Role Play Challenge, TNG: Reincarnation of the Guptas

[madscientist]

Maharaja Gupta: The Holy Beginnings

Welcome again! As the first attempt at the Guptas turned out to be an incredible boring and stagnant game I decided to restart it with some different rules to breathe a little life into them! These games are meant to be educational and fun, and the next generation series focuses on new leaders outside the classic 52 of CIV!

Here we the Gupta Kings starting with the Maharaja himself, the supposed founder of the Classical Indian Empire. Not many appreciate what greatness came from this time of history, the Gupta's have given us many great things in civilization both Culturally and Scientifically

The concept of Zero
Postulated that the earth orbits around the sun
A base 10 numerical system
The game of Chess
The highpoint of Sankreit Literature
The spread of Hindu and Buddhist religions
And of course, the Kama Sutra

A very productive empire that get's little respect from Civilization IV, something that just bridges Ashoka and Gandhi. But here I plan to give it proper respect!

Our rules!

1) First of all, we shall eliminate the probelm of the first attempt. Any peaceful victory conditions is applicable here, but we shall prefer Space or Culture are this is where the Gupta's exceled.

2) Animal Husbandry is banned to honor the Gupta tradition of being Hindus and thus vegetarians (work with me a bit people). Any improvements not involving AH are open!

3) Every soul is sacred! Thus we cannot adopt slavery, use the draft, and the cities cannot be razed option is on.

Game settings:

Big/Small standard map
Emperor difficulty
Epic speed

And we are playing as



Gandhi who really has the best traits for the Gupta's and can be seen as the LAST of the Guptas!

The start



WOW! That's alot of seafood with some difficult Marble to access!

So how do we start folks? Fishing? Bronze Working? And early religion?

 

[Duke Blackstone]

A religion or fishing i think

 

[DMOC]

Fishing -> Bronze Working.

 

[JFIGHTER]

agree with DMOC fishing for food, bronze working for chops and copper.
Build would be warrior while teching towards fishing, workboats, then settler.

 

[Duke Blackstone]

Get GLH? the only food he will be able to get is coastal or deer

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'll try this again too...

Note that I took Gooblah's suggestion and axed events out of my games FOREVER by making all event triggers weighted 0 . In CUSTOM assets.

 

[Killroyan]

Nice capital. I would even think about getting Maoi in this one just looking at the screenshot since you only have 7 landtiles. If this would have been a Willem van Oranje start then I would be cheering. Techpath is hard but fishing-> bronze working sounds right. Lets just hope there is enough land to explore and you are not stuck on this small one. Sailing is also important to get to the surrounding islands (especially to get the marble for some nice culture wonders).

 

[oyzar]

The early religion seems the most flavourful, you should have chosen leaders who doesn't start with myst and required to get both budhism and hinduism and spread them around, would have made the game more challenging.

 

[St. Augustine]

Don't find yourself ignoring that marble either, a possible play for Artemis given your two starting techs? I do think that fishing is obviously, a no brainer.

 

[madscientist]

The problem with the marble is access to it as we need a very long road IF the land is connected. OR we need a fort next to it and a road which requires MAth. However, the raw hammers of a hilled marble quary are not to be ignored!

Right now I am a bit torn between the best start for the map in fishing/BW or the RPC angle of Hinduism. Emperor level is no guarentee of getting it, especially with no commerce tiles to work.

Techpath I am thinking though is fishing/BW/masonry/sailing/monotheism which may get me a religion and a shot at the Great Lighthouse Wonder. It also looks like a good time to avoid an early worker and pump out warriors for fogbusting and an early settler. Alot of options here.

I also like the idea of the early Maori statues in the capital!

One final point I just thought of, the possibility of popping AH from a goody hut. If that happens I will simply just worldbuild the tech out.

 

[Meatbuster]

I think you should allow the evil AI to raze cities if they want, if you can still somehow re-allow city razing. It might make for good RP if you denounce what Genghis is doing...

EDIT: Oh, I realized that you might "accidentally" auto-raze 1-pop cities if you enable city razing.

 

[madscientist]

EDIT: Oh, I realized that you might "accidentally" auto-raze 1-pop cities if you enable city razing.

Yeha, that's why I added the no raze option. The Gupta's were efficient warriors and I do not want to alter a good military strategy for an RPC rule.

 

[UWHabs]

Should be interesting. No Slavery would be tough with this start. May I suggest it as an early settler pump, followed by gunning for HR/Caste as early as you can?

 

[Jaaboo]

Don't you just need a road on the tile to a coast or river if you have Sailing?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The problem with the marble is access to it as we need a very long road IF the land is connected. OR we need a fort next to it and a road which requires MAth. However, the raw hammers of a hilled marble quary are not to be ignored!

If that marble is on another landmass you can always plant a city on it too.

 

[MadmanAtW]

Don't you just need a road on the tile to a coast or river if you have Sailing?

Just a road on the coast doesn't work, connecting it to a river, fort on the coast, or city on the coast would connect it to the trade route.

 

[dalamb]

Just curious: why did you switch from China to India as the civ?

 

[bestsss]

Gandhi got a birthday today Even google changed the logo for

 

[madscientist]

Just curious: why did you switch from China to India as the civ?

The main reason to use China was to leverage the unappreciated UB for a culture win. Since culture is only an option now I decided to just ahead and play as the Indians and take their crappy late UB.

 

[madscientist]

Maharaja Gupta: The Holy Beginnings

Maharaja Sri-Gupta awakens to find himself once again sleeping upon the plains, however the sea air stirs his lungs. "A second chance? Yes, I failed the Indian people before but not this time. I have been reincarnated once more into the world, and once more the Indian people need me to start them off!"

He looks around seeing alot of forrests and fish off-shore. "The animals may be our friends, but the Indian people still need to eat. The sea shall nurish us!"

The Maharaja decides to settle in place and have his people look into how to harvest all that food in the ocean, especially all the Indian people can work at first is one forrested plains hill!

However, the sturdy Indian warrior heads out insearch of assistance from the locals and comes back with



"Ah the heavens have given us a sign and exactly what we need! Our people MUST now start pondering the mysteries of all the gods!"

And since we have fishing and essentially a "Spanish start" we soon get



HOW FITTING IS THAT! We quickly adopt Hinduism so the people in the streets can celebrate the new found Hindu gods!

While our good Indian citizans start researching Bronze Working, the warrior met more natives which gave us a map showing



Greeks to the SW, and we are not sure which it is.

After Bronze Working we see that



No copper. OK, we build mostly work boats, a few warriors, and a settler to found



There is quite a bit of livestock to tempt us, but the Guptas are true to their faith and refuse to succumb to temptation!

The Maharaja is committed now and puts his faith in the sea by researching Sailing, and goes towards Monotheims after masonry. Does this enlighten the Indian people that there may be only one God???



You bet he does! Bombay is now the Judaist holy city!

At this point teh Maharaja has grown weary and decides to journey into the hills to become closer to the Hindu gods as he forsees a need for the Indian people to adopt this new single god faith. Still he is content and his work done, the next Gupta has already been chosen and merely has to wait a short time before his impression on the Indian people is made.

And with his final thoughts before sweet nirvana takes him over, is "What now shall the Gupta scholars research???"



So there we have it. Alot of good options here, plenty of room for discussion! I am liking this setup for a cultural win but we shall not rush it. I think defense is in order as the next possibility is iron, so we should detour to archery. After that perhaps the wheel, priesthood for the Oracle, meditation for early monestaries and the 1000 year doubling of culture. we also need to decide fast is we want another settler or pump out a worker and chop out the Great Lighthouse now!

Also let's look at the map



Enough seafood to support one city each. Not a whole lot of cottable land so I think an SE approach may be in order, especially as happiness does not look like an early issue with the religions and fast temples.

Also, should we both trying to get some fast temples up for a priest slot. And do we adopt OR, and do we convert to Judaism to pop the borders of Bombay?

So much to do here, definitely alot more in this game than the entire last one!