NC CXXIV Ramesses II of the Egyptians

[rfcfanatic]

50 BC

Spoiler :

The relative weakness of Gandhi made me to believe that War Chariots were actually powerful units. I guess that's not the case in most of the games.

Gandhi has been wiped out. Nothing else but Archers and Chariots I encountered.

 

[blunderwonder]

1AD Imm

Spoiler :

looks like an easy game, i forget my tech order, but i prioritized Bw and AH, first city i settled was the wheat/gems, i just wanted to grab it before ghandi because i had figured if i dint rush i wanted to grab some space. once i saw the copper/cows/corn site i settled that next, followed by one west of the capital to share some cottages. I went after ghandi pretty quick but it didtn work out well... I took the first city/2nd/capital with the first stack of 10 chariots, he had no metal. But by the time i got to the capital it had 60%, and i think it was on a hill? idk, but he had quite a few cg archers, and i got unlucky. In any case, i didnt try to worker steal, i was capturing cities, and sitting on gold till i got libraries/academy up. The cities were so far and i had so little commerce, my units went on strike for 2 turns before i got enough happy resources to work enough tiles to keep it out. Then i crawled to currency, and still managed to win music and tgl.

What really hurt is that even at like 250BC, ghandi dindt have alphabet, and neither did I, so I got nothing but cities and capture gold from him, then 5 or so turns after the war was over, he peace vassaled to izzy Oo. izzy has awful land i think, hes spread around ghandi's 1 city, which a culture bomb with oracle/AP/palace/+shrines or whatever, its annoying culture on delhi now, even with tgl and NE there its insane. I used first gs to academy the capital, and then i used obelisk to grab a great prophet and got the shrine for buddhism which delhi is the capital of. Everyone but izzy is buddhist, and it still only generates 10 gold a turn, but its also the ap religion, so 2hammers a turn from it is nb also. Im trying to figure out if its worth sticking in buddhism even if it pisses off izzy.

Joa settled 3 cities on my continent, all jungle. Im at 10 cities, with 2 more obvious sites to the south. But im in for a pretty lenghty game now, because i got behind in techs. Ill trade music to catch up some, and swtich back and forth in religions to grab trades. Once i get to col im goign to spam courthouses because its looking like it will be awhile before I attack, and ill likely have 20+ cities for a good portion of the game. going to spam misionaries as well though. I think the other continent has 2 religions, so thats good news for me assuming their in different religions. Darius beat me to pacifism by alot so he switched to toasim which is also nice.

The good news is joa is nothing more than a nuisance to me, so once im ready, i can cap ghandi/izzy pretty quickly.

In retrospect, i should have waited for alphabet and a bigger stack before thumping ghandi, i could hvae gotten 4-5 techs out of him for peace instead of nothing, and been able to build research alot earlier.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This was over in the BCs on IMM/Norm

Spoiler :

Took out izzy and took gandhi down to 1 city, using capture gold as a priority towards alpha, letting me fleece gandhi for 4 techs and getting a few techs off Joao/darius too. Gandhi was stuck with 1 tundra hell city, Joao got 2 cities on the continent, and every other city was mine. I just sat on that and won space easily.

 

[blunderwonder]

space win late 1800's, first time i think on Imm Oo, idiot neighboors kept sabotaging my docking station cost me a few turns

 

[Noble Zarkon]

People suggesting this is easy so I've stepped up to Monarch from Prince, Epic speed, No Huts or Events.

Status at 900BC:

Spoiler :

Built a City next to the Stone (anyone know why the Computer wants to build the city ON the stone??) and got the Great Wall while pumping out War Chariots (after building a Barracks and Stable in Thebes), 12 of them were enough to take out Gandhi and his 4 cities. Isabella has 2 cities and I'm at 2.7 power ratio so going after her next.





After Izzy it will be time to consolidate, I usually war early or wait for Tanks but wondering if upgrading my War Chariots to Cuirassers might be the way to go here?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Spoiler :

Is it a good idea to build Barracks / Stable before a WC rush or not? It delays the rush but Flanking I & II can be immensely helpful in helping your Chariots survive by withdrawing.

 

[ben-jammin]

Because it's Egypt I figured this one had to be Deity. To 75BC:

Spoiler :

War Chariots AND Gandhi as the closest neighbour?

I still opened with a worker to get the corn farmed asap and start roading towards the target. The start was sort of awkward for the opening tech path with Animal Husbandry being a top priority but no actual tiles for it. So I decided to actually go pottery to get a couple early cottages up. Worker spent his downtime prepping war roads.

Built a second warrior and had them both hang around Gandhi's borders until a worker showed up, which was immediately stolen. Horses pop in the capital which makes this all too easy. Mining->BW->masonry is the tech path. With a lot of early unit maintenance and capturing cities more distant than we would settle ourselves, very early cottages I think is an ideal move.

One turn after 2000BC I capture the first lightly defended city (bypassing Bombay where Gandhi is stacking his archers):

Then Bombay, which will eventually be my bureau capital for obvious reasons:

Sometime around here Gandhi moved his fearsome stack of 5 archers into the open, which I killed at 90% odds. Very thoughtful of him. Then Palipatutra:

At this point I took a ceasefire because I needed to heal up/build some reinforcements, and Gandhi had stacked a good number of archers in his capital (7 or 8) and probably would have been close to a dozen within a few turns. That would have required around 20 WCs to be safe. So with a ceasefire I know that Gandhi will move some archers out to explore and also probably escort a settler (which he does).

I redeclare and take Delhi with only 4 defenders, one of which wasn't fortified:

Now this cost me a diplo hit with Isabella (the original declaration didn't because it was so early), but she's a religious zealot and adopting her religion will more than make up for this. Joao will get to pleased eventually with Hereditary Rule (his favourite civic), and Darius you don't really have to worry about when you share no borders. I then eliminate Gandhi completely by destroying his just-settled city (which I re-settle a few turns later. Buddhism is adopted which allows me to trade aesthetics for alpha (with a couple turns put into it) with Isabella, and then broker Alpha to all three known AIs.

A nicely placed barb city is taken in the nick of time, with one defender left:

And with one more settler between that city and my capital I'm at 10 cities all with very strong land. Expansion is over and economic recovery is in full swing. Lots of fail gold along with the gems mine (couldnt mine the second one til I traded for IW of course) and early cottage spam got me through all the way from writing to currency, and even to Metal Casting. Self researched that because a)it's a great tech in itself b)none of the civs I've met have it, and c)a Great Artist was born in a far away land, meaning music is less attractive. It opens up this trade:

This is a good trade for several reasons. Happiness is far more limited than the number of good tiles I can work (particularly with cottages spam in 4 of 10 cities). HR gets me a big diplo bonus with Joao, who has a different religion from me and we now share a bunch of borders. Organized Religion means I can spread happiness to the 6 of 10 cities that don't already have buddhism and also means huuuuge amounts of fail gold from repeat building the Moai Statues and the Epics. A total of +200% hammers with the bonus resources, Industrious, OR, and a forge...this can win you games, folks.

It's also a safe trade because one turn later:

All in all this is shaping up to be about the fastest non-pangea Deity game possible. And it's all because of how overpowered War Chariots are. In terms of attack odds against fortified archers, they're essentially a 2-move axeman that's 5 hammers cheaper and can get started even earlier. A total of only 3 settlers built for the game, all of them after rushing and taking 3 cities. So much efficiency.

 

[ben-jammin]

Spoiler :

Is it a good idea to build Barracks / Stable before a WC rush or not? It delays the rush but Flanking I & II can be immensely helpful in helping your Chariots survive by withdrawing.

You would never build a stable because you would never wait for HBR (or even tech it at all, necessarily) to start producing War Chariots. Barracks make sense because there are likely a bunch of turns before hooking up horses in which you have nothing else to build other than
-a settler (a long build and you dont necessarily want or need settlers before a WC rush except to claim horses in the first place)
-a worker (you will be capturing plenty) or
-a warrior (waste of hammers).

The nice thing about 3 experience WCs is that they can often get their second promotion before attacking a city by taking out a barb warrior/archer or enemy archer in the open on the way there.

You also dont want to give all your WCs flanking promotions, I don't use them at all. WCs are already immune to first strikes, they're very cheap to begin with, and a badly damaged unit that retreats will probably be healing while reinforcements move on to the next city anyway. Combat II gives you something like 30% win/10% retreat odds against a fortified archer in a walled city, which is already excellent.

 

[Strickl3r]

Deity normal -> Conquest 1640

I think it was my first nobels club map that i have won on deity...

Spoiler :

After WC Rush vs Ghandi i took out Izzy ~600 Ad and Jao+Darius ~900 AD with Cuirrassiers.
Darius was the only reasonable person on this map, he gave in after just 1 city. The rest of the guys didn't do me that favor. Had some arty+infantry in the end, but mainly used cavalary and airships on the other continent. Still only had galleons, but the other continent was behind anyway, but nappy beelined steel+rifling and those guys had billions of units on their continent when i arrived there^^

The map is obv very easy

 

[dalamb]

Monarch, Epic

Spoiler a question for warmongers :

I conquered India with war chariots in 2100 BC (with only Memphis) then went on to get Spain in 1200 (with Delhi, Heliopolis 1N of stone, Thebes 1W of copper) -- only to totally crash my economy. Should I have waited until CoL and built courthouses, or currency to build before going after Spain? Or do I just chug along with near-zero until I can get some cottages to grow?

Edit: I removed the saves; I'm getting a lot of space used up for attachments, so am going through and deleting (almost) everything but the NC .zip files.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Monarch, Epic

Spoiler a question for warmongers :

I conquered India with war chariots in 2100 BC (with only Memphis) then went on to get Spain in 1200 (with Delhi, Heliopolis 1N of stone, Thebes 1W of copper) -- only to totally crash my economy. Should I have waited until CoL and built courthouses, or currency to build before going after Spain? Or do I just chug along with near-zero until I can get some cottages to grow?

Spoiler @ Dalamb :

Will be interested to see the answers you get, also playing Monarch, Epic - Gandhi and Izzy are gone and my economy is wrecked. Two Indian cities are building research until I get to Currency, Madrid is about to pop a Great Prophet who can create the Hindu Shrine which will help.

 

[ben-jammin]

Monarch, Epic

Spoiler a question for warmongers :

I conquered India with war chariots in 2100 BC (with only Memphis) then went on to get Spain in 1200 (with Delhi, Heliopolis 1N of stone, Thebes 1W of copper) -- only to totally crash my economy. Should I have waited until CoL and built courthouses, or currency to build before going after Spain? Or do I just chug along with near-zero until I can get some cottages to grow?

Even at monarch it doesn't make any sense to attack and keep distant cities just because you can if you don't have either CoL or Currency to make up for the maintenance. And now settling more of your own cities closer will increase the maintenance of every city including the distant ones that are actually dragging you down. And they'll keep dragging you down until you reach those techs, which takes longer because they're dragging you down. It's a vicious cycle that can actually lead to unwinnable positions at higher levels because you overextended early. On deity for example if you're not in a position to at least get through currency with your capture gold there's a good chance you've totally screwed yourself and will never catch up.

You can help yourself by disbanding any units you don't need for barb defense and city garrison duty. High food/low production cities can whip libraries to run 2 scientists (if a tile doesnt have better than 4 total commerce/production tiles they can work, a scientist is better than building research). Scientists also beat out cottages short-term because they're 3 beakers up front, whereas a riverside non financial cottage will only provide 3 beakers after 10 turns, and then only when you're able to run the slider at 100%. In a situation where you're struggling with a low slider, specialists and building research are really the only viable options.

Build the pyramids if you still can, rep can get you out of even the deepest hole.

 

[Strickl3r]

Monarch, Epic

Spoiler a question for warmongers :

I conquered India with war chariots in 2100 BC (with only Memphis) then went on to get Spain in 1200 (with Delhi, Heliopolis 1N of stone, Thebes 1W of copper) -- only to totally crash my economy. Should I have waited until CoL and built courthouses, or currency to build before going after Spain? Or do I just chug along with near-zero until I can get some cottages to grow?

Did you just crush them in one stroke or have you made peace before they were wiped out and got some techs?
Not sure how much you can get on monarch or if alpha is available at that point, but i would leave them 1-2 citys most of the times and get some techs first before finishing them off.

Also get failgold from maoui statues, with chops and whip overflow in your coastal citys. Stone+Ind makes it pretty easy to get 300-500 gold out of that single early NW.

As mentioned already, hard research will get you to currency. Normally you should tech currency with the gold from captured citys.

 

[blunderwonder]

Organized Religion means I can spread happiness to the 6 of 10 cities that don't already have buddhism and also means huuuuge amounts of fail gold from repeat building the Moai Statues and the Epics. A total of +200% hammers with the bonus resources, Industrious, OR, and a forge...this can win you games, folks.

does this work?

I havnt tried anything like that for a long time, once i built sistine chapel in like 2-3 cities to about 2-3 turns till completion, and in my capital i just decided to get it because i wanted the gold asap, and it was only a few turns to finish, but then i got no fail gold from the other cities

/e I will be excited to see the answer to this as well, because theres quite a few sort of useless national wonders like mt rushmore etc, and i could repeat build HE in bunches of cities Oo I also dont see the harm in building oxford 3 or 4 times before i put it in my capital. It seems like something i would have seen in a video but I havnt.

 

[ben-jammin]

does this work?

I havnt tried anything like that for a long time, once i built sistine chapel in like 2-3 cities to about 2-3 turns till completion, and in my capital i just decided to get it because i wanted the gold asap, and it was only a few turns to finish, but then i got no fail gold from the other cities

/e I will be excited to see the answer to this as well, because theres quite a few sort of useless national wonders like mt rushmore etc, and i could repeat build HE in bunches of cities Oo I also dont see the harm in building oxford 3 or 4 times before i put it in my capital. It seems like something i would have seen in a video but I havnt.

Delaying Oxford would not be worth the hammers if you have a really strong location for it. Think of all the beakers you're losing. Repeat building wonders works and gives you 1:1 hammers:gold in every city in which you put hammers towards them. I've gotten over 2000 failgold from the Sistine Chapel before, and it's pretty easy to get ~1000 from each of the Epics. It's why if you have the industrious trait you would always build a wonder over wealth (50% better return) even without the resource boost.

It's particularly handy in the lead-up to cuirs/cav/rifles/cannons/whatever, in which you normally have access to a number of resource boosted wonders (Sankore, Angor Wat, Sistine Chapel etc) that will often be built by the AI in time for the failgold to be used to upgrade waiting units. Between those and the national epics it can be the equivalent of 2 or 3 GM trade missions. And earlier wonders like Chichen Itza, Shwadegon Paya, Parthenon etc can provide timely gold to power through what you can't bulb leading up to Lib.

 

[Tall German Joe]

does this work?

I havnt tried anything like that for a long time, once i built sistine chapel in like 2-3 cities to about 2-3 turns till completion, and in my capital i just decided to get it because i wanted the gold asap, and it was only a few turns to finish, but then i got no fail gold from the other cities

/e I will be excited to see the answer to this as well, because theres quite a few sort of useless national wonders like mt rushmore etc, and i could repeat build HE in bunches of cities Oo I also dont see the harm in building oxford 3 or 4 times before i put it in my capital. It seems like something i would have seen in a video but I havnt.

yeah, you absolutely get it. its a really abusable tactic with industrious civs (and montezuma).

 

[Strickl3r]

Az does it in his vids from time to time with the earlier NWs. He whips them to get the max hammers and then switches the same turn and builds them elsewhere.

 

[learner gamer]

Monarch, Epic

Spoiler a question for warmongers :

I conquered India with war chariots in 2100 BC (with only Memphis) then went on to get Spain in 1200 (with Delhi, Heliopolis 1N of stone, Thebes 1W of copper) -- only to totally crash my economy. Should I have waited until CoL and built courthouses, or currency to build before going after Spain? Or do I just chug along with near-zero until I can get some cottages to grow?

Spoiler :

@dalamb: What was your tech path after the worker techs? And specifically, what was / were the tech (or techs) that you researched after writing? If you're going to crash your economy – either by RExxing or warring - then @Strickl3r has nailed it. Currency then becomes the key tech to focus on – and ideally you want to be getting there via alpha (or trading to get alpha) so you can build research or wealth to keep your economy afloat.

 

[rfcfanatic]

1922 AD Domination victory. My first victory on Emperor.

Spoiler :

Well, that was relatively easy game. I'd say a lot easier than the victory of my first Monarch game which I also played as Ramesses.

Spoiler screenshot :

Score:

Spoiler score :

Power graph:

Spoiler power graph :

Statistics:

Spoiler statistics :

Top cities:

Spoiler top cities :

After wiping out Gandhi I built more Workers than usual and spammed cottages. As a result, my economy recovered quite well. Judaism and Hinduism shrine gold also helped a lot. I missed Liberalism, but still, I got Rifles and Cannon in 1400s. Declared on Izzy in 1580 AD and on Joao in early 1700s. Izzy got completely eliminated after a lenghty war. From Joao I accepted capitulation after taking Lisbon.

After a century of recovery, I declared on GK in early 1900s with this stack:

Spoiler invasion force :

and capped him quickly. Next I applied the same strategy of accepting quick capitulations when dealing with Napoleon and Saladin. The tech picture of Saladin didn't make any sense at all:

Spoiler AI techs :

Saladin didn't even have Rifling Just for a case I checked if my game settings were correct and it seems that they were:

Spoiler game settings :

NobleZarkon, thanks for the map!

By the way, may I ask a question - is 500 BC too late for War Chariot rush?

 

[Robert FIN]

@rfcfanatic: Congratulations for 1st Emperor win! Greatly done!

@dalamb, NobleZarkon: Hehe, we all mapmakers are currently playing on Monarch, I moved up too!

My own 1st Monarch game, Hut/Events on, 750BC:

Spoiler :

Trying my BUG/BM Mod at the 1st time too, Thanks to the guys who helped me to get it running! I SiPed at the first turn.


Here are the closest neightbors:



and Gandhi...

I saw a great chance to crush the weakling neightbors with early WarCahriot rush. I settled another city (Cairo) and started to build the stack. I was ready soon with stack of HAs and WCs. I already built a road to Gandhi's cities so it was fast to move there. DoWed him and here are the results:





Done. There was Izzy behind him and I had horsies left so I decided to take the another peacemonger out to ensure my first Monarch victory!!

Results:








That's it. Now I'm gonna fight against the maintenance costs and see what happens! !

Map:
Classic Egypt:

Old India:

Old Spain:

I'm happy that I made myself to Monarch player! I feel good! Thanks for all who have supported me, there's still much to learn!

Help would be nice! Save: