NC CLXXX - Hatshepsut - Egypt

[Fippy]

Nate is right, you will do much better if you never use flanking.
It's useful in selected cases (i guess ), but an easy overall hint for players still improving: forget flanking exists

Also for Cuir breakouts, you should aim for combat 2 guys.
5xp or more is not difficult, stables + barracks are not expensive at this point.
Vass. or Theo can also be used.

They are high base strength units, and while plenty cases can be made for skipping xp on Horse Archers it's very different for Cuirs.

Attacking Giggles first here, hmm i would say it's a not needed risk.
Respecting protective longbows makes sense, when you have much easier targets around.

You could have teched Cavs while grabbing Hanni, Alex and Augi.
Not sure why you have 1k gold and 0% slider, also sell resis for gold per turn.
While there's still useful techs to get, try having almost no turns without 100% science. Cavs are not really far away, and plunder gold also helps.

 

[pigswill]

@bdubbs

Spoiler :

Having a go from your latest save. Up to 1250, annihilated Persia (one city!) and just capped Alex. Finishing RP ready to start rifling. Giggles has used AP to get mass dow on Asoka. Maybe leave Giggles until I can upgrade to cavalry, polish off Asoka in the meanwhile.
Couple of things I noticed:
i) If you're thinking of prolonged and/or multiple wars use first GG for supermedic.
ii) If you're thinking of heavy warfare (or even if you ain't) specialise a city for military production (little commerce, lots of food and hammers, barracks, stables forge) which will become your HE city and contribute most of your units.
I have to agree with previus posters about combat instead of flanking.

 

[Metaslab]

Oooh, I realise that my mention of flanking on the previous page was ambiguous. I was referring to the ability to damage all siege in a stack (outside of a city) that mounted units get anyway, not the actual Flanking promotion, which is poor. bdubbs, if my post had anything to do with you fgiving your cuirs the Flanking promotion, I apologise!

 

[Izuul]

Yeah the survival odds with Flanking look nice, but the problem is that you aren't inflicting enough damage.

 

[Mizar]

To me Flanking always looked like an investment that would quite likely never pay off.

 

[pigswill]

@bdubbs

Spoiler :

Finished off game from your save. From last spoiler (1250), I met Gil's stack in Delhi before getting to rifling, succumbed to temptation and killed stack (?25 units) wih cuirs, pinched a Sumerican city before another AP peace delcaration. Worked out ok, gave me time to cap India, tech rifling and upgrade quite a few cuirs to cav before dowing Gil again. Cav do pretty well against protective LBs, got capitulation after capturing another three cities. Got a couple of GGs for medics. Then waltzed cavalry across to Carthage (6 move on roads) and positioned them, captured four cities in first round of war, Hannibal capped after losing Carthage. After that it was just sending lots of cavalry against Rome, prats are good for their time but obselete in the gunpowder age.
Techwise went for communism after rifling then pretty much switched off research. Built cavalry and wealth with occasional health building.

 

[Benginal]

@bdubbs comments and screenies below.

Comments looking at your save:

Spoiler :

Overall the situation looks really good. You've got a nice advantage over all other civilizations. Your cities are all quite large. Being in Caste and not running any specialists anywhere seems like a waste. Especially when compared with slavery which is super powerful when preparing for war. We'll be using gold captured from the raising of cities during the war to tech up to cannons with which we'll finish this game. You have workers sitting idle in some cities + are working unworked tiles and have tons of trees! :-o. Those trees can (and should) all be turned into cuirs. Before building an army, build barracks in your cities and run civics that will increase XP. Stables are sometimes worth it. I usually have a handful of cities with stables. But generally 3 7XP cuirs are better than 2 9XP ones. You've got a ton of spare resources and AI with GPT for trade. Make more of these deals.

Thebes: There are very few always and nevers situations in civ. But I think working unimproved non-river plains tiles has got to be about as close to never as we can get.

Memphis: A useful thing to do at the beginning of the game is decide what your cities will specialize in. This is a weird sort of hybrid that we'll be whipping down throughout the round.

Heliopolis: We'll chop the rest of the forests and get this city some more farms and then whip it down.

Akkad: These plains farms are just terrible. We'll be whipping this city all the way down and farming over some of the cottages.

Babylon: Will get the Heroic Epic. It'll go up quickly with marble and the forests. Still need to unlock the unit, but we'll make sure that happens quickly. This city is crying out for farms and for chopping.

The rest of the empire is in a similar state. You need more workers, more chopping, and more improvements. We'll be building some more barracks and and a few stables.

Tech path is interesting -- you could go a few ways. I'm going to go straight to cannons and use the GS to bulb part of chemistry.

First turn:

Spoiler :

Time to whip!

That's a small stack. We can handle that.

Suicide squad into our units. We're fine though. Some promotion healing and we're all good to go.

Mop up the remaining units and take another city up North.

Time to heal up quickly.

Our cuir is at 1.9/12 strength, but can heal in just 2 turns! Great general medics are amazing.

Continuing to whip regularly.

Finish off Alex the turn before the AP vote:

Take out Asoka. Passes!

But I've got other plans:

Continue to whip.

32 cuirs, including 2 great general medics. Hannibal has a dozen or so units left.

Our citizens might not like the whip, but we do.

Don't fall in love with passive hammers. Moai statues who? Whip whip whip.

JC's stack is somewhere in our territory so it'll be fairly straightforward to finish off Hannibal and then immediately take out JC. The army can then turn around and finish off Giggles and Asoka with Combat 4 cuirs and cannons, if necessary.

Give it another go from the save you posted. I'll think you'll find you're in a much better position than it feels like. No harm in playing from the same spot a few times until you get more comfortable with it.

 

[Lazteuq]

Did anyone other than me decide to attack Hannibal first?

 

[Benginal]

Finished @bdubb in 1490.

Spoiler :

Moved the armies around and finished Hannibal a few turns later.

Goodbye to Cyrus soon after:

Look for opportunities to farm XP.

Keeping my eyes on JC's stack.

4 turns after the war started.

Looking back it would have been better to finish off JC and win via domination. Busy watching TV.

The army heads towards Sumeria.

Sacrificed two cannons and then took the city:

No losses:

I got a bit bored. So took the free city that I wouldn't have to wait come out of revolt.

Building culture to trip domination.

Fun game! Thanks Mizar.

 

[Lazteuq]

1690 Domination Immortal for me, so late partly because I finished off Rome, Carthage, Babylon, and Persia, but then I was 1% short of the land requirement for Domination. So then I had to fight Gilgamesh, who was actually pretty advanced. The win date would have been way better if my economy didn't horribly crash in the middle of the game.

 

[Benginal]

Nice win Lazteuq. It might be possible to get that extra 1% land requirement by ramping up the culture slider instead of declaring war. You can steal quite a few land tiles this way.

 

[Pengu]

Fun game!
Immortal dom 1585 AD

Spoiler :

Disappointed with the finishing date considering how the game went.
SIP felt pretty obvious with the fp, silver and wheat. Built worker pretty slow so I stole 1 from Hannibal to speed things up. Hammy settled right up to my border but my 2nd city still got the wheat to the east. There were a couple of things that made this game easy. By settling 1 city to the east and another one to te southwest you had blocked of a nice little area all for yourself making it very easy to get 6-7 cities. The stone gave me a ton of failgold and I also chopped out the mids to solve all unhappiness for the rest of the game. And finally the religious blocks turned out to be prefect with buddism to the west and Hinduism to the east. That made all my neighbors like me and I could get Hannibal to pleased. So I could focus solely on teching. What also helped was the constant wars that occurred all the time. Caesar dowed Hannibal and Alex dowed Hammurabi and then Cyrus a couple of times. Then Cyrus dowed Hammurabi and India got into the action too. I stayed out of it and got super early beaurocracy, 1st to music and built TGL and the Parth.
I went early pottery to get those cottages out as early as possible. There was no barb problems at all in this game which also helped. The AI was super slow teching this game as I got economics before any AI got paper....
Went for lib after that and took MT. Meanwhile Rome did vassal Carthage and Indi vassaled Greece but I wasn't overly worried as Carthage and Greece were small.
When I was ready I dowed Hammy who was still at war with Cyrus. He had a small stack but he gave up pretty quickly. Next I thought about Persia but since he war Hindu I was worried about the peacevassal to India. So I went for Rome. As usual an AI with a vassal is stubborn as hell and not until Rome had 3 cities left did he cap. Carthage had broken free with1 city left so I vassaled him and gave back his cities. Same with Rome. Next up was Cyrus. Even if he pvassaled I was confident with 3 vassaled and closing in on rifling. Cyrus didn't do it so the was was quickly over.
By now it was 1380 AD and I thought I'd wrap this one up quickly as everything had gone so smoothly. But India had got grenadiers and cannons and I lacked gold to upgrade all my cuirs. And he had a ton of units! I let my vassals focus on Greece as I needed all my armies focusing on India. I took out his 1st stack rather easily but then he had like 15 units in each of his next 2 cities and that was one slow slogfest. Sure enough Hammy took care of Greece for me while I took city after city. When finally Greece broke free with 1 city left I thought India would definitely cap with only 4 cities left but that stubborn bastard still refused. As a reward I decided to wipe them both out. Lost made a few turns but it was well worth it. I don't know what Sumeria had been doing as they still didn't have rifling or steel so he folded like a deck of card pretty quickly after I dowed him. If not for India it would have ended almost 200 years earlier
But it was nice to have a super easy game for once. It is so rare you are at the top in scoring by 1 AD on immortal and have Beaurocracy all to myself for over 500 years.
I did get a decent lib date around 900 AD but it is rare that maybe 1 or no AI has paper by then...

 

[Takesitez]

Immortal 1360 AD conquest.

Textbook breakout game for me. I suppose I could've rushed someone, but I was a fool and didn't explore my horses, lol.

Just blocked off my peninsula and expanded peacefully to 6 good cities, went early pottery into early writing straight into Alpha, then maths (didn't chop almost anything before) (no sense waiting for AI with such a start on Immortal), Didn't have marble and stone was a bit far away, so decided to just snatch the Hanging Gardens, decent little wonder for my small empire, it's like having a 7th city. Prioritized an early academy, hit Civil Service 300BC, then first to music, went into caste once I had philo to double farm 2 more scientists (Edu bulb) and 2 Merchants. Hammy was a great sport and built both the Mids and the AP for me, arrived at lib 580AD, attacked Hammy 200 years later with 20 upgraded War Elephants. Played lazily and easily got first to economics and then to rifling without ever stopping the war, until the 1360 Victory screen appeared.

Very relaxing map ! I missed an opportunity here to play for one of my rare Deity wins, but I felt lazy

PICS:

Spoiler The things I did :

Spoiler Decent score :

Spoiler soso cap :

 

[Lazteuq]

Question for Takesitiez

Spoiler :

How did you manage to get Gilgamesh to capitulate? The minimap seems to show he has almost all his land intact. Same with Asoka?

 

[nebux]

he gave back the cities after capitulation.

 

[Takesitez]

Spoiler :

Normally, the answer would be what nebux said, but not in this case. The situation near the end of the game had Asoka as a 10 City Empire, and Sumeria at 10 Cities as well but with Cyrus 4 City vassal.
Asoka however had been at war for awhile already with Alexander, a war I had instigated around 1050 AD whilst I was mopping up Rome, right before I invaded Greece . Apparently the war hadn't been going well for Asoka, since by then he had already lost Vijayanagara to Alex, and I imagine, most of his army. When I declared @1210AD, I immediately took Dehli and Agra on the second and third turn, this happened at the same time I whipped a nationwide round of Cavalry, spiking my power rating by alot. 3 turns later Asoka capitulated as my troops forked Pataliputra and Bombay.
The war against Sumeria was short because of another reason: in the first 4 turns, I whiped his vassal clean off the map, whilst also taking Lagash, where Sumeria had kept their entire SOD, which was absolutely annihilated by my Cav. This massive power hit and war success (Cavalry don't lose many fights compared to Cuirs, which makes a big difference, in end stats you can see I have built 58 cav and only lost 6, compared to losing a whopping 53 out of 89 Cuirs in the earlier wars) was I think the shock and awe that caused Sumeria to throw in the towel 5 turns later, having now lost Kish and being simultaneously threatened at Uruk and Nibru by 2 big stacks.

 

[bdubbs]

Well I just checked back in on this thread for the first time in at least a week and I really have to thank everyone who commented on my game. There was a lot of great advice there. I do have to shout out @Benginal in particular, aside from the thorough step by step guide as to how you rolled the world from my save with detailed screen shots that are extremely helpful it was pretty gratifying to see my game save taken to a strong victory.

After all the feedback I'll have to take another shot at this save and see if I can bring home the win.

There are several obvious flaws in my game, a lot of them are easy to fix like the need to whip more at war time and making use of the supermedic. I was always a peacemonger on lower difficulty settings, most of the time I warred it was for land early in the game. The time that can be wasted moving units around and trying to get a stack together has been my biggest lesson. When coupled with the lack of a supermedic the time it takes to complete wars can be crippling with the snowballing effect of enemy civs having time to build more units and further their tech.

Thanks everyone, when I take the time to play it again I'll let you all know how it goes.

 

[Lazteuq]

Bdubbs, when I fought in this game, I sent many spies in to enemy territory and invaded with several smaller stacks. In my war with Hammy (3rd one), I had mini stacks of cavalry and cuirs positioned to attack 3 different cities on turn 1 of war, and the war was over by t6 or 7. Those mini stacks were the right sizes to attack the defenders without lots of excess. TLDR: spies are useful, even when espionage points aren't.

 

[SittinDown]

Played some more.

Playing on Monarch.

Spoiler :

Defeated Carthage first, then took Babylon's homeland. They had 1 city off in nowhere that eventually vassaled to Casear.

Built the pyramids in Carthage, though I meant to failgold it - then took on caste system and chained a bunch of golden ages together, built 3 academies, and libbed MT.

So far - been pretty fun. Greece DOW on me, and I wasn't really ready, but I switched back to Slavery, and held off his initial attack. Just took Sparta with Curriasers.

It's 1100 AD or so, so I'm moving slow for the MT thing. After MT, I debated going Chemistry and Steel, or going for economics. I decided on Guilds, Banking, and Econ. I think getting cannons sooner would be a lot better though - so I could roll through Caesar, or Persia.

Expecting a space win, as it's getting a little late to roll up on so many other empires, but I do have a substiantial tech lead.

 

[Gumbolt]

Played this out to a 475AD domination win. Normal speed immortal. 308127 score.

Spoiler 475AD immortal win :

Nice and easy game. Love the UU here.

Overran Babylon early on and used mostly chariots against Greeks. Ignored Hannibal and Rome at start. Basically used chariots and pults for Persians mixed with a few axe and HA. Sumerians mainly chariots/HA and pults. Hannibal was only AI to vassel to me. Took Indian capital 2 turns before the finish.

By end turn I was losing 300 gold a turn. Indians would not cap but Hannibal did on turn before last. Gifted him back 3 cities and settled 5-6 cities for land.

Domination was mine.