NC CLII: Kublai Khan of Mongolia

[dalamb]

Concerning the map:

Spoiler :

For someone with more experience of Global Highlands than me: does it always produce difficult maps? Should I put Global Highlands on the list of "unusual, choose rarely" scripts? Is it appropriate to have food-poor maps once in a while? Or should NC avoid difficult maps always?

 

[Ohblivion]

@dalamb (beware major major spoils for everyone else)

Spoiler :

I have no further experience with this script; but i'm SHOCKED that that was randomly generated. When I played through it, it felt to me that each and every element of the map was doctored. from the 'mountains of moira' to the low food to, the soft target on the hills in the middle and friggin' Mehmed in his cave of alibaba up north, and to top it off Degaulle being your endgame rival just in case you managed to handle your continent.
Anyway I had great fun playing it and lots of headaches. Very surprised it wasn't doctored.

 

[byang08]

Spoiler :

So is it possible to not keshik rush? I thought it was too far and granted the land isn't great, there's lots of production and two river sites, one fp site that can be used for commerce, though both can only be settled a bit later.

 

[Amao]

@dalamb Global Highland! It's larger, food poorer, more hills, and most likely, continents type, hence a lot harder than any other maps at the same size. Sounds like it's tuned for Windmill economy. But that comes so late.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

I played a couple of those recently and I found them very agreeable. Little flat grass and more food specials which requires more unusual approaches to teching and development. You can raise the sea level to prevent it from getting too large. They also feature mountain ranges, which some say provide choking opportunities but I didn't get that on my maps. Well worth trying out.

 

[dalamb]

OK, so I feel better about using this map script. Anyone care to write a couple of paragraphs for nobles about those "unusual approaches"? I'd put it in Message 2 in a spoiler about "playing this map type"; I've tried to do that with other unusual maps sometimes but don't always manage it.

 

[FlyingSwan]

Ive been looking forward to playing this all week.

Spoiler :

move 1,scout onto marble reveals seafood-very nice,settler 1 north for the extra sheep and PH hammer reveals 6 mines in our BFC-also very nice.

 

[Ohblivion]

HF it's a nice map

 

[FlyingSwan]

EMP/normal/huts and events-and there were a couple of nice ones...

Tech path was AH,writing,I figured the worker will have plenty to do anyway after improving the sheep with building roads,and we have cheap librarys and lots of hammers.

Spoiler :

found Justinian pretty quick and decided to take a gamble on teching alpha straight away using the Great scientsts from the library to get there.Was starting to think Id made a big mistake but found Mehmed a bit later,along with his super capitol.

Got alpha about turn 51,decided to bulb maths so I could catch up with expansion,It seemed a waste to put an academy in the capitol after Id seen Mehmeds.

A scouting warrior picked up HBR from a goody hut about this time,then shortly after I got the "build enough stables" event.

I had already decided that Justinian was too far away for a keshik rush at this point,I could just raise a few citys but felt that this would just play into Mehmeds hands.So I decided to Bribe Mehmed into war with HBR,MATH,ALHA,Preisthood I believe.This was a pretty expensive bribe ,but I felt it worth it as HBR was no use to mehmed as I saw he didn't have horses or elephants.

This I believe secured me the oracle-Justinian has a penchant for building it-in which I took metal casting.At this point the path was clear-get Knights asap.So I self teched machinery,trade for monarchy and self teched feud and guilds.

The knights started pouring out at about turn 135.Justinian had been seriously crippled in the war agaist mehmed-I reckon all his workers got stolen so virtually all his land was unimproved,and I was only facing archers.After he capitulated It was straight on to mehmed.

Here I was facing maces,and a few pikemen-but I sabotaged his iron straight away with my band of 7 keshiks I got from the stables event.Alot of hills on this map made the knights quite slow.

After mehmeds capitulation I played quite sloppily,there was so much to do with all the citys,and so many of them,also I didn't fancy a domination or conquest win with all the boat building and stuff,so just went for a lazy space victory.

The AI played pretty good in this game,gilgamesh won Lib,and In the final 15 turns of the game De gaulle was nuking me to death.Upgraded my Knights into gunships which worked nicely against the modern armour he was sending over.

Got a lousy finish date,didnt play to my best and reloaded too much for this game to count.

View attachment 152 Kublai BC-1920 bulbed HBR.CivBeyondSwordSave

View attachment 152 Kublai AD-1924.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Ohblivion]

AZ ended up playing this one on Deity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clq7_1S_14A&list=UUgT_HmP4nlz5wECKOkIlj9Q

I was interested how winnable this thing was on Deity after I had played it through; it unfortunately turned out as I expected more or less.
I don't think the things Quip and me did would've even worked on Deity though, so yeah, probably pretty though map for that level.