[BTS] Nobles' Club 203: Mehmed II of the Ottomans

[Fish Man]

Happy New Year, everyone! I bid you all, ladies and gentlemen as well as persons of nonbinary gender - welcome to Nobles' Club 203! The Nobles' Club series started out as a way for Noble-level (and below) players to improve their game. Most of the original participants now play at much higher levels, so this has become a way for advanced players to help others learn to play better. You can play your own game at any level and with any mod, but it would be nice to comment on the games of other players and give them advice. This week we are playing as Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire:

Spoiler :

His name is Mehmed - but I like to call him Mom-ed, as per the AbsoluteZero pronunciation. And for the time being, we'll call him Mom-ed Moneybags, for reasons that will become clear very soon.

The Ottomans start with the wheel and agriculture, arguably one of the best starting tech combos in the game - it gives access to quick food and quick pottery, maybe even fast chariots if you're so inclined and the map allows it.

Mehmed is expansive and organized - a deceptively decent trait combo. Expansive is always nice for fast workers (no, not Osaka's fast workers but ones that are fast to build ), and quick granaries with a single whip or chop; it also allows you to delay connecting health resources, chop more, and tank the from factories/plants better. Organized gives discounts on the most buildings in the game (all of them useful ones), and its civic upkeep reduction is criminally underrated, allowing you to save a hundred or two gpt in the late game easily, as well as making bureaucracy even more powerful by slashing its cost in half.

The UU, the janissary, is a musket replacement with 25% bonus against mounted, archery, and melee unit. That's a lot of bonuses against basically everything pre-Renaissance that matters! But the drawback is its position in the tech tree - there's a reason nobody's ever really done a musket rush in optimal play. And 9 str + 1 move isn't quite enough to take on longbows and maces by itself, even with the bonuses. Still, it's able to defend better when paired with cannons and is the only musket that can actually win against knights.

And the start:

Spoiler :

Spoiler: map details

Spoiler :

Map type: planet generator 0.68, no other settings changed. Was tempted to make crazy flood plains appear everywhere...but that would be too easy, now, would it?

Number of players:

Spoiler :

12, to accommodate for the larger map.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for - the challenge condition!

Spoiler :

Mom-ed Moneybags wants his money 'n metal, and he wants it all! He starts with 2 gold but he's greedy for moooaaar. So, he's made it his mission to collect mining resources, and collect every single copy of'em.

Your goal, playing as Mom-ed, is to obtain as many mining resources as possible (and by that I mean resources that can be improved with a mine - the full list being gold, silver, gems, copper, iron, coal, aluminum, uranium), in the shortest time possible. To obtain a resource it must be hooked up to your trade network and not be traded away to anyone else (so...you need fission for uranium). Resource trades from other civs count towards this as well.

You will get +1 point for all the resources that you have control of at the turn you win. You will also get +10 points for having at least one of every mining resource. Finally, your score will be multiplied by x2 if you win before t250 (standardized for all speeds, so t750 on marathon), and it will be multiplied by x3 if you win before t200 (again, standardized, so t600 on marathon). There are a lot of ways this can play out and at least from first glance not really a clear way to optimize your score, so if you participate, think carefully about what you want to do.

(There's a corp that uses most of these mining resources. Perhaps it'll also be nice...to build a spaceship with it...on a slower speed?)

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:The WB-saves are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, check out the BUG MOD), select "Play Scenario", and look for "NC number Leader Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels). You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Deity, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

What's up with specific difficulties:

In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Prince. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

For players on Monarch or above, you should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows.

How to add techs to the barbarians:

1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
6. Exit the worldbuilder.
7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

Huts and events:

The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.

And with that - let the games begin!

 

[Fish Man]

OK it's super lame that I'm the first to comment on this and even more lame what I'm about to say, but here goes.

In my playthrough...I forgot to set MaxTurns to 0. Did it for all the WB saves attached...but kinda jumped the gun and started playing before making the necessary edits. Right now it's t415, marathon, I just got plastics. And according to the top right corner, there are 85 turns left in the game.

My questions is: what will happen when that counter reaches 0? My initial assumption was I'd win a time "victory" and not be able to launch the spaceship, but after saving another WB file and setting MaxTurns to 1 after the current to test what happens when the turn limit is reached...nothing occurs? No victory, no defeat, nothing. So...do I win a time victory when the countdown is reached, or does it just pass by without doing anything because it's marathon? @elmurcis 's experiences showed that whoever has highscore wins time victory and all other players experience defeat, but my testing has shown that the turn limit doesn't mean anything? Or is that yet another WB quirk that happens when you mess with settings in the text file directly?

If I AM forced to "win" time can I still launch a spaceship? It appears to be the case; seemingly you can still build Apollo after victory. But can someone confirm this?

 

[krikav]

@Undefeatable yes thats kind of lame.
I don't know at all what will happen. But do change the files and upload with correct settings, in case it screws things up for some marathon player.

 

[krikav]

I'm playing the map. Appreciate the map and the nice photoshop skills!!
I think I allready made a serious error in judegement in the opening, but no real harm done.

Spoiler T9 :

I moved warrior SW, and saw another gold. so I just decided to SiP.
I was saved by an hidden wet corn, so this might not be a disaster. But from the opening screenshot I think it would be way superior choice (probably not outcome, du to wet corn) to instead settle 1N on the PH.
We are an expansive leader so lack of freshwater doesn't harm us as much. And the extra hammer is nice, but since we can also work a 1F2H tile, we get _another_ hammer bonus when building worker.
This would allow us to get a worker out in 10 turns!
Abit annoyed that I missed this.

Spoiler :

With that in mind, now that I did SiP and remembered that we are expansive, I saw a choice.
Go for worker straight away, or grow to pop2 and only then produce a worker?
Turns out I like warrior first best here.
8 turns to grow, and then 10 turns to get a worker, so you end up at T18 with 8 hammers in warrior, 2/24 food @ pop2 (or 0/24 food and 10/15 warrior if you choose, but that loses you one commerce too)
Worker first ends up at T18 with 9/22 food, 3/15 warrior and 3 more workerturns.
I think I want to value a workerturn as 4F here, since that is the first task I would do, improve the wet corn.
So warrior first comes out ahead in this analysis.

Spoiler :

DeGeualle is really close and has a peaceweight of 0. So Wang at PW8 and Charly at PW6 will hate his guts. Buddhism is founded in a distant land, and unless Charly gets Judaism or something, I think it will be easy to buddy up with Wang and Charly and smash DeGualle.

Haven't found much food, but the pigs I want.
And if I find nothing better, I'll settle a city by that lake to get a good chunk of chops. That city can also take the load of capital by working the gold. And it can borrow corn when it needs to grow. Eventually it has 5 freshwater green tiles, so it can be farmed and be good long-term.

I want to go maths quickly, since we have cheap workers and an insane amount of forest.
So right now, I'm gearing up for a construction war against DeGualle.
Mining->BW->Pottery->Hunting (if no copper nearby) ->AH->Writing->Math->Mason->Construction.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T10 update :

Oh, Charly converted to Buddhism.
My dream of a friendly trio bashing down on the hapless frenchman is crushed.
This complicates things. If I join Buddhism I probably need to citygift Wang to stay safe, and vice versa.
It's also likely that I will stay out of a religion for quite some time.

Since they both have a holy city, I would want to go Buddhism if I can, since Charly cares much more about religion at +7 same (-4 different) compared to
Wangs +5 same (-3 different)

Don't know the mechanics of how religion spread, but I'm likely to keep borders closed with wang untill I have at least one Buddhist city.

 

[Bibor]

Mom-ed, Hatchet, Suli-man Gosh, I miss Chris and his commentary.

 

[krikav]

To T73:

Spoiler :

As always, things didn't pan out like I wanted.

Spoiler :

Will change my city spot, since Charly is so close. Don't want alot of borderpressure if I can avoid it.
This city will have alot of mines, and it will be coastal. It seems that most AIs are on different islands, so I'll need some coastal cities. This is a likely candidate for heroic epic.

Spoiler :

2pop-whips of workers are really good with expansive.
Here I whip a second worker before settler, the settler is finished with the overflow and chops.

Spoiler :

The turn before I finish hunting, DeGualle bulds TGW, which essentially forces me to go archery right away.
Poor city#2 won't get it's food improved for some time.

Spoiler :

And ofcourse I get infested with Hindu when I want Buddhism!

Spoiler :

DeGualle makes an arrogant demand.
I like these demands, since you get a peace treaty for free. Now I don't think that the odds of him starting to plot at me are high, but extra safety doesn't hurt.

Spoiler :

The guys on my continent are building some wonders.

Spoiler :

Pretty sure that Charly took monarchy with his oracle, he soon trades wine to me, the charming fellow!

Spoiler :

When scouting Wangs territory, I stumble on my future best friend. I really really want that Ivory to go with my catapults!
I do hope that someone gets alfabet soon, because I need to know if I have iron, and if I manage to gift Hammy some tech I'll get to pleased and will secure that ivory.

Spoiler :

Toku is out there too. in a few thousand years I imagine that my tanks will roll over his samurai.

Spoiler :

De Gualle is building something massive in Orleans! He has stone so I think it's the pyramids! <3

 

[Fish Man]

@Undefeatable yes thats kind of lame.
I don't know at all what will happen. But do change the files and upload with correct settings, in case it screws things up for some marathon player.

The settings are correct for the uploaded WB saves but I used an unedited, different one for my playthru

 

[Swordnboard]

@krikav

Spoiler :

You can actually gain the 2 (instead of 2 growth) without losing a commerce, just work the 12 tile before the borders pop. And at that point, you can actually finish the warrior in one turn by working two 12 tiles, which is probably worth a delay on the worker. This is my go-to micro setup for a lot of HOF games where having an extra warrior for worker-stealing is worthwhile.

T50

Spoiler :

I thought this one would be fun to play "HOF style" (deity huts & events, no barbarians, aggressive AI). Oh, how I love De Gaulle! Of course not very comparable to games with barbs and without worker-stealing, priorities are very different. At T50 and can almost smell the horse archers...Would you steal Wang's worker? Convert to Hinduism? And who would you target?

 

[krikav]

@Swordnboard

Spoiler :

Thats true, working that tile before borderpop avoids loss of commerce. And yes, probably worth just postponing worker one more turn to get the extra warrior out. 10 turns worth of warrior-scouting isn't neglectable. I think I had a feeling of falling further and further behind. Bad choices on my part!

I looked at your T30 save and almost spilled my coffee! You had two worker, and corns+gold improved!

Screenshots:

Spoiler :

My progress att T30:

Yours:

I could not believe my eyes, and opened up the start again to see if I missed something dramatical, and found one optimization.
When the first worker is starting to improve the corn, we can spend 4 turns putting 24 hammers into a second worker, which can be 1pop whipped as soon as BW is in.
This however didn't get me much closer to your result, even if it did speed things up.

I then realized that workerstealing was involved, and not only have you stolen one worker from deguaulle which is notorious for acceping ceasefires, but you have also one worker recently stolen @charlys place.
How do you make them ceasefire so easily? Whenever I workersteal, I'm in a state of constant war untill perhaps I'm lucky that they suicide a archer on a warrior on forested hill.



I might dare steal a worker of Degualle, but never from charly.
So my target of choice is the frenchman.
However... he has stone and might build the pyramids for you if you have patience.
Charly with metal doesn't look too tempting.
Any religious shrines to take into account?

 

[krikav]

To T116:

Spoiler :

At T79 Degualle finish pyramids in Orleans.
I'm still at a loss on how to back up my catapults.
No Alfabet yet, so pleasing of Hammy the Ivory trader takes it's time.. Perhaps Horse Archers with cannons?

At T85 Wang discovers alfabet, but he has everything I have except for HBR, I trade HBR for IW, probably a mistake.
Next turn Charly has Alfabet too, but not Hammy.
I had to give Charly both HBR+Construction to get Alfa, so he is going for construction.
Now I gift Hammy HBR and get him to pleased! Finally ivory!! but... NOO!

Spoiler :

Hammy the filthy dog has traded ivory to Charly for clam!! FOR CLAM!

T89

Spoiler :

Now I have a acceptable stack, and realize what a massive overkill this has been. Orleans is guarded by two archers.
I must have been so preoccupied with the idea of getting ivory, that I didn't pay attention to DeGualles military situation. The poor dude is apparantly lacking metal. A crowd of horsearchers would have easily taken him out.
Oh well, better to hit to hard I guess!

T98

Spoiler :

Oh, forget what I said about filthy dog Hammy, you are my darling!

I give into a few demands/requests.
Charly wants aestethics, and Hammy wants me to adopt buddhism.

Spoiler :

By now, I'm starting to gear up to go for Wang, so I don't care too much about diplo with him since he is the only hindu right now. And Hammy I want as a long term friend. Any request from him is fine. With his love for burocracy he can be befriended and secure future trades for me.

T109

Spoiler :

Take peace for monarchy with DeGualle, he is down to one city now and I'll have to accept abit of motherland-anger. Don't have time to take him out, need to turn to Wang before pikes/longbows.
Hopefully DeGualle will develop a few cities in the south for me to take later.

I also sell HBR to Toku for 110g the same turn. I'm getting awfully starved of cash. Techrate is non-existant.
Lets see how much I can take from Wang before he gets longbows/pikes and I need to delete units and switch into rep.

At T116 I declare, but I don't want to do it alone...

Spoiler :

Really nasty to give away all that gold, especially since I'm already bleeding. But I need the company. Also it's nice to diminish abit of Charlys troops.

First turn of the war:

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

T116-T151

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Wang had both Engineering and Feudalism, but no longbow/pikes yet. So I waste no time bombarding. Just throwing them catapults away. Ceasefire after I took the city.
A 3 turn war, just the way I like them!!

Spoiler :

Empire overview after the war. Notice that I razed quite a few cities. I'm scared that upkeep would hold me back. I think it's important to gain full dominance of my surroundings, rather than to get many cities asap.

Spoiler :

Charly is dissapointed that I left him alone in the fight.
Sorry Charly, I'll be right back!

Spoiler :

2 Turns later I was in position. I have had EPs on Wang since the start, and it was enough to blow up walls.
I only had 2 spies there and at 47% it was a gamble if I would succed. But I think the only difference would be the loss of some more units.

Spoiler :

DeGualle apparantly saw my dotmap note!

Spoiler :

Seoul the 1tile-city is out of revolt, population is cold-whipped away from 9 to 1.
Library for 4pop, monument for 2pop and archer for 1pop (due to police-state).

Spoiler :

Ok, I'm not going for that city.

Spoiler :

I took one city of Wang in the west, and razed a minor city of his far south-west on the coast. Reached CS and bulbed Philosophy, revolted to bur+pacifism.
I then followed Charlys stack with trebs which was moving toward the holy hindu city, the last of Wang cities.
Since I had no chance taking it myself, I was hoping that he would bombard it with trebs, and then fail to take it. Charly didn't dissapoint!! <3

 

[krikav]

T116-T151 continued:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

P'yongyang was quite a capture, 12 pop, Hindu shrine, a bunch of buildings, 2 generals doesn't hurt, especially not when in rep.
And look at them workers... Yum yum!
Up at 25 workers now with 14 cities.

Spoiler :

Tech situation at T142. I'm quite behind, but I really like my techrate. I might even win lib!
I delete a bunch of units and save me 16GPT. Could cut deeper but I don't want to delete my veteran elefants, and even though not all of my workers are doing productive work, I can't stomach to delete workers.

Spoiler :

I probably should have done this earlier, possibly to bulb paper+edu or perhaps run a GA. or at least bulb edu. But late to the party I now starve out a GSci to at least bulb lib.
Abit glad that I was so behind that I didn't have machinery!
All cities are running a food deficit with rep scientists if they have libraries, and rep-merchants if they don't. All building wealth. Librace!

Spoiler :

When going sw with horsearchers to finish DeGualle I met Hatty, which was abit behind in tech and gave me Feud for civil service and metal casting. Once I had paper I could also trade for her map!
Hatty is landstarved with cities in the tundra. Zara is squeezed. Hammy is turning into a monster. If I get abit of culture in Wangs former coastal city, I will be able to pass through the strait in galleys and load up units in Tokus territory to declare on Hammy?
Oh no... Wait it's Toku. And he is annoyed with me. >_<
Load up at Hammys place and attack Toku? In any case I'm going to need cannons!

Spoiler :

The HAs alone couldn't manage to stomp out DeGualle which has a couple of spears. Elefants is still miles away. The motherland anger in his former cities are starting to become an issue.
When scouting around I stumble upon another civ, which I wasn't expecting.
My first thought was that he had come with a caravel, but no he doesn't even have optics.
So there must be some land-bridge or narrow strait that he could have crossed pre-optics.

Spoiler :

Education was in, so I bulbed lib. I won the race!
Here I wasn't quite sure what to lib. Nationalism seem to have good trading value. Gunpowder was pointless since I can get it from my best buddy Charly.
I decided to go for PP instead. Taj is built and I think I can trade for nationalism in time for drafting if I need that.
I mindlessly traded Sally Philo+paper and my map since those two techs where not enough. And when he later got circumnavigation bonus I realized my mistake.
Oh well.. slow ships for me!

Spoiler :

I took PP with lib, and traded edu for engineering with Sally.

Plan now?
Not really sure what to bulb, if anything? I can probably trade for both gunpowder and chemistry with Charly.
Can bulb Chemistry if I go gunpowder, and can bulb astro if I go for optics.
I can sell some techs for a massive cash injection which will probably last me to steel.
I want Sallys map and want to know what is happening in the rest of the world... But that requires me to go into theocracy and/or free religion, and I'm not ready for that yet.
I should probably do a GA- push for a bunch of GP, but Charly has MoM and it could be an idea to take him on first? He also has colossus, and I could probably postpone astro for a long time and reap benefits from that too...
There is also alot of unsettled land in the SW which Hatty, Charly and Sally seem to compete for (With DeGualle there too).

Will probably just try to trade my way up in techs, and save GScientists for future golden ages.

The massive worker army will farm everything to get cities up to happy-cap, and then convert everything to workshops once I have traded for guilds+chemistry.

 

[krikav]

I'm the only one playing this?

To T194:

Spoiler :

I see I did alot of screenshots on trades, but won't go into them alot. The only meaningful trading partners I had was Hammy, which seemed to be almost always one step ahead and Charly+Zara.
Since I went for Steel+Rifling I didn't want to trade those thechs around so I was kind of starved for other trades.
This one was a highlight though:

Spoiler :

I did put one turn into Astro to possibly trade for that, but that cash was a better deal since it could power my path to rifling faster.
I added "Go into free religion to get a fairer trade, since Charly is worst enemy of Sally. But that didn't help, got a -4 diplo penalty with sally for that trade. Very unfortunate.

Got my third GPerson at T168, a GEng. I save him for possily mining-inc, and instead use my saved GScientist for my first GA.
Swaping into:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

I got a GGeneral from my fight with wang, I added him to Paris which already had two, and self-teched litterature after steel was in, so I could build Heroic there.
Now with Vassalage Paris will crank out one CR3 cannon per turn for most of the rest of the game. <3

Sold some techs to backwards Toku.
Met the rest of the crowd, a sorry collection of backward civs. Hammy and Sally are the competition, perhaps Zara could become a culture threat.
Sally was so kind to trade me economics the last turn of the GA, so I changed to freemarket as well.

Took on Charly at T177:

Spoiler :

His main stack had med stationed at Augsburg for quite some time.

So I jumped into that forest, with the intent that he could suicide against me there.
I just got rifling, and have no riflemen yet, and I'm not sure if they are that much better against grenadiers than are these Janiessries?
I didn't want to get hit in the open anyway!

He didn't fall for the trap, but almost as good. Placing his stack right next to mine.
I took the river penalty, suicided a few drill-barrage promoted cannons and then cleared his stack.

Then it was just a process of slowly slogging through culture taking cities.

At T186 I traded steel for Astro with Sally, since Hammy already had steel by that point. OB with the backwards crowd Ragnar+Alex+WvO gave me a nice boost of 100-200 beakers or so. I could also cancel a few trades with Sally and instead trade with them. Don't want to boost Sally if I can avoid it.

Charly wanted to Capitulate at T188, but the deal was too bad. I even tried to make him accept a deal where he cave me the small city he had in the middle of my territory.
When he declined, I just took everything from him.

Spoiler :

Capital was kind of nice!
First of all MoM, which is straight out awesome. I suspect a very long golden age is due to the mighty Ottomans!
39GPT, and a GProphet+GArtist for even more GPT on top of that.
And already grocer+bank built! Yum yum!

At T194 I let him capitulate, getting military science in the deal. Pisa is his only city now. A fitting exile for the deposed king.
I'm glad that he is likely to stick around for the rest of the game, he has been such a good friend!
I'll send over a Galley with some goodies to make him pick up the pace there. <3

I also traded him steel for corporation, and putting him into free religion. I think this is good for diplomacy with the rest of the crowd.

 

[Fish Man]

@krikav
I sorta gave up and did something else for a bit after learning of my unfortunate WB mishap. But...I would've won space in under 550 (marathon) turns if I played on. Mining Inc (founded 10BC) was pulling in a solid 22 hammers, and I got 15 food/turn with sushi. 575AD plastics is nuts .

Spoiler :

Gotta sleep now - may provide details and comment on your save tomorrow, maybe. Good job so far, though! The start was wondrous but the surrounding land left much to be desired. By now you should probably know that gold in BFC means something devilish is in store (in this case, it was lot of free land for AIs and potential for 20-city Saladin).

 

[krikav]

T194-T204

Spoiler :

When I left of at T194, I had two GPersons, a GArtist and a GEngineer, I had planned to save the GEng for possible Mining-inc, but since it would take me 10+ turns to get another GPerson, I just did a GA right away.
Change to Rep-Bur-Caste-Freemarket-Pacifism.

Spoiler :

GAs with large empries is really awesome. Especially if you manage to snag MoM.
With a small empire, most of your cities are busy starving out more great people, but with a large empire you can do otherthings as well.

Spoiler :

I traded rifling for Sci-Meth with Charly first thing I did, because I'm a total idiot.
Now I had to spend the next two turns scared out of my mind that he would trade his fusion/rifling/military science for steampower with Zara (or some trade with Hammy).
I sold military science to these two fellas for the gold, just to lower the odds (no clue if that worked?)

Spoiler :

Would have served me well if the trade went through, but apparantly I was lucky. Charly continued to behave! (I'll remember this Charly!)

Spoiler :

When you have units, you should use them. Sent a small raiding party down the peninsula to take Hattys both cities.

Spoiler :

On the other side of the continent, a few Galleons had to work really hard to shuttle my enormeous army over. Toku has 2 cities that can be taken at turn1 due to Hammys culture.

At T201 I got a low odds GEng, so I still have the chance to get mining, but I think SP will suit me much better with all these workshops.

Spoiler :

Only a few turns into the war, Hatty gets a DoW from Zara, apparantly this is enough to make her cave in against me? Thanks Zara!
I had only taken one city from her, with some longbows in it.
I don't complain! Come into the fold Hatty!

Spoiler :

Here Hatty! You need some military tech for what we are about to do. Oh, and you need to learn me about communism too!

Spoiler :

Getting Hatty as a vassal was to much for Toku to bear. He didn't want to give me any tech though, and what I had was not enough to get electricity which he apparantly liked.
So I tried to bring him up to speed. He will become a buddhist. I also sent him to caste out of habit. I didn't realize he wasn't in enmancipation yet.
Should just have gifted him everything and made him enter free market next turn instead too.

Spoiler :

I keep my promises, two Galleons loaded with settlers and workers for Charly.
Should send some troops asap since Zara is trying to grab my friendly kings island.

Spoiler :

T204 Tech situation:

Realized now that it was another mistake to gift all cities back to Toku (wanted to avoid the culture pressure from Hammy). Now I have nowhere to upgrade my units.
I think I'l just move my army down to Hatty from Toku. Then declare on Zara from there. I want to give Hatty a few more cities to get her techrate up. And I want the confu-shrine for myself.
There I can upgrade my units before going on to Hammy.

Another GPerson is out, so I can continue to just chain the GA.
One more should be enough to get all the techs I need for the glorious bomber+tanks combo which I have been longing to try out!
Things are working out so incredibly great!
I want to play more maps with dual corn+dual gold and DeGualle as a pyramid-building neighbour.

 

[krikav]

@Undefeatable Plastics at 575 sounds really wicked yes. Is this a consequence of Marathon? Did you take all 3 neighbours out with HAs or something?

 

[krikav]

Final T204-T260

Spoiler :

At T207 I stumble upon a stack of 10 units I apparantly forgot in a city after the attack on Charly.

Spoiler :

T209 Assembly Line is in, and I start build factories all over. Too large empire to really micromanage where they are needed or not. I probably built way to many in the end.
Still one turn left untill I can change civics again, then it's off to organized religion.

Spoiler :

T210, Hatty has finished biology which I trade for. Having Vassals tech for you, and managing the brokering amongst them is really helpful to keep techrate up.

At T210 I landed a Galleon with 2 cannons and a rifle on Charlys island, to gift him. Zara had two cities on the island and I thought Charly could take them.
The old stack I used to attack Charly (and Toku) was now in place outside Zaras homeland.
This attack was probably a mistake. The outdated units took way to heavy losses, which wasn't a problem in itself, since I could produce more without any problems. But the war weariness was becomming a huge pain.
Also, when I lose units against Zara, he becomes less likely to capitulate and/or accept ceasefires.

Spoiler :

A minor stack outside a stray city on my peninsula.

Cannons can do a wonderful job long after their era. One just have to bring enough of them to suicide. Similar to catapults. They also bombard very effectivly promoted with cityraider1 -> accuracy.
Having some of them promoted to CR3 is golden, since they can be used to crack even the hardest of top defenders. It can often be worthwhile to use a GGeneral to promote 3-4 siege for this purpose.
With paris and all them settled generals, I was in no short supply of CR3 cannons though.

Nice shrines, thanks Zara!

(At T217, the last turn of the GA, I swap into theocracy, choosen endgame civics is policestate-vassalage-castesystem-stateproperty-theorcracy. However... UN had screwed me over and made universial suffrage mandatory.)

It was a long walk through Zaras territory to his capital, and to move around to avoid river penalty.
I think screwed up and sent all my CR3 cannons up to his city in the northeast, because I lost 9 cannons against his capital. Pace was way to slow and I had to stop and save cash to rifles to infantry to win.
What are Toku and Hatty doing?!

At T220 Hatty is done with combustion and I trade that for electricity (which I got from Toku earlier).
At T222 Toku is done with radio and I trade that for MilitaryTrad+Steampower+Biology (which Hatty teched!)

I had to send a landing force to Charlys island to help him out. He was just holding up in his city with all the units I gifted him previously...

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Here I was getting quite desperate to get out of the war. Not even 60% culture and theatres almost everywhere was keeping things under wraps.
But I had to wait one more turn, throwing units at 2% odds isn't a good idea.
Next turn, hatty suicided her units and made it easy to finish Zara for good.

This is how the happines situation was. I had to defy UN vote to adopt enviromentalism two times (losing state property probably spell the doom for my economy).

 

[krikav]

Continuation - T230-T260

Spoiler :

T230 Hatty is done with flight and I trade that for industrialism+some gold.

I had started to get out quite a few tanks, nothing enough take on either Hammy or Sally, but there was a collection of deplorables on Sallys peninsula, so I shipped over a bunch of tanks and knocked on their door.

Spoiler :

Alex and Ragnar had a defensive pact. That was kind of cute.

Tanks vs Longbows.

This is the state I found them in. Ragnar and WvO wasn't that much better off either. They all quickly realized that they would be much better of under the "protection" of the ottoman empire.
As soon as they where mine, I canceled resources trades that I could with Hammy+Sally and traded resources with this crowd instead.
They all also got a shower of techs each turn to get them up to speed such that they could contribute at least something.

At T238 WvO capitulated.
I then spent probably too much time building up way too many bombers.

Spoiler :

It was getting quite late, and I played abit sloppy, forgot to take alot of screenshots.
I had alot of tanks in Alex territory, and loaded up his cities (and forts) with bombers.
The dynamic of this war is quite interesting, and I haven't really tried it out much. What you do is that you ride in with the two-moving tanks, which are tough enough that they can endure a counterattack. (Preferably they should have at least one promotion saved, to be able to heal up.)
Then you use bombers and first bombard the city (if it has loads of defender) and then use strike mission with even more bombers to damage the defenders. Next turn you strike/bombard even more, and the city-raider promoted tanks can just ride in at 97-99% odds.
Really quite elegant, and quite fun!

Spoiler :

I think this was Sallys main stack. Once you take out the AIs main stack, they become quite crippled, and after that you can just follow a simple mechanic routine of just grabbing cities.

Spoiler :

But wait... What is this on the southern tip of my peninsula??

Oh my! Good job Sally! You certainly showed Mehmed that he still can bleed. And you brought that mining-inc executive in just to add insult to injury?
Unfortunatly, gazzilion of landlocked tanks where just drooling over the prospect of some action while waiting for the seas to become safe enough to get shipped over, so the city was retaken direcly.
But I'm still amazed at this naval invasion, something the AI usually does extremly poor. Transports tend to be filled with things like 10 trebuchets and one horse archer or similar things.

Spoiler :

I had finally gotten my old galleons in position and had started to ship over reinforcing tanks, since the ones comming in from Alexanders land started to run too thin to keep up fast pace. I also built quite a few forts on my eastcoast to load up with more bombers.
But then Sally decided that he have had enough.
Oh, and Alexander managed to improve that crab again, the only one in the game I think, and it was quite a prize when I first got him as a vassal. Even single resources matter a whole lot when you have a large empire and big cities. It's abit annoying that the AIs won't trade away resources when they have only one of them. Sometimes I would gladly pay 30-40gpt for a single wheat or so.

@Undefeatable
There was a challenge going on I didn't plan around it since I just wanted to play a nice game, but now close to the end I did think about it abit, so 1-2 turns before the end, I traded all mining resources I could with all my vassals. It's a shame I didn't manage to win 10 turns earlier... But here it goes!

Spoiler :

8+8+13+6+6+5 = 46 mining resources, 6 different kinds. Did I do ok?

Spoiler :

A final view at Charlies island. I'm still very grateful that he suicided his stack against Wangs holy hindu city early in the game.
Those clams outside of Pisa are improved with a gifted workboat, he didn't do much for a long time. Perhaps he had to come to terms with his ruthless deposing? But it seems that he has gotten around to get some activity going on his island now at least.

 

[krikav]

Saves from final position, and from the declare on Saladin, in case someone wants to try out tanks+bombers.
Saves with Buffy05 mod.

Spoiler :