Role Play Challenge: Suleiman the Magnificent and the Battle of the Philosphers

[TheMeInTeam]

To 1170 AD. Marathon is slower, even if I click end turn a lot .

Spoiler :

Teched out banking. Remember, using religion for border pop exclusively to get courthouses and other buildings up ASAP under OR. Banks will be especially helpful since I'm leaning on commerce so much.

I automated workers and used governor emphasize very early on in this segment. I'm familiar with how it works so city specialization actually won't be too bad this way...I don't have time to micro 20+ cities!

By the way, I wasn't really "complaining" about a hit to the economy per se', just pointing out that conquest money that was allowing me to tech as if I wasn't at war ran dry! Note that if wars are sufficiently fast, the conquest money gained is much closer to the cost from the war. My first war was very very fast which is why I had such a strong position at 10 AD. This one wasn't bad either especially since we're on marathon so I expect a very powerful boost as those cities come online.

945 AD I put forbidden palace in cantebury. This will help me afford eventual ownership of the entire continent. I am massing a LOT of janissaries/siege to take down alex very fast once he's DoW'd. Note that any other AIs other than the ones on the continent are still MIA. Where are they?!

955 AD I DoW alex. I have 2 sizeable stacks and the 2nd one is not supported by GG's but is just a lot of cats/jans. That will do for his northern cities. As usual I have some missionaries ready too. Here goes! The pop 1 city falls that turn thanks to knights movement, but is auto razed .

960 AD jany force pounds moundville and heads straight for visgoth. Alex is screwed, nothing pre-muskets beats janissaries .

970 Corinth goes down, the next turn my forces crush a weak horse archer counter attack near chaco canyon. Visgoth falls in 980 AD.

985 Argos taken, then mycenae in 1000 AD. THIS is more like it. I'm actually gaining gold faster than I'm losing it this way. I will take an economic hit shortly after the war ends, but by that point I'll be able to whip in more courthouses in new conquests and start growing them.

1005 sparta taken. Thebes in 1020. Lost my first GG (A combat VI march elephant) to taking knossos. Not like I care at this point. Athens falls in 1045 AD. This is alex's last continental city. I decide to take capitulation (and music). I can prep my janissary squads for peter, who has neither paper nor machinery. This means that he is a long, long way from muskets.

I decide to do some econ prep before ending the segment.

1120 Banks brought me close to a positive net at 40%. Once I hit PP, it WAS a positive net:

1160 Met freddy, who is actually backwards. Wow. Met lincoln master of cyrus (colony) 2 turns later. I trade some stuff for backfill that my continent had already.

1170 Segment ends:

Big and small huh. I'm not sure I want to go through the effort of domination here. Mad says we can build the UN in the RPC rules, and it is very, very obvious I can get it first at this point. I'm just going to kick peter around until he's not big enough to be eligible himself, force capitulation, and beeline straight for mass media without passing go or even stopping for rifling. I will probably detour for democracy and state property for the RPC flavor and also because those civics will massively improve my beaker rate. Actually, SP is probably king here, FP helps but a lot of cities still pay considerable distance maintenance.

I've captured like 1 or two wonders, oracle and the ever powerful GLH. This has turned into another one of my CE love fests but I've gotten better at both early beakers and warring, and it's showing here (I have a lot of people to thank for this...maybe I can win more consistently on immortal after I'm done with all this fun stuff , although I have run some immortal games also).

Again, this is all pretty much a commerce city/hammer city game where I specialized them manually earlier and have begun to leave it to the governor as of the start of this segment. OR and whips in new cities bring them up to speed sooner. Other than that it's just a matter of picking which commerce multipliers are optimal, and when warring and capturing gobs of cities it's usually the gold multipliers. I REALLY wish I could shrine judaism but since I can't I'll probably just put wall street in the capitol since I have to run bureaucracy for the rest of the game. Probably oxford too, which is a combo you'd almost never see otherwise. Might as well milk the power commerce as much as possible though.

I'm open to answering any questions about this but since it's just a shadow game use discretion on whether it's better to post here or PM (if you think it will be ongoing just PM)

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[oyzar]

@ TMIT

Spoiler :

Monarch, really? You happen to not know how to start games by yourself and just download everything you can find on the forums?

 

[Sc_0pe]

Interesting! I have always played some of my games semi-roleplaying (to some extend) and liked the challenge in them too!

But what does BS stand for = Bull****?

 

[madscientist]

But what does BS stand for = Bull****?

You got it! From Mel Brooks movie "History of the World Part I" where Roman Mel Brooks was a standup Philosopher or commonly called then a BS artist!

I love seeing so much in spoilers, curious to see how many entires there will be by the time I start the game!

 

[Jaaboo]

Did you bulls**t last week?
Did you try to bulls**t last week?

 

[Capellan]

I've also been playing this map (on Prince/Epic, and without following the RPC rules) and it's been a blast.

Spoiler :

I'm not doing as well as TMIT, but I know I need to learn to be more aggressive. But then, my success rate on Prince is only winning about 1 in 4 games right now, so I'm pretty happy to be in the 1500s with Lizzie as a vassal and Sitting Bull looking vulnerable as the next target.

Janissaries are lots of fun if you can get them when your opponents still have only medieval units. Which I very specifically set out to do

 

[madscientist]

Magnificent Suleiman and the Battle of the Philosphers: Part A

When I said a kingly start, I did not realize how true that was!!!! Massively rich lands with military resources to ram down any AIs close by! The Magnificent one is extremely pleased here.

Let's start off by what we teched!

AH/Mining/BW/Pottery/Writing/Fishing. Yes, unusual for the mad Scienctist to NOT tech archery yet, but you will soon see why!

Suleiman directs his warrior to the west to scope out the lands!

That's alot of floodplains there! Makes you think that this is the river Nile rather than Ottoman lands. Suleiman decides to move 1 west

Yes, Suleiman wants that gold to support his research!

You can also see some decent lands here, with marble very near, coutesy of a village map from a goody hut! We also netted 147 gold before out warrior got eaten by a bear!.

We meet our first leader

The Agressive one of the Philosphers. No problem, the Greeks shalt be part of Ottoman lands soon enough!

After AH we find

Which explains the computer initial placement of the settler. Not a problem, the borders will pop before Barbs are an issue!

We meet the next Philosopher

And after teching BW

excellent, copper and horse well within the next border pop!

The next city we settle is directly west to claim the copper and create a strong cottage city.

We then meet the lovely red-headed English lass.

Who ios directly north of us! Suleiman declares his love for the charming lady and decides to grant her the privalege of joining his Harem. Of that means overrunning the English empire to do that, but certainly a worthy endevour. SULEIMAN IS KING AND TAKES WHAT HE WANTS!

We end the segment by dropping our third city right next to Liz to claim the corn (needed for helth with those floodplains) and Jumbos. I plan a third city on the coast to lockup the horses, marble (good for the NE and HE national wonders) and rice.

So there you have it! I am looking to hunting/archery next, perhaps followed by HBR and having a massive attack on Elizabeth. The Imperialistic trait is certainly nice to get these early cities!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Can't see the pics, and everyone seems to be saying bulb-sh*t So bulbs it is then?

 

[madscientist]

Can't see the pics, and everyone seems to be saying bulb-sh*t So bulbs it is then?

Sorry about the pics, give photobucket a little bit.

BulbS**T, battle of the Philosophers. What an idea!!!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I am currently working on a game that in german translates to "Fast Philospher's Quiz". So I approve.

 

[madscientist]

Finished the entry.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To 1484...Domination win.

Spoiler :

Sometimes I'm glad when I cut a segment off. I rethought my plan here. I have a lot of cities and a lot of power. UN would take forever. I'm going to play for domination, so I switch to astronomy immediately at the start of this segment. I might be able to finish this by completely eliminating peter from the mainland, and then forcing capitulations out of the remaining civs until I win. With a large force and ridiculous power rating, this approach is likely faster than UN, and shouldn't take all that much effort, onward:

By the way, I forgot techs @ last segment end:

In 1210 I opt to and betray Peter. He's teching engineering and lacks guilds or education. What this means, since everyone else is in the same boat, is that there will be no muskets to take on in this war either. In other words, despite being the only relevant AI left, Peter's done for on turn 1. I have 3 stacks, west, central, east, on his borders prepared to make this war as fast as possible. The smaller stacks to the west and east have 12 janissaries and bombardment siege. The central stack contains the GG's and is a bit larger:

1215 Newcastle and warwick are mine. 1220 I take rostov and cut down his counter attack sod, although I will need to reinforce that front.

1225 WHAT! Peter took hastings with a maceman off a galley. Are you kidding me? That was a good commerce city too! You're doing to DIE peter.

1230 I take yaktusk. I'm going to have to work my way back to taking hastings with new units. 1240 I grab another city.

1250 I reclaim hastings. I also take novgorod.

1270 I have half of peter's empire, not bad considering he had over 20% of the world's pop 100 years ago. Go marathon!

1280 Even after capturing yekaterinburg north of his capitol and having 4x his power now, peter won't capitulate. Not that I'd accept it, but still, what the? I mean, what circumstances dictate this? He absolutely should be willing to...

1315 Ok. I'm annoyed. I delayed taking moscow, because my spies could see that it's building U of Sankore and very very close to finishing. However, the computer repeatedly did whips in the city, and somehow it hasn't overflowed to finish the damn thing. Maybe it's because he can ONE POP WHIP A LONGBOW EVERY TURN. I hate AI bonuses and forgetting they have them.

1320 I promptly murder the 12+ whipped units in moscow and cackle about it. DIE DIE DIE. Screw U of Sankore. Sully doesn't like wonders anyway.

1340 I get a GM and have to bulb replaceable parts . Oh well. That won't hurt me, the watermills will be a little better.

1362 The russian civ is (finally) destroyed. I went up to nearly 2000 gold in this war from city capture:

And BPT got better the entire time! Haha. Tech situation is promising:

And so I started galleons mid war. I will march my troops to my staging port city, board galleons, and finish this map off.

1364 AHHHHH nooo. Freddy made a vassal. That's really annoying because when they do that they won't capitulate even if you're bending them over badly.

1386 I get the event that gives muskets pinch. Oh man. As if I needed help at this point, owning the entire continent.

WHAT THE HELL. I HATE THIS. I right click on lincolns face in the trade screen, and what happens? The game COUNTS IT AS A DOW! FROM THE TECH WILL TRADE SCREEN. I wasn't holding alt.........................I won't even reload because those scrubs don't have astro, but seriously, what the hell? I hate certain things about this game and this is one of them. One of these days I'm going to lose a HoF game because of this and that's BS.

1396 Since the dye is cast thanks to the game cheating, I sail a fleet towards lincoln. No sense letting him tech out gunpowder. I will probably wipe him off the map entirely since he's weak, and then capitulate cyrus.

1406 The AP stops the war! And i'd already started sailing there! You know what this means:

Yeah, just take another target ^^.

1412 Munich captured. Hamburg in 1416. He has 4 cities left so rather than capitulation I'm just gonna kill him. I love having enough EP to just focus on someone and see all their cities. How am I getting it? More than 30 cities and courthouses .

1424 Busy turn, I capture Essen, stuggart, and berlin! This is why I was annoyed he spawned a colony though. He has one city with 4 garrison units in it, and he WILL NOT CAPITULATE FOR ANYTHING. This is such a poor feature that it has bug suspicion as far as I'm concerned. Make them vassal! It's not like charlie has anything! I have triple their combined power!

1430 Germany is off the map and I'm moving on Charlie. I get frankfurt in 1432. Charlie won't cap either. What the hell is up with this?

1438 Democracy is in, forcing me to make a 6 turn anarchy for emancipation. My whip . Like it matters now though. I can win with my standing army.

1446 Charlie is dead too.

1458 I make my final war declaration:

Lincoln has 4 cities so I go for him first.

1460 I use a gspy to infiltrate cyrus (i'd gotten him on the island via caravel just before declaration). I capture new york this turn also.

1466 I capture lincoln's 3 remaining cities on the same turn, ending the war. Now...I'm kind of curious how he lost boston to barbs and NEVER reclaimed it, but i'll probably just grab that city also.

1470 Oddly enough, cyrus still won't talk to me. A former colony. The last AI on the map. Pinned down on a tiny island with 6 total cities and with less than 1/6 of my power. COME ON. Are you kidding me?!

1472 Now he will talk but not capitulate....................

1484 I was just about to take some of his cities on his "mainland" when...

Whoops . Let's have a look at some end stats:

This is my 2nd highest legit score ever...kind of weird to get it on a water map.

So yeah. There we go. I stayed within the rules, ending civics being HR, bureaucracy, emancipation, decentralization (sorry mad, never made it to state property ), and OR which I was basically in all game.

I abused the hell out of elephants and then janissaries, which carried me the entire rest of the game. Proper use of courthouses, markets, and banks kept the economy good and with fast-moving wars the recovery period is mighty small. IMO the final tech rate is pretty impressive with all that colony cost out there (remember, I put the FP up way early and couldn't use it on any of those islands). Commerce and gold multipliers FTW .

Have to use the autosave here because I didn't see the end coming heh.

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[DMOC]

No need to research Archery. Just go towards Writing -> CoL with backfilling a couple of techs along the way.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree on the archery bit. It's not even a spoiler at this point - you have two strategic resources for military and you know it . I can maybe understand hunting if you're pushing the cap and need to hook up elephants to improve that but you just don't need archers with these kinds of resources!

 

[semirami]

Archery? Unless, if you plan to atack with HAs, you don't need this tech. Writing/Math/Mas/Con/HR and kill,kill,kill.

@TMIT I finished my shadow game with domination victory at 15th century too.

 

[Joshua368]

Well he said he plans on researching horseback riding so I'm guessing he wants horse archers. >_>

 

[madscientist]

My thinking is hunting for the jumbos and the extra happiness. Archery is pretty easy to tech and then we tech HBR for HAs. HAs and axes should be enough to take out Liz.

 

[espartaco]

Mad, I see your interface has not less than 10 buttons on the center lower part and mine doesn't, where\what are they? thanks.

 

[Joshua368]

Mad, I see your interface has not less than 10 buttons on the center lower part and mine doesn't, where\what are they? thanks.

BUG Mod. All are various ways to organize the way groups are stacked. The BUG Mod is also responsible for the Great General and Great People bars on the top of the screen and the enhanced leader chart in the corner with attitude and power rating.

 

[Single Malt]

Mad, I see your interface has not less than 10 buttons on the center lower part and mine doesn't, where\what are they? thanks.

You are probably referring to BUG Mod which can be found here.