Nobles' Club LXVII: Saladin of Arabia

Oasis, 2 extra AIs. This type of map has a lot of land area, and some extra AIs helps compensate for that.

Well that didn't last very long. Got seriously hurt by barb Axemen before I could hook metal and rage quit. Man, I should get archery sooner. Or maybe just actual units. Will try again.

probably one of the worse starts in civ history and the surrounding land aint much better. a completely resourceless start.

Honestly, dalamb...I think it is cool playing different maps but I would minimize the map switcheroos and alterations for these games. I'm not sure what the thinking on this map was...

I'm still winning it on IMM, but it is ugly. And for folks playing the series just to try to win on Noble, this will be frustrating. And the kicker is that SIP is so egregiously bad and often newer players are advised to do just so, that it kinda defeats the purpose of the series to alter it the way you did.

I decided to settle 1W, sacrificing a turn, but getting both the deer and the river in exchange. Oh, and it also got me an extra FP SIP would have missed.

Medina went to the north. A great commerce site with corn and copper. Also grabs the first desert tile of many I will probably own during this game...if I get that far.

And here at 1280 AD I decided to end the round. I just finished my second settler in Mecca, and am not sure where to go with. The two most interesting possibilies would be a furs city north of London (York must have went to the east, so I should be able to get the spot). I'm just not sure whether I should settle it so that it gets the Elephants north of it in the BFC or 1SW of that, getting the pigs to the south. The other site would be in the northwestern deserts, getting either 2 irrigatable desert corn, an oasis and gold, or, again, 1 SW, trading the gold for a third corn (in that case, a city north of Medina (I haven't scouted there yet (always when I wanted to go up there, there were too many lions around and I had to change my direction), but it is almost guaranteed to have lots of FPs) will get the gold instead.) This one would have quite some desert tiles (but enough hills to get Library, University or NE), but certainly would be great for GP production with all these corns. What I don't intend to settle are these Sugars, they are in London's third ring, no way I can get them without killing Churchill.
Techpath went: Wheel/Myst (starting techs), Agri (prereq for Pottery), Pottery (Mecca has no many nice riverside tiles I can't put to any other use right now), Mining (for production), Hunting (for the deer), Archery (I had met no one yet, so I though barbs would be an issue...unless I get some pro archers early enough), BW (even though, I think I'd rather spam pro archers than axes, this is always nice to have), writing (opens up a lot), Meditation, Priesthood, Monarchy (area is sort of void of resources)
Next I'll probably get IW, there are a lot of jungles around.


By the way, one question: Why are there two Romes, and JC's color is the same as Hannibal's?

Moved the Warrior 1N to see what was there - nothing.
Took Daconarius' advice and Settled 1SW. Luckily picked up some cows in the BFC 2S of the city which I would have missed by SiP
Started a warrior - Worker - Setttler to build up pop and to send out scouting.
Tech path decided Agri-Hunting-AH-Mining-BW-Pottery. I needed hunting for the Deer, and wasn't 100% sure I would get AH out before the Worker, which was another reason to get warrior 1st.

Explored anticlockwise and found a load of huts, but no techs - 49G, 43G, Scout all before T13 at which point Buddhism FiDL
T14 Met Churchill from East., T17 Hinduism FiDL
3 more huts! 24G, Map, 57G
T26 Mining done - BW
Worker out and improving Cows - deer - hill. Maybe should have done deer 1st as more food (less hammers), but that's hindsight for you.
T33 another hut!!! - 88G and met Hannibal.
T34 met Augustus Ceasar AND Lincoln on the same turn - All Civs came from the East.
None of them Founded a religion.

T37, Settler out! One spot East is OK as a first Production city.

We're right up against the southern edge of the map, with 2 possible sites S of us (cows and pigs) then a brick wall. can't be worked properly until Iron (jungle) and even then there is no way to get water until CS so you can only work 1 food for the foreseeable future.


To the East is an OK production site that picks up a few hills + Copper and can t least build a few farms around the lake. If you want to get the copper, you can't share the cows with the capital to get going.



To the N is a mess. Corn nest to each other in the desert.
Loads of flood plains and very little forest for health.
Desert and Desert hills.


No idea what to do after the first couple of expansions.

"To the East is an OK production site that picks up a few hills + Copper and can t least build a few farms around the lake."

Nope - food is life. You might drop a city over there mid or late game, but in the early going it's a high risk/low reward play.

I researched COL, mainly for some SPI Slavery+Caste shenanigans I'm not really good at yet, but want to try out, and popped Confusion- in Medina, my commerce paradise. Excellent.

So I used the Madrassa and two temples to spawn a Prophet. I'm having problems with green faces anyway (kind of forgot to look for resources in trades, of course now I remember that I might have done that), so it didn't even cost me anything.

Unfortunately, it took ages to get the next GP after that. My actual GP Farm Baghdad was not able to run more than 2 scientists yet, until size 6 or so. But, I got the scientist I wanted, not the minority prophet who had a chance to spawn because the computer hired a priest on the turn I built a Madrassa in there and I didn't notice. Einstein is going to build an academy in Medina.

Arabia at this point. Medina is currently starving because I noticed it was working unimproved tiles. I just hope I'll manage to get rid of the spy and prophet points that the city has for some reason.
And yes, I did get Taoism in Najran. Unfortunately it has almost no spread and Najran is a production city, so I don't feel like shrining it. I'd rather have another academy or bulb something.

Demographics. Looks like despite HR my military is far too weak. Thankfully JC went after Hatty, if I wouldn't have given him a tech he would probably have went after me... and I'm not sure how well pro archers do against massed praets. Can't complain about the rest though, well production maybe. My strongest production city got pillaged into stone age, that's why I suck there so much.

Tech. Everyone except Toku is cautious or pleased, yet no one wants to trade ANYTHING
Plans: Build more workers, cultureflip Liverpool (it's exactly where I wanted to settle, for some reason I delayed the site too long... could have needed the pig. ... well, I only need 150 more culture in Mecca, with a Madrassa and maybe a monastery that won't be problem at all), get Buddhism (AP religion, and I have not one single city... Maybe i'll attack Church, he's a buddhist so he'll have buddhist cities... could go the wrong way though, I don't want to get dogpiled), and maybe trade for some health resources. Cities being sick at size 8 or 9 is just unacceptable.
Other than that... I'll see. This is a pretty slow game, feels not like 900 AD at all.

Not really much happened. I got Liberalism (took Nationalism, not really excellent but better than nothing. And maybe I'll get the Taj, that would be nice), and am still having size 12 cities at a point where I usually get to size 20. There are just NO health ressources on the map, and those that actually have some I can't trade anything to they don't already have. The only thing I'm getting per trade is in fact pig from Churchill.
So... militarily it's not going well. My power is pathetic, but at least I'm only 2 techs away from rifles. With that and either Trebs or Cannons, not sure, I'm going to attack someone weaker. Unfortunately I have no borders with any of the sucky AIs, JC and Churchill are both about my size and twice as strong (how the hell do they PAY for these huge armies), Lincoln is Augustus vassal and Augustus is HUGE, and well, while I do share a border with Hatty, most of her land is too far away. Mehmed, Hannibal and Toku suck, but all of them are far, far away, in fact I haven't even located Toku yet. Maybe JC would be the best target, while he's powerful, he also is a bit backwards, at least regarding the rifling path. And, more importantly, he's a jew, and the only other one, Hatty, is probably not pleased with him because he declared on her earlier, so no one will come to his aid. With JC's land I might be able to keep up with Augustus and Lincoln and their permanent-alliance-vassal relation, but it's likely I will have to take out someone else first. And even then, the land is so health ressources poor (well, corn is everywhere, but apart from that...), I'll still have to deal with size 10-ish cities until the modern era. In fact, I plan to get to Medicine as soon as possible, probably even before AL. Environmentalism might win this map for me, I think.

Arabia at this point. Also some good news to be seen (or not): Baghdad has almost finished its NE and can soon start running scientists again, while Oxford is queued up in Medina right after the Buddhist (AP religion, also the religion of most scary people) Temple. Unfortunately Mecca has still not managed to cultureflip the thorn in my side that is Liverpool, but maybe the Stupa will help with that.

Tech. I'm leading right now, but Augustus and Lincoln will eventually overtake me with their advantage in land, ressources and the ability to trade with each other.

Demographics. Second behind Augustus in most categories, terrible in the other ones.

Plans: As I said, kill JC with Rifles, maybe Hatty too, meanwhile tech to Medicine for Environmentalism to be finally able to end this green faces crap. Not sure what I'll do if Augustus will try culture while getting feeded with tech by Lincoln. They have 26 or 27 cities together, even with some conquest it'll be hard to do anything against that. Maybe I'll get to nukes in time.

Julius declares war on me and apparently bribes Churchill at the same time. Bastards. I'm not even sure why Churchill declared war as he just suicided some random units into me. I had a warrior on a hill from the ancient ages that was spawnbusting, and I used him to quickly pillage Churchill's copper-- which seemed to slow him down a little. Where the heck is the iron?

I then enlist Hatshepsut to DoW Julius but to my horror everyone starts dogpiling her, including my friend Memhed and also Hannibal.

Then more DoWs happened and the state of affairs got very convoluted.



Caesar, all your attempts at attacking my border city have failed miserably and I've just conquered 2 of your cities. Is this really wise to make these kinds of demands? Why are you demanding the city you can't take?



Because he will not end the war peacefully, I engage in the crapfest known as feudal warfare.

Meanwhile Hatshepsut is falling apart and offers to be a vassal. I cannot accept this because there's still Hannibal at war with her and I really don't want any more wars. I bribe everyone at war with her besides Caesar to stop and accept her vassalage.

Another city convinces Julius to give up as well as give up one of Hatshepsut's cities.

It's almost 1600 and everyone's so friggin backwards that I'm still the first to lib. Yay. Now to plot on finishing Caesar off. He also built the AP for me of which I'm now the leader. Cool. And so I played about 200 more years worth of peace and raising an army of rifles. And I still don't have Iron. And the western side is still reeling from all that pillaging. I hate chopping jungles.

So, I got to Rifles and Steel and noticed that Cannons require Iron and I don't have any, but declared on JC anyway with a stack of mainly Rifles and Trebs. Of course, he got Steel about 2 turns after I declared from somewhere, and he DID have Iron.

I did get this nice event with Churchie, but it was a bit too late. I had no money to upgrade my stack fast enough, and no way to get some fast enough, as JC was already researching RP.

Then, this: Hannibal declared war on me (I kind of was expecting it, so I had stationed a few units in Damascus), and his stack was a lot bigger than I expected from his weak power level.

While on the western front, things did not go well, and I already had to take peace after 2 cities because my stack was too beat up (well, at least I got Drama and some gold for peace from him), on the eastern front - besides a surprise attack on one of my cities, Fustat, from JC through England, but Fustat was quickly recaptured - went quite well. Hannibal's stack just DIED against the Walls, Castle and Rifles in Damascus, and he even capitulated. Of course I accepted, now I'll just have to get him to convert to Buddhism so AC (he has been warring Toku (I had joined in for a phony war at some point) for a while, and no side had much success, which is good...and Lincoln broke away, which is even better) won't hate him and attack me for having a vassal he hates. I'll just have to hope AC won't switch into FR, I REALLY don't want to switch into Rep to keep him pleased, the unhappiness from losing HR (especially now where I'm getting close to the for once badly needed Environmentalism, would kill me), since I have pretty much no happiness resources at all too.

The stagnating Arabia at this point. Two more cities - oe is not really good, the other one is crippled by JC's culture.

Tech. I'm not leading anymore, but at least AC was slowed down by his own war too. And most of his new techs aren't important anyway.

he power graph. I think I'm going to build more Rifles soon, this time actually with Cannon support, and redeclare on JC. I really need some more good land.

Demographics did not exactly get better. Except that I'm for some reason leading in land area now, even though Augustus has 16 cities and I have far less.

So, the plan... Still the same. Use HR and Enviro to get actually good city sizes, kill JC (or capitulate and covert him to Buddhism), tech to space or maybe do some tanks warfare if I get there early enough.

Just some more fighting. I sent my old maces/axes across the world to vassalize Tokugawa so I could get an AP cheese victory-- that failed miserably. I forgot that taking vassals screws the diplomacy. But at least I don't have to worry about him getting overrun by someone else. I then conquered Lincoln.

At this point Julius had defense pacted with Memhed II which really sucked, but since Mehmed was already weakened due to fighting with Lincoln he wasn't much of a thread. Caesar was way ahead of me in tech sadly and I was still stuck in monarchy because I had no way to generate happiness so I had to ramp the culture slider. I was extremely desperate for happiness, so I started spamming theaters, colosseums, temples, and even cathedrals out of desperation since I really wanted to get out of monarchy into something more useful.


I captured Broadway from Julius and that pretty much solved that issue. In the meantime Hannibal and Churchill fought a bit and Hannibal surpirsingly got beaten. He peacevassals to Augustus. Ugh... Augustus soon starts on the space race.

The UN was built, but my gerrymandering still fails by about 50 votes. Caesar had built the UN and so he'd always be a candidate (should have bothered to capture that city before accepting capitulation. Augustus on the other hand, having not fought that much had grown pretty strong so I had little clue on what to do with him. Meanwhile I was just hoarding up gold to upgrade/rushbuy a bunch of artillery.

So I decided Churchill was the easier target; tanks were beating him up later on. But after the first 2-3 cities, he manages to pull out some pretty advanced stuff like mobile artillery and gunships seemingly out of nowhere. He also pelted my army hard with bombers and in the meantime AC was building SS parts peacefully. >.>

Anyhow, sending infantry/tank/artillery/fighter into mobile artillery/sam/mech infantry/bomber was pretty painful. He even got his hands on modern armor but fortunately I had enough collateral damage from artillery and whatever bombers I could get to just overwhelm him.

The war weariness was definitely killing me. But it couldn't be worse than my vassals. Lincoln sent a cavalry/trebuchet stack at that ... he finally gives up once my own mech infantry come in. I never manage to tech modern armor; apparently I was too sleepy to notice my surplus. Funny thing was that the AP vote (was still lying around) came up after the UN and I probably would have won that as well.

I wound up settling 1NW 1W. I very much wanted to go for an early religion for a change this time around, in part to be different and in part to aim for a religious economy. At this point I have vague plans to send out a lot of missionaries, but I'm not sure yet whether that will work out. Polytheism is prerequisite to some other important techs like Literature, so I picked it over Meditation. Initial tech path was thus:


I built worker first, then started Stonehenge while he camped the deer. Mining wasn't quite ready when he finished so I built a road to the grassland hill and started mining everything. Once BW arrived I switched to slavery and chopped a 2nd worker. Stonehenge finished in 2350 BC. I built a scout, started a second, and switched to granary after pottery. I whipped the granary as soon as possible, finished the 2nd scout and a warrior to protect the capital. Shortly after Priesthood I started the Oracle, and chopped all the surrounding trees to make sure I'd get it. It finished in 1425 and I took Metal Casting.I need to research Archery next for protective archers, and build a city near the copper to get axemen online; my explorers have started meeting barbarian warriors, so I need to build defenders ASAP. Here's my initial idea of a dotmap:

• I need Red immediately for the copper. After cottaging most of the floodplains it'll be a good commerce city, and as long as I farm 1W of the dot I can chain-irrigate the corn after Civil Service.
• Dark blue to the south is fairly safe for a while, since it's nearby, so it can go 2nd after Red. With 2 food and the hills it's a good production site and might become my Heroic Epic military city.
• Light blue to the NW gets gold. The wheat 1W of the oasis is farmable after a border pop, and the one 1SW of the dot will work after Civil Service.
• Yellow isn't quite as good as light blue but gets another gold for possible trading.
• I'm not sure I can get to Magenta before Washington moves that way. In any case before I settle there I'd want to think more carefully about territory to my east and west between me and the AIs.

And here's the rest of the world as I know it:

Went with the 1SW option in settling my first city and was pleasantly surprised by the cow. I decided to go for my usual initial build: warrior-worker-warrior-settler. Research wise, I went Hunting-AH-Agriculture-Mining-Bronze-Writing. Picked up Archery and Horseback Riding out of huts, which was good. The other huts have given me gold, a Scout and experience for said Scout which then went and got mauled to death by 2 panthers and a lion the very next turn...

I settled cities 2 and 3 to claim the 2 nearby sources of copper (the eastern one I was more interested in keeping away from Churchill than anything else). City number 4 will probably go to the west, but I'm not exactly sure where. The grasslands would make great cottage sites but the city wouldn't develop all that quick...

Anyway, the overall plan from this point is, quite simply, to kill Churchill. He is the closest AI and is behind me in score (for now) so I hope to overwhelm him with Axemen. Once he's gone I'll decide whether to keep conquering or settle down for a slightly more peaceful win.

I really struggled to expand on this map. Barb pressure from the north, while it never looked like taking a city, did a lot of damage to my flood plain cottages. I eventually struggled to 6 cities, but was then hemmed in by the powerful JC and Churchill.

Despite my lack of cities, I was competetive early on, and even won Lib, but I had a very small army and industrial base, and was relying on the Hindu love-in (and the heretic Tokugawa painting a bullseye on himself) to keep me free from war.

Post-Lib, it became clear that I couldn't keep up in tech. I probably chased the tech race, and then the dream of beelining Mass Media and the UN, for too long. Eventually, I realised I had no chance at space, and relations were not good enough for Diplo.

So I went for Assembly Line and spammed protective Infantry. The plan was to attack the now-heretical Ottomans and hope to cap them before they found someone willing to go to war with me to protect them, then use my expanded power base to throw down with someone else. I was helped in this by the Ottomans attacking the Americans, who were vassals of the English. This was of course also a worry, since I didn't want Suleiman war-capping to Churchill either.

The war went well - I captured two cities from the Ottomans, including their capital, the English captured one, and the Americans lost two (one of which I poached, to give me three gains).

But then Suleiman capped to JC, who had more than double my power. And JC bribed the equally powerful Hannibal into the fight.

Maybe the war could still have been won (or drawn), even while fought at a tech and power disadvantage, but then the game would almost certainly limp to a time limit finish, and I didn't fancy the long grind to get there, so I resigned the game.

Looking forward to the next one