Role Play Challenge: Qin Shi Huang the Coward

[TheMeInTeam]

You didn't spread your cities out, enough, TheMeInTeam.

You only get to make a couple before you have to finish the great wall, you know. It isn't like that game at all (completely different goals).

 

[apenpaap]

Settle 1E. Also, build a s*itload of ICBMs once you're able to. They're a real cowardly weapon.

 

[semirami]

Shadow attempt failed:

Spoiler :

Missed the wall at 1960BC. Augustus with stone in BFC is kind of very bad luck and he prefers to build the wall, instead of henge.

 

[madscientist]

Cowardly Qin: Part I

We got right into the game and layed out a pretty good foundation, if I say so myself!

First what to do??? We sent our warrior to the east first to see what sort of dangers lurked for our cowardly leader!



COWS!!!!!!!!!!!! That is great! While I really dislike moving the settler in RPC, we take the chance and settle 1E anticipating eventual levees!



We then met our first two rivals





While we can trust Mansa to leave us be, Agustus is a little more dangerous. In fact Qin is terrified at the thought of those Roman Prats marching through his lands!!!!!1

Now techpath: Masonry/Wheel/Hunting/AH/BW/Archery and start Pottery!

Our brave and majestic warrior pops three huts!!! All of which were maps before he got eaten by a Lion. This terrified Qin so much he vowed never to send any troops out exploring! Only scouts and explorers!

Now, the strategy how to play this out went as follows

1 worker (duh!)

9 warriors to get to the happy cap (yeah Jumbos)

4 straight Settlers built at the happy cap



And as you see I saved all the settlers and sent them out at once while building the Great wall. Interestingly, the last settler took 14 turns which was the same as the Great wall itself!

Our 4 cities were as follows

Shanghai



Guanghou



Nanjing



And Xian



And the next turn after Xian was settled



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So 4 cities settled and the Great Wall, all by 1890 BC!!!! REXing the way even that a Russian Lady would love!

And our empire



So there we are, 5 cities all sheltered behind the Great Wall of China!!!!

I assigned each city to buiilding an archer, to be followed by a worker. We then shall try and wonderspan Bejing while the other cities work on Military

Techs, Pottery should be done soo. Out slider will drop to about 30% once the treasury get's exhausted (One of the worse RPCs to miss out on gold from Goody huts!

Hell, the only problem is I whould have shot for a 5th settler!!!!!!

 

[pigswill]

Why are you building archers when you've got the Great Wall?

Maybe monuments to get them borders a-poppin'?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why are you building archers when you've got the Great Wall?

Maybe monuments to get them borders a-poppin'?

I went archery out of habit too (and to fogbust preventing barb cities/protecting settlers en route - I love archers early for some reason), but man...Mad got out more cities (I settled capitol+3 before the wall). I think I'll use marathon vs normal as an excuse .

Mad - you're in good shape. Use IND + that stone IMO. Your RPC already dictates diplomacy and decent power so you're ok there. Wonderspam = faster border pops! I bet you can imagine why that might be useful.

 

[BakingTheArt]

Can I get the WB save? I need it to try and play a shadow on warlords.

 

[Saint Rising]

Following this. Amazing idea.

 

[Joshua368]

Looking good so far, though your capital should really be building workers rather than an archer... you're gonna need a whole lot more than that single guy you got for your brand new cities. At least six, preferably more.

Also if you want, I went ahead and worldbuildered a more thorough great wall for Qin to cower behind, so he doesn't have any of his initial five cities exposed to the terrors outside. Nothing gameplay-effecting was changed, it's purely aesthetic! Of course barbs will still be able to jump through the wall that isn't within your cultural borders, but that'll go away soon enough.



Yes crazy old Qin built the Great Wall along the shore... don't want those evil foreign ships landing on his priceless docks!

 

[CivCorpse]

You should settle a 3rd city on the river to the west of beijing. The settler will not have to leave your cultural borders. 6 is the magic number for globe/FP/oxford/wallstreet. it also allows you to build 6 templs per religion which means 2 cathedrals of each religion. for a cultural victory that is pretty important.

 

[semirami]

@CivCorpse, you forget that there is an additional prereq for FP. You need 6 courthouses and at least 8 cities, altough I agree with you that 6 cities the best number.

And for the guy, that wants the WB save, here it is

 

[DanF5771]

Maybe achieving control over the AP might prove helpful here, to assign cities to the rightful coward, I mean, owner. Either build it yourself or let Mansa build it, infiltrate him with GW-GSpy (generally useful to steal techs from him) to investigate his cities and Spy-convert him to your minority religion (Taoism?) when he is <5 turns from completing it. All in all it looks like a Hindu lovefest (AC has BasePeaceWeight 8 and MM 9).

 

[semirami]

Shadow attempt II successful

Spoiler :

Settled 1E of course. The first hut was very generous:



Founded 2 more for about 500 gold and lost the fourth to Mansa. The villagers were hostile and they decided to kill my warrior instead of his skinm...
Got the health event very early, turn 25 or so. This event is too overpowred, when come that early.

About 2000BC barbs begin to enter my teritory and I have warriors only. They can still hold on archers but have no chance against axes and I see they are coming straight to me. So it's time. The glourious chinese empire:



Decided for culture victory. Top 3 are the capital, cottages+specialists, Shanghai- wonderspam and Guangzhou a pure GP farm.
No religions at our continent, I decided to run scientists, until pop GS to lightbulb Philo and switch to artists. Unfortunatelly the first GP was spy, the second too. So decided to research Philosophy manualy.

Build the mids in Beijing, all the rest went to Shang. Aug founded confu, but it didnt spread to me until much later, but judaism came from nowhere. Build Sw. paya(for free religion), missed Parthenon by 2 turns, SoZ, Sis capel, Notre dam, founded tao. I am friendly with both Mansa and Augustus. Decided to use my spy points for passive missions, so I can see what they research and the wonders they build. Went straight for Liberalism for free speach:



Here I set the gold slider to 100%, so I can rush buy all 6 cathedrals, when Taj is done(anarchy free to US and back to Rep)



Got the colouseum quest and yes i have SoZ. Unfortunatelly I have 6 cities only. The influental border pop of Ghao, gave me a chance to settle one more city on good location. Sent all workers to chop the coluseum there. But when the quest was done, decided to take +4 culture for coluseum instead of golden age.

The big 3 are finally set up:







Shang builds SoL and Broadway. Saw that Mansa has Mass media and decided to build UN. Not because I have a chance to win, but because he has a chance. If he is the owner I wont be a candidate and Aug and Hamm will vote for him. If I am the owner Augustus will vote for me because I have +29 with him. So:



Mansa won the vote, but he is not even close to victory. I revoted to confucianism and pacifism for Sistine, great artists and AP bonus(yes it's confu)

Finaly after bombing each city with culture bomb, I have a spare artist and founded Jewlers only few turns before victory. All 3 became legendary on the same turn:



And the big 3 are top 3 in the world:



And:

 

[madscientist]

Qin teh Cowardly: Part II

A very good and productive segment I think! First of all I used the save that Joshua368 produced for asthetics purposes regarding the Great Wall!

First the techpath: Mysticism/writing/fishing/IW/sailing/math/currency/Aesthetics/drama/lit Alot of techs!

We started off by building archers/walls/barracks in each city until we got mysticism then went with monuments! While we teched very quickly later, early on our economy tanked a bit because of the early REX.

In the capital we got



Which allowed us to



SO now we have the possiblility of running a damn strong hybrid economy here, plus a bit of wonderspamming in the capital! Cowardace does have it's advantages.

Soon we got our first GP



Which we settled.

After teching IW we found



Well, no horses, no copper, and iron just outside the culture borders. Nevertheless, by the end of the segment we had iron hooked up.

We meet the next AI



Moderate to get along with although outside of the Mansa/Agustus Hindu block. Speaking of which we have open borders with all although Hinduism has yet to spread to us.

At this point we readjusted eps, directing ALL towards Mansa who is our closest neighbor.

Once we teched Currency, things started opening up for trades



And the current tech situation



And before people can come demanding techs from our Cowardly leader we pull the trigger on some AI heavy trades.



Unfortunately I was forced to concede some things.



Another decent trade



And yet another demand



well danged!

After that we pulled this trade with Mansa before he starts asking for more handouts



After teching off Lit we saved as that was as good a place as any.

Our Empire so far



I am thinking of dropping city #6 to the SW of the capital.

The eastern lands (the west has a lone Barb city).



Our espionage is accumulating



However, Qin is pretty scared to send spies out, what if they are caught and Mansa gets mad at us

However, looking at techs



MC for fast forges certainly looks tempting!

And finally, the Glance screen.



So far so good.

OK, so a few items we need to consider

1) Bejing is building the Hanging Garners. I expect this city to exclusively build wonders for a while.

2) Military. Since we are playing defense here, I say 1 spear and 1 axe in each city in addition to the archers.

3) Techpath??? Do we gamble for music and the free GA. THAT would give us a big edge towards a culture win and probably get us another city to settle! Then there is Fuedalism real early for CG III Longbows! CoL can wait I think, however we are teching very fast here!

Looking for advice to help our cringing leader.

 

[JammerUno]

Tech toward music, the GA is nice, you'll need theaters sooner rather than later to expand the borders and build more cities. On monarch getting music first isn't too hard. It will also give you the sistine chapel, combined with representation it's a great wonder to have, especially if you see an oppertunity to get ankor wat, and even more so if the AP gets built in a religion available to you (or you build it ofcourse).

EDIT: you have gold, industrious trait and aesthetics; what about the Shwedagon Paya for early FR/pacifism?

 

[LuCiver]

it looks like you can squeeze another city in due west of the Capitol, but after that any future expansion will rely on your border cities reaching their third border pop. You might aim for CoL/caste or Drama/theaters to get artists running in Xian, Guanghou, and city #6.

 

[bobbyboy29]

Pacifism seems to tie in well with this RPC, a cowardly leader like Qin would certainly prefer to "pass a fist" and get more great people whilst hiding behind his big wall!

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

I've tried 3 times to do a shadow of this game, and I can't get out 4 cities and the great wall, its fallen time wise;

1st try- Great wall fell in 2200 BC and I'd built stonehenge as well...Mistake No setters
2nd try- Great wall fell in 1940 BC and I'd gotten out 3 cities, building 4th settler, Augustus
3rd try- No, I've had enough. I'll just watch now...well done on 4 settlers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've tried 3 times to do a shadow of this game, and I can't get out 4 cities and the great wall, its fallen time wise;

1st try- Great wall fell in 2200 BC and I'd built stonehenge as well...Mistake No setters
2nd try- Great wall fell in 1940 BC and I'd gotten out 3 cities, building 4th settler, Augustus
3rd try- No, I've had enough. I'll just watch now...well done on 4 settlers.

It's fine if you don't want to play but remember that 4 cities pre-GW isn't necessary! You can settle new cities within borders after 2 border pops, although some might not be optimally placed. The capitol will get its second border pop very quickly, even if its only wonder is the wall (yeah right). Even if you just got 2 settlers out and spaced out a bit, you'd be able to settle 6-8 cities after pops...at least.

 

[Jaaboo]

Well I played a shadow on Noble, Epic. Cultural victory at 1898 (I am so bad at planning those out.)

Pretty fun game, it got boring at the end as all cultural wins tend to be. Really no big secret to it. I spent a good amount of time getting my economy back on track, used a very strong CE with a few overlapping cities to quickly build up towns. I had little luck getting religions spread to me so I ended up founding Creative Jewelers and Sid's Sushi, by that time I had everything I needed for a cultural victory, just sat back and spammed execs and watched the world go to State Property. ><