Role Play Challenge: Stagnation!

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd prioritize blocking the AIs before I'd prioritize a wonder, personally. If he really wanted GLH, he should not have built other wonders or waited this long (though I agree it would be spectacular with the intercontinental foreign trade). In many emperor games it's long gone by now. It certainly isn't safe to start on it in 870 bc on monarch/marathon. You MIGHT win it, but you might not too. The city, if you get it in time, is a sure thing, and a very useful sure thing too.

Speaking of blocking, why not wall off gilgamesh before settling the northern tip of the island? I know the AI is bad about shipping settlers until it fills its land, but 1) you can't see his land (I suggest you remedy that) and 2) you're tempting fate.

 

[madscientist]

@ CivCorpse: I am glad you approve

@ Shadowcrow: You bet, one of those few games where I am looking for uranium as a higher priority than oil. One of my goals is to see how much habitable lands remains in the world come 2050 AD!

@Killroyan: I believe I have blocked the Summerian as much as I can. He already has some cutlure on our coastal tiels and there are no open areas except further north near the iron which I don't think he will settle.

@Bed: The GLH already was built. I was more concerned in getting the shrined religion (thus 2 GPP wonders, and free CoL) than massive trade routes. That shrine will never go obsolete while the GLH has a limited shelf life here. You are well correct with the workers
though, lot's of jungles to chop.


@ MIT: Perhaps my screenshots are poor. The horse/jungle city effectively blocked Gilgamesh as much as I can for now. NExt are two cities along the NE coast and the SW wineshop.

The GLH certainly has alot of appeal here, but looking for some more RPC action here. Nothing stirs up a hornets nest (or a hair-trigger red-headed Russian lass) than swapping out to a heathen religion!!!

 

[CreeDakota]

What is the tech path?

Founding more religious and/or Sistine may be good to keep out of AI hands.

Or a Rush to Gunpowder and a big smackdown?

 

[JammerUno]

Getting samsun to the 2nd borderpop to ensure ownership of the silk tiles would seem to be a good idea. Not only are they great commerce tiles, if gilgamesh doens't have any on his continent, you can trade with them, adding even more value to those tiles.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A side note with some relevance here for newer players:

Culture borders don't extend past two tiles off the current land mass the city is on. In other words, Gilgamesh's culture can't extend further onto mad's land, and placing a city in that corner tile is fine because it will never flip no matter what, even if gilga's city were to go legendary.

 

[JammerUno]

Even so he can swamp yonder silk tile with his culture, taking away a high commerce tile and possibly a trade for another resource. Good to know though, the 2 tile rule.

 

[madscientist]

Even so he can swamp yonder silk tile with his culture, taking away a high commerce tile and possibly a trade for another resource. Good to know though, the 2 tile rule.

Bah! If he takes my silk via culture I'll kill him!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Bah! If he takes my silk via culture I'll kill him!

Even if he looks at you funny...most likely.

Especially if he's about to win culture, I'd imagine.

 

[Terrance888]

Woohooo. You are the best!

 

[madscientist]

Stagnation!: Part III

well, well, well. An aptly named RPC here. Let's take a look at what we have here.

Techpath was pretty amazing: Math/Currency/Music (yeah for the Free GA)/metal casting/machinery/calendar/Civil Service/Paper/Education/Philosophy

Wow, that's ALOT.

we settled another city on the east coast

And with out free Great Artist from Music, we started a Golden Age which Sped up the next GP

Which we settled in the Confuscian holy city (added gold and faster money buildings)

And also sped up

In the capital, which we folloed with the National Epic. Next GP was a Great Scientist which we used for an academy in the capital.

We finally got arround to building anotehr Galley to explore our friends coasta and met

Which made me feel better since Gilgamesh "Had Enough on His Hands" we I asked him to DOW on Cathy. Appently Asoka and Gilgamesh are involved in a major war the entire segment. We on and off went to war against Asoka for diplo points. But more on warfare later.

Finally, Cathy and Gilgamesh teched off alphabet opening up some tech trades.

I delayed this as I preferred NOT to annoy CAthy by refusing her demands, which of course I did when she came looking for handouts.

We then launched a series of backfilling trades

Resulting in

Tech superiority, and our advantage of machinery has not registered yet!

We fianally set up our wine city

Just in time. Gilgamesh was trying to slip a galley towards that area and we had to shut off open borders for a few turns until the settler got finihsed.

we then made a trade I just could not refuse!!!!!

OK, so I am a jerk who likes to stir up trouble!!!!! They made peace after a while though, so I guess it was simply a tech gift to Cathy!!! Worth a try.

We dropped our last 2 cities

Scraping teh bottom of the barrell but hey we were at 80-90% science with a gold profit!!!!

Finally we popped the next Great Person which was a profit, and we saved him for a few turns because we were teching Philosphy and...

HOLY SMOKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Manually researching teh last tech for the liberalism race and we actually found the religion!!!!!!!!!! Well we used the prophet to shrine the religion for ANOTHER strong gold city.

we saved here to think about whether we want to research it now or wait and try to get something a little better for free, like Fission! Seriously, this techpace is just nuts.

So the map of the world as we know it.

Cities

And Demographics!

Tops in GNP and prodcution and #3 three in soldiers (after Gilgamesh and Cathy).

Well, I guess let's see how to play up this RPC!!! I say Mehmed simply stagnates where he is and tries for time. we start some warfare once someone is a threat to actually win the game, but at this point even these morons in this hemisphere are going to be launching a spaceship after 2050.

As far as tech, I think perhaps optics to see what idiots lie on the other shore. Probably Sitting Bull and Tokugawa who are refusing to open borders with each other!

Oh, one more thing. I think no more tech trades for now. Let the AIs struggle a bit, I can backfill guilds and engineering myself without trading education, I like having universities to myself!

 

[UWHabs]

Given your UU, I'd want to put it to use. I see in the last pic you're researching gunpowder. My say would be that it might be time to get a foothold on that other island. Taking out Asoka might be easy, although you probably want to keep him around for the others to beat up on. Maybe grab a couple of Gilgamesh's cities?

Or go for something crazy: Gunpowder->optics->Liberalism (Astronomy), and go with a musket invasion of some cities across the ocean.

Or, with stagnation, just sit back and watch everyone kill each other. Maybe even go to the other continents with some missionaries and try to convert someone over there, since if your side has Budhism, Hinduism, confucianism, and taoism, that basically means that the other continent is all Jewish. Although, if I missed it, and Asoka or someone got Judaism on your side, the the other continent is all religion-less. If that's the case, bring one confucian and one taoist missionary on caravels going either way, and spread one religion to the 2 big players on the other side of the world. Religious wars for the win!

 

[Kev]

What's the setup with the AP? Could be a Christian half of the world somewhere and I'd rather have control of the AP if I could. Be a nice tool to stir up trouble - not to mention the extra stuff from the buildings.

 

[Killroyan]

Anybody noticing how Konya actually lies in Italy (landshape ) Even the little island of Corsica is up there. Too bad you aren't playing the romans. They would feel right at home

So far the game is in the bag but I wonder how you are going to play this out. Is it all going to be about diplomacy and getting wars going? Or will there be some conquering also?

 

[bestje]

with the techpace going at the rate it is I'd start taking out a few of the AIs as soon as you can get jannissaries. always better to fight at a massive advantage than on equal terms!

 

[madscientist]

Stagnation!: Part IV

As before a very slow and slow segment with noone really chalenging the mighty Ottomans although both our friends have higher scores (remember I can lose a time win if I have a lower score!). So to entertain myself I have decided to see how long I can go without liberalism while still being the first to it. So far we d not have it, but amazingly someone has FINALLY teched education at the save!!! And guess who...

First the techpath: gunpowder/compass/optics/guilds/banking/engineering/economics/printing press/astronomy/chemistry/replaceable parts/rifling and saved.

We got 1 Prophet which we saved for a future golden age and 2 great scientists which we used for academies.

We also made NO trades with our friends, stiffling their research.

Things started to shake up with

Ohhhhhh!!!!!!!!! we voted for Cathy just for diplo-points and because she really wanted the AP seat! She was so happy that she came by to ask for this

What the hell, I gave it to her!

We then started meeting those other leaders

Mao appears to be a colony of

We are a different religion so he's not too happy.

To address this we made this trade

And revolted to theocracy for diplo-points with Zara.

we also got a map showing

Certainly easily conquerable lands! In fatc I think I can let our allies alone to go trash some Ethiopian and Egyptian lands. Oh yes, one of the egyptians are out there.

See!!!

OK, we met most of the Ais and checked techs

As we backfill techs via researching them we find that we have a big tech lead.

we then meet another Zealot leader

Gotta watch that lady, I have been hit by a massive stack of outdated Spanish troops before.

We made our last trade of the segment, figuring spreading music arround the world makes things a little less dull.

we used the free GM for a trade mission to Gilgamesh for 5100 gold which allowed us to run the science slider @ 100% for the entire segment.

We meet another colony.

Now, The Russian Lady does have nationhood and military tradition over us so we opt for a DP ASAP

Which lasted about 3 turns as Cathy declared war on Hatty of which we joined.

Meanwhile we built a slew of privateers to get us to an experienced enough unit to get the Heroic Epic but no GG yet.

We saved here, wanting to sit back and decide which tech to go after next.

The tech situation

Well, well, well. asoka actually got Education! He is a vassal of Gilgamesh and has maybe 1-2 cities.

So I say we tech off steel for some drydocks and cannons, take liberalism and steam power for free. Then proceed to SM/RR/Combustion for kingship of the seas! If we lack oil, I say it's time to rev up some galeons and take what we need.

Our cities are doing very well

I think we definitely could use some FS civic for our cottage cities. Production is a littel week, and I will get to work on teh Heroic epic soon.

I figure if all goes well, we should be building a nice force of destroyers and tanks to go kill some Egyptian and Ethiopian muskets.

well, what do you all thing. YAWNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!! Yeah that's Stagnation for you!

 

[DMOC]

Agree, take Steam Power. Nice game so far.

 

[v8_mark]

Asoka's tech rate is horrible. You've got time to trade Nationalism, manually tech Constitution, Corporation and Steam Power, and take Assembly Line from Liberalism.

Go on, you know you want to

 

[Phinaeus]

I don't like the fact that your power ratings are so low even with friendly neighbors. You're gonna need a military sooner or later, too obtain the high score.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

He probably wants to dominate the AI with a super tech lead. The idiot tech "full monty" warmonger is more of my realm .

If horse archers could swim I'd have attacked the entire neighboring continent with them.

They don't swim though.

If you can get infantry mad, do it. On marathon in a game like this, they're top notch untouchable. Their only counter is machine guns, and those are only OK if they get hit by airships (and do nothing vs arty). Essentially, infantry vs pre-MG troops is a military break point - the strongest in the entire game (just behind rifles, as IMO grenadiers are easier to come by as a counter than MG, and can...actually attack). A stack of infantry is unassailable for a long, long time.

IMO you should get rid of an annoyance or two. After all, the theme of the RPC is stagnation ----> take a lot of land, have notions of winning a non-time victory.......then stagnate .

 

[Gliese 581]

Fresh water and 3 grasslands instead of 3 coastal tiles.

Not to mention another gems tile.