*Spoiler2* - Gotm19-Ottomans - Full Map - Mag+Grav

[Kemal]

After a very quiet first 3000 years in my game, which you can read about here, things turned out to become more interesting in the Ottoman Republic during the medieval era.

After entering that age in 730 BC, I was pretty disappointed to recieve feudalism as my free tech, as I usually get that for free anyways from AI research, and it forced me to research monotheism on my own, the most expensive of the first 3 medieval techs. Also, as a (usually) peaceful player, most of the time education is first on my list to get in the medieval age, and now I had to research an extra tech to get there as fast as possible

As I was progressing through the tech tree, another misjudgment I made due to my lack of experience on these smaller map types became apparent, as I noticed that my original aim to get most medieval techs at 4 turns was going to hit a snag due to the small size of my empire. As tech costs continued to rise my economic output didn't have much stretch in it anymore, and the AI wasn't very helpful too as none of them were willing to do any gpt payments for techs except Rome, but they only payed a little.
As my empire's coffins were rapidly emptying, I came to the conlusion that I had to abandon my researching habits for a short period, getting gunpowder in 5 turns, and try to strengthen the economic output of the Republic.
After only a short consideration, and much to the dismay of Brennus and his Celts, a plan was put forward: War!

As I had not yet connected the iron source due to fear of it getting exhausted, I shifted production in most cities to horsemen and abandoned research for a while to store some cash for upgrades. Ironically, the Celts themselves provided me with the weapons which were to be used for their own destruction, as Brennus happily traded me Chivalry for Astronomy, and immediately the first upgrades were made.
With the original task force only consisting of 10 knights, I was wary to start an all out assault on the Celts, as I didn't want to unnecessarily waste any military unit, but as the best the Celts could produce was 1 regular knight and 1 regular Gallic swordsmen, Ottoman commanders sent their Knights on a rampage through Celtic lands and about the year 310 AD the Celtic empire ceased to excist. Unfortunately, no leader was generated during the small war, but I did have 4 elites now.

As the Celtic jungles didn't really have a great impact on the once again reinstated Ottoman research projects, a quick check on the F3 screen led to the conclusion that an attack on Carthaginian targets was justifiable, especially since Military tradition was only a short time away at that time. So in 330 AD, the Ottoman GA started with a Sipahi shooting down some inexperienced Carthaginian mercanaries and immediately 3 Carthaginan cities fell to the rapidly advancing stacks of Ottoman Sipahi (well, I still only got about 12 but it was more than enough though...). Also, it was during this initial attack that a Great Leader emerged from one of my elite Knights. A tough decision had to be made regarding how to use him, but considering the terrain I captured from the Carthaginians per turn, I decided to save him for some time and rush a palace near Carthage some time later.

"Some time" turned out to be about 2 turns, as the Carthaginians apparently hoped I'd be as peaceful as always, and they grossly undermanned their defensive positions. With mostly only two or three regular mercenaries per city, their empire quickly fell and it by the time I entered the industrial age in 430 AD they were reduced to a boat settler, who later built a city on the island east of Rome.

Although war has been quick and succesful, the situation isn't so bright in other aspects of the game. The (very badly performing)AI still don't do much themselves, they neither invent techs nor produce some gold to fuel my tech machine, and what's even worse they are neglecting their own infrastructure, as they fail to connect luxuries to their own empires, or build any harbors for that matter. Therefore, I'm still only at 6 luxuries (only import is ivory from Rome) inhibiting my development of my new capital's city core. I might be pushed to take matters in my own hand regarding the acquisition of those last two luxuries, Mao had better start building some harbors soon if he knows what's healthy for him.....

 

[Renata]

The people of the great and terrible Ottoman empire are wondering what these foreign technologies of mag and grav are - they've never heard of them.

After a slightly rocky start --- click here if you're so inclined ---the Ottoman empire finally began to get rolling in the middle of the first millennium BC. A galley exploring the west coast noticed an enticing patch of light-blue sea tiles off to the west and made a run for it, contacting the Egyptians next turn. The denizens of the second continent were no more advanced than those back home (foreign intelligence later revealed a vicious war between India and Spain, which would eventually wind up with the purple menace wiping Spain off the map), and trading of technology between the two continents helped the Ottomans catch up in tech for the first time. Meanwhile, things were becoming interesting back home.

War was declared on the Celts about 600 BC. Two cities were razed (one by the Romans) and two captured (including Entremont with the Pyramids!) before peace was allowed temporarily in exchange for tech, leaving the Celts with two lousy jungle cities and one rather nice one, centrally located on a lake in the far south. The Ottoman swordsman/horse hordes had gotten thirsty for blood though, and easily persuaded their commanders to continue on to take three Carthaginian towns in the far southwest. They fully intended to continue the fighting until Carthage was but a pale shadow of its former glory, but in 10 BC a great leader emerged in the fighting and insisted on taking the war back to the Celts so that the Forbidden Palace could be built in the beautiful lakeside town of Camulodunum. This plan was indeed carried out, and the Celtic civilization ceased to exist in 290 AD. (Took a while for the Azar warriors to slog through all that jungle .)

In the meantime, spy investigations revealed that the Carthaginian city of Utica would shortly complete the Great Lighthouse, and the hordes (now with knights!) were held up at the Carthagian borders until that was done, understanding that a short delay then might enable them to take the great wars overseas to the puny Chinese and the pitiful Egyptians sooner than previously planned. (As it actually turned out, though, the Carthaginian war turned out to be a bit of a slog and astronomy was learned just about as the galleys were about to head out, anyway.) The war was victorious, and the Carthaginians, down to just one mainland city in 600 AD, were given a temporary reprieve from complete extinction in exchange for their city of Cirta on the small isle to the east of Rome.

By this time, research had been directed to military tradition, and the knights were collecting on the west coast and laying down their swords in preparation for pistols. The galleys finally depart, full of Sipahi, assorted motley elite units, and one settler, in 750 AD. War is declared versus Egypt the following turn, following on the heels of a similar Indian declaration. The Golden Age is triggered with the razing of Elephantine in 760, and the Sipahi hordes become unstoppable. The competition with India for Egypt's cities goes in the Ottomans' favor, and Egypt is gone by 830 AD.

(Somewhere in this time period a few stray Sipahi find their way to Carthage's last city and wipe them off the map as well.)

China proves only a slightly more worthy opponent, with war declared in 870 AD and the last cities taken in 960, just as the Golden Age ends.

At this point, the Ottoman high command (read: me) begins to get peeved that domination has not yet been triggered, despite mountains of golden-age cash being spent on library rushes and settlers for filling in the blank spots. In a competely despicable and arguably premature move, war was declared on India, who had very kindly refrained from taking advantage of the numerous Ottoman conquests left competely undefended in the neighborhood of their troops for much of the just-ended golden age. And that's not even mentioning the six turns of luxes that were yet owed on the deal that had stolen JS Bach's cathedral out from under India's nose.

The high command were severely punished for their dastardly ways in 1000 and 1010 AD, when three new Ottoman cities were (re) conquered by the Indians. Unfortunately for their collective moral character, though, the setback was only temporary, and domination was triggered after the great push forward of 1040 and 1050 AD.

All in all a fun, fast (probably too fast ) game. One comment about Rome -- it took me all the way until about 300 AD to realize there was something odd there. (I'd had their world map since ~ 500 BC.) They still hadn't filled out their entire island, and had in fact left one of their ivory tiles exposed. I sent a settler there and started sending settlers to the small island as well, but wasn't quite quick enough in the latter case - two Roman cities were founded there (as well as the Carthaginian one I later extorted) before I could lock up the whole thing.

I think the number of close-by luxuries helped a great deal in making the victory as easy as it was. I managed to get all four local ones with my initial expansion. Camulodunum gave me the fifth (incense), and my ivory poaching gave me number six. This was sufficient to keep my cities happy to size 12 with just marketplaces. I built very few temples once I had literature, and never built a cathedral, but still only ever had happiness problems in a very few cities that were ahead of the general growth curve.

Here's my final minimap --

Renata

 

[MadScot]

v1.21f

Well, I must have been psychic or something.. at the end of my 1st spoiler thread I commented that I had met the Celts in 2950 or so, the Carthaginians in 1990 and Rome in 950, and "I should meet the next civ in 10AD". Well, I had built only two galleys - one had died in about 70BC (ambushed by a squid the first turn at sea) and my second galley nervously ventured out in 10BC. I could just sea a patch of 'sea' across the ocean (off the Indian coast, in fact) and fearing the squids more than the open waters my galley sailed due East. As luck would have it an Indian galley was also at sea, and was just inside meeting range. They gave us contact with all the other civs for techs (we had the Great Library, so giving away techs was no hardship). Our galley then sank the next turn, before it could move again! I purposely never traded contact between the Romans/Carthage and the others, to keep them slower. (They eventually made contact on their own, in 400AD or so)

The following are views before starting my move, with the galley about to move, and following the move, with Ghandi contacted. Note there's something odd about the Indian border; it's visible in the first shot, but not the second. It didn't affect my decision to sail - it was the sea that made that the inevitable decision - but it is odd. Note also the threatening 1hp squid!

Border visible above, but not when the galley is the active unit, below.

The lucky encounter...

I got Engineering for the Middle Ages (in 230BC or so) and became a Republic in 110BC, while finishing off the Celts (in 70BC). The AIs very kindly concentrated on the bottom row of techs for me - by the time the GL expired in 520AD I had been given Chemistry. I'd also built up a massive treasury, something like 5000g. (Massive for me, anyway).

I attacked Carthage in 530AD with about 20 Knights and 12 Azap Infantry. We finally gave them peace in 710AD, having reduced them to a single city on the island East of Rome. Rome then wiped them out next turn. (I ended the war with 20 Knights, too )

The war actually lasted about 100 years more than it needed to. Towards the end the last 2 Carthaginian cities on the mainland were both building wonders (Sistine and Leonardo, the latter replaced by Bach at one point). Our armies received regular updates of Carthaginian progress on 'our' wonders. But we built Sistine first, and India JS Bach. So we then took the two cities.

We did capture SunTzu, the Great Wall and the Pyramids in Carthage, and the Lighthouse in utica. And had full ownership of our continent, plus 2 ex-carthaginian cities on the island to the east of Rome, which we obtained in the peace talks.

About 2 turns later Spain sneak attacked us, dropping off 3 longbows and a spear from 2 galleys. 3 Knights and an Azap killed them off. They then landed a couple of units next to one of the ex-carthaginian cities. We could not defend it, so traded it to the Chinese. Deprived of their easy target, the Spanish sued for peace.

710AD-900AD was our golden age - we entered the Industrial age in 870AD, thanks to our rapid tech pace (and huge budget surpluses). Our GA was triggered by building Copernicus in Sogut, and that caused the Sistine Chapel to advance to be built the same turn, forestalling a wonder cascade. We also built Adam Smith's and Newton during the GA.

In terms of odd things during the game:
Spotted the Roman galleasses, but they are no problem to me, as they have never fought us. it was a close thing when they piled in on Carthage, but I kept them away from the last 2 cities, and they helped out by killing them off for me - no flips

There's something weird about the Romans in my game - they have gone culture-crazy. 3 of the top 5 cities are Roman, and not one of those has a wonder. It's very odd. They have their own island, I have mine.
Look at the Roman culture surge.

3 cities in the top 5, not a wonder between them

I'm beginning to think the Romans started with something odd. Did they have the tech to build Colosseums at the start or something odd like that?

Carthage was quite weak - only a couple of Numideans in most cities. I think they 'wasted' a lot of time on amassing wonders (for me!) in Carthage. In fact both they and the Celts were underwhelming.

I got my solitary GL from an attack in Carthage - used him to jump the Palace to just N of Carthage. I now have two good core areas - the older one fully developed, the Carthaginian one still growing. Most of the central jungle belt is gone now - 22 Ottoman workers, 12 Celtic slaves and 29 Carthaginians made quick work of the terrain!

Now I have to decide what kind of victory to pursue. With a single large island/continent to myself and the AI generally pathetic at invasions, I should be secure from their threats.

Minimap progress:
250AD

710AD

The only change since is that the Chinese have the city at the N of the island E of Rome now.

 

[Sirp]

I discovered the Indians very early on. I sent a galley out into the sea, in between fog, through a passage the Romans had kindly cut for me. I was going to return the galley to safe waters, but sighted a purple border, so instead sent it on a suicide voyage, which it survived, and contacted the Indians. Brokering between the continents gave me all contacts and tech parity.

After building the Pyramids early on, I expanded out and filled in most of my territory. I had built up some warriors which I upgraded to swordsmen and prepared to attack the Celts.

Just as I was getting ready to attack, some civs reached the middle ages, and there was a barbarian uprising in the north lands. No problem, 15 Ottoman swords turned back for a couple of turns to slaughter the barbarians without loss.

They then went south and captured and razed several Celtic cities, finally making peace for another city which left the Celts with just their capital.

I decided I would be going for a quick-as-possible conquest victory. The best place for my Forbidden Palace, I figured, would be near my capital, giving me an elongated core. It would be too difficult and take too long to get a second core up and running. So, I self-built the Forbidden Palace a little south-west of my capital, completing it in 50AD.

After cities built a library and a marketplace, they would build a barracks, and then start building horsemen. I got one city after another up to the crucial 15 shields per turn mark, and massed many horses.

I still had around 10 swordsmen left over from the Celtic wars, and I decided that they would be no use later, so I might as well use them now. I upgraded them to MDIs, and first attacked Carthage, since I didn't really want to break my peace treaty with the Celts.

I captured Rusicade in 130AD, and then decided I had enough troops to risk attempting to cripple Carthage by siezing their capital. I only gave myself around a 50% chance of winning, since I had about 7 MDIs, and Carthage would be no-doubt well-defended. Still, a 50% chance of capturing their capital was better than having troops sitting around becoming obsolete. In 170AD Carthage fell to me.

I didn't have enough infantry to push on, and I didn't want to have a bloodbath of horsemen on my hand losing to their mercenaries, so I decided to leave the rest of Carthage for my sipahi, and signed a peace treaty with them.

Meanwhile I was b-lining down the bottom of the tech tree, going for military tradition. I had waited a while hoping for the AI to research engineering, but it was taking a long time, so I gave up and researched it myself. India had built the great library, so I made some money selling them techs, but for the most part, the AIs had very little money to give. I hoped to keep the AIs away from gunpowder as long as possible. I had pulled a short straw by getting the disappointing Monotheism as my free tech.

I never researched Chivalry, concentrating on building lots of horsemen.

I used my remaining four MDIs to attack the final Celtic city, and in doing so generated my first leader in 290AD. Perfect. He was used to rush Leonardo's Workshop, of course. The Chinese, who were fairly weak, built Sun Tzu's soon after. They would be my first target on the big continent.

I discovered Military Tradition shortly before 500AD, and declaring war on Carthage, I cut research to 0, generating a golden age and pouring all my cash into upgrades of horsemen to sipahi. My major cities used golden age production to build sipahi.

The sipahi were brutally effective against Carthage. I didn't lose a single military unit in that entire war, and my sipahi retreated only twice.

Next my eyes were set on Rome. I had acquired a Carthaginian colony on the north end of the Roman continent and massed Sipahi in it. The Carthaginians were banished to the island east of the Romans. I had around seventy sipahi by this time: a deadly force.

I traded for Education from the Indians and then researched Astronomy, and then Navigation.

Declaring war on Rome, my sipahi charged and captured several cities, and slaughtered the Roman infantry - they had no mounted units at all, which made it so brutally easy.

I lost no units in that war either, until the siege of Rome, where two sipahi were killed, and then one more at another Roman city. The entire Roman continent was taken with the loss of only three sipahi, and they were banished to the island to the east as well.

I used a great leader to rush Magellan's Expedition to speed my invasion force. I had all the technologies I wanted, and research was nixed.

I was now building an invasion force to go west and attack the weak Chinese, taking Sun Tzu's. A smaller invasion force was preparing to inflict some initial damage on the powerful Indians by going east. War was declared on India, and military alliances against them with Spain and Egypt signed.

The Chinese had spearmen and fell with pathetic ease. The Indians were stronger, having muskets, and I suffered my first real losses, painfully so.

I started advancing on the Indians from the east and the west, and finally destroyed them, then turning on the Spanish and Egyptians. The Spanish put up some resistance, but the large Egyptians were pathetic, having many of their cities defended by spearmen. That I captured their saltpeter source on the first turn of war didn't help their cause.

I had not paid due enough attention to the island to the east of Rome, that having several exiled civs on it. A couple of Roman cities flipped back to them, and since the entire island was left guarded by two sipahi, I had to take time to rush more sipahi and take the cities back. That slowed my conquest down by one turn.

My victory by conquest finally came in 740AD, with a game score of 8103, taking 18-and-a-half hours.

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

@Renata: Looks like we were two of the few warmongers, well played

@MadScot: I believe you would have been better off moving your galley three tiles to the north-east, instead of three tiles east. You would have ended up right next to the purple border, and I understand that if you are right next to a border, you automatically get contact (probably because they can see you). The way you do it, it was only because you fortuitously saw an Indian galley that you made contact.

-Sirp.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by Sirp
@Renata: Looks like we were two of the few warmongers, well played
-Sirp.

Thanks, you too. Looks like you're not going to lose to your student. That must've been a strong incentive.

Did you use Republic for your game? I decided to try my game in monarchy, which was fun and different. I used very small invasion forces, in absolute terms, winning versus Carthage especially more by attrition than anything else, and I took much higher losses than I usually do. (Yes, I attacked three cities-worth of numids with horses and swords -- pretty good results, actually.) Even my invasion of Egypt was only with about 25 units (they looked weak enough that it would be safe, and it was), and I never had more than 50 sipahi. It was quite a lot of fun playing pedal-to-the-metal darn-the-combat-calculator-full-speed-ahead, but I think I'll go back to my old style in future. It starts slower, but has better acceleration with the much lower losses.

The other reason I asked about Republic was that you reached military tradition a lot earlier than me. I had expected to be even or behind in tech, but wound up leading the tech race myself (in monarchy!) in the middle ages, probably due to India's pre-occupation with Spain on the other continent. Money was never an issue, but earlier MT would've been much better.

And finally, I think you were absolutely correct to build your forbidden palace close to home for this type of victory -- I built mine down south with a leader about 100 AD, but it took centuries to get the new core up and running, and that area only ever contributed sipahi as re-inforcements for the overseas invasion (i.e. in a time period after your game was already over).

Anyway, I might try similar strategies again sometime - the first time you do anything is *always* less-than-optimal and this was hardly my best-played game ever - but the comparison was very interesting.

Renata

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Sirp
@MadScot: I believe you would have been better off moving your galley three tiles to the north-east, instead of three tiles east. You would have ended up right next to the purple border, and I understand that if you are right next to a border, you automatically get contact (probably because they can see you). The way you do it, it was only because you fortuitously saw an Indian galley that you made contact.

I'm sure you're right. But I only got the first image - the one with the clearly visible border - when I loaded the 10BC/AD save to take those screenshots. At the time I only saw the second image (because I had no other active units nearby, and when the cycle moved to the galley I got the second view). I can now just see a border on the edge of the FOW, knowing where it should be, but at the time I could not. So I was really aiming for the sea that I had seen when the galley was sent out.

 

[Sirp]

Originally posted by Renata


Thanks, you too. Looks like you're not going to lose to your student. That must've been a strong incentive.

Wellll I had no idea what kind of a game you were going to play or what kind of score you'd get

Anyway if you improved much from your previous GOTM it'd be difficult to beat you by much

Did you use Republic for your game? I decided to try my game in monarchy, which was fun and different.

Yes, the only time I use monarchy is if I'm playing Always War, or right before I go into a long war if I'm religious, and only sometimes then.

With Republic, you can just build a much bigger military and hit them much harder and get the war over and done with. When you're not losing troops, you don't get much war weariness either. The game was a few turns from completion before my first war weariness hit came in, and it was only because of some high losses against India.

I used very small invasion forces, in absolute terms, winning versus Carthage especially more by attrition than anything else, and I took much higher losses than I usually do. (Yes, I attacked three cities-worth of numids with horses and swords -- pretty good results, actually.)

I mostly used very large invasion forces, although in some areas they were small. Even five sipahi are pretty brutal.

Yes, you *can* get horsemen to work well enough against numids or pikes. Many people assume they are hopeless and won't even try, but horsemen are pretty good, and will take a pike-defended city without too many losses.

I just decided to wait for sipahi, since I figured taking them early and taking them later wouldn't make much difference.

Even my invasion of Egypt was only with about 25 units (they looked weak enough that it would be safe, and it was), and I never had more than 50 sipahi. It was quite a lot of fun playing pedal-to-the-metal darn-the-combat-calculator-full-speed-ahead, but I think I'll go back to my old style in future. It starts slower, but has better acceleration with the much lower losses.

Yes they were wimpy in my game too. Defending everything with spears. I started a little slower, waiting to sipahi, and then just went nuts.

The other reason I asked about Republic was that you reached military tradition a lot earlier than me. I had expected to be even or behind in tech, but wound up leading the tech race myself (in monarchy!) in the middle ages, probably due to India's pre-occupation with Spain on the other continent. Money was never an issue, but earlier MT would've been much better.

Yes, I would have gotten there first because of Republic....as well perhaps as a more productive FP area, and maybe better land development (I really don't have a clue of your land/city development so I can't comment )

-Sirp.

 

[Smirk]

Originally posted by MadScot
Border visible above, but not when the galley is the active unit, below.

Kind of an annoying bug in PTW, this isn't related to the active unit its related to the screen not updating. I've seen it for land improvements and the Food and shields display, but hadn't seen it yet for borders. And easy way to see this is to turn on Food and Shield display or turn it off, and then see that nothing has changed on your map until you move the map around.

 

[DaveMcW]

The border isn't visible in the second picture because it is in the dark area outside a unit's 2-square visibility. You can use Ctrl-Shift-M to turn off the fog and see it again.

Also, people with high-quality monitors can see it in both pictures.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by DaveMcW
The border isn't visible in the second picture because it is in the dark area outside a unit's 2-square visibility. You can use Ctrl-Shift-M to turn off the fog and see it again.

Also, people with high-quality monitors can see it in both pictures.

I'll vouch for that last. The border is trivially easy to see on my monitor here at work, but absolutely invisible at home.

There is something to MadScot's 'active unit' hypothesis, though. Have you ever fortified a unit at sea? When you do, the brightest area of visibility actually expands around the unit -- you get the usual tiles plus also that little bit of 'edge of fog' that you normally only get around cities or if you use ctrl-shift-m.

Renata

 

[forged]

Hi -- This has been an amazing learning experience for me. (Especiallly since prior to this game, I had never played past Warlord.)

My question to you all is: When you produce a great leader is it better to use it to build armies or hurry wonders? In my game, I have produced 2 so far. The first one ended up hurrying the Universal Sufferage wonder (which was my first major wonder). The second one ended up speeding up a palace jump from Sogut to Carthage.

(I had built a Foreign Palace really close to Sogut well before doing that.)

Thanks,
Forged

 

[ltcoljt]

Dear Forged,

I'll answer that question for the hobnobs around here, as they are unlikely to say anything.

Yes, build wonders including the forbidden palace. The GOTM elite would never be likely to build armies unless they have nothing else to use a leader on.

You have to remember that these GOTMers are pretty awesome. They would never admit to having an army. They can handle the AI without armies.

Some of these folks around here will send out just two archers, on diety level, both in different directions and each walking uphill all the way and will own half the earth shortly after the wake is held for the last dinosaur.

 

[Hurricane]

I would say that people only rarely create armies with leaders, usually only if there are no wonders available (or in the near future), no palaces to rush and good chances of getting a new leader soon.

 

[hotrod0823]

Dear Forged,

I'll answer that question for the hobnobs around here, as they are unlikely to say anything.

Yes, build wonders including the forbidden palace. The GOTM elite would never be likely to build armies unless they have nothing else to use a leader on.

You have to remember that these GOTMers are pretty awesome. They would never admit to having an army. They can handle the AI without armies.

Some of these folks around here will send out just two archers, on diety level, both in different directions and each walking uphill all the way and will own half the earth shortly after the wake is held for the last dinosaur.

@Itcoljt: I am not sure why you feel the way you do but I don't think any deragatory comments really help the discussion at all. I have a completely different opinion and think that these discussion are very helpful.


On the leaders it is really a personal preference. Hurricane is right a leader rushed wonder at the right time can make all the difference but there is place for armies as well. Getting an early army to allow the Heroic Epic can help get those future leaders.

Personnally I would've saved the leader for ToE, one of the most powerful wonders to help get back in the tech hunt. Getting ToE and a jump start on Hoover Dam is a huge advantage. I prefer that over US. I tend to be less of a war monger and US doesn't help my game much. And in game that I am fighting I usually stay in Monarchy.

Hotrod

 

[Shillen]

I don't build armies until there's no useful wonders to build. The Heroic Epic is a mixed blessing. You pretty much waste that leader on the army, then you have to spend 200 shields on the Heroic Epic, which could have been used to produce 2-6 more military units instead, depending on the time period. And then you have to generate 5 more leaders before you benefit from the Heroic Epic.

I also never build the military academy or armies. They're completely not worth the shields they cost. The only armies I ever build are from leaders when there were no wonders available. Armies are rarely even helpful. They use up multiple military units in order to create one unit. This means you can attack less times per turn, although with higher success rate. They take a long time to heal up when damaged. They don't heal in 1 turn even in barracks cities. IMO they're only really helpful on defense. But with the new PTW AI they will never suicide their units on your full-health armies. So the only real use is to prevent the AI from attacking a certain city or your artillery stack. But they will just find another easier target.

As for forged's situation, I would have rushed the Palace with the first leader instead of the second. IMO the most important thing to do with leaders is to ensure optimal palace/fp positioning. There are a couple exceptions, like securing the pyramids in the ancient age, but in general the fp/palace are the most important structures in every game.

As for Universal Suffrage in particular it doesn't belong in this thread. This thread is for pre-industrial age topics.

 

[ltcoljt]

Derogatory?

Not.

If anything I was being complimentary. You misunderstood my post I think HOTROD.

 

[forged]

Originally posted by hotrod0823


Personnally I would've saved the leader for ToE, one of the most powerful wonders to help get back in the tech hunt. Getting ToE and a jump start on Hoover Dam is a huge advantage. I prefer that over US. I tend to be less of a war monger and US doesn't help my game much. And in game that I am fighting I usually stay in Monarchy.

Actually, it is interesting that you say this. After missing most of the wonders up to US, I managed to snag the ToE and Hoover Dam as well. I think part of it was that I was in a branch that the AI wasn't racing down. I think the other part is that I have spent large chunks of time being involved with world wars that only seemed to slow down the tech race a little bit. (Well, that and the fact the Spanish got wiped out without me lifting a finger. )

However, since I have spent a significant chuck of the game since entering Middle Ages in war, I'm not sure the US was a complete waste of time. [At the time I was waging war in a Republic.]

My biggest problem at the moment is deciding whether to go for a military win or a space race win at this time. Diplomatic and Culture wins for me are not an option.

Forged

 

[forged]

Originally posted by Shillen
As for Universal Suffrage in particular it doesn't belong in this thread. This thread is for pre-industrial age topics.

Ah crud. Thanks for pointing out that I was out of line for talking about the Universal Suffrage in this thread.

My apologies all.

Forged

 

[hotrod0823]

@Itcoljt: sorry if I misunderstood your meaning. I think all questions are helpful and should be answered. I may not be the best person to answer as you pointed out there are a lot of great players and I think most are very helpful. Then ofcourse there are the middle of the road players (such as myself) that play okay and may have few things to say as well.