King of the World #3: Tokugawa

[r_rolo1]

Rush Khan ( don't forget to raze that annoying city in the backyard )

palace in tokyo ( until you find a better place )

Forget the south pacific for now.... think India ( seriously: Asoka should had cleaned the jungle.... it is time to think in invade )

 

[Joshua368]

And what about the South Pacific?

Do you think you could even afford settling the South Pacific?

 

[dankok8]

How the hell does the whole world have the same religion?!? This sucks as attacking one person may cause many to help through bribe. Weakening Ghengis is a must, but after that you may want to calm down and just settle the Pacific for like a millenium. Domination is tough when everyone is the same religion. Either way, nice job taking care of China.

 

[Joshua368]

How the heck does the whole world have the same religion?!? This sucks as attacking one person may cause many to help through bribe. Weakening Ghengis is a must, but after that you may want to calm down and just settle the Pacific for like a millenium. Domination is tough when everyone is the same religion. Either way, nice job taking care of China.

If the Buddhist bloc is too threatening he could always try a naval invasion of the Americas, that could be interesting. Taking over cities there though may be costly... after striking Gengis it would probably be wise to let your economy recover fully before doing any other expeditions.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Do you think you could even afford settling the South Pacific?

Yeah - thats what the Great Lighthouse does. Each new coastal city on an island with currency generates +8 commerce immediately which should pay for itself.

Whats killing at the moment is the colony maintenance - which won't apply for new island cities in the south pacific. What this economy can't afford is settling / conquering any more cities on the mainland until the capital is moved there.

Me, I'd plan on focussing on the economy and the south pacific until the capital is moved - while building up for the next war. A few more island cities will help later and not be a burden on the economy as they are settled.

 

[r_rolo1]

How the hell does the whole world have the same religion?!?

Most likely Monty and/or HC founded early religions. A real diplo PITA.

 

[mystyfly]

Most likely Monty and/or HC founded early religions. A real diplo PITA.

I don't think so... mainly since nearly everybody he knows is buddhist with a few confucians mixed in.

Joshua suggests attacking the american continent as he won't get diplo penalties with all the european/asian civs. I'd prefer to see neal fight from one end of the continent to the other; from chinese lands via mongolian and indian soil towards persia and arabia.

 

[Joshua368]

Me, I'd plan on focussing on the economy and the south pacific until the capital is moved - while building up for the next war.

Out of curiousity, doesn't moving the capital simply involve building the Palace building in another city? I know he needed to churn out units but if a palace is all it takes it'd probably be worth a few turns worth of hammers/chopping/whipping to cut down on the almost-crippling heavy costs ASAP... unless there's something here I'm missing? (so far I've never had the need to move my capital in a game)

Also we had a Europe/Africa takeover last game. (not that I would complain with him going that route, expecially since its a new angle)

 

[mystyfly]

To move the capital he only needs to build the palace somewhere.

I just think attacking overseas might be boring as everyone says how they're backwards and everything...

 

[Neal]

Firstly, regarding the capital.... I started the next round, just to see what I was dealing with, and built the Palace in Tokyo. Our Gold+Science went from 69 to 124. So, yeah... That should have been done a long time ago. Ah, well. The whole point of this exercise is to learn, right?

Isabella's religion (Buddhism, in this game) is almost always a major factor on this map, though I've never seen it succeed like this! In addition, one turn into the new round, Isabella finishes the Apostolic Palace, introducing me to the remaining civs of the hemisphere (Mansa, Julius, Louis, and Liz), and confirming that, yup, EVERYBODY is Buddhist. That said, it's not all one big happy family. Greece is warring with Rome, and Egypt is fighting Arabia.

So circumstances are a bit unique. I'm almost tempted to spread into the south Pacific, send Buddhist missionaries everywhere, and try for an Apostolic victory (which I've never won before). Then again, we still haven't seen Samurai or Tokugawa's signature super Gunpowder units, yet. And we've had our chances in the past games to try an intercontinental invasion, but I've chickened out both times. Maybe this game would be an appropriate opportunity to play for some alternate history, converting the Americas to the One True Faith of Buddhism by the sword

Thoughts?

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, two options in here ( after the mandatory genghis bashing ):

-Open path via sword to India and maybe beyond ( Cyrus is always a big player... )

This would probably be the more cost effective short term option, given that India land is very good, but could give serious backfire in diplo terms

-Expand to Indonesia and australia while preparing a invasion of the Americas

The Americas in this map is a nice land ofr overseas empires and normally they are somewhat backwards. But conquering them would be extremely painful in terms of logistics and it is quilte likely that you would have to fight with a european power to control the Eastern shores of the continent ( normally the best part, especially in the North ) . But the simple fact of having cities with the intercontinental bonus with the GLH would be very nice ( GLH does not play too well with wars.... )

if you think that you can pull the India coup, do it. Otherwise I would strongly recommend leveraging the GLH via settling Indonesia and Australia, while preparing to take Mexico.

 

[dutchfire]

Kill Khan, then settle the pacific while teching towards Rifles (or Grens), and use those super gunpowder units to grab some more land.

 

[Neal]

This was a fun little round.

Our first move was to change Tokyo's build from a Courthouse to the all-important Palace:

This should have happened a long time ago. Our colonial maintenance was through the roof. We're significantly less solvent and scientifically advanced than we could've been.

The turn after the beginning of the round, Isabella did what she does best: managed to be the queen bee and a royal pain in the butt while being irrelevant from a winning the game standpoint:

Yeah, she built the Apostolic Palace. In 600 A.D. And managed to win the throne (We abstained).

In 660, we founded our first real Pacific colony:

Yeah, it's gonna take forever and a day to get it up and running, but it shouldn't be a huge drain until then, and it's got a lot of potential.

Here's a peek at the Diplomacy screen in the early eighth century:

As you can see, the Buddhist bloc isn't quite as lovey-dovey as it could be. Old feuds (likely started from some Civs starting out Confucian before converting) die hard, it seems.

In addition, we can see that Frederick is becoming a little big for his britches. Elizabeth and Catherine are both potential powers on this map. To see them both bowing to Berlin is disconcerting, to say the least.

Catherine offered us a fantastic deal:

I'm not normally much of a fan of Compass. It's kind of just a stepping-stone to Optics, for me. But in this game, Harbors are an economic godsend. In addition, moving the Palace to Tokyo brought us from break-even at 30% science to running a surplus at 60%. Techs have gone from 15-25 turns to 5-7.

Elizabeth came by, making funny faces and demanding something we planned on doing anyway:

Effectively, Open Borders and two resources for two gold per turn. And the Mongols are our primary target right now.

Apparently, Genghis Khan wasn't going to take our diplomatic snub lying down:

Well, well, well. This makes our decision for us. And it saves us from the diplomatic demerits of declaring on him.

The turn that the Mongols opened hostilities, I finished researching Civil Service, switched to Organized Religion and Bureaucracy, and made a quick and easy swap with India to get Samurai online:

Yeah, this might make Asoka a much tougher nut to crack, but he'll probably have Machinery before we get around to him, anyway. And Samurai will cut through Mongolia's outdated troops like butter.

With a pressing need for liquid assets at home, our reverse Marco Polo had to dump his goods a little earlier than would be optimal:

We received 1100 gold now, which is a lot better than, say, 1400 gold ten turns from now.

Ning-hsia was woefully underdefended, and wasn't guaranteed to remain so, so I sent the Osaka garrison hurtling across the border without pausing to upgrade:

They won and burned the city (which I later refounded 1N of the old site). They then upgraded and turned west to Beshbalik.

There our Spy, having completely integrated himself into the local society, laid the hammer down:

And... failed miserably. So much for all that investment. Our forces were still sufficient, but the conquest came much later and with much greater losses.

Tiflis was much less of a problem:

Sadly, that beautiful seven-promotion Samurai died from Genghis' Chariot counterattack.

We made a fairly major tech trade with Persia:

No, we're not running Theocracy or Vassalage. OR and Bureaucracy are just too valuable right now, especially with a Great General settled in our primary military city. Maybe I should change that.

Beshbalik finally fell in 960:

And we spawned a Great Scientist in 1000. He taught us the secrets of Philosophy. I still have one eye on the Liberalism race. We're a bit of a dark horse, but not completely out of it.

More backfill tech trades:

In 1020, Genghis Khan is finally willing to throw in the towel, so this is as good a decision point as any:

Here's a look at our empire, including the useless city of Otrar:

And here's our dilemma: We could probably take New Sarai this turn, but if the strike fails, Genghis will probably fortify and deny us the city totally, and may change his surrender conditions:

Here's a look at our other, more robust stack north of Beshbalik:

And our obligatory charts and graphs:

As you can see, we're strong right now, but one or two poor decisions could change that in a hurry.

So, what should our move be? Seems like we can continue to war with the Mongols for a little while, though I don't want to push it. What should our longer-term direction be? Given the fractious nature of the Buddhist family, a doctrine of total war might not be as disastrous as it might be. Then again, the Americas are outsiders, and likely backwards outsiders at that. And (except for our little island) the south Pacific is still there, waiting...

Thanks again for reading.

 

[dutchfire]

Couldn't you get Genghis to capitulate? I'd probably kill him of completely though.
If you want to take on India, you probably want to have trebuchets.

By the way, could you post the diplomacy - Techs screen next time? It's good for showing how you're doing technologically.

 

[DMOC]

I don't think peace with Genghis is worth it. Build some more samurai and finish him off (be sure to raze the cities he puts way up north - later in the game if you are searching for domination you can refound those cities).

 

[Commodore Nate]

If you're going for peace, just do a cease fire. That way you don't have to wait ten turns to hit again in case something big comes up.

 

[slobberinbear]

Genghis tends to build a lot of semi-junk cities in the frozen taiga of Siberia. I would refuse peace and raze most of them. He has no answer for Samurai unless he suddenly gets Machinery and crossbows.

This obviously slows down your Pacific expansion, allowing Asoka (and possibly Saladin and Cyrus, btw) to REX wildly in the South Pacific and Australia. For this reason, I would have to seriously consider vassalizing Genghis to save the time and effort of capturing his cities so that you can get some more settlers out and maximize the Great Lighthouse.

 

[Frankthetank]

The bear's right -- you don't want that land in siberia, might as well have a vassal control it, allowing you to expand down under. Don't take peace yet ...

 

[Shadowcrow]

At the momment?

You would want to establish some kind of support economy from behind the lines. REXing into the pacific and Australia.

Because if you look at the lie up both Asoka and Cyrus and doing fairly well in score, not to mention on the latest power graph, Asoka is right up their, and In my experience on Earth, Cyrus tends to get more powerful as time goes on.

Drawing a war out with either would not be desirable. You may be able to go through the back door over the Urals, and take northern Persia which should yeild some lucrative cities.

You will want to avoid pokign Europe to much atm untill you have a really good power base. Because if Fredrick had btoh Cathy and Liz as vassals, he could very much take over Europe, which would be big late game trouble.

Peacefully you could take the americas with less fuss and use it for say a space race or Domination win. But that wouldn't be as fun IMO.

Another Option for winnign is to put a lot into the war against Asoka, enough so as to have leftovers and a means to fend of Cyrus in the short term if need be, then turn towards Africa. There seems little love lost between Hatty and some other Europeans, but I can't be sure. That whole Mid east into African region is ripe with Flood Plains you can use to catapault reaserch.

The problem with using australia, is I get the feeling that because aside from production, the land is somewhat sub par economically. Right now that won't be so bad, but with late game building on maintenance, it coudl really come back to bite you in the ass. Then again, do you want someone else to have it?

The war with Genghis shouldn't take too long, maybe get a short ceasefire, regroup and then wipe him out. Then if you don't need to recover so badly, ammas for strikign the heartland of india and chop the jungle for nice grasslands you can use to recouperate your economy.

Either way, Fredrick is shaping up to be a big late game problem. I would like to see a big end game war between the two of you.

 

[Neal]

Hey, all.

My home Internet connection is down until Friday, so the next round is played, it just can't be posted yet. Essentially, Khan finally knelt before us in the mid-12th century. This brought him to Cautious, which is darn good for a newly subjugated vassal in my experience. A few techs and the liberation of some of his less-worthwhile cities and he should be useful in no time.

So, here we are, at another decision point. My natural inclination is to declare an end to expansion and turtle up in preparation for the Space Race, but we did that in the Montezuma game. So what should we do?

India's going to be a tough nut to crack. We have zero tech advantage, and Asoka's had plenty of time to build up his army with no opportunities to deplete it. Then again, that also means he'll have very few promotions, especially when paired with his lack of warmonger traits or a "real" Unique Unit. And his territory is awfully juicy. Then again, unlike crazy gun-nut loner Genghis Khan, Asoka is very social and well-connected. We could potentially set off a powderkeg we can't handle by invading India.

The Americas seem, prima facie, to be an easier target. Not only are they not esteemed members of the Buddhist family, they're not part of the family at all! Not only that, but they're horribly backwards. I do love kicking an A.I. when it's down (see: The war against the Mongols). But, then, intercontinental warfare is difficult to do, let alone to pay for.

And the South Pacific? It's turning purple in a hurry. If we're going to settle it peacefully, it's kind of now or never.

Your thoughts?