Mehmed Immortal Cookbook

3 Dhoom
2 Nishant
1 learner

And I've already finished the game from my save. I'll post the shadow at the end.
 
@learner gamer
Spoiler :
Is there any chance you might be able to elaborate a little more on your early build order (ie. settlers and workers) please
Turn 70: Revolt into Slavery
Turn 71 or 72 (whenever it was possible, probably Turn 71): Whip a Settler in our capital. That City got settled to the east, so that it could grow quickly using the Pig to Size 2 and then could pump Workers for me, initially sharing our second City's Stone square or Grassland Hills Mine.

One of either the capital or City 3 was always working the Grassland Pig.
One of either the second City or the third City was always working the Stone.

The first few turns: All Forest Chops that you probably put into The Pyramids were diverted into Workers and Settlers.

I also chopped out Workers and a Settler from City 3.

Our faithful Work Boat explorer pretty much meant that additional Cities kept getting Foreign Trade Routes... the "worst situation" that I saw early on was 2 Domestic Trade Routes (out of a total of 12 Trade Routes) when I only had 4 Cities and then maybe a few more Domestic Trade Routes when we had a couple of more Cities before meeting more AIs... I didn't pay very close attention other than remembering what I saw when I had 4 Cities. Essentially, expansion didn't have the normal "bite" that it does on your economy.

The southern City (the future Moai site) was pretty much constantly working a Plains Hills Mine, to help it pump out its needed infrastructure and so that it would be working an improved square.

I ask because I’m looking to understand how you managed to get Ankara and Bursa settled around you – and still found time to settle the two blocking cities on the west coast.
To be honest, I wanted Giglamesh to settle on our continent. I'm not sure what took him so long, but when he arrived, I had already given up on him and had sent a Settler to the NW part of our continent via Road. As you can see from my screenshots, I arrived in time to beat him, but had he settled there a bit earlier, I would have been fine with it, since that would have meant one less Settler to build.

I don't know if my actions (my settling order) affected Gilgamesh in any way or if he just chose to build different items (such as his early-game Courthouses, a Forge, etc) instead of building either a Galley or a Settler. Even if he builds a marginal City on our landmass, it would be useful for Espionage purposes--we've spent all of our Espionage Points on him (probably everyone has done so if they didn't adjust the Espionage Weighting in their games, since we were set to spend 100% of our Espionage Points on Gilgamesh at the start of the round). If we're going to collect these Espionage Points, we might as well spend them, and they are far easier to spend if the City that you are targeting is on the same landmass as your Palace City (aka capital) is located.


closing in on both The Colossus and HG
To be fair, that's as much an illusion as was the Round 1 saved game that we continued from which had "almost" finished The Pyramids. The Colossus just has a bit of overflow and a recent Forest Chop in it, while The Hanging Gardens only has overflow Hammers ABOUT to go into it (0 Hammers have been invested into The Hanging Gardens so far).

So, both Wonders are only just being started on. Every AI has Math, so I wouldn't delay The Hanging Gardens, but one could feasibly delay The Colossus for longer if they had a reason to do so. There aren't any other Wonders to build right now, though, and we've pretty much built all of the Settlers that we need for our continent, so the only good reason that I could think to delay The Colossus going forwards would be to pump out a quick army of Swords, Axemen, and Galleys, attacking an AI before Longbowmen come online.

One could justify building Settlers to resettle some of the poorly-placed AI Cities, but honestly, I think that you'd FIRST build an army and only THEN build Settlers to replace the razed Cities.


Did you simply stall the mids, build 4 settlers and then the accompanying workers for instance?
Pretty much. I don't remember the exact build order, but The Pyramids City built AT LEAST one Settler and one Worker, probably two Settlers or perhaps just more Workers since a Hammer-heavy City would have been good for building Workers. I tried to make sure that most Workers were built using a combination of whip overflow + Forest Chops + high-Hammer output squares, so which City got more Workers than Settlers and when they came out kept being adjusted. For example, I might have been building a Settler but then switched to a Worker in order to benefit from a Forest Chop, then back to the Settler on the following turn.


Did you use the whip to remove unhappiness in Istanbul, or just accept the grumbling from the malcontents?
Whipping, then regrowing as quickly as possible to the new Happiness cap while building a place-holder building (a Library for much of the time until we learned Metal Casting, after which it was a Forge), after which I'd pump out a Settler at or just under the Happiness cap.

Actually, I whipped all Forges everywhere about as soon as they could be whipped (in our first 3 Cities), giving me Forge-enhanced Hammers for the last Settler or two that I built.

I got Gold in trade early for Copper. After finding out how absolutely AWESOME a Woodsman III Axeman in a large Forest/Jungle is, I felt that I didn't need our Copper. Two Barb Archers came at us within the first couple of turns, at which point I decided "awww, why not?" and just upgraded our Warrior when he was still at 9 experience points.

He won the first fight, partially healed by getting the Woodsman III Promotion, then healed himself fully within 1 turn in time to defend from the second Archer. I was shocked at how fast Woodsman III lets your unit recover (having already forgotten about the Woodsman III units from our Monte game as I assumed at that time that I'd only ever build such units when playing as Monte and that their usefulness was not something worth remembering--I was wrong--it is worth remembering). Anyway, the point is that I felt that I had no immediate use for our Copper (expanding took precedence over building The Colossus, in my mind).

However, I was later asked to either lose the Gold Resource for Copper Resource deal or to sweeten it, being forced to throw in our Clam Resource or lose the deal. I might have been able to renegotiate the deal fully, but I didn't want to risk the possibility that the American Leader had found his own source of Copper being the reason why he was asking to renegotiate. I think that we have 1 turn left to go on that relatively lop-sided deal, but the plus side is that the American Leader actually likes us a bit for having traded Resources with him and went from being unwilling to trade his Ivory to willing to trade his Ivory to us... but that fact could also be due to a shifting Scoreboard and him giving us +1 for both of us being in the bottom half of the Scoreboard... I didn't really pay attention to WHY he liked us enough to offer up his Ivory... I just went with it. :lol:


BTW, can you recall when you built a WB for Istanbul...was it during that early stage...or did you leave it until after you’d gone into representation to boost happiness?
Now that you mention it, I built it right after whipping the first Settler. I remember toying with the idea of whipping it or not and I think that whipping it won out... the extra Food would help me to regrow the whipped population point ASAP, while my goal was to grow to the Happiness cap and then start on another Settler, so to me, it didn't matter what that Happiness cap really ended up being.


Two last points if you don’t mind. Firstly, what made you comfortable delaying The Colossus and Hanging Gardens (and the mids for that matter) for so long?
The Colossus = After I got Alphabet, only Gilgamesh had Metal Casting. He's close enough for us to attack easily, so if he built the Wonder, no real loss. It would essentially "be ours" if he built it.

The Hanging Gardens = Gilgamesh was the first to research Math. It was a long while before the other AIs learned that tech. I think that I actually got Math in trade from Gilgamesh. It is still a risk to build the Wonder at this point, but I forced myself to build a few Work Boats from our second City before starting on our Hamman (spelling?)--our Unique Building version of the Aqueduct. So, it is quite possible that we will miss this Wonder, but we have a reasonable shot at getting it since most of the AIs did not get Math for a while. Fortunately, we are set to build it in a production-heavy City, meaning that the total time that the AIs have to build Aqueducts + the Wonder is going to be pretty tight for them. If we miss it, we miss it.

The Pyramids = Well, I took a bit of a gamble, but it my experience that the AIs take a long time to build this Wonder. Either they delay starting it or else it is just very expensive or perhaps they start to build it in marginal Cities and the fact that it is so expensive takes them so long. I don't really know the reasons why, but in my opinion, there was no need to complete this Wonder in the first round and there was no real rush to complete it in the second round. At worst, I wouldn't finish it and then I'd have a differentiating factor with me game: you'd have to choose between a REX game and a game that likely built The Pyramids first and thus likely didn't REX as much.

It's a fun and useful Wonder--I really love Police State, for example--but with The Great Lighthouse under our belt, we'd already have been in a good enough position.


I ask because I actually managed two other playthroughs after submitting my save, trying to get The Colossus and HG. On one occasion, I managed to get them both in Istanbul; on the other the AI beat me to The Colossus.
Did you trade away Metal Casting? I did not. Gilgamesh is tight-fisted and for most techs (a tech like Monarchy would be an exception), he won't trade until several other players (at least 2 other players) know the tech. So, he won't be trading it around until someone else manually researches it or until we trade it away ourselves.

AI research choices can be affected by random values, so it is possible that an AI in your game manually researched that tech, but my GUESS is that you traded it away to at least one AI, which may have allowed Gilgamesh to trade it away or else may have been traded to a loose-fisted AI who had no trouble in turning around and trading it away. That, or else the AI that you traded it to built the Wonder.


As an aside, do you happen to know if there’s a guide somewhere listing at roughly what time the AI will build various wonders at this level? I’ve looked but can’t see anything on cfc.
No idea. I play a lot of Game of the Month games where the difficulty level is always alternating, while I have a good bucketload of other players' games against which to compare dates. So honestly, reading the historical (i.e. past months' games) First Spoiler threads in the Game of the Month Forum would be a good a spot to start as any.

What sucks is that often within the same game, you'll go for The Oracle and will have an AI beat you to it at 1400 BC, for example, while another player that didn't go for it had no AI build it until 800 BC. If you're smart about it, you start to see some correlations between these kinds of events... consider the following throught that I have had: "Hmmm, if I research Priesthood early, maybe some of the AIs are doing the same, and thus they have the chance to start building the Wonder a bit earlier... maybe I shouldn't research Priesthood and then research 5 more techs before starting on The Oracle... perhaps I should research most of those other techs first [you can't do so with all techs, such as Confucianism, if you are going for a Civil Service beeline in Vanilla, but you get the picture] and only then research Priesthood, and I might gain more game-years in which to complete The Oracle..."


Lastly, is it possible for you to expand a little on the tech path and tech trades you made please? I see from the log that you managed to secure a number of techs after first researching what looks like alphabet. If this is right, what was it that inspired you to tech alphabet before metal casting?
I actually play this trick a lot: I almost research a tech but then don't complete it.

Doing so prevents an AI from piggybacking off of your research.

For example, if I know that I want to research both Pottery and Animal Husbandry to get the pre-requisite bonus on Writing, but I don't need either of those techs' benefits immediately (Sheep are in my 3rd City and I only have 1 or 2 Cities, I am building a Settler and don't need a Granary, I am building Mines so I don't need Cottages, etc), then I might:
1. Research all of one of those two techs, say, Pottery, minus 1 turn of research
2. Research Animal Husbandry fully
3. Complete the last turn of research on Pottery
4. Start on Writing 2 turns after having learned two of its pre-requisites, thereby giving the AIs the least amount of piggybacking time on researching the first of Pottery/Animal Husbandry that I chose to research

I didn't actually tech Alphabet until we almost knew Metal Casting, not for the pre-requisite part of the above discussion, but for the avoidance of piggybacking part of the above discussion.

I suppose that just like getting Animal Husbandry earlier, where you can reveal your Horse Resources sooner, which may alter your settling locations, you might also be able to build a Forge sooner, but my Cities were being whipped and then kept small from building Settlers and Workers, so it would have taken a long time before they would have been ready to build Forges anyway, so I don't think that I lost out in the end.


Was it to avoid persuading the AI to research metal casting (because you have it and since they’ve met you, they’d get a discount)
That and not needing the tech myself immediately combined into one point.


From your discussion, it looks like you’ve done the same thing with teching aesthetics.
It seemed to have worked out that way, although since it is a tech that you can potentially get in trade if multiple AIs go for it around the same time, it may have been a mistake. I actually had different reasoning at the time... I thought that I was going to complete the tech. But after putting some research into it, I realized that I had no Cities in which to build the Wonders, so I aborted research on it.

While it does set us up to be able to research the tech quickly if an AI gets it, allowing us to "race" them for the Wonders, if I had to do it again, I'd have put that research towards getting Civil Service faster.


After all, I mentioned settling another city to work Istanbul’s pigs in my earlier post...and then ignored my own advice to block off Giggles, d’oh!
As I said, I was hoping to see Gilgamesh settle our area so I was frustrated when he appeared not to be doing so (and only appeared to be doing it once it was "too late," since I'd already built the Settler).

Therefore, I had no such dilemma to worry about and definitely wanted to settle in a way to overlap the Resource squares that I wouldn't be using in our two existing Cities thanks to whipping them and/or slowing their growth by building Settlers and Workers.


I’m looking to learn how you managed to settle the two good sites near Istanbul and still managed to get those blocking cities up before Giggles tried to settle them.)
Well, I leveraged the early settling for extra Commerce and production (particularly by way of making use of the Grassland Pig and the Stone whenever the other 2 Cities weren't needing them or could just as easily work a Flood Plains Cottage as the Pig, essentially "working" the Flood Plains Cottage in City 3 because the "Hammers" from the Grassland Pig would go to a Settler or Worker in one of City 1 or City 3, while the replacement square would be a Flood Plains Cottage instead of say, City 3 working a Grassland Forest).

As for Gilgamesh, it could be that he simply had a different build order.

Another very real possibility, and it is not to be discounted, is that the constant stream of Barbs that came from the north-west area held him at bay. In our last Succession Game of the Month game, Zara stayed with 1 City in our game for the longest of time, while in other games he'd settled 2, 3, or even 4 Cities. The reason? A single Barb Warrior was trapped by his Culture (there weren't enough Barbs to enter borders at that time) and it was wandering back and forth over the square or squares that Zara settled his second City on in other games.

I kept the north-west un-fog-busted but not as much on purpose as due to having only 1 Military Unit to do the task. Our Axeman couldn't get more experience (so less Barb units would have been better in my mind) and I kept being afraid that he'd lose a battle and thus would even let Barb units "walk by me" several times so that I'd either attack them on low-defensive terrain or would "catch up" to them using our 2-movement points and "let them" get "more chances" to randomly attack us when we had the defensive bonus--essentially he was our first, last, and only line of defence. Therefore, it was by necessity of the Axeman only being able to cover so much territory at a time that there was a near-constant flow of Barbs coming from the north-west.

Interesting, huh? You think that you're doing a good thing by spawn-busting the Barbs, but all that you really end up accomplishing is convincing the AIs to settle the area that much faster than normal. :crazyeye: It is odd how life works sometimes. :scan:


In addition, I have to confess that I’m rueing my decision to tech aesthetics and literature after currency, to build the epics (without marble).
Well, Grashopa seems to have capitalized on getting Marble from Greece. I'm not sure what Resource or Resources he traded to get it, but it was a good idea.

If we play forwards from my game, we should be done with our Stone in time for learning Aesthetics, so trading Stone for Marble would be a good trade (but only AFTER building The Hanging Gardens or getting Failure Gold from it, not before then!). We just have to hope that in the meantime, Greece doesn't trade away the Marble to a different AI. It is a possibility, but since I have made so many Resource trades in my game, it is a lower possibility than normal for you to see a lot of AI-AI trades.

The risk, of course, is that Greece will use Stone to build City Walls in all of its Cities. But, given that they are already being Wonder-lovers, their Cities' Cultural defences will probably already be 40% or 60% anyway, so 50% from Walls won't help them that much (other than making Bombardment of the City defences take longer).

Anyway, I guess the point is that either:
- You unfortunately missed out on the trade for Marble, perhaps because another AI beat you to it or perhaps you angered Greece
- Greece didn't offer up the trade (perhaps a different AI beat them to the second source of Marble in your game or perhaps Barbs have been pillaging Greece's Marble, or whatever)
- Greece took a long time to connect its second source of Marble (or even its third source for all that I know, if it traded away its second source), taking longer than you needed

So, it sucks that you missed out on Marble and I was thinking that we would have to take such a Resource via war, but sure enough, Marble is now being offered on the trading table (I have no idea when it became available, though--I didn't see it in my game. I only noticed that it is available for trade after I'd read about Grashopa getting it and went to check in my game to find out that we do indeed have access to trade for it now).

I actually feel kind of silly that I missed seeing that trading opportunity (although it is still available, so "missed" might not be the right word to use here), especially since I was on that Resource Trading screen so much in order to watch for the deals that I did manage to broker.


Looking back, the much more obvious choice was to finish CoL and civil service...and then tech to literature powered by bureaucracy.
Not so obvious. I did the opposite, but then stopped myself when I realized that I didn't have the production power to finish off those Wonders. Getting The Great Library before Civil Service is a very valid option in gameplay terms.


this path makes available courthouses at CoL should you need to control maintenance costs.
Oddly enough, I haven't found any time in our build orders to fit in Courthouses. They're just going to have to wait. So, going for Code of Laws purely for Courthouses (I'd already missed Confucianism) would have been a mistake, since we're not building them (well, we haven't been in my game, anyway). Fortunately, my reason for resarching Code of Laws was because it is a pre-requisite for Civil Service, not for the tech itself.



@kossin: would you mind if enKage and Benginal had the oppotunity to re-cast their votes, to give them the chance to consider Dhoomstriker's save (which was submitted after they voted), should they wish to do so?
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. I think that it would be in poor taste to change one's votes after having voted.

I submitted late. I will take my medicine.


EDIT: Wow, that was freaky: I was writing my message and then when I submitted it, the background turned red and all of the colours went haywire. Someone clearly just recently applied the Christmas theme... although that bright light green colour that you see when editing a message (and probably will see when authoring a new message) is pretty hard on the eyes. Time to break out the Christmas smileys! :xmascheers:
 
EDIT: @kossin: would you mind if enKage and Benginal had the oppotunity to re-cast their votes, to give them the chance to consider Dhoomstriker's save (which was submitted after they voted), should they wish to do so?

People are free to change their votes as much as they want. However I'm not going to change the vote count if someone decides to change their vote at the last minute.
 
@kossin

you can always pick one. I would like dhoomstriker's, but since I didn't check any other saves you shouldn't use this as basis for counting my votes.

I am really sorry I am not putting enough effort into this series, but i am mostly here for fun and I just like more playing.
 
I missed 2nd round but looking at the saves

3pt- Dhoom
GL shot, Colossus and HG close, land secured, great tech lead

2pt- Grashopa
Land secure, GLH, Colossus, GL close, MoM close,

1pt- learnergamer
Land secure, GLH, Colossus, GL close, MoM close,

Both Grashopa & learnergamer's are very close together, is a tough call on those 2
 
I missed 2nd round but looking at the saves

3pt- Dhoom
GL shot, Colossus and HG close, land secured, great tech lead

2pt- Grashopa
Land secure, GLH, Colossus, GL close, MoM close,

1pt- learnergamer
Land secure, GLH, Colossus, GL close, MoM close,

Both Grashopa & learnergamer's are very close together, is a tough call on those 2
To be fair, I can't really tally your vote despite your participation in the series.

I'll leave the voting open for the night and decide tomorrow if no further votes are cast.
 
I got lucky and found a few minutes to look things over:

3 points) nishant1911

2 points) Grashopa

1 point) Dhoom

Dhoom is just too good at rexing!
 
Abigcivfan - how do you manage to have so many beakers in the capitol? I'm trying to wrap my head around it, and I cannot figure it out. Thanks in advance!
 
Abigcivfan - how do you manage to have so many beakers in the capitol? I'm trying to wrap my head around it, and I cannot figure it out. Thanks in advance!
Well, he has an Academy there. It is likely that he also is running Bureaucracy in order to see that kind of output, although I haven't checked the saved game to be certain.

Still, as you can see, that's the power of one of the few amount of multiplicative bonuses in the game... most bonuses are just additive. For example, an Academy's +50% to Science bonus adds to a Library's +25% to Science bonus, for a total of +75% bonus Science, whereas if they multiplied together, you'd get 1.5 * 1.25 = 1.875 or a total bonus of +87.5%.

Civil Service leads to Bureaucracy, which increases your capital's Commmerce output by a factor of +50%. Here, the Academy is not an additive bonus, since the Academy factors as a bonus on the City's Science output, and part of the City's Science output (as long as the Science Rate slider is greater than 0%) will come from Commerce.

In other words, Bureaucracy plus an Academy combine as a multiplicative bonus. If these bonuses added to each other, then 10 base Commerce converted to Science would equal 20 Science (+50% from Bureaucracy and +50% from the Academy). But, since these bonuses are multiplicative, you actually get 10 * 1.5 (from Bureaucracy) = 15 Commerce being converted into Science Flasks, and those 15 Flasks * 1.5 (from the Academy) = 22.5 Flasks.


Of course, the other point is that I haven't had time to check the saved games myself.
 
Benginal
The Great Library is being built and we still have a monopoly on Literature.
We have completed The Colossus.
We have went for Libraries first and have one completed in an auxiliary Coastal City.
We have expanded to 5 Cities.
We have access to Buddhism, should we choose to convert to it.

The Pyramids were built but we haven't switched Civics yet, so our Cities are small in size and aren't taking advantage of the extra Happiness that we could be leveraging.
The auxiliary Coastal City with a completed Library is building a Settler instead of first growing to Size 4 and hiring 2 Scientists to take advantage of the Library beeline (which, of course, would be even more advantageous to do if we also ran Representation).
We only have 3 Workers.
We have yet to spawn any Great People (which is okay, since the focus was on rapidly expanding).
We have zero Resource Trades ongoing (be sure to check the F4 -> RESOURCES page every once and a while for trading opportunities).
Our exploring Work Boat, unfortunately, appears to have died.


Slizský slimák
We have a huge capital (Size 11).
We have an Academy in our capital.
We have a Forge, a Hammam, and a Barracks in our 2 primary Cities.
We are running Representation and are using our two large-sized Cities to run Specialists.
We made an interesting beeline gambit for Moai Statues immediately after building a Monument.
Civil Service is almost ours.
No one appears to have researched Aesthetics yet, while we could easily leverage a trade with Pericles for his Marble + Corn for our Copper, or some other such deal.
We are getting 2 Happiness Resources in trade.
We have founded Confucianism, which could work for or against us, depending upon what we want to do--run Organized Religion and anger the neighbours or not.

Unfortunately, I don't count queued-up Military Units with 0 Hammers invested into them as any sort of an army. While the intention to build an army is there, one could equally continue from any other save and queue up the same units, so no extra credit here.
Lacking a Lighthouse in our Moai City means that we'll probably still work the two Mines squares instead of switching to Coast squares with the 2 population points that aren't working Seafood Resources, at least until a Lighthouse is built, so given that we have cheap Lighthouses, I think that a Lighthouse at minimum should have come before Moai. A Granary can optionally come afterwards, but building Moai and not having a Lighthouse (as was done here) or building Moai with a City that has whipped away most of its population (not really done here but another common thing to do) are both things that reduce the value of beelining Moai, in my opinion.
We only have 3 Workers.
With only 3 Cities, there is a lot of REXing left ahead for the next turnset--which kind of attracts me to this game as I can handle the REXing part and actually really enjoy that part of the game.


nishant1911
We have built The Great Library.
We have built The Colossus.
We have 4 Cities and they are mostly working improved squares.
We are in the midst of building The Hanging Gardens and will have to make a difficult choice: temporarily fire 2 Scientists and speed up production on this Wonder or keep running the Specialists and increase the chance of missing the Wonder.
A Music beeline looks very doable for us to snag the Great Artist.
Our capital is about to grow into Unhappiness, but we can immediately trade away our only source of Pig plus a surplus Fish to Pericles for Ivory and a resulting +1 Happiness.

We are working an unimproved Clam Resource in the capital and seem to have queued-up other build items there instead of a Work Boat.
We do not have access to any Religions.
We have only met 4 of the AIs (and of course, have lost our Work Boat explorer). This fact COULD be good if we want to trade for a bunch of cheap techs before meeting the other AIs, in order to only increase our We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced counters for 4 of the AIs instead of all 6. That said, if we'd rather REX, then we might quickly run out of Foreign Trade Routes.
It will be a while before we will be able to leverage Caste System or Bureaucracy, since we do not yet know Code of Laws.
Our only Resource Trade is Marble for our Copper. What is weird is that when I tried the trade in Slizský slimák's game, I was also offered Corn on the table. Maybe Pericles doesn't think as highly of our empire in this game or maybe we didn't think to ask for more than Marble in the trade? I'm really not certain what the reason is.


enKage
Ohhh, we are at war, which can be fun! :)
We have The Colossus.
We have access to Buddhism and are actually running it to curry favour with 2 AIs while being at war with an AI of a conflicting Religion.
We still have a monopoly on Aesthetics.

Unfortunately, our large number of Cities may actually be hurting us, since we aren't getting any Foreign Trade Routes.
We have The Pyramids but have not switched Civics yet, so are keeping our capital's unnecessarily population small in order to stay under the Happiness cap.
I don't see a single Granary in any City and ours come cheaply.

As for the war, I would have suggested waiting to fight it until we had a force of: 3 Galleys + 4 Axemen + 2 Spearmen, plus 1 to 2 pre-planted Spies in Gilgamesh's capital. The war would have probably had to have waited until the next turnset to execute. I don't know what you knew about Resource access before the war, since no Resource Trades are possible now, but in others' games and in my game, it was clear that Gilgamesh does not have access to Copper or Iron. So, at best Gilgamesh only has Archers, at worst he also has Chariots and Catapults. With this force, I'd land next to his capital on the first turn of war, which can even be done in your game where Gilgamesh has a City on our landmass next to his capital, as we could sit 2 SW of that City (Nibru) and still land next to his capital without fearing death-by-Trireme. A Spy could have been used to also scout out his lands and possibly to even disconnect a Strategic Resource (Horse) at the start of the war, which is something that I suggest people build (a Spy) for whichever saved game we continue playing from. It can be dangerous to run a Spy around in territory where you don't have a lot of Espionage Points invested, so I would limit the Spy's activities to Gilgamesh's lands, but you would at least then know for sure what his land looks like and could cause trouble (disconnecting a Resource, or preferably, bringing down a City's Cultural Defences on the turn after landing your assault force [not on the same turn or the Espionage Points would have been wasted--units that land can't also attack in the same turn]). With a capital captured, we'd be in a better position to negotiate with Gilgamesh sooner, while it should be easy to capture Cities on our landmass later, especially given how Gilgamesh appears to have settled in the Jungle. If the capital had been highly defended, then our 6 units could have started towards another City or could have Pillaged--anything to cause more damage to Gilgamesh's empire so that he'd want to talk Peace as soon as possible. Delaying such a war might to build up more units before launching the war might also have meant that Gilgamesh would have built us a Worker on our mainland and perhaps even started chopping Jungles for us. Anyway, good work so far on capturing a City and you'll likely have a second City soon. The biggest danger is that by running a conflicting Religion and having declared war, Gilgamesh might not even Open Borders once we obtain Peace, meaning that our access to Foreign Trade Routes could be cut off for a long period of time. At least by capturing his capital, you would have owned Hinduism, which then you could have chosen to convert to when the war was over or perhaps even Gilgamesh might have converted to Buddhism, seeing as how he has another large-sized City that has Buddhism in it. To have an effective assault force for his island now is probably also going to require us to build Triremes or to first take a period of Peace so that our Galleys can surprise him.

Overall, the war seems moderately successful, since you seem to be on track to achieve the goals that you set out to achieve (capturing the Cities on our continent); I simply am offering suggestions on how you might alter your goals.
I can't comment on how well you traded Resources since any such trades would have been cancelled by the war declaration.


drlake
The Colossus is almost complete.
We have 5 Cities.
We also have 2 more Settlers in the works.
We appear to have a monopoly on Aesthetics and a reltative monopoly on Currency.

We haven't spawned any Great People yet.
We have 4 Workers.
We are working several unimproved squares (Forests)
We don't have any Resource trades and I unfortunately don't even see any Happiness Resources that we could get in trade at the moment, since Gilgamesh appears to have snapped up Wine and Gold using his 2 surplus Gems--it would be a good time to send in a horde of Spies to cut off all of Gilgamesh's Gem Resources at once, break the trade deals, then negotate them in place of him. He even scammed the surplus Marble for a Fish, which is going to be hard to break up unless a Barb Galley spawns or unless we also invest Espionage Points on Pericles and first cut off all of his sources of Marble.
We don't yet have access to any Religions, although having more Cities increases the chances of getting one.


Grashopa
We have a Great Merchant, although I'm not really sure what we are going to do with him. I would tend to settle him in our future Great Person Farm at this early stage of the game, since we don't have the option of settling him in our future Corporate HQ (unless you can predict in which City we'll found a Religion that we'll also build a Holy Shrine for :crazyeye:).
We are 1 turn away from having 6 Cities (assuming that you like where the Settler is currently standing--that spot looks good to me, anyway).
We have built The Colossus.
We lost our monopoly on Aesthetics but we still have a monopoly on Literature.
We look like we'll get the Great Artist from Music pretty much uncontested.

We have appear to have a good shot at getting the Mausoleum of Maussollos, although all of the AIs have Calendar, so it's tough to tell--at least we're focusing heavily on Hammers in the City that is producing it. I, unfortunately, have little experience in terms of dates that this Wonder gets built on Immortal difficulty, with it being a BTS-only Wonder and me normally ignoring Calendar until I get it in trade (a habit picked up from Vanilla games).
No Granary in City #2 means less production potential overall, as we're smaller in City Size than we could have been, given our cheap Granaries.
We do not yet have access to a Religion.
We have skipped Currency, Code of Laws, and Civil Service for now. Actually, since we have such a lock on Music, I would even delay researching it and switch to Currency (unless you plan to get it in trade soon) or Code of Laws and only go for completing Music once an AI gets close to it (try "fake selling" Literature to the only AI that knows Aesthetics every once and a while to see if he is researching Literature, for example).
We only have 3 Workers.


vranasm
Smart idea: Work Boat before Settler in our capital.
We have 6 Workers! Excellent.
We are still working some unimproved squares, but those squares are few and are actually being improved by our nice force of Workers.
We have explored well and have met every AI.
It doesn't look like we have made any (or at least not many) tech trades yet, so it could be fun to continue from this game in order to play out the trading game.
We have actively spawned a Great Person (a settled Great Merchant) and have begun aggressively working on the next one in apparent hopes of netting ourselves a Great Scientist.
We are about to complete a Barracks--I smell war in the not-too-distant future.

We have researched Metal Casting but I do not see a Forge anywhere. Early Forges can catapult your empire towards success and if you have no plans to build them or to trade the tech (which it appears that you have not done), then researching it could have been put on hold. Of course, it was the "selected tech" when you started the round, so it wasn't really your conscious decision to research it. Now that we know the tech, I'd even suggest delaying the capital's Settler until we get a Forge pumped out or whipped out (whipped makes a lot of sense now that we'll have the Clam's extra Food to help us regrow quickly, although the trick will be to catch the overflow Hammers into the Settler for a turn, switch to a different build item [like a Building] until we grow a bit more, and then finish off the Settler).
We do not have any Resource Trades ongoing.


learner gamer
We have 2 Happiness Resources incoming in trade.
We know Currency and almost know Literature (we'll learn it next turn).
We still have a monopoly on Aesthetics.
We have The Colossus.
We have received a Great Person (a Great Merchant) and have settled him.
Every citizen is working an improved square (I count Specialists in this category).
We have 5 Cities.
We have angered Lincoln slightly by refusing to stop trading with his Worst Enemy, but I believe that this choice was the correct one, given how everyone else (who has a Worst Enemy) has Lincoln as their Worst Enemy. Not Opening Borders with Lincoln as a result is a good approach (sorry, I forgot to check other people's games for this aspect).
We can get Construction from Pericles for Metal Casting immediately, if we so choose.
We have access to Hinduism, if we want to switch into it.

We only have 4 Workers.
We have yet to start research on Code of Laws.
Unfortunately, Marble is not up for trade. HOWEVER, no AI is getting it in trade, a situation which gives us hope for Pericles possibly connecting it in the future (but it could also mean that he lost the second Marble City site to another AI, which means that neither AI might have more than 1 source and thus Marble might not be receivable in trade).


My votes:
learner gamer = 3 points. It's a pretty solid game and we have lots of options available to us.
Slizský slimák = 2 points. This game looks like it would be a lot of fun to play from, since I enjoy the REXing stage and we're set up nicely to either REX or very quickly pump out an army. Actually, I think that I'd go forward with the war, hoping that Gilgamesh will settle us a couple of Cities as we prepare the war machine.
enKage = 1 point. Although the war is far from clean, you have guts and without guts you won't see any glory! "It's my island" is the right attitude! :cool:


Note: I apologise if I messed up facts--I was switching back and forth between saves a lot to compare things, so feel free to correct me if I incorrectly attributed a comment to your game. I am too exhausted to double-check what I wrote; given the volume of text, there are bound to be a few mistakes.
 
@dhoom

thanks for the kind words... The sad truth is that a lot of the positives are just a randomness that the thing just kind of turned out on itself :-D.

The rax I build probably because that will be production city and I thought that it's good timeframe to build them in advance.
The GM as first GP is probably because of GLH, I usually prefer GS for academy first.

Those tech trades are complete oversight :-D, I just forgot that I should check here and there trades.
The same with not going for Colossus/forges. I knew what was Grashopa intention, but when I played I totally forgot I teched MC :-D.
Too bad Japan is not willing OB soon enough :-( would like to explore more in the west.

I think I looked for some resource trades, but didn't saw good options maybe I didn't analyze the situation properly. I don't like trading away the only source like you did in your save, so kudos!
 
Abigcivfan - how do you manage to have so many beakers in the capitol? I'm trying to wrap my head around it, and I cannot figure it out. Thanks in advance!

Dhoom got most covered. The easiest way to see where these beakers come from is download the save, open the capital city, then point your mouse over the beakers and it gives you the breakdown of the sources.

I am running 100% science, so all commerce is converted to beakers, here are all the sources:

1. Raw commerce: 4 trade routes + worked tiles
2. Specialists: 2 scientists + 1 Settled Great Engineer
3. Enhancement civics and Multipliers:
a. Bureaucracy civic boosting raw commerce by 50% (x150%)​
b. Representation civic adds 3 beakers to all specialists​
c. Library+1 Monastery+1 Academy = +85% (x185%) beakers​
I ran 2 scientists after building the library non-stop, my first GP was an Engineer (settled). I was lucky to get a GScientist as the 2nd GP at about 50% chance, and built an Academy.

Much of this game is really about city specialization and stacking various huge bonuses.
 
Round 3 - 40 turns

Since there was still a tie, I veto'd the vote and selected a winner...

*************
* learner gamer *
*************

Runner-up was nishant1911. Good job everyone!

(Save is link in his name in the box right above this line.)

Round 3 will last only 40 turns, up to t150, and about 5 days or whatever is required to have a decent number of saves to select from.

I suggest a good fill-up of the island and spamming of workers... those cities will pay for themselves so better get them up ASAP!

Good luck to everyone!

4th round will be to the end of the game!
 
gz learner for winning the round.
I checked your save and indeed it really is great save.

I am now considering what to do with the settler it comes next turn and how quick and decisive I have to be in settling the island.

As I see it there are 3 spots that I would like to have before opening borders with Gilga for trades.
It's the fish+sugar on north east, where you are preroading. The pigs spot west from capital and the rice+stone+shared pigs east of capital.
It's questionable how much to rush with settlers for the expense of workers, because the number of them seems low, probably the western city has to help out with workers (even if I would like there to put library, but we need at least 2 worker pumps now).
maybe the capital could sneak in worker/settler before finishing hamman.

As I saw nobody likes Roosevelt so opening borders woudlnt be that great for start :-). I saw you got 2 demerits for not giving in request from Turks, what they asked from you?
 
Heres my shadow off of my save

Spoiler :


I used the music Great Artist for a golden age switching to Bureau/caste/theocracy at the end. I starved Edirne and popped out a GE during the golden age which I used to rush the Globe Theater in the NW city since it has a lot of food. One GS for an academy in the capital and 3 Great Merchants for trade missions - Great Library and NE in capital which ran 5 or 6 merchants. Theres 1 GM waiting to do another trade mission for 1700 gold.

The goal from the start of the turnset was get steel and whip an army. Janissaries/cannons to start with the +25% it will be an easy romp against non hill longbows even without collateral which means we can build several stacks and attack multiple AIs.

I didn't have enough workers so I'm still working coastal tiles instead of farms in the screenshot which slows down the whipping a little bit. We are in rep/bureau/slavery/theo. No police state yet since we are limited by happy in whipping. 12 trebs and 5 galleys already, delaying steel will save 20 hammers per cannon at the cost of 80 gold to upgrade but post cannons the only tech we'll need is grenadiers.

Civ4ScreenShot1237.jpg

 
Don't forget we are expansive. I notice several people were building workers off of food when you can knock out 2 turn workers in a hammer city.
 
Settling Locations and Closed Borders with Gilgamesh
I am now considering what to do with the settler it comes next turn and how quick and decisive I have to be in settling the island.

As I see it there are 3 spots that I would like to have before opening borders with Gilga for trades.
Good point about the Open Borders... really, we can take our time with settling, if we so choose, with the only cost being missing out on a maximum of 4 of Gilgamesh's Trade Routes before Opening Borders with him. Don't forget to Open Borders at some point, though.

As for settling locations, for those of you who are going to settle the Rice to the east of our capital, I strongly suggest that you settle 2W of the Grassland Rice and 2E of the Grassland Pig. Even if we DO NOT steal the Grassland Pig from the capital temporarily, you will gain 2 extra Hills squares this way. That's a lot of lost production on a low-production map if you settle 1E of there (i.e. if you settle 1W of the Grassland Rice).

Then, of course, we have the Pigs Hills Jungle River square to the west of the capital that will get a City... likely Coastal, although you could make an argument for settling NE + E of the Pig and NW + N of the Plains Hills River Copper for a pretty decent late-game Ironworks production City for pumping out a Spaceship. That said, I usually grab such a City location from an AI, so I'll probably just settle on the Coast there.

As for the NE settling location, the obvious choice is 1NW of the Grassland Rice Jungle square, which picks up a couple of Grassland River squares and a Grassland Hills square. However, if we wanted to, we could instead fit two Cities up there by settling ON the Rice. In so doing, we'd get an extra Food from the Lake square that we would pick up (a Lake gets 3 Food when you build a Lighthouse in the corresponding City). Settling on the Rice would allow more room for an additional Resource-less City in the north that could use 3 Grassland River squares (it would settle on top of the 4th one) plus a Grassland Hills square that the City to the east would no longer get. I'm not sure what the best choice is here... any thoughts?


Workers vs Settlers
It's questionable how much to rush with settlers for the expense of workers, because the number of them seems low, probably the western city has to help out with workers (even if I would like there to put library, but we need at least 2 worker pumps now).
I would tend to agree: a few more Workers before Settlers, if possible. Settling a City to work a 2-Food Grassland Rice Jungle or a 1-Food 3-Commerce Coast square isn't the end of the world, but if you can have a Worker there ahead of time pre-Chopping the Jungle, then the new City will get itself off of the ground that much faster. We apparently have "used up" all of our excess Foreign Trade Routes right now, since I see a couple of Domestic ones, so you can't even (currently) make the argument that settling quickly at this point will net us additional Foreign Trade Routes.


AI Relationships
As I saw nobody likes Roosevelt so opening borders woudlnt be that great for start :-). I saw you got 2 demerits for not giving in request
Yes, the Diplomacy is pretty easy here: don't trade Open Borders with Roosevelt.

Good call about Kublai Khan of the Mongolians giving us -2 for refusing their request or requests for help (it could be from one request if they really hate being refused)... I would tend to suggest accepting any such future requests unless:
a) It is a request made by someone else's Worst Enemy
OR
b) It is a request that you really do not want to give up (say, a request for Literature when you are trying to be the first player to research Music)
 
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