Played peacefully toward GLH. Island hopped for the copper. AH/fishing/Mining/BW/sailing/masonry/writing. Then headed towards maths/construction. Wheel pottery as filler techs once 2 turns.
Built GLH 1320bc. Used 1-2 maths chops. Pre chopped all the forest for army. Expanded to 4 cities.
Whipped/chopped axe/pult and spear army with 1-2 GW. Headed towards Shaka. Took first city with no loses albeit he attacked with a stack on captured city turn later. Lost 2 axe and a warrior from his attack. Killed his mini stack turn later with no losses. Lost 3 pults on his capital. Killd a chariot and HA in open play. Took a ceasefire.
He has 4 cities left. They all look horrible. Albeit the marble could be useful. Maybe HA attack early on could of been faster. Seems crazy to lose GLH here.
Attacking French next seems the best move here. His land can't be any worse than Shaka's. Shaka will build up his forces again but that is for another day. He should have no horse now. Could try for Marble city
Up to 125bc
Spoiler125bc :
Took a while but I built a further 3 galleys. Built 2-3 more pults. Eventually landed 12 units near French capital. 2 defenders. Bombarded fully in 1 turn and attacked. Lost 2 units. Gained 4-5 plantations.
Biggest threat at present is Russians. In war mode and I am probably only target. She has 11 cities. All mine are size 4 and below.
Tech wise. I have COL, Monarchy, currency, Alphabet, Calendar and IW. Albeit I got some of these when I traded for alphabet earlier on. Alphabet/IW traded for currency and maths. Also have all basic religious techs to mono. Traded for griculture too. 4-10 turns off CS.
Just noticed 3 of the Ai fav civic here is HR.
Spoilerupdate 325ad :
Should of seen this coming. French bribe Shaka into their losing war. Looks like Shaka still has no real stack and I am quickly forming a secondary stack for his 2-3 units should they come. Hopefully take out his marble capital.
French 2nd city Orleans fell with only 1 pult loss. Had 5 defenders and 2 galleys. Academy always nice to capture. Just captured Lyon and Goth French still have 3 cities left. I Has 2 food resources in outer ring. Rest of his cities appear to be on islands.
Took Shaka's marble and iron city too. Should solve a few problems if Shaka has no metal. Took HBR and some gold for peace.
I can see 2 more French cities on this mini continent. Problem is I am suffering huge upkeep costs due to continents. 12-15 per city a turn.
Used my great merchant for a mission on Russia. Powered through aesth/lit and music. Will consider a golden age at some point. With marble the GLib looks good here.
13 cities overall now. 242 science at 100% science. So so.
First game of CIV for a few months. How I've missed it! Thought the setup looked interesting here. Fired it up and ... whoops, it's six hours later
Spoiler:
We know GLH can be gamebreaking on watery maps, but I don't think I've ever played a map where it's been quite so ridiculously OP. As everyone's reachable by sailing, you've got intercontinental pretty much as soon as it's built.
Early-game log:
Cathy got circumnavigation in 1360BC . Went AH-Min-BW-fishing-sailing-masonry-wheel-pot-writing. Got GLH in 1520BC. Went for an appeasement strategy with Shaka. Gifted him my second fish as soon as it was hooked up, and once GLH was in I had tech to spare for gifting. GLH kept diplo pretty sweet with everyone, it's been peaceful overall with very few worst enemies, so I've been able to trade freely. Founded CoL and spread it to Shaka, converted once he had, and peace was assured.
Perhaps should have attacked him earlier, but instead expanded peacefully until Lib---> MT in 600AD. DoWed next turn. Bribed Shaka onto Justy a while before attacking, and more recently set Louis on Izzy. Was playing pretty quickly so made some careless moves, perhaps most notably:
As I was heading to Lib I realised I had no iron for cuirs. So I settled this city down at the SW of Louis' territory. But I forgot to pick up a worker on the way! So had to just settle on iron to have it ready in time for the mass HA upgrade. I'll gift it to Louis once borders pop on Shaka's iron city. His land is mostly crap, and he's made some poor settling decisions. He has two cities left, one of which I'll raise and resettle.
Started a GA in 50BC (with Music artist) hoping to squeeze out some GSs for bulbing, but instead got 2 GMs during the GA at low odds. Still pretty good. First GP was also a GM, all of which have run trade missions to the ToA city (Madrid). The Econ GM will also land there in 2t. With all of that cash I've very rarely had to take the slider off 100% . I stayed in Caste/Paci for a few turns after the GA was over and got 1 GS, who bulbed Edu. This means that I don't have an academy in my cap, which is disappointing, but not a big deal really.
HC will finish banking next turn, at which point I hope he'll take Lib+Econ for Astro. Then I'll expand my navy a bit, tech to rifling (ETA 10t) and take out my next target, and probably the rest of the world, with Cavs. I think that'll be HC, because he's the biggest rival. There's a landing spot where I can fork his cap and first city, probably take them both in the same turn. I should be using Cavs against pre-gunpowder units, or muskets at best, which will be both fun and cruel .
Demos:
I've been at #1 in GNP forever, but until recently have been way down in most other categories. Most of my cities have contributed little except income.
I don't know if I'll play any further, but i did make it into the early ADs on deity and I'm not in a horrible position.
Spoiler:
Shaka actually did not plot on me early, but he was building a pretty big stack in his copper city on my border. I actually declared on him to lure them out before the stack got too big. I think he came at me with something like 3 Impis, 2 axes, and 2 swords. All of them died on my archers. I countered with HAs and took 3 cities including Ulundi (and the marble city to the west) but i took peace for Construction and some gold instead of finishing him off because the rest of his land looked awful. Oh and Catherine had some units in my land waiting to attack me as well so i really didn't have much of a choice. She tried to land 3 galleys in my SE fish city but i begged some gold and bought myself 10 turns while i finished with Shaka. They roamed my cities for 10T waiting for the peace timer to expire before attacking. The AI seems to like to do that... Anyway, i killed her 6 units losing 1 HA in the process and she eventually took peace for a little bit of gold.
After that i basically just teched on towards Lib. I imagine it would've been possible to take a couple cities from Louis with HAs + galleys, but i was afraid of bribes since Justinian, Louis, and Cathy are all Buddhist. I've got Lib sitting at 1T right now just to be safe while i tech Nationalism. I think I'm 4T short of that so hopefully i can Lib MT in 5T. I have a GM on a galley heading towards Paris atm for some upgrade gold, and i think I'll get a 2nd merchant in time as well. The problem is that i didn't take Shaka's iron city so i either need to do that or possibly buy iron off Louis for a turn or two. He wants 99gpt for it or 86 + 1 res, but i can probably trade him incense or something + gold and then pillage my resource to cancel the deal before it bleeds me dry. I should be able to get enough Cuirs like that to take my own iron.
I just don't know where to go after that. I hate late game naval stuff on deity.
Didn't have the time to look at the saves, but I assume you're playing on IMM?
GLH=game in the bag in this case I think, but wasn't it risky to peacefully tech with Shaka next door, even on IMM?
You can actually go pretty far with Rifles+Cannons+Galleons in most cases. Else just tech to tanks or whatever and use transports. If you're in a winning position you can afford automate a lot of stuff. A bit ugly but makes the game faster.
Yes on immortal.
No risk at all as I had Shaka at pleased after gifting resources. I also had copper. So not really much to be worried about? He was not red fisted at any point. Remember early game he was building 3x workboats too.
Glib should be okay as no one else has lit. The Ai seem slow tech wise this game. I have marble.
With GLH I can't see the game being lost. French and Shaka pretty much dealt with. Russians plotting war against me. Working on happiness her now. Need to decide if I attack Justin next or go for a better tech. Not had a chance to play today. Finishing off another game first. (Final stages.)
With any game like this if you play the right strategy the game will always seem easier.
I'm still working on the the Mao game for NC 189, but since those turns are starting to take quite a bit, I wanted go ahead and start this map as well. I'll try to give a more detailed breakdown of my though process and hopefully get some more great advice.
Immortal, NH/NE:
SpoilerTurns 1 - 40 :
T0: I went ahead and moved the scout to the east to see if there were any visible resources in the immediate vicinity. Although nothing was revealed, the PH is the obvious move. It retains all of the (important) resources as well as the coastal start. The fish will obviously take longer to hook up, but since the Celts do not start with fishing that will not be a big deal anyway.
T1: It looks like I'm on the eastern side of the island. The plan will be to grab AH, and then go for Mining -> BW.
T2: The scout reveals another fish to the south east. The desert tile looks like the obvious city spot for a future city.
T5: Uh oh, looks like I have the friendly Zulus to the west! Shaka doesn't seem too impressed to meet me.
T6: The border expansion revealed another fish to the northwest. This makes the PH west of the sheep a natural spot for my second city.
T8: Turns out Shaka's capital is quite close. I don't know how peaceful the early game will be, but at least both of my early cities will be on hills.
T13: The next few turns turns were uneventful, as my scout uncovered the remaining land between myself and Shaka and then parked himself for spawn busting duty to the west. Animal Husbandry revealed horses in the capital, which gives me at least one strategic resource even if I have no metals. Started on Mining into BW.
T17: The sheep came online, accelerating the growth in the capital. Now the question becomes whether to improve the gold or the horses first?
SpoilerGold or Horses? :
Improving the gold first:
The gold would come online on T23, right as my capital hits 3 pop. The result would be a 12T settler with 6T to BW.
After the gold I would improve the horses, and then chop the hill 1W of the city center, with the chop completing on T32. On T33 the settler will complete, with the chop going into a WB. However, it would still be a few hammers short, resulting in a 2T build for the WB.
Now improving the horses first:
Just like with the gold, the horses come in the same turn as the capital hits size three. The result would be a 10T settler and 7T to BW.
The settler will also complete on T33, with the chop going into the WB just like before. However those few extra hammers from the horses being improved first would result in only a 1T WB. Obviously my tech would be a couple turns behind, but I think in this case getting the WB one turn quicker will be a much bigger payoff this early in the game.
T20: Mining come in and I continue onto BW. Having tried both options I decide on improving the horses first.
T23: The capital hits size three, and I start on a settler. Shaka has adopted slavery - hopefully this doesn't bode ill for the Celts.
T30: BW comes in, and reveals two copper tiles - one on the island to the south and another immediately west of Shaka's capital. This being only Immortal I might be able to beat him to the location, but that also may bring on a very early war declaration. With the gold now online, Fishing will come in on the same turn as my settler is done. My worker was able to move onto the hill the previous turn, and this fortunate timing will allow him to place a chop into a WB right after the settler.
T33: A very busy turn. The settler completes as does Fishing, which allows me to send the chop into a WB. Unfortunately my scout has revealed a settler coming to claim the copper. There's a good chance Shaka will settle him on the copper, and there's no way for me to beat him to the location. I could have gone onto Sailing here, and pretty much guaranteed getting TGL, however I think I can get away with going Archery into Horseback Riding first and putting an early end to the Zulu menace.
T35: Shaka does indeed place the city on the copper. I delay settling for a turn to finish the chop on the PH.
T36: The chop shaves two turns off the WB, and the second city is founded. I go ahead and start another WB, which I will use for exploration. Vienne takes the sheep for the time being, since Bibracte will take two turns to hit size four regardless. Planning on whipping a second worker at size four to help with all of the upcoming chops.
T40: I 2-pop whip my second worker, with the overflow probably going into an early barracks since most of my horse archers will be coming out of Bibracte. First worker continues to pre-chop in his anti-treehugger crusade. Although not visible in this screenshot, I have spotted Russian borders in the ocean to the east.
I will attach my save if anyone would like to take a look, and as always feedback and advice are greatly appreciated!
I was 50/50 on the plains hill. The easy access to the southern fish. Now your wb requires 5-6 turns to settle it. Also any galley heading south from capital will take time to gte in place.
Agree with horse/gold order for worker. Then a case of how you manage forest/chops and how you decide to deal with Shaka? Where to settle next?
You whipped a second worker? Guess you are going for early HA? Building worker with 6f resource is not a bad option here. Whip better? Additional workers in capital seems tough here. I let my 2nd city borrow the sheep so I could whip the workboat.
Always a dilema. 3rd city vs chopping more HA quicker. To regrow you will need to lose the gold for a few turns. Guess you will pre chop the forest? Guess the other workboat is for exploring?
The wheel might of allowed chariots. They can still be useful as mop up units. Nice against axes. HA are the strong unit here. It would of given your second city something useful to build.
Without pottery whipping here will be tough for HA.
Nice write-up! Your opening moves, and thinking around settling locations, are identical to mine, so obviously I think you've done an excellent job . I mined the gold first though, so it was really interesting to see your calculations regarding the results of that vs horse first. I think by that point I'd already decided to go for GLH so wanted to make sure I got through the necessary techs in time.
You can keep Shaka happy with gifts, and later religion, if you want to stay peaceful for a while. As Pedro78 pointed out in a spoilered comment on my game, you can gift him fish as soon as it's hooked up, as you won't need the yet.
Agree with Gumbolt that forcing workboats to travel further is a drawback of those city spots. I almost lost copper on the southern island to Louis due to my galley having further to go later on, too. But I think the locations work well - later, with another city SE of gold I was able to juggle food between the three of them quite effectively.
Good point on the fish ... as with all the changes I've made to my play while becoming comfortable with IMM, it's a case of unlearning bad habits / invalid rules ... in this case "never trade away your only copy of a resi"
Yeah GLH was basically a win button here. I could see from your test opening upthread that you'd planned this one quite carefully to encourage a situation that would make use of the UB (which seems like classic NC mapmaking ). The whole thing would have played out completely differently if I was forced into an early defensive war. I will give Deity a go one of these days ... looks like there are some strong leaders coming up soon, which might be a good opportunity.
Yup BAT calls cuirs "heavy horsemen" - also maces are heavy footmen. There might be others.
Also I finished mine.
Spoiler:
Didn't save the last turn so can't remember the exact date, the last save I have is 1525AD, which is when I DoWed Izzy, the last remaining AI. There's a small stack just off her west coast, and she capped after my main stack got over and took out Madrid. So about 5 turns later.
Not much to report really - the insulting tech lead made war easy. HC built a city on my mainland, I took that and 4 from his continent leading to capitulation, then a few turns later I attacked Cathy on 2 fronts. The Inca stack went across the northern land bridge connecting their two empires and attacked from her east, starting with Novgorod. Another stack came in by sea to hit her west, starting with St Petersburg. They then converged on Moscow. She was toughest - had a few muskets and grens. She also took the westernmost of the cities I'd taken from HC. I didn't have any units in the area, and by the time I'd whipped cavs from HC's cities he'd actually taken it back himself in a rare moment of non-useless military action by a vassal.
Got sloppy playing the last turns, but it didn't really matter. I set a captured Russian worker to automated roadbuilding, and didn't notice until a few turns later that he was grouped with about half my stack, including the supermedic! So they were uselessly wandering around Siberia while the other half attacked Louis, from whom I only had to take Paris for capitulation.
Also accepted a trade for Corps from HC, meaning I lost a in every city
One nice thing about this map setup is that it makes intercontinental war much less tedious - just a short hop to the next target.
Yeah that was part of my motivation to put the start next to Shaka - the goal was to bar the player from building the GLH, which makes the game too easy. But I really can't figure a situation on a map like this where it's impossible to get the GLH on IMM and the map is still winnable on Deity. I'm pretty sure that removing the gold would already make the map unwinnable on deity.
Good point about the horse vs. gold, but it all depends on whether your bottleneck is beakers or hammers. In my game I improved the gold first because I wanted Archery+Masonry ASAP (and I stayed at 2 cities for a while). In your case improving horses first is def better.
Unless you're assuming that Shaka has another source of Copper nearby, that's false. The AI can only plot on you if they have at least 2 units strictly better than Archers, so Shaka would need at least one of IW/Construction/HBR to possibly DoW you.
I like the fact that you're playing the "safe" way - going HBR before GLH. Perfectly fits the spirit of this map . But as Gumbolt stated, I would get some Granaries first
I would also hurry getting the third city up so it can be useful for the HA war
I actually didn't plan to make any use of the UB when choosing this map, I was only thinking of an early and very tough HA rush. But I didn't expect Shaka to settle his second city on the copper every. single. time. on deity even though he cannot see it from the beggining. This makes him DoW much earlier (sometimes as early as 2000 BC) and requires teching Archery + Masonry, thus making the UB useful. That hill for the second city was a lifesaver aswell.
Looking at how easily you've beaten this one you should definitely try deity, it's a lot more fun/challenge (fun comes with challenge, right?) than IMM. You just have to accept the fact that you won't be able to jaguar-rush anymore
Still playing this. Ben somewhat distracted this week by everything apart from this game.
SpoilerUpdate 475ad. :
Decided to wipe out the French. Took their final 3 cities. Could of got MC for peace but motherland issues were a pain. Capital I lost 4 units as on hill and on an island alone. razed one of the 3 cities.
Struggling a bit science wise here. Started a golden age with great artist. See how things go. Traded for philosophy. Ai seem to have feud now.
Spoiler700ad :
Cathy declares war. Bribes Shaka in too. AP vote on same turn declaring peace between me and her. I think she did land her stack. It just vanished the same turn.
Her phant and 3 pults teleported halfway across my continent. Ho hum!
Have a sizeable stack of Maces, GWs and Trebs now. Getting ready to take out Shaka or rather vassal him once the last Trebs roll in. Took three cities earlier with Construction, then went for CS then Machinery+Engineering. Currently managing my mistiming with the next Great Scientist to bulb Astronomy. Might have to self-tech it entirely or wait a long time to bulb it since I can't afford to go out of Slavery. Too many places have too many crappy tiles they're working if I don't whip them away. Anyways, after Astronomy I would like to take out Louis or maybe Cathy. Shaka should be mopped up by then with minimal losses and I will probably soon start getting a bunch of ships out.
Played it out.Rather sloppy play for second half of game. Conquest 1515ad.
SpoilerFinal stint. :
Final score 234451
Cathy bribing Shaka into war was frustrating just before cuirs. That and Shaka culture grabbing my iron and getting LB! He lost 2-3 more cities and capitulated. I kept whipping cuirs.
Used a stack of 15 or so cuirs against Justin and after 3-4 cities fell he capitulated. (Should of wiped Shaka out or crippled him more after 350ad.)
By this point Cathy was teching replacement parts. I had about 21 units ready to land near her capital. I think this probably was not enough for starting attack. It was literally dumping them into an arena swarming with units. I had to retake Moscow 2-3 times. She had 14-15 cities. All with 3-7 defenders. She had been in war mode most of the game.
Incans were much easier. He had a stack of 7-8 units.He capitulated after 3-4 cities fell. He only had 10 cities.
Isabella. Just like the Russians she had about 14 cities. Had to take 10 of her cities. It was getting to point where domination would of been easier. Maybe I should of wiped out Shaka and Justin earlier?
Overall a lot of fun but a lot of work at the end due to the amount of land and AI spamming cities.
This game was all about dealing with shaka and securing the GLH. At that point the game is pretty much won if you can spam an army.
Question about Horse Archer timing... Playing on Emperor.
SpoilerTurn 51 :
I settled the capital on plains hill NE, 2nd city to share sheep and grab fish NW, 3rd city on incense to share SW fish and floodplains (though not sure if sacrificing that high commerce tile was worth it). I researched AH-Mining-BW and grew to size 5 before building settlers with whip/chop. Shaka settled the copper spot to the west around that same time.
After that I teched archery (as safety), fishing, the wheel and pottery. I could get HBR around turn 60. Would it have been better to rush it faster here? It seems getting the fish was important, but would you delay pottery/granaries?
Pottery and granaries are usually worth in before HBR when HA-rushing. You want them for whipping. Archery that early was unnecessary though. Safety from what? There is no barb pressure and the AI shouldn't attack you quite that early on emperor.
Built horse archers and started attacking Shaka's cities around turn 70, then Louis' around turn 90. After researching HBR on turn 60, I teched Math and Currency. I may have also self-teched Calendar, but I traded with Catherine and Justinian to get Priesthood, Monarchy and Iron Working.
Two Zulu cities were well placed (seafood resources and marble), 3rd not so much. Both French cities were very productive, and I prioritized courthouses to deal with the large distance maintenance. I built 12 HA total and was left with 7 after the war.
After eliminating Shaka and Louis, I focused research along the Music line, then CoL. With the marble, built the Great Library in capital, National Epic in Ulundi and Parthenon in a 3rd city. I bulbed Philosophy with a GS, and after the Parthenon was completed, switched into Caste/Pacifism and started a Golden Age with the Great Artist. With the great scientists, I was able to get to Liberalism and picked Nationalism as the free tech.
I didn't try attacking Justinian with HA since he has swords. Justinian and Catherine have 12 cities each. Met the Inca and Spanish later, and they only have two cities each.
My plan right now is a Cuirassier war on Justinian, then Catherine on way to conquest victory. At Turn 139, I'm around 15 turns from Cuirassiers at current tech pace, and around the same time I should complete the Taj Mahal in Ulundi for a Golden Age. I'm just able to switch civics again.
I could switch back to Caste/Pacifism right away, build more HA, and run merchants in the strongest GP cities in order to get enough gold for a mass HA-Cuir upgrade. However, it might take time until I generate a Great Merchant since my pool is still mostly Great Scientists. It would also slow down the science. Alternatively, I could still switch to Caste and Free Religion (+10% science in all cities instead of more Great People points in 3 Hindu cities), run more scientists, get one GS (Academy in capital?), reach Mil.Trad., then focus on gold generation and merchants during Taj Mahal golden age to upgrade the HA.
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pretty much as soon as it's built..JPG)
. Went AH-Min-BW-fishing-sailing-masonry-wheel-pot-writing. Got GLH in 1520BC. Went for an appeasement strategy with Shaka. Gifted him my second fish as soon as it was hooked up, and once GLH was in I had tech to spare for gifting. GLH kept diplo pretty sweet with everyone, it's been peaceful overall with very few worst enemies, so I've been able to trade freely. Founded CoL and spread it to Shaka, converted once he had, and peace was assured..JPG)
. I stayed in Caste/Paci for a few turns after the GA was over and got 1 GS, who bulbed Edu. This means that I don't have an academy in my cap, which is disappointing, but not a big deal really.
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res you have early on when you don't need health so you get the bonus faster.
). The whole thing would have played out completely differently if I was forced into an early defensive war. I will give Deity a go one of these days ... looks like there are some strong leaders coming up soon, which might be a good opportunity.
