Hammurabi - Immortal Cookbook

[drlake]

I'll be playing my round tomorrow. Too damn busy to play, with a middle-schooler playing volleyball, a wife doing student teaching for her master's while she teaches a night course, and my work.

 

[Fierabras]

@GKey

Interesting point. What's a good date to move the capital?
After having seen CivConVict's save I think your numbers evaluation will be more interesting this round.

 

[GKey]

50 turns.

Spoiler :

Turn0: Switch tech to mysticism, need it right now; queue warrior and settler in Athens, revolt into slavery.

Raze Corinth on turn 4, will cost too much and there is better spot nearby.
Capture Sparta on turn 8 thus eliminating Greece.

Sent chariots explore and settled gold and copper sites.

Tech path: Writing -> Poly (ToA) -> masonry (Marble) -> priesthood (Unlock Monarchy tech brokering) -> aesthetics.

Turn28: Gems popped near Athens.

With wine from Justinian for wheat I got much needed 2 happy.

Once economy got better, settle Nippur near previous Corinth spot: much better with copper and flood plain in BFC, plus block north from Darius. Also settled fish spot near Babylon.

Exploring chariots helped with locating Barb cities. Razed two, got ~200gold and 2 workers.

Plan: get ~ 10 axes and go for Zara, his cities are lightly protected. This decision made religion choice a no brainer. We are Buddhists together with Darius and Justinian. Minor side - we got state religion in only one city.

Turn42: GS in Athens – academy.

Turn44: Aesthetics in, trade for Alpha (60 beakers in) from Justinian. Make 1 turn detour into fishing.
Next turn trade with Darius; he is most backward, so need get anything from him:

And with Zara:

Revolt into HR/OR.
Turn48:

Tech situation is not bad:

So here we are. We got small army of axes/chariots in Dur-Kurigalzu. Babylon building MoM (in 14), ToA in 8 (can be finished right now with chopping). Darius went WHEOOHRN 10 turns ago, going to attack Peter, he was pleased with us then.

Not really exceptional turnset.

 

[GKey]

@GKey

Interesting point. What's a good date to move the capital?
After having seen CivConVict's save I think your numbers evaluation will be more interesting this round.

Anything between 500-1500 AD . Can't be sure. When you can afford wasting ~20 turns on palace. But by then we could have better candidate.
Saves from later periods don't need numbers IMO. You can see situation more clear then in early ones.

Spoiler :

Dude, why did not you whip that unhappiness out in your save?

 

[Fierabras]

Dude, why did not you whip that unhappiness out in your save?

I made my save a little open-ended. For this same reason I haven't made traded with Aesthetics yet (like you did).

 

[drlake]

Jeezus, that was a harder position to play from than I thought! I'll post my save, screenies, and comments later. I need a beer...

 

[drlake]

Round 2 report:

Spoiler :

I found it very difficult to play from this position for two reasons. First, it was hard to figure out how to finish off Alex with reasonable dispatch (dispatch him with dispatch?) and losses. I probably played the first 15 turns 10 times, so feel free to consider this invalid on that count if you want.

So, the first part of the turn set was the campaign against Alex. I eventually did it by taking Corinth first (I decided to keep it, though that was probably not the best idea), making peace, settling Akkad to get the copper for Axes, in case I needed them to get Sparta. Making peace with Alex for a breather, and then nailing Sparta with a blitz of Chariots in one strike. I found that worked a lot better than slugging it out, since peace resulted in him reducing the defenses there. Since I took the Greek Settler before making peace, he didn't get the chance to build another city.

After that, it was a struggle to keep the empire's bank accounts positive. I built Libraries everywhere and ran scientists to get techs to trade. Aes got me Alpha, IW, Math, Hunting, Archery, Priesthood, Polytheism, and Monotheism by the time it was all over. I've now largely recovered the economy, and am getting close to Currency (which will finish off the recovery. Beyond the three Greek cities and Akkad, I also took out the Barb city to get the Gold, which is going to allow for some growth.

Screenies:

The cultural borders just expanded to get the Iron, and I've got three or so workers on it or heading that way. I've also got a settler in progress in Corinth to settle the Iron/Corn site. There is also room for a couple of coastal cities N of Babylon, and it would be worth grabbing those if it didn't crater the economy. It would have done that if I'd gotten them earlier, though.

You'll notice Justinian is WHEOOHRN. I don't think he's going for us, since there has not been a large troop build up in Nicomedia.

Cities:

I'd like to get the Parthenon in Babylon for the culture and the GPP boost. The partial Pyramids there was for fail gold, since there was nothing I could build for a while that wouldn't add to the maintenance problems. The Temple of Artemis is for fail gold. As soon as Currency is done, the production priority would switch to Wealth so we could take better advantage of all those Libraries. There is also a need for some defensive troops, and Bowmen would serve that need nicely I think.

Foreign Relations:

I'm guessing Justinian is gunning for Darius, based on this. If so, I'd be thinking of joining the war on Justinian's side to get room for expansion. It would probably be worth moving the Palace to Athens if so, to cut maintenance.

Tech situation:

I didn't try to make the trade for Calendar, but it might be doable and would be useful since we have Sugar and Spices in the Empire, and should get Bananas too.

Religion situation:

Converting to make Justinian happy would probably be a good idea, but I was waiting to see if he was targeting me or would demand it and neither happened.

Demographics:

I think I did better than I originally thought. While we're low on most counts, being very close to the territory leader gives me hope since we're close to being able to raise the happy cap, which will close that gap. Get Currency and Calendar and build those three cities I was talking about and we'd be in a much better position for future wars.

Wonders:

Just for amusement.

So, all things considered I think I did OK with this segment. That said, I'm now going to look at what you guys did, and rethink my analysis.

 

[Yamps]

@drlake

Spoiler :

Justinian is annoyed towards Darius, but you are closer so it could be you....

Also, not to offend you or anything, it's just sth I noticed from the sreenshots, your cities aren't really focused at the moment. Aiming for wonders, settling and research all at the same time. For one thing, you'd be better off to fire those scientists and to work cottages or even to work hammer tiles for research building.

 

[kossin]

Sunday night... 5 or 6 submissions... does anyone want an extension or shall we move ahead?

 

[Nothingontv]

I won't be submitting my save, it was a complete mess and i can't imagine anyone voting for it. I did just about everything wrong.

 

[sadmachines]

Sunday night... 5 or 6 submissions... does anyone want an extension or shall we move ahead?

One more day please, if it still isn't up then move on without mine.

 

[Fleme]

I'll have to sit out. I'm away from my playing computer and swamped with work.

 

[Edzako]

I won't be submitting my save, it was a complete mess and i can't imagine anyone voting for it. I did just about everything wrong.

Yeah same here. Couldn't figure out how many chariots one needs to take out 3 archers on hill. Six didn't do the job, managing to kill only one. I guess 8 would have done it, but that means ~4-6 more turns and maybe additional archer in Sparta. How did you do it ?

 

[drlake]

Yeah same here. Couldn't figure out how many chariots one needs to take out 3 archers on hill. Six didn't do the job, managing to kill only one. I guess 8 would have done it, but that means ~4-6 more turns and maybe additional archer in Sparta. How did you do it ?

After failing to take Sparta with 8, I reloaded and made peace after taking Corinth. He pulled an archer out of Sparta during peace, and then I hit him with 8-9 chariots when peace expired. Cheating, I know...

 

[Wafflecakes]

I took Corinth first and then managed to take Sparta with 7 or 8, by that time though Alex had settled another city and my economy was ballsed so I had to make peace.

 

[CivConVict]

It's often possible to bait the AI out of their cities if you keep the main force out of sight. Also when suiciding chariots it's usually better to use Strength promotions rather than Flanking.

 

[GKey]

Corinth is an easy target. Sparta requires some luck, I guess. You have 2 full health chariots and worker in Athens. Scout with chariots, bait with worker. Worked for me, only 2 archers left in Sparta, when my chariots healed and were ready to attack.

Looks like many people abandoned thread . Probably because of not being comfortable with winning save. May be we should try and play a few turns from each save, then vote for save we are most comfortable with. Kind of cheating but this is educational thread, not HOF or something.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I managed to play the second round

Spoiler :

Chariot Spam
CivConVict set the scene: Babylon's build queue was set to build infinite Chariots. It seemed like a good approach, so that's what we did.

Alex was already weakened and it would probably hurt our economy to take his Cities, so it was just a matter of scouting around his remaining Cities, pillaging his Strategic Resources (just a Horse Resouce) and then looking for the next victim.

Why waste Chariots attacking Alex's Cities if all that he'll be able to build are Archers?

Zara's land was too jungly to attack before we were able to learn Iron Working. Justinian was all the way to the west and our army was in the east, so he didn't make sense as a target, either. I settled on heading towards the south past Zara's Jungles and found out that Peter was going to be a good choice of targets, while Saladin was just too far.

On our way to Peter, 5 of our Chariots first went a bit east before going south, past Darius' lands, scouting as they went. Well, ho ho ho, Darius only had 2 Cities, had a Worker that was just begging to be stolen, and had only 1 defender in his second City.

So, before Peter would get attacked, Darius lost a Worker and a City.

With Babylon pumping Chariots non-stop, we fielded a two-front war (well, two nearly-simultaneous wars, really), going after Peter and Darius at once.

Unfortunately, Peter had a source of Metal connected. We caught him with his pants down in taking a City of his with Ivory and Pig, but he was ready with a Spearman in Moscow.


Once we'd amassed sufficient troops, we sent in our stacks, hoping to be able to pillage the source of Metal, so that there would be a limit to the number of Spearmen that we would have to face.


Well, Peter made our job especially easy for us and attacked our Chariots with an Axeman and a Spearman. Yes, great kills, taking down our Chariots. But, it was a grave tactical error, as that Spearman of his could have defended Moscow on a Hill much better than by fighting one unit at a time when on the offensive.

We didn't keep Darius' Cities as they were too far away and Alex's Cities would have blocked any Trade Routes to said Cities, but we did keep Peter's Pig + Ivory City and Moscow. Moscow came complete with Stonehenge.


Both of those AIs managed to survive by settling additional Cities before I could wipe them out. No matter... we'll just have to extort techs from them at some point.

Once we finally learned Aesthetics and then put some Research into Alphabet, Zara was willing to share the secret of Alphabet with us.

Technically, we could have kept extorting techs for peace, but I was hoping to get some of the AIs' Gold reserves, so the plan is to stay at war until we learn Currency and can get Gold as well as techs from them for Peace.

Every time that I wanted to build something other than a Chariot (it happened about 12 times), I deleted whatever build item I had added to the build queue and just put a Chariot back in its place. Finally, near the end of the turnset, it seemed like it would be a good idea to build a Library, if for no other reason than to use our Gold for more efficient deficit-Research by trying to research Currency.

The game ends this round with us owning 8 Cities, 4 Settlers, more than a dozen Chariots, a Swordsman, Stonehenge, The Mahabodhi (the Buddhist Holy Shrine--worth 5 Gold per Turn), The Great Wall, and 3 Happiness Resources (Gold, Gems, and Ivory). We are 1 turn away from learning Currency.

Zara is one turn away from learning Calendar, so maybe we'll be able to get that tech in trade sometime soon, which would increase the number of Happiness Resources that we can connect.

I forgot to connect up the Marble, so it still needs a Quarry.

We also went after Justinian. Three Chariots scouted his lands and discovered that for whatever reason (Barbs?), he had failed to connect his Horse Resource. Well, that was just an invitation to pillage and our Chariots just starting pillaging everything left, right, and centre, which was great because our army was costing us a lot and there were only so many relatively-easy-to-capture Cities that could give us lump sums of Gold. The pillaging of Justinian's lands basically kept us financially afloat.

The pillaging also meant that his Road network was being continuously ripped up (and continuously being rebuilt by him), making it tough for him to defend multiple Cities with his mobile Archer stacks.

After ducking and weaving from City to City of his for what seemed like forever, he finally gave us a break with a Settler sent out and only 2 Archers remaining in his capital. We sustained heavy losses of Chariots, but Justinian's capital is now ours.


We also have 2 Super Medic Chariots (one in Justinian's old capital and one in the east near Darius' old capital). Maybe having two Super Medic units is overkill, but they proved their usefulness in healing our troops nearly instantaneously, so it is not like I am really complaining.


The game is far from over. Saladin has the same number of Cities as us and has Hereditary Rule, so he'll likely have large-sized Cities with a lot of Happiness. In addition, with him being Protective, he'll likely have Protective Longbowmen before we can do much against him.

Zara won't be a push-over, either, while Justinian is likely going to keep us busy until both Saladin and Zara tech up to Feudalism.

 

[vranasm]

@Dhoom

brutal as always... I think you chose the right nickname for this forum ;-)

 

[drlake]

Good lord, Dhoom.