical" victory!
Edited to add: just noticed that my core is now in Iran per "Turkic core and capital moves to Persia when all of Persia is controlled". Nifty. I was worried about my stability when the Mongols bite off Central Asia, even though I hoped to have hit my 6% land, completed the silk road and divested myself of my excess cities by then to focus on defending the heartland. Silk Road is being a bit slow spreading, even though I have concentrated on linking up every silk, cotton, incense and camel resource in sight - only spread to 4/10 so far. Also, in the 600 AD scenario it's hard to find enough stuff to pillage. I'm sort of following the Independent Workers around India, fighting off their archers and pillaging whatever gets built.
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Tigranes
Armenian
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 10,406
800 for Karakorum is very ahistorical. It was a city of tents only thanks to Timujin, there was nothing of value there before him. I mean Mongols were just one small tribe! Plus historically no one killed more Turkic people than Mongols, so telling the to settle Karakorum is plain wrong...
DC123456789
Deity
The city spot represents Ordu Baliq for the Turks.
Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Mongols haven't spawned yet so I can't argue with this from experience.
I was relying on this code in getConvertedCities in the DoC 1.16 R&F.py:
Code:
# Leoreth: remove capital locations
for city in lCities:
if city.getOwner() < iNumPlayers:
if (city.getX(), city.getY()) == Areas.getCapital(city.getOwner()) and city.isCapital():
lCities.remove(city)However, I had already decided against using the Karakorum-as-Turk-capital gambit in my current game (I own better cities, already developed, in Persia and the ME so I decided to play it straight and save the weirdnesss for later games where I know the ropes better) but I think I'll fork my savegame just before the Mongol spawn and WB the capital to Karakorum in the fork, just to test this.
It's been a long-standing tradition in all flavours of RFC that capitals don't flip. It has supported many a startling exploit (Roman capital in London, forsooth). If DoC is abandoning this tradition (which is in any event ahistorical; RL capitals have no magical protection against fifth columns) it opens up interesting possibilities. In some cases, if the old capital is taken by invasion or flipping and the old country has become noniviable (e.g. collapsing stability) but has not yet been completely destroyed, refugees from the threatened civ could flee their country and immediately create a new, restabilised heartland elsewhere (possibly flipping cities of some other civ) instead of respawning later. Some of the hordes that threatened the Roman Empire and later Europe were fleeing fiercer hordes that were taking their old lands. When the Crusaders are driven out of Antioch or Jerusalem they could on occasion immediately flip Rhodes or Cyprus, if they don't already have those (I believe the islands are scripted respawn points already, so this is effectively just making it an instant respawn instead of delayed). The old country would cease to be core territory.
I note that the Mongols get a first contact "horde event" (conquerors stacks) against Mughals, Persia, Arabia, Byzantium and Russia but not, apparently, the Turks. Of course the Turks are going to lose half their empire to the flip anyway and then have their cities thrown into disorder at the Mongol approach, so I guess adding conquerors would have been overkill.
Edited to add (5 hours later) - I am amused by one aspect of the movement of the Turk core to Persia - that being, they can't build Settlers there initially. Not really an issue at first (after all, they need those cities building population for core population stability, not settlers) but eventually they will need more Settlers to fill out their new core. So once I had my Silk Road and my 300 Culture in Orduqent, my northern cities switched to building Settlers. And they'll keep building Settlers till the Mongols flip them, because you never know when a spare Settler might come in handy, plus it helps stability by keeping those now-non-core cities small. Still, I wonder if that was intentional (in which case, well done O Devious One) or inadvertent. Fortunately, Mirat-ul-Memalik (which is Core) and (if you capture it) Lahore (which is foreign core) can also build Settlers at need.
ETA ETA: After moving my capital to Shiraz (888 AD), suddenly I can't build Setlers in Orguqent, Kashgar, Lahore or Mirat-ul-Memalik any more but I can now build them in the core cities that were previously blocked, plus in Anatolia, Samarkand and Merv. So now the North is building Workers instead.
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Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Not only is Ordu Baliq historical, making it the turkic capital is also historical. In real history, the Turks lost the city long, long before the Mongols appeared; but that is part of what makes the RFC mods so much fun to play - you can alter the supposedly inexorable course of history. Having the Turks spawn at Ordu Baliq and follow their historical course would be bad news for China, reducing them to mini-Mongols. The Turkic civ we see in the game, with its trade and westward focus and representing Turkic empires throughout history, is much more interesting than that.
Ordu Baliq is actually 27 km NNW of Karakorum and has an interesting history that still resonates today, but on the scale of the DoC map they're on the same tile. See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Turkic_peoples_(500–1300) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_Khaganate
Well, the code you quoted means that a plot needs to be both your capital plot and also be your current capital. So if you move your capital to Ordu Baliq, it only satisfies the second condition and it will not be flip protected.
Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Aha! Thanks for the insight.
And here I just moved the Palace to Shiraz. Clearly I should've left it in Orduqent till after the Mongol spawn! Maybe I still will - it's not too late for a quick save/load ...
Yeah, nah. Has to be moved by 1100 anyway to keep to the UHV timetable.
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Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
Great Artist in Esfahan = Historical Victory in 1123. Monarch difficulty, Marathon. Augustus Caesar, score 859 (normalised: 148,010).
I approve of the Turkic civilisation. No tricks or stunts required, just play it straight and don't overextend yourself.
I approve of the Turkic civilisation. No tricks or stunts required, just play it straight and don't overextend yourself.
Spoiler Turkestan Triumphant :
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Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
TL;DR: It may indeed be too easy at Monarch or below. The real test will be how it performs at Paragon. I've seen a few civs that are "too easy" at Monarch that are impossible at Paragon (*cough* Indus Valley *cough*). Needs a playthrough at "Impossible" to be sure. I suspect capturing Persia may be really hard at Paragon level.
The real key is to identify what you actually need and ignore the rest.
The military stuff was over early on; the major early challenge was Independent Persia, with those dag-darned Crossbows. That was costly, but since my initial Oghuz units all started with March, at least I could heal up the survivors in the field, and with a little save/load goodness I managed to crunch Herat and Shiraz well before the Arabs spawned, with a couple of units in hand. Declaring war on Byzantium once I contacted them gave me a nice flow of reinforcements, although in retrospect I should've initially buddied up to Byzantium (time enough to declare on them later, once Arabia is tamed) and declared on Korea instead (too far away and too small to be dangerous; I sent my Scout there). It's quite fun to throw an Archer at a group of 4 Barbarian Horse Archers or 3 Barbarian Oghuz and fetch them all home with a halter through their nose. Wouldn't have been possible to capture the ME from the Arabs otherwise, because Turks' early city production and economy is awful. Instead of building early units, I focused on Divans, to get my maintenance costs down, and relied upon captured Barbs to fill the ranks. I think that was the real key. The focus on Divans paid off richly (thank you, Sword of Islam and all those Byzantine games).
(Edited to add: you're not restricted to harvesting the Barb spawns near Orguqent; I got excellent value from a Horse Archer I kept lurking in the Carpathians.)
Once I owned Persia, I stopped expanding and relied on cultural expansion (10% on the slider) to get me from 4.75% to 6%. I used my initial 2 settlers to settle Esfahan and a city on the west bank of the Indus at the south-east corner of my new Core (Mirat-ul-Memalik; lousy industry but excellent population growth). I did send some healed-up Oghuz from the Caspian to the Black Sea to grab Trebizond, but mostly I was waiting for the Arab spawn - there was no point capturing anything that would flip to the Arabs.
The Arab spawn was rough. I burned my military on Baghdad, which was full of Camels - but once I cracked that, Damascus and Jerusalem were easy. I made peace with the Arabs before their reinforcement Camels could get to Jerusalem (held by my last, badly bloodied, Horse Archer), then went after Ikonion when the next reinforcements reached the western front. Because I was already at war with Byantium I got no brownie points with the Arabs for this, and it was centuries before they opened borders with me. That's why I should have made peace with byzantium earlier. If I'd declared war on Byantium, the Arabs would've opened up to me at once. I converted to Islam as soon as I owned a Muslim city (stayed pagan till then). Once I got more troops later, I also took Constantinople to quiet the Greeks down, although I didn't really need that city. I just figured it would make a good choke point against European/Greek interference in case the Mongols were too much for me.
Jerusalem was both the Orthodox and the Jewish Holy City; my first two Great Prophets built shrines there. The income from the shrines kept me afloat until the Divans cut my maintenance costs, after which I was finally able to move the Research arrow off 0.
Once I had established my hold on everything I needed from the borders of China to Jerusalem, the rest was basically a case of building up my cities, wating till my culture covered the Silk Route (built a Fort in the Gobi but then still had to wait till Dunhuang hit 300 culture, dang it) and the Silk road spread in my cities, and using diplomacy to keep my neighbours at least quiescent, if not exactly friendly. Orduqent gets 300 culture with very little encouragement. I then went to Shiraz for my #2 capital, which turned out to be a mistake. I had to turn the Culture slider right up in the 900s to be sure to get it to 3000 Culture in time (achieved it in 1069 AD, for the record) - Esfahan actually beat shiraz to 3000 culture by quite a margin. Meanwhile, as soon as I got the necessary techs I focused on building Theatres and Weavers so I could set up Artist specialists. Over time I got two Great Artists, who culture-bombed Esfahan for 7200 (7100? Whatever.) each (15,000 needed at Marathon). As soon as Shiraz had its culture sorted, Esfahan started building Palace #3. I even managed to build the University of Sankore in Esfahan while building the Palace, thanks to a late Great Engineer from Constantinople, but basically that was a bonus. I got Great Artist #1 from Shiraz sometime in the early 1000s - no point expending him on Shiraz as by then I knew Shiraz was going to make it - and Esfahan itself managed to pop GA #2 in 1123 which, of course, was the winning move.
In the end the key was building the Divans and getting the Great Artists. I believe Marathon is generally easier than Normal, but either way, once you have your territory you just need to stop expanding and work on generating Great People; the rest is up to the random number generator. I got something like three Prophets, a couple of Engineers, and the two Artists. No Merchants. I got one Great general (Kultigin). In the 600 AD scenario, China is friendly, India is all Independents, Egypt belongs to the Arabs (your friends), and Greece buffers you from Europe. In short, it's a peaceful-development wet dream. You stay at war with some civ until you recruit enough Barbs to guarantee your military primacy, and after that nobody dares to challenge you. If your stability gets shaky, you can divest the two Gobi cities to China once you have completed UHV #2 (I finished with 30+ Stability). The mongols will flip them anyway.
You can send teams of a couple of Oghuz into India and the Despotate of the Morea to pillage the necessary 20 improvements. That part was really rather silly, with two massive horsies tip-toeing in after the independent Workers to destroy their work as soon as they moved off the tile. One poor rice field got pillaged three times. Towns were especially juicy; two or three pillagings for the price of one. The 600 AD map is rather thin on improvements, but it just takes patience.
The real key is to identify what you actually need and ignore the rest.
The military stuff was over early on; the major early challenge was Independent Persia, with those dag-darned Crossbows. That was costly, but since my initial Oghuz units all started with March, at least I could heal up the survivors in the field, and with a little save/load goodness I managed to crunch Herat and Shiraz well before the Arabs spawned, with a couple of units in hand. Declaring war on Byzantium once I contacted them gave me a nice flow of reinforcements, although in retrospect I should've initially buddied up to Byzantium (time enough to declare on them later, once Arabia is tamed) and declared on Korea instead (too far away and too small to be dangerous; I sent my Scout there). It's quite fun to throw an Archer at a group of 4 Barbarian Horse Archers or 3 Barbarian Oghuz and fetch them all home with a halter through their nose. Wouldn't have been possible to capture the ME from the Arabs otherwise, because Turks' early city production and economy is awful. Instead of building early units, I focused on Divans, to get my maintenance costs down, and relied upon captured Barbs to fill the ranks. I think that was the real key. The focus on Divans paid off richly (thank you, Sword of Islam and all those Byzantine games).
(Edited to add: you're not restricted to harvesting the Barb spawns near Orguqent; I got excellent value from a Horse Archer I kept lurking in the Carpathians.)
Once I owned Persia, I stopped expanding and relied on cultural expansion (10% on the slider) to get me from 4.75% to 6%. I used my initial 2 settlers to settle Esfahan and a city on the west bank of the Indus at the south-east corner of my new Core (Mirat-ul-Memalik; lousy industry but excellent population growth). I did send some healed-up Oghuz from the Caspian to the Black Sea to grab Trebizond, but mostly I was waiting for the Arab spawn - there was no point capturing anything that would flip to the Arabs.
The Arab spawn was rough. I burned my military on Baghdad, which was full of Camels - but once I cracked that, Damascus and Jerusalem were easy. I made peace with the Arabs before their reinforcement Camels could get to Jerusalem (held by my last, badly bloodied, Horse Archer), then went after Ikonion when the next reinforcements reached the western front. Because I was already at war with Byantium I got no brownie points with the Arabs for this, and it was centuries before they opened borders with me. That's why I should have made peace with byzantium earlier. If I'd declared war on Byantium, the Arabs would've opened up to me at once. I converted to Islam as soon as I owned a Muslim city (stayed pagan till then). Once I got more troops later, I also took Constantinople to quiet the Greeks down, although I didn't really need that city. I just figured it would make a good choke point against European/Greek interference in case the Mongols were too much for me.
Jerusalem was both the Orthodox and the Jewish Holy City; my first two Great Prophets built shrines there. The income from the shrines kept me afloat until the Divans cut my maintenance costs, after which I was finally able to move the Research arrow off 0.
Once I had established my hold on everything I needed from the borders of China to Jerusalem, the rest was basically a case of building up my cities, wating till my culture covered the Silk Route (built a Fort in the Gobi but then still had to wait till Dunhuang hit 300 culture, dang it) and the Silk road spread in my cities, and using diplomacy to keep my neighbours at least quiescent, if not exactly friendly. Orduqent gets 300 culture with very little encouragement. I then went to Shiraz for my #2 capital, which turned out to be a mistake. I had to turn the Culture slider right up in the 900s to be sure to get it to 3000 Culture in time (achieved it in 1069 AD, for the record) - Esfahan actually beat shiraz to 3000 culture by quite a margin. Meanwhile, as soon as I got the necessary techs I focused on building Theatres and Weavers so I could set up Artist specialists. Over time I got two Great Artists, who culture-bombed Esfahan for 7200 (7100? Whatever.) each (15,000 needed at Marathon). As soon as Shiraz had its culture sorted, Esfahan started building Palace #3. I even managed to build the University of Sankore in Esfahan while building the Palace, thanks to a late Great Engineer from Constantinople, but basically that was a bonus. I got Great Artist #1 from Shiraz sometime in the early 1000s - no point expending him on Shiraz as by then I knew Shiraz was going to make it - and Esfahan itself managed to pop GA #2 in 1123 which, of course, was the winning move.
In the end the key was building the Divans and getting the Great Artists. I believe Marathon is generally easier than Normal, but either way, once you have your territory you just need to stop expanding and work on generating Great People; the rest is up to the random number generator. I got something like three Prophets, a couple of Engineers, and the two Artists. No Merchants. I got one Great general (Kultigin). In the 600 AD scenario, China is friendly, India is all Independents, Egypt belongs to the Arabs (your friends), and Greece buffers you from Europe. In short, it's a peaceful-development wet dream. You stay at war with some civ until you recruit enough Barbs to guarantee your military primacy, and after that nobody dares to challenge you. If your stability gets shaky, you can divest the two Gobi cities to China once you have completed UHV #2 (I finished with 30+ Stability). The mongols will flip them anyway.
You can send teams of a couple of Oghuz into India and the Despotate of the Morea to pillage the necessary 20 improvements. That part was really rather silly, with two massive horsies tip-toeing in after the independent Workers to destroy their work as soon as they moved off the tile. One poor rice field got pillaged three times. Towns were especially juicy; two or three pillagings for the price of one. The 600 AD map is rather thin on improvements, but it just takes patience.
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While Autumn Leaf's feedback is valuable, I just want to highlight he/she is playing on Marathon, in case that wasn't noticed. There's obviously nothing wrong with that and the feedback is still valuable, but the Turkic UHV 1/3 are both expansion based and become considerably easier on Marathon as a result.
I find the Turkic UHV to be really quite challenging at all points on Normal (I have yet to clear it, though I think youtien posted a clear somewhere), and its my understanding that the game is balanced to that game speed.
I find the Turkic UHV to be really quite challenging at all points on Normal (I have yet to clear it, though I think youtien posted a clear somewhere), and its my understanding that the game is balanced to that game speed.
I didn't notice that earlier but with that in mind and the fact that their strategy is already quite apt for the UHV's requirements I don't think there is need to change it. Thanks for the mini AAR though, it was still very illuminating on how the civ plays.
Autumn Leaf
Since 1992
You're welcome. I'll put together something for the Gameplay Guides sometime once I've played through a normal speed game, since the reaction from some quarters seems to be "pfff, Marathon". FWIW it was a Monarch level game, not the easier default (Prince or whatever). Would hate to have that fact overlooked in the rush to point out that I was playing Marathon.
The real takeaway is that I won this on my 1.5th playthrough (I abandoned my first try when I found myself going down a blind alley, and fixed that by loading a save from the mid-600s). Usually it takes me 2-3 tries and possibly a peek at a game guide and sometimes even a reversion to Prince before I win as a new civ, so in fact I did find the Turks rather easy. Sorry about the Marathon, but hey, I have a long attention span and I like long games.
No offence was intended. I just wanted to highlight that the game is supposedly balanced on Regent (2nd lowest difficulty)/Normal and for that to be flagged before the UHV is adjusted. I also play games on Marathon when I want to buckle down and really get into it and I'm absolutely not judging you for playing the game on Marathon or posting your results from it. It's just that things become fundamentally different when you have 3x as many turns - the following the workers around in India with Oghuz' for example is not feasible on Normal (I do agree that the goal is very very difficult on 600AD due to the lack of improvements however).
Again, I think your feedback and the effort you put into both playing and writing up your experiences on Marathon are great and I don't want to discourage you or any other people for playing on Marathon or Epic or lower difficulties.
RevivalCircus
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2018
- Messages
- 15
Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but I have no idea how to access 'turks' and play as this civilization. I'm in the RFC Dawn of Civilization folder, but I can't find anything. Help?
Make sure you're on the latest Git revision. The Turks were added during the 1.16 development cycle and will not be available if you're playing using the official 1.15 release. Instructions for how to maintain a Git version can be found in in the third post of this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/welcome-to-dawn-of-civilization.533861/
Once you pull the Git revision, the Turks can be played in any scenario. There's a lot of other feature changes since v. 1.15 that are also included on the Git version, so there's a lot of differences aside from just that civ existing.
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