Success, the Indians and You

[Arrian]

dexters,

Thank you. But no, I don't have a webpage. By the way, I think my "AARs" pale in comparison to some of the others (Catt, for instance).

Yahweh,

Japan is a problem, yeah. My second city in the aforementioned game was my barracks town. It pumped vet spears & vet warriors (which were later upgraded to swords) for some time. That helped deter would-be attackers, I think - my military wasn't very weak for very long (I had one harrowing moment as Japanese archers marched across my land, then defended by regular warriors). Also, having the two nearby militarists at war with each other was a big stroke of luck. Thus, when I hit Japan, my force of ~10 horsemen, 5 swordsmen & a couple of spears sliced through them like a knife through butter. It was soooo easy. I think I lost 1 unit. Maybe 2.

I should also mention that I purposely traded luxuries to Persia for next to nothing to keep those jerks happy. The meek shall inherit the Earth.

For some reason, despite have cultural linkage on, Korea & the Mongols were replaced by Persia & Carthage. Carthage was nerfed by the major jungle they started in, but Persia is strong as hell, and China is no joke down in the far south either.

Tech

IIRC, here is what I did:

I traded Alphabet to the Zulu & Japan for Pottery + 10 gold and The Wheel + 10 gold, respectively. I think I managed to trade it to somebody else (china?) for more goodies later on.

I researched Mysticism at max right off the bat, but the damn Zulu must have gotten it from a hut, and so that was largely wasted. I was beaten to Writing too, IIRC. I forget how I got BW & IW... perhaps via trade, perhaps I researched one.

The big one, as is often the case, was polytheism. I researched it at max (twenty-some-odd turns) and then whored it around, which gave me 200+ gold, mapmaking, code of laws, and horsebackriding. Boo-yah! Then I beelined for Republic and switched to it immediately. After that I spent a long time with research off, using the GL (until I realized that Persia was rocketing ahead, and the other AIs were lagging, meaning that the GL wasn't helping me). I ended up having to scramble to research Monotheism, Theology, Engineering & Invention myself in order to get the Sistine & Leo's. I got Education from the GL & then went for Music Theory, which I later traded for... I forget... Banking? Sold printing press & demo too.

I still don't actually have a tech lead. The Persians have Physics, whereas I have Metallurgy and am siphoning off a huge gpt payment from them (85gpt, IIRC) for Demo. I figure if I hit them with 50 Cavalry before they get rifles, they will go down in approximately 5 turns.

I have 39 WE's now, 2 are elite, so that's 37 Cav. By the time my Demo for 85gpt deal with Persia runs out, I should have 50. I also just made an army with my first Leader, so I will have a 3-cav army for nutcracking.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, I'll have more to report soon, Shiva willing. In the meantime, I must ask: when (exactly) did you build the barracks? Was it warrior-barracks? Or warrior-worker-barracks? Or something please?

Please let me know, as I generally use my first two cities for settler/worker pumps.

Thanks again.

[Arrian]

I should also mention a couple of odds 'n ends:

I purchased 2 workers in the early game, one Japanese, one Zulu. The Japanese worker was part of a tech deal, whereas I just forked over the 115 gold for the Zulu guy.

Why was I willing to pay so much? Well, in the Japanese case, it didn't actually cost me much, since they didn't have enough gold to pay full price for my tech anyway. That worker probably cost me 25 gold in reality. So 2 slaves for 140 gold. Nothing special, I suppose, but I took a worker away from each of my closest neighbors & as a non-industrial civ, you need all the help you can get. And they did help.

The culture flip of that Persian town was quite deliberately engineered on my part, but even so, there is luck involved. That was a major plus.

I had horses, iron, and saltpeter all within my initial REXing borders. Again, nice luck there. Add in several major river systems, and it's a nice place.

I also had the amazing, incredible, unsinkable galley. I built 1 galley. One. I rowed down the coast and picked a likely "jumping off point" and sent it West. It didn't sink. I sent it west again. It didn't sink, and met the Aztecs & then Spain. 1st contact netted me some money (~150 gold) and their maps, but nothing huge. Then, I sent it north from their continent. Two more turns in ocean. No matter. I then discovered two large islands in the middle of nowhere, which are only now being colonized. After having mapped a huge part of the world, I jumped off again and sank. That galley absolutely ROCKED.

Finally, one of my early gameplans failed, and I'm glad it did. I was worried about how slow my civ was getting going and was worried about possibly not getting the GL. Therefore, I concocted the following plan:

Race to Republic while building the Colossus in my nice coastal capitol. The Colossus would trigger my GA, thus allowing me to punch out the GL quickly, and boosting my production & trade so that I could rush improvements and build/upgrade units.

As it turned out, Spain built the Colossus a few turns ahead of me (thus triggering their GA, resulting in their getting the Lighthouse). My Colossus build switched to the Library, which I got. My GA was therefore delayed until the late middle ages, when I have a much larger and better developed empire.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Yahweh,

IIRC, it was warrior-warrior-temple-barracks. Initially, that city didn't have much food (I had some irrigating to do, and needed a border expansion to get some other juicy tiles). So it was growing slowly but producing a decent # of shields.

That city also ended up building my FP, a granary, market, library, the Sistine, a university, a bank, a cathedral, and of course, more troops. It's quite productive now, at size 12. IIRC, it has 5 mined hills and some shielded grassland. Powerhouse. ~25 shields/turn (non-GA... now it's boosted into the upper 30s).

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Thanks for the info, Arrian. One last question...

If you can recall correctly, how many cities did you have after your REXing? Specifically, how many in your "core" area? Any outlying cities?

[Arrian]

Core:

Not many. 5-6, depending on what qualifies as "core."

I built nothing north of Delhi, because it was all plains, no river, and the Zulu were up there (and they're garbage, so I figured if they built a city it might flip). Thousands of years later, they had a size 6 city with no culture in it when my War Elephants rolled through.

I expanded aggressively eastward at first, because that's where the good land was. Japan had nice land and I was concerned. They actually forced me to build city #3 one tile SW ("1") of where I wanted it because they had a settler team ready to build a city that would have screwed me out of the site. It turned out ok.

There was a desert south of Delhi, south of which was some grass, hills, and then a jungle. SE was rivers & floodplains. So I plunked down cities there, and built a bunch of workers from those towns at first (then temples, then other stuff, like courthouses). With some tender loving care, the combo of irrigated floodplains and mined hills worked out nicely.

Outliers: yup. 3 cities in the jungle, 2 of which were designed to flip the Persian dyes city. As mentioned, that worked. Another outlier was built in the east, grabbing another river & floodplains area (wheat on FP, baby). After the FP was built & I got a courthouse there, it's a pretty nice place. It just took a long time to get that way. Finally, I built one more city, far to the south, seperated from my empire by 2 Persian towns. It has a whale & a wines source.

So that's a total of 11 cities built during the "REX" phase. Add 1 from the culture flip, and that's 12. Not that many.

Then I captured 3 from Japan, autorazing 2 others that I had to rebuild. Oh, and I built an extra to fill in a small penninsula, so that's 18. 3 Zulu cities down, 3 to go. So now I have 21, going on 24.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, 5-6 sounds about right to me, before the conquest. I've been doing about 10-12, and I think that's overdoing it for India's usual neighborhood (on a huge map with 16 civs)

[Arrian]

5-6 was the core. I built 11 total.

16 civs on a huge map has roughly the same space as 8 on a standard, right?

I forgot about you and your huge maps.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by Arrian

I forgot about you and your huge maps.

Hey man, if I'm going to slave my life away to pixels on a screen, I might as well slave utterly.

Besides, as the Indians, I feel I have the divine right to make up for real life and trounce the Persians, Arabs, Chinese, English, and French. My only regret is that Afghans are not fully represented as a civ.

[Arrian]

Well, I had hoped to hit Persia pre-nationalism. Unfortunately, my GPT deal with them lasted right until the turn they got it for free upon entering the Industrial Age. So my ~50 cav took a beating, but I still cut up their empire. I'm down to ~30 cav, and things took longer than I had expected due to some bad luck in the southwest and a size 12 hill city in the southeast (I had to spend a number of turns bombarding it with my cannons to drop it to size 6 before I could take it without suffering horrendous losses). I got a Leader and moved my Palace to Persia. So everything is great, right?

Wrong. I have Persia down to 4 cities (2 on the continent, on the other side of Carthage, and 2 island towns), but they managed to wrangle a MPP with China (for nationalism, by the look of things) and China declared war on me before I could pull my troops back from what's left of Persia. Now I'm in for it. China is strong. My defenses along the Chinese border are weak. Even though I brought along a lot of defenders in my invasion of Persia, I still feel a tad thin down there, due to the fact that my guys are musketmen (skipped nationalism for Steam Power & Industrialization, now beelining for Rep Parts). My northern powerhouse cities are building factories, so reinforcements won't be forthcoming for a bit.

I do, however, have ~5500 gold in the bank. That will come in handy, but I still think I'm gonna lose 2-3 border towns. Damn fool Chinese!

And now for the really annoying part: my initial declaration of war vs. Persia cut a trade route with Carthage. My fault, I should have noticed Carthage never bothered to build a harbor. All I had to do was build 1 tile of road to ensure that didn't happen. So now my rep is shot. Plus, I allied with Carthage vs. Persia, but Carthage ducked out early. I was annoyed at them, because I wanted them to capture 2 Persian towns inside their empire, so I actually brought them back in (the first time, they did it for free, the second cost me saltpeter & a luxury). This locks me into warfare with Persia for a while longer, and thus means that I will be a war with China for a while longer. I can wipe Persia out, but I have to get a galleon over to their island cities - and that means diverting 4 Cavalry from my fight with China... it's all very messy. Alternatively, I could say "screw this" and make peace with Persia, get nationalism from them in the peace deal, hold off China for a few turns & make peace with them, and be done with this until Tanks.

See, this is why I like to fight early on - no MPPs, no alliances even, until writing! I would actually like to have started as China on this map and worked my way north (Persia first, then India, then Japan, then maybe wheel on Carthage, then finish the Zulu).

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Ooh! That is sounding nasty. But fun, in a nasty kind of way.

Well, I gave India a shot this morning, incorporating the bulk of strategies from this thread. I ignored my own advice - I started on an "Asia only" continent (plus Spain, a civilization I loathe utterly) - but played it out anyways, as there were silks and spices nearby. No other luxuries on the whole continent, but there are two mid-sized continents nearby with additional luxuries, hosting the Babs and Arabs on one and the Ottomans on an island all their own.

I went for Writing first and was able to trade that massively. I must admit, however, it was luck that put me in my current strong position. Japan started way up north, on a peninsula, behind a massive jungle. Also, Korea's third city was placed in a poor location, away from the beautiful river valleys I coveted.

Still, my own skill did have something to do with my growth to date... I built more warriors initially then normally, and built more workers (1 after each city had a warrior, then more from my flood plains towns) than I normally do. Two of these warriors attacked the third Spanish city... Spain was in a good position to whup me and expand into the same lush river valleys, but miraculously, after about 10 turns of "war" where no troops were lost on either side (apart from the 2 warriors I initially attacked with, and lost), the Spanish sued for peace at the price of their third city! Needless to say, their growth has been forever stunted.

Getting Iron Working early (from a hut I believe, after about 20 turns of research) allowed me to spot all the iron and claim a lot of it... the Koreans, Spanish and Mongols have no iron... China, to my northwest, has plenty of it, and for once, China is quite large... I have to stay on good terms with them, obviously.

I flipped one Korean city, but surprisingly, no others yet... still, my culture is solid. I have three barracks cities. Many of my cities are underdefended, but the barracks towns will pump enough Spearmen, then focus on building horsemen to upgrade to WE.

My chief competitor is Korea, which I traded currency to in exchange for 230 gold and 2 workers... now, we're racing to Construction, which'll put them temporarily ahead of me in the tech race... I might lose a wonder to them, but with no iron my war elephants will probably take them out.

But I have lots of options in this game, and I want everyone and anyone's feedback as to what direction I should take now. Therefore, I include this here saved game file. Please, give me some feedback!

[Arrian]

Sounds like you're in a good situation. You've hurt Korea significantly by grabbing those 2 workers (that won't manifest for a while, but you may look back 50 turns from now and wonder why the hell Korea is such crap ).

You building more workers is a good thing to be sure Many, if not most, civ players that are struggling either 1) do not use their workers properly; 2) do not have enough workers; or 3) both.

Are you trying for the GL or not? (I'm at "work" so I can't download your game and check it out).

-Arrian

p.s. In my game, I noticed why Persia was such a tough opponent. I knew they had nice land, but I never really looked all that closely at it. I have captured 11 Persian cities. Of those, 4 are "non-core" - on the other side of an inland sea from Persia proper. That leaves 7 "core" cities. 6 of those were on rivers. All 6 were size 12's. Add to that land Persia's strong traits, and it's no wonder I had a real tech race on my hands!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Unfortunately, I am at "work" as well, and cannot reply properly... but more coming soon...

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Alright. I'm at the reception desk now so I can write more freely about my game without risk of being caught.

Anyhow, I have zero dinero in my treasury. I think I paid a grotesque amount to someone with no appreciation of money - either the Chinese or Mongols - for mathematics, and then built embassies with the outlying civs, and hence have only about 100 gold left.

I'm in a Monarchy (preparing for war, thanks) with science set to 70% (the rest is taxes) and I'm earning about 1 to 2 gpt. This'll change over the course of about 20 turns when all my cities have marketplaces, and by this time I expect Korea and I to be neck and neck in the tech race... Neither Korea nor I have Republic or Construction. I'm 7 turns from Construction and I'm not sure if Korea's going for that or Republic.

Unfortunately, Carthage, somewhere overseas, beat me to the Great Library. However, I got HG instead, so I'm content for the time being. The Oracle is also overseas, as are the Pyramids, but the Koreans have the Lighthouse, which I'm looking to acquire.

Obviously, I'll be able to take out the Spanish at some point. Korea is the most desirable target (just to put them out of the game).

The question now is: go for Chivalry, accept a slight tech race lag with Korea, and then invade them and steal whatever they build? -or- keep up with them as best I can, trade for Chivalry, and trigger my GA with a war against Spain?

Then, of course, there's the Mongols and Chinese, with their UUs, to think about, but I think I can keep them placated for now, and behind in the tech race... still, I'd like to conquer my continent relatively soon, so I could perhaps take at least Babylon out overseas.

Feedback?

[Arrian]

I'm 7 turns from Construction and I'm not sure if Korea's going for that or Republic.

In my experience, the AI usually goes for construction.

What do you have for an army currently?

-Arrian