Nobles' Club 215: Hammurabi of Babylon

There is absolutely a chance for a peaceful approach.
But it requires quite abit of luck with:

Spoiler :

1. Monty founding Buddhism/Hinduism.
2. You getting spread fast enough (Difficult with lack of connecting rivers and coastal cities).
3. You succeeding in producing 2 surplus settlers fast enough, and managing to escort them through the jungle and gaining +3 liberation bonus.

Then you will get to friendly, and be safe long term.
But what next...?

 

Spoiler Some minor success... :

Replayed the opening at least 10 times to get this amount of luck...
Also did a couple of reloads!
So, very much cheating, but as a proof of concept.

Met monty at T5 for some beakers bonus.
(Was planning on getting archery, but that turned out to be unnecessary.)


Manage to get a worker stolen early. AND sending said worker home without being killed by panthers. (Pillaged roads with warrior, and camped in hill forest).

Two workers working hard to get horses improved and connected early, and beginning to road up to Monty.
Luck required to have Monty NOT tech BW earlier. (Had to replay at least 3 times just because he went BW earlier and first chariot didn't arrive on time).

But once this copper denial is in place, things develop rather nicely.

Getting some settlers killed.

And this was quite a insane capture.

T114 Liberalism. Thats rather unusual...

 

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

You wrote:
"I was expecting basically a bowman choke/rush on lower difficulties and axepult with a small stack of Early Monty DoW Defenders bowman tagging along as future city defenders on higher difficulties. Is this not viable? Does Monty just spam too many units to take him out early?"

Yes, I think so. He does spam alot of units, so not even getting 2vs1 trades is good enough I think, and the relative distance toward him add to the difficulty too.

There was a NC with Fredrich earlier, in a similar setup (Isolated with Napoleon), but in that case we had dual gold in the start, and a PHI-leader.
Also, Napoleon was way closer.
Lain won that game and it has been a favourite of mine.


But hey, I'm not complaning. This is a nice map compared to the Charly one.





Bowman choke/rush on lower difficulties is almost certainly viable. Might be doable on deity too, and way more consistent than the weird chariot choke that I tried out.

 

@krikav

Spoiler :

Yikes. I checked the odds on Bowman vs. axes and swords (not that Monty has 6 versions thereof ) and they looked good, but I don't think they were 2+v1 good.

...Looking at the screenshots, is that fourteen forests in Monty's capitol? Pete's sake, I made a note about that and everything .

How brave(/suicidal) are Monty's units? An axe gets something like single-digit odds against a fortified Bowman on a forested hill, so would it be possible to hem in Monty's workers/settlers by putting a bowman next to them?

 

Spoiler :

from what i experienced he was as suicidal as you can get. He had no fear attacking with <1% odds into fortified crossbows. Somehow even that would work for him because by the time you heal he's already brought in a fresh stack. He also had everything roaded which meant every city you capture becomes a liability

 

Spoiler :

You know, come to think of it, on a Hub map I once got in a situation where Monty was fighting my neighbour and was ready to attack a city...the turn I used a Transport to drop off five Machine Guns in said city. And DoW him. Monty had a huge stack of pre-Gunpowder units ready to attack, and was suddenly facing Machine Guns (albeit, unfortified ones). He rammed enough units into them to actually kill one through sheer force of units. 5 18 defenders with 1 FS and immunity to collateral damage from seige weapons. Monty was willing to negotiate the turn after I DoWed him, needless to say.

Should have remembered that, to be honest. Or just that Monty is completely insane.

 

I don't find this always true on deity. AIs can and will get far, far ahead of you even if they have much less land - the one that came to mind was Mansa in Lain's Frederick game, who was isolated with only 10 cities but had gotten rocketry and AL by the time Lain could throw together a force of cannons and rifles to attack. Generally, I find you need about 2-2.5x the land of an AI to keep up with it tech and production-wise late game if the land is decent, or 3x if it's bad land. So, throw agg rifles at the other continent all you want, but if the conditions are right (and a 25BC lib date is already a really bad sign), they're gonna counter with 1400AD infantry and artillery and tanks. What are you going to do then?

 

Hmm...

Spoiler :

I'd say nukes, if they don't win culture/space by the time you've build the Manhattan Project that is. On this map it should at last be possible to hopefully, maybe pull off some diplomacy stunts, I think like two AIs like each other by default and the rest go from lukewarm to worst enemies as soon as religions get put on the board, but beyond that...yeah. I'd also say that at least you've got a decent stretch of land available to you after you take out Monty, but, well, "after you take out Monty" is an ordeal in it's own right...

 

I would say that in the situation after a successful workersteal and chariotchoke+ alot of more workerstealing, the situation is perfecly under control.
However, it feels too much like cheating for me to keep the motivation up and wrap it up.
(Save attached if someone wants to have a go)

Trying out a bowman-choke now.

 

Spoiler :

I say the land is awesome, although covered in jungle, there is alot of green and plenty of rivers.
Also alot of resources for trades.

I have now also checked out the other continent in worldbuilder, and the AIs and what they are doing indicate alot of options diplomacy-wise imho.
Biggest threat I would assume is a early culture victory by Mansa.

Keeping Monty under wraps and managing to seize control over the continent with sufficient tempo is the chief challenge.

 

Yes, with the right conditions, they can really reach escape velocity.

 

Looking forward to seeing how the Bowman choke works out. Or doesn't, as the case may be .

 

Certainly not as well as the chariot approach, and I kind of doubt that this will be fast enough, but it's at least fun!

Spoiler :

 

Spoiler :

Monty's a douche so I welcome any and all newfound ways of making him suffer.

As for the speed of AI progression...not sure where I heard it from, but on AI they actually get more discounts the further you get along the game, I think. Per-era modifiers are the hidden but very frightening part of playing on deity, and one of the main reasons for runaways. By the modern era their techs costs half of what they do the human player, maybe even less, which explains how a 6-city Hannibal can get AL in like 7 turns no problem.

 

Sounds like it'll be a viable approach on lower difficulties, but Deity remains...well, Deity. Which is to say, not easy .

@Fish Man

Spoiler :

From The Complete Guide to Espionage:

 

Yes, this is deity. Bowmens are quite nice really. Won't be that much of a problem to topple Monty with this type of play.
But the question is if it can happen fast enough.
No more time to play tonight, but will continue this toward the weekend, thanks again for a wonderful map.

 

Spoiler :

so I gave it another shot with the idea of a defensive war while I out-tech Monty, and it was going a lot better I think. I forward settled a city into the jungle on a hill, loaded it with bowman, and let Monty try his best to take it. he was throwing hammers to the wind, and while that was happening I had every other city running cottages/specialists & building wealth.. with 3 GS I was the first to reach astro, and after making contact with the other continent I made some amazing trades. I was able to trade for feudalism, CS, guilds, construction, engineering, paper, and gunpowder! all from astro . meanwhile poor Monty didn't even have CS. I went for rifles/trebs and took Monty out with relative ease(it seemed like he was plotting on Bismark because he had an insane amount of galleys). The problem is as soon as I finished off Monty, I checked the victory conditions and Mansa was only 40 turns away from a cultural victory. by that point I had infantry and cannons, so I whipped out some galleons and tried to pick off one of his legendary culture coastal cities. I probably brought about 10 fewer attackers than I needed, so I lost the game at that point.

I'm thinking of starting over from my save where I made contact tonight just to see what I could do better. any suggestions would be appreciated.

screenshot of the tech situation @ 1060AD attached

 

Spoiler :

I'd say try to avoid giving the AIs Astronomy for as long as possible, since it's a really big boost to them, but given the situation and the fact that Mansa is in the game I think trading it to everyone at once for a massive grabbag of techs is probably the better play.

As for Mansa, if nothing diplomatic could be done to delay him (bribing him into a war or someone else onto him, bribing him into terrible civics, etc.) and using espionage to delay him isn't viable (either endless revolts to buy you a little more time or sabotaging his stuff) and it's not possible to get together a big enough force to raze his cultural cities in time...beeline Fission/Rocketry and go full ? With an entire continent to oneself one most likely has a source of Uranium available somewhere. I don't think that's a "win the game" solution so much as just a "prevent Mansa from winning the game" solution, though.

Let's see, Bismack bribes at pleased on pleased or lower (yikes), Sally bribes at pleased on annoyed or lower, Willem bribes at friendly on cautious or lower (probably not a winner), and...the last AI is Roosevelt, right? Bribes at pleased on cautious or lower. Mansa himself bribes at cautious on pleased or lower, but getting something to bribe him with is probably difficult. Still, I think that's the best solution - getting Mansa into a war somehow.

 

Spoiler :

I think I had to cash in my chips on astronomy. Everyone but Bismark already had optics, and without that grabbag of techs I was in the dark ages comparatively.

And I was going towards nukes but I just couldn't get there fast enough while also taking out Monty. I grabbed fission around 10 turns before Mansa would have had his CV, but I was nowhere near rocketry. When I realized he was so close to CV I did try to bribe in Bismark, but he just wasn't having it. At first it was "we would have nothing to gain", and after Mansa had marines and artillery it became "We're afraid of their military might". maybe I just waited a bit too long? Perhaps bribing around 1200ADish would be a lot better. I never thought Mansa was the type of guy to have a strong army though.

Bribing Mansa would be great, but from this point on I'll never have a tech he wants. He'll very shortly win Lib, use it to bulb Printing Press, and then grab everything I'm headed towards a lot quicker than I can get it. Bulbs might help, but I don't know much about the bulb paths this deep into the tech tree, and running scientists while I'm trying to whip on 6 cities to take Monty over would be really painful.

Also regarding nukes, how exactly does that work? If I nuke someone enough times they would eventually capitulate to me? I've heard there's a chance nukes destroy buildings, but would they destroy culture? I've only played around with them a few times on much lower levels, but I didn't really understand them at the time.

 

Spoiler :

Yeah, if that many AIs had Optics chances are high one of them was going Astronomy and you do not want to miss that opportunity. Probably for the best that you traded it around when you did.

Pretty sure that bribing earlier would be better, yes. As for lategame bulbs I believe Scientists get stuck on Physics -> Electricity -> Fission(?) as soon as you can research the first one, and beyond that I basically never bulb anything. Not sure. They can bulb some useful stuff, but your options are limited from what I recall.

Not too experienced with it myself, but as far as I know Nukes cannot destroy culture. They can destroy every non-Wonder building in a city, kill off huge chunks of it's population, destroy it's improvements, cover it's tiles in fallout and even outright destroy resources though (at least the food ones I believe), so they can destroy a city's ability to generate any real amount of culture. Enough Nukes also wouldn't eventually force a capitulation, I don't think, but it will cause every AI in the game to forever hate you unless you're nuking someone they actively hate. So either nukes are your ticket to winning the game or they're your ticket to not winning the game, because having everyone on the map Furious at you kinda limits your options just a tad.