Oromo Breakout? Or Something Else?

[floydmcw]

Emperor, fractal, BTS (no mods), Zara Yaqob.

Spawned at the end of an elongated continent. My neighbors are, linearly along the continent, Alex, Nappy, Charlemagne, Julius.

I built Great Lighthouse and expanded to 6 cities by T92 with reasonable resources (horses, copper, iron, silver, furs, decent food, and later marble).

On T94 Alex declared on Nappy. They seemed to be evenly matched (Alex lost Sparta then retook it) and I had very little military so I stayed out of it.

For quite awhile only JC and Chuck had a religion, so I was first to Theo in T117. Unfortunately Hinduism spread and now all the other 4 civs are Hindu. (I don't have Hinduism yet.)

So my original plan was to bust out with Oromos. But now with everyone running the same religion, I'm not so sure that will work (even assuming Hinduism spreads to me).

I am building missionaries to send to Napoleon, then I will try to bribe him to Christianity after converting a couple of his cities. Is that a reasonable plan?

Should I accept the lovefest and try for a Diplo win? It isn't something I have a lot of experience with.

Or is my position strong enough that I can spam oromos and not worry about it?

(T122 save attached.)

 

[Gumbolt]

Very confused save.
3 workers for 6 cities is not enough.
You have loads of forest left here.
You could go swords/pult war here. Chop away all your forest but build 2 or so more workers soon. The AI land is horrible. Small risk Ai could get phants. They seem somewhat slow here.
How quickly could you get Oromo? Your science rate at 100% is not great. Not helped by those forests covering all the grassland. Waiting 30-40 turns is too long.

You really could use more Ai land now and Alex could be an easy target.

I don't get the theology tech. Building mish to convert AI is 100% a waste of time. Same for religion based buildings.

Construction is 3 turns off. Whip 2-3 workers. Then chop /whip an army. You want 6-7 pults and 7-8 decent melee. No need to fully bombard cities. I just attack with pults. You could use 1-2 to reduce defences. Check odds before you attack.

 

[floydmcw]

Very confused save.
3 workers for 6 cities is not enough.
You have loads of forest left here.
You could go swords/pult war here. Chop away all your forest but build 2 or so more workers soon. The AI land is horrible. Small risk Ai could get phants. They seem somewhat slow here.
How quickly could you get Oromo? Your science rate at 100% is not great. Not helped by those forests covering all the grassland. Waiting 30-40 turns is too long.

You really could use more Ai land now and Alex could be an easy target.

I don't get the theology tech. Building mish to convert AI is 100% a waste of time. Same for religion based buildings.

Construction is 3 turns off. Whip 2-3 workers. Then chop /whip an army. You want 6-7 pults and 7-8 decent melee. No need to fully bombard cities. I just attack with pults. You could use 1-2 to reduce defences. Check odds before you attack.

Hi Gumbolt, thanks for the feedback.

Yeah I don't usually have 0.5 workers per city but there never seemed a need, I don't have a lot of squares to farm/mine and my land is pretty compact.

I didn't build that many cottages because until HR (and some resource trades) I had a low happy cap and was running 2 scientists per city with cheap libraries.

So is it never a good idea to try to convert an AI to another religion to prevent a big religious bloc? When I started down the Theo path Nappy had no religion in any city, I was hoping I could convert him (the AIs are usually happy to convert to the first religion that spreads to them) which would put him at odds with JC and the Burger King.

But I guess it shouldn't have been a big surprise that Hinduism spread to him in the time it took me to do that.

 

[Gumbolt]

Only advantage of theo path is perhaps route to paper?

Agreed land is very limited and poor here. Instead of Theo you could of had catapults many turns earlier?

Note most of the AI are not bordering you. You will get -1 for attacking their friends. So you need to finish wars in one bash. Not great starting near 2 warmongers.

Main danger could be AP being built somewhere.

 

[Anysense]

It seems that you struggled to find job for your workers, hence all the pointless roading and cottages. Never build non riverside cottages without financial unless you have done math and know they are ok, because in 99% cases they are not. Don't build more workers than you need either, better focus on managing fewer workers and learning to use worker turns more efficiently. For instance, you forgot to connect wheat and cows, that happened because you built more workers instead of using those that you already had more thoughtfully.

The thing that troubles you most here is lack of good tiles. In fact, just 1-2 per city. Coast is ok to grow on and mines can be used when a city has a lot whipping anger, but that's it.

I agree that teching Construction sooner would be a good move. Most of your land is quite useless without SP+biology, so there is no point in growing vertically. Typical approach to such starts is to grab all the food available, tech the most suitable military tech and whip units to conquer better land.

The location of Dbre Berhan strikes me as very odd. You want food worked as soon as possible, but whale isn't something to consider when you settle your first cities. It only slowed you down without bringing any benefit. I doubt that Adulis is worth it either, you could have 2 catapults instead! If only you had Construction.

Forget about religious stuff, it won't save the day. What you really need is Construction and ivory. You'll have to get Napoleon to pleased, otherwise he won't trade strategic resources. Probably, just give him a bunch of techs.

 

[floydmcw]

I was on vacation for a few weeks and now that I'm back, wanted to say thanks for the advice. I went after Alex with swords and cats and was able to cap him. Then I took out Nappy with Oromos (and trebs).

The Hindu lovefest never materialized, I was assisted by Napoleon going after Alex and then by Charlemagne wanting some of Nappy. A resolution stopped my war with the French after I took 4 cities, then 10 turns later I declared again and capitulated him.

Then smooth sailing to a T343 space win.