Nobles Club CXXV - Qin

[Smilingrogue]

This way is risky: you may get a great prophet instead of the desired great scientist.

Well, depends. (Isn't that the standard answer for all things Civ? )
If playing at < Monarch or maybe even Emperor (not unusual for most players of this series), building the Oracle in a production city, settled second with lots of mines and not much food is perfectly viable. This city will likely not get the Prophet out as other cities with food will constantly stay ahead if they run specialists.

I tried that strategy a while ago and the prophet popped with 100% odds at a perfect time to burn with a GS for my third golden age so not all that bad either.

Edit : To elaborate, I don't remember the game I did this on (Maybe of the NC Justinians? or Charlie?), but the details are basically build the pyramids in the capital, settle a third city to run two scientists, Oracle MC in the second city. Whip forge in the capital and run 1 Engineer. Hire and fire specialists to ensure the scientist in third city pops first. Then run an Engineer from the forge and two scientists in the capital from library and let either pop. If two GSs popped, just bulb all the way to Engineering. If one GS and one GE popped, use the GE on Machinery and GS on Engineering.

On Immortal, this strategy didn't work perfectly in the NC DeGaulle game as the AI was teching a little too quick to wait to see if the second Great Person would be a GE or GS to put off bulbing, so I had to rush with X-Bows. It might not be undesirable to do that for Chinese anyway, though.

 

[FlyingSwan]

View attachment NC 135 Qin Shi Huang AD-1715 culture victory.CivBeyondSwordSaveculture victory 1720ad.

Spoiler :

after settling for the marble with the 2nd city my mind was made up for culture victory,no realy close neighbours and with a bit of diplo I got stalin to pleased so war never crossed my mind.

Well that was a 1st-mining a bananaUnfortunatly I forgot to turn it into a plantation for about 60 turns after I got calander

Thanks to Noble Zarkon for posting the map .Although I didn't explore half of it as I got too engrossed in the culture victory to build a scout.

 

[Whutom]

Haven't been on this part of the forums in a while - I must admit I've been unfaithful and started playing Civ 5 but the games are so outrageously slow compared to a BtS game, slightly due to my laptop's performance...

Anyway...

Spoiler :

Furs in grassland forest? Silver on desert hill?

Is something wrong with the script?

Will post my save soon

 

[Whutom]

Spoiler :

So everyone seems to want to do a culture victory, I've never don't one before so I thought I'd try, so excuse me if my setup is garbage, I don't normally do cultures!

My first thought was with IND get as many early wonders as possible, got SH, GW, Oracle and Parthenon all in Beijing, Oracle'd CoL and built the shrine with the first GP and buled Theo with second, so I've got two holy cities and two shrines and a capital with lots of wonders. I figured Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing are my best bets for the culture victory. To give them the best chance I presume you want to run Caste system and run lots of artists, much easier in Nanjing and Beijing for that given Shanghai's very average food wise...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

@Whutom

Spoiler :

Furs in grassland forest? Silver on desert hill?

Is something wrong with the script?

Not that I'm aware of, it's just different that's all.

 

[Learner]

Prince/Marathon turn 472

Spoiler :

I settled in place and started with Animal Husbandry. It was obviously a mistake, but I thought there might be horses near. I made a second mistake, when I forgot to switch to worker. Anyway, the game is in pretty good shape. Barbarians wiped out Spain and I was lucky enough to get a great engineer from mids. I quickly researched MC, used engineer to bulb machinery and used cho-ko-nu´s to defeat Stalin. My economy was in pretty bad shape, but i managed to tech feudalism. I declared war against Gandhi, took Delhi and Vijayanagara. Vijayanagara was the holy city of Christianity, while Delhi was the holy city of Hinduism and Judaism and also contained The temple of Artemis and Stonehenge. After I captured those cities Gandhi capitulated to me.

I also managed to get the key wonders(Mids, TGL, Parthenon, Great wall)

I think it´s too late for a cultural victory, so I shall go for Domination or Space.

 

[vogonpoet]

Monarch, Normal, no huts or events:

Normally in my offline games at Monarch, if I finish them, I have a slight tech lead most of the game, but loose it during some crappy warring, then have to power ahead again, then do some more crappy warring, then eventually win dom in 2020 or something sad like that. I really want to learn how to utterly destroy Monarch a few times before trying to move up to Emperor - my mid game in particular is rubbish, like I lib steel, my rivals might still not have gunpowder even, but I still manage to make the wars a horrible slog.

So if you have any tips, here I am at turn 96, 475 BC:

Spoiler :

I have just bulbed Machinery, and can trade for Archery whenever I feel like it.
I went writing fairly early, and ran scientists in my cap whilst I built the oracle in my second city, so I didn't have any problems with prophet pollution.

After Priesthood I went to Alpha so I could finally trade for AH and IW. I am working on the pyramids in the cap, because I don't rememember the last time I was IND and had stone. I guess I will go Rep, or maybe just head straight to Police State, I am not sure.

So where to go from here? I have just 4 cities, the AI are probably struggling with the jungle worse than I am, and I could start building Chokonuts straight away... Should I go try beat up on Stalin? I am terrible at wars... Or perhaps expand to fill the available jungle and just try to steal some workers or something...

I need more workers for sure. And to explore everywhere more.



Edit: Also, never really tried the Cho-Ko-Nu before... what sort of stack should I make - loads of CKNs and a spear, just suicide my troops until the city has fallen?

 

[dalamb]

@vogonpoet: I quit a lot of games, mostly because of war-slogging. I sympathize. Maybe we need a war-haters support group.

 

[Pengu]

Well, something insane happened in my game. Until 450 BC

Spoiler :

I thought it was going to be hard but it seems noone got a great starting location as wonders are going very late. This allowed me to get some failgold from TGW.
I hold back on the IW and settled north and west 1st before going into the jungle.Anyway I went for Aesth hoping someone would trade me Alpha. Then just a few turns before I get Aesth it says Gandhi is willing to trade Alpha. Great I think...
But it turns out he was teching Aesth the b******, so I couldn't get Alpha from him and noone is close to it seems. Well, I get Poly from him and go for a late oracle.
Gandhi seems to be far ahead in tech. Then at 450 BC, when noone else has Alpha besides him(I had put 1 turn into it) Gandhi the idiot just hands me Alpha for free!
What was he thinking?

 

[hankinsohl]

Emperor, no huts, attempted domination/conquest loss early 1900's:

Spoiler :

Settled in place, built lots of early wonders and expanded to 10 cities. Had a large tech lead on everyone except Joao.

Won Liberation, teched to rifles and began warring. I wanted to attack Joao since he had 21 cities at the time. Unfortunately, Gandhi peace-vassalled to Joao and the AP was built in Joao's religion - Hinduism.

I thought I might possibly win by wiping out all the AI's so that was my plan. Things were looking good when Gandhi broke away from Joao. By that time I had completely wiped all the other AIs off the map. After about 12 turns Gandhi too was completely gone. I had about 32 cities or so and over 60% of the population. Unfortunately my land area came to only 61% - 3% short of what's needed for domination.

Joao launched a space ship before I could tech to parity with him and I lost to a space race victory. I couldn't attack Joao since he had amassed a large number of tactical nukes and since he had quite a few advanced combat units versus my infantry/artillery. I was about 25-30 turns from being in position to attack Joao - I'd have to tech to modern armor and start cranking out units. Just before Joao's space ship landed I passed a non-proliferation agreement in the UN so Joao's nukes were no longer an issue.

I'm not sure what I could have done differently - there didn't seem to be any opportunity to spark conflict early on (perhaps I could have built the Oracle, and taken COL to spread Confucianism to Joao, thus offering better chances for war) and by the time I was in position to attack Joao was unassailable. I would have attacked Joao at tech parity in spite of his size except that Gandhi peace-vassalled to him.

 

[TheMadFiddler]

Prince [though gave the AIs the Monarch start]- Huts and Events on

Moved the warrior to the plains hill and decided to settle 1s on the plains hill. Start worker, warrior, settler. Tech - Bronze Working then the Wheel.

Spoiler :

Situation at Turn 50

Met Stalin quickly, no one else yet. Built the GW in the capital. Next city will be 4 E of capital on the C. Future possible city sites also marked. With the distance to people, not certain the Spy culture route will work. May be like many others and go with more traditional culture route.

Tech at turn 50 if anyone is interested.

Suggestions where to go from here?

Also, I need to note I find the map script weird- not just the resources, but more so the square edges of the map. It is just so strange.

 

[FlyingSwan]

@madfiddler.

Spoiler :

I would suggest your next city 3E from the capital as 4E you wont have fresh water and will be surrounded by floodplains which will create health problems for that city.This will also let you settle another riverside city to the NE from there on the plains tile which will get the deer initially and then the rice with a border pop.

map scripts

Spoiler :

there are many map scripts which have square edges,oasis,great plains,highlands for example.This map script a player called iggymrr used to swear by for getting early space race victorys.

 

[FlyingSwan]

@hankinsohl bad luck on the loss.Maybe taking early vassals and getting them to work for you?A vassals land still counts towards your domination(although % wise not as much as if you owned it yourself I believe)A decent vassal can research the techs you don't want to,you can gift it obsolete units for it upgrade to help you in war etc.IMO an early capitulation is more beneficial to your civ than wiping an AI off the map in many cases.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

@hankinsohl

Spoiler :

The United Nations Nuclear Nonproliferation Resolution when passed simply makes new ICBM or Tactical Nuke production impossible. Any Civ can still use its existing stockpile of nuclear weapons on any target it is at war with (provided neutral units are not in the 3 x 3 kill zone).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[hankinsohl]

@FlyingSwan

Spoiler :

Agreed, but I felt that I was facing special circumstances; namely, I didn't think I'd be able to attack Joao due to his vassal and huge size. So my plan was to get 100% credit for land/population and hope that Gandhi would break free - at which point I'd wipe out Gandhi too.

Kind of bad luck that I was off by about 3% on the amount of land I needed.

In retrospect, taking vassals would improve my tech rate as you say so I might have had tech parity and enough time to generate advanced combat units/nukes to take on Joao if I had taken vassals.

@Sun Tzu Wu

Spoiler :

Wow - I didn't know that you could use existing nukes once the non-proliferation treaty passes.

To that end, given enough time, I may have been better served by ICBMing the heck out of Joao and using paratroopers to mop up his tactical nukes should any remain (they seem to have all been stacked in a single city fairly close to my borders).

 

[Pengu]

Continued until 1450 AD (Imm)

Spoiler :

Well, time sure flies. I did loose out on the oracle but got mids, TGL, MOM and Shwedy peddy, The reason for Shwedy was that almost everybody were in different religions.5! of them. So I built it to get into free religion sooner. Didn't stop Stalin from downing me but saw that one coming as it is almost impossible to avoid even at cautious. Got some fgold to get me in the tech lead. Used lib for MT and let an engineer build the Taj. Nice long golden ages . Well, even at 10 cities there was no horses anywhere close. But after the Victoria one I DID NOT WANY cannons again. So I managed to get Izzy to pleased and traded my only iron for it. Well, that meant no cuirs but cavs. That idiot Joao vassaled the poor Sumerians and then tunred to me and demanded 200 gold. As I was getting close to rifling I need that gold and told him to do one. Well, a red fist came up but I didn't care. I did build some muskets just in case but just when he stacks started coming I got cavs. After whiping out his 1st stack I could have taken peace to concentrate on Lizzy, but I thought it would be better to totally kill all of Joao's army now before he got MS and other nasty things. So after killing around 40 units or something, I made peace. This is where I am now. Noone else have MT, MS or rifling right now, but they are closing in on it fast. Gandhi has a ton of cities, but I think I'll be able to vassal enough civs before it gets tricky.
Gandhi has been one stingy b***** after he gifted me Alpha. He has never given me any gold no matter how I beg .

 

[Robert FIN]

Apart from the fact you don't need to move to get the banana!

Oh, yup. Its a SiP then.

 

[Robert FIN]

My first tech choise would be BW, so we can adopt slavery and see if we have copper. Mining/Agri shoild keep the workers busy.

 

[TheMadFiddler]

map scripts

Spoiler :

there are many map scripts which have square edges,oasis,great plains,highlands for example.This map script a player called iggymrr used to swear by for getting early space race victorys.

Spoiler :

True, but I cannot get used to those maps either. Plus starting in the corner here doesn't help. Not that the maps cannot still be fun and whatever, they just strike me as odd. But, like they say- variety is the spice of life.

 

[Jarno]

Emperor NHNE, Cultural Victory 1770 AD

Spoiler :

Decided to SIP, used the stone and marble in 3rd city to wonderwhore: got all the early wonders except for GL and Colossus. Got a warrior up to WMII and stole 2 workers from Liz. Oracled CoL and spread confucianism to Stalin to get him to pleased. Funded contiuous 100% research by selling techs to backward civs (Liz, Stalin, Giggles) and failgold (and eventually building the wonders myself: winwin). Whenever Joao or Asoka became too threatening, I used my big brother Stalin to pick on them at the cost of a tech or 2.
Libbed Democracy, then stopped teching for 100% culture. Got 4 religions for my 9 cities, so all my 3 legendary cities got a stupa, cathedral, conf academy and mosque. First cultural victory for me

Fun fact: didn't lose a single unit.