Nobles' Club 368: Suryavarman II of the Khmer

[sampsa]

@Build2Much

Spoiler :

In isolation cities are obviously smaller due to no /-res trades, no religion spread etc. I'm sure you can get a big capital here as well, with HR warriors. @soundjata will share the screenshot soon.

You made the decision on T0 with the available information and that is what matters.

 

[Build2Much]

@Build2Much

Spoiler :

In isolation cities are obviously smaller due to no /-res trades, no religion spread etc. I'm sure you can get a big capital here as well, with HR warriors. @soundjata will share the screenshot soon.

You made the decision on T0 with the available information and that is what matters.

That wasn’t meant to be a criticism of your note, just the reality of the situation as the game played out.

Spoiler :

part of me wanting to go 1E was to “grab more land” which was unnecessary as it turns out. I did want to open up the plains hill near the FPs for a potential city spot and that did work out, but as we know happiness was a bit of a problem for a while. Cant go Mids/Rep and HR so I was effectively stuck quickly

 

[soundjata]

1AD

Spoiler :

Can't resist settling more
Cities 7, 8 and 9 cost 10 gold / turn... A bargain

Won't be the earliest optics date but caravels will rush out in the fastest way possible

 

[sampsa]

@soundjata

Spoiler :

Academy yes/no? GS production, planning to double bulb astro I presume?

 

[Henrik75]

Henrik POV, up to t80 / 875bc

Spoiler :

Fairly smooth opening settling 2nd city on stone and chopping exp workers and a settler out while building mids in cap.
Finished pyramids pretty safely at 1400bc and just about to settle my 5th city. Just did double swap into slavery and rep. Feeling p good about this one. second city ended up being super useful, 2 workers, a settler, a boat, horses and stone within 30 turns.
I love creative. Couldn't do this without it. I'll have my videos of this up in a couple weeks.

 

[soundjata]

@soundjata

Spoiler :

Academy yes/no? GS production, planning to double bulb astro I presume?

Spoiler :

Yes Academy in the cap before IW and MC.
Could be a single or double bulb I don't know yet. (We'll be doing >400 /turn with AI money as fuel by then)
GS production:

 

[soundjata]

T155 (900AD)

Spoiler :

It took longer than expected to reach astronomy, due to a lack of 2nd GS on time.
I didn't want to switch into caste (went into bureau only) because I figured I'll want to whip galleons, having heard of "islands in the north"

10th city just settled

There's a settler/chariot party ready to embark on a journey to silver.
Silver island could be either 2 cities of ours or 3 cities forming a colony. Suggestions?
I'd like to research steel next. There's nothing else to build but army at this point (barrays and forges already everywhere).
Sweet trades with AIs who where backward on the compass line. Vikings and Persians went out of their way to give me literature and music.
Ragnar is pretty advanced. He just libbed steel this turn

Bag of snakes:

@Henrik75

Spoiler :

no stone yet

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@0urBall

Spoiler :

Immortal difficulty, 1AD. I was very slow, couldn't expand or grow quickly enough. Does my screenshot look like yours?

Spoiler :

I started with agriculture, mining, bronze working. Even though there was only forests in my starting capital, I wanted to train warriors quickly. I didn't know there was horses nearby! For the city placement choice, I wanted ivory and fur at the second border expansion.

@chinemol

Spoiler :

Immortal difficulty, 600AD. You're right, this game might get difficult later. Even after 1000+ hours I still can't handle these maps well.

Spoiler :

Astronomy at 560AD. Just traded for currency and code of laws. Straight for liberalism through civil service, hope I make it!

Grow, damnit, this leader is supposed to grow like weeds.

 

[Henrik75]

Turn 130 / 375AD

Spoiler :

250BPT pre optics is encouraging, should have some strong long term potential with astronomy, expansive harbors and growing this cap 6 more sizes.
I am thinking of going straight to caste now (haven't teched mysticism yet lol) to run 2 extra dudes in nagara jayasri to save 5 turns on astro. Otherwise looking at 800AD astro which is fine still.
Rep beakers going strong. My slider is stuck at 20% average, dunno what I'd do without mids here lol. About to settle 9th city, the beauty of this is instead of textbook 4 city slog to optics I have expanded up to 8 pretty quickly and developed/grown these cities nicely which is going to really help me post astronomy to snowball further and have no production shortage for the war.

 

[Thrasybulos]

@Henrik75 @soundjata
A question for you:

Spoiler :

Maybe even more for soundjata, since he went for Monarchy: you're happy-constrained... and yet the one spot you guys haven't settled is the Wine ressource. Why?

 

[Henrik75]

@Thrasybulos

Spoiler :

In my case I went pyramids/rep so monarchy is useless except for one wine; but that city will cost 15+ GPT to settle, 800 beakers to tech myst to monarchy, and for what? 1 bare grass cottage in the cap? No way that'll help me get to optics faster. It can wait until astro.

 

[sampsa]

@Henrik75

Spoiler :

I think the stone settle is a great idea! Something I didn't even consider because there are other, stronger areas to grab. It's just that Mids solves all problems in one go.

 

[Henrik75]

@sampsa

Spoiler :

The stone settle is actually really nice thanks to being both expansive and creative, you get the horses really fast and its a decent pumper tile to build quick workers with, and then having strat resource for barbs and early happiness is very helpful!

 

[sampsa]

@Henrik75

Spoiler :

Yes the horsie changes things! Perhaps I had mentally excluded that spot already, but horse makes it a decent size 1 spot.

 

[soundjata]

@Henrik75 @soundjata
A question for you:

Spoiler :

Maybe even more for soundjata, since he went for Monarchy: you're happy-constrained... and yet the one spot you guys haven't settled is the Wine ressource. Why?

Spoiler :

one of my cities works wine eventually

It's a matter of cost / benefit mostly
Monarchy costs a bunch of beakers (close to a thousand!) and gives +1 instantly in all cities, then each subsequent +1 costs only 15 (one warrior) per city. This is useful to rapidly grow the core cities that have been stuck at happy cap for a while.
Later on, adding extra happiness resources like ivory, fur and wine alleviates the cost of increasing the happy ceiling and cities can keep growing without building extra warriors.

 

[soundjata]

T171

Spoiler :

Ragnar and Cyrus have been grinding nicely, must have reduced their military count significantly
I stop the war for printing press (my last self research after astro and paper ; traded for the rest)
Nice exchange of cities Ragnar bro

We finally used our "too late for astro" GS to launch a golden age last turn, after completing a couple of whips (university in the cap and granary in silver city)
Now 4 cities are pumping GP (mostly GS with some GE 'pollution')

Current plan is Rush Kremlin, while pre-building half an army, then whip like crazy.
What will I do with the great scientists?
The odd engineer I know, he shall instagib Kremlin

Islands:

Notice the stone worker?

Need more workers. Maybe the pig will be allowed wildlife forever, who knows?

still sneaks.

Technology:

 

[0urBall]

@0urBall

Spoiler :

Immortal difficulty, 1AD. I was very slow, couldn't expand or grow quickly enough. Does my screenshot look like yours?

Spoiler :

I started with agriculture, mining, bronze working. Even though there was only forests in my starting capital, I wanted to train warriors quickly. I didn't know there was horses nearby! For the city placement choice, I wanted ivory and fur at the second border expansion.
View attachment 710833

@chinemol

Spoiler :

Immortal difficulty, 600AD. You're right, this game might get difficult later. Even after 1000+ hours I still can't handle these maps well.

Spoiler :

Astronomy at 560AD. Just traded for currency and code of laws. Straight for liberalism through civil service, hope I make it!

Grow, damnit, this leader is supposed to grow like weeds.
View attachment 710834

Spoiler My lowly Monarch 1AD screenshot :

I've played on from here, and managed to settle all of the dotmap spots as well as meet everyone else. I'm currently trying to play the diplo game (badly ) to avoid getting into wars and getting crushed by the crazies on the other landmass

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@BornInCantaloup

If you don't mind, would you please explain your first turn?

Spoiler :

Scout and settler movement. I don't understand you settled there. I also don't understand why most players settled in place. Just for the oasis? Was my choice a mistake?

@0urBall (immortal, turn 166, 1060AD)

Spoiler :

Cantaloup is correct that I could have had more workers. I was struggling with population growth. It's hard to keep growing and expanding while also building the pyramids. I wasn't working unimproved tiles so I felt I had enough.

Henrik settled on stone because he was playing on deity difficulty. Desert stone needs 3 turns for the road and 8 turns for the querry, it wouldn't be up on time.

I attached my save file.

@soundjata

Spoiler :

You don't like whales? Are the islands worth settling beyond silver and whales?

 

[Henrik75]

Spoiler :

if you play it blindly, moving left with settler is a huge risk of ruining fish. So it's up down or in place. Going to the right to lose most flood plains seems very questionable, you already have great production being expansive and creative so i would opt to keep the river.
1 south wastes a turn and kills a forest i cant justify that. Nothing is gained except keeping a single flood plain. SiP seems fine to me.

 

[soundjata]

@soundjata

Spoiler :

You don't like whales? Are the islands worth settling beyond silver and whales? View attachment 710914

Spoiler :

I wanted my island cities to be productive so whale did not appear as a valid option