Nobles' Club CXXIII: Willem van Oranje of the Netherlands

Sorry no screenshots, but 2 saves (and a lot of prose) for those who want to look. Doing this from memory so apologies if I get a couple of facts wrong.

My first thoughts: wow what a monster tech capitole this baby can become!
My second thoughts: wow I'm all boxed in a little corner with the Boston Celtics right in my face!...

I SIP'd because the 2H city tile was good enough for me. Started out with a WB (working the unimproved Gold tile) because I wanted to work a 3C food tile as soon as possible but kinda regretted it afterward: going for the wet corn first for the extra food is probably stronger.

I don't remember exactly my initial tech choices but I must've gone Mining > BW > AH > TW. Maybe Sailing after that.

I quickly dotmapped 4 city spots mainly including: 1S1E of Pigs, 1N of Stone, 1N of Horses.

I hesitated between 1S1E of Pigs and 1N of Stone for City 2, and decided to go for the Stone to build the Mids (didn't consider Oracle because our tech pace was thriving). I prechopped a lot of forest around Amsterdam whilst researching Masonry, Writing and Maths. Don't like to self-tech Maths but I needed the chop multiplier for the Mids.

Right before getting Maths Amsterdam got unhappy at pop 7 so I decided to whip a 2nd Settler. And that's when frikin' Brennus settled 1S1W of Pigs... so I settled City 3 1N of Horses and mentally noted I would settle 1S2E of Pigs ASAP for City 4.

I chopped the Mids with fewer forests than I had expected. Still had some prechopped forests so decided to go for the GLH too. Got that soon enough, things were looking fine.

Switched to Rep as soon as I could run scientists in my cap.

Religion-wise, almost everybody got their own ('cept us hehe). The main thing is that Brennus founded Hinduism and is its sole follower so he's not getting along with anyone (good recipe for diplo management). At the time I was thinking I would choose a religion only after the AP was built. That was then (see below)

No one had Alpha yet, but I didn't rush into it. Went Aesth, HBR, IW possibly not in that order.

Speaking of HBR and IW: my first schemes, when I saw the horses, was to HA-rush the hell out of Brenny-the-nice-bearded-guy. But THEN, I saw how he got to 10 cities in no time, and THEN I discovered I had no metal whatsoever; and suddenly, breaking out a HA-rush out of 5 cities against a 10-city-reasonable-unit-spammer with no metal-troops to back it up didn't seem a very good idea after all...

Whilst considering this doom, I settled City 4 1S2E of Pigs, Zara got Alpha (which I traded for Aesth) and I got myself a GE in Amsterdam. Being AHEAD in tech is the least we can say about our situation
Decided to use the GE for the TGL which made perfect sense with the Rep orientation. Started working cottages around Amsterdam by City 3 & 4 in preperation of CS and a Bureaucracy civic change (I know going Rep + cottages is odd but I thought it had a nice hybrid efficiency to it).

Made a couple of minor tech trades and went for Currency to start trading for some $$$.

Oh and I started 2 wars. 1 of which was a big mistake: gave a load of techs to Brennus-the-nice-redheaded-bully to DoW Zara... who was on the other side of the frikin' landmass. WASTE

Anyway, I need myself more cities and I have no metal. What to do? I decide to go for a Treb rush with possibly Macemen if Copper or Iron shows up on the commodities exchange... (I need CS anyway) And lo and behold! Copper shows up from Charlie, then Darius.

I get CS, go Bureaucracy and HR (in preperation of my first conversion). I build a science academy with 1st GS, I settle the 2nd. I now got a hell of a tech Cap.

I build City 5 on the Island of Horses and start preparing for war once I get Copper from Charlie (very bad deal), then Darius (much better deal). And THAT'S when I see Brennus' Elephants and Catapults regrouping in his border city... oops, not ready. Panic.

He was plotting of course, but was already at war so I couldn't really see it coming. He's Cautious with me and I need to get him off my back so decide to settle the city of "Please Don't" on the mini Clam island to gift it to him. Huh Ok he doesn't want it... Panic, again. He is on the verge of declaring, I'm whipping Macemen as fast as I can but I don't see how I'm going to survive.

So I reckon I don't have a choice: I convert to Hinduism. Being Spiritual he instantly digs it and that gets him to Pleased. I beg 1 gold per turn from him, he accepts, I get a 10 turn peace treaty... pfeewww
The diplo situation is a bit less flexible now that I'm a Hindu, but I bought myself some time. I got metal and a military tech advantage but very few cities.

I need more cities and I see 2 options:
Some thoughts? Would be extremely grateful if someone gave me insight on my play so far and what to do next.

If you've read up to here you are a courageous lad. Thanks!

I prefer 10x your situation over mine at approx the same date: you have cities, metal and a good tech pace. Once Cuirs are in, the game is over I guess.

I guess the big difference is that early war you waged that allowed you to ice Brennus' expansion north...

My game went exactly the same, the big difference being I'm on Immortal As a matter of fact I immediately thought this map would be tough on Deity. Did you consider going Colombus-style?

Looking at the saves it seems to me you lost your way after c 500bc. You researched calendar with no calendar resources or marble, music which is ok but weaker without iron for cuirassiers and engineering just for trebs. You're going to struggle in a war regardless of your target. Going exploring for the new world (and a source of iron) looks like the best option in the short term. However if you'd paused on discovering you had no metals you may well have started on that route a lot earlier and saved yourself non priority beakers

The Calendar errance was due to the fact I first decided to build the MoM with my GE before realizing TGL was much better (lost a couple turns of beakers there ). Didn't tech it completely though, trade the rest of it + gold for I don't remember what.

Music was only because of the GA (for future golden age) + reasonable trade bait.

It's true I didn't want to face the fact that going for the new world earlier was probably better. I guess that doesn't excite me too much However I do have Copper now...

Engineering isn't worth beelining just for Trebs? I figured "why not" with that tech pace. Trebs are pretty darn powerful if you get'em early IMO.

I made SiP move and soon met my neightbor Brennus, who was in rushing range . I spawnbusted a little and I noticed that if I won't rush Brennus I can settle only 3-4 cities... I spotted horsies next to Utrecht and went for super early HA/Chariot rush. Brennus was taken out in no time by my whipped horsies. I renamed his captured cities as Vinck, Maetsukker and Pieterzoon (they are dutch sailormen from Shogun- book). I made two more cities and I have seven cities for now. Gonna peacemonger now and tech Astronomy before the other guys, since we cannot load settlers to Caravels right? I'm in good position. You can check the thread tomorrow and I'll post the save.

Hmm...that's a rather tough situation you've gotten yourself into. The biggest problem is - you have no Iron. The second problem - you only have 4 cities capable of whipping an army. Rotterdam cannot help at all, because it has no food.

The Treb/Maceman rush idea could work as long as Brennus didn't have Crossbows. He will most probably have them soon. But even without Crossbows, his War Elephants would be a problem for your Macemen.

If you want to try a military approach against Brennus, there may be a slight hope of Cuirassier rush. Just make sure every city has Forge (for cheaper whips), Barracks and Stable. A Great Person will be born in Amsterdam in 10 turns. The odds for Great Scientist are 78% at the moment, so the prospect of Education bulb would be quite uncertain.

What about HA to counter the xbows...? Bloody iron...

Rotterdam does have some food don't be harsh

Indeed! HA as xbow counter are still better than nothing. As soon as you manage to secure Ivory (2N1E from Bibracte) from Brennus you would even have a better xbow counter - War Elephants.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound harsh about Rotterdam

Actually, with my tech rate I'm not sure a bulb would be necessary... I have half a mind to settle whatever GP comes out, unless GA. The other Civs are late

I tried to proceed from your 580 AD save using military approach, but I actually went Feudalism-Guilds-Gunpowder and did Muskets+Trebs. I got a Great Scientist for Edu bulb, another one for Printing Press bulb and libbed Replaceable Parts. I also picked Theology for Theocracy, because there was a need for better-promoted troops.

It's 1150 AD and I have managed to capture only one city. Had to fight many defensive battles first and more hard fighting is yet to come. The main problem is now that the cities have been exhausted by the whip.

I don't have metal since Brennus didn't have any (only metal I denied another AI got and is quite far). I only captured elephants off Brennus. That said, cat/phant/HA/longbow would be trivial to use or else thanks to all the protective spam + already going to be #1 in land in forseeable future I could just tech to cavalry instead.

I probably won't play it out since AI will expand into new world and it would add tedium. Nobody who is even remotely threatening can declare on me; this one's over.

I didn't WANT to go full-on choke mode, but I wasn't about to give Brennus a city for peace and it turned out well lol.

BTW a bulb will still beat settling most of the time. You might not "need" the bulb, but by storing gold, bulbing edu, then deficit researching you can get more techs sooner. The settled scientist would take an eternity to match the raw value of the bulb even with multipliers, and you can reach additional techs to increase your tech rate sooner.

Bulbing almost always beats settling in tech trade games, and in many cases will even if they're off though it does depend. Only non-bulb I'd consider with a scientist would be an academy early, or possibly a corporation very late.

1920 BC and already very boxed in. I decided to settle right in Brennus' face to steal the Rice/another city:


1080 BC and a latish GLH:


The first of three (soon to be four) island cities:


My tech pace was stupidly good, so I headed for Mathematics, Construction and then HBR. Brennus went into war mode a little after he became Pleased, so I knew he'd be distracted. He went after Sitting Bull.

I attacked the initial city with Catapults to get things rolling, and did the same for the Holy City (on a hill... Dun makes rushing extra painful):


I took a brief ceasefire and redeclared two turns later. Brennus had moved his stack away from his capital to Sitting Bull, so I rushed with Horse Archers:


Now I'm waiting for his stack of 8 Spearmen and an Elephant to return.

I lost my Super Medic, unfortunately. I used a third movement point to sever Brennus' Ivory, brought along two HAs to help defend, hit enter and... Oh well.

Empire and tech:

Oh noes. Leadership Chariot.

When I created the map I decided I was going to make very few edits on this one, so I didn't give us any metals when the RNG was ungenerous. Thus my only initial attack units were chariots, and I wasn't good enough at rushing the first time around to get to Brennus before he built walls. So I had to wait for catapults. With axes at least I might have been brave enough to attack before cats. So I just finished wiping out Brennus in 780 AD, instead of the much earlier conquest I might have had if we had any metals. On the other hand I'm pleased I was able to take him on at all.

Turned off barbarians, turned on 'no tech brokering'.

• 4000 BC settled in place and built workboat followed by worker and a 2nd workboat.
• 2520 BC chopped/whipped first settler and settled The Hague 1SE of the horses.
• 1840 BC whipped 2nd settler and settled Utrecht 1N of the stone, hoping to go for the pyramids eventually. It was around this time that I started building chariots seriosly. On the first attempt I found Bibracte at 60% culture and decided I needed catapults, but Sitting Bull invited me into a war too early and didn't have enough archers to defend it nor attackers to continue the war. I backed up and tried to build chariots faster for a rush but still found 60% cultural defence when I got to Bibracte, this time without catapults. So I backed up again, went for a slower military development and did some building.
• 475 BC finished the GLH in Amsterdam
• 450 AD Oracle'd CS in Utrecht
• 50 AD got Monarchy from Charlemagne but forgot to switch to Hereditary Rule. Not sure why; even the +1 from the initial warrior in each city would have helped by working 1 more production tile in several cities.
• 50 - 780 AD conquered the Celts, starting with Bibracte. I'm not much of a warmonger but managed to keep up a steady attack without peace treaties, though I did have to wait after each conquest for troops to heal. A lot of Brennus' cities were on hills so I had to sacrifice a fair number of catapults and heal the others before continuing.

• My territory:
  
  Somewhere towards the end of the war with Celtia, copper appeared outside Rotterdam, so I can make macemen for the next war. I have the Heroic Epic and a settled Great General in the Hague, and a supermedic, have Engineering for trebuchets, so the next war should be somewhat easier.
• I had hoped to get Brennus' iron, but the cultural pressure from Poverty Point is too high at the moment. I hoped for the southern icecap's iron (and marble) but Charlemagne has control of the iron at the moment.
  
  When I'm ready for the next war I might have to pick one of the two as a target; I'd really like to be able to promote some of my experienced chariots to Knights eventually.
• Technology: I'm ahead, but as I mentioned Charlemagne is a little further towards Liberalism than I'm happy with.
  
• The various charts:
  Spoiler charts :

  
  I am seriously behind in espionage, having few points because of not building courthouses during the war. I expect to improve the situation ASAP, and may even build castles to help out (given the availability of stone).
• The diplomatic situation:
  Spoiler :

  
  
  
  Everybody likes me. That will change if/when I start the next war.
• Demographics: I'm behind in several important categories, especially land area. This suggests several western empires have overrun a lot of territory. I thought a lot of it was poor terrain when I made the map, so maybe it's not as bad as I originally thought.
  
• Wonders. I captured the Statue of Zeus from Brennus, which likely made the war a bit easier than if he'd been able to double my war weariness. As it was, most of my cities had +1:unhappy: by the end of the war.
  

At this point I really need to decide whether to continue to space or conquer/dominate the Old World. I'm not sure I have enough productive territory yet for a space victory. The other approach is conquest. I'm not much of a warmonger and usually bog down and quit before I finish -- though I have done so sometimes, back at Noble. Maybe a mix is right -- conquer SB's adjacent territory then consolidate and head for space.

I once thought I might want to try to expand into the new world just to be different (almost everybody ignores the new world for Terra and Earth2 maps) but that's an iffy proposition. You really need to be able to build both Versailles and the Forbidden Palace over there unless you get to Communism and State Property before the colony costs kill your economy, and that's not the best civic for space (I think), and getting Versailles is chancy; it's expensive and it's a while before the new world cities are productive enough to build it. I suppose I could beeline Divine Right and build Versailles in Bibracte, planning to move my capital to the New World. This isn't likely to win the fastest, but might be more fun for a builder like me. Is it totally ridiculous to try?

Really nice start, your expansion skills are quite the feat...