PCXI: Charlemagne

Hello Forum, and welcome yet again to the PC! This series was started a while back and was purposed around getting Noble level players to Prince; and prince to Monarch. Also, the second, (and equally important) is to have fun! It is also advised for some of the more advanced players to help out the people asking questions by giving solid advice.

Our leader this eleventh run in the series:



Protective is not a very good trait in my book, and seldom do I hear any positive remarks on it, though it still benefits you with better Archery and Gunpowder units along with cheap walls.

The Unique Unit



I would consider this a good unit. Comes a tad late and has a short shelf life but I think it has great potential. Anyway, it has +100% vs. Mounted such as a Pikeman and +100% vs. Melee making it have the same power as a Maceman. It’s quite versatile in this regard…

The Unique Building



This is personally my favorite UB. I think it goes great with Imperialistic in the regard that it takes down 75% of city maintenance. 50% more effective than what it replaces, the courthouse…

The Start





(Sorry for the background in the screenshots. It should be legible though. My screenshot software expired in which I could window a screenshot.)

Map is

The Save
View attachment PCXI Charley.zip

(If there are any problems with the save, please notify me as soon as possible. I have tried to do my best editing this but if I forgot something I am sorry.)

Finally, a cut and paste (and another slight edit) of the Nobles Club standard doctrine:

(I hope it isn't rude to use the same doctrine, as It applies to most forum games.)

There are no hard and fast rules here: fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do request that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards.

Tentative posting updates are suggested at:

4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, where you're thinking of putting cities, etc)
500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didnt, met other continent if applicable, etc)
1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)

Remember, these are only guidelines. What we really want are your thoughts as the game goes on, so if your strats don't fall into line with those dates, feel free to adjust your reports accordingly.

We also welcome players to ask for specific game advice, as we have a number or stronger players who lurk and help out with solid tips, and of course, we help each other. Replies to specific questions should also be in spoilers, with a simple "@" in front of the person the answer is directed towards.

The WB-saves are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, check out the BUG MOD), select "Play Scenario", and look for "PCVIII Qin Shi Huang" (or Monarch, if you want the AI to start with its usual Archery bonus tech, or Immortal for Archery+Hunting, or Deity to add Agriculture). This allows you to play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Deity, all are welcome!

Have fun playing the forum game!

Low sea level to screw over the higher level players nicely ...unless you added extra civs to compensate. Personally though, I think high-level friendly considerations are not necessary in NC or PC. I would be a little angry with that in IU though .

I disagree on the UU: it's pretty awful overall. Let's look at it:

1. No better vs knights than standard pikemen
2. Very poor on direct offense because it will trip the likes of longbows and crossbows when attacking cities
3. Only average on defense. While it fills one extra niche in stack defense, it has no answer to CR siege when defending in a city, and is not even great against things it counters directly after eating a 1.0 str reduction...and it doesn't take much for a catapult to drop them there.

So they're slightly better than pikes as stack defense, and generally awful offensively...and they come in the worst era (on average!) for offensive warfare. These are not the makings of a good UU.

The UB, however, is easily a top 5 UB, so HRE isn't all bad.

PS: when considering what to build first in the capitol, remember you have a 3H tile and IMP, which means that settler 1st is a viable option.

Yet again have I made a bad assumption... Like I said in the last PC game don't take my opinion for things like that... (I don't know why I keep posting my opinions on the UU and UB descriptions...) Even while I must be wrong about the HRE's UU, I personally disagree with the statement that the Medieval/Renaissance is a bad era to war in. Maybe it is hindering my success, but that is my strongest striking point...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=346329

This was the only game that I truely pwned... And guess what, with maces. I warred for about 500 years and ended up taking the whole hemisphere. Yet, that *was* only Monarch, and that game had a pretty easy map, but I don't see what is wrong with fighting in that era. I know it is on the borderline to gunpowder, but maces can easily take muskets IMHO, especially when promoted. Rifling is still a good war's time away and I really think the AI get's real tough if you wait. Cuirassiers (sometimes cavalry) and nationalism (in my games) make a pretty nasty AI even for rifles and cannons...

Medieval is a bad era for warfare because

1. Bombardment takes an eternity due to castles, and the best cheap defender (longbow) is a favorable matchup against most attackers,
2. It is hard to come up with enough espionage to overcome defenses with spies, and
3. Means of production other than raw hammers or whips are not yet viable.

However, RENAISSANCE is one of the best eras for warfare, and many deity players make their game breaking move in that era, using rifles, cuirassers, cavalry, or cannons. It is better for a few reasons:

1. Bombardment time with cannons is now minimal
2. The defender's strength against the attacker is less severe (no inherent city defense bonuses or even inherent first strikes)
3. Economies have had more time to develop EP output, and more time to pre-build spies for revolts
4. Rush buy (universal suffrage) and drafting rifles (one of the best food:hammer conversions in the whole game) are available and actually viable
5. Workshops are finally good enough to be a solid tile improvement with caste/guilds/chem
6. This is often the first era where fighting with a true tech lead is possible.

If you can war in medieval w/o significantly hampering your economy, it is OK to do it, but just as often waiting can give you better returns. This also depends to an extent on opposition! Warring against a tech trading, peaceful AI early makes less sense than, say, taking maces + cats against shaka's swords and axes (reasonably possible even on immortal), where waiting with shaka can force you to eat a DoW rather than deliver one.

Nevertheless, even when medieval war becomes viable, this UU STILL doesn't shine much, it is just a slightly better stack defender than you'd have otherwise, and is actually a worse city defender on average than the standard longbow, which you get sooner.

TheMeInTeam said:

Medieval is a bad era for warfare because

1. Bombardment takes an eternity due to castles, and the best cheap defender (longbow) is a favorable matchup against most attackers,
2. It is hard to come up with enough espionage to overcome defenses with spies, and
3. Means of production other than raw hammers or whips are not yet viable.

However, RENAISSANCE is one of the best eras for warfare, and many deity players make their game breaking move in that era, using rifles, cuirassers, cavalry, or cannons. It is better for a few reasons:

1. Bombardment time with cannons is now minimal
2. The defender's strength against the attacker is less severe (no inherent city defense bonuses or even inherent first strikes)
3. Economies have had more time to develop EP output, and more time to pre-build spies for revolts
4. Rush buy (universal suffrage) and drafting rifles (one of the best food:hammer conversions in the whole game) are available and actually viable
5. Workshops are finally good enough to be a solid tile improvement with caste/guilds/chem
6. This is often the first era where fighting with a true tech lead is possible.

If you can war in medieval w/o significantly hampering your economy, it is OK to do it, but just as often waiting can give you better returns. This also depends to an extent on opposition! Warring against a tech trading, peaceful AI early makes less sense than, say, taking maces + cats against shaka's swords and axes (reasonably possible even on immortal), where waiting with shaka can force you to eat a DoW rather than deliver one.

Nevertheless, even when medieval war becomes viable, this UU STILL doesn't shine much, it is just a slightly better stack defender than you'd have otherwise, and is actually a worse city defender on average than the standard longbow, which you get sooner.

Click to expand...

Hmm... I still think Maces/Trebs is very strong against even Castles w/ xbows or other medieval units. But yes, hammers are difficult to manage and whipping/drafting seems to be the only way to get units quickly other than raw hammers as stated. I have made good use of the Oracle ---> feudalism or bulb to get early Xbows as a way to comfortably fend off attacks. IMHO medieval is when diplo for the most part gets sealed and wars and war requests start to become common. I guess any era is, "good" to war in according to the situation/playstyle/strategy. Yes, I do agree that Renaissance and Industrial are proboby the most advantagious times to fight.

It takes a whopping 25 treb bombardment turns to down a castle's defenses. Each turn you spend not capturing a city, the city can produce more units. On higher levels, it is or is close to 1/turn on normal speed. If you are attacking a 10-12 city empire, losing 15-20 turns means a lot of extra units to fight, which means more healing time, more losses, and more time for your opponent to gain tech WHILE at war. If you are hitting in this era, you better be damned sure you know what you're doing.

Now, pre-medieval can work pretty well on high levels too, especially early rushes or deft use of horse archers. It's that castle window that can get really hard against some of the AIs.

On monarch you can probably steamroll whole continents with horse archers. Well, not probably. You *can*.

TheMeInTeam said:

It takes a whopping 25 treb bombardment turns to down a castle's defenses. Each turn you spend not capturing a city, the city can produce more units. On higher levels, it is or is close to 1/turn on normal speed. If you are attacking a 10-12 city empire, losing 15-20 turns means a lot of extra units to fight, which means more healing time, more losses, and more time for your opponent to gain tech WHILE at war. If you are hitting in this era, you better be damned sure you know what you're doing.

Now, pre-medieval can work pretty well on high levels too, especially early rushes or deft use of horse archers. It's that castle window that can get really hard against some of the AIs.

On monarch you can probably steamroll whole continents with horse archers. Well, not probably. You *can*.

Click to expand...

I only win like 1/4 of my Monarch games... But I seem to be slowly but continuously improving and am somewhere near emperor. I have played this game like, 500 hours easily. I have a really steep learning curve, and I usually am not damned prepared when I hit at that time. But for some reason it seems to work, ON MONARCH!

EDIT: 500 hours over a 5 year period!

Another reason that medievil wars are not as good as reneissance is that the untis become outdated quite quickly and you cant usually roll over more than 1 opponent. rifles and cannons, on the other hand, can go on a rampage and when you get to infantry the upgrade is relatively cheap.

I was looking for some fun map lately, so will definitely try it. I am lately trying Prince (not finished any game on prince yet :-D), so will see how it goes ;-).

Initial thoughts...
SIP seems like best.
Scouting half circle to the east and then who knows where to go, will depend on the layout.
Techs aggri (if we dont have it already - noob dunno starting techs etc), then probably mining, BW for quick chops and copper.
Probably will go with worker, warrior maybe 2 wars for cap to get bigger, settler.
But after i read TMIT remark about high food, will reconsider the building order. If i would go with settler first I would change techs to mining->bw (to see copper for best tip on second city)->aggri (after settler would come worker right away probably).

So that's my initial thoughts .

Initial Thoughts:

Decided to settle in place, 2 clams, rice and pigs within close proximity will make my first town a whipping town
Looking at AH, agriculture, fish.
Worker, boat boat and hunting for horses for my second town.

Will probably go hunt down a neighbor or two with horse archers

The UU is good. It works against horse and foot. It is only weak vs range and thats why you bring your pro x-bows with you along with CR trebs. It represents Swiss Pikemen, the most formidable force in their era. Pikes are one of history's most deadly weapons. No other weapon system could beat a force of pikes, no force of pikes could beat Swiss Pikemen.

You grab feudalism early for vassalage, then engineering, build a stack like that and go to town. Very easy to double your land and set up for a win.

Played first round do 1000 BC, Prince Epic speed

TheMeInTeam said:

It takes a whopping 25 treb bombardment turns to down a castle's defenses. Each turn you spend not capturing a city, the city can produce more units. On higher levels, it is or is close to 1/turn on normal speed. If you are attacking a 10-12 city empire, losing 15-20 turns means a lot of extra units to fight, which means more healing time, more losses, and more time for your opponent to gain tech WHILE at war. If you are hitting in this era, you better be damned sure you know what you're doing.

Now, pre-medieval can work pretty well on high levels too, especially early rushes or deft use of horse archers. It's that castle window that can get really hard against some of the AIs.

On monarch you can probably steamroll whole continents with horse archers. Well, not probably. You *can*.

Click to expand...

while that is true about trebs, spies can do it in 1 turn. then use those trebs to weaken defenders. I do love horse archers too

TheMeInTeam said:

Low sea level to screw over the higher level players nicely ...unless you added extra civs to compensate. Personally though, I think high-level friendly considerations are not necessary in NC or PC. I would be a little angry with that in IU though .

I disagree on the UU: it's pretty awful overall. Let's look at it:

1. No better vs knights than standard pikemen
2. Very poor on direct offense because it will trip the likes of longbows and crossbows when attacking cities
3. Only average on defense. While it fills one extra niche in stack defense, it has no answer to CR siege when defending in a city, and is not even great against things it counters directly after eating a 1.0 str reduction...and it doesn't take much for a catapult to drop them there.

So they're slightly better than pikes as stack defense, and generally awful offensively...and they come in the worst era (on average!) for offensive warfare. These are not the makings of a good UU.

The UB, however, is easily a top 5 UB, so HRE isn't all bad.

PS: when considering what to build first in the capitol, remember you have a 3H tile and IMP, which means that settler 1st is a viable option.

Click to expand...

If the Landskhnect comes at Machinery rather than Engineering, then it becomes a much better unit. It's like a Xbow rush except it can overcome horses. Actually, it's better than Xbow b/c it can take CR promo.

Been looking at the forums, and I wanted to do one of these games, so here's my initial thoughts:

Playing on Prince, Epic speed. I took a big break from Civ for awhile so I still got some noobishness.

I settled in Place, and with only 25 turns for a settler I'm gonna build that first, probably followed by a warrior then worker. Teching AH first for the pigs and to find some horses, then agr > fish.

My only problem with this situation is I don't know how to specialize this capitol, it's got a lot of food, hills, forests, and water, but not a lot of cottage of farming spots.

Immortal/Marathon without modifying Archery to the AI's (simply slipped my mind) to a 1656 UN win.

@Fleme

JFleme said:

Immortal/Marathon without modifying Archery to the AI's (simply slipped my mind) to a 1656 UN win.

Spoiler :

So yea, with the AI's without Archery this was a walk in the park more or less. Settled in place - teching Agriculture/AH and followed with Mining/BW after no horses were seen. I decided to rush and since the AI's didn't have Archery I noticed that my power was pretty much above them the entire time.

Settled the copper immediately south of Aachen and another city to claim the additional copper further south with gold to fund my warring.

5 Axes took both English cities and then 3 of those made their way to the Maya who had founded the "hydra" as in the three first religions. I razed his second city of Lakamha but kept the capital. Economy tanked pretty hard at this point but I had Writing and had made my way to Priesthood through Polytheism with the money I had from capturing York, London, Lakamha and Mutal. As I had a sizeable workerforce I chopped the Oracle in London (renamed Augsburg) and took CoL. Proceeded to chop further for ToA which I also got.

With my economy on the recovery with Rathauses being whipped all over I blocked Joao with 2 cities and spread the CoL-found Christianity to him which left him at pleased and me with room for what I counted 40+ cities. I slowly proceeded to fill that gap and Rathauses really pulled their weight in this game. With Augsburg having both the Oracle and the ToA it generated three prophets with me paying no other heed towards GP farming and the three shrines (2 of which in Mutal-Mainz and one in Prague) lent themselves to expansion and I was pretty content with building just cities and missionaries.

Joao got the religion from Philo, I got every other religion. Upon meeting the other continent they were very backwards and ridden with internal strife and I decided to send christianity over to papa Joe and Toku and converted them to the true faith and fueled their warring on Bis to keep them as backwards as they were. With three shrines, the trinity of AP/SM/UoS and the cheap living brought to me by the greatness of the Rathaus I was beginning to take off like a rocket.

I could've grabbed any win I wanted with 43 cities powered by huge Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc but I opted against warring because didn't feel like going tanks on muskets more than necessary. Since I ended up against Joe in the final UN votes I had to subdue Joao to secure his votes and the combined arms of 10 Bombers and 10 Tanks made short work of his Longbowman/Grenadier defense.

Some highlighting snaps of the end:

Demographics, 10 times the GNP and MFG of best rival:

Spoiler :

National Park running 21 specialists:

Spoiler :

Closing in on 7000 Beakers per turn, notice the gold surplus even at 100% science and having 2 corporations in 43 cities:

Spoiler :

1374 gold per turn from the Wall Street double HQ double Shrined Mainz:

Spoiler :

Score:

Click to expand...

Great job Fleme! I noticed that you mainly had farms... How in the world could you farm that many beakers? Or was the picture just wrong? Also, I keep wondering about the Archery in the save; how do I set it to the default difficulty? Or should I conciously leave it alone like I have been doing?

Bio Farms/Sid's Sushi/Caste System/Representation. (+let's not forget Statue of Liberty, that alone with 40 cities and rep is worth 240 beakers unmodified alone)

Give it a shot sometime

@cripp7:

Here's the end save. I had to play from the autosave at 1652 AD and improved my micro while doing so. It's closing in on 10000 BPT in the save provided here.

Edit: Didn't cross my mind to edit the previous post, sorry for double posting.

Edit2: It's played with BUG 4.1. I know that must be inconvenient but I do it because of our Co-op da Whoop games and Silu's reluctancy to upgrade