Nobles' Club 316: Suryavarman II of the Khmer

[jnebbe]

Immortal 1AD

Spoiler :

Ridiculously good start with a very strong leader, should be a pretty easy game

700 failgold, time to lock slider at 100% =D

Gifted a city to all 3 ai but apparently that counts as "trading with our worst enemy" so I have a nasty -3 with both charlie and catherine but they're both at please now
Just got horses so starting to build HA's, a couple cities already have barracks+stable
Teching pretty fast and I have another 800 failgold in various wonders
Probably should've settled that pig city earlier, it will work the pig plus just mines and will just build HA's to upgrade to cuirs

It's 1AD and still nobody has alphabet which is extremely odd. The ai have been in expansion mode for so long they've probably tanked their economy hard. Catherine has really really nice land and needs to be slowed down sooner or later. Charlie has 11 cities but his land is nothing special and 3 or 4 of those cities are useless tundra.
I'd love if I could trade for alphabet since I have a GS ready for philo and the music GA ready to start generating more scientists and merchants
The other continent has built a lot of wonders and just built great library which is fairly early on immortal so I need to get to lib fast.

 

[jnebbe]

Immortal cont.

Spoiler :

Libbed MT t149 and attacked t156, messed up my great person generating and only got 3 merchants instead of 4 but it was completely fine

War went basically perfectly, catherine declared on charlie a few turns before I attacked so a lot of her attention was on him. Cease fired a few times to dodge attacks from a big stack of elephants.
Gonna settle 2 or 3 more cities and probably turn around and kill toku. Gonna keep charlie alive since he's already friendly and his land isn't that good
Optics just finished so time to meet the other continent, but I can't imagine anything that would make this game difficult at all to finish

 

[Snowbird]

played to T32

Spoiler :

Opted to settle on stone. While producing the first worker the output is the same as on gold (+1 coin from phants) and since Surry starts with hunting the camp is likely to be improved early, so commerce is probably the same while making the settler. On stone dodges quarry and opens things like trying for the Great Wall.

Abundance of scouts however suggested no GW

So stopped at settling second city

On blue circle would probably be best short term. (Or maybe 1S from it)

White circles likely are not going to happen, since NW site does not make lots of sense as the second city and I probably won't get it as a third. (Also moved the settler the wrong way if I was to do that)

I also consider settling on the rice as a sort of short/long term compromise.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

played to T32

Spoiler :

Opted to settle on stone. While producing the first worker the output is the same as on gold (+1 coin from phants) and since Surry starts with hunting the camp is likely to be improved early, so commerce is probably the same while making the settler. On stone dodges quarry and opens things like trying for the Great Wall.

Abundance of scouts however suggested no GW

So stopped at settling second city

On blue circle would probably be best short term. (Or maybe 1S from it)

White circles likely are not going to happen, since NW site does not make lots of sense as the second city and I probably won't get it as a third. (Also moved the settler the wrong way if I was to do that)

I also consider settling on the rice as a sort of short/long term compromise.

Spoiler :

Looks like a near identical opening to me.

I then settled on the plains hill 2N1W of the settler. The gold was improved when I settled so I could instantly work that to get a warrior or two while waiting for the border pop before improving the cow. The plan is to grow it to size two and work the cow and the gold while building workers.

It’s also nice land longer term with the river and flood plains and claims a lot of forest, which is appealing because, given the crowd, I think elephants are looking likely. The hill was also attractive because an early DOW is a risk. Obviously it’s now more of a risk because I settled in Cathy’s face but my plan is more overt hostility in fairly short order.

 

[Snowbird]

Spoiler :

GW for Charlie and no gap for AI units. Guess it would be lots of fiddling with barbs and then going for elepult. So neither interesting now, nor in future.

Games tip says "Snacks are good in moderation", but so are goldmines.

 

[Tecumseh1]

350 AD Immortal:

Obviously great land here. Really good discussion about starting location. I did not think that deeply and settled on neither gold nor stone. Got the mids. Charly attacked Catherine and took 2 cities easily including Moscow. I was almost ready for my attack on Catherine anyways so I decided to backstab Charly and attack his weakened stack. Took back those 2 cities, then settled for peace. Few turns later continued the war. Elephants are just so strong so rest of the war was a breeze. Beat Charly to 2 western cities so I ended up with all of Catherine's land. Thinking of gifting the city north of Toku to Japan, but it has marble and land is land.