NC CLXXXI - Suleiman - Ottoman Empire

[nate46]

played to 650 bc (IMM, Normal):

Spoiler :

I had to restart my game because I forgot to save my previous one! I did it a little different this time. There were less forests to chop in Edirne in this playthrough, so i ended up slow building my 5th settler in ankara this time. I only built 2 libraries instead of 3. Although it came out pretty well... i built the 5th city in a different place, too... babylon didn't build his cities anywhere near me. I have one Granary, in Ankara, which really needs it for the health. Going to build a hammam there after the palace, then a library finally.

Declard on babylon @ 800 bc with 6 catapults and 8 chariots and 5 cities. Took his cap 650 after bombing down his city wall defenses. Got the stonehenge.

Nobody has alphabet yet, but hoping i can trade currency for it when someone does. Used my first two great scientists for two academies, one in Istanbul and the other in Ankara, which will soon be my bureau cap. Teching towards code of laws and bureaucracy.

 

[nate46]

to 1 AD (IMM, Normal):

Spoiler :

OK, so besides the 2 cities i kept, babylon managed to build 4 complete garbage cities on hills. I decided to raze them all because i really wanted to get rid of the babylonian culture in babylon, which now has a great library and will soon be my GP factory city. I lost most of my army but thats ok its was just a bunch of cats and chariots. Wiped him off the map a couple turns ago. Only one CR 3 cat left, the rest died (2 of which were to 85%+ rolls :/ ). I'll probably just go for cavalry, anyway.

I have a great scientist waiting to bulb education, going to try to get oxford soon. Ragnar declared war on gandhi. Gandhi is somehow holding his own... not really sure whats going on, you'd think he'd be ragnar's vassal by now. It might be because i traded him construction.

 

[bdubbs]

@Nate46 its surprising to see

Spoiler :

Gandhi holidng his own against ragnar

In my game nobody has gone to war but me.

Spoiler :

Ragnar has 12 cities and Charly has 9 courtesy of the barbs. Ragnar is now boxing me in to my current area, not that it's a problem now that I have 10 cities of my own. Seems like I was just a little late to taking over a piece of the northern jungle.

The political situation is a little strange because of how religions spread though, could use a little advise about how to proceed.

Spoiler :

Right now I'm cautious with everyone but Gandhi who is at pleased because I haven't picked a religion yet. Rags is Hindu which I am now the founder of courtesy of Hammy. Charly and Gandhi went judaism, Willem is buddhist, and there's still a civ I haven't met yet.


Rags is probably the biggest threat and the one I'd like to avoid going to war with at the moment the most because he now has the closest border to me. He's also probably going to be the least useful as a trade partner. I refused a demand from him earlier so I'm already -1 with him, and I can see a situation in the near future where he's asking me to go to war with gandhi and / or Charly who are both annoyed with him. If I refuse then I'm going to move up his hitlist and are inviting charly and gandhi to request that I join the war on Rags which would hurt my rep with both of them if I refuse.

I'm just not sure how to play it politically other than possibly trying to bait rags into a war with the civ I haven't met yet. Part of the problem is just not knowing the enemy AI well enough.

Can someone post the link to the strategy article that gives you detailed info on every civ? The one that rates how likely they are to build units / wonders on a 1-10 scale and how many techs you can trade before WFYABTA and all that? I've been scanning the strategy articles and tried googling it but I'm having trouble locating it.

Edit: found the guide, about to favorite this sucker. I kind of want to stay no religion but I'm giving up a potential production bonus from organized religion. Any opinions would be appreciated the reasoning is

Spoiler :

Rags can declare at pleased and is a sucky trade partner. If war breaks out between Rags Charly and / or Gandhi then it should help take the heat off me. On the other hand going hindu gives me a production bonus plus a gold bonus for the holy city and the only civs I'll take a large penalty with (unknown civ not counted) is Charly.

 

[Benginal]

Useful for everyone:

Kossin has the link in his signature to a variety of files. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9030955&postcount=11

If that's not your style, Kaitzilla's overview of each leader is usually sufficient. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=478563

 

[Powerfaker]

Moving on from 65BC to 1300AD.

Spoiler :

With 8 cities and Hammy a vassal a phase of peaceful build up passed. Science rate is somewhat poor because cap is HE city with farms+mines. Reached Lib 685AD. Took Nat. Got GP through trade same turn. Ragnar had dowed Charly 600AD and I thought I shouldn't wait any longer and join now with basically trebs and HA's still, but Janissaries on the way and cuirs not far away either (as it went 920AD).

I quickly seize 2 outlier cities but then Charly turns out a massive obstacle. Ragnar's army vaporises and he leaves the war 800AD. I'm facing truckloads of landsknecht/knights/cats/phants. I'm stuck in defense for a long time with only slightly better units so I lose some with every attack. It is 1140AD when I finally go offensive and win the first mayor siege defeating some 25-30 units. That didn't mean his power crumbled. I'm forced to progress slowly and when I'm standing next to his cap (with janissaries upgraded to rifles) it''s loaded with another 25-30 units. The battle is won and that was 2 turns ago. I expect, hope, this war will come to an end soon now. War weariness makes it expensive business.

Science rate is still poor. I'll need to attack Ragnar soon after Charly to maintain a solid position (and win eventually)

 

[bdubbs]

Frustration Defeat: 1836 AD

Spoiler :

I was tired of the military conquests and decided I'd rather take a shot at space than a cuir or cavalry rush. It was going pretty well albeit very slowly. Everyone but charly eventually took free religion, Willem vassaled to Rags, Gandhi peace vassled to Charly and they warred it out on and off for 600 years. I had a solid tech advantage even with only 9 cities and a few components of my spaceship ready.

What I hadn't done was saved in at least an hour and a half, Charly requested I go to war with Rags and I accidentally said yes with a misclick. Could I move into slavery and hold him off until I can make peace? Almost definitely, but I don't think I will. Serves me right for not striking when I had Cavs vs LB's

 

[shakabrade]

@Izuul

GG.

@bdubbs

If you misclick, why don't you reload?
Honestly, I wouldn't hesitate.

 

[Fippy]

Autosave should be not older than 5 turns too?

Reloading on misclicks is fine, we have gotm and HoF sections for games where you cannot do so.

 

[shakabrade]

Autosave should be not older than 5 turns too?

Is that some rule? Anyway, it is quite a tedium to go that far. Especially if you micro at any level.

Reloading on misclicks is fine, we have gotm and HoF sections for games where you cannot do so.

Yeah, that is why I crawl through official games.
Edit: Actually my only HoF entry, Deity Domination was done in 8 hours. I guess micro is the sole reason for doubled play time and also mistakes. People, don't micro.

 

[Izuul]

My favorite is selecting a stack of units and accidentally clicking the explore button.

 

[shakabrade]

My favorite is selecting a stack of units and accidentally clicking the explore button.

Oh yeah! Every game. Probably because of automatic unit cycling when it switches from Army to workers (fortify, fortify, fortify, fortify, fortify, sh*t, reload).

 

[Fippy]

I have autosave set to every turn, need that in gotm games in case of crashes

Copy:
In Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV.ini, search for "save" you should find
Code:

AutoSaveInterval = 4

Can be set to = 1

 

[shakabrade]

I have autosave set to every turn, need that in gotm games in case of crashes

Copy:
In Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV.ini, search for "save" you should find
Code:

AutoSaveInterval = 4

Can be set to = 1

I set them to 0 to force myself make less mistakes. Now I manually save almost every turn and must delete ton of files frequently.

 

[bdubbs]

So I didn't even realize autosave was a thing . It was probably stupid to think I could win the space race with 9 cities. I had a chance, but things turned around out of my favor. True defeat in 1951 AD

Spoiler :

So I haven't played a game out past rifles and cannons in a pretty long time considering I just started playing again more recently and have spent most of my time trying to keep getting better at ending the game as early as possible.

I knew time wasn't on my side and my tech lead would dwindle over time and I underestimated just how many beakers you need to get all the techs for a space win. I hoped by keeping Rags and Charly at odds the whole game it would slow down tech enough that it didn't matter and I could just get the late win. What I wasn't counting on was Charly all of a sudden wrecking ragnar in 10 turns and capping him and Willem.

Probably should have realized Rags wasn't on tech parity and seen if I could feed him any good military techs when I had the chance. Anyway Charly declared on me the turn after my rocket went up, it was still a long way from victory. I literally had nothing but a handful of cavs with the whole world bearing down on me.

Guess I'll be spending some more time in the strategy articles section and looking over some of your write ups. I think I have pretty much narrowed down the culprit of my troubles though, and it's basically the micro managing of cities for better whipping. For example I think it's Benginal's write up where he has 9-10 cities after taking out the closest neighbor and techs to Cavs. When he goes to whip he's 2 pop whipping in almost all of his cities on the same turn.

When I try and build units they are always coming out on different turns, some cities have almost no hammers or not enough food to grow more and support the hammers while a few others can slow build them in 3-5 turns. You guys somehow get a tech and then have an army 10 turns later and don't waste as much time waiting for units to get to the stack by building units in bunches.

It makes sense. By cavs and 9 cities 2 pop whipping twice doesn't seem like a tall order, but a lot of my cities were going to need 12-15 turns to slow build a cav so getting the hammers up for a 2 pop whip just seems slow by comparison. I can see that doing things more quickly is literally everything in this game, and I get things done too slowly to keep up.

I've gotten pretty decent at the opening turns and the different types of B.C. rushes but after that my game falls off hard. I can win the lib race pretty much every game no problem, and sometimes to cavs over cuirs. But even this game I don't think I managed to do that until 1200 AD. Combine that with having trouble whipping out armies fast enough and any wars I fight in that era are hard fought and definitely aren't carrying me to a win. Gotta keep practicing, still only have 1 win on emp!

And this is a complete nub question but last round was the round I learned the value of the supermedic, how does the heal while moving promotion work? It doesn't seem like my stacks are healing while they move

 

[MeowZeDung]

And this is a complete nub question but last round was the round I learned the value of the supermedic, how does the heal while moving promotion work? It doesn't seem like my stacks are healing while they move

I believe march only affects the unit that took that promotion, not the stack like the other medic promotions do.

 

[Benginal]

To Cultural Victory -- Turn 278 -- Deity

Spoiler :

Having played the map and read the other write-ups already I wanted to try a deity game. I planned from the beginning to try for a culture win. My thinking was that I would only have one bordering AI and he didn't declare at pleased. If I could keep myself safe from Ragnar and Charlemagne I should be fine. Things went basically according to plan and I took a late win.

The empire at 1AD:



No religions yet which was super frustrating. I probably should have gotten a second scientist and used him to bulb Philosophy -- the first was used to build an Academy -- but I was hoping to get only artists. I was able to found Taoism, though, and got a religion that way.





Babylonian culture was annoying. But after settling a few artists in Edirne I got all those flood plains. And since Hammy built and worked cottages for me it didn't really slow me down to much.

Finally got Buddhism in 225 AD.



That gave me four religions. I also got infected by Confucianism and was able to self-tech Divine Right. I got beaten to Sistine by three turns -- not having Marble hurt.

Charlemagne DOWed Hammy. I made some trouble:





Best Frands!



Most of the game was just being careful with diplomacy trying to make sure I didn't get involved in anything too damaging.

The legendary cities:



Apollo founded:



But there was so much warring between relatively equal powers that the AIs teched so slowly.



Hit enter...

 

[abrakebabra]

Monarch.

0BC + early moves

Spoiler :

Warrior moves 1 SE, see no reason not to SIP ... so SIP it is. Looks a bit food poor midterm, but thats not a problem for now. Set research to animal husbandry for the cows, and then expect to go for mining while my warrior heads NE to start scouting a Northern loop.

Not a move I'd normally make, but decided that with the fast settlers and the long time it takes to farm flood plains, I'd grow to 2 and put a blocker city in to claim the flood plains and land to the north for future development. So developed the cows first and then gold while growing to size 2 then starting the settler.

I was shooting for horse archers; half way to HBR and about to commit to the rush when I but became concerned that it was turn 57 and we hadn't met anyone else yet and might be isolated. I check spy points and we're even which supports this. Not wanting to lose the tech discounts and trading, I switched the peaceful option, settled the stone and chopped out the Pyramids.

Missed the 0BC point, but here we are at 225BC.

Spoiler :

An angry Charlamange turns up at some point, but I'm happy teching and begging from my Jewish brother Hammurabi.

Planning to beeline treb's and try to vassal them both. I'm about to use my 2nd GS to bulb philosophy and deciding whether the take the jungle city for the resources, or just leave it to the other civs while I whip together an army.

 

[ym123]

First time playing Noble Clubs Game,

Spoiler :

Never Played on fractals( I hate transporting units so i normally play pangea )

4000BC: I think i'm going for domination/conquest( Warmonger ). i will settle in the starting position and i will farm the flood plains as a food resource.
since there is so many hills in the starting position i'm pretty sure that there is some copper near me so i'm going for axe rush,
My tech path: Mining > Bronze working > Animal Husbandry > Writing/Pottery
I'm not sure if AH into writing is a good tech path but since there is two gold in the starting position and ALOT of production i'm not going for Pottery > Writing

 

[ym123]

900 BC

Spoiler :

Got SUPER lucky and got Pottery because of a hut ( got it by border expansion )
Met Babylonian, Holy Roman and the viking ( Both the holy roman and the viking are far away from me )
My axemen rush failed the nearest copper was in Babylonian borders luckily there was a lot of horses
so i finished my settler and settled a coastal city next to calm and horse

Improved the horses and connected it then got some chariots and destroyed the Babylonian empire and got the Stonehenge
Got iron working from the holy roman ( demanded it )

 

[ym123]

So I have got a question: how can i attack anyone if we are so far away ? ( 14 turns to the nearest enemy )