Nobles' Club LIII: Justinian of Byzantium

A slightly odd map this time around. I started with an Inland Sea, random opponents, medium sea level, and swapped us with a leader whose start had horses reasonably close.Inland Sea is a no-wrap map with land surrounding, you guessed it, a sea in the middle. It seems to have somewhat less food than standard maps, but that may just be the 2-3 maps I happened to generate. I made my usual edit of changing most deserts to plains, and split the single land mass into three parts, each reachable via galleys. I then added a twist.

basically the overall land is food resource poor, but with plenty of river and riverside FP. So in my first attempt I went with settling rivers and farming FPs, there is usually 2-3 fp per river, with one exception to west.
but that limits cottages. So my actual gameplan was to farm FP and rely on that gold in second city.
So i am a bit unsure if switching to cottages is worth it, or try some weird specs running economy?

ah and i would love to hear your opinion about strategic decision early, but if you want to play the game i put it better in another spoiler

I managed to chariot rush Saladin somehow with about 8-10 chariots.

If you dont settle in place on this map, no immediate horsies







The nubcake spent all those years between the two attacks building a settler instead of archers, and only had two archers when I sent in a stack of chariots.

I only trained two settlers, then spammed chariots, on top of the two Arabian cities, I also found two barb cities going the other way. 7 cities, plus two extra settlers waiting for the economy crash to recover, go go Library and Courthouse spam.



I got so many cities that they wont even fit onto a max zoom out

No one built the pyramids, I managed to get it in 295 AD

11 cities, Confucian shrine founded, trying to get two more priests for hindu + jewish shrines that Saladin had founded cities. I will try to expand to 16 cities by 1000 AD

techpath: agriculture ( corn ) > ah > mining > bw > pottery > writing > iron working > alphabet

i went with agriculture first to get the corn going. i then moved the ah. i debated bronze working but decided that given there were no immediate 3+ food tiles other than the cows i figure ah first, then move to BW > wheel & pottery to get some early commerce going while i look to pump settlers and claim land.

it's 3600 bc and i've not yet met anyone. i find a great looking city site to the southeast - great commerce city, arguably a better bureaucracy capital than i have. this will be my first settled city i figure.

my build order goes worker > warrior > settler > warrior > barracks > settler. i have a great city site and it fits the traits of my leader. this seems like a resonable plan. i also have cottageable land to drive some commerce as well as gold to get commerce going. this would be and ok situation to rex even though historically i'm bad at that.

it's been a long time since i've used a leader without mining. ah seemed worth it with the horse tile i got but wow it will be awhile before i have bw and can chop out those forests.

i meet saladin who is to my west and looks to be the founder of buddhism. it isn't clear which direction pericles came from; possibly south, possibly east. i find saladin is immediately west and close enough for a potential rush although i find it's nice to be able to ally religiously with a close neighbor and he founded buddhism. we'll see.

i lose my western exploring warrior to a lion or bear. man that sucks.

after another warrior in my capital i decide on a barracks in case i decide to rush saladin. i'm not really feeling inclined to a great deal given the amount of nice looking land about but it's a possibility and i'd like to get up to size 4 soon.

broze working is in and i immediately change to slavery which i'm sure i'll use soon. i hook up my two cities via a road and start on the goldmine. thessalonica is first pumping out a worker before i grows. i go with pottery after bw to get some early cottages and commerce in the hope this will allow for an aggressive rex.

2280 - i lose my eastern exploring warrior to a lion - my luck is not looking good this game.

2nd settler is out and i decide to settle towards saladin.i do and notice i will overlap his 2nd city almost immediately. i also find no competition yet to the east. pericles must have come from the south. i don't have metal with my first 3 cities but i do have horses and i'm tempted by the thought of rushing saladin. his 2nd city is on a hill which sounds like a nightmare but if i wipe him out by whipping / chopping i may be in a great place with 5 cities, lots of land with commerce and room to expand to the east. this will be the plan. once the granary is done in constantinople it will be all about chariots.

writing is in, i switch to iw & open borders with everyone. i meet asoka in this time and find the greeks who are to my east so unhindered expansion to the east is not what i thought. there is also a barb city to the east as well. i move into saladin's land and find mecca on a plain and only defended by a single archer. life is good. 4 chariots are in my border city now.

i explore around and whip / chop 12 chariots. two of the three cities fall easily but the city on a hill proves my issue. by the time i get 8 chariots there, it has 4 archers and is un-takeable. i switch from currency to construction which i'll have in 21 turns. i then make some tech trades with pericles to get that down to 19 turns. i then decide to extort what i can from saladin. i make peace for 2 of the religious techs.

this will give me an extra negative with pericles but i figure i may as well get something from the war. i'm going to need catapults to truly end it and that's some time away.

since i'm at happiness cap in constantinople and it's time to turtle up and get ready for the next phase of war, i switch to cottages in my capital and go with two scientists. i don't want to grow any larger and i might as well drive some commerce. i also whip out a library in my 2nd commerce city.

it's 725 BC. i'm going to call that the end of chapter 1 and look for some feedback on the game thus far.

my plan from here is as follows:

1. get workers out in my 2 newly capture cities and start building them up
2. get to construction / whip catapults, finish saladin
3. rex eastward as much as possible to claim land away from the greeks who are a potential next war target
4. cross my fingers for religion from either asoka or charlemagne.
5. decide if i'm moving my capital before settling my first great scientist. my capital will be good for commerce but not as good as my 2nd city to the southeast which has something like 5 floodplains and a gold mine. palaces are somewhat hard to knock out.
6. get to priesthood, get the oracle and slingshot COL - this is a big if for me. i never try this kind of thing and i'll only do it if i have time after construction. then again maybe i'm thinking backwards here. maybe the move is to get the COL slingshot and then finish saladin.

ideas, comments more than welcomed.

this map seems to have tons of commerce which makes me think we'll see pretty fast teching. i'm please to appear to be pretty far ahead

OK, so I settled in place and got the warrior out scouting. Not much in the way of huts but I did find Saladin pretty close. In fact so close it was a "Must Rush" situation... and luckily AH turned up horses right next to my capital If I'd settled 1SE then they wouldn't have been in the BFC and so no hammers, so I'm pleased I did say in place.
After the grief Saladin gave me in NC 52 I wasn't prepared to tolerate his idiocy a second time around

Build order:
Worker - warrior - worker - warrior - settler - worker - warrior.

Tech path:
Agriculture (8 Turns), Mining (7 Turns), Bronze Working (13 Turns), Animal Husbandry (10 Turns), Pottery (8 Turns), Writing (9 Turns), Masonry (4 Turns)

I chopped probably 10 chariots in the end, but the first wave only needed three for Saladin's capital. His second city was much harder, with two archers and two warriors on that damn hill. Burned more that perhaps I should have but to have the rush over with by 1120 BC was worth it.

Plans for the future, get a couple more commerce cities setup before 1AD and grab as much nice land as I can. Plan is to go for a cultural victory so I need at least nine cities and it would be great if I owned a religion or two too. Must start going for wonders now...

As per the dot mapping in the following images, I think the city layout works really well with no overlaps and maximising resource usage (except for those sheep).

My 'empire' to date


Victory conditions

Build Order in Constantinople: Worker > Warrior > Settler > Warrior > Barracks

I settle in place and get started on Agriculture so I can farm the corn nearby. It's not an ideal capital in my opinion, but the two bonuses are alright, and there's plenty of forest for some choprushing. I head off to the west and find a spot near a river where there's a couple of hills as well as stone and sheep, a decent spot for a production city. I go toss up between Mining > BW and AH after Agri is done, and decide to go with the BW path. I keep going west until...


Why hello there, Saladin. He's a bit close for comfort - a possible candidate for a rush. Unfortunately, when BW is done, it becomes clear that there's no copper within visible range. There goes the axe rush. Instead of risking it and going with IW, I decide to see if I can get a Chariot Rush going and start on AH. A lucky hut gifts me a Warrior,
saving me a couple of turns of production in Constantinople.

Luckily, AH gives me access to some horses inside Constantinople's cross, meaning I've got the go-ahead for the chariot rush. I get my workers to chop out a big stack of 12 chariots (as it happens, way more than I need, but I like to be safe), and send them flying towards Mecca. It has a paper-thin defense, just an archer and a warrior. I lose one while trying to inflict some damage to the archer, and another one, unluckily, while killing the warrior. But the holy city of Hinduism falls pretty easily - I decide to keep it, giving me a religion and some more resources. Medina is a bit more well defended - two archers - and three more chariots die, but I manage to take it. It's a pretty shoddy city for a capital, and so I raze it. I steal a worker, too, so I can work a few more tiles in the meantime. Saladin thumbs through his moustache for the last time in 1320 BC. Tech goes Masonry > Pottery > Writing > Alphabet.

The next few turns are mainly improving some tiles around the cities. I send off another settler to found Adrianople to the south of Thessalonica (sp?) - another production city, this time on the coast. It'll be handy for later if I decide to launch an attack across the inland sea. A group of three Barb Warriors decide to descend upon Mecca - I guess those Chariots are of use after all. After Alphabet is done, I decide to go Polytheism > Priesthood for the Oracle > CoL slingshot.

The State of the Empire:

For the next couple of turns:
- Tech IW and Construction for possible war with the Greeks.
- Pyramids to raise the happy cap with Representation? I have Stone, so why not?

After 4 tries I concur that rushing Saladin is the only option how to get in this game anywhere. BUT you have to be a bit lucky in his distribution of archers.

At first try he had total 7 archers, 5 of them in cap (wtf???). At second try he had in cap 2 archers, what got to be pain was medina which had 3 archers (I initialy skipped that monstrous site for cap). for those cap 2 archers I had to waste I think 3 chariots to win the rest.
I made a mistake there not realizing he built another city to west and going straight for medina and resting around for military build up. After i realized he has another city west, i sent there immidiately 4 chariots, that lead to him abandoning medina with 1 archer in the open, reducing medina to 2 archers. And that was the breaking point.
Western city was easy with only 1 archer (got there 2 workers free, nice) and after that I finally finished saladin killing medina after some turns.

Immidietaly preparing settler expansion, but since economy is down the drain, i will stuck a bit on 5 cities, have 2 settlers ready in their spots and after the economy catches a bit (workers have to improve land) i will have 7 cities I expect around 900BC will be the right time.

And to 1AD I hope get at least 2-3 more cities, I have enough land. Especially that wheat+gold site to east seems lucrative to pay for itself immidiatly.

I think the game after the rush is on the right course and should be easily won after light expansion.

I rushed Saladin as discussed before, expanded, teched, won liberalism race 1k AD. Got 15 cities overall, still some room in empire for more cities, but very uninspiring, except for that furs site, that I initially thought that i will just grow bounds and get eventually furs (not needing more maintenance there).
I have slight tech lead, trying to finish universities around the empire and oxford.
I have relatively big empire now with a lot of cities, that leads me to think that it's better to wait for cavalrys for another war. first target will be naturally pericles which is east.

Mecca will be primary unit pump, with 4 more cities that i will dedicate to production. but mecca will be THE pump.

What would you do in my place other? I am currently teching guilds to get better workshops. next target will be all the techs for cavalry.
Didnt build any wonders this game. probably should try for taj mahal now (maybe it's right time for GA).

I have BIG problem with generating GPP and GPs, since there is no obvious GP farm and food is generally scarce.

Some screenshots of my empire.