Rbw2 - Angry Korea Man

[Iainuki]

This is the rant section of my turn set. It's gotten to the point where I dread opening up the save, because I know I'm not going to like what I find. I apologize in advance for my lack of tact, but this is ANGRY KOREA and politeness requires time. Honestly, a lot of what's going on strikes me as sloppy play and sloppy reporting. As Blake observed, this game is easy enough so we probably won't lose because of it, but it makes me ANGRY nonetheless. So, I'm going to write an ANGRY discussion of what's been going on that shouldn't have been, and what hasn't been that should be.

• Emphasis settings. At the end of my last turn set, I had most of the cities set to the governor, without any emphasis settings. Blake said he reset all the cities to no emphasis. However, most of the cities are now set to emphasize food/production/commerce. This is BetterAI: that's not the optimal generic setting. Why were emphasis settings applied?
• Unhappy, unhealthy population. Seoul, Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg all have population that's unhappy and unhealthy. Several more cities have population that's unhappy or unhealthy. This is crazy: we're not at the end of any wars, so that war weariness isn't going away any time soon. (Side-note: the mostly-finished aqueduct I had enqueued in Seoul at the end of my turn set is still sitting there unfinished.) As Blake said, we should be whipping away that population, to military units or buildings that will increase our happiness/healthiness. Some of these cities are still burning off whip unhappiness, which makes me wonder if our whipping has been efficient enough; I have no idea what's up with the ones that aren't.
• China built the Taj Mahal. Just to be sure, I scanned the turn set logs again, and the only mention of the Taj was Swiss Pauli removing from the queue. It looks like China rushed it with a GE, which is unfortunate but happens. What bugs me is that no one mentioned this happened. For the sake of my sanity, I'd prefer not to have to dig through the in-game log to pick up important events like that.
• The use of the great prophet on the Mahabodhi. I had expressed a preference to build the Church of the Nativity first, to add +1 prophet GPP/turn Illinois' GP pool and allow it to hire more prophets. There's frankly no reason I can see to have built the Mahabodhi first: Christianity has 16% influence, vs. only 7% for Buddhism, so the Mahabodhi is bringing in less cash. If we want to stay in Buddhism to make diplomacy hard, that's fine, but there's no advantage to having the Buddhist versus the Christian shrine.
• City specialization. Berlin isn't a bad place for the HE/GT combination, though I'm not sure it's optimal. (It is, however, quite possibly the best choice among the cities we already have, so it might be sensible on time consideration grounds alone.) I'm glad to see progress on this front. I'm not so happy with Illinois' condition: it's building military, despite being very unhealthy, it doesn't have any specialists assigned, and it still has cottages and mines instead of farms and windmills. We're only at 700 GPP/GP, and we want at least two more prophets.
• Efficient land use. There are two ways, in Civ4, to handle city placement while conducting war: raze misaligned cities and build new cities with better spacing, or capture all cities and build squeezed space-filler cities. I generally play the former because of my perfectionist tendencies, though the latter is probably better. In this game, we've opted for the latter, except we're missing a critical part of the strategy: building the space-filler cities! There's a big chunk of land between Seoul, Cologne, and Otrar that needs a city, and another big chunk between Essen, Otrar, Hippo, and Ning-hsia. There might be room between Frankfurt and Seoul, depending on where the Seoul/Cologna/Otrar cities go. In the south, there's room for a city that can get bonus food from irrigation, the desert incense (is that worth working?), and some towns/windmills/lumbermills. Finally, there's room for some fishing villages on the antarctic peninsula, if we want them.
• Not enough Buddhism spreading. Most of Germany is still not Buddhist. Of our unhappy cities, most of them don't have Buddhism. We have non-Buddhist cities producing military. We have cities in need of border pops without Buddhism. Somehow, we've managed to finish two more 120-hammer courthouses (not counting the unfinished courthouses in queue), but not any more 40-hammer missionaries?

These are my first impressions. I have not yet dug into the build orders, military situation, or diplomacy. Next up, I'm going to try to write some responses to questions raised by my last turn set, and things that have happened since.

 

[Iainuki]

But seriously, improvements and city builds aren't really worth writing about at length, unless an immediate strategic change (farming over towns, windmilling over mines) is being proposed; these points would be better off in a follow up post. If you don't like the city builds, change 'em. These dead paragraphs detract from important points of strategic discussion (tech, national wonders) that you raise.

I tend to think about micro issues as they relate to macro issues. In this case, I mentioned improvements to talk about city specialization and future civics choices. City builds I brought up because I wanted to chide the team about why certain things hadn't happened (forges!), and to ask questions about future directions.

Setting your report out in such a way will also answer some of your own questions (why does Seoul have 2 merged GGs) because experiencing the flow of play can give better insight into why certain decisions have been made than a 'cold' pre-set analysis can.

If you're implying that because I used Seoul to build units during my turn set to fend off Mao, this endorsed the military instructor/military academy in Seoul, I disagree. I used Seoul because it had them, but if they'd been put in another city, I would have used that city; and Seoul might have been, e.g., free to build an aqueduct during this period.

I tend to disagree about city specialization. This is something which is not so important for Financial leaders, because all cities end up pretty samey - like as you note, Windmills are a great build for financial. This means that all cities end up with a mix of hammer and commerce. The science rate usually ends up high, but not quite so high that you can afford to neglect gold builds (as an Organized leader with Shrines might be able to).

Sure, that's true. However, national wonder placement means that all civs, no matter their traits, benefit from specialization to best take advantage of the national wonders. Moreover, the kind of specialization I'm talking about is pretty minimalistic: in particular, commerce cities with low production need to emphasize building commerce buildings, because otherwise they won't get done with those buildings in any reasonable time frame. I still don't understand why we have low-production cities with over thirty base commerce building military units.

Your also wrong about courthouses, an average city is at 7-8 upkeep and maybe 15 or so average gold (30 commerce at sustainable science rate of 50%). This means a courthouse will save 4gpt while a marketplace will provide around +4gpt also. Usually the happiness is of some consideration but in this case we have oodles of it (everyone loves Angry Korea!). Once we get Banks (which are a much better build than markets or grocers, sans health/happy) our sustainable science rate will be approximately 50% higher with banks alone, which will considerably reduce the profitability of markets/grocers, while the value of the courthouse (which is cheaper) will remain constant.

I don't agree here, at all. For a more up-to-date analysis, our weaker developed cities have around 40 base commerce. We're running a little better than 60% sustainable science, but let's call it 50% to make the calculations easy. A market/grocer generates +5 gpt under these assumptions, which is still in the same ballpark as a courthouse's maintenance reduction. However, at this point, our happiness and healthiness problems are pretty critical, with most of our cities unhappy, unhealthy, or both. We get +3 health from grocers at the moment, and +1 happy from markets. When I said what I said last time, I was thinking about (but did not adequately explain) that we weren't at war and our cities were still regrowing from recent conquest, so our happiness and healthiness situations appeared better than they were. Two more important points are that if we do move to State Property, which I think is our best option, courthouses become much less valuable; and if we manage to get any trades going (with the other continent?) for more happy/healthy resources, the grocers/markets become better deals. I think these are clearly worth the extra 30 hammers.

The other commerce buildings tend to enjoy more favorable returns in gpt/hammer. Markets/grocers have a .0333 gpt/hammer return, courthouses .0416, under the assumptions I made above. Libraries, banks, and seowons offer .0555, .5, and .035, respectively. Banks have the ancillary benefit of opening Wall Street, and seowons will let us build Oxford.

One final point about courthouses: a 50%/50% science/cash split is where they perform best. Under other conditions, markets/grocers/banks or libraries/seowons perform relatively better. Since we're above 50% science right now, research buildings provide us the better payoffs, but eating Mali may tip that balance in favor of the cash buildings.

Something I forgot to mention is that the cities had whack emphasis settings, in the end I selected all cities and pulsed the emphasis settings and governor buttons (turned them on and off again) to ensure all cities were being managed by the mostly competent Better AI default governor, which even in this older version tends to do better than a human who isn't checking every city every turn.

What do you consider whack emphasis settings? I was probably underusing the whip because I wanted to grow the German cities some for cottage growth, so I had some of them with slowed growth. Other than that, what is there that you felt needed to be changed?

(I'm asking for my own edification, since obviously who knows what the emphasis settings have been since our turn sets.)

Great Generals:

Our use of these feels pretty haphazard, to me. So far, we've burned two in Seoul (I won't talk any more about those) and two on warlords. I haven't develop a firm strategy on when to create warlords vs. military instructors, so I'm going to pose some questions about that.

(I generally don't think military academies are worth it, except under unusual circumstances: the +50% unit production isn't that big a bonus, and it stacks the bad way with Bureaucracy, Police State, and building multipliers. In our situation, where Assembly Line isn't that far over the horizon, I think military academies are probably a bad investment, unless we want to pair one with West Point.)

Right now, we have 3 XP from barracks and 2 from Theocracy, so it would take three military instructors, or two and West Point, to get to the next promotion. Do we want to build the Pentagon? (If we can?) I'd lean towards it, since we still have a lot of conquering to do and a lot of it will be done in the modern era. Do we want to turn Seoul into a military pump? (I still disagree with the decision to put them there, but done is done, and we have to make the best of it.) Settling one in Seoul and two in Berlin would give us triple-promoted units from two cities with the Pentagon, even ignoring West Point.

I'm not quite sure I appreciate the best ways to use warlords. In my past Warlords games (my Warlords experience is nowhere as deep as my vanilla experience, I have to admit), I've used them primarily as shock troops, attached to cavalry with Tactics and Flanking II to create units with 90% withdrawal chances that I can use to clear the way against powerful defenders. Here, we have them on cannons, but we can't nearly as high withdrawal chances, so we have to rely on the warlord cannons winning their fights. What promotions should warlord cannons have? The only obvious one is Leadership. (Why does one of our cannons not have Leadership?). Tactics will help them survive if they get unlucky, but not kill things. I'm not sure how helpful morale is for a siege weapon, since they still have to wait for the other cannons arrive to bombard city defenses. Are we going for Combat VI?

The other thing I do consider it important to do is to make at least one Medic III, since it's quite powerful in helping keep an army moving, especially when paired with March.

 

[Iainuki]

There's a lot going on here, and I want some guidance on my next turn set.

We're at war with three civs right now, Hannibal, Roosevelt, and Mansa. Our army seems to be near Mansa, implying he's our primary target. Is this correct? Hannibal and Roosevelt are both weaker on the tech front, which could be an argument in either direction. They all have about the same power. Geography argues for Hannibal or Mali: Hannibal's cities are close to our capital, so have low maintenance and won't extend our borders much, while Mali is more or less behind our nominal ally, Genghis, whom I don't trust that much. Mali has the best wonders still active.

We are researching Steam Power. This is along one of the directions I floated during my last discussion, but it's not clear to me it's the best of the available choices. In the terms of the accessible technologies that offer actual benefits, the big ones are Steam Power (worker speed, coal) and Constitution (Representation if we want it, jails). After that, which line do want to go up? Steam Power->Railroads will get us faster movement on our continent and more production from mines/lumbermills, but we don't have many of those, it's expensive, and it only opens up Combustion, which won't be useful to us until after Scientific Method. Constitution->Democracy will let us start the Statue, if we want it, and open up Universal Suffrage. I don't see Economics+Constitution->Corporation as that important until we're ready to run for Assembly Line: we're in Mercantilism, so trade routes aren't that valuable to us, and we can't build Wall Street yet anyways. Scientific Method sucks for us in itself, but opens up three critical techs: Astronomy->Physics->Electricity is very expensive, but will greatly increase our commerce, Biology will help some of our laggard cities grow while giving boosting Illinois and Berlin in their designated functions, and Communism will open up State Property.

A related question is whether we try to trade for the older techs, or just research them ourselves (with the discount). In particular, I'm alarmed that it's 1665 AD and we still don't have Optics or Music. In particular, having not met the other continent, we don't have the ability to take advantage of trading techs with it, we don't get research bonuses for any techs it might have already discovered, and we don't have the possibility of trading resources. I think we need to rectify this soon. Has anyone circumnavigated yet? Not having Music means we can't build culture to pop borders in new cities, which would be convenient for our new conquests and some of our still-uncultured older possessions; I think we could also benefit from Buddhist stupas (+3 net happy for 150 hammers because of copper and incense; we have a state religion, we might as well try to take advantage of it) and Military Tradition.

Right now, Constitution, Optics, Economics, and Music are all out there, but trading for them could be tricky. Our only partner at the moment is Genghis, who only wants Steel and Rifling. These are key military techs, so I'm a little reluctant to pass them around, but it's a lot cheaper than trying to research all of those techs on our own. Does anyone have suggestions on which trades would be wise to make?

I don't know which of these techs paths I prefer. I can just pick one, but I'd like to hear from other players if they've seen something I missed.

We have another civics change coming up. I see two basic plausible options: get Representation, do everything we can to build the Statue, and run Mercantilism for the synergies; or go to Universal Suffrage and State Property to maximize our production. Which of these do we want? Two civic switches take two turns of anarchy for us now, so I don't see there's any benefit in waiting. Which civic do want first? Are there any other swaps we should consider? Nationhood? (I'd suggest Free Religion, but we've already talked about that.)

I want to plant at least three more cities, one between Seoul and Cologne, one southwest of Essen, and one in-between Cheju and Namp'o. Does anyone have any suggestions for where these should go? Do we want to found fishing villages on the antarctic peninsula?

It's likely we will get another great general during my turnset, or if not mine, Blake's. My inclinations would be to either make a Medic III unit (out of what?) or merge them into Berlin as a military instructor.

The Iron Works is open. We should start it somewhere. Where? I don't see any obvious candidates. I'd still like some discussion about where Wall Street, Oxford, and West Point (especially) are going, so we can plan around that. I still lean towards Wall Street and Oxford going in Seoul and Illinois, but I might be convinced otherwise, particularly about Oxford. West Point might go in Seoul, or another city better focused as a military pump.

Other suggestions about what I should be doing are welcome.

 

[Kodii]

Iainuki gets the award for the longest essay.

I'll try to get my way through those... grossly prosperous posts and then post my own much shorter comments.

 

[Kodii]

Iainuki, I think your analysis is taking the fun out of a variant meant to be ANGRY and not analytical.

If you see something wrong, I would much prefer that you fix it while you play and then make note of it in the turnset report rather than delay the turnset with essays. I feel that long pauses in between turnsets in SGs such as this begins to make the the game stretch out for far too long. I am thoroughly enjoying the pace of the LK series and there is no reason for the RB games to be any different.

Anyways, I got through the first and second posts, and then skipped the third one. Your points are valid and insightful; they just come in giant multitudes.

Really, I think the main difference between me (and perhaps other people) and you when it comes to this game is our view of the game.

Your view: We have a three-front war. We must devise a plan to defeat these mongrels as efficiently and quickly as possible.

My view: KOREA is ANGRY. KILL.

 

[Swiss Pauli]

I agree with Kodii here, Iainuki: you're simply not entering into the spirit of the variant, but trying to impose you views of how civ should be handled onto this game. Mahabodi was built because we sold Jesus and don't want his heathen money.

Your play is desperately slow (days for a got it and days for a pre-game analysis and days to play and report) and it's taking the fun out of the game. It's not (S)GOTM; we're not interested in l33t stuff (and I think over-analysis plagued SGOTM3): the aim is to have fun playing and reporting.

I also don't think you've been checking out the reports too thoroughly either: Blake declared a 'rage-war' on Mansa when he demanded Gems and then we got declared on by Roosy and Hannibal in the same turn. The army was, of course, by Mansa. You'll need to decide how many troops to send south to help fend off Carthage and America. I've long had eyes on Hannibal's lands, so I'd divert more troops south and make peace with Mali (for now).

Seoul is at the hub of our Empire, so it's the best logistical choice for the GGs (as we've been under simultaneous attack from North and West almost constantly). Tech wise, we're now out of the hole we were in for military techs, so pick one for the economy: I trust (and will respect) your judgement as there are many possibilities.

 

[LKendter]

Your play is desperately slow (days for a got it and days for a pre-game analysis and days to play and report) and it's taking the fun out of the game. It's not (S)GOTM; we're not interested in l33t stuff (and I think over-analysis plagued SGOTM3): the aim is to have fun playing and reporting.

What is "l33t stuff"?

 

[ruff_hi]

What is "l33t stuff"?

LK - you are showing your age ... elite stuff ... and YES, I agree it is stupid.

 

[Atlas]

This is all you need to know (I wish I had a pic of the Mali city I took, but it had about 18 units in it)- The BetterAI piles units in its front city(s), once you break that you have often broken that Civs back- Use the units on that front to CRUSH Mali- keep the cities.

In generally I favor just whipping (or drafting?) the former German Cities into the dirt, while producing cannons out of the Angry Korean Kore to take Hannibal and then FDR if there is anything left of him by then. I think Hannibal is spent.

Simultaneously do what I have described in the quotes to constitute a second army to take Hannibal. The reason those cities were unhealthy and unhappy was I wanted to pose the idea to the team before whipping away about half of the population in the former German cities.

In 50-60 turns (once we have all of Mali and all of Carthage) lets not forget that war declaration of Mao's .

BTW- Great General definitely in Berlin for drafting/whipping

 

[sunrise089]

@Iainuki: While I tend to agree with the other teamates' feelings regarding the spirit of the game, I appreciate all the time you're putting into your posts. While it may delay the game a bit, I'll be looking back over these in the future to try to improve my play.

 

[Iainuki]

ANGRY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• I HATE THE VASSAL SYSTEM. Hannibal is Genghis' vassal, Mansa and Roosevelt are Mao's. Stalin, Montezuma, and Alexander are all Tokugawa's vassals.
• I HATE MAO. Mao and his vassals are at war with us. I ALSO HATE GENGHIS BUT HE HATES MAO TOO. I brought Genghis into the war on our side.
• OUR ARMIES ARE ANGRY, AND HATE MANSA AND ROOSEVELT. A northern army took Gao and Timbuktu, and is marching on Djenne. A southern army took Atlanta and Los Angeles, with the option to head for Washington or San Francisco next.
• I HATE LOSING BATTLES AT 95%+ ODDS. The ANGRY KOREAN CANNON died while taking Timbuktu.
• I HATE MEDIC III BECAUSE IT'S IMBA. I made the ANGRY KOREA PRIEST to heal our northern army.
• I HATE PILLAGING BOATS. Munich's nets got pillaged, and I rebuilt them; an ironclad is in the area to make sure it doesn't happen again. Illinois' nets got pillaged by a pair of frigates: another ironclad killed one, and will need to heal up before taking on the other. There's a workboat in Namp'o ready to repair them once the pillagers are dead.
• OUR PEOPLE ARE ANGRY, I HATE OUR PEOPLE. War weariness is biting hard, up to +8 in larger cities. The last few turns I've been using the culture slider a bit to help suppress the problem, but we're going to need jails and stupas in our biggest cities.
• I HATE NOT HAVING A TECH LEAD. We have Steam Power on everyone. Only Genghis has Rifling, and only Mao has Steel. Mao is the only one with Astronomy, and Mansa is the only one with Democracy. I HATE DEMOCRACY BECAUSE IT'S CAUSING EMANCIPATION UNHAPPINESS IN OUR CITIES. Let's try to kill Mansa before he has a chance to give that tech away to too many civs? Mao, Mansa, and Stalin have Military Tradition. Lots of people have Economics, and we're halfway done researching it.
• I HATE NOT KNOWING WHERE OUR ENEMIES ARE. I have a caravel exploring another continent. It was being chased by some of Mansa's caravels, but I don't know if they're still following.
• I HATE EMPTY LAND. I built three filler cities. I marked locations for two more potential filler cities.
• I HATE OVERWHIPPING. I overwhipped Illinois some to get it healthy, and then had to whip it again before it cooled to get an ironclad to deal with Mao's frigates.
• I HATE UNINFLUENTIAL STATE RELIGIONS. I spread Buddhism to Germany and I've started spreading it to Mali. We need it in America and some of our new cities.
• I HATE HAVING RELIGIONS AND NOT USING THEM. We should build some Christian, Taoist, and Confucian monasteries before developing Scientific Method so we can spread those religions for shrine income.
• I HATE OUR DEMOGRAPHICS. The happiness problems have been tanking our GNP, because we haven't been able to work all our high commerce tiles. Our manufactured goods and crop yield have been holding for now. I HATE HAVING BREAKEVEN SCIENCE AT 30%. I've been focusing on cash buildings to try to improve this situation. However, I think the ultimate solution is State Property.

Inherited Turn, 1665 AD:

As per my previous discussion, there's a lot of stuff to do. First of all, I flash all the emphasis settings, resetting cities to the default governors. Second, I take some workers that were near Namp'o and add another grasslands cottage, since it was working a sea tile. I move our chariot to MP Kassite.

Cities:

Seoul: Assign free specialist to prophet. (If we get a GP from Seoul, prophet would be nice.) Queue a settler for whipping to get rid of the unhealthy/unhappy people.

Frankfurt: Approaching its happy/healthy cap. I decide to whip out a caravel from it next turn, and complete (in some order) the caravel, monastery, and the grenadier--the monastery for missionizing Germany.

Essen: Whip aqueduct to get rid of unhealthy pop, send overflow to Buddhist monastery for culture against Genghis and missionizing. Shift some extra obsolete garrison to Hamburg to make it happier.

Munich: Is very unhappy and starving. Switch to a marketplace for whipping. (No building gives us more than +1 happy at this point, so I might as well kill more pop and get the commerce bonus.)

Berlin: Finish Globe, send overflow to Heroic Epic.

Cologne: Finish cannon, start market for whipping to kill unhappy/unhealthy pop.

Hamburg: Still waiting to burn off whip unhappiness, so leave it on an aqueduct. Send some longbows south to Wonsan and Namp'o for MP duty.

Pusan: Stay on grenadier.

Wonsan: Finish cannon, queue settler for whipping.

Cheju: Whip granary, send overflow to forge.

Illinois: Assign free specialist to priest. This city has lots of unhealthiness, yet extra happiness from the anti-American garrison, so I decide to overwhip it further for a grocer. I cancel the rifle: this city has too many other things to do to be on military.

Tech-wise, I decide to clean up some obsolete technologies. I start Optics, due in one turn.

1670 AD: I switch Frankfurt to a caravel for whipping. I send workers to build Illinois more farms, repair the pillaged winery at Pyongyang, and a few north for the new city between Seoul and Cologne. The army in Tekedda heals. I begin repositioning units to solve the Carthaginian problem. Optics finishes, I go for Music.

1675 AD: Music finishes, I switch Kassite to culture to pop its borders. I found Ulan between Seoul and Cologne. I push units around.

1680 AD: Mansa Musa adopts emancipation. THIS MAKES ME ANGRY! IT MAKES THE KOREAN PEOPLE ANGRY TOO! MUSA MUST BE DESTROYED!

Buddhism spreads in Munich. The people there are less angry now--time for more whipping to anger them up!

1685 AD: I start bombarding Gao. I found Inch'on in between Cheju and Namp'o.

1690 AD: HANNIBAL VASSALIZES TO GENGHIS! THIS MAKES ME ANGRY, BECAUSE WE'RE NOW AT PEACE WITH HIM! On the plus side, it seems to have reduced our war weariness slightly. I take the units intended for Hannibal and send them over to greet Roosevelt.

I finish bombarding Gao.

Sheep help with our health problems, slightly. (Baaa!)

1695 AD: Genghis adopts Free Religion, improving our relations with him, so I beg 350 gold from him.

(Would Roosevelt offering to capitulate count as a "positive deal" with America?) In any event, I reposition the armies near Gao and push on towards Atlanta.

1700 AD: Genghis/Hannibal declare war on Roosevelt. Apparently, we're not the only ones who are ANGRY. (I'd accept the capitulation at this point, since if we don't, there's a good chance Roosevelt will vassalize to someone else, but I don't know if it's allowed.)

I spread Buddhism in Berlin and Hamburg.

1705 AD: Gao falls to the ANGRY KOREAN CANNONS with no losses. I bombard Atlanta.

1710 AD: Roosevelt throws the kitchen sink at our forces outside Atlanta and it all dies. He then capitulates to Mao.

Hannibal offers open borders, and I take it, figuring I'll want to move the forces from the American war north to open up another front with Mali.

1715 AD: MAO IS ANGRY AND DECIDES HE WANTS A PIECE OF ANGRY KOREA.

Mansa capitulates to Mao, so we're now at war with the Mao/Mansa/Roosevelt. I pay Genghis/Hannibal 380 gold to join in on our side, if for no other reason than to ensure that Mao's forces can't just waltz through Mongolian/Carthaginian lands into our undefended interior.

Our northern army advances on Timbuktu, and our southern one advances (again) on Atlanta.

We discover Steam Power, which will hopefully make our worker shortage less acute until we can capture some more. We have four coal resources inside (or soon to be inside) our borders.

1720 AD: I bombard Atlanta and Timbuktu.

1725 AD: I found P'yongsong southwest of Essen. (Unfortunately, borders just expanded in this region, so it will require some culture work for it to take back tiles.)

Atlanta falls with no losses on our part.

1730 AD: Our ANGRY KOREA CANNON dies at 95.5% odds attacking Timbuktu. I don't lose any more units on it, but the city has too many defenders, so we can't take it this turn.

Having stored up cash, I start research on Constitution: only Mansa, Mao, and Genghis have it, and Genghis won't trade it. Thus, we have to self-research it.

This turn, I also find the other continent and four AI civs. How four at once, you ask? It turns out that Tokugawa has vassalized Montezuma, Stalin, and Alexander. I get open borders with Stalin on general principles. That continent is much less advanced than ours is, but it does have Economics, so we might be able to pick up that tech on the cheap.

1735 AD: Mansa circumnavigates. I attack Timbuktu again, with the loss of a grenadier, but still can't quite take it because Mansa reinforced it with a bunch of fresh units.

1740 AD: Timbuktu falls, with no losses. Mansa's probably out of troops at this point, so the rest of the conquest shouldn't be too difficult, since he's cut off from his allies.

The southern army moves towards Atlanta.

I apologize if this is weed, but I've noticed that our armies have spent more time healing lately than they have moving or attacking, so I decide to make a Medic III. I christen the ANGRY KOREAN PRIEST from a knight, on the theory that mobile healing is good and the knight upgrade path has good withdrawal chances (cavalry->helicopter) so it can fight a bit without putting itself at undue risk.

1745 AD: No one will give us Economics for anything less than Steel, so I decide to have us start research ourselves.

I move the army to heal in Timbuktu, and advance on Los Angeles in the south.

I decide to move the culture slider up to 10% to suppress some of the growing war weariness.

1750 AD: Most of the Timbuktu units are healed courtesy of the ANGRY KOREAN PRIEST, so I move two large stacks towards Djenne. In the south, I bombard and capture Los Angeles with the loss of a grenadier.

More war weariness means bumping the slider to 20%.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/105085/ANGRY_KOREA_MAN_AD-1750.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Iainuki]

I didn't manage to get the Iron Works started anywhere: when cities weren't building military, they were building happiness, healthiness, or cash buildings. We're closer to being able to start Wall Street when we get Corporation; I'd lean towards Illinois as the best place for it, provided we don't get unlucky with prophets. We're no closer to Oxford because seowons weren't worth it with our low science rate.

I made one Medic III. Hopefully that's enough and future generals can go to Berlin. (Note that at the moment, the marginal benefit of military instructors in Berlin isn't that great, since the units go from 5 to 7 XP.)

I picked our tech path based on early Assembly Line, since modern infantry should wreak some serious havoc. Our health cap is pretty low, so industrializing will be a pain. Do we want to consider getting Medicine for hospitals? In a war-heavy game, they might pay off, though I've never tried it before.

I didn't switch any civics. Nationhood and Representation could help with our happiness issues. Nationhood will kill our commerce, but allow us to produce fairly overwhelming numbers of troops. Representation would give us a healthy science boost because of Mercantilism, but I still lean against it as a long-term choice. It might be worth the turn of anarchy, though.

I'm sorry for causing trouble. Apparently, the expectations of the rest of the players were much closer to Miller Time (RB24?) than some of the other SGs I've seen. If I'd known in advance that was in the offing, I wouldn't have signed up: my mistake.

 

[Atlas]

[*] I HATE THE VASSAL SYSTEM. Hannibal is Genghis' vassal, Mansa and Roosevelt are Mao's. Stalin, Montezuma, and Alexander are all Tokugawa's vassals.

OMG- I HATE THE VASSAL SYSTEM

[*] I HATE MAO. Mao and his vassals are at war with us. I ALSO HATE GENGHIS BUT HE HATES MAO TOO. I brought Genghis into the war on our side.

Mao

[*] I HATE LOSING BATTLES AT 95%+ ODDS. The ANGRY KOREAN CANNON died while taking Timbuktu.

[*] I HATE MEDIC III BECAUSE IT'S IMBA. I made the ANGRY KOREA PRIEST to heal our northern army.

I'm sorry for causing trouble. Apparently, the expectations of the rest of the players were much closer to Miller Time (RB24?) than some of the other SGs I've seen. If I'd known in advance that was in the offing, I wouldn't have signed up: my mistake.

No trouble, but Iainuki this game is just Monarch (which I am pretty sure you can stomp all over with your eyes closed) and just for fun-try to have fun with it . I (maybe others?) have not been playing it with particular care due to the low level, so maybe the problem is that you are following me in the order ? As for my expectations (keeping in mind it is Blake's game)... I expect people to have fun, write an angry report, and Mao.

 

[Swiss Pauli]

ANGRY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

That's more like it. KOREA likes ANGER.

This turn, I also find the other continent and four AI civs. How four at once, you ask? It turns out that Tokugawa has vassalized Montezuma, Stalin, and Alexander.

Japan? KOREA HATES JAPAN WITH EVERY FIBRE OF ITS GLORIOUS BEING! JAPAN MUST DIE!

Actually, destroying Japan would make a fitting goal for the game. I've not had the chance to look at the save, but how feasible would it be to attack Japan (and set free her vassals)?

 

[Atlas]

Actually, destroying Japan would make a fitting goal for the game. I've not had the chance to look at the save, but how feasible would it be to attack Japan (and set free her vassals)?

fighting Protective/Aggressive gunpowder units- Ugh, definitely not looking forward to that

 

[Swiss Pauli]

@Iainuki - errm seems to be the wrong file:

forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/105085/ANGRY_KOREA_MAN_BC-0750.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Iainuki]

Argh, oops! I misclicked and got the wrong save. It's fixed now.

 

[Iainuki]

I had a temporary lapse and forgot my Warcraft. Our Medic III should be the ANGRY KOREA PALADIN, of course! Blake, feel free to rechristen it .

 

[Swiss Pauli]

1 Blake - UP FOR ANGER
2 Swiss Pauli - furiously waiting
3 sunrise089
4 Kodii
5 Atlas
6 Iainuki - dunragin'

 

[Symphony D.]

Decloak: LURKERS HATE DAY-LONG WAITS FOR UPDATES! GLORIOUS KOREA WAITS FOR NO-ONE! HATE FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

Rather more seriously, this is the most I've laughed at a thread in a long, long time. Keep it up.