NC LXVIII: Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia

[kalidude]

125AD:

Spoiler :

I've managed to successfully block off a northern border and get my 6 cities up, I think the last one was founded around 365BC. I founded Confucianism and sent my first missionary up north to DeGaulle, so he is now Confucian as well. It really payed off, to. DG just founded Christianity a few turns ago and Toku immediately converted, so now instead of me being the odd man out, DG is pleased with both of us, Toku is annoyed and has made me his worst enemy, and he's cautious with DG now that they are in different religions. DG has 3 cities and Toku has 5 to my 6. I'd still like to sneak another city up the river between France and I, or maybe just cap the barb one that sprang up there, even though it's not exactly where I had planned it. Expansion is on hold for now though, until I get my economy in order. We were suffering for a bit with 3 cities holding jungle tiles that I couldn't chop until the very recent discovery of IW. I since grabbed maths and am working on currency using binary research. I just watched our income go from +5 to +3 in a few turns, at 0% research, so it's getting a bit dicey. I've hooked up roads to the Japanese border, so I think if Toku connects his roads we might get some trade routage out of it, even though the borders are closed. I could be wrong on that. I just recently connected the last of my 6 cities to the road network, and there is still plenty for the workers to do, but some of these city sites are very food poor.

As soon as barb axes and spears started showing I teched archery and now that I have an archer and an axeman in each city with a few scouts and axes guarding barb hotspots on the border, I am up to 1.2x Toku's military might, so hate me all he wants, he cannot possibly declare.

Right now the focus is economy->backfill/expansion->lib race

I haven't been able to trade techs yet as no one on this continent has Alphabet. I'd like to stomp toku sooner than later but not at the cost of slowing my tech pace or hurting economic growth. He is going to be land-constrained fairly soon anyways which should lead to me having a greater advantage as time goes on. I definitely need to keep up in the arms race and keep an eye on power ratings so he doesn't become an annoyance. Still, the prospect of rolling in with cats/trebs, phants, and horse archers and grabbing TGW and whatever other presents he has for me is a juicy temptation, like a rotting apricot as seen by a raccoon.

 

[vhhawk]

Regretting my decision to drop down to Noble for this one now.

1000 AD

Spoiler :

It took me ages to capture Carthage. Essentially I had to wait until I had catapults there. Complicating matters, I got Civ-blind and forgot to pillage the farms for a good many turns. Hannibal whipped a good dozen CG2 archers by the time the siege commenced, but of course they were no match for siege. And ultimately it didn't cost me much, as I turned the war machine northward to Toku's border, recovered for a few turns, then dow'd the Japanese.

As of 1000 AD capital Aksum is humming along like a well oiled hemi on Rep/Buro/Slavery/OR.

1300 AD

Spoiler :

Toku fell quickly and I vassaled his two remaining off-continent cities. A few turns into our war, DeGaulle had DeNoive to dogpile me, but he never attacked and sued for peace at the earliest opportunity. So I never took it to the French. The continent is big and resource rich and I have three fine capital sites cranking out wonders. Still in slavery because many locations are food rich and hammer poor. Switched from OR to Pacifism and decided to go with National Epic in Aksum, which already has seven settled specialists.

Toku was quite the wonder queen in this game, surely owing to having stone and marble in his BFC. Kyoto had Great Lighthouse, Great Wall, Colossus, and a Scotland Yard all fixed up for me. Actually got two Scotland Yards out of the deal, as his final mainland city got another GSpy before he shuffled off.

 

[kalidude]

1560AD:

Spoiler :

I have taken all of Toku's lands including 3 island cities, so the Nipponese are no more. France and I are still on good terms. I was first to liberalism, gaining Nationalism in the process, and am now about to get sci. meth., after which I will grab physics for the free GS. Then I will tech towards steel and start building galleons. I have nearly finished circumnavigating with my caravels, so I will pick up the movement bonus as well. Finally met the other half of the world and LOL...Shaka with 15 cities is the master of Pericles and Frederick each with 1 city of their own. Psst, Shaka, should have just wiped them out bro. Anyways the plan is now to conquer Shaka and his vassals first before sweeping France off the map. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to attack France the minute I finished off Toku, seeing as they don't really trade techs with me anyways they aren't too useful so far. Maybe something will happen to push them over the top from "pleased" to "friendly" and I'll get a PA out of it. Seeing as I'm so dominant, Shaka will probably go after DG as soon as they meet, so there is probably a joined war in my future.

I have a question:
Are the differences between cautious and pleased the same number of relation points for each leader, and if so, what is the minimum for "pleased"?

 

[Danelius90]

1560AD:

Spoiler :

I have taken all of Toku's lands including 3 island cities, so the Nipponese are no more. France and I are still on good terms. I was first to liberalism, gaining Nationalism in the process, and am now about to get sci. meth., after which I will grab physics for the free GS. Then I will tech towards steel and start building galleons. I have nearly finished circumnavigating with my caravels, so I will pick up the movement bonus as well. Finally met the other half of the world and LOL...Shaka with 15 cities is the master of Pericles and Frederick each with 1 city of their own. Psst, Shaka, should have just wiped them out bro. Anyways the plan is now to conquer Shaka and his vassals first before sweeping France off the map. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to attack France the minute I finished off Toku, seeing as they don't really trade techs with me anyways they aren't too useful so far. Maybe something will happen to push them over the top from "pleased" to "friendly" and I'll get a PA out of it. Seeing as I'm so dominant, Shaka will probably go after DG as soon as they meet, so there is probably a joined war in my future.

I have a question:
Are the differences between cautious and pleased the same number of relation points for each leader, and if so, what is the minimum for "pleased"?

I don't know if there is a minimum threshold for pleased or whether it dependant on leaders. But what leaders do at different attitudes is in the xml (and a spreadsheet somewhere on the forums). There's also hidden attitudes, thats why some meet you and they are already annoyed. You can enable it with bug or bull can't remember which, where it says 'a first impression is a lasting one'. So if it is the same amount to get to pleased, what you actually see ingame will be skewed by these initial modifiers

 

[kalidude]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm having alot of fun on this late game, which is funny since I was thinking it was a foregone conclusion and was considering quitting because of how boring I thought it would be.

1790AD:

Spoiler :

I knew Shaka was getting ready to DoW someone for a long while now, but I wasn't worried since I knew I was higher in power than DG and from the visible indicators I had a slightly better relationship with Shaka. I was about to finish researching Democracy, so I could use a great spy that I saved for a GA and then switch to US, Emancipation, and State Property. In the meantime I had been building privateers and was now building drydocks in all my coastal cities. My continental cities were well garrisoned, with 1-2 Oromo's in each, but my island cities still had a combination of archers, war elephants, and horse archers defending them. Suddenly Shaka DoWs on me, lands 2 knights and a maceman on one of those island cities, and takes a galley that I had parked. I ended up whipping a couple riflemen and crushing the tiny invasion before they could make inroads.

I'm currently expressing my naval superiority in manners most harsh to poor Shaka and his unwilling vassals. I crushed the majority of what he must have thought an armada in a single turn, and watched my relative power jump from .7 to .8. My economy and tech pace are great, so the rest of the game looks to be me crushing foolish Shaka beneath my heel. I'm currently beelining combustion so that I will be assured naval superiority long enough to build up my endgame invasion force. It just occured to me that having a mass of privateers is a good way to hide your actual military might from enemies.

 

[vhhawk]

1500 AD, Farm/Food Economy approach. I am an inveterate cottage spammer, but I set my focus on farm spamming in this game, chopping and pop whipping in lieu of bonafide production until I could get the techs and civics to make workshops work. Cottages only went in where I could not put a farm, but now after civil service I am replacing them with farms via chain irrigation.

Spoiler :

Food economy is a good call for this map and leader. I was poor early but always had production when I needed it. A few wonders provided the fail gold to get through the lean times. I ran Representation most of the early game after building the Pyramids, along with Bureaucracy, Slavery, and Pacifism, and made the unusual decision to build National Epic in my capital. Although as a rule I save my Bureau cap for Wall Street and Oxford, NE + Pacifism + farm economy sparked an incredibly prolific run of Great People. Primarily Great Engineers, at that.

After taking out Hannibal and vassaling Toku on his offshore island, I tried to coexist peacefully with my pal DeGaulle. He's just too damn irritating, however.



The same turn I got Steel, my capital finished Taj Mahal. I switched civics to Police State, Vassalage to offset the unit costs of Pacifism, Merc, and CS, dow'd DeGaulle and cleaved his empire in twain as I went straight to his 'wonderful' capital. I then split my stacks and sent them off in multiple fronts to finish him as quickly as possible.

Unless somebody I haven't met steals this one, it's in the bag.

I hope anyone who reads forgives my wordiness. These posts become my time for reflection and meditation on strategies, and I do tend to go on.

 

[vhhawk]

1876 AD, Conquest, Noble (with regrets). First conquest win? I think so.

Spoiler :

After the continent was mine I went straight for a nuke win as the quickest solution, with a side bet on the UN. Stocked 11 nukes, hit Pericles' four core cities, and he capitulated after two turns. A couple of turns later I hit Frederick's core cities with 9 nukes, and he capitulated after one turn. Then hit Shaka with 7 nukes over 3 turns and he capitulated. End game.

In retrospect, I learned a lot about the farm/food/snack/specialist economy, which seems to be both simpler and more flexible than the cottage economy. I also messed with a couple of civics I have not used before, police state and vassalage. Got to see the Conquest endgame video for the first time, and got to see more of BUG 4.4 including its global warming effect and its absolutely gorgeous Ethiopian units. The unit art used in 4.4 is stunning. My only regret here is dropping down to Noble. I'm sure I could have won this on Prince, maybe Monarch. The capital, Aksum, was maybe the strongest capital I've ever had, whether running Bureaucracy or not. I had 16 settled GPs at last look, 5 GE, 5 GS, 2 GSpy, 2 GG, 1 GA, 1 GM. I built National Epic and Ironworks in it, both extremely unusual national wonders for my capital city, but ho mama, what a city.

 

[dalamb]

@vhawk: congrats! I used to never go for conquest, so getting my first one was special.

 

[vhhawk]

@vhawk: congrats! I used to never go for conquest, so getting my first one was special.

Thanks! So rare to get conquest over domination.

 

[A_Hamster]

It took longer for me to complete the game than desired, but it's done.

Spoiler :

At my last check-in (1200 AD), I was gearing for war. Despite my desire to run a SE, I needed Slavery to hurry along infrastructure in my underdeveloped cities. Since Civil Service was a ways off, my builds were mainly Jumbos and Trebs, with some Pikes and LB. There was a large stack of mixed Swords and Axes, about 40% veterans of the Punic War.

Much to my surprise, on turn 219 (1545 AD) both De Gaulle and Toku attacked! This proved to be a short prelude to the real war, as Ethopian forces had a favorable kill ratio on the invading Japanese and French SoDs (Only about 8 units per SoD), and I took the Japanese city of Izumo. The reason it was short was 4 turns later, De Gaulle used the AP to end the war, the proposal: "Stop the war against Zara Yaqob." It passed . I was willing, since it took the French out of the war, and I took the next ten turns to build more siege. Then the real war began, which lasted (if my notes are right) from 1615 AD to 1882 AD. During this time, Toku vassalled to France so I had a two front war for about half of that time. De Gaulle eventually vassalled to Ethopia once all mainland French cities had been taken, and I tried to vassal Toku once the I'd kicked him off the continent, but he wasn't having any. He did give me all his techs which put me at parity.

During this time, the Germans, Greeks and Zulus discovered me. (Since my research path was all land military I did not have naval units better than triremes.) Overall, interaction with the second continent was limited. Shaka and Frederick had two long wars with Shaka making desultory progress into Germany. After getting Toku's techs, I was able to trade techs for backfill.

While digesting my conquests, I decided I'd have to go for Domination, since I had such a large veteran army. Accordingly, I beelined Combustion so I could start working on a navy. I did not obsolete the GL until I got Combustion. (I'd already missed Liberalism and Physics, so keeping the GL was better for me).

I launched a second small war against Toku, who was already fighting Shaka, and so got rid of the "We want to join our Motherland" penalty in my former Japanese cities. At this point, the game was going very smoothly with tech discoveries coming frequently and much money coming in. The only problem was building enough sealift to go after Shaka. After getting the WWII military techs, I diverted to Mass Media and built the UN. In 1949, just as the last (and largest) of three invasion fleets approached the Zululand coast, I won the diplomatic victory.

Diplo Victory

Spoiler :

If I had not won that turn ...

Spoiler :

I made many mistakes this game, but people have given me much advice, and I will try applying it in the Bismarck game.

 

[Capellan]

@A_Hamster
Congrats on the win - you dug yourself out of the early hole quite nicely!

 

[A_Hamster]

Thank you!

@Archon Wing: Yeah, I know. And that task force has plenty of Marines and CRIII Infantry. I'm pretty sure I could have taken all three objective cities that turn, but I won and I wanted to start the new NC game. Will have to play Zara again: Oromos are pretty good UUs, and since I botched the early game, I feel that Ethiopia's honor must be restored.

 

[Archon_Wing]

@A_hamster

Spoiler :

I like how Shaka has more galleons than anything guarding that city; like that's gonna help.

 

[dalamb]

BC 4000-2425
BC 2425-825

I seriously mismanaged both expansion and warmongering, so I think I'll abandon this game; maybe I'll try again some other day.

Spoiler :

I took far too long to attack Japan; I lost and wounded enough troops that I had to get peace treaties twice. By now Japan has expanding off onto several islands, which will be a pain to take.

Diplomatically I'm OK with De Gaulle -- I got him to convert to Hinduism, so he's reasonably happy with me. If I were to continue I'd likely wait for Gunpowder/Oromos to attack him -- he's quite powerful at the moment, too, and I goofed in letting him settle some cities in less-than-wonderful locations in the middle of "my" territory.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

why are you already abandoning this? you can still perfectly win.
I don´t really see anything wrong there, except to build some more cities and thats it....

I would not worry about crappy islands. I welcome them
either you vassal them or you blackmail them for techs...... really who cares if they are there until end of history.

if you look at my playthorough, I was in similar position, just had more cities.

you really need to stop with this replaying stuff and following some guides to the letter stuff and start playing the cards as they are handed out.

here a minor spoiler about rest of map, if you dont trust me you can easily still win it:

Spoiler :

the other continent will be vastly backward

 

[dalamb]

you really need to stop with this replaying stuff and following some guides to the letter stuff and start playing the cards as they are handed out.

I don't "need" to do any such thing; I play the way I find the most fun. Advice welcomed; disparaging of the way I like to play, not.

 

[Horgh666]

Noble, Epic - default settings

Cultural victory

Spoiler :

Darn, that was easy...

Possibly the easiest and smoothest, yet also boring iteration of the Noble's Club to date for me.

Things started rather promising with Hannibal a stone's throw away from me. After scouting out his location, I told myself he would be dead within a couple thousand years.

Settled in place, chose BW for my first tech, and my initial build order was Worker - Warrior - Worker - Warrior - Settler. I hooked up the deer to a camp and chopped plenty of forests to hurry things up.

Early access to copper in the BFC signalled the end of Hannibal.

Lost my scout early on to wild animals, but I had the time to find Tokugawa and Hannibal, along with meeting DeGaulle's men.

Picked up agriculture and the wheel after my scout hut-popped AH and Archery (!). Also popped about 260 golds pieces in total, along with some experience. Fun times.

Oh look, horses in the BFC! Gee... whatever shall I do?

As soon as my second city had been founded (right next to Hannibal no less), I quickly began producing axes and chariots to annoy Hannibal.

Along the way, I picked up various sundry techs, but by the 2500 BC mark, I noticed that no religion had been founded yet. I surmised that I was not going to find any of the zealots this time...

So, I figured I'd take a shot at it and ended up getting Hinduism while DeGaulle got Buddhism one turn before me (him in 2275 and me in 2250). Interestingly enough, Hinduism spread faster and better than Buddhism.

After more scouting, I realized the four of us were the only ones on the continent, so I initiated my war with Hannibal in 1575 and killed him three turns later. He had founded two cities, Utica and Carthage, whereas I had REXed early and had three cities (one that hugged Carthage's borders and another between my capital and Gondor).

Oh what fun that was. Hannibal didn't have archery so he was forced to defend with warriors against axes and chariots.

Carthage was a stupendous city and Utica was auto-razed. Best of all, I managed to snag a number of workers from Hannibal.

Next, I sent some of my promoted chariots up north to finish scouting. Found DeGaulle's pad and noticed the dolt didn't have archery either. Now by that time, I had teched alphabet (everyone had taken weird tech paths), so I could tell my pal would be easy pickings.

Got a few extra chariots up there, but unfortunately, he got archery by the time reinforcements arrived.

No matter, by 1350, DeGaulle was dead and Paris mine.

Oh and I forgot to mention how DeGaulle got froggy and built the Mids for me some turns back. Thus not only was I getting an awesome Holy city, I was getting an awesome Holy city with the Mids!

Woah...

Toku was sensing that something wasn't right. Despite building the Great Wall back in 2400 or so. He had been slowly building up. With only Kyoto and Osaka to his name, he was starting to pale in comparison to my mighty empire.

He had chariots, archers and a mean attitude, but with 6 cities to his 2. Things were in my favour.

Built some spears to counter his chariots and started poking him a bit, taking over Osaka by 1700 or or so. Got a peace treaty and a few backfill techs. Used this time to research Iron Working (lots of jungle in Toku's land) and boost my troops as Toku was getting scary.

Protective archers with quick great general production was a scary thought, so I had to act quick! A group of 6 axes and two chariots took over and auto-razed Tokyo (he had been whipping it to 1 population regularly).

In the meantime, some of my guys were busy pillaging every tile around Kyoto to slow him down.

Toku founded Satsuma toward the north but I steamrolled over Kyoto after tricking him into sending some units outside his city.

I posted a weak axe a tile or two away from Kyoto, so he sent an archer to kill it. I simply waltzed over and crushed the archer sitting alone on a plain. This meant he had a duo of warriors in his capital who were no match for my superior forces.

By 1000BC, I had 9 cities to my name, including three splendid conquered capitals, and two early useful wonders.

Toku agreed to peace in exchange for more backfill techs (stuff like pottery and sailing).

After REXing some more, Toku's time was up and I blasted his lone chariot defender out of the city and razed it.

Thus began a long and not so interesting period of REXing and barb beating.

Took over my whole continent and just rolled with it for a while as I pondered my options. Obviously wonder hogged everything I could and with such vast land, I was able to tech rather quickly. Went gung-ho on the specialists, eventually teching everything up to liberalism in 1 turn at 100% science and while still bringing upwards of 30-40GPT.

How did I do it? Simple: religious economy.

I quickly went out of my way to capture every religion, making diplomacy a lot easier and allowing me to build various cool wonders like the Spiral Minaret which paid off in a big way.

After I saw what the opposition looked like (a three-way tie between Shaka, Fred and Pericles), I came to realize that a cultural victory might not be a bad idea.

I spread my state religion of Hinduism abroad through gifted missionaries, only adding to my already awesome religious economy.

Got a shrine for Hinduism and eventually one for Taoism (both of which had been founded in Gondor), later Christians in Carthage got their own shrine.

Later, as the religious economy couldn't support my empire alone, State Property and eventually corporations took over. I had Sushi, Mining Inc, and Creative Jewelers all working to give me a huge boost. Gondor acted as the Wall Street city due to the shrines and hosted all three of these corps, plus AlCo, because I had spare Great Scientists. But that one didn't really spread. My science was quite fine as it was.

Kyoto became the top production city (Ironworks and the like), Carthage was bringing in upwards of 300BPT alone (tons of settled scientists, academy, multiple monasteries etc.), peaking at almost 450BPT.

I flirted with moving my capital, but never bothered.

Arkum, Carthage and Kyoto hit legendary and the world was mine by the damn of the 20th century with 80 or so turns left.

My final score was a joke, a slim 11952. I guess the game doesn't like cultural wins.

 

[Archon_Wing]

@dalamb

If you post a save, I can try to shadow the game and maybe save it. ;p

 

[dalamb]

I restarted after finding the war against Japan un-fun, getting a domination victory in 1885. I had wanted to go for space, but started getting these warnings about "n turns left!" where n was far too few. I finally realized:

I goofed and forgot to reset the max turns -- it's set for Normal speed rather than "obey the default for the selected game speed". In the original post I've added NC 68a Zara Yaqob Noble to the zip file for anyone coming late to the game, but have left the originals intact for those who want to play it out the way everyone else did.

So here's a summary of how the restarted game went:

Spoiler :

Rough outline:

• BC 4000-1825: Settled 3 initial cities in preparation for an axe rush of Carthage. Gondar and Lalibela built initial infrastructure and military units while Aksum worked on the Oracle.
• BC 700: Managed to do a CS slingshot and switched to bureacracy.
• BC 575-365: Conquered Carthage and razed Hannibal's other two cities, whose locations seemed very bad to me (and also worse than in the first game, for some reason).
  
  
  Lost 3 axemen per city against 3 defenders -- some combination of archers, axemen, and swordsmen. I figured out where his iron had to be from noticing a grassland mine with suspiciously many , and settled Yeha just north of it (getting the gold also).
  
  
• BC 365-AD 115: settled two more cities to block Japan's southward expansion while teching Construction for catapults.
• AD 325: The Great Prophet from the Oracle's GPP popped and I bulbed Theology. I had avoided switching to Confucianism hoping to have one of their religions spread to me, but to use Theocracy I had to switch at this point and suffer the diplo hit.
• AD 745-880: War with Japan, taking 3 cities including Tokyo, which had the stone and marble, the Jewish shrine, and three wonders (Stonehenge, Pyramids, and Temple of Artemis). Didn't know Toku liked wonderspamming; I expected more from IND De Gaulle.
• AD 880-1275: The next turn De Gaulle attacked because Toku vassalized to him; I'd failed to notice that France had Feudalism. Finding this unfun I backed up one turn and took a short peace with Japan to get ready for a two-front war. During this period I stole Feudalism from France, tech'd optics, met Frederick, and "circumnavigated" by trading techs for Fred's maps.
• AD 1275-1405: Attacked two Japanese cities simultaneously, then joined armies to take a third. At this point Japan un-vassalized from France and I made peace with De Gaulle, who had been a little bit of trouble but not too much. Finishing off Japan was then fairly easy.
• AD 1495: Took Steel from Liberalism; I'd safely delayed Lib until then, spying enough on my opponents to know what they were teching; I wanted cannon for the war with longbow-equipped France -- not to mention my Drill IV Oromos from the Gunpowder prerequisite.
• AD 1570-1736: Conquered France. When he was down to just one mainland city and the 1-tile island, I took peace to extort the island from him to avoid a pain-in-the-posterior amphibious assault; I'd taken the 3-tile island previously by landing on his one open tile.
• AD 1792-1861: Shaka went to war with Frederick. The 2nd time Fred asked me to help I realized Zululand was getting a little large, so I shipped my army to Germany, reconquered some former German cities (and gifted them back to Fred) until Shaka had enough and capitulated to me. I could have conquered Germany fairly easily at this point but wanted a space victory instead.
• AD 1880: The handwriting had been on the wall ever since "100 turns left!" had popped up. I attacked Germany from the one originally-Zulu city I had conquered from Shaka; Fred capitulated after I took his first city, and I won domination the next turn.

Spoiler end-of-game status :

My territory:


Everyone else' territory (except the cities I conquered):


Wonders: 12 captured, 9 self-built.


Victory conditions: Conquering Fred just squeaked me over the domination limit.


Charts:

Fun, but not as fun as a space win would have been.

 

[Archon_Wing]

@ dalamb

Spoiler :

IMO, that is a bit late for an axe rush. Because there is copper in your BFC, connected by river already, and the fact that bw is your second tech due to the huge amount of trees, meaning you'll always see the copper soon enough. If this happens, you should look for a victim asap.

This is especially true on epic. It's possible to send 5-6 axes and nail him before he even has archers before 2000 bc. It's a bit easier because you won't have multiple cities to fight through, and massed archers can be pretty frustrating for axes to deal with. The other bonus is that you don't have to worry about him hooking up his strategic resource. Once he's out of the picture, you have a capital better than your own, and can resume your regular business.

Then again, you did Oracle really fast. For a delayed rush such as that, I'd aim for whipping out an extra settler or two in the meantime. Having that extra city and claiming that land really works wonders, since you have so much land up there to claim.

Because you bulbed Theo, I would recommend building the AP for the hammers, denial, and possible AP screwjobs you could do. Personally, I do not think the bonus from theo alone is worth making both of them angry, but the AP on the other hand...