King of the World #13: Asoka

[IAM]

Well you overted a disastrous war with China. Way to go with the Music trades. Since we have likely lost the Liberalism race I would go for the military techs. It's easier to trade them for other techs than other other way around. Plus like you said another major war is likely in the cards.

 

[Kwibuss]

Interesting game so far. Certainly not won yet, so really looking forward to the next update

 

[Fetch]

I haven't read every post, but I haven't seen a grand plan on when to turn off research. Have you gotten your 3 religions spread around? How goes the construction of the cathedrals?

 

[LuCiver]

It looks like he's just now building hindu temples in his future Legendary cities, so cathedrals are probably a ways off...

10 cities by my count, which means you need a couple more before you can even build 3 cathedrals of any kind. So what is the plan for acquiring those cities? The basic options are war or peaceful settling. No exploration of polynesia or australia to know if settling is even possible yet. Not enough production to make war a viable option unless it is via a dogpile.

My vote would be throw some convicts onto boats and find somewhere to dump them. Australia has always been popular for that. Follow them up with missionaries. All you need is enough food or hammers to whack out 3 temples, then let them throw up a barracks and Alt+click your favorite defensive unit.

 

[r_rolo1]

By countining number of cities + my experience with this map, I would almost give my warrant that Indonesia is completly settled and that the north of australia too. Madagascar should also be occupied. This leaves the SouthEst/west of Australia or war as reasonable options.

If you want my opinion, I think it would be a good idea to attack Justinian for the rest of the cities. Charlie is going down ( in a 3:1 war with France gearing to attack them again ( that little red fist in the right side of the score is a VERY useful BUG function, Neal BTW send some flowers to Isabella, since it is very rare to see the Isabella AI taking a city in this map ) and I would not be surprised if Justinian gained steam again just because of that. IMHO, taking Adrianople and Constantinople would probably do the trick.

P.S Any plan for the GP that will come in 7 turns?

 

[whats a navy]

I think instead of settling australia you should just squeeze in some marginal cities such as one in eastern arabian tip that grabs the crabs and fish. One by Smarakand could work too. Just a question but is Tibet still open? Even if they don't have enough production you can always crack that whip or gold rush if need be.

 

[madscientist]

I say screw the remaining cities and keep to just 2 cathedrals per religion. Expanding outside your natural borders may make you more vulnerable. Just plan an extra culture bomb or 2.

 

[huerfanista]

Well, I count 11 cities on the map that he posted at the end of the last round with room for 2 more easily: NE of Persepolis, and SE of Karachi. After all, all they have to do is build a couple of stupid temples so who cares if there's overlap?

 

[IAM]

And about stopping research I'd feel better once we get to infantry... just in case. With Sams and anti-tank units we could fight a decent defensive war until we get three legendary cities.

 

[Pohjalainen]

Expanding and building far away colonies isn't the wisest think to do. Those cities tend to be expensive and vulnerable. Just chooce a place to build a filler city and built the temples there. How about for example building a city one the island west from Sri Lanka?

 

[r_rolo1]

To build a temple in a city in that spot would take ages : no food to whip and no natural prod besides the city center. That would force US to $rush the temples and I'm not sure if neal wants to tech that far ( i would tech until Broadway, but that is just me )

 

[madscientist]

To build a temple in a city in that spot would take ages : no food to whip and no natural prod besides the city center. That would force US to $rush the temples and I'm not sure if neal wants to tech that far ( i would tech until Broadway, but that is just me )

If you tech to Broadway, why not go all the way to Mass Media. 2 more +50% culture wonders, Broadcast Towers, and two more culture producing wonders (Eifel and Christo).

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, why not indeed? ( I forgot to put the word "atleast" ) And definitely sushi as well if possible... this map has huge ammounts of seafood, so it would not be hard to grab a nice ammount of raw culture out of the corp

 

[Pohjalainen]

To build a temple in a city in that spot would take ages : no food to whip and no natural prod besides the city center.

Yeah, you're right. I quickly looked it from a last general map and thought it could share the cow with Sri Lanka but now when I checked again I noticed too that it can't. So, it's a bad position.

Still, I think that a filler city somewhere would be the way to go in here. Maybe northeast from Persepolis.

 

[capnvonbaron]

well... there is a good chance you may be to stick some filler cities in S. America

You did reverse colonization in the SB game, think of this as backwards colonization

 

[Kev]

I'd be thinking that Liberalism is not in the cards at this stage. There are 7 known civs with paper and 6 with philosophy while you have neither. Could be possible to trade quickly for some of that, but I would not put much faith in that.

My thoughts would be to go for Guilds and perhaps look to knights. Then try to take the tech tree through Econ and see if you can get the free Merchant involved. If you'd like, it might be nice to save him for Sid's if you decide to get to Medicine.

With knights, I think a focused strike on the two closest cities of Justinian would get you the two extra cities you need and basically take him out of serious contention. Plus, you'd get a city with Buddhism in it for some extra flexibility. Best to do so before he gets guilds himself and has Cataphracts running about.

Hopefully by taking this route you can backfill the other techs with trades and get the better culture civics and such up and running later.

 

[capnvonbaron]

*poke poke*... you still alive there Neal?

I guess I can't say for sure with Immortal difficulty, but in 99% of the games I play on monarch and below, the AI never prioritizes liberalism -- perhaps because they don't prioritize education most of the time. They always love to tech up the chemisty/sci.method line, leaving me to snag liberalism whenever I want. I think with a couple of clever trades, Neal could still grab liberalism...

 

[Neal]

Sorry, all... I played the round, but I've come down with a nasty case of the (not swine!) flu. So every time I sit down to write, I just end up scowling at the empty "reply" box for about five minutes before giving up and going back to bed. Anyway, I figure the least I can do is offer you all the save. It was a... surprising round.

 

[CHEESE!]

That's exactly how I felt when I did my failed series. You have much better resolve.

 

[Neal]

Oh, it's not dead. I just need to kick this flu before I can write something worth posting.