Nobles' Club LXVII: Hammurabi of Babylon

[dalamb]

I continued with my plan from my previous message, and have a brief question about city positioning.

Spoiler progress report :

I placed both blocking cities in time, then continued with a peaceful expansion -- only to be attacked by Huayna when I wasn't ready. My power was larger than his, but not enough, apparently. So I backed up to where I bulbed Theology and started a military buildup, using the Great Artist from Music to start a golden age, switch to Confucianism, then change civics to Caste System and Theocracy (already in Representation from the 'mids and Bureaucracy from Oracling CS). I started building catapults and elephants, but teching is so fast on this map that before I had quite enough units to want to declare war, I was building trebuchets and macemen.

I'm now in the midst of an easy-to-win war (the only kind I'm willing to wage, apparently). I circumnavigated in 340 AD and have met all the AIs; I'm 1 turn from Liberalism and expect they'll all be a while before they get it, but will spend some turns upping my espionage against each enough that I can see what they're researching.

In the war, I've captured Huayna's 3 oldest and largest cities and am plowing through the rest. I expect to win in a couple of dozen tedious turns, at which point I'll likely take out Zara.

Spoiler dotmap and question :

On the island to the east it's easy to fit in two cities. For those of you who settled it, where did you put them?

I definitely want to take in the gems; would white or 1E of white (on the cows, whose I'm reluctant to lose) make a good Maoi statues city? The thing is, it has so much food I'm not sure how to use it. With enough + it might make for a huge city and a secondary Great Person farm; might it make sense to put the Globe Theatre there?

 

[vranasm]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

that gems spot looks ok, but I think I have put it on the rice. gains more resources

the northern city can be arguably placed 1S (arguably because it depends if you will run hammer economy with super workshops or not... the 1S position has 2 grass for production, the northern horses+1 grass)

btw i had on the main land city 3W of the horses for the fish etc.

 

[shyuhe]

@dalamb:

Spoiler :

I would leave yellow as is and put white 1SE on the rice. Unirrigated rice sucks anyways so you're not losing much by settling on it. You can then fit a third city to grab the fish/clam in the middle.

 

[dalamb]

I did finally finish -- 1764 space victory, and my highest score ever (but apparently lots of people got very high scores on this map, since it wasn't hard to get lots of population).

 

[Heliac]

Wow, nice starting location; haven't tried this one yet. SiP

 

[WelshGandalf]

I tried a CS sling on emperor, after getting mining/BW.

Turns out it is possible - on the 2nd attempt I took CS on turn 61 (1560BC). Working 5 gold that early in the game is kind ridiculous. By turn 70 (1200BC) I was churning out 111 a turn.

I then said "screw you" to teching & my economy in general, and decided to see how far a never-ending medieval war campaign could take me. Still playing it through at the moment. I'll post some wacky screenies when I win. I'm trying to avoid building anything with a strength rating higher than 8...

 

[dalamb]

Wow, nice starting location; haven't tried this one yet. SiP

Don't get used to it. I think it's nearly universally agreed, even by me, that I overdid the "more resources" idea on this one.

 

[Pengu]

Immortal until 1200

Spoiler :

Man, this was harder than I thought.
Nice start.SIP. I hate pro so I decided to avoid Toku and expand instead.
He settled towards me so I took PH city by the cows and then the gold city by the pigs as 3rd. Built SH and Oracle and took CS. Switch right away. Toku had founded budd so I joined him even if Capec would get pissed as I don't want to get in a medival war vs Toku. Continued to expand west and east peacefully up to 13 cities. I easily got the lead in tech and was doing well I thought.Meanwhile Zara and Capec fought and Capec lost a couple of cities. After that Capec has been in and out vassaling with Zara. They are both Hindu. They seem to like eachother still. Now the bad news. I met Mehmet and Cyrus around 1000 AD and Mehment already had rifles and Cyrus had vassaled Kublai. They both had almost 2000 pts and 20 cities each! I took PP from lib and got economics. Zara adn Capac also had an insane amount of cities and Zara was also going to overtake me in pts. I was building rifles like crazy but Capec was about to get MS so I bribed Toku on Capec. This turned out badly as Capec gave Zara MS and bribed him on Toku. Toku was now terrified and came crawling to become my vassal.
In 1 turn world war 1 started. I had many rifles but both of them had Grenadiers and Toku wasn't that strong. So now I am in deep **** fighting on 2 fronts while Mehmet and Cyrus are in the lead. I am now trying to build cavs instead but it will take awhile.Or I might try to reach AL and upgrade my rifles. I am now sitting with half my army in 1 Ethiopian city and the other half in an Incan city figuring out what to do next. All I know is if I can't cap those 2 rather quickly I will probably loose

 

[Pengu]

Immortal until 1520

Spoiler :

Hmm, well this is going to be a looong grind.
I wrongly decided after taking 2 of Zara's cities that I wanted to take them out 1 by 1 and made peace. problem was that Capac capped after 3 turns. I gave back the cities to him. then while I had to wait 7 turns Zara got rifles. And he was furious so he would not cap easily. After taking a few of his citeies and after got AL he capped.
meanwhile unfortunately Cyrus and Mehment had grown stronger and also now have AL.
I have 3 vassals and 3900 pts. Cyrus has 1 vassal and 3800 pts and Mehmet alone has 3200 pts. It is more or less tech parity among us.
I am wondering if I should go and tech artillerry, build 40 of those to go along with my 40 infantry and go for Mehement right away or if I should try to out tech them with my 3 vassals to modern armor 1st and then go for them.
Problem is Cyrus and Mehment are good fried and in judaism. This means mehment might cap to cyrus if he is attacked...

Any thoughts would be nice. I think I have this in the bag though