Nobles' Club 183: Mansa Musa of Mali

[sampsa]

Start the GA when you are ready to go into caste+pacifism to run specialists. So you need philo and several cities with high population.

 

[Biggs_Pliff]

Spoiler Turns 46-60 :

Turn 46-49 - Met Washington, teched archery, built barracks, now teching pottery and building probably ill-advised skirmisher army
Turn 50- France completes stonehenge so i was right that he was building a wonder but he's done now and i'm not ready yet. 1 pop whipped skirmisher.
Turn 51- Skirmisher 1 done, skirmisher 2 next turn
Turn 52- Skirmisher done, another one next turn
Turn 53- Another skirmisher done
Turn 54- Whipped skirmisher in capital again
Turn55- Teched pottery started on mysticism (originally went for writing but i thought mysticism is quicker than writing and a monument is smaller than a library which means my seriously flagging second city will be useful a little sooner
Turn 56- looks like the french have decided to settle their second city pretty much in my face, settler and 2 archers heading towards me, sent out my 5 skirmishers to deal with it (not sure if sending out my guys now to maybe stop the city being founded is the best idea but i figure its more straightforward and useful than taking and auto-razing a new city)
Turn 57- French founded city two, currently only one archer in the city, hopefully the other outside will move away and make my job easier. Whipped skirmisher in capital again.
Turn 58- No such luck, 2 archers in city, 5 skirmishers on the border. Looks like it's time for Operation destroy the French or fail terribly and Ragequit. War were declared!!
Turn 59- City 2 builds skirmisher, whip anger has caught up with capital. Took out city of Orleans losing 1 skirmisher.
Turn 60- Sent warrior to scout Paris, not sure how many guys i would need to take it but pretty certain what i have is not enough, especially since it's another 4 turns for just the first few guys to get there. I took a screenshot of Paris and its defenses if anyone wants to give me their estimate.

Spoiler Whip overflow and chopping :

Read something here on the forums about whipping and the amount of overflow allowed/given being limited by the number of hammers it takes to produce the whipped thing. In other words did i just waste a lot of chop hammers from whipping a skirmisher (25 hammers) at the wrong time?

 

[Pangaea]

unas:

Spoiler :

Kumbi Saleh is on a hill, right? That city will be his main target, so if you hoard some axes and skirmishers there, behind a wall, you may be able to hold out until he gets siege. Hopefully he loses enough units to want to peace out. City Raider 8-strength units is no joke though.

edit: Err, maybe check the last page next time Sounds like things went well.

 

[unas876]

Start the GA when you are ready to go into caste+pacifism to run specialists. So you need philo and several cities with high population.

See, I never knew I was gonna switch into caste and pacifism in the first place! Sounds like a good idea though! That means, even if I went through an Engineering war (I think that would be good since my neighbor to the west has plenty of nice wonders, land and few cities), I would save this guy for after the war to catch up with those civics (and hopefully the Mids if the war goes as planned)?

unas:

Spoiler :

Kumbi Saleh is on a hill, right? That city will be his main target, so if you hoard some axes and skirmishers there, behind a wall, you may be able to hold out until he gets siege. Hopefully he loses enough units to want to peace out. City Raider 8-strength units is no joke though.

edit: Err, maybe check the last page next time Sounds like things went well.

Spoiler :

Yeah I did pretty much exactly what you suggested. Hilled city, whipped some walls, got a bunch of skirmishers and a few axes in there and he slammed a couple of stacks right into that. I barely lost anything. Then picked off some units of his in the south and bought him off with Monarchy once he was willing to talk. Again, he is for some reason slow in tech.... But dude, skirmishers are amazing for this kind of stuff!
Now he converted to Hinduism as well and we're best buds

 

[sampsa]

See, I never knew I was gonna switch into caste and pacifism in the first place! Sounds like a good idea though! That means, even if I went through an Engineering war (I think that would be good since my neighbor to the west has plenty of nice wonders, land and few cities), I would save this guy for after the war to catch up with those civics (and hopefully the Mids if the war goes as planned)?

Well, for me, golden ages are always used to generate , because that +100% bonus for -generation is huge. Caste and pacifism fit in with that (and obv representation, if you got the Mids). I guess you can also do it without having philosophy for pacifism, but you lose out on a +100% bonus.

 

[Major Tom]

Well, for me, golden ages are always used to generate , because that +100% bonus for -generation is huge. Caste and pacifism fit in with that (and obv representation, if you got the Mids). I guess you can also do it without having philosophy for pacifism, but you lose out on a +100% bonus.

Interesting with pacifism, but if you use 2 to create 3 (say, to have a golden age) the gain seems rather slim compared to run OR when in building mode competing for wonders, theocracy in unit buildup or free religion for more science output. Have anyone done the math here, counting in reduced growth rate running many specialists? Or is this caste/pacifism setup only when going for a certain bulbing path?

 

[Pangaea]

Caste-Pacifism (and Rep, if available) is pretty normal I think. It's what I'm looking for at least before launching the first golden age (and MoM, ideally). Then produce several great people, usually scientists for bulbing, and later on, get enough great people to launch more golden ages.

Another benefit with Pacifism is that it's much cheaper than, say, OR. The other side of that coin is that this doesn't apply if you have a huge army, because you pay more maintenance for military units. However, early on, you typically don't have a massive army (especially in games where you need to break out).

In some games I simply run Pacifism all the time, because it makes getting more GPs easier, and is cheaper to run.

 

[dutchfire]

Interesting with pacifism, but if you use 2 to create 3 (say, to have a golden age) the gain seems rather slim compared to run OR when in building mode competing for wonders, theocracy in unit buildup or free religion for more science output. Have anyone done the math here, counting in reduced growth rate running many specialists? Or is this caste/pacifism setup only when going for a certain bulbing path?

Well, if it is turning 1 Great Artist into 2 Great Scientists, that helps a lot in the race towards Liberalism.

 

[unas876]

Well, if it is turning 1 Great Artist into 2 Great Scientists, that helps a lot in the race towards Liberalism.

Yeah thats kinda what I thought. It was just one Great Artist. And I wasn't going for any wonders. I mean what is there really to build after getting GLib, after getting CS so basically you're just gearing up for war then and most of the infrastructure is in place? I couldn't whip Mints in that time, but that was probably poor planning on my part. MC took me three turns, I should have probably done that beforehand. But apart from that I was really just going for Engineering. Didn't really need the whip at the time so I don't think the civic switch and GA had any negative impact in that sense. Just I got unlucky. Was gonna get Merchants to upgrade a few guys (I know, no Theocracy so just one promotion but I didn't have Theology anyway and noone was willing to trade it) and to be able to keep teching throughout the war. But I got another Artist (3% chance) and the second one was a Scientist at like 18%, but I used that guy to bulb parts of Education, so I guess thats not too bad.

Spoiler :

So yeah I have an army standing now but De Gaulle has Engineering too. I started the war and rage quit 2 turns later due to bad luck and risky attacks. Fortunately I saved before DoWing so I'll just try again with a few more trebs that time, which will hopefully mean I don't lose all my maces taking the first town (again 125% defense somehow...) and then end up losing all my trebs when De Gaulles stack arrives... Guess I need some more experience
Also I can't think of any net negatives of delaying the war longer and starting with a bigger army. Its not like Theres some dangerous tech De Gaulle could get to before I can roll him and I'm hoping that my army will then also be big enough to whack someone else right after, since De Gaulle has only 5 towns.

 

[Pangaea]

125% defense somehow...

Ooof, that hurts. Means he has Walls+Castle+Chichen Itza. A total pain to wage war when that happens -- until you get gunpowder units who ignore walls. Bombing down the defense takes for ever too. You want loads of bombard Accuracy trebs, but it will still take a silly long time. Shows how important it is to wage war on AIs before they manage to get up castles everywhere. If not, it can be better to wait for Cuirs.

A way around those huge cultural defenses is to use spies to put the city into revolt for a turn. But it's fairly expensive and you probably don't have that much EPs on him anyway. Need to be prepared in advance as well, so the spies get 50% discount. Of course, they can be caught...

 

[sampsa]

Interesting with pacifism, but if you use 2 to create 3 (say, to have a golden age) the gain seems rather slim

Usually you can produce way more than 3 though, since you should use many cities. Like in that recently resurrected IU Charley-game I had produced 11 pre-800AD (+music artist). Also, first golden age costs only 1. Certainly there becomes a point when launching a GA costs so many that bulbing is better.

 

[unas876]

So I found time to continue my Immortal game here.

Spoiler :

Yeah, I saw in the end that De Gaulle had Chicken Pizza. And all my units only one promotion. Maybe I should have self-teched Theology or gotten a Prophet to bulb it... But I got into the war anyway after a few turns more of whipping troops out and it did go pretty smoothly after all. He got knights a few turns in and I didn't bring enough pikes but he didn't have the production to put more than a dint in my army. And I think it paid off nicely:

I'm on my way to libbing Steel (teched Lib until a few beakers away already). I'm also gonna get Oxford (even got stone in BFC of Paris) and its looking like smooth sailing from here. Just need to decide whether I wanna smack around Stalin first or Huayana.

 

[unas876]

Theres two questions on my mind:

1) When doing medieval warfare with infantry/siege, do you recommend teching Theology beforehand or getting a Prophet specifically to bulb it in case you can't trade for it? Or is this just my particular case that nobody apart from one guy has teched it?

2) When an AI is not willing to trade a tech for reason "We don't want to start trading this yet", will they use it to bribe people when they get declared on?

 

[sampsa]

Looks very good, unas.

I'd just ignore theology, unless you can get it via trade. It's a tech that doesn't get you closer to the good stuff (liberalism-line for example).

For your second question, I don't know the answer.

 

[unas876]

Alright, gg and thanks for the tips! 1675 Conquest win on Immortal.

Spoiler :

 

[Fish Man]

Turn 295 (1850 AD) science victory on noble.

 

[dutchfire]

Interesting that you only took out Caesar, he was the toughest nut to crack for most of us (unless one rushed).

 

[Fish Man]

Interesting that you only took out Caesar, he was the toughest nut to crack for most of us (unless one rushed).

Well I was farming this for as fast of a science win as possible on a lower difficulty (noble). CS slingshot meant I teched like a madman, and Caesar himself was so slow at everything that he only reached construction by about turn 150. I was building up a force for attack but he actually DOWed me first, nice of him to send his praets and axes to be gobbled up by my macemen. After that trebuchets easily finished the job. By that time I already reached cannons, but I didn't even need them...

 

[Pangaea]

That's kind of the "problem" at lower levels. Once you handle the basics well, it becomes laughably easy, and you can end up fighting with rifles against archers and axes. It's clear you are ready to step up a few levels. Perhaps Immortal is too far, but think you'll have more fun when challenged more than Noble or Prince can provide.

 

[The Green One]

Guys how come when I download the zip I cannot find the games when i try to load them? I've extracted them to my saved games file