How to go from here - Immortal Hannibal on Pangea

[DanielTorrence]

Hello Civ-Fanatics,

I rolled a decent start with Hannibal, that I would like to share, paired with the asking for some advice on how to continue from here. This is the start:

Spoiler :

I decided to settle in place. Perhaps 1SE on the plains hill would have been a better option but it would loose one flood plain and we don't know what's behind the hills in the east..

Currently I am at 50 A.D., not in a too bad shape I think, but I am lacking a plan on how to win this map.

Spoiler :

Since I did not find marble nearby, I skipped aesthetics and went for early cottages, currency and CoL. Having Mansa, the tech whore in the game, I teched alphabet myself, got it early, I think around 1000 BC and got mathematics from him, that led to some nice deals with the other AIs. Then after CoL and currency I went straight for CS, which is where I am now. This is the empire of Carthage.



And this is the tech situation:




My concerns are:
0) I have no marble so it does not make much sense to go for MT/Taj, does it?
1) we have a love fest that includes all major AIs, even Monty, who would have been the one causing some heat for a reasonable large Mansa
2) that leads to a very fast tech pace, so I don't know how long I can compete and what would be a military advantage to leverage
3) declaring on one of the big guys like Ramses or Mansa would
4) I have no resources for any aesthetics wonders, so fail gold won't be much help here

On the bright sight:
+) The capital has a good size for 50 AD I think and has some nice cottages
+) I won both CoL and Philosophy, founded both of these religions
+) I had room to expand to seven cities, one more is coming up, most of them are decent with at least one food source

So, what to do? Tech straight to Lib -> what to take from there? How to finance further research? When to switch to pacifism/caste system? Burn the next coming GP for it? Questions, questions. Thanks for your help, in case you find the time to give this one a look.

I know I don't have enough workers, I am trying to micro-manage them to compensate, but I rather have my cities growing first.

...

Here are the saves, starting and current situation

View attachment AutoSave_Initial_v. Chr.-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
View attachment Frank n. Chr.-0050.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Gumbolt]

Few thoughts. Why waste so many hammers on religious buildings? Complete waste in my opinion.

Why build taj if you go MT? It's often not a must have wonder. By time you get MT you will be whipping your cities anyway.

You define the Ai as big guys??? They only have 7-8 cities. You can beg from the Ai to ensure nearby neighbour don't declare on you.

I would have cottaged the flood plain in your capital. That extra food is probably not helping now.

To state that a granary is quite an important build in most cities is an understatement. Hippo has no granary. This could be a nice GP farm. A granary would speed it up. Whip? Aqueduct in capital??? Why????

I might run your capital as HE city. 8 mines looks pretty good to me. Albeit you have a lot of worker stuff still to do. Need a 10xp unit for HE. Perhaps as war starts cranking up build HE there.

I don't like the copper city. Nothing in first ring to grow on. I prefer a city 1 south of incense. You then have both incense and can farm flood plains for growth. With border pop in 14 turns you get silk.

Why are you farming a plains?? Unless you want the farm for Utica?? Utica should grab Carthage mine. Carthage can run the 4 hammer mine.

40g for Mono. Then 10g for mono for trades.

Overall grow cities. Granary, forge, stable in capital and whip cuirs.

AP victory should be possible here. Once you take out Egptians you should be able to get the Ap vote. You need to up your vote count. Once you capture Ap that should do the trick.

I would probably start gifting the Ai resources. +2 from resources is nice. Then +4 from diplo for fair trades. Don't forget to bribe the Ai into your war with Egptians too. SB lacks the Ap religion.

Good luck.

 

[DanielTorrence]

Gumbolt, thanks for the input. I will try the AP-approach and follow your suggestions closely. Seems the game play needs a lot of fine tuning...

AP-buildings: I thought they are worth their hammers, but it doesn't seems so, as you pointed out. There are pros and cons, but perhaps getting forges up and start preproducing HA would be the better choice.

Taj/MT: even without marble you suggest that as a good option. Interesting thought, it did not occur to me to go for aesthetics without marble...

I know begging is an option to avoid declarations. Mansa with seven cities feels rather big, he teched Feudalism in like 4 turns and that was some turns ago.

The flood plain is farmed to spread the irrigation, I did not see a better way to do that and it leaves two green tiles for cottages.

The missing granary's are due to the fact that I did not whip Hippo, just wanted it as GP farm, so I got a monument and the library there...how would a granary speed that up?

I will get the copper city in the spot you suggested, it makes more sense.

 

[Gumbolt]

No I suggest Cuirs were a good option. Not Taj!

A large Ai for me would be 10+ cities. Mansa is not a unit spammer. Cuirs vs Longbows is nothing. Walkover. Fair enough on flood plains.

So you didn't want to whip Hippo as GP farm?? You do realise lack of Granary has halved this cities growth?? You will need whipping to get NE up and running here. No granary was a big mistake.

I think the game is quite winnable from where you are. Key for AP is to up your vote share and get most Ai to vote for you. Should be possible.

Remember you want to keep most Egyptian cities here. I see little value in a vassel to start with as you are way below the 75% mark.

 

[DanielTorrence]

I guess I will never win an AP game, at least not with a stack of some 30 cavalry on the board. I tried an alternative approach, initially only planned to compare SIP vs 1SE and got caught in the 'only one more turn trap'. Religions fell differently this time, but my early commerce brought me easily to Lib, where I took MT. I used my tech lead to bribe Monty on Mansa, Boudicca joined the party, and started conquering Egypt. With the capturing gold and one GM from the GP-farm (without NE ) it was only short that I got rifling and rolled over the map. I could not resist to build the Taj, after SB was trading me marble, so I postponed the attack a little bit. In the end it turned out pretty well.



...

Sometimes I think the AIs research behavior is rather strange. Pericles would have had the power to get rifles pretty fast but did not even try. This is the tech screen at the end of the game:



All in all a nice game with a great leader. Charismatic can rule and the UU gets Flanking I per default, making some nice promoted Cuirassiers.

...
Thanks for your advice, it helped a lot. I am still to hesitant on the whip, feeling sorry for the citizens

 

[sampsa]

Congrats on the victory. Gumbolt already gave some very good pointers, but I'll add a few things you can look into.

- Granary+whip. This is the thing standing out from your save, otherwise your empire management is good. I understand your explanation that if a city is running specialists and doesn't produce food, the granary is moot. But here Hippo is producing 5 even when running two scientists, if you'd work the coast.

- I think 7 workers is enough for your empire, as you have plenty of financial coast to work. Those 23-tiles are a lot better than plains hill mines 4 btw, since your happy cap is high and allows merciless whipping or just growing onto more cottages/coast.

- While those AP-buildings will pay themselves back eventually, there might be things that pay back faster and would be preferable. Building wealth is one of those things in my opinion. That will help you reach key techs faster, leading to a faster attack date. Monastery is a decent building, but a temple gives you very little.

- Gumbolt already pointed out that there was no need for an aqueduct in capital. What you should always build in capital like this is monasteries. They are cheap and that +10% adds up quickly. I'd spread Tao and Confu there asap.

- Religion+civics. This is puzzling for me, why are you not in Judaism and running pacifism (or even OR)? Biggest thing religion gives is access to these very powerful civics. Well, that and diplo.

- Trade routes+resource trades. You should clear the fog near Hippo asap to gain access to resource trades with all AIs. It's free , which ever you need.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yeah that is a good win. Could you of done it with just Cuirs? The Ai should of capped quickly with a Cuirs rush. You may have also got some free vassels too with high enough power rating and land. Don't know the exact mechanics.

 

[elmurcis]

I have seen AI delaying Rifles many games (maybe problem is Replaceable Parts "value" from AI "calculation point"?)... And because I play without tech-trading (easier to keep lead, harder to catch up), I can get huge window for wars

 

[Gumbolt]

I have seen AI delaying Rifles many games (maybe problem is Replaceable Parts "value" from AI "calculation point"?)... And because I play without tech-trading (easier to keep lead, harder to catch up), I can get huge window for wars

Well on a good game you take out the tech leaders first so they don't reach rifles.