Ghandhi (EC) Emperor Cookbook! Let the fun begin.

[mjg5591]

I'm ok with any save here. Ambrose by far blew all of us away. I say it's your call Gumbolt.

I won't be on next few days either way friend got hit by car. Will be away for few days.

 

[Ambro]

You can clearly manipulate the Ai well in war.

We have a issue on the voting. Deadline has past. Do we play from the leading save or go with Ambrose clearly superior save?

It took me forever to play through the war though. Had to keep looking up how to do stuff like leaving tempting targets to draw the AI out. I'm also used to fighting wars without seige which helps (big fan of cavalry warfare and single unit type stacks). Both the AI's also did some really odd things which made it easier as well. Monty split his stack up and left several troops in the open next to my stack while Toku started using mounted troops to defend and left his secondary "stack" sat in the little city to the North, probably because of the cultural pressure and only sent troops out in ones or twos.

Thought it was all going to be over when I was hitting Toku's Capital though, Khan had a stack right on my border and was in War mode, fortunately he just wandered by and attacked Brennus instead.

 

[Harbourboy]

I still haven't had a chance to review the saves so am happy to go with whatever anyone decides - we'll learn something either way.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Thought it was all going to be over when I was hitting Toku's Capital though, Khan had a stack right on my border and was in War mode, fortunately he just wandered by and attacked Brennus instead.

That was my problem. I should have opened borders to GK. Then maybe he would've gone for someone else...

 

[Gumbolt]

Let call the voting round to a close. Overall i think if I hadnt closed round early most would of put Ambro save before mine. I have no problem giving him the full 3 votes.

I do think in future rounds you need to give warning before the round closes if you need more time.

We will play to 1100ad with Ambro save. Congratulations to him on winning this round.

 

[CBPE]

I'm sorry, I couldn't lurk at the forum in the last days (so I've voted previously) and couldn't contribute to the debate about the saves.

Anyway, I agree that Ambro's one seems to be the better choice.

 

[Harbourboy]

I'm away camping (no internet) for the next 5 days. I look forward to seeing what you guys manage to do in the next round.

 

[Gumbolt]

I needed to post the usual round info but pc kept d/c last night so i went to bed.

 

[MaximumPain]

I played the last round but got invited to a curb stomping party with Monty then GK decided to join in. I fought Monty hard even raiding his iron and other improvements but those Jags got dug in in the wooded hills near the northern city and could not be dislodged. I did burn one of his weak cities but then GK decided to join the party and rolled in raping and pillaging. I didnt get to the time limit but having lost 2 cities and my bronze and horse and the capital under siege I think I can call myself dead. I do plan on trying the next round.

 

[Gumbolt]

I played the last round but got invited to a curb stomping party with Monty then GK decided to join in. I fought Monty hard even raiding his iron and other improvements but those Jags got dug in in the wooded hills near the northern city and could not be dislodged. I did burn one of his weak cities but then GK decided to join the party and rolled in raping and pillaging. I didnt get to the time limit but having lost 2 cities and my bronze and horse and the capital under siege I think I can call myself dead. I do plan on trying the next round.

Last round was all about hooking up the copper asap then amassing units and making the AI stack come out to be destroyed. I got the units together but failed to get Monty stack in the open.

 

[Gumbolt]

The next round will be played over the next 3-4 days with voting over Saturday-Sunday. (this may change on time needs)

The round will finish Friday 1800hr GMT.

The next round will be played from 400ad-1100ad. Lets get playing people.

Congratulations to Ambro who won this round.

Here is the winning save to be used for the next round:

Ambro

Please ensure when you post save you rename save with your name.

Round 0: The starting save -
Round 1: 4000 BC - 1500 BC- Completed
Round 2: 1500 BC - 400 AD- Completed
Round 3: 400 AD - 1100 AD- Playing
Round 4: 1100 AD - 1500 AD - upcoming
Round 5: 1500 AD - 1700 AD - upcoming
Round 6: 1700 AD - 1820 AD - upcoming
Round 7: 1820 AD - 2050 AD - upcoming

 

[Gumbolt]

This round should be somewhat easier so lets see just how much peole can make the indians traits count. Two of the strongest in the game.

 

[Ambro]

100 years left to play of this round. Caught myself playing on auto-pilot at about 700AD so didn't really focus enough to fulfill the goals I'd meant to set. Also went with a slightly unorthodox strategy but that'll be more apparent when I post up the round. However, I find that I have a choice to make even this close to finishing the round and was wondering if anyone who knows more about the AI's could help me. Don't think it needs spoilers but people might read more into the question than there is.

Spoiler :

My problem is deciding how to deal with Brennus and his little celtic civilization. Does anyone know what he is like to try and capitulate? Does anyone know whether he is a good vassal to have? I don't particularly want to end up taking over almost the whole continent as that's a lot of cities to manage but I also don't want a tiny pointless vassal that's going to get me negative relationship modifiers with the other civs.

PS. don't forget to use the spiritual trait for the civic changes. I could have done so much better if I'd remembered to take advantage of this.

 

[Gumbolt]

100 years left to play of this round. Caught myself playing on auto-pilot at about 700AD so didn't really focus enough to fulfill the goals I'd meant to set. Also went with a slightly unorthodox strategy but that'll be more apparent when I post up the round. However, I find that I have a choice to make even this close to finishing the round and was wondering if anyone who knows more about the AI's could help me. Don't think it needs spoilers but people might read more into the question than there is.

Spoiler :

My problem is deciding how to deal with Brennus and his little celtic civilization. Does anyone know what he is like to try and capitulate? Does anyone know whether he is a good vassal to have? I don't particularly want to end up taking over almost the whole continent as that's a lot of cities to manage but I also don't want a tiny pointless vassal that's going to get me negative relationship modifiers with the other civs.

PS. don't forget to use the spiritual trait for the civic changes. I could have done so much better if I'd remembered to take advantage of this.

as the comment is not much of a spoiler I have looked.

Spoiler :

Overall if you capture 3-4 of his cities and he capitulates you will end up with 3-6 unhappy faces due to we want to join the mother land message. There is the option to gift back the cities and letting Brennus grow. You gain +1-4 diplo bonus too. He would be a powerful vassel later on in the game. Just make sure your empire remains larger than his or he will break free.

Capturing all the cities/destroying them helps on vc as you get 100% of land area as opposed to 50% vassel land gives you.

Overall with phants in BFC a decent rush should be possible on this round.

 

[CBPE]

At least this time I've expanded a bit

Spoiler :

After a while, GK demanded me a tribute.
I refused (it would be a shame towards the great Ambro's save! ) so he declared on me.
But I had obtained HR previously, so whipping Elephants and some caths I had no much difficult to counterattack.

Meanwhile I've won the liberalism race (bulbing Edu+lib thanks to Atzec's capital) and I've choosen Nationalism.

Spoiler :

After taking 3 cities (including his capital and pyramids' city) I've had enough with him also 'cause war weariness was becoming a problem.

Spoiler :

Now we're in the middle of a golden age started by Taj Mahal.
I've also built SoZ (strangely HC missed it!) thinking that it could be very useful in this sort of "always at war" game.
We have 1 GS waiting to what to do and in 2 turns we'll have another Great Person in Vjanagara

Spoiler :

This is the Empire Overview

Spoiler :

(of course barb's city has to be caputered soon)

Veterans of Mongol's campaign

Spoiler :

Techs' situation

Spoiler :

Demographics

Spoiler :

Now we can put down Knights and it seems quite simply to finish the job at least with Toku and Monty soon.

About the prosecution of this game, I was thinking about to move up the capital in Kyoto

Spoiler :

and place FB in Teo.... in order to reduce the empire's manteinance looking forward to communism

Spoiler :

Also, I'm beelining Rifling (I'm quite close).

About these last choices, even if we won't continue with my save (and it's almost sure) I'd like to know what do you think for the learning purposes

As always, any advice is welcome!

 

[Ambro]

as the comment is not much of a spoiler I have looked.

Spoiler :

Overall if you capture 3-4 of his cities and he capitulates you will end up with 3-6 unhappy faces due to we want to join the mother land message. There is the option to gift back the cities and letting Brennus grow. You gain +1-4 diplo bonus too. He would be a powerful vassel later on in the game. Just make sure your empire remains larger than his or he will break free.

Capturing all the cities/destroying them helps on vc as you get 100% of land area as opposed to 50% vassel land gives you.

Overall with phants in BFC a decent rush should be possible on this round.

Thanks Gumbolt. I'll finish my round off today hopefully. Disappointed with it but still in a comfortable position. Suspect my land improvements are going to look a bit different to some other saves. Since I'd already wasted a lot of the first half of the round I figured I'd play it a little differently.

 

[Toranth]

I will not be done with my round until Friday night - Warring is taking a LOT of time, now that we're getting up to real sized armies. I'll try to get it up as early as possible, though.

 

[Ambro]

Well finally got round to finishing it off.

Spoiler :

As I said before I'd been cruising along for a while before I caught myself and tried to regain some focus. Decided to gear up for war but instead of the 'phant cat route I decided to go with Knights. They don't seem to get much love and frankly I think I know why now, they are too expensive for the strength, the speed is nice but not having seige along makes them even more expensive to use (suicide attacks).

Still with a few cats and a block of knights I went to town on Toku. He'd taken the barb city but was kind enough to only have one archer there which he promptly upgraded to a longbow when few of my knights turned up. This wasn't the first city I took, that happened at the one South of Delhi and his third city just to the West fell quickly too. Unfortunately it was at this point I ran into a minor stumbling block. Toku vassaled to Brennus and bang, instant war. No matter, his closest troops look weak and thanks to the speed of my knights I have troops winging their way into defensive positions. A little scare where Brennus had 2 swords attacking one of my cities was fine as I quickly upgraded my own troop there to a maceman and with the defenses he held strong. As for his attacking stack, that was easy to deal with, he hadn't been able to gather his troops properly and so had a minor stack with reinforments moving in. One Catapult and two Knight attacks slowed them down while my troops moved over and then I finished them off over the next couple of turns with repeats of the same tactic.

Brennus wouldn't talk to me so I gathered a minor stack and some cats to finish off Toku and finally I was back to only having to watch one border. Well, until I realised GK had gone into war mode and had a stack sitting on my border at 1000AD. It was at this point I did something I'm not proud of. I begged him for 1G per turn, this is the first time I've used the "tactic" and I felt a bit bad after. However it did mean that he was out of the way for the rest of the round and I could move units across to defend. Not before my units mobilised to deal with some of Brennus' cities however. Went straight for his Northernmost city (sandwiched between two Aztec cities). I decided not to use siege so that I could hit quickly since his best defenders were archers and spearmen. A very short fight later and the city fell, it was at this point that I opened up the trade window (apparently he'd become willing to talk this turn) and noticed the capitulation option was open. He only had 5G and a map to give me but I wasn't too worried about that, the war was over and I had over fish to fry. Strangely I noticed that the capitulation appeared to have turned off GK's War mode. I guess he had to recalculate because of Brennus being my vassal.

Well that left me about 6 turns, I had a few Knights up near the Aztecs North cities (I figured it wouldn't take much to deal with them and had shifted a very small force that way) and his other two were either side of my main stack. Well this made for an easy decision, his best defenders were jaguars it seemed. On the very last turn of this round his finally city fell and now it's just us, Brennus and GK on our continent. Our military is stronger than GK's and I suspect capitulation would not take much to achieve. I'm wondering just how early this game could be won from here.

During all this fighting we've won the Lib race, should win the Economics race (we're clear), we have a great artist kicking about and have the taj building with noone else on nationalism. I'm thinking that back to back golden ages should quickly sort out the shambles of an economy I've created or we could take the Taj GA and make war with GK and save the other for recovery after this is all dealt with. Arguably Brennus should not have been cap'd as the holy cities would have been nice but I think the finish will be quicker this way. HC got the round the world bonus but that isn't important on this map. We'll just be ferrying troops to the other continent which is about 3 moves away.

 

[Ambro]

CBPE

Spoiler :

Looks good to me. Shouldn't take long to clean up the continent from there. Especially if Brennus folds as easily as he did for me.

In my game I've spewed out farms and workshops everywhere whereas you've gone for a much more balanced approach. I personally don't think Kyoto is worth switching to the capital, I'd probably go with Osaka and chuck down a couple of workshops since we are this far through the game. In my own round I turned Osaka into the science city since it had all those gem and dye resources and I think it could make a pretty good capital.

Your save is good. I'd be more than happy playing from that position. Not sure how your victory conditions screen looks but on mine the only thing to note was that HC was starting to get some culture in but he's only a short hop to deal with so doubt he is going to be an issue in your game (you seriously out-army him it appears).

Looking forward to Gumbolts save. Barring an unfortunate accident I think he'll really have taken this round and done some nice work.

Toranth, there will probably be a small turnout this round as some people are busy so I hope we can keep the round open to include your save. I think people will have gone about this round in very different ways so should be pretty interesting even with less players.

 

[Gumbolt]

Not many have played this round yet including myself. Lets extend it through Saturday to give people a chance to play. it would be nice to see 4-5+ saves for this round.