The Emperor Masters' Challenge 4 (Warlords v.208)

[aelf]

It would be nice if everyone could play the same game again

I agree. I can't comprehend why they decided to include some improvements to the AI in the first place, something that has divided the community and caused negative side effects. People knew the AI was dumb, but they mostly seemed happy enough to simply advance through the levels. Now that Firaxis has implemented this without taking proper measures, the game is thrown into imbalance and all sorts of ugliness have appeared on the forums (believe me, I've received enough insults through PM from a certain Powerslave because of my views on the issue). Why couldn't they have just fixed bugs and the vassal issue with the patch?

 

[lilnev]

Personally I like the AI improvements, and I think they make for a better game. In particular, I get to keep most of the cities I conquer because they're actually on the right spot. And they often come with towns instead of infinite acreage of farms. Yes, there are some balance issues, but I figure if I'm playing at high levels I'm doing it for the pure challenge, and I've forfeited any pretext of fairness or rationality, and most of my free will as to how I want to win. But I agree that division in the community is unfortunate.

Back to the game: I'm pretty sure that Sattelites are required for the Space Elevator as well as Robotics. And you might even need the Apollo Program first? Not sure about that, but you should check before proceeding. I seem to remember not being able to do anything before completing Apollo, which makes it the highest priority. Once you have it underway, get Computers so you can have your laboratories ready when Apollo's done.

I see some cities building Banks. Are they going to be worth anything when you can keep the slider so high? Factories and coal plants everywhere (I used to love 3 Gorges, but now I realize it just takes too long to come online).

Great war, by the way, and I agree with all the major decisions. Be careful how many techs you trade to the leader, though. It's almost a zero-sum game at this point.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Winston Hughes]

Superb warmongering and diplomacy once again, aelf. Too many times I've let a war between two AI civs work out to my disadvantage by failing to play the role of peacebroker at the right moment.

And, as usual, a hugely entertaining thread.

 

[carl corey]

Great round, aelf! I'm glad you got your Aluminium, hopefuly you'll just be cruising to the Space Race victory from now. Check every few turns if you can't negociate the Defensive Pact with Napoleon. I hope you manage to get it. Once done I don't think that Saladin is going to bother any of you anymore.

 

[Sisiutil]

Well played. The only thing still making me nervous, as it has all game, is your power rating. I'm not sure how long you can afford putting off Free Religion for its research bonus; then again, I'm not sure how long you want to exist without a shared faith keeping Napoleon happy.

I think the end game will require extraordinary diplomacy on your part, but you seem to excel at that, so I have every confidence in you ability to pull this one off.

 

[futurehermit]

Great stuff aelf. I agree: if you can get defensive pact with nappy that will be huge.

In acidsatyr's current deity succession game on deity (played with Blake who does the AI), they've pretty much come to the same conclusion: the upgrade subsidies need to go.

Next round go robotics ftw!

 

[cabert]

you don't need the apollo program for space elevator
I know it's strange, but that's the way it goes.

What I'd do in this situation :
- go to computers first.
- prepare my empire (yours here) for the grand final
= put cities in 4 categories, and give them the buildings for their role
1) big production for the most expensive parts (engine!)/ wonders
2) Production cities for "normal" parts (thrusters ...)
3) Hybrid cities for casings
4) science cities

One small opinion :
Only the first category needs a factory + power + laboratory.
For the others, the laboratory may be enough.
2nd category can use a factory now, and build a clean power plant later (waiting for the right tech to come).

Another opinion :
If you go for the internet, you won't need any more tech trading. It's very cheap in your top production cities.

 

[aelf]

Satelites is needed for Space Elevator, but the AIs tend to go for that first and not Robotics. Hence, getting Robotics quickly and then getting the discounted Satelites is the best way to ensure that you get the wonder. It does not need Apollo Program to be built.

About our power graph, I don't see how this situation is reasonable. Can one keep up with the AI without paying huge maintenance costs and having half of one's army constantly becoming obsolete?

And one thing that I'm slightly concerned with is the lack of comments lately. Surely I deserve more help for this less-than-conventional game

 

[cabert]

I did my comment already.

IMHO you don't run the risk of an invasion from any other than nappy.
They will all switch to "space race" mode, including Saladin.
maybe you should have left Napoleon busy on saladin ?

You could trade physics around for money (+MT? is it worth something to you?) and keep them all busy researching rocketry.

 

[Elandal]

Certainly you deserve congratulations on handling the situation thus far I'm sure some comments about the future development would be helpful - I simply can't think of anything to offer for that.

I don't think there's any real problem in building a spaceship anymore. If no AI is churning out at the very least casings by the time you start Apollo, that should be fine. The problem is rather in being allowed to build a spaceship instead of units. That is mostly diplomacy, in which you have shown such skill that I can't find anything at all to add to.

What I can say is that I can't think of anything special regarding Napoleon and defpact. I could guess that The Little Corporal doesn't want a pact with someone not powerful enough (in his mind) to give him a real benefit, and I find power graph to be skewed. If I don't plan on invasions, keeping up in power means I have to get all cities that aren't on a special project onto units. Which is what I end up doing when going to space: any city that is not building something directly involved in going up is building a unit. From the last update I gather you were doing just that: units unless there's something special to be built.

 

[Sisiutil]

In my most recent off-line game, Monty was my pet dog. He was more powerful than me through the whole game, but started getting left behind in techs by mid-game--making him easy to bribe and keep happy. We shared the same religion (Christianity, which I had founded), so between the shared faith and the mutual military struggles he was either "Pleased" or "Friendly" with me through the whole game.

The end game came along and I had taken Mansa Musa as a vassal. I also switched to Free Religion for the research boost, gearing up for a space race win. Monty turned surly, canceling our open borders agreement. "Uh oh", I thought. Sure enough, a few turns later--just as I was starting to build the Space Elevator and the Apollo Program was nearing completion--he declared war.

I was more advanced, so I definitely had an advantage. I had several tanks, bombers, marines, artillery, and gunships to his infantry and Cavalry. (Yep, good ol' Monty, up to his usual tricks.)

I think you can see the similarity to your situation with Napoleon. Your complication is you don't have quite the tech lead on Nappy that I had on Monty. However, I still think you can deal with him. Instead of trying to match or outdo Napoleon in military, which you never will, focus on putting together a good anti-invasion force along your shared border in case he does the same thing and invades you at an inconvenient point. You have artillery now, so build some of those to hurt his stacks. Keep a unit, or better still, a spy touring his territory to see what his best offensive units are, and build counters. Also note where his strategic resources are (especially oil) and ensure you can destroy them if need be.

Also have a city-capturing stack ready to go. After I crippled Monty's stacks with saturation bombing, they went home, but he still refused to talk. I took one of his cities, and suddenly he was all roses and sunshine and didn't bother me again. You can even give the city back to him if you want to.

 

[PMabey]

I really don't understand why Nappy wont sign a defensive pact with you. His reason is he is not happy enough with you, which seems stupid as he's friendly. Nor do i think its because of your low power rating - ive signed def pacts with ai's with far higher power than me before, and he specifically says he is not happy enough.

I downloaded the game and switched religion to christianity to see if Ramesess would sign one to check that it wasnt just Nappy being an idiot. Despite now being friendly, he 2 wont sign def pact. However one interesting thing to note is that despite not having the same religion bonus, and having the different relgion penalty, Nappy was still friendly. Maybe you can switch to free religion after all.

If you stay buddist, i would say that the only fear you have is an attack from the other continent. So you'll need to build a decent navy and be prepared for any transports heading your way. Despite not being on the space route tech path, flight may be a useful tech in dealing with any invader.

IMO the space elevator is unecessary. The hammers saved on parts is not normally enough to compensate for its cost. So i would go for rocketry next, start apollo program in ironworks city, then prepare 3? other cities for spaceship/unit production - get computers next for labs.

 

[ShredZ]

Im just curious about one decision, the one in which you made Nappy declare peace for Plastics was it? My idea was, although it may have hurt your power even more, did you consider 'gifting' Nappy units so that he can defend his own cities and maybe do some damage to Saladin keep the war going and take an even further tech lead... ?

As I usually play Prince/Monarch - it seems to me, the only difference between winning at this level over those is using diplomacy MUCH more often, I tend to ignore it too much.

Also, I think you got lucky with the AIs willingness to trade with you. I started another Prince game last night, took the tech path that you did, but once I got to alphabet and start looking for trades, they were all red!!! I could get anything, it was so annoying, Ironworking was reded out and I cant remember the reason stated, it wasnt "we just dont like you enuf" it was something else... grrr~

 

[aelf]

The no defensive pact thing is really quite stupid. And I see no possible explanation for it except that it's a bug in the new patch. One after another, as they say

Gifting Nappy units to help him survive was indeed a viable idea. But looking at the number of units that Saladin has at his disposal, it was a dangerous situation. If Nappy had not lost Numidian, he could simply lose a city elsewhere or lose a large number of units, which would severely weaken him. I did not want Saladin to be in a better position to crush Napoleon later on at the end of the war. Also, we had very few units to spare. And, besides, I thought with peace we could sign a defensive pact with Napoleon, but for some reason that turns out to be impossible.

Well, we do have a significant military tech lead on Napoleon. We have Industrialism and Artillery on him. All we need is Combustion to produce tanks. Saladin, though, remains a big worry, IMO. He's the vengeful type, in my experience (you know, the whole holy struggle and past golden age thing ). We have an even bigger tech lead on him, but he has loads of units. His human wave attacks would be enough to overwhelm us. I second the idea of building lots of Artillery for defense.

Anyway, I'm tempted to go for Combustion next and then Radio, Computers/Plastics and Robotics. How about Flight? How important is aircraft for our defense? Having bombers to bomb invading stacks would be great, but that might deviate a little too much from our main research goals.

Anyway, getting Space Elevator is also a matter of denying it to the AI. I've had quite a few close space races where my ability to finish all the parts a few turns earlier was all that got me the wins. If the AI was the one who had the Space Elevator, I'm sure those games would have been lost.

 

[Sisiutil]

Anyway, I'm tempted to go for Combustion next and then Radio, Computers/Plastics and Robotics. How about Flight? How important is aircraft for our defense? Having bombers to bomb invading stacks would be great, but that might deviate a little too much from our main research goals.

In my own experience, Flight is a worthwhile detour on the way to a space race victory in this sort of situation. Build a few fighters and bombers and your power rating will jump substantially. Being able to significantly weaken any stack from a safe distance is a great option to have--they'll often turn back home to heal.

Frankly, Flight should be a pre-requisite tech for the space race--it's kind of absurd that it isn't. Wasn't every single one of the Astronauts in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs a pilot? Not to mention the crossover in engineering...

 

[aelf]

Maybe we should research Combustion -> Radio -> Flight -> Computers -> Plastics -> Robotics -> Rocketry -> Satelites, in that order?

 

[NaZdReG]

yaarg!!

my sheepdog literally just ATE my copy of warlords.. I'm now on sabattical from the game but I'll be following the EMC and ALC games from you and sisuitil, hopefully that will keep my interest while I scrounge up a new copy

NaZ

 

[aelf]

I think I'll play tonight. Any more suggestions?

 

[carl corey]

Well, I'll just say that getting Flight and pumping out some bombers can indeed help you a lot. Plus they don't get any experience, so you can build them wherever you want, like in Cheju for example. That city won't become anything specific anytime soon, so making it build bombers on infinite queue can be its thing.

 

[dragomaster]

Greate thred.

It whod be nice to have bombers around if anyone attack you, they can change the outcome.

I having problem on monarch. so my advice could me misleading though.