New challenge: earliest possible UHVs

[AnotherPacifist]

I tried to get a Khmer start like yours, but no luck. That is why I don't like 3000 BC starts for civs that should really start with 600 AD. It is almost impossible to build the Notre Dame with France.
It would be really nice to get a different set of UHV for 3000 BC and 600 AD starts.

 

[Fierabras]

I rushed through the game and achieved a virtual UHV in 1230 AD, but I won't bother to put it up for this challenge. Luck plays too big a part for 3000 BC unlocked starts.

 

[DroopyTofu]

Hey. I've been enjoying lurking this thread and hearing you strategies, but I have one question. How exactly does a caravel chain work? I've been thinking about trying a game as the Khemer. Thanks!!!

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Let's say you build a missionary in Hanoi, and send him to board a caravel 1W of Pagan. That caravel goes as far as it goes SW, and there you've already pre-placed a caravel. You click on the missionary and ask it to board the unmoved caravel which then goes as far as it can go SW again, where there's another caravel. And so on...
To be completely safe, you should probably have 2 caravels per square to guard against the Arabs (who sometimes declare war out of the blue) and barb privateers. It takes about 7 moves to Europe (unless you attach a great general to a caravel to get more movement/navigation).

 

[DroopyTofu]

Ok. Thanks AP! That's how I figured it worked, but wasn't sure. How many caravels would this take? I'll try this when I get done with my Japan game.

 

[Fierabras]

With the circumnavigation bonus you need 8 caravels to reach Amsterdam from Bang Makok. I'm considering to play the Khmer again and try it with 2 chains to get a missionary to Europe every turn instead of every other turn.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

As usual with the 3000BC-starts, the starting situation for later civs is a gamble. I got pretty lucky, Istanbul was the Christian holy city, Sparte (Independent) had several wonders, incl. Great Lighthouse and Great Library + 3 great scientists settled. Niniveh also had some wonders, so my economy was running really good while i was pumping out cannons and Janissaries to grab the required land. Babylon declared war after the flip, which was nice for additional units, and collapsed a few turns later just like Arabia.

Mali, Portugal and Inca vassalized voluntarily.

VV could have been achieved about 5 turns earlier, but i forgot a city in Mesopotamia (Sush does not count there), so i had to build another settler (yes, slavery is better than serfdom...).

Next try will be a 600 AD start which makes the games really more compareable.

 

[Tigranes]

Let's say you build a missionary in Hanoi, and send him to board a caravel 1W of Pagan. That caravel goes as far as it goes SW, and there you've already pre-placed a caravel. You click on the missionary and ask it to board the unmoved caravel which then goes as far as it can go SW again, where there's another caravel. And so on...
To be completely safe, you should probably have 2 caravels per square to guard against the Arabs (who sometimes declare war out of the blue) and barb privateers. It takes about 7 moves to Europe (unless you attach a great general to a caravel to get more movement/navigation).

For some reason I was never able to move a unit from ship to ship in an open sea...
I thought this was branded as an exploit and Firaxis made sure it is not possible. But then again, I am not sure if I payed any attention if my second moved or not...

 

[Tibur753]

For some reason I was never able to move a unit from ship to ship in an open sea...
I thought this was branded as an exploit and Firaxis made sure it is not possible. But then again, I am not sure if I payed any attention if my second moved or not...

To do this, the two ships must be in the same tile. One tile away does not work. Click the "unload" button and then "load" and choose the ship with movement points left. Note that this does use up the unit's move for the turn, but you can do it as much as you want to in a turn regardless of whether you have any movement points left.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

No Lisboa means a little slowing of my science since I had to raze Lisboa with lots of troops.

I know this is an iffy VV, but here are my reasons:
1. France is my vassal (and I can easily direct them not to research astronomy, and park privateers right outside of Rennes if they indeed trade for Astronomy from somebody).
2. Netherlands is dead, and if they do respawn, it would be too late for them to found any cities in the New World.
3. England has Astronomy but hasn't founded any cities yet, and doesn't have gunpowder, much less military science. I have both and just declared war on them with frigates and if any galleons escape, I will catch them in the mid-Atlantic.
4. I have the only Aztec city left, and the 2 Incan cities are mine. I can always found another city in Tucume if it was razed by barbs (that's probably not necessary).
5. As long as I keep churning out frigates and privateers, England will be choked to death and probably collapse due to economic stagnation.
6. I was the first to found Montevideo in 1500 or so.

I've played a similar game before (razing Bordeaux and Marseilles) and usually by 1600 England collapses.

Addendum: unfortunately Rhye might have tinkered with the stability thing since England didn't collapse but was only shaky most of the time. They built New York which was easily captured.

Spoiler :

 

[Tigranes]

How about vikings? and don't you want to recreate the Spanish empire in it's glory --with Philipins and stuff?

 

[Tigranes]

Finally done. Strategy is described here.

I am showing both the VV and the actual Victory (finished with 19K). Only used 3 Merchants, the forth great person was a Scientists from Alexandria (Lighthouse still provides 20% chance for the Merchant)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

You know what, I've done the Egyptian/Ethiopian conquest for the Lighthouse and Great Library a couple versions ago with Mali, but I thought that was too much of a gimmick. (It was a threatened great barbarian arising with about 7 axemen that happened just in my turf, and they all flipped the next turn!:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=251858) The problem is that you cannot rely on having flipped units--i.e. Rhye did not intend you to have those camel archers or elephants. I say if he doesn't want to lessen the difficulty, he should at least give Mali a starting camel archer and an elephant (they are desert people after all).

 

[Tigranes]

The way I understand Rhye's intentions is this: flipped troops act as a random element at the start. All those proto-Persian Chariots and Immortals who appear in the Persia's spawn zone few turns before their arrival are there for purpose. Same with the other civs. It's like former Barbs see the glory of the new civ and join it. Rhye tuned this by killing excessive flips. Mali starting with Camel Archers would look a little inconsistent with the entire UU philosophy. It's ok to have some Bedouins flip to you, but starting units represent the civilization itself and and Camels don't represent the essence of Mali.

And as I said, it's worth to invest some 40-80 gold to hire few Mercenaries (if the right units and promotions are available).

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Really bad Chinese city placement, otherwise I could probably have done 50 years earlier. You get what you conquer. Vassals are Greece, Portugal, Khmer and Ethiopia.
Mongolians destroyed by 10 elephants and 3 catapults.
Teched for Aesthetics even before math and construction, which explains why I missed out on the Great Wall.
Built most of the wonders (except for Mausoleum, Stonehenge, Notre Dame, Hagia Sophia, Pyramids, Temple of Artemis, Great Wall and Colosseum). AP was built by Greece (Hindu initially but he switched to Judaism).
Free tech from liberalism was Assembly line (could even have been industrialism) in 1470.
Undertook a war to get Pataliputra, whipped a Hindu missionary and spread it throughout for the AP hammers. Eventually gave it back but got it from a conference.
Really annoying is that Maya collapsed early and got conquerors, otherwise I might even have 1 more vassal.

Just building the useless wonders for points now. Blizzrd, do I really have to play this one out till 1930?

Addendum: built a spaceship, conquered 2 Indian cities and founded one north of Dairen. Mali respawned and vassalized spontaneously.

Spoiler :

 

[blizzrd]

Blizzrd, do I really have to play this one out till 1930?

Your stability looks good enough to last the distance, but yes you should hit "end turn" a bunch of times.

 

[blizzrd]

Spoiler :

Similar strategy as last time, with some minor tweaks:

Built all three Great Merchant wonders (Great Lighthouse, Colossus, Temple of Artemis) in Chalkedon so that when this city spawned a Great Person it would 100% be a Great Merchant. Sent this GM to Delhi for +1300g, more than enough to keep 100% science rate for the entire game.

India didn't collapse this time, and voluntarily vassalised with the barbarian pressure. Connected our two empires via a coastal exploration link and demanded all of India's resources, importantly including Ivory and Rice. This allowed faster city growth for my 4 cities as the happiness and health caps were raised.

After Masonry-Priesthood-Monarchy-Aesthetics I bulbed Mathematics and then started my own research on Calendar. I beat China to it, founding Taoism in Egypt and rushing the Mausoleum which extended both of my Golden Ages this time (effectively doubling the number of Golden Age turns).

EDIT: Skipped Construction entirely until after Optics was learnt. Didn't need no stinking Great Wall.

Built a Trireme upgrade city in both Azores and New Zealand this time. This also saved a turn or two at the end.

Got to Japan with my Scout for 2 more goody huts this time, but still no techs were popped. Short of this occuring, I'm not sure if I can improve on this best time by much more.

 

[TDK]

Wow! That's a really early one, good job.

 

[Fierabras]

Once again I played the Khmer, trying to improve my own record. This time I used a different strategy based on the posts by AP and TDK below:

Spoiler :

Yes, those are the best cities, although some people would suggest getting a southeastern Indian city (where the cow and fish are) first and wait for barb Hanoi to spawn before conquering it and bombing it with a GA, simply because you cannot improve the plantations until you get calendar.

Have you considered the caravel chain?

Sailing - Calendar - alphabet - Compass - Paper- Philosophy - Optics
Try to spawn a great spy in Patna (there's a courthouse) or whip one in your capital (if you don't want to take any chances of a great priest) and steal Currency - Feudalism - Guilds - Civil Service -Engineering from China. You can get the in about half the time if you plan it right. Of course you still need the 3 great artists but with Jayakarta and castes/pacifism it should be no problem.

I finished my Khmeri game.

My research was Sailing, Calender, Engineering, Currency.

I expanded quickly into India and built up my empire in Slavery and Organized Religion. Revolted to Caste System and Pacifism once the infrastructure was in place.

I decided to try to spread Buddhism through central asia and to Europe, thereby avoiding the religious zealots like Saladin and Isabella. Russia and Germany, on the other hand, are not too sensitive to different religions and will open borders.
I bribed Russia and China into Buddhism and Organized Religion to maximize the chances of them creating missionaries(they did build a few).

All cities that I didn't absolutely need(Sirajis, Kandahar, Merv, Mumbai, Hanoi) was buddhized and their cost externalized to other civs.

The first 2 Artist were used offensively in Anatolian cities. They were very effective and caused other cities to revolt which could then be attacked.

I settled Bang Makok, Jayakarta and Pitkapuram (on the east coast of India). One archer and the 2 elephants conquered Pagan, Patlliputra and Dilli. After that I took 1 elephant back to conquer the barbarian Hanoi.

In Bang Makok my first build was a courthouse which I whipped ASAP to generate a Great Spy. Until 1100 AD I stayed in Slavery and OR, but in hindsight I could have switched to Pacifism sooner to generate the Great Spy faster. Eventually it netted me Engineering - Feudalism - Guilds from the Chinese. I couldn't get more, because the Chinese collapsed when I was about to steal Paper. I teched Currency and CS on my own.

AP's Great Spy strategy is definitely viable, but it needs careful execution. Alternatively one could generate a Great Engineer from an early forge to bulb Engineering. Why only Engineering? Because this tech is the key to TDK's strategy, which is to build a road from the production powerhouse Dilli to SE Russia. The 1+ movement point will get your missionaries to Russia in 2 moves way before you reach Optics to utilize a caravel chain. See screenshot below:

Spoiler :

You very likely only need to convert Russia and Germany to get to the 30% Buddhism spread (I converted Amsterdam as well). Both were running Theocracy, but that didn't matter, I just gifted the missionaries and they used them on their biggest cities.

Spoiler :

I probably could have reached a virtual UHV before 1450 AD with some better focus. The plague that hit me in 1360 AD wasn't helping as well. Oddly enough I reached the UHV exactly on 1450 AD, so no VV for me, but a proper UHV:

Spoiler :

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Blizzrd, would founding a city on Mali's coast be even better for your trireme upgrade?