SE2 - Gandhi

[drlake]

Monarch/Epic to 1300ish, quick update:

Spoiler :

No screenies at the moment, I didn't have time to take them when I shut the computer down last night.

I didn't go to war with WK yet. Based on the diplomatic situation and the way Mao was encroaching on me, plus the fact that he was starting to research Feudalism, I decided to take him out first. NP on that, took 5 mainland cities from him (razed one), Mehmed took one (he decided to join in), and capped him.

After that, it's been teching and building infrastructure. I was way ahead when I took Liberalism (no one else had Education yet) but I'd already beat MM to Economics (free GM = 2850 gold!) and I wanted Astronomy for the trade routes to Charlemagne and AC. That put my tech rate up to 3-400bpt (I used GPs to pop a couple of GAs during this period).

I had built up a solid army to go after Mehmed, but decided to wait for Cannons (I'm almost done with Chemistry right now). He didn't want to let me wait (he's been WHEOOHRN for a while) and jumped the gun when I had a worker working a tile next to him. Many of his cities have Walls and probably Castles so it'll be slow going, but I've got a solid tech lead and decent-sized military so it's time to bring the Ottoman province into the empire.

After that, I'm just going to roll over MM and WK. Neither is strong enough to even slow me down once I'm done with the Ottomans.

 

[drlake]

Monarch/Epic to 1340AD, Screenies:

Spoiler :

Just to flesh out the previous post, here are the screenshots taken after Mehmed attacked me. I bribed WK and MM into the war on my side, to distract Mehmed. They'll probably send some troops through my territory and may even attack him, but I doubt they'll do anything meaningful.

Maps:




I lost track of his SoD, but it was in Istanbul not long ago. I'm guessing it is in the shaded tiles near Nanjing, so I think I'll refrain from attacking for a turn to see if they turn up.

City Screen:


I'll be putting troops into production (Muskets, Maces, Trebs, and Knights) en masse as cities finish the infrastructure they're working on right now, but I see no reason to switch their production immediately since my SoD is sitting at Pataliputra.

Civics:


I'll probably stick with what I have, since I don't need to use war civics to win this one.

Foreign Relations:


Poor Mehmed...

Tech Race:


Poor, poor Mehmed...

Tech Tree:

After Chemistry, Steel! Poor Mehmed...

VCs:


My biggest rival is about to fall.

Demographics:


He may well be the one AI with a bigger army, but it isn't going to matter much. I'm not used to leading in trade balance...

 

[vranasm]

@drlake nicely done...domination is in the air...

@SE games just a personal remark, I have the feeling that my no cottage games are a lot better then my usual games, where I am allowed to build cottages. Tough to say why it's that... must be something with bad specializing in that situation, the cottages probably confuse me, even if I don't build them lately on non-riverside green.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@vranasm
Though I haven't yet completed a no-cottage game (oops...), I've also had this revelation that no-cottage games are feasible. With the exception of my Willem van Oranje games (btw financial cottages are quite good), I've done worse in game in which I tried to go for cottages.

The thing I like is that I feel more free in relation to what I can do in the cities, I don't need to care about working as many cottages as possible, I just run on as much food as possible until happy cap, then switch to as many scientists as possible and game just goes from there.

The thing that no-cottage games have not yet fixed in my strategies is the blunder of angering too many neighbours, or the wrong neighbours. But I'll get to that.

 

[NihilZero]

Cottages are pretty inflexible and really aren't great until they get boosted by techs, FIN ones are nice though.

Specialists are highly flexible, you can move them to the mines or workshops instantly, and vice versa, changing your entire empire from production to research to gold or whatever you need. Cottages just sit there, demanding that you work them and they tend to discourage whipping. You need a long peaceful start to the game when you're running mostly cottages, because production isn't going to be great and you can't switch gears if you get surprise attacked like you can with food and specialists.

I'm not convinced that pillaging all captured cottages is ideal though. Unless I'm playing games from this series I have generally kept captured ones unless I want to specialise a captured city for production. Towns and villages are fine if you don't have to grow them yourself. I also usually like to have one or two specialised commerce cities with lots of riverside cottages (usually the capital, but not always).

It's been very interesting playing with no cottages at all though. It doesn't change the game as much as I thought it would.

 

[MkLh]

Cottages are pretty inflexible and really aren't great until they get boosted by techs, FIN ones are nice though.

Specialists are highly flexible, you can move them to the mines or workshops instantly, and vice versa, changing your entire empire from production to research to gold or whatever you need. Cottages just sit there, demanding that you work them and they tend to discourage whipping. You need a long peaceful start to the game when you're running mostly cottages, because production isn't going to be great and you can't switch gears if you get surprise attacked like you can with food and specialists.

Non representation -specialists are weak compared to even non financial cottages or almost any other tile improvements - unless they are creating GPs, but usually only a couple of cities will ever create GP. Running specialists in other cities is a waste. No cottage -games are easy with two gold mines capital though.

 

[NihilZero]

GPs are by far the best way to get beakers in the early game.

 

[Grashopa]

Cottaging your capital is the best way to get beakers in the early game. You don't really need cottages outside the capital. Popping a couple GS before you can bulb anything but alphabet or math is useless. If you don't have gold you will be ridiculously far behind me if you try to research with farms and libraries.

 

[NihilZero]

Post alphabet and mathematics is still early game in my book.

Of course Grashopa usually finishes his games faster than most of us.

 

[vranasm]

ok I progressed today to 860AD and need advice! comments/suggestions welcome

Spoiler :

I picked up from my 550 BC save with peacefull evolution in mind, getting currency, col, monarchy etc. to get my empire to better shape.
I secured another religion with getting Taoism and to my surprise I have double holy city in Thebes (wall street?).

All the time I thought about the map and expansion, as I wrote in this thread I befriended Mao as WK would be my next target. The southern jungle region with rice+dye went to Mao, I don't mind THAT much. I have plenty of room elsewhere.

Was first to construction, so I started to build 'reasonable' strike force in 4 cities with balanced numbers of swordsman and cats.
At around 595AD I started war against WK. All went good, I would say great! Quickly managed to get from his cold hands another 3 cities (his cap included), but the expenses rose very quickly!

That leads to my current situation where I have many cities and at 0% slider not much income. I get peace from WK, I could take more cities from him, I have army superiority in numbers (not in techs since he got hwachas), but that would send me more in the hole.

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I think I should outline some sort of plan before I post this!

Well basicely I plan to finish forges in my production cities (Delphi, Memphis, city SW from Memphis) to start build there wealth, more courthouses (probably in WKs land), leading to question about forbidden palace and where to place it?

Should i delete big bulk of my army? Especially from the swordsman army (25 is a lot).

What would you propose for other options I have?
I think that after I get eco a bit better I should finish WK, before he gets feudalism. I don't say that i will give 10 turns of peace and then reopen war, but don't want to wait too much...

edit:

Spoiler :

Should I drop caste system to slavery for some turns? It would cost me in workshops though, because I finally have them started build "everywhere" and could have negative effect on wealth producers.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

If you still have enough army (25 swordsmen seems quite enough to me, do you have some cats as well?), you should keep conquering.

As far as FP is concerned, building it seems like too early a decision to me, since the distance between your farthest cities and your capital isn't all that great. You want to build it, eventually, in a city you grab from an enemy, be it rather far south or rather far to the west/east.

~~~
I should mention that the biggest reason why you're in trouble is having so many soldiers. That's why conquering is a good choice, you lose more of those in the process and gain more cities.

 

[vranasm]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

If you still have enough army (25 swordsmen seems quite enough to me, do you have some cats as well?), you should keep conquering.

As far as FP is concerned, building it seems like too early a decision to me, since the distance between your farthest cities and your capital isn't all that great. You want to build it, eventually, in a city you grab from an enemy, be it rather far south or rather far to the west/east.

~~~
I should mention that the biggest reason why you're in trouble is having so many soldiers. That's why conquering is a good choice, you lose more of those in the process and gain more cities.

Spoiler :

yep...8 cats, I think one of those screenshots is my army grouped in types, so i thought that could be seen...maybe it's bad quality though

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@vranasm
Oh... yeah, I only opened one screenshot. It takes some time for the image to load after you click on it and you have to click on all of them, one at a time, and patience is not among my qualities... not by a long shot.

Sorry about that, but it's going to be a factor when I reply, unfortunately.

 

[drlake]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

First, check to see where your expenses are (F2). I'd guess you're spending around 25gpt on troops at the moment (more if they are outside your cultural borders), and significantly more on city maintenance. If I'm right, conquering more cities will not really help, since each city you take adds to the maintenance of the rest of your empire.

Second, stop building so many forges. Most of the cities you are building forges in will not benefit from it for a looooong time. Keep in mind you're spending 180 hammers (I assume Epic speed for all calculations) to boost production by 25%. You've got 5 cities with less than 10 current production building Forges, and most of the rest are under 20 production. If the city generates 20 base production, the Forge takes 36 turns to repay the investment, which isn't too bad. If it generates 12 base production, it takes 60 turns to pay for itself. At 8 base production it takes 90 turns. At the moment, most of those smaller cities should be building stuff that pays off sooner, including Wealth. For the bigger cities, rotate them through building Forges, rather than doing them all at once. That'll help you sustain a higher research rate while still allowing infrastructure development.

Third, you're farming the wrong type of GP in Thebes. At this stage in the game, I suggest you go for a couple of Great Merchants. Use them for a trade mission, to either the Temple of Artemis (if you didn't build it) or to whichever city your capital has the biggest trade route with. I netted 2850g/GM for 3 GMs doing that. That will fund a LOT of deficit research, plus help you with your budget issues. I've got Thebes producing GSs now in my game (built the GL and National Epic there) and Beijing doing GMs, but if I could only do one I'd be focusing on GMs.

This map is one where you really don't need to build the FP, since your capital is so centrally located. That said, I still built it in Thebes to help with the economy, and will go for Versailles in Istanbul if I can. I'll rely on State Property if maintenance becomes an issue later in the game.

Are any of WKs remaining cities ones you really want? If not, I'd make peace (or even vassal him), reorganize my production to get the economy and research back in balance, and rebuild my siege train to go after Mao.

 

[vranasm]

@drlake + CT quick update 1050AD, sorry for reading drlakes post after I did the round :-(

Spoiler :

Sorry for being a bit unpatient, I followed CT's advice to continue war and completely layered WK down. I didnt have feudalism so vassal was out of question though.

I have reached liberalims at 1000 (or around) my soonest time, took Nationalism and I was at the time at war.
The war finished now at 1050 AD. I have from it 600 gold, 60% research (263 beakers) set now with -40 gold.

i read somewhere here that when you build forge and brings you more then 4 hammers (and BUG shows it exactly) then it's good build and I kind of followed it.

Those GM's are great advice!! I will certainly follow it...it will have 2 positive effects... 1st reduces maintenance now, 2nd those trade missions...

Does anyone know how to check if I have some cottages built? I do it with eyes (a bit forgot) and overwriting with workshops now, but don't want to abuse rules and need to check for perfection.

The WK land is good afterall 2x gems, a lot of food, horses etc. so I hope it will pay out.

I am out of siege now, should rebuild, but since everyone is in feudalism now, I will tech feud (maybe trade for some cheaper tech if I can after 1-2 turns of research) and then guilds to get stronger workshops (making grass workshop grassland hill).

This game so far is wet dream .

have 15 turns for constitution, so after guilds I will probably get it (i can tech it already but stronger workshops are better in my opinion)

 

[drlake]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

Sounds like it is all working out fine for you.

This is a very easy setup. 2 BFC gold, good food, several hills, and iron in the BFC is a huge bonus. I should come back to this start for my first Emperor game.

 

[Grashopa]

vranasm, if you play with show yields (ctrl-y?) on you can what the tiles are and the ones your cities are working are noticeable.

 

[vranasm]

vranasm, if you play with show yields (ctrl-y?) on you can what the tiles are and the ones your cities are working are noticeable.

yep I am playing with yields up, but it still is about me seeing those cottages and it's not consistent enough for my liking...
I know when I retire there is that statistics table summarizing builds, so something like that without retiring would be great...

 

[vranasm]

to the game and my future plans (please comment)

Spoiler :

OK after leaving the game a bit to settle thoughts, I think I will adjust some decisions.

First I will research constitution first, then feud + guilds.
Second I have now 4 holy cities with 4 shrines (go figure how much easier you can even get in this game with all those gold/gems/silver resources), so I have to spread all 4 religions more, will be tough though because 60% of my empire builds wealth now, so it will cost a bit in research.
Third after I finish my HE i will start in 2 strong prod. cities preparing maceman+treb war, hoping I will be quick enough before the next big jump in military techs. (at first I wanted to wait for later war).

It is possible that after I get feudalism that I get peace vassal offer from MM, I am a bit undecided on it. Ottoman is biggest challenger yet (I have to find last AI though, but I don't think he will be much evolved), Mao is my friend and buffer state against Ottomans, so I thought that I should conquer MM, he is founder of christianity and holy city of christians is practically first city at my western borders... very tempting :-D.

To the forges situation, I have right now all 3 types of happy resources that forge adds 1 happy, so I am thinking about actually building forges "everywhere".

What about our UB after constitution? Should I build it in every city I own right after research? would have to drop the slider and limit for some time my research output, but could pay it back quickly (hopefully). But I feel that in a lot of cities I am now more on food output limit, will probably have to check, but WW reduction should be helpfull everywhere since I want to war more soon.

 

[vranasm]

Monarch to 1460 AD (without screenshots, am lazy tonight)

Spoiler :

Basically as I said I was preparing for another round of war against MM this time. To my surprise Mao attacked MM first. But I still wasnt prepared so I had to decline his goodly meant invitation.

What I didnt expect is that Mao did afterall capped MM! So what now? Well I thought I have tech lead and power lead enough to destroy both of them...

So in 1380 AD i thought i am prepared and Dowed them luring SoD of Mao to my SoD. So as it looked the plan went as I wanted...
well not so easily... after some turns it came clear that I overcalulated a bit my strength and even if i did kill Mao's sod (MM had no SoD to speak of), the healing was too big of a drag even if i have my mash chariot.
so I took piece by piece the western continent, blocking horse archers and other rushing units to my south...
After a long time I finally managed to free MM from Mao and both of them capped to me at 1460AD. Uff...

Bad news Ottomans are teching replaceable parts. good news I have already chemistry and tech military tradition. But from rifles I am 2 or 3 techs away.

Empire begins to be too big for my liking...it begins to be very tough to coordinate everything :-(.

i think i should tech next steel and build some cannons and go for cannon+grens war against Ottoman. What you all think?
Naval invasions against weaker nations (caesar + hre) are not possible, I lack Astronomy...well maybe I should tech astronomy first... my trade routes income is not big enough as I wanted.
Should probably build more missionaries too... will have to recheck religion status.