Nobles' Club CLXXIX - Qin Shi Huang

[nate46]

^wrong thread lol

 

[Izuul]

Lol. That's what I get for playing two games at the same time. Not finished with this one yet.

Edit: Immortal 1200 AD Conquest

Spoiler :

 

[aitkensam]

Fun map, thanks for hosting! I had forgotten just how awesome cho-ku-nu are.

Imm 1090AD Conquest 267653

Spoiler :

SIP. Early scouting found gold and JC. Settled 2nd city on PH to SE of gold and worker stole from JC. Tech order went BW - Wheel - Pottery - Oracle Techs - AH - Writing. Oracled MC in 1800BC. In the meantime I got a woodsman two warrior, later joined by an axe, and stole two more workers from JC while choking him to keep him at one city. 3rd city went on PH to west of wheat, 4th on Marble by Bismarck and 5th Horse Fish.

Decided on war as cho-ku-nu are super fun and also the primary religion was Judaism, but both Bismarck and JC were Hindu, plus Bismarck had -2 you declared war on our friend.

Teched Math (1160BC) and traded for Alpha, Fishing, Sailing, IW, Masonry, Poly. MC kept as a monopoly. Settled Deer Silver site (my 6th and last peaceful city) for extra happy. Teched Currency (800BC) and Machinery (575BC). Got 300+ fail gold from ToA which helped fund Machinery. Failed to get an academy for ages as first two GPs were Prophets (settled in cap).

Started building an army of cho-ku-nu with a few cats (Construction 425BC) and random melee. Traded for Org Rel, HR and spread Judaism around.

DOW'd 9-city Bismarck in 300BC. He had his stack next to me so I waited for him to move it in to my territory and killed it on first turn of war. Feudalism in 200BC, traded for CoL 100BC. Vassaled Bismarck in 1AD after taking 5 cities. Got Aesth and HBR for peace too. Gave one city back leaving me with 10 total and marched on towards Washington...

Now it went much the same 75AD DoW Wash. 225AD Vassal him. 275AD DoW JC. 375AD Vassal him. Engineering came in 300AD. Also built Parth, MoM and NE in capital. Figured I'd go for Willem next as Asoka had Feudalism. Whipped 10 or so Trebs. 560AD DoW Willem. 680AD Vassal him.

Raggy and Liz had been warring whole game so were quite under-expanded and only had feud, not eng. So the cho-ku-nu marched on... 720AD DoW Ragnar, 840AD vassal him. 840AD DoW Liz, 1000AD vassal her.

Asoka was too advanced for cho-ku-nu's to work quickly so I started giving most cities back to keep the tech pace up. Paper 680AD, 700AD launch 12-turn GA. 860AD Nationalism. 860 AD GS finished Education. 900AD Lib - MT. 940AD Gunpowder. Didn't pre-build HAs as my GPs were messy this game so just whipped Cuirs. 1040AD DoW Asoka. 6 turns later all over.

Unit builds (deaths): Cuirs 56 (13), CKN 29 (13), Treb 17 (17), Cata 10 (10) etc. Suicided all my remaining siege on last Liz city.

Kills: Archer 25, Mace 19, WE 18, Axe 18, Sword 17, LB 16, Cata 15, Spear 15, rest single figure. Quite a please Archer to LB ratio. Shame I couldn't finish map with CKN though.

 

[georgjorge]

Pretty nice conquest dates! You guys really know how to use Cho-Kos

Spoiler :

and worker-stealing...

 

[hankinsohl]

Normal, Emperor, No Huts, No Events - 1585, Win by Apostolic Palace Vote

Spoiler :

Fun game. On Emperor though, I thought it was pretty easy.

My plan was to build the mids, run an Engineer and bulb Machinery for the UU.

But Julius immediately settled just to my left on my borders taking a bunch of good spots.

On teching Bronze Working I found copper just to the north and settled my first city next to it.

I spammed Axeman and rushed Julius - I took all his cities save one to the far north which I raised. Julius was dead, I had the nice spots I wanted to originally settle and so... it was back to building the mids.

I built the mids in my copper city, chopping everything in site to ensure success.

With the mids in I built a forge, ran an Engineer, and prepared for war.

Soon I was unstoppable: Police State, Theocracy, Bureaucracy, Slavery, spamming UU, catapults and elephants.

The only minor glitch was that everyone but Elizabeth was in Buddhism, and the Indians built the AP. I had to cease hostilities once due to an AP vote, but with well-timed warfare and fast capitulation I was able to avoid issues. I spread Buddhism to all my cities and built temples and monasteries - after capping Bismark and the Washington I controlled the AP vote (Ragnar always voted with me).

When trying to capture the Dutch, the Indians declared on me. The Dutch wouldn't cap claiming "we are afraid of your enemies" - I had to make peace with India before he'd cap.

At that point, the game was all but won - I took the easy way out though and just spread Buddhism to England.

With all nations having Buddhism, I switched to Monarchy to secure Ragnar's vote. Several turns later the win was in.

 

[escream1]

Thank you for all the posters that took some of their time to critique my game!
It looks like I could have spared a few units at the end and built wealth instead, allowing me to get the culture slider to 100% and save a few turns!
I still need to analyse the AI's tendencies to declare war a little further. It just seemed like keeping my power ratio somewhat closer to the AI's would reduce the chances of a backstabbing declaration. But maybe I'm just off, I'll need to look into that!

 

[elitetroops]

I still need to analyse the AI's tendencies to declare war a little further. It just seemed like keeping my power ratio somewhat closer to the AI's would reduce the chances of a backstabbing declaration. But maybe I'm just off, I'll need to look into that!

In general this is not recommended. While it can work on lower levels, on the higher levels it's too much of an effort to keep up with their power rating, unless you are going for a military victory. And the thing is, it's an on/off switch. If they find you are too powerful for them (depends on AI leader and if you are land target how much is required for this), they never declare. If they find that you are not too strong, it doesn't matter if you are right below the threshold or only have one warrior in your entire empire, they are still just as likely to declare. So the most efficient peaceful victories are those where you handle the AI through diplomacy and have barely any military at all.

 

[PaxImperator]

I've wanted to join in the moment I saw this thread. Now I've got the time.

Prince, huts, no events, no espionage, turn 53

Spoiler :

Shanghai will build a settler next turn, Beijing has a couple of turns left to complete the Oracle or I can 2-pop whip it right now. Beijing grew to size 5 just this turn; I could get it happy again by connecting it to Shanghai.

I'll probably Oracle metalcasting, research writing, then alphabet, trade for missed techs, then research machinery. Then it's chu-ko-nu time.

Questions:
- How does the yellow square look for city #3?
- Researching metalcasting and Oracling machinery would be a completely daft idea, wouldn't it?
- Any other thoughts? It was probably a mistake to build Stonehenge in Beijing, and I've neglected my worker techs.

 

[georgjorge]

@PaxImperator:

Spoiler :

Oracling Machinery is definitely doable but risky, and you probably should have planned it earlier on if you want to do that. Oracling Metal Casting seems better.

The city at the yellow circle would be a very strong cottage capital in the long run. But it takes off very slow, with no food specials and no production. If you want to focus on early wars I would rather make a better short-term city 1 east of the Cows (that is, if you want to tech Animal Husbandry any time soon). Note that since you have Stonehenge (which I'm not really sold on) you could have founded your second city one west and gotten two additional Floodplains and some extra forests.

 

[Lazteuq]

PaxImperator,

Spoiler :

I would have expanded more aggressively. Having only 2 cities at 1800 BC is unusually slow, you probably could have claimed as far east as the gold/marble/cows site. Stonehenge will help you grab more land though. Definitely take those floodplains and get some commerce going.

Note: Its a real shame that you arent working Shanghai's gold mine, it would immediately increase your research rate by 8 beakers per turn! To work it, I would have grown Shanghai to size 3 before the building a settler in it.
EDIT: you still could take that eastern gold site!!

 

[PaxImperator]

@ georgjorge and Lazteuq:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the tips. You both raise good points.

I Oracled metalcasting, then researched writing, alphabet and machinery. I founded my cottage capital on the dot-mapped square, then founded two small production cities. I built up an army of axemen, swordsmen and chu-ko-nus (got impatient while waiting for them), then went for Bismarck.

Caesar had just gone into WHEOOHRN mode so I requested archery from him and got a 10-turn peace treaty out of it. I then bribed Bismarck to declare war on Willem in hopes of making him unpopular with the other AIs before my own declaration of war. It worked with regard to Washington but not Caesar and Asoka. I could've avoided it altogether if I'd DOW'ed Bismarck before he converted to Hinduism like almost everyone else. Took three German cities and razed four more.

I think I'll conquer Caesar next. He's got only four cities and they're relatively good and nearby. After that it's probably Washinton's turn. I guess I should start thinking about researching feudalism so I can vassalize the more distant AIs and not cripple my own empire with maintenance costs?

 

[georgjorge]

@PaxImperator:

Spoiler :

Good game so far, especially with regard to diplomacy!

Unless I'm mistaken you can vassal AIs that have Feudalism even if you don't have it yourself. And it's something AIs research relatively early so you should be able to trade for it in time, plus for the first two or three opponents I always try to take all their cities anyway since you already have the option of whipping in Courthouses. I would rather research either an economic tech or something to keep the war machine going later (Engineering) - but I think Cho-Kos will be good for some more wars, even in the face of Longbows.

 

[PaxImperator]

@ georgjorge:

Spoiler :

Thanks. I'm not always that careful with my diplomacy.

In the end I did declare war on Caesar. After I took his three mainland cities I found out that he had two more offshore cities and that I had to know Feudalism myself to be able to vassalize anyone. So I accepted a peace treaty in exchange for some gold and Feudalism. I used the time to move up two galleys and a trireme. Oh, and I killed Washington. It then took a few more turns to raze/capture Caesar's last two cities. By this time I was starting to get macemen and trebuchets.

Ragnar then spontaneously (and ultimately ineffectually) declared war on Asoka. I backstabbed Asoka, took two of his cities including his capital (Hindu holy site), and vassalised him.

Military plans:
Chain capitulate Willem, Ragnar and Elizabeth with macemen/trebuchets/Chu-Ko-Nu. Maybe I can bribe Elizabeth to backstab Ragnar to make things easier for me.

Economic plans:
Get Nationalism, get the Taj Mahal, get a golden age, get Oxford, get printing press, and try to generate a great prophet somehow to get the Hindu shrine. Asoka hasn't built it for whatever reason. Silly AI.

Question:
Asoka is now my vassal and has 60% of my land area. How much of a problem is this? Will he break free automatically after 10 turns?

Screenshot at turn 152, just after vassalising Asoka:

(link if the image isn't working: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...ince Qin Shi Huang 3_zpstqyb7szi.jpg~original)

 

[georgjorge]

@PaxImperator:

Spoiler :

Well done with the wars - and sorry for giving wrong information on the vassal system!

Ashoka can only break free if he has more than 50% population AND more than 50% territory of you. He can't break free with only land.

Military plans are very solid. But given the situation, the economic plans are too much focused on the long-term. I don't build Oxford if the game won't go at least until Rifles, and I wouldn't go out of my way to make a shrine. I'd rather tech the next military techs which will make your conquest faster instead of Printing Press (or if you suspect the AIs make it to Astronomy fast, you may want to get that yourself to follow them onto the islands). I don't know your tech situation, but Grenadiers or Cuirassiers (especially the latter for being faster) can beef your army up quite a bit.

Or you could just not care about your economy (well other than staying above zero gold) and whip a lot of the units you already can build to conquer them all . Should work on Prince with the number of cities you already have. None of the AIs have more than 6 cities while you have 17 - that's more than enough to take them down (even simultaneously if you do it wisely).

 

[PaxImperator]

Finished!

Spoiler :

Got a conquest victory on turn 178/in 1180 AD. That's my earliest victory on Prince yet, as well as my highest normalised score. I vassalised Asoka, Willem, Ragnar and Elizabeth. The economic plans in my final post didn't matter a whole lot, because I already had enough troops anyway. I did accomplish them though.

Thanks for the tips georgjorge and Lazteuq! I'm gonna check out all the other spoilered text now to see how everyone else did.

 

[jvdl]

Immortal, standard speed, NHNE, diplomatic victory 1866 AD

Spoiler :

The map turned out to be somewhat strange, with a civilized continent, a large archipelago to the north of that and a barbarian continent.

Tried the Oracle/Metal/Pyramid gambit, which worked out although maybe not the best strategy to finish quickly.

• 1920BC/T52: Oracle/MC; start forge in Shanghai
• 925BC/T78: Pyramids in Shanghai (chopped); start building GE
• 275 BC/T104: GE bulbs machinery; start chopping choconuts.

In the meantime, did get Maths (474BC) and Literature (300BC) also adopted Buddhism (775 BC) and everybody happy (Julius and Bismarck pleased) and impressed with my culture so no fears; so also went for GL, Parthenon and Lib. That was probably not a good idea: although it has kept me in front of the tech tree and was able to Lib MT; it didn’t allow to get the most out of my choconuts.

DOW on Bismarck (375AD/T130) was therefore late and the war slow. Made peace in 900AD/T155;. He had only an ice city left way down south and desert city way west behind Asoka but he didn’t want to vassal and I didn’t care to walk my choconuts over there.

On the same turn, liberated MT. Lucky because Asoka would have won that race if Ragnar hadn’t dragged him through a long war, which Julius later joined to help his Buddha buddy. The end result was that Julius had peace vassaled both Bismarck and Ragnar and I had Cuirs.

My cuirs wiped Julius off the continent by 1290/T189. Waited until 1320/T192 for Ragnar and Bismarck to break free but he still didn’t want to vassal despite having only two cities on remote islands left! Vassaled Ragnar myself 1350/T195. Left Bismarck and Julius to rot.

At this point it was pretty obvious that the game was won so played along with little purpose or plan.

Proved in 1170/T177 that the world was round and by the 16th century had conquered the southern half of the barbarian continent. Totally inconsequential and slowing down the victory but I had never played a Terra map before so it was a nice side adventure.

Meanwhile, Asoka had caught up with rifles. Went into free speech/market/religion to catch up with him. Whipping cannons, drafting rifles, while easily vassaling Washington with remaining cuirs in a two-turn war (1490/T209); as well as Bismarck (1525/T215).

Asoka in the meantime had brokered a defensive pact with Lizzy and was waiting for me with machine guns. DOW on 1610/T232 and vassal both in 1750/T260. That took longer than it could or should have. My stack was way larger than necessary and having lost interest in the game did not bother to plot the most efficient paths.

DOW Willem in 1770/T264; wiped him off the continent in 1816/T278 but… no vassal. Domination was not an option in this game so now needed build a gazillion galleons and navigate around Willem’s destroyers to kick him off his islands (and Julius as well).

One turn before complete conquest, got elected secretary general.

 

[georgjorge]

Finished!

Congratulations, very well done! Cho-Kos are quite nice, aren't they...

 

[PaxImperator]

They certainly are, although towards the end I seemed to be getting more use out of my trebuchets and macemen. They had higher odds of surviving their attacks, so I started mostly using the Chu-Ko-Nus to mop up the remaining defenders. Still, a very good unit.

 

[Gumbolt]

Giving this a try. Not played it to any great standards. Albeit I am unlikely to lose the game once the UU arrives. Up to 875bc.

Spoiler :

Settled in place. Went Ah and BW. Found copper.

2600bc I worker stole from Germans.
1640bc I declared on JC. I got to Antium near the gold and he whipped a Praet. Fortunately praets vs axes in cities with no culture are harmless. Moved up to Rome and took this too. Rome had 1 archer after he used his archers to attack my 2 warriors. I definately have Iron as I captured Cumae from the Rumans and now have a 2f2h tile on a grassland.

It's here my play gets a bit muddled. I started on alphabet and back tracked to pottery, hunting and fishing. Had a lot of happiness issues. Also a number of my cities early on were not working improve tiles.

With 7 axes left from Rome I headed towards Americans. Took NY defended by 5 archers and Washington which had 2 archers defending. He has shipped a settler off somewhere. (Not sure where.)

English/Indians are by far the tech leaders here.

I have 8 cities.

Oracle race was lost at 1600bc. I never tried for it.

How far am I off MC? Pretty far. Tech rate is rather static for now. Could use mids.

 

[Metaslab]

Played this out over the weekend. Never really exploited Chokos before, so I wanted to beeline them by using Oracle--->Metal Casting, then a GE-bulb for Machinery.

IMM, Normal speed, no huts or events.

Spoiler :

After moving the warrior and revealing marble, I decided I wanted it in the BFC, so settled 1N.

I don't normally bother with the Oracle, so deciding upfront to go for the Choko beeline meant that my usual early tech decisions were scrambled. My early research path looks terrible on paper, but it all seemed to work out OK. So having settled a marble city, and being IND, I thought I might as well squeeze the bonus on building the Oracle as hard as possible, and have that marble hooked up for the build. So my opening tech was .... Masonry! Started building a worker.

Things got off to a good start with an opportunity to workersteal from Julius in 3680BC:

Spoiler :

Hooking up the marble made more sense now - with two workers, it won't delay developing the corns.

Looking at other games, it seems this was also crucial for expansion - he seems to have settled in some players' faces, but with him slowed in this way I was able to grab the gold/floodplains site NW for my second city, sharing one corn with Beijing.

Next techs were Wheel, AH, Pot, then Oracle techs, BW. Was working on Maths when Oracle was done.

Built the Oracle in Shanghai, to avoid GP-pollution in Beijing. Very late - 1320BC - so was lucky there. I don't have a save from that turn, but opened up one from a couple of turns later and gave myself Currency in WorldBuilder to see if there were any big chunks of failgold floating around, and there weren't, so I guess AI weren't after it this time.

As soon as I'd Oracled MC I built a forge in Beijing and started on Mids, partly for their general awesomeness, and also for extra GE-points. Built them in 775BC. A few pre-Math chops went into them, but none before the forge was done, so they were all boosted a bit. Went Rep.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 425BC, and bulbed Machinery to within 1 turn.

After the workersteal, Julius remained at war with me until 2080BC, when he took a ceasefire, despite me being at only 0.4 compared to him. He never sent a stack - one archer who was killed by a warrior defending Shanghai.

By 850BC both he and my other neighbour, Bismark, were Hindus, so I converted too. In 800BC Julius went Buddhist! I was already his worst enemy, so really all this meant was that he was even more obviously the first target.

In 125BC I declared with a stack of 7 Chokos, 5 archers (I'd built some while waiting for Machinery, and then for Chengdu to pop borders onto the iron, with the intention of upgrading as many as I could afford, and using the remainder for garrisons), and one chariot.

The empire in 125BC:

Spoiler :

Building military everywhere, except for the workboat in Chengdu. You can see the stack right at the top.

In 250AD Julius was ready to cap, but I already had units in place to take his last two cities. The empire in 275AD, the turn the Roman empire fell:

Spoiler :

Rebuilt my army and focused on economy before declaring on the Germans in 620AD. Probably should have done that sooner. Chokos handled Bizzy's forces easily enough, despite a smattering of WEs and LBs. They were in two stacks, by the end of the war each had a supermedic. He capped in 760AD, after losing Hun, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, all of which were retained for the glory of the Chinese empire. Berlin was nice - a 30 shrine with grocer and market intact!

Spoiler :

I started my first Golden Age in 720AD, with the Music GA who had been sitting around since 125AD. Also built the MoM in 175AD. Didn't build any other wonders, but did get lots of failgold from both World and National wonders.

My plan for the GA was to farm a couple of GSs for bulbing towards Lib, and build Taj; that should allow enough time for another couple of random GPs for a third consecutive Golden Age. After I had enough GPs I'd switch back to Police State / Slavery / Theology from Rep / Caste / Paci, and stay there for the whole game. It worked out pretty much like that, except my first two GPs were low-odds Engineers, meaning it took longer to get to the civic switch than anticipated, and I only bulbed half of Edu.

DoWed Asoka in 900AD. Chokos were good for the first 2-3 cities, but Indian knights were taking their toll. Fortunately cuirs were on their way (Lib--> MT 960AD) so didn't have to break pace. Delhi had wondrous infrastructure:

Spoiler :

Some general thoughts on fighting with Chokos: apart from being awesome, they open up some interesting tactics, especially when it comes to weakening specific defenders. Taking German cities with both WEs and LBs, for example, it was sometimes possible to switch between the top-defender that would be faced by each unit by giving it Cover or Formation. A unit can attack an LB without scratching it, which is always really annoying. But if that unit gets Cover and goes head-to-head with a WE, Choko collateral becomes a more reliable way to weaken the LB. More generally, not sure what the best promo line is for this excellent UU. Went Drill mostly, Combat line on a few but didn't make much effort to compare results.

Asoka capped in 1160AD. While I was wrapping that war up, Washington declared, in 1090AD. Fortunately he was prepared to cap after taking his mainland cities, in 1170AD. That army was all cuirs.

DoWed Willem 1210AD, he capped after a two-pronged attack lasting three turns. The remaining Chokos were suicide seige by this point.

The 36-turn Golden Age finally came to an end in 1230AD.

Then Ragnar (DoW 1270AD, cap 1320AD) and Liz (DoW 1370AD) to finish up. She had Redcoats, which were a pain. Had built some Grens to counter, but they were too slow getting to the front, so the final captures were City Revolt followed by kamikaze cavs.

Conquest victory 1450AD, score 246413.