Restarting this map (again) looking for some tips

[kopfschuss]

Kublai Khan, Continents, Huge, Epic, Noble.

So basically I played this map twice. The first time I figured out who was on the same continent as I was, and ran 2 botched attacks against Hatshepsup & Roosevelt (one at a time). I went after Hatty for the gems, went after Roosevelt because he's my closest neighbor but, yeah it was all bass ackwards and I ended up fighting one lost cause after the other (because I really didn't build up my troops enough and had small groups scattered throughout my cities).

Second game, I axe-rushed Hatty, grabbed Thebes and hooked up my cities for the gems, only to be stunted by wave after wave of barbarians because I didn't explore enough of the map, then my settlement by the horses was cause enough for Roosevelt to declare war. So I decided third time's the charm.

Here's the map, though as you can see I didn't even get near Elizabeth up there in the NE corner and my other two roommates haven't been explored much either.

Spoiler :

I'm aiming for a domination victory but not sure who I should make my first priority. Keep my people happy or get enough breathing room to lay low and cultivate my civilization before moving out to systematically curbstomp my enemies?

I dread what's going to be waiting for me on the OTHER contient.

I also know I am SERIOUSLY behind on my number of cities and tech considering my time period. I'm a total wreck.

BTW: The mine south of the pyramid is a copper mine, so I at least had the luxury of starting with good access to resources!

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Your first priority should be building up your economy. From what I can tell, you have no economy to speak of!

Karakorum (I'm assuming that's your capital down there) is obviously a production city (and a pretty good one at that).

Your Horse city is horribly placed -- as it has no Food source (it should either be 1W of where it is or just south of the Horses to also pick up the yet-claimed Pigs). But oh well ... as it stands, I'd Farm 2 or 3 Grasslands and Cottage-Spam the rest.

Your third city up by the Corn will probably do well as a Production/Commerce Hybrid.

Settle a city on the desert between the Pig and Fish and set it up as a specialist city. Since you have the Pyramids, leverage them and run Representation.

Settle also a city by the Lakeside Pig to the north and either cottage spam the riversides or farm it up and run specialists.

Also, conquer the Barbarian city to the west and do the same -- use the Pigs (plus whatever seafood is hopefully in the fog) to run a couple specialists.

If you don't already have Code of Laws, then forget about Construction and get Code of Laws ASAP. Not only will it let you build Courthouses in your most distant cities, but (more importantly) it will allow you to adopt Caste System and forgo the need to wait for Libraries.

Once you have a stable economy, only then should you think about making war.

EDIT: I also just noticed you have a settled Great Spy. Direct all of your towards the tech leader (or your next opponent) and build some Spies. Either tech steal your way as close to tech parity as possible, or use the EPs to incite revolts so you don't have to waste all your time bombarding the defenses.

 

[vicawoo]

More cottages. And expand more.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You don't want to rush too quickly or it will make your economy take a hit. Usually for these domination games the ideal tactic is to build up a little bit, get code of laws and currency, then (since you have them) just steamroll everything with keshiks until people start getting feudalism (pick targets without it if possible). Once you're big enough and have feudalism, you can start vassalizing people, and that's very powerful.

Flank II keshiks are unstoppable in the earlygame. If you're really fast, you can actually win with just them. More typically, the advantage gained in their use via land and resources is a bit much for the AI to overcome. Just stay out of strike and you're golden!

 

[Bandobras Took]

You seem to have the Pyramids:

1) Why did you build them?
2) Are you currently using whatever you built them for?

If you built them for Police State, watch out; the High Upkeep will kill you. If you built them for Hereditary Rule, getting enough cities grown to large population would be a good idea.

 

[DaveMcW]

I'm aiming for a domination victory

Don't build wonders in a domination game. Military and workers are all you need.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Start over. This game is a lost cause. You're over 1000 years behind where you should be. But so is the rest of the AI. Looks like you're playing on settler.

So many problems. Why did you only build 2 cities? And both cities are working unimproved tiles. Yet you built mines and farms that are outside either city's BFC.

I don't know how a military attack could fail at this low a level. How many units did you bring? 3? Rushing to Keshiks and bringing in just 10 of them would let you steamroll any civ at this level.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

@ BalbanesBeoulve:

Dayum .. that's harsh, lol.

 

[General_Ski]

Hey there Ghengis Khan, it's 715 AD...
First, I strongly recommend at least 5 cities by 0 ad. Second, I'd recommend such a strategic placement, where you'd cut off ai's access to your peninsula. I.E. City by the lake in the desert by pigs with access to both copper, lake, a hill and a food resourse to work it.. Yeah it's not going to grow much. But it's going to be a frontier outpost regardless, a focus of AI counterattacks, but by no means an over the top city.
As for the horse city I agree with others, it has to be moved. For several reasons I recommend moving one square south west. Note your 2nd city will be very well placed to produce settlers, this is important as your capital may wind up producing wonders/troops.
You will still have horses, you will get pigs, and fresh water from oasis, that's +1 health, that would be my 2nd city with the desert city third...(to grab space), fourth city will go on the forested hill just above fish... This is your science city. Yeah, it will interefere 2 plains squares with your 2nd city, but it will use hills on top of it for production and fish and sea for money/food... This is good as it will produce decent amounts of food to produce workers, and will generate enough money to pay for itself eventually, as well as it will be able to feed 1-2 scientists no sweat, especially after you get sailing.

Now, as far as pyramids, they are nice, but, unless you plan on having 6+ cities by 200 AD, I do not consider them a priority.
You have decent amount of troops, which makes me wonder how come the land near the barbarian city left of you is not scouted?

You don't really need much to hold off barbs at the start even with barbs set to the highest level of difficulty, like i do in all of my games... 2 archers per city (1 archer early on) and roaming archers (preferably in pairs of 2). The rest of the troops can scout/conquer, guard important frontier points.

Now as Mongols you have hunting and the wheel so archery is really easy to come by and really useful. Archers are very good city defenders, even against swodsmen... Now you will need a few spearmen along against Egyptians later on, but as you will have access to copper and iron that's not a problem... And 4 chariots, with your horse city second, should make mincemeat of any barb invasion, without even approaching your city. You will need wheel to connect your resources anyhow...
After you have 5 cities. You will have enough power to build a simultaneous army in a matter of 12 turns, if all your cities are building troops. Or, if you dedicate selectively 3 cities to troops at a time, you will be capable of fielding first a defensive army, then an attacking one...

Oh and you can first train your troops in a stack against a barb city.. That will give your swordsmen a second city attack promotion, no sweat. Making them face off against others easier. Also... Attack with your inexperienced units first, if they perish they perish. Experienced units, will have an easier time afterwards, and will get promoted faster... You will need 5-6 elite units later on as they will anchor your multiple armies later on. Don't forget to level various specialization unit. I.E. for every two elite swordsmen, you want to have a chariot and an axeman who is also elite, and possibly a spearman. Spearmen make good medics, as they don't really need much promotion, not until knights show up.. By then you had better have some of Knights of your own. Now as far as techs go. you will need archery, mining, bronzeworking, fishing, wheel, animal husbandry, pottery, writing, sailing, math, currency, iron working.. etc.. not necessarily in that order, but yeah. early archers are nice, especially, since you will be able to build archers, till cities grow to size 3, before you get more settlers and workers from them. Do note that fishing, may come before mining and bronzeworking for both food and money, in addition to the little fact that, workers will be useless early on without techs.

Have your frontier (torward ai not barbs) cities have 2 units to start, 4 later on.. That ought to break any early attacks/counter attacks. You will also be able to place at least two cities torward the left side of your peninsula, depending on what resource barb city sits on top. If you want to keep it, you can, second city in the area is going to be tricky to place. Also, after you get currency, don't forget calendar, as you can exploit calendar resources.. Try that see if it works. If you go on offensive against ai, you need at least 10-12unit stack to take a city without pults, 8 of those have to be swordsmen, the rest a mix of axemen and spearmen. Don't forget chariot raiders, you need to destroy roads behind enemy city to prevent reinforcements. You can lose 3-4 of those raiders (use inexperienced units first), but as long as roads are cut, within 2 squares, it will make ai reinforcements as slow as yours. That's important, as they will be forced to slave their city, possibly causing riots in there, which is good for you. If they get it to size one, you don't have to burn it. It will burn automatically, where upon you can heal your troops and proceed on with the conquest, while creating a city in the area later on. If you do take over the city, you'd have to bring a reinforcement stack to protect it, or you can build one of your own if a city is burnt.

I hope that helps.

 

[General_Ski]

Hey there Ghengis Khan, it's 715 AD...
First, I strongly recommend at least 5 cities by 0 ad. Second, I'd recommend such a strategic placement, where you'd cut off ai's access to your peninsula. I.E. City by the lake in the desert by pigs with access to both copper, lake, a hill and a food resourse to work it.. Yeah it's not going to grow much. But it's going to be a frontier outpost regardless, a focus of AI counterattacks, but by no means an overthetop city.
As for the horse city I agree with others, it has to be moved. For several reasons I recommend moving one square south west. Note your 2nd city will be very well placed to produce settlers, this is important as your capital may wind up producing wonders/troops.
You will still have horses, you will get pigs, and fresh water from oasis, that's +1 health, that would be my 2nd city with the desert city third...(to grab space), fourth city will go on the forested hill just above fish... This is your science city. Yeah, it will interefere 2 plains squares with your 2nd city, but it will use hills on top of it for production and fish and sea for money/food... This is good as it will produce decent amounts of food to produce workers, and will generate enough money to pay for itself eventually, as well as it will be able to feed 1-2 scientists no sweat, especially after you get sailing.

Now, as far as pyramids, they are nice, but, unless you plan on having 6+ cities by 200 AD, I do not consider them a priority.
You have decent amount of troops, which makes me wonder how come the land near the barbarian city left of you is not scouted?

You don't really need much to hold off barbs at the start even with barbs set to the highest level of difficulty, like i do in all of my games... 2 archers per city (1 archer early on) and roaming archers (preferably in pairs of 2). The rest of the troops can scout/conquer, guard important frontier points.

Now as Mongols you have hunting and the wheel so archery is really easy to come by and really useful. Archers are very good city defenders, even against swodsmen... Now you will need a few spearmen along against Egyptians later on, but as you will have access to copper and iron that's not a problem... And 4 chariots, with your horse city second, should make mincemeat of any barb invasion, without even approaching your city. You will need wheel to connect your resources anyhow...
After you have 5 cities. You will have enough power to build a simultaneous army in a matter of 12 turns, if all your cities are building troops. Or, if you dedicate selectively 3 cities to troops at a time, you will be capable of fielding first a defensive army, then an attacking one...

Oh and you can first train your troops in a stack against a barb city.. That will give your swordsmen a second city attack promotion, no sweat. Making them face off against others easier. Also... Attack with your inexperienced units first, if they perish they perish. Experienced units, will have an easier time afterwards, and will get promoted faster... You will need 5-6 elite units later on as they will anchor your multiple armies later on. Don't forget to level various specialization unit. I.E. for every two elite swordsmen, you want to have a chariot and an axeman who is also elite, and possibly a spearman. Spearmen make good medics, as they don't really need much promotion, not until knights show up.. By then you had better have some of Knights of your own. Now as far as techs go. you will need archery, mining, bronzeworking, fishing, wheel, animal husbandry, pottery, writing, sailing, math, currency, iron working.. etc.. not necessarily in that order, but yeah. early archers are nice, especially, since you will be able to build archers, till cities grow to size 3, before you get more settlers and workers from them. Do note that fishing, may come before mining and bronzeworking for both food and money, in addition to the little fact that, workers will be useless early on without techs.

Have your frontier (torward ai not barbs) cities have 2 units to start, 4 later on.. That ought to break any early attacks/counter attacks. You will also be able to place at least two cities torward the left side of your peninsula, depending on what resource barb city sits on top. If you want to keep it, you can, second city in the area is going to be tricky to place. Also, after you get currency, don't forget calendar, as you can exploit calendar resources.. Try that see if it works. If you go on offensive against ai, you need at least 10-12unit stack to take a city without pults, 8 of those have to be swordsmen, the rest a mix of axemen and spearmen. Don't forget chariot raiders, you need to destroy roads behind enemy city to prevent reinforcements. You can lose 3-4 of those raiders (use inexperienced units first), but as long as roads are cut, within 2 squares, it will make ai reinforcements as slow as yours. That's important, as they will be forced to slave their city, possibly causing riots in there, which is good for you. If they get it to size one, you don't have to burn it. It will burn automatically, where upon you can heal your troops and proceed on with the conquest, while creating a city in the area later on. If you do take over the city, you'd have to bring a reinforcement stack to protect it, or you can build one of your own if a city is burnt.

I hope that helps.

 

[kopfschuss]

@ BalbanesBeoulve:

Dayum .. that's harsh, lol.

Nah not harsh. He's completely right. I wasn't intending to try to salvage that particular game though. Like I said, I knew it was a total disaster even before that, so better to get the cold hard facts so I'm more prepared for next time.

I'm usually the peace/culture-monger in strat games, so this whole war thing is still new to me. I always play with no time victory (since I'm obviously still learning) so I don't have that limit hanging over my head.

As for the pyramids, I built them for Representation but I'm also learning how to keep my people happy w/o them by not overbuilding stuff (which I suppose is an old habit that stems from all my city building games; overbuild, then shut all the buildings down until pop growth needs them).

But, like they say on NBC: The more you know!

 

[Geoffroy]

Do you understand the concept of the big fat cross? (you'll see it mentioned as BFC on the forum). Doubleclick on a city to see which tiles it can work. You'll see, for example that you can not work the pigs because they are too far from the city. You get the health benefit, buy not the food, which is a pity really. Same for some of the hills you mined, they are outside your city's BFC, so it's useless to mine them now.

I see you attacked Roosevelt with Axes and Swords. Normally not a bad decision, but leverage your Keshiks! If you plan to start this game, I'd advise you to connect the horses, found cities and grow until Roosevelt starts blocking you, and then attack him with your Keshik hordes! You'll probably have Code of Laws, by then, build couthouses everywhere! After that, go for Feudalism for longbows to defend your newly conquered cities, and to vassalize civs you don't want to destroy completely.

Also keep in mind that you can sue for 10 turns of peace in exchange for technologies (you or your opponent had to have alphabet) or cash (currency). This should enable you to get more troops to the front, and heal your wounded units.

Good luck!

 

[Oni of Chaos]

Like some people have said already, you reeeealy need to get an economy kicking, especially if you will have prolonged domination wars. Cottage spam, specialists with Representation, whatever you feel like, but something. Two glaring things I noticed were that you hadn't scouted the western area and taken that barb city. That would give you another city for producing units if anything, and easy XP for your conquests later.

 

[dankok8]

As horrible as this start is, all is not lost. It's a large continent and everyone shares the same religion so no one should attack you if you start nurturing good relations now; take a city or 2 from Roosevelt and then build a few settlers yourself and fill in the other spots (ex. spot WNW of pig and NE of stone and spot W of northern pig and NE of iron) and conquer that barb city in the southwest. As bad as it looks, if you can get 10 cities by 1500AD without completely massacring your economy (build courthouses), you'll be in good shape to win this one.

 

[General_Ski]

Dankok, I disagree. First off, he has no way to build manageable reinforcements in timely manner with just 2 cities. AI will counter attack and build troops faster, just because of their city numbers. His second city is hardly developed to be a production one, that and it lacks a food resource.

In addition to that it's his frontier city, where ideally it should not be. He should have an outer shell of as few cities as possible to protect his inner shell of production/science/money making cities.

Outer cities should have walls (inner should too, especially for castles later on to give +1 trade route, before economics allows that via free trade.)

The point is... It's around 720 AD. AI will have knights by 1000 AD and gunpowder units by 1300. He is nowhere near that. In addition researcha and economics, for his new cities, if he ever manages, them at around 1100 ad... Will not kick in till 1700s, and that if he is not forced to defend them. Which he will be.
Best time for Kashyks, is between 500 and 11-1200 AD(at the latest), before knights appear. (nice niche gamewise, totally inaccurate history wise, as Mongol horsemen crushed any knight crusade attempts, and got as far as Vienna, and managed to take down most of Hungary, while nailing a ton of knights led by Hungarian king, but that's another story).

Now, as both cultural and aggressive, he should use his ability to generate cultural enough cultural points, as to culturally push Roosevelt's border cities, forcing Roosevelt to declare war.
This gives 2 advantages, he will start fighting on defensive, training his units for counter invasion. It does not give him any penalties for starting the war.

It creates potential allies out of enemies of Roosevelt, and gives an opening for a second front. It divides the continent into two clear camps... Once he knows who Roosevelt's allies are, he can proceed to piss them off enough, to declare, later on, by refusing their demands.

From the sound of it, he is a defensive player... I thrive on counterattacks even on emperor... AI almost always has an initial quantitative edge at the start of the conflict.. You have to wear down their first onslaught for a successful counter... Unless you bring a bigger stack, which is rather impossible with lower number of cities. Even if he had 5 cities, and he has 2.

Also he should not forget a fleet 3 galleys can deliver 6 swordsmen behind enemy lines faster than enemy can move his defenders in on land. This can allow him to take and burn an inner shell enemy city, while possibly losing half of his swordsmen, but will leave the rest experienced and able to retreat and sail away. This will provide him with 100-200 gold from conquest. Weaken enemy economically and tactically, as that city being burnt can't produce money, research and troops. It may also split enemy attacking stacks into trying to go after those swordsmen while they are still landed.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

As horrible as this start is, all is not lost.

I've come back from worse than this on higher levels than this.

The point is... It's around 720 AD. AI will have knights by 1000 AD and gunpowder units by 1300.

Um ... what !?

... and you can tell that ... how exactly? Did he e-mail you the save or something?

All we know is that Peter (the score leader) and Elizabeth are researching Mathematics right now -- a tech kopfschuss already has (so he's at least ahead in something -- if only partially and temporarily).

Your assumptions are completely unsupported by any fact related to this game.

If Peter's score was 1500, you might have a point, but a score deficit of just 200 points is nothing!

 

[General_Ski]

I've come back from worse than this on higher levels than this.



Um ... what !?

... and you can tell that ... how exactly? Did he e-mail you the save or something?

All we know is that Peter (the score leader) and Elizabeth are researching Mathematics right now -- a tech kopfschuss already has (so he's at least ahead in something -- if only partially and temporarily).

Your assumptions are completely unsupported by any fact related to this game.

If Peter's score was 1500, you might have a point, but a score deficit of just 200 points is nothing!

First of all, from top right of the screenshot, it is clear that this is 715 AD and 1:15: AM. Now. Clearly, you may be able to pull a come back, but you have to consider several things. It's 715 AD. His capital is rioting... If he establishes more cities or takes the barbarian one, his research will have to go down, and you should be able to crank it up.

Second, it's continents. By the time he dominates this one. AIs fromt he other will have sorted out hierarchy and established colonies and will be a pain in the butt to route in comination victory.

Third, he clearly was not able to take an enemy city with a stack of Kashyk, 4 axemen and a swordsman. What makes you think he will be able to generate enough units to thwart ai stack of doom, especially, since his capital is also rioting?

 

[General_Ski]

Also if he wiats long enough. Elizabeth will get redcoats. Good luck subduing her then, financial/philosophical, is not a good thing to ignore. And I am not even mentioning AI on other continents... If one of them is zee Germans... He is in the world of crap, especially if they get to combustion and industrialization first and have oil access.

His only other charm is that he started in a desert and is likely to have oil, if he restarts and builds cities the way I recommended. That way he can have tanks right away, after combustion and industrialization. But that's for endgame... He does not have a sufficient infrastructure, to even conquer one AI at this point. Heck, the only reson he lives is because, AI has not built a stack of doom yet.. Looks to me like he is fighting a very defensive battle to begin with. This is all fun and games till they get an upper tech. leg on him.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Can you post this save and the starting save?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

First of all, from top right of the screenshot, it is clear that this is 715 AD and 1:15: AM.

/sigh ... I know how to tell the game date. I was specifically referring to this statement:

AI will have knights by 1000 AD and gunpowder units by 1300.

It may happen like that in your games, but you have no way of knowing that's what's going to happen here.

For all we know, the entire world is at war (or will be soon) and will stagnate their economies until well into the whatever-hundreds.

My point is that you're making assumptions that without the save or any additional information other than what's present in this thread is nothing more than smoke.

What makes you think he will be able to generate enough units to thwart ai stack of doom, especially, since his capital is also rioting?

What makes you think he has to?

That I know of, kopfschuss hasn't mentioned anything of the price of peace.

For all we know, Peter and Roosevelt want it free of charge. In the event they don't, a bankroll of 763 and at least one tech we know the AI doesn't have (Mathematics) is a good start for peace (if only temporary).


@ kopfschuss: yes ... a current save would be most excellent.