[BTS] Nobles' Club 192 - Huayna Capac

[Pedro78]

@salty mud

Spoiler :

Two things go against building early wonders here:

• You don't have marble/stone
• You have good land to settle

IND trait is useful for failgold later on, but it doesn't make building wonders without res multiplier a good move. Later on you can possibly build GLib and NE without marble if you have enough forests and it fits well with your game.

 

[ArchGhost]

Continued on a bit until

Spoiler :

Got a lock on Great Lib.

Delhi with 4 food resources and all those forests to chop was already going to be a fantastic NE spot, but the discovery of marble to the North of my junker riverside cottage city cinched the decision. With prechops from back before Alpha and then chopping into Research/Wealth a few turns while picking Math/Aes/Lit, the Marble hookup grants a 1 turn GreatLib and over 200 hammers of overflow toward NE (some of the chops completed after this screen I guess, the loaded up save stats 576 hammers towards GL).




Now it's just some filling out expansion, spreading a bit of Buddhism, chopping into the Parthenon and GLH a bit with OR. Traded Currency around for things like Monarchy/Monotheism to civic swap. Plan is to use GS to bulb up and Lib for a Cuir attack in the future.

 

[salty mud]

Part 3, continued up to 1000BC though not much substantial progress.

Spoiler :

Sending my explorers further afield I quickly bump into my new friends and/or enemies. Zara, Justinian and Gilgamesh make for an interesting mix. Interesting to see how politics develop on our pangaea.

The Incan City State has evolved into an empire - Tiwanaku is founded to the north of Cuzco. Gathering it's sustenance from the nearby clams, it supplies the empire with bronze. Some higher quality soldiers will definitely come in handy.

And another neighbour reveals themselves - Hatshepsut. Looks like she's the founder of Judaism. I sense trouble between her and Justinian.

Just as I feared, the citizens of Delhi aren't too happy being part of Incaland. As you can see, the city's distant location and the empire's financial instability are making the people rebellious. There's not an awful lot I can do to stop it so I just have to hope for the best and I pull back my exploring Quechuas to garrison the city, hopefully to make them happier and fight off a rebellion should one occur.

Yet another AI! I'm afraid of Willem. With his financial and creative traits he usually founds strong and prosperous empires. He's on the other end of the continent too, so little I can do to stop him.

Delhi demanded independence. If I gave it to them, Gandhi would come straight back. I rejected their terms, hoping they'd see the wisdom of remaining under Inca rule...

Rather predictably, Justinian has been sending his missionaries around the globe. 33% of the world now call themselves Buddhist, including my 3 cities. Not wanting to make any unnecessary enemies and reap the culture/happiness benefits, I convert to Buddhism.

So here is the Empire of Inca, 1000BC.

I'm not sure I'm too happy with the way the game has progressed, what with capturing Delhi causing me potential harm in the long run. I'm going to keep playing it out though, see what can develop. There's still that river valley to settle - once I have currency I'll be in a much better place to handle it financially. If Justinian is too busy pumping out missionaries, perhaps his land will make a nice addition to my own.

 

[ArchGhost]

played on and off throughout the day to finish.
Finale @ 1330AD.

Spoiler :

Either the map/opponent spread is fairly easy (this is only my 2nd NC, I don't know of any trends) or Huayna is just that much of a monster, I normally struggle on Emperor/Normal speed if not playing one of the better leaders or my go-to guy Roosevelt.

Hastily reconstructed play history using event log and my questionable memory:

Spoiler :

175 BC - Great Library in Delhi done. Parthenon is being chopped in a junker city with like 7 forests, so I spread Buddhism there (in OR at the moment).
150BC - NE has enough overflow with one more chop to finish next turn in Delhi as well.
100 BC - self-tech CoL. GS is born in Delhi, bulbs Philo. Gonna try for the Music Artist to flip to Caste/Pac in a Golden Age since Sistine is great failgold anyway and I'll need Music for MT one way or another
25 AD - Parthenon done in Vilcas
50 AD - GS #2 in Delhi
100 AD - Music is in, won the GA (nobody even has Lit yet). Settling another junker with a road + missonary ready south of Delhi to chop into MoM. Marble + IND + OR + Math chops is way too good to pass up, even if it ends up being only failgold. Teching CS, chopping some forests in yet another junker down on the south coast for fail-gold into Sistine (which ended up completing, oops!)
175 AD - MoM complete in Andahuaylas with 4 or 5 chops. Can't beat that for simplicity. Massive failgold from Delhi which was working it on the down turns ever since I got Calendar way back. I burn the Music GA on a Golden Age and swap to Caste + Pac, running all 4 food tiles and as many scientists as possible in Delhi.
225 AD - Traded Aes + ~90 gold (seems cheap?) for Construction from Giggles. GS # 3 in Delhi.
250 AD - Trade (something?) for Metal Casting from Justin. I need it for bulbing Lib. Start on a Forge in Machu Picchu to get Colossus fail-gold (which I also completed because of not paying attention -- 3 chops in the same turn was too much and built the remainder in one turn! Damn you IND + Math chops! Oh well, financial coast + col ain't bad and you can whip those tiles away without feeling too bad at the same time since they grow back on their own)
275 AD - CS is in. Start self-teching Paper. Workers spreading irrigation hard around Delhi and the southwest junkers so they'll be whippable later.
300 AD - Trade Lit for HBR + gold from somebody. I need HBR eventually anyway, and the gold helps tech.
350 AD - Paper done. Teching Compass, as I need it to bulb Lib.
400 AD - GS #4 in Delhi. Was waiting to see if it would be a GS for sure before double bulbing Edu. One GS left over for Lib.
450 AD - Compass done. Double Bulb Edu and single bulb Lib. Load up Lib to as near done as possible while I still have fail-gold and the GA commerce., then swap to self-teching Nationalism.
475 AD - last turn of the 12 turn GA. Trade Music, Compass + (something else) for Theo + Machinery from Justin since Lib is bulbed; my techs still had full value because he was going Engineering apparently. Swap into Slavery + Theocracy for the upcoming whipping of exp buildings, forges, and Cuirs. Also traded Feudalism out of Zara for Music + Compass.
560 AD - Justin has been plotting for about 15 turns or so. He can't pick me as we share religion and are pleased with another, while Giggles joined us in Buddhist nirvana. Zara, Willem, and Hattie are all targets as Justin doesn't like them in other faiths. He DoWs Hattie and uses his 2nd place tech standing to bribe Zara and Giggles in on her too! The world goes from serene for 4500 years to erupting into world war in an instant.
580 AD - So naturally I join in too, for the brownie points with Justin and Zara mostly. They completely block Hattie off anyway. The relations boost instantly puts me at Friendly with Justin and I trade Engineering from him next turn.
600 AD - Nationalism is in, and I start building Taj in my bureau cap as there are still 4 plains forests to chop away. Gunpowder is the last heavy teching needed so I can afford to move off of a couple villages to knock this out.
620 AD - Lib Military Tradition. Start on Gunpowder. I can self-tech in 4 turns at 100% but gold is short...wish I hadn't screwed up the Sistine/Colossus chopping.
720 AD - Hattie peaces out for 35 gold. I then immediately trade her Compass for all 290 of her gold right back, to move on with Gunpowder. Heh. It doesn't even piss off Justin/zara because the value of compass is so low she didn't give me positive diplo.
740 AD - Gunpowder is in. I got another scientist (#5) somewhere after Lib so I'll use him on Chemistry and self-tech Printing Press, as I still lack Optics. I've been busy spreading irrigation, whipping and chopping Forges/Barracks/Stables and the occasional courthouse, so it's time to whip 7 exp Cuirs out!
840-880 AD - Cuirs rolling out smoothly as the AP is built in Buddhism. I win by a good margin. The cuir's first targets are a pair of barb cities on my northern border that have been an eyesore all game. Justin never cared to take them, he just expanded to all the (even crappier) land around them, so it's free gold+ exp for me. The barbs actually got around to popping borders and improving/growing quite a lot of tiles, so I snagged 4 free workers and 2 decent cities that could quickly help push Cuirs when they came out of revolt. Nifty.
900 AD - Taj done and a swap into Nationhood. Goodbye Bureau, you served well getting me here but with 15 cities, the cost reductions and +2 free happy from barracks helps me more in this whip-heavy large empire.
920 AD - Printing Press is done, I bulb most of Chemistry with my stray GS so it will only take 5 turns. Nifty.
1000 AD - Chemistry. Tech Idling on SciMeth since I don't really have a direction to go, and my tech rate is only going to drop anyway as I war, so I might as well save to fight strike if I need to.
1010 AD - I trade Guilds and Drama out of Zara and then DoW him with about 15 Cuirs across his border, with several more en route. Zara's stack is up north thrashing Hattie around so he is totally boned. With both Guilds + Chem now I just set my workers loose on Automate with the "leave improvements" unchecked and they'll (mostly) turn everything that's not a village or town into either farms or workshops. I'll be spending most of my attention span seeing which cities to whip and the actual attacks from now on and they can do that well enough unmonitored although they do sometimes wreck irrigation chains in the most "creative" ways.
1020 AD - Trade for Banking, set tech to Economics to try for GM and to get into Free Market which might be necessary to get out of the hole later.
1040 AD - GS #6 in Delhi. After long deliberation and lost of conquest gold, decided to use him on SciMeth to get Communism if the game goes on too long.
1070 AD - I capture my third city from Zara, Aksum, where the Mids are located. He caps and I revolt into Police State to make the Cuirs really fly off the line.
1080 AD - In preparation for DoWing Hattie, I bribe Justin out of the war with Printing Press. Don't want to give him Gunpowder, which he is much closer to than Rifling (he's busy teching up the Constitution-Democracy line anyway, my EPs tell me.
1090 AD - DoW Hattie. I see that Giggles is ready to take Thebes from her next turn and so immediately bribe him out
1100 AD - Econmics in. Willem beat me to it by a turn. I also forget to swap over to Free Market, but I'm just cranking Cuirs anyway until the game ends so no biggie.
1120 AD - Hattie gives in after 2 cities. I give her both back as the maintenance is already atrocious on Zara's cities. With her on the west end and my cities kept from Zara, we flank Justinian on all sides now, creating a nice situation for a rapid capitulation with multiple attack paths at once.
1160 AD - It takes 4 turns to mobilize down to striking distance of Giggle's nearest city. I bought forced embargoes out of Hattie and Zara and closed borders with him myself, but he STILL had some mini-stack hiding in the fog of war between me and Hattie before my new Zara-cities popped their borders, and he snuck a horse archer into undefended Aksum down the roads. Grr. Anyway, he caps in 1200AD after losing 4 cities (including recaptured Aksum) and he gets his 3 back.
1200 AD - With Gilgamesh rolled up, I don't even stop, and run across the border to kill a mini-stack guarding a worker just over Willem's border. He gives up next turn when I take his border city and pays me Constitution for it. What a swell guy. He gets his city back (one of only 4, dude got hosed on the expansion front this game) and all of the cuirs over there will now form up to hit Justin in the Southwest flank while I send another two stacks in from directly South of him and his Southeast made up of newly produced Cuirs.
1250 AD - DoW on Justin. The multiple pronged attack works great, wiping out large chunks of his defenders in 3 or 4 cities rapidly before he really masses anywhere in response. Only Constantinople is reinforced, and its central location means two of my stacks can converge on it to hammer it down. Justin collapses after that but refuses to cap as I race out and take 2 more cities with token defenses before he throws in the towel.
1330AD - Conquest Victory!

Grumpy Justin gives up after beating him down from 11 cities to 5, completely isolated with the world against him, giving me the win. His fault, being so stubborn. I know the vassal mechanics, but sometimes it just seem like they are vindictive and want to pick off more of your units. At least it goes for everybody: Hattie refused to cap to either Justin or Zara despite getting whomped by both and losing a city to each. She was so weak Giggles' little stack was going to take Thebes if I didn't buy him out of the war. Willem capped after one city on the first turn of the war, even Zara (the big dog at the time Cuirs started running out of my cities) gave up after losing his stack + 3 cities.



Wow. 10 wonders and that Buddhist shrine + 2 OTHER prophets. Justin has been busy.


Just to illustrate how stubborn he was, look at the shocking amount of the map he lost. His entire core is gone. Taking 6 cities and obliterating his army should have snagged the war success no problem, there's NO WAY he's big enough to avoid capping (Hattie is ~25% my size and she's intact). Yet it was "refuses to talk" all the way up to this point...

Spoiler End state :

Why build most of the wonders when you can just appropriate them



The graphs say it all. Yeah....this was pretty much over as soon as I Libbed MT. Maybe even earlier, With the double Edu + Lib bulbs. Should have got a screen of the trade screen, only Justin could tech Education at the time. I misread the tech trades and got spooked that Zara had Gunpowder before I even had Cuirs out since he didn't want/couldn't research it, so I slammed them out constantly until I capped him. Then with nothing really to do but run around chain capping AIs, I pushed out a lot more.


Tech tree, on the way to Communism for SP as I already have Guilds + Chemistry. SP + Nationhood is fantastic when you start running large empires, Financial BureauCap or not. Not that it matters, but this is how I would proceed further if this was a multiple continents or 18 civ game in order to keep pushing ahead economically.


Yup, it *was* Emperor. Man HC is crazy good...

Spoiler Conclusions about the way my map played out :

-Willem got choked off by Giggles. He's usually pretty good as Salty Mud was alluding to, at least in terms of establishing a good science base and running away in tech (he tends to be a weenie, if left alone, in terms of power, though he can DoW at pleased!). But with a Creative civ nearby to fight him back and curtail his expansion, he kinda got heeled hard.

-Justin founding Buddhism, and more importantly, Gandhi founding NO religion was massively helpful to my situation. I could just share Justin's religion and take Gandhi's share of land with no fuss, as the others were pretty much sure to hate Hattie. Only Zara could have really done anything to me, and the shared war on Hattie eliminated that possibility

-Giggles flopped over to Buddhism, which is nice, but looking at the way it played out he'd either get into strife with Zara or Willem anyway depending on which one he sided with. And since I was able to get on Zara's good side I was pretty much safe from the Gilga-monster anyway despite my initial read of the situation.

-Screwing up and completing Colossus and Sistine cost me probalby 10 turns of teching on Gunpowder, Economics and Scimeth combined. I couldn't trade for gold most of the game (they were broke) and I didn't want to really catch them up anyway. But a more careful eye on exploiting fail-gold would have made the Cuirs faster, and I might have actually reached Communism if I had needed to.

 

[Pedro78]

Congrats on your win @ArchGhost !

Too bad you missed out on Chicken Pizza though

 

[dutchfire]

Hope to have time to play some of this soon. Probably going to try Always War on Monarch or Emperor.

 

[Pangaea]

Is there something wrong with the saves or something? I extracted the Immortal no huts save -- didn't show up (but the last game I tried, NC 187 did, plus a bunch of others). Extracted the whole zip file into BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder -- still nothing shows up.



Forget about it. Haven't played the game in yonks, and must have backed up the user folder at some point, so now I extracted the file into this one instead of the one the game actually uses. It showed up in-game now, so should be able to (hopefully) have some fun with this. Not a bad leader!

 

[Pangaea]

Good start. T38. Immortal.

Spoiler :

Settled on the plains hill by the river. (1W or 1SW, don't recall). Usually walk in the wrong direction from the start, or when hunting for workers, but not this time. Stole a worker T9, same turn it was done improving the food.

After pumping Quechuas, 11 vs 3 hill archers was enough to take Delhi in T38, with one in backup. Close call. A very juicy city too, and not much else around is anything to holler about, with jungle and tundra+ice. Put a chop or two into Stonehenge, so almost got full value in failgold for it (next turn). Need that. Next up probably Fishing+Wheel (went Mining+BW from the start).

 

[Pedro78]

Playing with the Incas on IMM, isn't it a bit too easy for you, @Pangaea ?

 

[Pangaea]

Probably But it's the level I prefer the most, because it's possible (for me at least) to play games in different ways, while on Deity you need to play so darn good with barely any mistake to be able to win. Also...

Spoiler :

Justinian has become kind of a beast, because he has incredible land with great resources, boosting research something fierce. He got Alpha T50, and has a pack of other stuff now in around 1000BC, including a giant size 9-10 capital. May turn into an interesting game nevertheless, even if I should win unless I mess up too badly.

Plus, I've not played this game for probably 6 months, so going right back into Deity would surely leave me frustrated sooner or later I can win on Deity, but far from every time, and not easily.

 

[Pedro78]

Well this map isn't supposed to be too easy on deity, exactly for the reason you've stated. I hope this makes the game interesting even on IMM

Deity can sometimes be stressful but...

Spoiler :

..on a Pangaea with Gandhi as your only landtarget it usually isn't

And btw you can win most deity games making many big mistakes -- on most maps there's such a huge difference between winning and getting a "convincing win"

 

[Pangaea]

Took a while in between other stuff, but a status report at 1AD.

Spoiler :

Tech-wise it isn't going as well as hoped, but I have filled out the land, and snagged two barb cities before Justinian could get to them. That means I have 11 cities, currently working on Music. Don't have Civil Service yet, but Justinian just completed Feudalism, so if he picked Music next, he would beat me. Hopefully he doesn't anyway, so I have something to trade with.

Justinian is a beast really. 13 cities, 14 next turn, with more land to expand into. There is another barb city that can yield me gold (Justinian recently broke our deal). It'll be expensive, but it may just be worth it due to gold.

Took forever to get Currency and Math. Eventually I had to tech Currency myself. Only got Math like 5 turns ago. Don't have any wonders. Tried for Great Library, but Justinian got that last turn. Even with +50% wonders, it's a slow haul without marble, which he captured.

Gilgamesh is plotting. The smart move would be to smash puny archer-only 3-city Willem, but it could be against Hatty too, and maybe Zara.

I have many poor cities due to lack of food and somewhat dodgy land, but hopefully they will come in handy down the line. I'm expecting to take on Justinian with Cuirs (yes, yes...) -- unless he techs too fast from here until I can get them. Then it might be better to smash everybody else instead. But I kinda like the idea of taking down the run-away AI first, especially since he's close with wonderful land.

(Hatty's city count is not correct due to Justinian 'forcing' me to break off ties. She has 7 or 8, maybe 9.

The North:


The South: