Role Play CHallenge: Joao the Restless

[siggboy]

Say I settle 5 cities on the New world, can they trade amongst themselves or do they need access to the capital?

I can't answer this question, but how about this: move the palace early and the new world cities will be connected to the capital for this reason alone. If you build the Forbidden Palace in the old world at the same time, you won't suffer a big hit to your economy (it might even lower your total maintenance costs, because currently the capital lies at the far north of your empire, while the FP could be built in a much better position).

In my game, the inland cities on the new world did not generate overseas trade, they only traded among themselves. The coastal cities all had very profitable trade routes with my vassal state. (I got Astronomy from a hut and did not check for trade routes until after I had moved the Palace already, so I would have to edit my game in World Builder to know for sure).

It would not (<- edit) make a lot of sense to me if one of your cities needed to be connected to the capital to generate any trade routes at all. There is a bonus to profits for connection to capital, for me this implies that it's not needed (because otherwise the bonus could simply be worked into the basic calculation without special mention, if you know what I mean).

 

[madscientist]

OK, here's another question. How many courthouses do I need to build the FP on a large map? Standard is 6, I do not remember what Huge was.

 

[nbcman]

Rememeber that the barbarian probably have a unti on evry hut to protect it so you may not be abel to open them up with a explorer.

Bring a couple of spies along who can open the huts without attacking the barbarian unit. Of course you wont get the more favorable results that a scout/explorer will have if the scout/explorer opens the hut, but at least you can pop the hut without attacking a fortified barbarian unit.

 

[siggboy]

OK, here's another question. How many courthouses do I need to build the FP on a large map? Standard is 6, I do not remember what Huge was.

You need 7 courthouses on this map (I've just checked my last save). Huge is probably 8 courthouses, but I don't know either.

You need 8 cities to unlock the FP proper, however. But since you have 6 already, and plan to found another one for the gold, building the 8th one on the other continent does unlock the FP.

Bring a couple of spies along who can open the huts without attacking the barbarian unit. Of course you wont get the more favorable results that a scout/explorer will have if the scout/explorer opens the hut, but at least you can pop the hut without attacking a fortified barbarian unit.

Spies can pop huts!? That's nice, I never thought of that. They also won't die from attacks. OK, forget horses, definitely take spies along with explorers to the Americas first.

As far as missing out on the favourable results goes: you won't get them anyway if you need to attack the guarding unit (you cannot kill the guard and save the hut for an explorer at the same time). Probably one should use the Explorer for the unguarded huts and spies for the rest.

 

[Loknar]

I would also pop the huts with spies, but I would wait doing so until other Civs show up to maximize the profit from a technology gain event.

I would also consider making a short detour to Aesthetics and chopping the Parthenon (preferably not in the capital because Artists seem of limited use). It really seems obvious that saved great people could be very helpful for our goal.

(Edit: Actually, Shwedagon Paya could be worthwhile too to help surviving on the old continent while focussing on the new one. But then again, I seem to like shiny things in general.)

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Joao II the Perfectly Content

A shadow game done by me. The difference? It's a one city challenge! Forget colonizing the new world, the starting place is just fine! If you'd like to read, just click on the spoiler tag, and it will open up the story of how the game went. : )

Spoiler :

And so our intelligent and charismatic leader, Joao II, founds Lisbon and the Portuguese civilization!

Joao II: "It may be cold, but I find this is a wonderful place to live! We shall stay a city state, and live here for 1000s of years! We are blessed with many fish and crabs in our seas and many forests. Truly this is a great city!"

The game starts out good. I beeline Masonry and manage to get both The Great Wall and The Pyramids! I go for Judaism but miss it by one turn! ;(

However, that turns out to be a good thing. Saladin, founder of Hinduism (and Judaism, as I later found out), spreads Hinduism zealously, first to Suryvayarman II and Victoria, and then to me! The game continues to go good as I meet Shaka, Wang Kon, Brennus and finally Justinian I (Who founds Confucianism and adopts it).

Saladin keeps spreading Hinduism and it's the most popular religion, and Shaka adopts it. However, Brennus is the founder of Buddhism and Wang Kon is Buddhism too, and Justinian I is Confucian.

I manage to get the Great Library, but I miss out on the Colossus by one turn! The game is relatively unassuming for a while, I get the University of Sankore and my favorite civic, Pacifism, which I stay in for the rest of the game. I believe there are some wars going on.

Around turn 230 I meet Tokugawa, the last AI. How'd it take so long? He's furious at me for some reason.

Joao II: "Oookay...why are all of these other people so...strange? Uh...I guess we'll tolerate them for now..."

New rule: Portugal must have closed borders with all civs and run Mercantilism by turn 400.

I win the Liberalism race thankfully, snatching Scientific Method with it. I am beaten to the Taj Mahal by two turns (argh...I don't understand how that would work in real life).

Buddhism spreads to Lisbon and I quickly build a Temple and Stupa. (shame it wasn't a few turns earlier, I could have had a monestary) I don't adopt it though, as the only Buddhist civ is Brennus. (Wang Kon went into Free Religion)

Once I get the Forest Preserves, Biology and the National Park, my research increases rapidly! Around turn 280, Brennus DoW's on me. Oh well. I just beef up my military and hope for the best.

I instigate wars between Suryvararman II and Tokugawa. Also, Victoria is at war with Justinian and loses London and York. She becomes a vassal to Saladin.

Sury's war does surprisingly well and he takes Tokugawa as a vassal after taking several cities. The new world is getting colonized.

I keep instigating wars and perusing the Space Race victory.

Many vassals are taken and wars are fought, and also, Charlemagne is spawned as a colony by Saladin. I then, through some clever bribery, caused a massive dog pile on Brennus.

Surprisingly, very few warring was done and Brennus lost only two cities Meanwhile Shaka got dogpiled really bad and I DoW'd too....Victoria eventually took him as a vassal.

Suryvavaryaman II is doing excellently, with Sid's Sushi and massive wonderspam in Yasodurapurahura. Saladin is also doing great, with Hinduism, several vassals and a great empire.

Around 370 I also got Cristo Redentor...not really sure why a city with only Hinduism and Buddhism would build a giant statue of Jesus.....

Anyway, I continued to build my spaceship and more wars. I somehow ending up DoW'ing on Victoria, ah well. Pericles is spawned as a colony of Justinian rather late and a fierce war between Saladin and Justinian happens. Shaka broke free from Victoria and DoW'd on her the turn after. Saladin took London and York from Justinian I and gifted them back to Victoria.

Shaka did pretty poor this game, he was way behind and had really bad land. Thank God!

As required, around turn 393 I switched from Environmentalism to Mercantilism, starving Lisbon a little (from the loss of Sid's Sushi) and causing a few hundred thousand people to move away. I also closed borders with all of other civs, to no hard feelings.

Brennus came pretty close to a culture victory, his capital was legendary and his other cities were at 41,000 and 38,000...

And finally, I managed to launch my spaceship!

Joao II: "Wonderful! Let us leave behind Lisbon forever, and explore space! I trust that we will be able to build a utopia, as I have picked the finest 5000 citizens of Portugal!"
Crowd of people in spaceship: *Cheers*
Joao II: "I do hope that the leaders I have left in charge of Lisbon take care of the city though...ah well, who cares about them!"
*more cheers*

It arrived in the year 2007, giving me a spaceship victory!

Joao II: "Excellent, we have found a wonderful planet to orbit around! That one to the left of this window!

We shall start building the space habitat that we shall live in!"
Advisor: "Wait...you mean, we're not going to go on the planets and explore them, and establish our civilization on them?"
Joao II: "Indeed, my dear advisor. We shall orbit this planet in a massive satellite! Why should we explore these evil and strange planets when we'll be perfectly happy in our space habitat? After all, the main reason I wanted to go into space is so that we wouldn't be bothered by the other civilizations! Plus, I can finally stop pretending to be Hindu...I became a Buddhist decades ago!"
Advisor: "That makes sense, I guess."
Joao II: "Of course it does, everything I do makes sense! "

Anyway, here's what Earth looked like one turn before victory.

Old World:

New World:

Lisbon (a Celtic destroyer snuck in and pillaged the fishing boats, hence the starvation):

Final diplo:

Lisbon had a life expectancy of 92, the second highest was 67!

Also, take a look at the power graph:

Good thing I never got invaded!

And finally, the most impressive part:

That is BY FAR the highest score I've ever had! The highest before this game was only 17000!

So whoa...

Joao II: "Truly, staying in place as the city state of Lisbon was a wise choice! While those fools were searching for the new world, we had our eyes on greater things: space! And now we shall prosper in our satellite of New Lisbon, an idealistic, pacifistic society, away from those other foolish and annoying civilizations on Earth! "

Wow, Joao II the Perfectly Content was a roaring success! And I must say, even though the loading times between turns got kind of annoying towards the latter part of the game, it was very fun! I can only hope MadScientist's game is as successful and enjoyable!

 

[madscientist]

Joao the Restless: Part III

Now that the Khmerian is dead and buried Joao begins to concentrate on leaving this cursed frozen land. Sure the Khmer lands are prosperous, but several war amongst the petty leaders has Joao looking over the Horizan, guessing what could be out there.

OK, we teched to optics and saved. Segment done!

Oh, you want a recap on that, OK here we go

We teched off Metal casting/machinery/math/optics. We bulbed Compass using a GS, the next GP get's saved for the new lands and let's hope we can get a GE.

A view of Lisbon while we started the round.

Pretty good with religion and 2 happiness resources. We basically ran a hybrid eonomy, building a few cottages and running 2 scientists as often as possible.

As I mentioned I settled a new city to claim the 2 gold. Once we mined them and built 2 farms we got some good gold/commerce out of it.

Apparently Brennus doesn't like this Buddhist block very much and went after Wang.

Fine by me, I already took out the biggest threat. I should say by the save NO AI has any close borders although Saladin is probably the closest.

And speaking of the devil, er I mean the Arab.

And to get some extra cash until one of the AIs decided to tech currency

Some nicely promoted units we got! I should also mention I settled a GG in Lisbon during the Khmerian war. Needed at the time as I was not completely sure where that was going.

A minor trade with Wang.

Soon Shaka cannot take it anymore and needs to start pounding someone. Let's hope the English can put up a good defensehere for a while, so far so good.

After teching math we use our first GS to bulb compass, which opens up optics.

I have several triems and I am starting to build explorers and crossbows as my initial force. I will follow that by pairs of carracks containing 1 settler, 2 worker, 1 crossbow. Those should be enough to chop out needed buildings and preotect from barbs.

We made a few trades for cash to quickly tech optics and also upgrade our triemes to Carracks (80 gold)

We revolted to Monarchy to max the city populations.

Soon we find both Brennus and Shaka acting like jerks

OK, I have seen enough

We tech off optics and have this decision.

We are actually doing pretty well here. I say three techs we need now, calender/currency/CoL in that order.

We sailed arround alot of the continent, man the large map is LARGE!!!! I was almost wondering if I accidently set a Pangea map but then I remmembered it was shadowed!!!

Ok, a view of the land

We have 4 Carracks ready and a few teams set. I think we can completely forget buildings now except perhaps the cheap harbors.

We got optics in 240 AD compared with Willem's game where we got it at 120 BC. Not bad considering we did an early rush, had some weak land, and Willem was financial!

So let's see what's out there!!!!!

 

[Commodore Nate]

Can't wait to see what's waiting beyond the horizon!

I would say that, depending on how close the continent is to yours and how many forests/shields your first city has, CoL might be better after calendar, or before.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

We sailed arround alot of the continent, man the large map is LARGE!!!! I was almost wondering if I accidently set a Pangea map but then I remmembered it was shadowed!!!

We wanted to see how long it would take you to figure it out...


















No really, though, you're on the right track. No more buildings! Just harbors....let your colony sort the rest out.

As for tech path, I would say Code of Laws/Currency/Calender...what do you need calender for?

 

[Loknar]

This is a terrific game, I enjoy it a lot. I started a shadow game but did nowhere as well as you.

Just out of curiosity:

I say three techs we need now, calender/currency/CoL in that order.

I agree on the set, but not on the order. Don't we need the Forbidden Palace somewhere (Oporto?) on the ancient homeland before we can move the Palace? How many courthouses must we build before we can do that in Marathon? Isn't CoL what we need first?

 

[Calouste]

We wanted to see how long it would take you to figure it out...


No really, though, you're on the right track. No more buildings! Just harbors....let your colony sort the rest out.

As for tech path, I would say Code of Laws/Currency/Calender...what do you need calender for?

Calendar is a prereq for Astronomy.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Calendar is a prereq for Astronomy.

Even still...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well you there are a few possible strategies for how to do your 2 continent phase

1. Capital on Old World, FP in New
basically as soon as you move the Palace you liberate the Old World
disadvantage... you need to get the FP in the New World, but you don't waste an FP build

2. Capital on New World, FP in Old
Advantage... the Old World will build the FP faster, and the New World has to build a palace anyways

The second is what I would do
go Code of Laws, Currency, Calendar

Production Priorities of Old World

First Get courthouses and the FP up in the Old World
Second build units to take developed barb cities
Third build Settler/CG Xbow/Workers for colonization

New World Priorities
Palace in new Palace Location... it should be up just before you have as many cities on the New World as the Old

City Growth


Once you have CoL and Courthouses it may be worth going Caste System... it gives you fast Culture in New cities

 

[NintendoTogepi]

What do you guys think about the New World?

Spoiler :

I'm not really sure, but there's a lot of random desert tiles....where do you think would be the optimum location for Rio de Janeiro?

 

[paulthebug]

To make this game really unique,
I council for moving your capital to the new world and spin off the world as colony!
I have never seen a walkthrough like this!

So I would recommend prioritizing currency & COL.
As for cities, just concentrating on building settle, worker, units and carrack to quickly populate the new world.

ps:Man, the city placement in the old world is pretty bad.

pps: Personally I really hate Joan and find his UU useless because of no intercontinental trade route before astronomy. Only in RPC like that that carrack shines!

 

[grandad1982]

Good work mad.

Like everyone else I'd go CoL, Currency, Callende.

Why? Courthouses asap for FP in old world, currency to rescure your economy when it crashs and calender to hook up resourses in the new world etc. In facty you could probably delay calender for a bit IMO.

 

[Gath]

Is this just a rock out in the ocean, or is this a tip of an island?

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Is this just a rock out in the ocean, or is this a tip of an island?

Well, if you had read my shadow game , you would be able to see that

Spoiler :

its a moderate sized island, one of the many in the southern hemisphere of the old world.

 

[siggboy]

As for tech path, I would say Code of Laws/Currency/Calender...what do you need calender for?

Calendar must come next. You can not get Astronomy from a goody hut without it. So it must be known before the first hut is popped.

CoL should come after that, so the FP can be built ASAP. Currency can probably be traded by then (the AI usually researches Currency before CoL, and there are plenty of trading partners available).

1. Capital on Old World, FP in New
basically as soon as you move the Palace you liberate the Old World
disadvantage... you need to get the FP in the New World, but you don't waste an FP build

I don't see the point of doing that. Firstly building the FP in the Old World will start saving you money right away (keep in mind the bad capital location, far away from all our cities). Secondly, you can build the FP again on the new lands after you grant independence (all Nat Wonders become available again).
Since there is a large part of land to claim, we might need another FP on the new world before we get state property (possibly on the southern hemisphere, remember this is a Terra map, so the new world looks similar to the real American continent).

Once you have CoL and Courthouses it may be worth going Caste System... it gives you fast Culture in New cities

Caste System should be on for the fact alone that we want to farm many GP in Lisbon before Independence Day. Especially after the Palace has been moved and Lisbon won't get the Bureaucracy bonus anymore.

Quickly popping the borders of a new city with an Artist would be a plus, but keep in mind that the city doesn't grow if you assign the only citizen to be an artist straight away. It's probably better to send some buddhist missionaries over and spread the religion quickly after settling, that will also pop the borders reasonably fast (and it's what I did before I got to Music and could build Culture directly).

To make this game really unique,
I council for moving your capital to the new world and spin off the world as colony!
I have never seen a walkthrough like this!

Well, that's the whole idea of this RPC, and it's set in the rules anyway (it has to happen before 1776 AD, but I guess it will happen much, much earlier in Mad's game).

pps: Personally I really hate Joan and find his UU useless because of no intercontinental trade route before astronomy. Only in RPC like that that carrack shines!

The UU is very nice on all maps with a lot of water. The Carrack is faster than a Galley and it can settle remote islands that the AI can't reach yet. So for example on an Archipelagos map, the unit will give you a distinctive advantage.
Also, don't forget the Feitoria (replacement for Customs House), which basically is a free Colossus that never obsoletes for all your coastal cities).

Is this just a rock out in the ocean, or is this a tip of an island?

Spoiler :

It's the beginning of a large and juicy island chain that will eventually be settled by Shaka. Actually Shaka has probably the best lands of all civs due to these Islands, but since the AI kind of sucks in settling island regions, he doesn't make full use of it (in my game he was still pretty small when he could have expanded all over the place already; it's of course also because he's a warmonger and prefers to jump his neighbours' throats instead of doing something reasonable

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Spoiler :

It's the beginning of a large and juicy island chain that will eventually be settled by Shaka. Actually Shaka has probably the best lands of all civs due to these Islands, but since the AI kind of sucks in settling island regions, he doesn't make full use of it (in my game he was still pretty small when he could have expanded all over the place already; it's of course also because he's a warmonger and prefers to jump his neighbours' throats instead of doing something reasonable

Spoiler :

Yeah, he really could have had a lot of land, but in my game he expanded really slowly and so was the lowest score leader for most of the game, only getting up to like, 3rd worst in the later part of the game. But then again, wouldn't the maintenance costs have hurt him?