NC CLXXII - Wang Kon of Korea

[elitetroops]

nice game, elite...which joker did you worker steal from?

Spoiler :

Stole from Pericles. The first one I took on the gold, then he attacked me in the forest to make my warrior WMII. From that point on I stole a couple more to get cease fire, then got a nice machine going where I could stay 2 tiles away from his copper, outside his borders, and move in through forests to steal the worker as soon as it appeared on the copper. He never learned but kept feeding me more and more workers forever. It seems there is some mechanic that forces him to build a worker when he hasn't got any, so he would always build a new worker when I stole the last one and never get another archer that he could send as escort. I think I stopped stealing after 8 or so workers. I wanted him to improve that copper so that he could build melee units for my Hwachas.

 

[Gumbolt]

1000ad conquest victory. 274k score.

Spoiler :

Main delay at end was Shaka. Had to beat him down to 4 cities before he would capitulate. The others fell much easier. Shaka was only Ai to get LB before I capitulated them.

Overall a nice easy map. Turned off slider after feudalism. Perhaps could of gone for engineering.

I suspect this date is quite beatable as Shaka really slowed me down near the end.

Nice win Elite. I was never going to get near that date. Still a fun game to play out.

 

[elitetroops]

Nice one Gumbolt! You beat me in score, no wooden spoon for you at least.

Spoiler :

I wonder why the AI was so extremely slow here. Had a look in worldbuilder and it seems most of them lacked early happiness resources. We had 3, a bit unfair. Maybe good idea to also check a little closer what the AI starts look like when choosing a map for these. Usually I only check that they have some strategic resource nearby.

 

[Gumbolt]

Oh the reason the AI were so slow?

Spoiler :

I put it down to poor land. The Celts were limited to 5-6 average cities here. That and a sea food start. Mansa seemed slow too. Greeks had some nice resources but ultimately were slow out of the block on my game. Only cow in the inner ring. Took tham ages just to work the copper on my game.

Look at Sumerians on my game. 5-6 cities at 1000ad and not a single city over size 8. Shaka had 2 food resources but little else. He needed to settle a fish resource to have any further food resources.

The reality is AI need land or they become weak without commerce resources. Toku on this game was stack with 3-4 cities.

I probably slowed down Sumerians and Mansa by worker stealing from them early on. I recall Sumerians settler for 3rd city waiting whilst my axe freely pillaged his land.

Meanwhile we had double corn, silver, copper and fur. Plus 2-3 Ai to easily steal workers from. That with a large amount of forest to chop. Once you get 6-7 workers it makes building an army quite easy. Especially with the super charged UU here against Ai spamming melee units.

Stil at times I was losing 60-70 gold a turn to maintain my army. My starting tech order was very sloppy. It's one of those games where you just relax after a tough SGOTM game.

 

[yyeah]

guys nice finish dates .
Iam still fighting at 680AD

Spoiler :

Gilgesh dont want make peace he didnt manage to do any serious dmg to me but hes slowing me down like i had to deley my 2nd GS for Edu bulb that was preety anoying, anyway still in game for Lib, unfortunatly only Natio is an option.

Beocuse he didnt want peace...
Deal with this bastard

Shaka is ready instantly . He was marching towards Toku, I bribed Toku on Gilgesh Gligesh bribed Shaka on Toku.
But Toku made peace after i sold him Drama ... sometimes ai cooporate.
And like Shaka was free . So Paper + Philo was a enought for him to make use of hes troops

Edit.
Why ai were so slow, beocuse you was playing on IMM. After SGoTm where every tech was like deity date - Zaras Rifling was even faster then usually on S/N. Everything looks slow for you .
But yea this isnt fast tech game anyway i would say standard.

Edit2.
Quick look on situation at 1290AD.

Spoiler :

3 vassaled going for Toku now i think. Need Steel for Shaka and Budica.

 

[Izuul]

AI tech pace is very slow, even for Immortal.

 

[yyeah]

She's is plotting against me

Spoiler :

 

[Gumbolt]

That's a tiny stack really. Have you not played SGOTM lately.

In any case once you bombard I figure your stack will lay waste to those units.

20 cannons should seriously dent his stack. What other units he has is another matter.

Seems to me Deity is a good challenge for this game.

 

[yyeah]

That's a tiny stack really. Have you not played SGOTM lately.

In any case once you bombard I figure your stack will lay waste to those units.

20 cannons should seriously dent his stack. What other units he has is another matter.

Seems to me Deity is a good challenge for this game.

Spoiler :

I gotta tell you that this was a lot of units there didnt manage to take it out imidietly.
ANother thing why iam still playing, is ... Shaka had little city in middle of my empire he had all units there. And that was perfect for me beocuse after budica i could do same this with Shaka just wipe out hes stack from my border.
But i didnt realized that they had defensive packt .

So i had to deal with bouth of them, this crap and Shaka stack, witch was ... yea Shaka size stack in other side of my emipre.
Me.

 

[Pangaea]

Gave this a whirl on Immortal, to 1AD.

Spoiler :

Agri-BW, and a nice surprise in the SIP-capital, and another silver lining north. This meant fast teching, so I went for the Oracle. Struggled to decide what to pick, between currency and construction, but went for construction in the end, to kickstart a war. Could perhaps have gone for civil service, but I didn't want to risk it.

Went for Pericles first, since I didn't much like the sight of Gilga's land (and those vultures and protected archers are nasty). Pericles built lots of wonders, including the Jewish shrine and the Mids, so that was a nice. Still waging war on him at 1AD, but he only has 2 cities left. Will go for Boudica next.

Didn't worker steal so the start could probably have been quicker, but we're up to 267 by 1AD, and another city comes out of resistance next turn, so that is okay. 2nd city went between gold and in the east btw, killing a floodplain. It was the natural spot.

Mansa is annoyed with me (but at war with Gilga), so that's not great, but if I manage to get Judaism in the capital I can convert to that, which will help as several AIs have it, including Mansa.

Not sure what victory to aim for, but probably conq/dom. Once you start busting heads...

Hmm, a picture

 

[yyeah]

1806AD Conquest,

Spoiler :

Preety late but oh well when i put myself in postion to fight 11 cities Budica and 11 cities Shaka at once i should be happy taht i won it .
This isnt hard map but dificulty here, for conquest/domination comes from ais.
3 huge units spammers - Budica, Shaka and Protective Toku.
Gilgesh is allso decent btw and hes Cre on top of Protective.

Anyway fun map.

Spoiler :

And thanks for posting.

 

[elitetroops]

Congrats yyeah! Seems like it was a fun game!

Spoiler :

That's about my thoughts when creating the map as well. I saw the start is strong, but then I looked at the list of AI and it seemed they would put up a fight at least. Glad they did!

btw. in NC threads we usually keep all spoiler info in spoiler tags. That is any names of AI leaders or info about the map, so basically everything about game progression. Someone who hasn't play the game yet should be able to read the thread without fear of spoilers.

 

[Gumbolt]

Sorry I probably encouraged him there. Albeit my post gave nothing much about the game away.

Next game???

Edit congrats on your win Yyeah.

 

[yyeah]

Yea you are right elitetroops i should put ai names in spoiler.
Edit made.

Spoiler :

That's about my thoughts when creating the map as well. I saw the start is strong, but then I looked at the list of AI and it seemed they would put up a fight at least. Glad they did!

Spoiler :

My big advatnage was that i had 9 cities, if i would have 6 that would be a lot harder.

 

[bdubbs]

Looks like a good start, I got up to monarch difficulty before I took my last break from the game. I rolled over a couple monarch games this week so I'm going to make an attempt at emp. Definitely going to need some critiques of what I could do better because I have a feeling I'm not going to win, last time I tried to play emp I got murdered!

Edit: 2680 BC

Spoiler :

So I moved the warrior 1nw and didn't see a compelling reason not to SIP. Had my warrior keep going west and found Pericles, I was thinking of hounding his gold tile for a worker, but I lost that warrior to a bear while scouting out boudica's bfc. I was going to 2 pop whip my second worker after my second warrior came out but I forgot to move into slavery so now I feel like I should 1 chop / whip a settler immediately.

The only problem with that would be the abundance of desert and ice tiles, I've always been more comfortable in situations where I had most of my cities in a lot of grassland, and there's just not a ton of that going on near the capitol. With that said I do see one city site I like, the grassland tile 1n of the gold to the east. It could help work cottages in the capitol and share the wet corn, it picks up the gold tile, and the less valuable silver tile on the ice hill as well as a pair of flood plains. I know I'm going to want to put a city on those pigs, but I'm not sure what to do about that, I'm eyeing the two plains hills N and NW of the pigs for now. For tech I chose the wheel after ag and bw, and I'm currently researching AH to see if I have any horses nearby. I don't have any real inclinations yet as to a long term strategy though, in terms of some pyramids / oracle strategy, or some early military rush. Any hints that don't give away too much would be greatly appreciated!

To 125 B.C.

Spoiler :

So I think I had the right idea, but didn't get it going quick enough. Edit: trying to get a working screenshot of the cities

I oracled MC, built a couple forges, teched towards construction, then alpha to backfill, then currency, trade for monarchy and I'm currently teching feudalism.
As of the current turn I have 7 hwatchas and 10 axes ready to go positioned outside the city site mansa stole from me. Just to test the waters after I saved the game I declared on Mansa and just getting that one city results in some pretty heavy losses, so I just feel like I should probably have a much bigger stack at this point.

 

[elitetroops]

Good luck bdubbs! This is a great map to up the difficulty, I'm sure you can push through to a victory if you stop and ask for advice often enough. When you ask for advice, I recommend you describe a bit how you would plan to proceed, that way you usually get the best advice. A good first stop is after initial exploration when it's time to decide where to put the 2nd city. Let us know where you think it should go.

 

[dutchfire]

I played until just before Liberalism on Emperor.

Spoiler :

The local land is really nice, lots of happy and lots of commerce. I did get quite boxed in. I didn't manage to get the horses, so Rifling break-out looks like the best option, but I don't think I'll play it out. I have paper and Education and Liberalism 90% on all AI.

 

[Pangaea]

A little update to about 600AD from my game on Immortal.

Spoiler :

Killed off Pericles and have transitioned a Hwacha-Axe army into Elephants and some maces and horse archers. Shaka took a city off Boudica, I razed one and took 4-5 others. Then peaced out since she had monopoly on Metal Casting. She can have that lousy city founded on incense

Shortly before the war with Boudica was completed (2 cities left), I sent a warrior into Gilga's land to see what he was up to. He and Mansa had peaced out, and Gilga was plotting again...I see a 10+ stack of vultures and swordman. Not great with a defence of a war elephant and archer (and the warrior who couldn't get back in time). But at least sending him there gave me a 2-turn warning. Thankfully Mansa was teching Feudalism, so I managed to upgrade the archer to longbow, and get a few more units in there. Also got up a quick wall. Then took the lone hwacha and did a little damage to his stack. As I was unsure how many units would pour in, I made the very unusual move of self-teching machinery so I got access to maces and especially crossbowmen (his army was mainly melee). Didn't get it in time for his attack, but thankfully some of those 11-12 guys dispered when they invaded and killed two warriors that got booted out of his territory, so the initial attack was 'only' 7 guys. Our 4-5 guys withstood that, thankfully. And now the Supermedic arrived from its potentially very risky shortcut through Mansa's land.

Mansa's peace agreement with Gilga ran out, and I of course bribed him back into war. Not sure if this impacted anything, but to my surprise he wanted to peace vassal to me the very next turn. I only had 1.22 of Mansa's power, so he is willing to do this at a much lower threshold. I could now go on the offensive, as the army of axes and hwachas had finally come to the front. I had planned to declare on Shaka after wasting Boudica. Have taken the first city, but the fact he has gotten longbows means hwachas will die in droves.

Shaka is pleased now, because I got him to convert to Judaism, and some fellow war with Boudica, who he is still at war with (will take her last city in a few turns). Hopefully this means he won't backstab me during the Gilga war, because his stack is pretty immense (more power than me), albeit somewhat dated.

Although this DoW gave me a big problem, it was actually great fun too, because it gave me a real issue to deal with, and I felt I had the game under control. Fun when that happens, at least if you can turn it in your favour

More updates to follow

 

[Pangaea]

A query about one of the AIs in the game, whose behaviour surprised me.

Spoiler :

Think somebody above mentioned that Boudica is a unit spammer. Not really sure that is the case, maybe she is lumped in with Brennus? According to the Civ Illustrated guide (from my signature), Boudica has 6/10 for unit building. In the game she quite frankly looked freakishly weak. Cities were inhabited by archers, and eventually the odd chariot (behind walls), but not in great numbers. Suppose she never got metals, but I was surprised at how easy it was to crush her. I don't often play with her, but she was very weak in this instance.

 

[elitetroops]

@Pangaea:

Spoiler :

She usually is quite a capable unit spammer. But it seems she isn't interested in hooking up that desert copper on this map. Didn't grab it in my game either.

It also depends on when you attacked her. In the BCs the unit spammers don't necessarily stand out yet. In my game I faced nothing but weak whimps, nobody had any stack to speak of.