Game advice plz..?

[capnvonbaron]

So I have me an important decision point and several things I'd like guidance on in general. I consider myself a fairly seasoned player but there have been some things I've always wondered about.

I am Vikki of the English (random selection), playing a huge marathon terra, prince difficulty. After seeing my starting location and weeny neighbors, I naturally decided the outcome of my game would be conquer or dom. Now its about 1400AD and I'm debating on where to take my empire. Here is the situation.

Domestic

Spoiler :

The rex went well, but I didn't have a lot of great cottagable land initially so my economy is still a little weak. I'm running 30% science for -GPT, but I have a good infrastructure and I'm more or less at tech parity or superior to everyone. My army is pretty much cutting edge. I'm the only one so far with gunpowder; I should be able to liberalize Steel in a couple dozen turns. Numerically my army is a little weak, but I should have the numbers up by the time Steel comes in. As soon as it does, Education gets peddaled to the entire world and the cash gets used to upgrade all the old trebs.

Right now I'm Confucian, running Rep, B'cracy, Caste, and Org Religion. I have the most land area, but that is working more against me at this point.

I recently wiped out Sury and now have a lot of jungle-infested cities waaaaay east of my homeland. There is good land under it all, but my workers need time to make something of it (which they are doing in droves). I also recently DoW'd Mansa (fogetting he was a vassal of Zara ). After a bit of a scramble and some troop shuffling, I gained two cities from Mansa, as well as two of Zara's cities that seperated my homeland from Old Suryland. Zara's response was very limited, consisting basically of some worker raids in the that I destroyed easily. He even paid me 35 gold for peace... it all turned out way better than I expected.

I have a GEngineer standing by that I may use to rush Versailles (once Nat'lism comes in) in the center of the former Khmer homeland. Thoughts on that?

Military

Spoiler :

Typical middle-ages army: Maces, xbows, trebs, pikes, HAs, some Wellies. I have three GG units... Lysander the super-medic mace (C1/Med3/Wood3), Chandragupta the C4 Wellie, and Timur the C2/CR3 mace. All have leadership also.

Foriegn

Spoiler :

Zara: Pleased (was Friendly before the war). I share close to 90% of my non-ocean borders with the Green Giant. One of my two religious buddies. He has a few techs I don't but I can trade to parity easy. His army is pretty formidable, he has some great land (rivers and fp aplenty) and he is due to have education as I finish chem. If he goes for Lib next, it will be a close race and I may get hosed.

Mansa: Pleased (also Friendly before the war). Vassal of Zara. The other 10% of my borders to the southeast. Holds the Confucian shrine. Smallish empire, but up to tech parity (due probably to gifting from Zara).

Willem: Annoyed. Jewish shrine-holder. Fairly close to my west. Somewhat backward and very conquerable, (two cities... I think he had some early-game barb issues) except that he has lots of Jewish buddies who also don't like me.

Bismark: Cautious. Backwards. Jewish. Very far away to the northwest on a seperate sub-continent. Lots of jungle.

Hammi: Same as Bizzy, just a little more advanced. I have some oceanic border with him, but the land journey is pretty sizeable

Saladin: Very annoyed at me. Jewish. He owns the far western portion of the continent. At tech parity. I ran a couple of worker raids aways back that he apparently has not forgiven me for.

Ghengis: Small and useless. Off to the southwest aways. He's DoW'd me and took one city (a former barb city I sacked long before), but I took it back and he's been pounded on by Zara and Mansa since then. He's Jewish. Annoyed at me also.

Montezuma: Was furious, now just annoyed. Hindu. Small and backward, but is now a vassal of Zara thanks to his unsuccessful war against the Ethiopians sometime last century. He lies at the south end of my part of the subcontinent.

Pacal: Annoyed. Hindu shrine-holder. Large and technologically even... however he DoW'd me and showed up with a "stack" consisting of a sword and a spear. Both were slaughtered mercilessly and netted me a GG. The AP then forced him to declare peace three turns later He only borders Mansa off to the southeast. Very isolated.

So... who's next?

Conquer/vassalize Zara and Mansa and turn them into tech-slaves? Mansa is a pushover but Zara is quite a beast...

Do I crush Willem and face the wrath of the jewish bloc? Fending off attacks may make for some great GG points (imperialistic+GWall ), and shrine income will be good, but I don't want to lose it to a giant Arab stack of doom...

Pacal? He's an outcast and I could get away scot free through Mansa's territory (the two of them haven't talked for centuries). I'm almost thinking about just running border raids on him for the fun of it.

I have the Pyramids, so should I switch into Police State for more troops?

Also... I'm obviously going to get rifling asap after cannons, but how far up the techs do I go after that? Should I go for banking/corp and take advantage of my huge size and the English UB + Wall Street, or just draft/whip troops and hope I can conquer everyone before I lose every pence I'm worth? Also considering a palace jump to my science capital... London is set up for the Nat'l Park, but Canterbury has the GLib, an academy, lots of sciency buildings, and lots of cottages.

Advice please. Pictures (maybe a save) to come soon.

 

[BigTime]

If you have cutting edge military, and you have a decent number of them, build cannons and go and destroy those AI. After steel you can go rifling, as if you are the only one with rifling + cannon, nothing will really stand in your way. Hell, muskets + cannons would work well enough. Don't try to wage war through somebody's territory unless it is a vassal. It is much less efficient that attacking a neighbor. Williem sounds like a good first target.

 

[Silu]

Screenies + save is much preferred. Very hard to say anything based on a textual description since usually the best answers given are to questions the asker didn't think of asking

 

[Shafi]

Yes screenies + attach a save too please.

From your description dont see a problem, while you wait for Steel, quickly build an army of muskets, then with cannons + Muskets steam role your opponents, hit their capitals + 1,2 other cities they will vassalize.

 

[Shurdus]

Screenies + save is much preferred. Very hard to say anything based on a textual description since usually the best answers given are to questions the asker didn't think of asking

quoted for truth.

From what you said though there is something what worries me. It is 1400 and your army is a medieval one? You should be fielding cannons + drafted musketmen by then, or maces + cannons, or cuirassiers. Even rifles are perfectly doable...

 

[kochman]

Be careful about attacking Zara or his vassals... sounds like he is probably pretty close to Gunpowder and the Oromo Warriors... you probably don't want to be faced with those!

Keep your religious brothers on the continent happy with you.

I would probably attack Pacal or Hammurabi, but without seeing the world map, its hard to say.

Anyhow, you could also just build up forces until you beeline the redcoats, and then crush everyone with those and cannons.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Ok so I played today and got a little better idea of what is going to work and what won't (I think.) 50 years have determined several things and some interesting events have occurred in the meantime.

- Hastings was where I was thinking about moving the palace, not Canterbury

- Willem just voluntarily vassallized to me. I think it was best to accept it... I think I may spread Judiasm around a little and just convert to join the Hebrew League

- Zara beat Genghis into capitulation

- I shuffled civics around a little and I think I'm good with what I got. Always open to opinion though.

- I will win the Liberalism grand prize without problem

- Ben Franklin will bulb about half of replaceable parts (I aquired Printing Press from Hammi for a remarkably good deal just a half-dozen turns after he researched it ). I can have steel in under 12 turns and rifling about 30 turns after.

- Striking at Zara's totally under-defended capital is not -- I repeat NOT -- a good idea

That last one was initiated after the save I attached. If anyone else wants to give it a go, feel free... just be warned that Zara isn't as soft as he looks.

Pictures...

Greater England:

Spoiler :

Old Khmerland:

Spoiler :

The heavy-hitter stack:

Spoiler :

I have a couple of other small stacks.. One is over toward Vandal and another is hanging out around Hastings.

Lastly, the save is 3.17... I havent patched up yet Let the scolding begin.....

 

[Silu]

Full 100% science towards Lib, you might lose it as far as I can tell. Drop the espionage slider, you don't need to see them researching stuff that's an era old already

Since you have such a tech lead, I'd advice on not warring until you get Redcoat/Cannon online. After that you can walk over half the world without losing more than a handful of units. You're 100% safe from DoWs yourself with those power ratings but if you declare now the semi-obsoleted micro-stacks you have are quite vulnerable to concentrated efforts.

Either whip more offensively or build more workers, working forests at 1400AD doesn't cut it (no pun intended ). Drafting redcoats is an even better idea to avoid working crap tiles.

Hebrew club is a bit iffy since you'd have a huge undertaking in spreading it, though still probably the way to go. I'd probably just lazy-out and go FR.

 

[kochman]

Stop building Chicken Itza, it will be obsolete pretty soon after you complete it... so, you will still get good money for what you have built thus far.

Since Willem joined you, and Pacal is an outcast, take him out. That way you don't piss everyone off (if you do switch the Jewish you will have some new friendship possibilities).
Then you will have yet more cities and production.
At some point you will have to take on Zara, but I would wait until you have infantry probably... if he gets too strong, and keeps on teching, he can be a big problem.

 

[capnvonbaron]

Yeah I'm only building Chichen Itza for the failure payout. I think I may have even already switched it in the next turn. And the espionage thing was only temp... I was planning on civil-disordering Aksum for a just-for-fun pre-emptive attack. I carried out that attack and took his capital, setting him back to 30-some turns for Liberalism... unfortunately his stack of doom showed up and wiped out my entire main force, including Timur and Lysander

You really think Lib is lost? Zara is the only one in the race and he's 9 turns behind me

I think you're right Kochman... Pacal looks like a good interem target while I research rifling.

Civics.. I may stay where I am until I can switch into US/Emancipation/FR combo and spring a GA. 6 turns of anarchy hurts a bit

 

[Silu]

You really think Lib is lost? Zara is the only one in the race and he's 9 turns behind me

I just checked that there were ~5 Civs capable of researching Lib and you didn't have research vision on all. Might have been that you had. In any case, it's useless sitting on 2k gold and delay building Cannons for an extra 5 turns for nothing.

You didn't really need to DoW him. Much better to wait until you get the much bigger advantage since it's right behind the corner so you can make it swift and painless.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged war.

You could also make it quicker by quitting that game and starting one on a higher difficulty. You're blowing everyone away in every deparment; tech, land, even power which is pretty darn rare for me at least. Advice on an already won game usually isn't as helpful

 

[kochman]

Agreed, seems you will win this one!

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

BTW, what's a wellie?

NPM

 

[Shurdus]

BTW, what's a wellie?

NPM

A what now?

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

I hope it's not too much problem that I removed the spoiler tags for this bit!

Military:
Typical middle-ages army: Maces, xbows, trebs, pikes, HAs, some Wellies. I have three GG units... Lysander the super-medic mace (C1/Med3/Wood3), Chandragupta the C4 Wellie, and Timur the C2/CR3 mace. All have leadership also

???

NPM

 

[Sian]

War Elephants would be my guess

 

[capnvonbaron]

War Elephants, correct. I guess that shorthand isn't used so often.

They're all dead now anyways, mostly suicided. It doesn't really matter though since I went through with the plan stated and got cannons+redcoats rolling around 1550AD.

Things actually have really started to go my way... Its now somewhere around 1650AD and I own Zara, Mansa, Montezuma, Pacal, and Willem still... and Willem was kind enough to research all of Nationalism for me and sell it to me for Astro (that I popped from a goody hut in the new world) and a handful of gold. Chop/whipped Taj Mahal, changed some civics for free, got Versailles up and running in Old Khmer, drafted some redcoats, and now I'm making money hand over fist and steamrolling everyone's maces/lbows/trebs. Even Zara's Oromos were squashed helplessly.

Yeah I might need to go up a difficulty level, at least for marathon games In any case, thanks for the input everyone!