NC CXXVI Hannibal

[pomthom]

1936 AD

It seems that I'm going to lose that game The price of capturing 3 AI cities has been 50 Artillery units getting wiped out. NobleZarkon, thanks for the map. The early game was really fun but I screwed up in the late game.

Spoiler :

Come on man I'm sure all is not lost! Losing 50 Arties is a pain but look at the size of your empire you can rebuild the same stack in no time if that's what you want.

Which victory are you aiming for?

 

[dalamb]

@pigswill:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the advice re islands -- but I can't see how to survive without courthouses, given that without building wealth I run at negative gpt at a 0% slider.

 

[pigswill]

@dalamb.

Spoiler :

I played a few turns, got up to 40% research, -5gpt. It works fine, don't build a courthouse anywhere unless a city costs 8gpt+. Also delete most of your archers,and warriors, more than 1 mp unit per city is a waste of resources before HR and even then only necessary once a city has reached its happy cap. FFS switch off 'avoid growth' in every city at once and never ever use it again, there's always stuff to be whipped or specialists to run. Worth researching calendar, you've got plenty of calendar resources for higher caps and tile yields.

 

[dalamb]

@pigswill:

Spoiler :

Thanks for taking the trouble to work with my save -- but I must be dense, because I don't think I understand your comment. I do understand about running library specialists to get a decent tech rate even with a low slider, but I think my problem is needing to build wealth because of negative per turn even at 0% on the slider. Did you need cities to build wealth -- in which case, they couldn't also build libraries. Or did you solve the "negative gpt" problem some other way?

 

[pigswill]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

An easy way to cut costs is to disband lots of weak units (you can use NCs as MP units) until you've got your economy fixed. Go through each city and allocate tiles to high hammer or high commerce, if you've got citizens working naff tiles then whip them away. Just one pop1 island city did indeed add 15gpt through +1gpt per city. I certainly did build wealth in quite a few cities and only bult/whipped libraries in a few. What I didn't do was build courthouses or more units.

None of these measures individually sorted the economy but in combination they did.

 

[dalamb]

@NZ: in the first post you linked to the 2nd cycle bullpen instead of the third; would you please fix it?

 

[ben-jammin]

Deity 1916 culture victory. The most boring kind of game, though it got interesting right near the end...

Spoiler :

GLighthouse abuse was ridiculous this game, with 1 tile island cities producing 50+ beakers. I also popped a second goldmine and third gems mine, i ncase the trade routes weren't already enough The tech pace was slow with the whole world but me at war from astronomy onward. Caesar expanded to over 20 cities and started to dominate. He eventually declared on Sury (second highest in score) and absolutely nuked the out of him.

Once he vassaled England he dropped down to cautious with me and almost immediately demanded all my gold. I declined and he declared. It would have been his massive numbers of nukes/modern armour/mech infantry/mobile artillery vs my garrisoned troops, mostly chariots and warriors He'd have surely taken every one of my cities within a single turn....but my third city went legendary as soon as I pressed end turn.

Only beat Wang to culture by 4 turns

Almost as many Great People as military units produced this game, and that's only because I got two barb cities

 

[Choggy]

Immortal (Normal/NH/NE) 1848 Dom/Conquest Victory.

Spoiler :

Managed to grab the copper and the horses on the mainland before being hemmed in so went GLH/Colossus spamming the surrounding islands with GLib coming from grabbing the stone/marble site early on. JC helped out by founding Hinduism and then spreading it to both me and Sury, Sury then obliged by building the AP so I could get some AP hammer buildings whipped out on those tiny islands.

Bulbed Astro (720AD) so I could whip out galleons for even more GLH island cities before taking Communism from Lib to save my sinking economy (1320AD) and then went Cuirr stompling over the pair of them. Took the Mids from WK's capital and went Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy for Charismatic unit XP abuse and stayed there all game.

I hadn't made my mind up what VC condition to take until quite late - it just so happened that I got Cumbustion about the same time I capped JC so rather than go Space Race win I decided to build a load of transports and destroyers and then went on a grand capping tour of the world - first WK, then Ragnar quickly followed by Vicky before finally slugging it out with Toku for the win.

Screenshots:

The kill stats.

Spoiler :

JC and Toku build a few rifles...

Final Score.

Spoiler :

...and a nice early Mausoleum of Maulossus

Spoiler :

Overall it was quite fun, even if managing that many cities took some time. Cheers for the map Noble Zarkon, it was a good one for Hannibal.

 

[JSS]

Spoiler :

I played this on Immortal up until when I got about 30 cities before taking a single city from the other two leaders on my continent. The AI tech pace was horrible.

I was going to sweep my continent with the help of Kremlin + rush buy -> sid's sushi + rep powered research to win space, but got bored. The game, played correctly, would've taken a few more hours, and it was all about execution at that point. The path to victory was clear, so I didn't bother.

Wonders went very late. I managed to get GLH, GL, Mids, MoM. Basically all the essential wonders. Didn't build the Colossus because I had the Great Lighthouse, so I bulbed Astronomy in the early ADs.

 

[dalamb]

So, I sufficiently disliked my previous situation that I backed up and took another route:

Spoiler :

I didn't invade Sury this time; instead I went for settling the islands and building up infrastructure there:

I did manage the GLH but lost the Colossos; I got the Mausoleum and am far enough ahead in techs that I expect I can get Nationalism and the Taj.

As of 1120 AD I've circumnavigated, met all the AIs, and am teching well at 70% slider with -4pt. Unfortunately I was recently told:

which is backed up by the demographics:

And the charts say:

I'm weaker than both my co-religionists on the home continent; can either of them declare at Pleased? Which they are because of same religion and various concessions I've made over the centuries. I have no idea of the strength of the overseas AI, and won't for a long time because I generate little per turn -- in fact I've been building courhouses just for the EP, despite not being up to the -8 mantenance level that pigswill suggested.

I'm 1 turn from Liberalism and wondering whether it is safe to wait for a more expensive tech. The AI tech situation:

I read this as: Vicky, Ragnar, Julius, and Tokugawa lack Philosophy so are far behind in the Liberalism race. Wang lacks Education, so I can wait a while for him. I'm not so sure about Sury, though; does his lack of Code of Laws mean he's very far behind on the path to Education?

I'm running HR/Bureaucracy/Caste/Decentralization/OrgRel, which I switched to during the golden age from the Music GA. The diplomatic situation:

Ragnar and Toku hate me because I traded for Victoria's map (which led to circumnavigation the next round!) Vicky and Wang like me because of my giving them some fairly old techs (or selling them at a low price, in Vicky's case).

And a puzzlement I hope somebody can clear up:

Spoiler :

I think I may have figured out a piece of mechanics I didn't understand before. I was told island cities paid for themselves. When I build island cities in most games with the GLH, running a high slider (70% in this game), they lost gpt instead of gaining any. I eventually noticed the total did go up noticeably. So, was this just a result of where the slider happened to be at the time? They would have paid for themselves in if the slider had been lower?

Plans, on which I'd appreciate comment:

Spoiler :

I think I need to lib or tech Astronomy, and work on settling that empty western continent, with the Iron city first so I can build cuirassiers if I decide I need to invade my neighbours. Here's my first cut at a dotmap:

Any good alternatives I've missed?

But is building up a military a higher priority? I'm weaker than both neighbours. I can fairly easily switch my 4-6 best production cities to military units (the three mainland cities, plus Leptis, Kerkouane, and Hippo).

Are Numidians obsolete at this point? JC appears to have Feudalism, but Sury doesn't ( not quite; he can research it), so I wouldn't be facing longbows or pikemen. Just a lot of spears; his copper and iron are far away. I could build macemen and soon could get Engineering and trebs, using the Numidians to race overland to kill off his metals. They could start north of Cumae and get the iron on the first turn, but the copper is a few turns away (4, by my count).

Do I have too little production for Space? I might start getting behind in the tech race because so many AI are bigger than me. Does that mean I really need to conquer my continent sometime reasonably soon?

 

[Shalvan]

Hm, so again, I'm too lazy to play 20 turns and post. I know it's the best way to improve, but still...

Started a game at Monarch (still can't win every time). This is my third attempt. On the first I got crushed by a huge army of one of my neighbours despite being a bit ahead, on the second I just didn't like how slow was the pace of the game.

Spoiler :

I settled in place and started by researching Hunting (no farmable tiles nearby and hunting is needed to get Numidians, also it's cheaper than agri so it was a faster way to get the pigs). I decided to build work boat while working pigs to grow to 2 asap, then work the PH forested hill. Following that I built another 2 WBs to get all the seafood tiles. My warrior stole Sury's worker. Utica was founded near the horses and hadrumetum very soon after. I got stonehenge which saved me a lot of hammers in the early game, then I built the GLH. I stole another worker from Julius and expanded south, then waged war on Julius getting Cumae and Rome which were in good spots, then capped him. I also got one inland city, but lost it stupidly by attacking Sury who, as it turned out, had some huge ballista elephant stacks. I lost Utica, but managed to claim it back with my brand-new trebs, pikes, maces and longbows (sic! xD). At this point I was finishing colonizing the islands, also got heroic epic and moai in Carthage and it was a production powerhouse, spitting units 1 turn each for the rest of the game. I lost the Lib race (my fault probably) to Wang Kon, but I was still ahead. Wang took astronomy with the Lib and traded it to me right away for some expensive tech, then I tried hard to maintain open borders with everyone to take advantage of my GLH Cothon Free Market madness. I colonized the islands to the west and to the south-west, but Ragnar was faster and took the FP spot (Odense). Later I got into a war with him where I took Odense with tanks while he was defending it with one machine gun and some cavalry and rifles. After this war I started building powerful military (for the first time I built quite a lot of carriers and fighters - it was fun to play as a naval superpower with stacks of destroyers, battleships and carriers filled with fighters -later jet fighters, and later, when I planned an invasion, I built transports and filled them with marines and some tanks).

I researched Corporation pretty late as I wanted to maintain my GLH bonus, but when I finally did I founded both Mining.inc and Sid's Sushi in Cumae (which had a nice number of towns already - i ran automated workers, too lazy xD) and built Wall Street alongside all the improvements to gold income there. I spread the corporations to all my cities and - because I had a lot of seafood - i was surprised by how much it actually costs me. And I learned that Courthouse can actually make Corps cheaper to maintain. Anyway, my cities grew crazy big with the huge food bonus and mining gave me those sweet sweet hammers. I didn't manage to spread it everywhere yet, but I doubt there's a point. The game is close to over even though Ragnar DoWed me again. When he did, I quickly made peace with Toku - I barely managed to sail to his shores and raze Yokohama, eh.

Overall, awesome game, awesome map. Save attached, I started building spaceship parts as it seems unlikely to be able to conquer all at this stage and I didnt really push culture.

Spoiler :

Wang Kon

is at a similar stage of building the spaceship, but my hammers are vastly superior I think I can also still DoW him (though it would hurt my precious trade routes) to stop his space advances and try to win time, which I never actually did before

 

[dalamb]

@Shalvan: Nice writeup, but could you put it in spoiler tags?

 

[Choggy]

@Dalamb:

Spoiler :

You're miles ahead in the tech race - the tech path for Lib is Civil Service/Feudalism->Paper->Education and none of the AI even have Paper yet. With Education being such a big tech the AI will often ignore it for a while anyway if you've got it first so you can delay it quite a bit. Just keep checking the AI tech trade table and keep an eye on when one of them gets Education.

Sadly, both Sury and JC can DoW at pleased so if you're worried about them attacking you then bribe one to go to war with the other to reduce their diplo rating with each other (JC is a good candidate for this as he's a war-monger) or just go and attack them yourself.

Regarding your dotmap - the blue/red sites won't work as they're only 2 squares apart. I think you could also split the Pig/Fish site into 2 GLH cities coastal cities. When people say that a city can pay for itself, what they generally mean (as I understand it) is that when that city builds wealth it can cover its' own maintenance cost. One of the great thing about GLH cities are that the trade routes alone means this is normally possible - even a 1 pop city will pay for itself, although watch out for Colony maintenance costs - if these start getting too high then beeline Communism and run State Property.

 

[Shalvan]

@Dalamb:

Spoiler :

One of the great thing about GLH cities are that the trade routes alone means this is normally possible - even a 1 pop city will pay for itself, although watch out for Colony maintenance costs - if these start getting too high then beeline Communism and run State Property.

Spoiler :

Wouldn't just building Versailles or Forbidden Palace in there suffice? I got Versailles on the south end of the starting continent and Forbidden Palace on the island to the south-west. It really helped reduce the maintenance. As much as I like State Property for huge empires - production bonus, workshop bonus and ignoring distance to palace are amazing - it really doesn't fit thematically with Hannibal, as Carthage was a maritime trade superpower. I'd probably defy if someone wanted to set environmentalism as a global civic xD 25% additional cost for corporations would easily kill me.

 

[Choggy]

@Shalvan

Spoiler :

Building Forbidden Palace on that island in the short-term is a good move, however in the longer term if you are pursuing a GLH-based ecomony with lots of coastal based island cities on different islands you really do want to be getting to Communism asap as it does make a huge difference to your economy. It's quite easy to Lib Communism too if you already have Astro as it only then needs Scientific Method. Versailles is debatable though - the pre-tech tech is pretty much useless apart from trade-bait and it's often easier to wait for another AI civ to build it and then go capture that city.

 

[Shalvan]

@Choggy

Spoiler :

What about the corporations? Are they not worth it with a large empire? I think the food and hammers provided can really outweigh the 10% production bonus and 1 food from workshops, free market provides more trade routes and makes corps cheaper while courthouses reduce the huge maintenance costs coming from both distance and corporations, and 200% gold bonus in wall street city which founded both corps isn't too shabby either and overall I feel it can make up for the maintenance reduced by the courthouse.

 

[Choggy]

@Shalvan

Spoiler :

Corporations is a late game strategy (Sushi would be very strong on this map). GLH spam is an early to mid game strategy and because one obsoletes the other they are incompatible. However that's not to say you can't switch from one to the other, spread your corporation to as many cities as possible until you bankrupt your economy and then switch back to State Property to recover it again - in fact that's often the path people take on a Sushi Map.

 

[Shalvan]

@Choggy

Spoiler :

If you look at the save I posted you can see that I transitioned from one into another. Researching corporation did give my economy a hit, but I quickly recovered - overall its just one trade route less. Then I proceeded to build the airports which gave me the former trade power and then single currency is always nice.

So you recommend switching, which would be a good strat since I did get cristo redentor - and didn't really make much use of it. The problem is I didn't need to switch since my economy was strong enough to maintain both Sushi and Mining. I had enough money because I was still a trade superpower in the lategame thanks to colonies all over the map which gave awesome overseas trade and Sushi boosting my populations, and it should be considered that my Wall Street City was pumping out over 600 gold/turn.

One thing I did badly in this game was oxford placement. I didn't have a super-science city except Carthage (working gold and all those sea tiles brought a lot of commerce alongside the huge trade) and it already had Moai and HE. Honestly I can't even remember where I built it... I think Utica or maybe the fourth city (which was... Hippo?).

 

[Tall German Joe]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

I think I may have figured out a piece of mechanics I didn't understand before. I was told island cities paid for themselves. When I build island cities in most games with the GLH, running a high slider (70% in this game), they lost gpt instead of gaining any. I eventually noticed the total did go up noticeably. So, was this just a result of where the slider happened to be at the time? They would have paid for themselves in if the slider had been lower?

Spoiler :

the reason these cities pay for themselves is because they'll bring in more income just from trade routes than their maintenance cost. for example, if a brand new city is bringing in 8 commerce from trade routes, 1 from the city square, and 3 from working a crab coast tile, then that's 12 commerce in total income. if it has a 9 gold maintenance cost, then that's a 12-9 profit. if your slider is at 0%, then that's an extra 3 gold per turn in your pocket. if your slider is at 50%, then you'll get 6 gold and 6 beakers a turn, so you'll actually lose 6-9=3 gold per turn. however, don't forget that you're still getting those 6 beakers a turn too!

Plans, on which I'd appreciate comment:

Spoiler :

I think I need to lib or tech Astronomy, and work on settling that empty western continent, with the Iron city first so I can build cuirassiers if I decide I need to invade my neighbours. Here's my first cut at a dotmap:

Spoiler :

this is OK, but I think you'd be better served putting the fishes in the first ring of the cities so you can get the cities growing faster. you can also put more cities on this island than what you've marked. its a little zoomed out, but i have a screenshot on the top of last page that shows how I settled this island; 2 of these were barb cities so I couldn't adjust their placement, but it worked out so I got 8 cities on this island, 7 of which had a food tile. all of them were very productive; got several space parts out of the fish floodplains site by building all watermills and workshops on the floodplains and then building my ironworks here.

Spoiler :

Do I have too little production for Space? I might start getting behind in the tech race because so many AI are bigger than me. Does that mean I really need to conquer my continent sometime reasonably soon?

Spoiler :

it certainly couldn't hurt. there are several excellent production spots on the continent, especially in khmer's land. numidians are possible but you'd be running a big risk; however, if you're already close to astro you might as well wait for cuirs or cavs before you run amok on the mainland.

 

[pomthom]

Just wanted to share this little screenshot I took during my Hannibal game

Yes, this is Immortal.

Spoiler :

I just met Ragnar. It's 1410 AD, he has 12 cities, and yeah, he still hasn't researched... Alphabet.



"Keep it cool Rags, I'll just get back to researching Rifling..."