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

[CBPE]

OK.
Now that I've seen your saves (I never take a look before completing my own round) I've simply realized that I'M VERY VERY FAR FROM BEING AN EMPEROR LEVEL PLAYER!

I've won several time on Monarch, but evidently for the most was luck.

Maybe it's more correct to say that I'm quite in confidence with the empire management, but it urges that I read some sort of "War's manual" or such things.
I've read the "Stack'o'Doom" manual by Sisiutil and it helped me a lot, but only in the situations such you have the proper time to prepare a war and hit a rival not too strong compared to you, so you can go straighforward his capital, capture 2-3-4 or all cities and make peace.

In a situation like our game (being under attack from multiple rivals or anyway in an "open war") I'M TOTALLY UNPREPARED!

I.E., look at LYMOND's save: even if maybe is not the strongest, it's anyway many light-years better than mine! (Just a question: why did you accept to become hindu when there is Toku so close and with a different religion?)

Anyway, excuse me for going around, and think about our game.

This time, I'm going to vote for the one that I consider the BEST save :

1st - GUMBOLT: W O W ! For me it's simply incomprehensible how could you do to achieve this! You afforded multiple wars gaining cities, land and wiping out rivals and you are in an enviable tech situation and an empire well developed (look at workers' improvements and you're close to GL too!!!).
Can you explain a little more how did you manage all the things?

2nd - Mjjg5591: 6 cities (not very much land claimed), it seems you've no gained and no lost from the war(s), but the tech' situation is very good and the empire well developed. Monty could be wipe out easily, but we have to defend towards Toku.

3rd - TORANTH: great job, 8 solid cities, a lot of land gained, very good army and a pacified diplomatic situation that could allow to recover economy and development (at least for a bit). The downside it's a heavy technologies' gap from the rival.

 

[Gumbolt]

OK.
Now that I've seen your saves (I never take a look before completing my own round) I've simply realized that I'M VERY VERY FAR FROM BEING AN EMPEROR LEVEL PLAYER!

I've won several time on Monarch, but evidently for the most was luck.

Maybe it's more correct to say that I'm quite in confidence with the empire management, but it urges that I read some sort of "War's manual" or such things.
I've read the "Stack'o'Doom" manual by Sisiutil and it helped me a lot, but only in the situations such you have the proper time to prepare a war and hit a rival not too strong compared to you, so you can go straighforward his capital, capture 2-3-4 or all cities and make peace.

In a situation like our game (being under attack from multiple rivals or anyway in an "open war") I'M TOTALLY UNPREPARED!

I.E., look at LYMOND's save: even if maybe is not the strongest, it's anyway many light-years better than mine! (Just a question: why did you accept to become hindu when there is Toku so close and with a different religion?)

Anyway, excuse me for going around, and think about our game.

This time, I'm going to vote for the one that I consider the BEST save :

1st - GUMBOLT: W O W ! For me it's simply incomprehensible how could you do to achieve this! You afforded multiple wars gaining cities, land and wiping out rivals and you are in an enviable tech situation and an empire well developed (look at workers' improvements and you're close to GL too!!!).
Can you explain a little more how did you manage all the things?

2nd - Mjjg5591: 6 cities (not very much land claimed), it seems you've no gained and no lost from the war(s), but the tech' situation is very good and the empire well developed. Monty could be wipe out easily, but we have to defend towards Toku.

3rd - TORANTH: great job, 8 solid cities, a lot of land gained, very good army and a pacified diplomatic situation that could allow to recover economy and development (at least for a bit). The downside it's a heavy technologies' gap from the rival.

Did i post the right save?? Toku has a huge stack outside my capital> you are mad choosing mine!!! I would not use my save. Overall i hooked up the copper and chopped 2-3 workers at start of save. My war with Monty went pretty badly unit wise and Toku is a right royal PITA.

The problem is Incas are running away tech wise. i have already lost philosphy tech race too. Mikes save is in a much better situation. Most of my stack was lost to monty. Look how many Axes I lost!

 

[Gumbolt]

We could wait for Ambrose and CHyank save??

How long do you guys need? lol

 

[Gumbolt]

I'm trying to get round to playing this but I'm still in the BC's. Spoiler for anyone else still playing.

Spoiler :

I had the Monty War but once I'd sorted him out I lost a bit of focus. Figured Toku was readying for me so moved my stack down and in he came with Monty (Monty had no troops left though so he wasn't an issue). I've now taken Toku's capital and burnt one of his cities (well done Toku, defending with a Horse archer was an excellent plan ). Unfortunately, even though I'm once again in control (although I'm a little nervous about KK) and can grab peace and am probably tech leader (me or Toku and he will pay with all his techs for peace) I'm not really sure where to go. I want to take another of his cities to ease cultural pressure on his old capital.

Think I'll pile into one more city and probably burn it (just can't afford all the cities and stuff I've got). This will cause cultural issues again later but I intend on burning Toku to the ground eventually anyway.

Drawing the defenders out of the cities, getting them to attack and not letting them sit on forests and hills too often were really really important for these wars. Even let Monty kill a couple of free chariots just to hold him off the forested hills when the war started, this had the unexpected bonus of him splitting his troops, no idea why he did it but it was a nice result that saved me several turns of war.

Sounds like this could be a round winner.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

We could wait for Ambrose and CHyank save??

How long do you guys need? lol

I don't need any longer...

Dogpile in 205 AD.

Spoiler :

Things were looking ok at first. Had moved my massive military back to Delhi just in time for Toku to DoW me. Thought to myself -- right -- time to to push south a little! So I sued for peace with Monty and got a couple of techs off him even.

Then I went south and razed one of Toku's cities before taking Kyoto - mwahahaha - not looking too bad... then Genghis hit me from the right. Toast. Keshiks pushed me over and took my lunch money. To be fair, I was rushing to get to 400 AD somewhat to try and post a save so I wasn't checking WHEOOHRN or anything - but I knew the risks.

This situation takes a little more savvy than I've got. If I was doing it over again I'd bunker down with a better defensive force and balance out some building with pushing out to do some damage when I get DoW'd.

I'll tell you what - the wonders aren't half going fast in my game. Must be the Incans building everything in sight. Wonders pretty much off the table. I might be able to make a decent stab at Emp, but I'd have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Looking forward to going back now to read some of the other round 2 reports now!

 

[lymond]

I.E., look at LYMOND's save: even if maybe is not the strongest, it's anyway many light-years better than mine! (Just a question: why did you accept to become hindu when there is Toku so close and with a different religion?)

Ha....well, at least I got a mention, if not a vote.

As to your question, I switched religion after Toku declared war. I'd already been in the process of buttering up the Mongols for obvious reasons and was looking to align with Hyana to hopefully help with tech. Toku kinda helped make my religion choice at that time, but I could always switch out a few turns later if needed. At the time I thought it was most advantageous.

I have not looked at all the saves. From what I gather so far is most people either got owned or survived. For the purposes of the Cookbook, I'm interested in hearing from the erudite participants who were able to maintain some level of tech parity during this outright mess of war. That would be some good information. In most cases lately I've been able to fair well with research on Emperor level, but situations like this baffle me.

@Gumbolt - re your earlier comment regarding city size, I haven't had Monty's cap that long and was in the process of whipping infra and an earlier unit whip to help take out his final city. From what I've seen so far, I think I may have one of the largest amount of cities considering from what I captured from Toku and Monty.

 

[Gumbolt]

Ha....well, at least I got a mention, if not a vote.

As to your question, I switched religion after Toku declared war. I'd already been in the process of buttering up the Mongols for obvious reasons and was looking to align with Hyana to hopefully help with tech. Toku kinda helped make my religion choice at that time, but I could always switch out a few turns later if needed. At the time I thought it was most advantageous.

I have not looked at all the saves. From what I gather so far is most people either got owned or survived. For the purposes of the Cookbook, I'm interested in hearing from the erudite participants who were able to maintain some level of tech parity during this outright mess of war. That would be some good information. In most cases lately I've been able to fair well with research on Emperor level, but situations like this baffle me.

@Gumbolt - re your earlier comment regarding city size, I haven't had Monty's cap that long and was in the process of whipping infra and an earlier unit whip to help take out his final city. From what I've seen so far, I think I may have one of the largest amount of cities considering from what I captured from Toku and Monty.

I was impressed with the empire size but every city was so small for that date. I can accept captured cities being small but the other cities too? I dont recall a city above size 3.

 

[mjg5591]

I'll look at the saves and vote in next hour or so. Real life been busy lately.

 

[Toranth]

Comments on the saves so far:

Spoiler :

Gumbolt - At war with Toku, but has an OK army.
3 elephants, 9 axeman, spear, chariot, catapult. 7 workers.
+120/-71 at 100%; +30/-2 at 20%; CoL in 8 turns, Great Library in 8 turns.
If we can survive Toku's SoD, it's a good position. Good in tech, good in Diplo.
Truce with Toku, kill Monty, turn on Khan, expand hard.


CBPE - Lost Pitipat and Calcutta to Khan. At phony-war with Brennus, Re-war with Khan soon.
OTOH, HBR in 1 turn, then we'll have Elephants.
Can trade with Toku for 6gpt. Then we're +82/-27 bpt at 100; +45 at 50%;
4 Axemen, 7 chariots, 2 catapults. No spears. 4 Workers.


John Edwards - No army, both Toku and Khan running around free in our territory.
Tech is weak; +20/+3 at 20%; +71/-37 at 100%; no HBR, Construction in 12-15 turns.
Way back in tech: Toku has Longbowmen.


Lymond - At war with Brennus, soon with Tokugawa. Toku has crossbows and catapults waiting to attack.
Worst enemy of Toku, Brennus, Cathy. Pleased Khan, HC (same religion).
3 swords, 9 axes, 2 spears, 2 chariots, 9 archers. No HBR, no Construction.
+3/-9 bpt at 0% (!), 90 turns to alphabet.

Mike - Not at war right now. Monty v Khan, Toku v Brennus are ongoing.
Monty, Cathy, HC have Longbows.
1 Elephant, 16 axes, 3 swords, 4 chariots, 6 spears, 6 catapults. 7 workers.
Good tech situation: Has Philo on everyone. Has HBR, Construction, Philo, CoL.
Researching Literature (6 turns).
+41/-6 at 20%; +125/-69 at 100%;

Toranth - No wars, Monty dead. Khan hostile.
13 axes, 12 spears, 5 swords, 6 archers. 9 workers.
No HBR, no Construction. Researching Alphabet, 14 turns.
+35/-4 at 20%; +119/-76 at 100%; 150 gold reserves.
Bad: Toku has Samurai.

Ambrose - Not at war. Toky, Monty maimed, defeated but not dead yet. Khan vs Brennus ongoing.
11 cities
Excellent tech, leading. Has CS and Philo, researching Paper. Built the Mausoleum already.
Tokyo has an Academy, Delhi has 2 GG and 1 GS settled.
+124/-13 at 40%; +276/-133 at 100%; (stopped Wealth builds). 417 gold reserves.
12 swords, 5 axes, 3 chariots. 13 Workers. No HBR, so no Elephants. No Cats.
Hindu: Us, Cathy, HC. Buddhist: Brennus, Monty. Jewish: Toku, Khan.
AP was built as Hindu, Cathy elected. We founded Taoism in Teotihuacan, unshrined.
Good relations with Catch HC, bad with everyone else.

Unless (even) more saves are posted, I've got my votes set:

1) Ambrose - By FAR the best save. If you'd be willing to, could you give a more detailed report of how you managed this result? The difference between your results, and the rest of us, is so large I'd really like to learn how to do it, too.
2) Mike. Good army, excellent tech, neighbors are all at war with other people. Bad: Longbows are out.
3) Gumbolt. Gamble vote. If we survive Toku's SoD, and can take a quick truce, then we'll be in good position to eliminate Monty and do something about Khan.

Removed from votes (sorry):
x) CBPE. Hard choices. Get Elephants, then we'll have a decent chance against Khan to reclaim our cities. But really - No spears?!

 

[Ambro]

Finally got round to finishing this. Second half was a bit careless to say the least. Kept cities I really shouldn't have, was a tech pariah because of trade grabs from wars, completely crashed my economy and wasted a lot of time by not pre-planning. None-the-less I seem to have just about got the game back on track. Not sure how necessary spoilers are at this stage but here you go:

Spoiler :

Well I continued the war with Toku and Monty, taking a junk city in the tundra and keeping it (don't ask, think the fur overcame my better judgement). Took Kyoto and Tokyo from Toku and also took a little city to ease culture pressure on Kyoto, seems a decent city but seriously added to my maintenance burden.
Took every tech Monty had (think it was meditation ) and had it away with a few of Toku's. Now no-one wanted to trade with me
Bumped into the Russian but still haven't found her home. She's in second place and will actually trade with me but she hasn't had anything worth digging myself further into a tech hole for. HC has a nice lump of cash available (he'll give me 625 for CoL but I've had a virtual monopoly on this all round and I know if he gets it he'll just start growing faster). HC is probably tech leader although if people would trade with me that wouldn't be the case for very long and he is only ahead on what I consider fairly junk techs (Great Library is gone so I'm not bothered about Aes for a while and Theology sucks in general while I have Civil Service and Philo which has hopefully blocked out the Lib race).
The Hindu's wanted me to switch and since they are the only dangerous competition I agreed. Shame because I'd just been spreading Buddhism around. I bulbed Philo and won that race, obviously now have a monopoly on that tech but hardly anyone has the pre-reqs anyway. Didn't spread the religion as I don't expect a GP anytime soon and definitely don't want to be in an outcast religion.
Tons and tons of resources available, nothing to trade them for unfortunately. Hopefully that'll change soon though as the civs develop.
HC preparing for War, hoping it isn't us and don't think it will be but better safe than sorry. Not sure he can do anything from across the sea at this stage anyway.

Plan for the future would probably be to clear out Toku and Monty finally (a few cats should do it). Probably conquer an Aztec city and gift it to Khan just for relations bonus. Make nice with the Hindu's and consider dominating the continent (probably take out Brennus and Vassal Monty as long as he is playing nice with the Hindu's still). Hopefully grab privateers before the others get any decent ships so that we can stifle their growth, burn their ships and get some nice free cash but we probably won't be able to get far enough ahead of them in the naval warfare stakes (played with this in my last game and it works really nicely but seems quite situational).

If you do run with this save then I would recommend you really consider the worker situation. There aren't enough, either it's early war and steal a few or you really need to build (I kept going back and forth on this and ended up not dealing with the situation). Could also do with getting Machinery - guilds for workshops, I've put paper ticking over because we all know we're going down there at some point.

Overall this was a really rough round. The thing that took up a lot of time for me was the war declarations. With Monty it was mainly a matter of keeping him out of my forested hills and then beating him back but with Toku I had to bring his troops out so I would spend a couple of minutes every other round trying to work out how to get some units out of his cities. Raising stuff and sitting on his strategic resources were the most important ways but he also did me a favour by using HA's and Elephants to protect his cities once his Copper/Iron was gone and they really don't stand up to Swordsmen.

Definitely learnt a lot about fighting uneven wars here. Usually I have a significant tech advantage in some way (not necessarily ahead in tech but got a military tech which gives me a major advantage in defeating whatever troops they have).

 

[Steve250]

I had some free time so I shadowed this from mjg's save to the end. I must say not taking out one of the ai's early in this map definately makes for a more difficult challenge, it also shows how annoying warmonger respect is It'll be interesting to see how everyone's game pans out, I might write up a report later if I can find enough screenshots for comparison.

 

[mjg5591]

My votes and comments,


John Edwards - Troubled economy, War with Toku anf GK. Would be tough go from here.

Lymond - Real bad economy, Whipped like mad making cities way to small for economy, Good side is Monty dead and has 9 cities.

Gumbolt - War with Toku and has stack outside capital. 8 cities with WE online and a GG WE in capital. TGL in 8.

Toranth - Monty dead 8 cities. Finally building granary in capital is really late here. Tough economy from here.

CBPE 2nd attempt - Lost some cities to GK war with Brennus small army. Really tough going from here.

Now the votes,

I have no idea lol,

1. Gumbolt - Why? Cuz he has WE's.

2. Toranth

3. Lymond

 

[Gumbolt]

In all fairness Ambrose save has out done us all. Do we include this in the vote? A day or so late!

My ownly quibble is he is teching paper when he should be beelining Aesthetic and literature if the Glib has not gone. Aztec capital is a stunning GP farm!!

 

[Toranth]

In all fairness Ambrose save has out done us all. Do we include this in the vote? A day or so late!

I'm willing to accept it, and agreed: He has far outdone the rest of us.

As a request for the future rounds, for those of us without much time during the week, could we have the round run Monday through late Friday (say 6pm board time), voting to go through Sunday afternoon? I had no problem playing my round, but writing up my report and doing a quick analysis of all the saves takes more time than I expected. It looks like some other players have similar difficulties, judging by the burst of last minute submissions.

 

[Gumbolt]

I'm willing to accept it, and agreed: He has far outdone the rest of us.

As a request for the future rounds, for those of us without much time during the week, could we have the round run Monday through late Friday (say 6pm board time), voting to go through Sunday afternoon? I had no problem playing my round, but writing up my report and doing a quick analysis of all the saves takes more time than I expected. It looks like some other players have similar difficulties, judging by the burst of last minute submissions.

We could vote over sat/Sunday using Mon-Friday to play game. Of course I realise people have real lives. if people need more time they should shout before end of round.

I really dont think a save where we are under seige from Toku stack is going to help us. Then again learning experience wise we might learn more from other saves.

Lets add Ambrose save to the voting. People can edit their voting to take account of this.

Question is do we go for a challenge or enter the dragons den. lol

 

[Ambro]

The Russians took the Great Library. It was available for a long time but I'd just assumed I'd lost the race before I was even in it as HC had Aes for ages. With my Tech situation the way it was mid round (I was negative cash flow with 0% slider for a little while) so I felt I had to avoid the gamble and get techs that I know we're going to benefit from (calendar was a major benefit for example, worked as decent trade tech for cash but just look at the amount of resources it opened up).

 

[Harbourboy]

Sorry, I've been away camping for the last few days so have not had a chance to review all the saves and vote. From what I experienced in my game, and from what I've read here, I'm all in favour of choosing a strong save now. I think we left ourselves a bit TOO Much work to do with the save we chose and I think if we'd given it to 100 players, only a handful would have come out in any sort of position of strength. So if Ambrose's is the best save then let's go for it.

 

[Gumbolt]

The Russians took the Great Library. It was available for a long time but I'd just assumed I'd lost the race before I was even in it as HC had Aes for ages. With my Tech situation the way it was mid round (I was negative cash flow with 0% slider for a little while) so I felt I had to avoid the gamble and get techs that I know we're going to benefit from (calendar was a major benefit for example, worked as decent trade tech for cash but just look at the amount of resources it opened up).

NE and HE on this map would be huge. Perhaps trade for the techs?

 

[Ambro]

True, NE would be very nice, GP's could really put us on track. Have been playing a game today and think I'm really starting to get a handle on some parts of the game I'd mostly bypassed. GP's, City placement and maintenance mainly.

 

[Gumbolt]

True, NE would be very nice, GP's could really put us on track. Have been playing a game today and think I'm really starting to get a handle on some parts of the game I'd mostly bypassed. GP's, City placement and maintenance mainly.

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?