Noble's Club 1- Elizabeth

Bloody stupid copper. Crazy looking landmass

Like someone said, crazy landmass, crazy Monty also, which I'm trying to block off but I dunno if it's going to work. Definitely going to need to spam units for a while until we can wipe him out. I didn't open borders with him, but that prevents his Buddhism to reach me, I think... I opened with mostly everybody who seemed relatively far, but not with Sitting Bull, who seems to annoy everyone. I'm hoping for a miracle to get a religion somehow. I think Frederick founded Hinduism. Now that I think of it, Judaism still hasn't been founded...

Anyway, my first build was a workboat, since we had fishing... I think I went for agriculture at the same time, somehow. Probably not a good idea, but my next build was definitely going to be a worker. I didn't keep track of all my tech choices, I must say this is probably where I'm not too good. I never plan too much ahead and always seem to pick depending on what seems like is going to happen in the next 30-40 turns or so.

Anyway, I founded York a bit late for my own tastes. I thought that our capital already had a good production so this cottage spam area or GP farm may be good. It just seems awkwardly distanced from my capital. And yes, that copper is really annoying, I'm not done with iron working so I don't know... But I'm tempted to put a crap city around there to further block Monty, but there is NO FOOD WHATSOEVER there. My tentative location could be moved south towards the ocean to get some lighthouse benefits at least. But I'm really at lost, the land is driving me crazy. There is so much stuff that it's making decision making quite hard. Just north of us is a nice spot where I'd like to put city A, but I don't know if it's really urgent. Maybe I want to be more aggressive and go towards Sitting Bull, but I stared at this chunk of land, wondering, for quite a while. Where do I put it. I definitely want the pigs in there, but it seems that anything that includes it also includes way too much useless plains and not enough hills for good production either, it's weird. I'm really at lost. Site A? Question mark for copper? (I hate that site), or AAAAARGH land, I dunno...



I seem to be doing quite well in points, if I remember well, 1st or second... I used the whip a bit liberally in my capital to get workers and my two settlers.

I'm thinking that maybe, with two cities in AAARGH land, and after wiping out Monty (dang), I'd have enough land to think of figuring out how to go for a cultural victory. Haven't seen marbles though. At some point I was thinking of going for the pyramids... I dunno if I should still try, I mean, we have stone. But it seems I want to put cities more than I want to build that, especially considering how weird the land mass is and how quickly we could be bottled. Aaaanyway.

Part 2: The Britanno-Aztec war; the war for a worthless piece of tundra and desert

The turn started with De Gaulles threatening me. I gave in, I think I want to be his friend. Maybe it's a common mistake in my games but I always tend to not open borders with my immediate neighbours, especially if I can box them in... Or if I have other plans for their territory. Opening borders is always a bit difficult for me. I also often check if my potential friends like the people who are asking me for open borders, I'm always afraid my wannabe friend is going to ask me two turns later to STOP TRADING WITH xyz

Okay froggie, take that fishing and have some nice meal (I'm allowed, my first language is French).


A british settling group quickly ran to that iron that popped up south of AAAARGH land. Unfortunately for them...



Only a few years later, the strange people from the south known as the Aztec, who we were trying to contain in their paradise of a peninsula, started to get too close for our comfort.



And too close for theirs too, apparently. I almost decided to take the city while it was in revolt, but decided that my forces were still a bit too low for the beginning of a war.



By this point, Britain is in an arms race with its neighbours as the Native Americans and the Aztecs are building large armies. Meanwhile, the French, Arabian and German people are having a go at wonders as messages keep popping about them having achieved great feats of engineering. I hate it when this happens, forced into army building when you can easily imagine far away AI in Neverland building a vast empire with two warriors in each city to defend it. AAAARGH. All the time.

Meanwhile, I have been using York as a makeshift GP farm (2 scientists via a library) and over the course of this round it has given me 2 Great Scientists, I can't quite remember what I lightbulbed... One of them was Alphabet, I think.

155 BC, the beginning of war. As you can see here



The Aztecs were sending a settling company towards the east (look closely) and apparently, realizing the hopelessness of their situation, decided to resort to this. At first the situation seemed quite impossible for me, but a mix of axemen and chariots (for those invading Axemen) made ground meat of this Aztec offense.

It was time for counter-attack (while more wonders are being built). The whipped was used again for more axemen... It's difficult mounting this attack while keeping my eastern city (which I founded north of the iron, close to the elephants and the river, can't see it here but it grabs elephants, spices, pigs, and rice, not too bad, but low in production, I'm thinking of a city on the side of the water north of there close to more pigs and rice, that has a lot of hills, need more production soon).

The British army thus marched south (bunch of axes and a few chariots and a spearman, last being a build mistake, hehe). It razed the first city that was present in the desert with few casualities (one I think). I decided to leave Texoco (in my territory) alone for now as it pathetic and will eventually be easily razed anyway.
The army reached Tlateloco, by the side of the water, which has a couple of hills, and has fish and wheat... Here the Gods decided to hate the British. I lost two 95%+ odds of winning battles, and wasted a bunch of units. Which was already annoying me, and when satisfaction came at last, basically on the same year the invasion of the city had succeeded...



... A strange throng of a petty civilization called "Philistines" decided to take arms against my civilization! So after in the previous turn I lost two 95%+ odds battles (add a third one to that a few turns earlier when an axeman in my territory failed to prevent a wounded Aztec spearman to pillage a mine...), the random number generator throws this at me. I wanted to hit my head on the wall until I realized they were only spearmen... My men fought them off bravely and got promotions! Wort wort wort!

Meanwhile, our first Great General (El Cid) was born in London. I settled him there for meaner units. Finally, in our last thrust south, we found the capital of the Aztec empire, as we arrived, we surprised another settling company with two axemen, they quickly withdrew to their capital, and are now buckled in this fortress (60% defense + on hill...). Luckily, our scientists are almost done with this strange rock-throwing invention (beelined construction). So I shall reinforce the remains of my stack with a few units and catapults and put an end to the Aztec's insolence.



I forgot to take a screenshot of my empire... You can add Copper city on the edge of the waters south of our capital... And the elephant city I was talking about. Now I also have one Aztec city that I showed you.

For over 200 years, the Aztec war has forced us into purely military avenues. The French are growing larger and larger in their idyllic country... This is proving to be hard. I win 75-85% of my Noble games (none of the wins ever feel that comfortable though... So I still stick to it for now), but I thought of giving up when I first got declared on and I was seeing my opponents building all these wonders. Probably because I still had the cultural victory in mind.... I don't know if I still want to pursue this. I find our land devoid of much production. I still haven't been able to settle site A as shown in my previous update. But I think I'll rush for another city in the nothern parts of AAAARGH land where there are hills, grassland, and food. A production city.

Iron seems to be completely out of reach... Unless I declare on Sitting Bull, in which case this game is turning more and more into a domination-type win. I'm thinking that my near-future army will consist of axes (for defense at this point), a lot of war elephants, some spearmen for defense too, and longbowmen in my cities.

So, I saw that de Gaulles had no restriction whatsoever on his growth... He liked me, and he was annoyed by everybody else. I decided to become his best buddy and to leave Sitting Bull between him and me, as a buffer.

So I built large defenses on my eastern cities, to remove any ideas Sitting Bull might have of trying to declare war on me.. But I was left with the problem that if I was BEST FREINDS 4EVER with de Gaulles, he would win the game by becoming so huge. So I had to expand. I went for the tech leader but the weakest civ; Frederick. Oh and I finally managed to build a wonder!



Sadly it's a bit late for that, but still, will provide a lot of money for this incoming war. I also built University of Sankore, since I was now a Jewish believer alongside de Gaulles. I even adopted Nationalism as soon as I could to please him (his favourite civic). He's friendly with me now. I also built Notre-Dame, and... Something else... Can't remember. Oh yeah, Statue of Zeus for the win. And the Spinal Minaret! I love that one too. I landed Islam and taoism, but haven't done much with them yet. What's interesting is that my wonders were spread among 3-4 cities, so maybe I still have a shot for the cultural win? ... I only did cultural wins on easier levels so I don't know if it's still worth trying now.

So anyway, I declared war on Frederick, he was friendly with Saladin so he immediately got that one into a war with me too. So I phoned up my own best buddy (de Gaulles) and got him to go to war with Saladin to keep that one busy while I annihilated Frederick. I wanted Berlin really bad, and look what I got.


My goal was to kick Frederick (and Saladin had a city there too) out of the peninsula to our West. So I did this rather easily, razed about 3 worthless cities, kept those which were decent. But then when I was ready to stop the war, Frederick wasn't going to capitulate... I thought that I didn't really care if he didn't want to capitulate, but realized his new capital was very close up north in worthless desert. Turns out he also has a bunch of cities oversea, I don't care. One of my problems was that he had astromony and I didn't yet, so he sank all my ships and pillaged all my seafood tiles and my whales! Argh. He might not have had a big army, but it was on par with mine technologically. He even had knights before me, no problem, I had pikemen in my stacks. But yeah, it was macemen on macemen. But I had a lot of trebuchet... But yeah, his new capital was close up north, I thought "okay let's raze that crap city and see what he says after that"...



The German empire, vassal of Britain, finally. And de Gaulles doesn't mind, he's still friendly. So yeah, I stopped the game there, it's 1708, and Fred's maps allowed me to finally see the last AI the Khmer dude. I had almost reached him with caravels but they got sunk by Fred's huge army of frigates (congrats Fred on your useless navy that just managed to annoy me slightly).

So here is my empire in 1708...



I'm in a good position to win, but I haven't really decided how yet. I'm kind of too lazy to think of war with de Gaulles (which I pretty much would have to if I went for domination... I dunno.. and I'm BFF with him now... ). I get the feeling Suveryanaman whatever his name is will try for cultural, he's on an island and AI on faraway islands tend to do this I noticed. So I may have a war ahead of me there. I think the easiest for me at this point would be to sit back and cruise my way to a Space Race victory. But who says I have to use the easiest route?

Oh did I mention that Saladin is the resident of the AP in this game and forced me to DEFY a resolution to stop wars against him and Fred... so it's two times I had to take the large unhappiness penalties because of that. Annoying. It's hinduist and me and de Gaulles have very little Hinduism in our land. Maybe with my new aquisition, and by spreading it, I could prevent further lame crap like that going on. I hate how when these menus pop up you have to select something and you can't go and check the number of votes or any of the advisor menus...

Any input?

Well... It turns out my friend, de Gaulles, made a mistake...

I was going to surf for some sort of space race victory... Then I noticed my "friendly" ally de Gaulles had "too much on his hands". I figured he was going to invade the weak Sitting Bull next door. I wasn't going to just sit there and watch him take more land. As soon as he declared on SB, I declared on SB too and a race for land ensued. He captured 2 cities, I captured 4 SB cities in the south, and made sure to leave a band of 4 SB cities between me and de Gaulles... a buffer... Then I vassalized Sitting Bull. So now I had two vassals, SB and Frederick. I realized that I only had 3 opponents left, and they were all extremely weak except for de Gaulles who still kept up. So I thought that probably vassalizing everyone was going to be faster than just going space race. So I turned unto my next target, Saladin, who was also hated by my best friend de Gaulles. Once again, it was war with my redcoats. (They also were prime army in my SB war). I quickly got up to Mecca and after razing a few cities that turned into capitals on far away islands, he had enough and capitulated too... Now I turned unto the Khmer empire, who were really lame and just pumping up culture. I sent an army there on 6 transports with 6 destroyers and I only razed two cities until he capitulated.

Even with 4 vassals, and after having attacked his friend (Khmers), de Gaulles still was very friendly with me.



That was just before I declared on him. I think key to my victory was doing a lot of things he liked, almost only trading with de Gaulles... And adopting Nationhood, his favourite civis, even if it wasn't optimal for me. Since we had both been together at war with Saladin and Sitting Bull, he was happy. If permanent alliances had been on, I would have had an easy domination by becoming one with him, I think... If it works like team play in multiplayer. But it wasn't so.. So tht screenshot was taken just before I declared war on him. Such a shame, I liked him... He even got a random event that popped up for me as "The French empire are bragging about the quality of their truffles", I thought it was funny.

By that point, I was so huge and had so much production that I was invincible, I also had insane beakers per turn and I was way in advance on him. I ended up killing grenadiers with gunships and marines and tanks. Sad sad... Here is one of my three stacks in his territory, the one that razed Paris to the ground...



He gave up a few turns later and capitulated, appropriately, in the summer of 1940. By that point, I had razed about 20 cities, given a bunch to my vassals too... The British empire, razing wonders of the world. Oh yeah.

And that was that. Conquest victory, my first (I usually get domination when I'm forced into the military route... first time I take on everybody). 32832 points. Augustus Caesar for the win. Also, CLOSED EYES BOOYA. Oh, I forgot to mention that Washington popped up in this game as a colony of the Khmer empire. It was a short lived colony (see last graph). On this powergraph, you see De Gaulle's forces dwindle. He attacked one of SB's city, and he had, I swear, about 60 units there. I brought 15 tanks and destroyed it all. By that point I had removed the animations for battle, it was taking too long (I like watching them usually, dorky, I know, but with Avain's MOD, it's nice to see all the diverse looks of different units. But jeez, it was a French genocide.

In my rush to play this game I haven't even done a spot map. I reckon the cities I've placed are going to haunt me when I go to bed tonight/in a minute. I'll do one tommorow. If some other people post their dot maps I'd like to have a look.
Any one whos looked at the spoilers could also suggest away of making the copper city - which I haven't settled - anything other than rubbish.

I haven't been that naughty

I honestly intended to focus on expanding in the opening of the game, rather than worry about wonders, but couldn't help myself! I did pick CoL so that makes me a good boy!

In my hurry I didn't do a dot map either, I think I'm actually getting worse not better. This map is tough, on my travels I havn't found a single flood plain yet...

got the mids too... running Rep/caste

I think the land north of SB is the best area. If only this was a millitary game!

Where oh where to put my GP farm? Capital? Somewhere else?! Arrrggghh.

Once I explored my immediate surrounding territory, I decided right away on some early goals. One for sure, The Great Lighthouse and Colossus with a slingshot to Metal Casting from the Oracle, with the intention of trying to run a strong TE. Plenty of forests and hills, but not a ton of great cottage area in "our" lands (lack of rivers, lots of plains, etc) made me decide to go this way. I also saw the stone, and knowing it was Noble, I decided to get ambitious and go for the Great Wall as well as the Pyramids. The GW mostly for the spy points and GGs, since I can sense impending conflicts in the future, with such nasty civs right in out backyard like Monty and Sitting Bull, both of whom I plan to eliminate or at least cripple. Monty would have to go ASAP, no question about it. I am not sure whats down there south of him, but he already dropped a city "too close for comfort". SB could wait, as I could cut him off early, and he would be expanding in the other direction, and being protective, is a much tougher nut to crack.

So I settled in place, started with a Work Boat and teched Ag--> BW. The only hut I managed to pop gave me Masonry, which was an excellent surprise given my goals. Using aggressive chop and whip overflows, I got 2 workers, 2 Warriors, and 2 settlers out ASAP, and then built a lighthouse and started the GLH in London. I didnt bother settling a separate city for the stone, knowing I would get it fairly quickly in London's cultural border. Instead, I settled York to the SW and Nottingham to the SE, and chopped/whipped monuments in both quickly for border pops. My 4th city, Hastings, was from a settler I built when London was about to go "unhappy" during the GLH. I settled this city by the Copper. Here is where my current Screenshot. GW and Oracle were built in York. Mids and GLH in London, and likely Colossus and GL:



I am currently building Barracks in a couple cities, and will rush Monty as soon as I pump out enough Axes. In the meantime, its important to get my populations up and get Scientists running soon, to take full advantage of Liz's PHI trait. For now, its going to be libraries and axes, and a couple more cities, one to the NW, and one to the W. Note, I have ALL my cities on the coast, and will look to build the Colossus very soon. I am not a perfectionist about my GPPs, and will take whatever I happen to get most of the time. I am not going for a Cultural win at the moment, but I may decide to before long. I merely started on the best "winning" path I could think of. There will be time to focus on a winning condition later. I dont think its right to pick a VC before you even start, I tend to go where the game "takes" me. After Monty, I would really like to take out SB, since he has that fat river running down his western borders (which I am poaching a bit with Nottingham, heh). I have opened borders with everyone, because BTS doesnt have as much "settling behing my lines" as Vanilla.

So, to sum up, my #1 goal was GLH + Colossus, #2 was Pyramids, #3 is taking out Monty early. I teched Ag (for the rice), BW, popped Masonry on hut, Wheel, Myst, Med, Priest, Pottery, Sailing, Writing, Math (for chopping bonus building all those Wonders), AH (3 cities have the need, and I also found Horses near enough to 2 cities that I will have them soon), and right now I am halfway through Currency. Once I bang out Currency and get the Colossus up, plus my city to the North which will have the other clam in that area, I will have a pile of trade and tons of cash flow (I hope).

Oh, and just after the Mids were done, I got the +2 health event, thus already increasing my health in all cities. Coastal means Harbors, which fall in line with my GLH-Colossus combo, so fresh water settling wasnt a huge thing. I also have a lot of +health resources to tide me over til Harbors anyway, and the Hanging Gardens have become a common wonder for me in games where I dont have a few rivers. I may still build the HGs, but its not as big anymore. The Temple of Art and SH are already gone, and after Currency I plan to tech Alphabet and see where I stand. I am sure I can trade some, and pick a couple "friends", Freddy and Sal maybe, since Monty, SB and Chucky DeG tend to be asshats, then likely tech Aesthetics --> Lit and head for the GL as well. City production wise, its Barracks and/or Forges, then axes until I have 20ish to pound Monty. I tend to overwhip at this stage of my games though, so I am hoping I can avoid that and get some population growth soon. There is also a barb city already up, to the west, so I am betting there is even more settleable land that way, but it can wait til after Monty is dead.

I will put up another update once I have my cities in "order", the war is on, and will post city screenshots at that time.

Founded in place, then started researching agriculture for the purposes of getting that rice and to get AH. Got 20g from the hut. I'm thinking of cottage spam around the land for the capital, but I delayed researching pottery, going instead for agri>AH>BW>Masonry>Wheel>Pottery>Myst>Meditation>Priesthood>Writing>IW
As such I haven't been able to get all my cottages up right away, but I'm starting that beautiful cottage spam.

Founded York in 2375, the same turn Hindu-founder Saladin gets BW (2nd to do so). Because of its location, I was able to run 1g deficit at 90% off of hut gold. Founded Nottingham in 1600 BC-I didn't found near the bronze because it's such a food poor location. I found some iron to the SE of Nottingham, so a settler is en route there to hook up some iron.

As far as builds go, I've been getting mostly work boats, warriors, and workers out of the capital, to hook up those clams, scout the continent, and get those cottages down/hook up resources. Only buildings so far have been granaries and monuments. For wonders, I built the 'mids in London and started the Oracle in York with the intent of running a hybrid econ. with Rep/Caste/Mercantilism (when I get it).
Below are screenshots at the end of the turn:

For the first map, I'll do black dot when I can get some gold flowing in at 80%ish. For the second map, I am leaning towards Red Dot. Although it is one tile from the sea, it will only have two water tiles, and has more food (Deer) than any of the other dots (resource wise; someone please correct me if I am incorrect).

For diplomacy, I know Monty must die. Maybe take his Holy City and use Buddhism? But I'm already going to get Confucianism, and I'd prefer to use that because I founded it XD After that, take out Sitting Bull when I have swords and horse archers (and maybe cats, too).