[BTS] Nobles' Club 201 - Alexander of Greece

[MeowZeDung]

To t170/1100 AD:

Spoiler :

As I was regrouping to finish off Suleiman, I sent a chariot to poke around and saw this:



Shaka just wants trouble it seems.

I finished Suleiman off the turn I could cancel the peace treaty and immediately started pondering the merit of turning on Shaka soon thereafter. I judged that I was in no position economically to mass enough HAs to wipe Shaka out completely. A few turns later I saw a golden opportunity with Shaka's invasive seafood city protected by only one archer, and 4 other archers in the field that I could kill with HAs that same turn. I took the bait figuring I wouldn't get a better chance at such amazing war success to get peace from this psycho. I razed the city, to be resettled later when I can actually afford it and was able to get peace just a turn or two later after killing one more stray unit.

Thus began the long slog toward economic recovery. This is a definite weakness in my game, as I tend to be a poor judge of balancing expansion and tech/military buildup. Having Shaka, the only civ I have contact with, unwilling to trade techs and open borders with no real hope of budging doesn't help.

I thought this would help enough to get me out of annoyed/worst enemy:


But alas, it did not:


I guess I could have gifted him some garbage city, but I don't understand the mechanics enough and didn't want to accidentally waste the 100 hammers.

It may have been better to simply fogbust the northern part of the continent, beeline construction and/or engineering to deal with Shaka, then take over the rest of the continent. I felt I had Shaka under control though, so I decided to settle the continent, and I am at ~20 cities, mostly done apart from some less desirable tundra fishing villages and resource grabs. It was dicey in the research realm -- an island city for better trade routes, gold from whipping cheap units, empire wide courthouses, and stone/chop fueled Moai fail gold are the only reasons I made it -- and I'm behind the other continent in tech for sure. That said, with a huge empire of developing cottages, I think I'm in a winning position.

The tentative plan is to tech civil service next, then bulb paper and education with the 3 GS I have sitting around (academy in capitol already), then leverage PHI and stone to get Oxford built ASAP, and finally tech towards cuirrasiers to deal with Shaka, perhaps diverting to economics for free market and the GM (for sushi) if I don't get one in my next GP pop. After Shaka is gone I can get Wall St. going in his shrine city and spread Hinduism like crazy, and tech with all my might towards corps (Sushi and Aluminum are best for space, right?). I've had some unsuccessful transcontinental invasions in recent games, so I'd rather stick to space or UN here.

 

[Fish Man]

To t170/1100 AD:

Spoiler :

As I was regrouping to finish off Suleiman, I sent a chariot to poke around and saw this:



Shaka just wants trouble it seems.

I finished Suleiman off the turn I could cancel the peace treaty and immediately started pondering the merit of turning on Shaka soon thereafter. I judged that I was in no position economically to mass enough HAs to wipe Shaka out completely. A few turns later I saw a golden opportunity with Shaka's invasive seafood city protected by only one archer, and 4 other archers in the field that I could kill with HAs that same turn. I took the bait figuring I wouldn't get a better chance at such amazing war success to get peace from this psycho. I razed the city, to be resettled later when I can actually afford it and was able to get peace just a turn or two later after killing one more stray unit.

Thus began the long slog toward economic recovery. This is a definite weakness in my game, as I tend to be a poor judge of balancing expansion and tech/military buildup. Having Shaka, the only civ I have contact with, unwilling to trade techs and open borders with no real hope of budging doesn't help.

I thought this would help enough to get me out of annoyed/worst enemy:


But alas, it did not:


I guess I could have gifted him some garbage city, but I don't understand the mechanics enough and didn't want to accidentally waste the 100 hammers.

It may have been better to simply fogbust the northern part of the continent, beeline construction and/or engineering to deal with Shaka, then take over the rest of the continent. I felt I had Shaka under control though, so I decided to settle the continent, and I am at ~20 cities, mostly done apart from some less desirable tundra fishing villages and resource grabs. It was dicey in the research realm -- an island city for better trade routes, gold from whipping cheap units, empire wide courthouses, and stone/chop fueled Moai fail gold are the only reasons I made it -- and I'm behind the other continent in tech for sure. That said, with a huge empire of developing cottages, I think I'm in a winning position.

The tentative plan is to tech civil service next, then bulb paper and education with the 3 GS I have sitting around (academy in capitol already), then leverage PHI and stone to get Oxford built ASAP, and finally tech towards cuirrasiers to deal with Shaka, perhaps diverting to economics for free market and the GM (for sushi) if I don't get one in my next GP pop. After Shaka is gone I can get Wall St. going in his shrine city and spread Hinduism like crazy, and tech with all my might towards corps (Sushi and Aluminum are best for space, right?). I've had some unsuccessful transcontinental invasions in recent games, so I'd rather stick to space or UN here.

Great job with Sillyman!

I think cuirs are overkill. Trebs will be alright against a slow-teching AI like him.

Communism is best for space on standard speed. Corps are mostly useless here.

 

[Olafeson]

Deity Difficulty NoHuts / NoEvents (Turn 60)

Spoiler :

Agri - AH -Mining -BW - Wheel - Pottery - HR

Did settle 1NE to grab more land and another gold + floodplain. Unfortunately the land to the north does not look very promising and i started scouting to the north and decided to fogbust there. So i did not see Mehmed until he already boxed me in a bit.

Well decided to go for 2 settlers after 1 worker and some warriors. Going to stay on 3 cities and go for a Horsearcher rush. Bit late to improve the second gold mine. Could have reached the tech earlier if i improved it faster. But then i want my 3 cities to have granary and baracks, maybe even 1-2 stables ( for shock promotion vs spearman) and be at max size. Forests will all go into Horse archers.

Guess i will be ready to attack between Turn 80 and 85, Bursa looks juicy and easy to take. Of course Mehmed has metal but i think i can still take at least 2 cities with Horse Archers, maybe more.

 

[Olafeson]

Deity difficulty No Huts /No Events (Turn 86)

Spoiler :

Got 10 Horse archers with 2 promotions in place to attack Bursa at turn 87. He only has 1 archers and 1 axe in it, maybe 1 spearman. Ankara only has 1 axe and 2 archers too. Got very lucky that shaka dowed on Mehmed on Turn 84. So he moved all his army to the east. Including the spearman which was fortified in Bursa and Ankara. With better micro maybe i could have attacked a couple of turns earlier.

Hope to get at least Bursa and hopefully Istanbul and Ankara too.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler To T74 :

Seeing that there was a special challenge involved, I felt that it was important to not waste any time. Did a mad dash directly to HBR with:
AH -> Mining -> BW -> TW -> HBR -> Archery with two cities. However my game crashed completely with this first attempt, I was simply too thin to sustain both the attack and then the economy.
A nice trick is that I worked the gold (2H+2C) first turn, since the worker would not have anything to do if he arrived early. This resulted in 4H overflow after worker which got my first spawnbuster out earlier. I'll remember this trick in the future!
Think I declared at T58 or so? I lost quite a few HAs to bad luck, and had to sue for peace after only 2 cities or so, perhaps the game was salvagable, but I decided to give it a second try instead.

So I retried the map with a more modest HA-rush, with AG->Min->AH->BW->TW->Pottery->HBR->Archery, built only two cities in this attempt as well, but had 4 workers instead of 2, tiles was more improved, chopping when faster and granaries ensured that I could whip HAs too.

I had to start the attack abit early at T65, since Suliman got the copper hooked up.

Spoiler T65 screenshot :

]

Even though I didn't get the lovely fist turn of war suprise attack, where you can position your HAs and then take all the cities you want, the war went incredibly well.
The combat2 HAs went through archers like a hot chainsaw through butter so I got a pair of cities with no(?) losses.
Took a ceasefire at T73-T74 and will now wait for healing and reinforcements before I redeclare.

Spoiler T74 screenshot :

Trying to reach alfa and it's possible I'll get there with conquer-gold before economy crashes, it would be so nice to get a few techs from Sulieman for peace once I have taken most of his good cities.


I'm frankly very worried of how to continue this now though... It seems to be only us 3 on this continent, and Shaka is well... Shaka. :|
HAs could have been a big mistake here, I'm thinking now that some sort of construction attack would have been better. The odeon is nice, and I would much rather have catas+phalanxes against them nasty pesky impis.

 

[krikav]

Played on until T142

Spoiler :

I continued grabbing a few cities from Sully, got some techs for peace which was nice. (IW+Sail+Mason).
Shaka showed the red fist, but then begged me for HBR, I complied since he had no horses, and the red fist went away. A few turns later he got into warmode again.
Don't really remember how long it took, but he did declare on Sully later on, and walked through both my empire and through neutral ground (Sullys previous territory) toward the deer in the NE where Sully had his last two cities.
I sacked the road he had his stack on whenever I could, to prolong the inevitable death of sully. But in the end he got there.

My economy was completly in shambels (How on earth should one recover from these rushes?)
Ran at 10% science when I was lucky, but 0% most of the time.
Settled fur and silver cities to get the happines, and eventually reached construction, declared on shaka when I had a few units.
The war was very difficult, since I had him west, east and south of me.

Did get the upper hand eventually, since he is so eager to suicide his stack on fortified units in walled cities. (Thanks Shaka!)
Took a peace treaty for 10 turns for monotheism just to breathe abit.

I'm winning the war now, and have managed to get at least some teching going. Reached CoL and bulbed philo, only to realize that it was incredibly stupid. I have no chance in hell to run pacifism.

Now I planned to save up some cash, and run scientists in some cities and eventually bulb Astro. But as I'm not close to finishing Shaka, and he is teching feudalism... Perhaps I need to go for engineering instead.

All illusions to finish the challenge have faded. If I somehow is able to finish Shaka of and then catch up techwise, which is looking rather unlikely, I probably have to play "whack a mole" with some cultural maniacs, because there are three cities full of wonders in a distant world.

 

[Samuel_996]

Considered just letting my excitable 1AD post hang there without finishing it, but

Spoiler :

gonna own up to the fact that this one got away from me after 1AD. Shaka moved a stack of units to my borders literally one turn after I resumed (no red fist because he had a treaty with Suleiman) and although I managed another cheap tech beg, he stayed plotting on me. Sadly he bumped to friendly a mere 1-2 turns too late. Once he eventually DOW'd me I was able to bribe Suleiman in, which saved me from major fighting. However Suleiman's edge in tech and cities allowed him to push back Shaka's obsolete SOD and eventually conquer 4-5 cities before capping him. Couldn't bribe him off because "he'd rather win the game" . I threw in the towel when I libbed MT ~800AD and realised I wouldn't be able to take on 16 city Suleiman (with a LOOONG border) who already had Knights, Pikeman etc, not to mention a vassal.

From the looks of the other games, converting a HA rush into a middlegame with Suleiman's strong core incorporated by 1AD might actually be a much better way to go here, especially with the bonus objective. Might try again with that angle. Choosing the diplo path with religion and gift cities is all very well except when you're on a continent with Shaka

 

[krikav]

Considered just letting my excitable 1AD post hang there without finishing it, but

Spoiler :

gonna own up to the fact that this one got away from me after 1AD. Shaka moved a stack of units to my borders literally one turn after I resumed (no red fist because he had a treaty with Suleiman) and although I managed another cheap tech beg, he stayed plotting on me. Sadly he bumped to friendly a mere 1-2 turns too late. Once he eventually DOW'd me I was able to bribe Suleiman in, which saved me from major fighting. However Suleiman's edge in tech and cities allowed him to push back Shaka's obsolete SOD and eventually conquer 4-5 cities before capping him. Couldn't bribe him off because "he'd rather win the game" . I threw in the towel when I libbed MT ~800AD and realised I wouldn't be able to take on 16 city Suleiman (with a LOOONG border) who already had Knights, Pikeman etc, not to mention a vassal.

From the looks of the other games, converting a HA rush into a middlegame with Suleiman's strong core incorporated by 1AD might actually be a much better way to go here, especially with the bonus objective. Might try again with that angle. Choosing the diplo path with religion and gift cities is all very well except when you're on a continent with Shaka

Spoiler :

Shaka can be a really problematic AI given the right circumstances. I think this is such a map.

I'm glad you tried a different approach than I did, with a peacefull aproach and later breakout.
I did HA rush failed first (too rushy rush!) but second attempt went very well.
After the HA rush I had to recover economically, and I also needed to tech abit to get construction. HAs against Shaka who is spamming impies powered by police state is not a viable option.
Lack of currency and military overextention made me tech too slow, and although did get troops in time things are moving to slow. I'm bogged down completely against shaka and when I'm done with him, I'm likely to lose to another AI on the other continent(s).


I'm starting to think more and more that a construction attack is the way to go here. The odeon takes care of the happines problems, and once you have taken what you need from sully, the remaining phalanx+cata stack can just roll on over shaka without interuption.
The extra time you get toward construction makes it more likely that you can get currency in time too.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T161 :

Ok, at T161 I admit defeat. Perhaps this is salvagable if there is a few wimps on other continents that is easy to conquer at tech disadvantage? Not certain though, and it would be such a chore that I don't want to go through the effort.
Shaka is still ways from being eliminated since I have to at least reach engineering to counter his longbows and thats at least 10 turns away.
Suddenly Qin cruises to my shore with 2000 score and 12 cities compared to my 1200score and 14 cities. Apparantly he has scimet.

I think that a construction breakout is the way to go.

 

[krikav]

@Olafeson How did your game continue?

 

[shakabrade]

Deity - 25BC

I went rather for expansionist/builder mode to develop the land first and be able to afford a war later without stopping the tech pace.

Save attached

 

[krikav]

@shakabrade

Spoiler :

That looks really nice! I'm abit amazed that you managed to get GLH that late, and that you also founded confu.
AH->Agri->mining at the start, why the reverse order? Better agri first? Or did you change your mind after AH was in?
DId you build the colossus w/o copper? (no road on the mine)
And how on the earth did you get that iron deal with Sulieman? I counted the EP points and it doesn't seem like you have sabotaged the mine. Did Shaka help you out with that? Feels like there is some trick I can learn here.

Do you think that it will be possible to meet the challenge condition of obliterating both Shaka and Sulieman before you are found by a caravel?

 

[Fish Man]

@shakabrade

Spoiler :

That looks really nice! I'm abit amazed that you managed to get GLH that late, and that you also founded confu.
AH->Agri->mining at the start, why the reverse order? Better agri first? Or did you change your mind after AH was in?
DId you build the colossus w/o copper? (no road on the mine)
And how on the earth did you get that iron deal with Sulieman? I counted the EP points and it doesn't seem like you have sabotaged the mine. Did Shaka help you out with that? Feels like there is some trick I can learn here.

Do you think that it will be possible to meet the challenge condition of obliterating both Shaka and Sulieman before you are found by a caravel?

Spoiler :

In hindsight that challenge was more for noble than deity...here it's really erratic what the AIs choose to tech. In iso games Willem likes to troll me by by going full astro then steel before I do every time. Meanwhile runaway HC was still missing astro 1200AD so I gave it to him for 200g because he could've probably gotten it in 1-2 turns or in a trade anyways.

 

[shakabrade]

Spoiler @krikav :

Spoiler :

That looks really nice! I'm abit amazed that you managed to get GLH that late, and that you also founded confu.
AH->Agri->mining at the start, why the reverse order? Better agri first? Or did you change your mind after AH was in?
DId you build the colossus w/o copper? (no road on the mine)
And how on the earth did you get that iron deal with Sulieman? I counted the EP points and it doesn't seem like you have sabotaged the mine. Did Shaka help you out with that? Feels like there is some trick I can learn here.

Do you think that it will be possible to meet the challenge condition of obliterating both Shaka and Sulieman before you are found by a caravel?

[/QUOTE]

You can see from the demographics on T1 or T2 how many coastal capitals there are, the lower the number, the more there are. You can get a reasonable guess by adding numbers to get the average you can see in the demos. I am an engineer and always have hand calculator on my desk, but you must have smartphone near. Normally, full land is 9000 land. The higher the average land, the more likely that you will get the water wonder. And if you have met Augustus Caesar, consider GLH gone. But it is best not to rely on the wonder. I used to skip GLH while I was trying to learn the game as it is an easy mode. For our semi-iso-ish map, fail gold is okay too. I do not think GLH has payed for itself yet, and I think I have 2 crappy cities which I founded only to justify GLH, which is probably stupid money drain. The Colossus is probably not worth it, but it was only 2 chops and one whip. Regarding Confu, I think I have not founded it since playing on Emperor. I bulbed Tao very often on Deity, but Confu, jeez, totally random. I wanted CoL for border expand and GPPs. Iron, I just checked and the deal was there. My guess is that there were Impis involved, barbs were highly unlikely, but maybe some were not dealt with for some time due to wars with Shaka. I have had no scout there to see. The trick is to go through trades every turn, nothing else. I was looking for gold in trades. I basically do not want Ottomans lose Iron while in war with and I got Iron by settling on it couple of turns ago.
I am extra greedy this game to meet the challenge, otherwise there is no chance for both killing guys before contact and early space. I'll see what happens, but I think there is 90% chance that I will fail the challenge.

 

[shakabrade]

@Undefeatable

Spoiler :

In hindsight that challenge was more for noble than deity...here it's really erratic what the AIs choose to tech. In iso games Willem likes to troll me by by going full astro then steel before I do every time. Meanwhile runaway HC was still missing astro 1200AD so I gave it to him for 200g because he could've probably gotten it in 1-2 turns or in a trade anyways.

In deity, space that early is realistic, as the global tech pace is quicker, but also waging a war is probably not possible without other AIs to help with the recovery. I skipped Archery with close neighbour which is not advisable to stand the chance. I do not like this game as I made a lot of gambles and won. And the start is simply to good.

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

You can see from the demographics on T1 or T2 how many coastal capitals there are, the lower the number, the more there are. You can get a reasonable guess by adding numbers to get the average you can see in the demos. I am an engineer and always have hand calculator on my desk, but you must have smartphone near. Normally, full land is 9000 land. The higher the average land, the more likely that you will get the water wonder. And if you have met Augustus Caesar, consider GLH gone. But it is best not to rely on the wonder. I used to skip GLH while I was trying to learn the game as it is an easy mode. For our semi-iso-ish map, fail gold is okay too. I do not think GLH has payed for itself yet, and I think I have 2 crappy cities which I founded only to justify GLH, which is probably stupid money drain. The Colossus is probably not worth it, but it was only 2 chops and one whip. Regarding Confu, I think I have not founded it since playing on Emperor. I bulbed Tao very often on Deity, but Confu, jeez, totally random. I wanted CoL for border expand and GPPs. Iron, I just checked and the deal was there. My guess is that there were Impis involved, barbs were highly unlikely, but maybe some were not dealt with for some time due to wars with Shaka. I have had no scout there to see. The trick is to go through trades every turn, nothing else. I was looking for gold in trades. I basically do not want Ottomans lose Iron while in war with and I got Iron by settling on it couple of turns ago.
I am extra greedy this game to meet the challenge, otherwise there is no chance for both killing guys before contact and early space. I'll see what happens, but I think there is 90% chance that I will fail the challenge.

Spoiler :

That's interesting...would never have thought to use demographics to check for GLH probability!