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Khan Baliq from Builder for the Great Khans
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Author |
File Description |
Beijing Tag |
Posted on 02/19/08 @ 04:38 AM
File Details |
Origin: |
Custom |
Score: |
26617 |
Population: |
7090 |
Difficulty: |
Very Hard |
Minimap:
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Another huge map with a variety of areas in which to build. An area suitable for irrigated farms has been pre-laid out, you don’t have to build them in the prescribed area but it makes life easier to do so.
There are two housing goals, 600 people in Heavenly Compounds and a total of 6000 in Luxurious Apartments or better. So you need at least 24 fully evolved elite houses. You could try to squeeze them into one block but this is tricky, you’re better off with two blocks. I can usually get 20 elites to a block, so two blocks is 40 Hvnly Cpds which is 1,000 residents so I’m gonna need another 5,000 in Lux Apts. Using the PWTWP&C spreadsheet tool by VitruviusAIA and Nero Would (which I’ve recently discovered on this site) I worked out that I will need another 68 or more fully evolved common plots, so that’s two standard common blocks needed. The spreadsheet also provides consumption totals for goods (e.g. food, hemp, tea) which is handy.
I briefly considered a sort of single common super-block with 70 houses, multiple markets and service buildings but the terrain makes this difficult - I would probably mess it up and suffer walker coverage problems anyway!
Year one - The immigrant/trader entrance is top centre, the exit is top left and the farm area is top right so it is practical to try to keep the housing close to this region. I opted to squeeze in forty or so plots into a common block just to the left and below the immigrant/trader entrance point. There was also room for a grand market, mill and a small loop for production/entertainment buildings. Close by I laid out my main trading/production area. As residents streamed in built one food farm and a hemp farm. The map allows for three farmed crops plus hunter tents as well as imported food so this aspect should not be overly problematic.
Kashgar traded from the start, Kaicheng and Ningxia opened trade for free, the Mongol Empire allied late in the year but the others required a cash incentive to open up. I started trade with Kaifeng, Jiangling and Lin’an, the first two to import raw silk and lacquer, the latter to export carved jade. Added a few feng shui dependant production buildings to the loop and started to produce paper, carved jade and silk.
Housing evolved up to attractive cottage level with about 740 residents and almost 300 workers, managed to collect a few taxes and staff up the admin city once the farms could be switched off. All this chewed up money and the fledgling city finished in the red for the year. Ignored all the troop requests.
Tax +220, Exports +1700, Coin zero, Imports -1,900, Construction -8,000, net in/out -10,400, balance -1,300.
Years two, three and four – failed to save individual years so this is from memory. The Mongol Empire had allied late in year one and they kindly bailed me out with a gift of 1,600 cash. They then followed this up with a (scripted) gift of 7,255 cash. I used this money to buy as much tea, silk and lacquerware as possible before supplies were cut off. Also imported as much raw silk and lacquer as possible and stored it up. I had set up trade with most cities by end of year four. Previous run throughs had shown that luxury supplies became quite limited and could cause elite devolvement.
Late year two/early year three built the first elite block on the plateau near the trading area. Ran into large deficit but the elites would soon kick in needed taxes. Late year three/early year four build a second elite block adjacent to the first. I now had two mills so to prevent cart pushers shuffling back and forth I set them to ‘get’ different foods. The common mill received only wheat, millet and imported salt, with the elite mill receiving game, rice, spice and a mixture of other imports to ensure a supply of tasty food.
Worker numbers were ample with the common block maintained at Ornate Apartment level. I had decided not to supply the common housing with tea so as to reserve it for the elites and also gifting purposes to achieve ally status with other cities.
During year two I added a mint and money printer.
I had added one more hemp farm, food farms, numerous production and entertainment units by this stage. Year two ended with hideous debt, year three was fairly in the red but by the end of year four things were financially fine. Finished just in the red due to adding the final elite units to the second block.
Year five – this was a sort of holding year to let the elite blocks fill up and churn out cash. By year end I had almost 700 folk in heavenly compounds and finished with a treasury of almost 16,000. It was also this year that the luxury goods supply started to become intermittent, both raw silk from Kaifeng and lacquer from Jiangling ceased this year but I had plenty stored up.
Year six – added the second common housing block in the area below the elite area, fed from the elite mill. Again, did not supply tea so conserve supply. Had started to experience some odd housing devolutions due to lack of acrobat coverage so ramped up entertainment buildings. Added a few forts as other cities had started showing shield build up (maybe I missed this in previous years, but no matter). Now had four four farms running, a full complement of industry and plenty money. Kaifeng ceased Tea supply
Tax +55,300, Exports +5,800, Coin +2,300, Imports -6,400, Construction -74,000, net in/out +45,400, balance +62,200.
Year seven – now had plenty of workers so started the monument construction. Added eight wood sheds both to supply lumber and also to excess to butter up Fuzhou. It was in these later years that I began to make gifts to secure allies. Maybe it was because I had such an ample treasury but gifting cash (even 2,500) seemed to make little difference to favour levels, potential allies wanted relevant goods not cash. Kaifeng restarted raw silk sales but they ceased by end of year eight, but two years of 12 imports per annum really helped out with continuity of silk supply for the elites. Unfortunately, Kaifeng ceased Tea supply from this year and wouldn’t kick back in for five years. The only tea supply was from Fuzhou. Had I been supplying the common blocks this would have been a big problem, Bodhidvarna could have been used as a stop gap but it would have been a pain to shuffle him around the various housing blocks.
Year eight – the monument was progressing along quite nicely and I had also started to make alliances. Large gifts of wood had raised the favour level of Fuzhou to where they were happy to ally. Nu Wa had been summoned and she had collected a panda which I used to trade for an antelope and a wild pig.
Year nine – lacquer supply restarted which was handy as supplies were getting dangerously low. Nu Wa had also collected a salamander and a pheasant that I could trade, I had to send her twice for the pheasant as I had forgotten to turn off the hunter’s tents and her first one got shot by a passing hunter! Nu Wa was also useful in blessing the tents to maximize game meat supply which can be erratic at best. Ningxia, Yin, Kuang, Lin’an, Jiangling and Kaifeng had all been added as allies but the Mongol Empire had become rivals and was soon to start conquering the Song cities.
Year ten – raw silk and lacquer supply came back on line so I decided to see if I could manage to keep a third elite block fully supplied. I decided to keep to the two mill strategy rather than building a new one even though the new elite block would be a little far away. A little bit of micromanagement was necessary, when the food buyer went to the mill I would switch the food shop status of the other nearby market squares to “Not Buying” to ensure that the mill would have the necessary tasty food quality available. Otherwise she might set off with good intentions but by the time she got to the mill the nearer three food shops had cleared out many of the food varieties from the mill and she would go back empty handed. As she had over 60 tiles to traverse one way an empty trip could prove costly. There and back took about two months so a failed initial trip followed by a successful second trip could mean that the food shop went four months without food. Not a disaster when housing blocks are well established and the houses have stocked up but dangerous for a nascent block.
I made a couple of lacquerware requests to my allies just to be on the safe side as stocks were a little low and also summoned Bodhidharma. I wasn’t ready yet to supply tea to the common blocks as I needed spare supplies to butter up potential allies but I could use him to cycle around the second common block with the Buddhist Pagoda and this would allow it to evolve up to Lux Apt level.
The Mongol Empire started to conquer the Song cities which caused them to go dark for a while and re-appear with negative (“Displeased”) favour but a few large gifts of goods and cash soon got them back to trading and ally status.
Year eleven – the elite mill was looking a little bare so booted out Bodhidharma and summoned Nu Wa. I used her to bless the hunter’s tents and did a little micromanagement of imported food supply to ensure better quality and quantity from this heavily used mill (it was supplying three elite blocks and one common block). Added a tea shop to the second common block to maintain Lux Apt status.
Animal exchanges and lavish gift giving had resulted in 7 of 9 menagerie animals and 10 of 12 allied cities. The monument was not far from completion and with 1,300 in Hvnly Cmpds, almost 4,000 in Lux Apt or better and a treasury of 290,000 cash I was close to triggering all the goals.
Year twelve – Kaifeng tea imports kicked back in so now all the luxury goods were in ample supply. I added a tea market to the first common block so now these houses could fully evolve and trigger the Lux Apt goal. The monument was completed in November and the final animals had been added. I re-allied with the Mongol Empire now that it had finished rampaging through Song cities by gifting weapons.
With so many residents unemployment could become an issue so I laid out a number of xbow forts to soak up workers.
The final piece of the jigsaw was to butter up Lin’an via gifts and re-ally. The victory screen splashed up late Feb 1277.
Finished with 1,500 residents in Heavenly Compounds. Could have been 1,550 but one elite house devolved due to lack of entertainment coverage just before the game finished – don’t know why because there were plenty of entertainment minions running around. Also I noticed that one elite house in the third block didn’t have enough desirability to evolve all the way. I should have swapped it for the Theatre Pavilion but too late now as feng shui would not allow it, oh well…
Overall thoughts – another varied, natural looking and beautiful map. I had to play the mission a couple of times before I got the hang of managing the luxury good supply problems. I got a bit frustrated early on the first one or two times due to housing collapses and took a dislike to the mission. But once I had a rethink and struck upon the strategy of rationing tea to only the elites (until near the end) I changed my point of view. I usually over build and over evolve so that I can bish-bosh my way through a mission but this forced me to be more patient and thoughtful in how I developed the housing. It’s good to be forced out of your comfort zone.
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Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Gweilo2
Staff |
Posted on 02/19/08 @ 07:35 AM
Thanks for a great walkthrough, it was a very interesting read. Congratulations on a beautiful Khan-Baliq.
So how does one provide for a solid challenge to advanced players in a peaceful mission? Especially a mission that is the finale of the campaign, which should be big and memorable? That was what I wrestled with during the design of this mission.
I struck upon the idea of introducing shortages of luxury goods for extended periods of time, so housing de-evolution would be a challenge to contend with. This forces a player to plan goods inventories very carefully, use heroes, and manage allies (i.e. good requests).
From reading your commentary, I think the design was successful. It was very tricky to time the shortages properly, but luckily my playtesters helped tremendously with that. I do agree that this design feature is more challenging on players of your style, who enjoy overbuilding.
The design of this map was largely an experiment to see how the pre-built agricultural dikes would play. I'm not sure I would incorporate them again on a map, but they are fun in this one. I personally loved the way the mountain ranges turned out on this map; they were intended just to take up space but ended up being very attractive eye-candy (IMHO). |
Beijing Tag
File Author |
Posted on 02/19/08 @ 08:39 AM
The dike area for the farms was interesting. A fresh idea and adds novelty to the map design.
I toyed with placing the second smaller common housing block at the end using the upper two right hand spaces for the housing strip and the top left space for a mill etc. One long housing road would have run along the shore edge and the other up over the dike mound, I could get twenty or so houses to fit with necessary services and still maintain perfect feng shui. It looked funky and made me smile as I considered them to be premium priced water side apartments. But they weren't practical and adding a third mill would have resulted in problems.
I currently live in Beijing but I wasn't that aware of the Yongding river. This map made me look up some articles on Beijing terrain and there is quite an interesting history with regards to the various water courses that run through the city. The local government is now making some serious investments to restore the city's natural (and dynastically altered) water features. So your map has inspired this resident to become better informed about his local surroundings, for which I thank you.[Edited on 02/19/08 @ 08:40 AM]
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Size: | 321.78 KB |
Added: | 02/19/08 |
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