ALC Game 32 Pre-Game Thread: Playing as Charlemagne

All Leaders Challenge Pre-Game Show:
Game #32 - Holy Roman Empire/Charlemagne​

In the next ALC I'll be playing as Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire. Sisiutil used to have one of those pre-game threads for every ALC. I've decided to re-introduce them, at least for this game, for two reasons. One, I have a poll, , and some questions (more below). Two, finals week begins a week from today and I'm sitting for actuarial exam MLC on the 11th so there's lots of studying in my future and therefore not a lot of time for civving. I figured this pre-game thread might be a good place to keep this series alive while I take a brief hiatus.

Traits:

Protective: This trait, lovingly referred to as the worst trait in the game, gives free Drill I and City Garrison I promotions for archery and gunpowder units. It also lets us build walls and castles at double speed. The archer and gunpowder promotions are actually not bad. On defense their benefits are obvious but even when attacking it means that fewer city garrison troops need to be left to defend from counterattacks when the main force moves on. Walls I rarely build and castles I never do. So getting them at half price isn't particularly useful. However, when price goes down, demand goes up (note we're moving along the curve, the curve is not shifting). The question then is, does making castles half the price mean I will build them? The answer is still a pretty decisive nope.

Imperialistic: This trait is slightly better though still not one of my favorites. It makes great generals appear 100 percent faster and it gives us a 50% bonus on the raw hammers being used to build settlers. Be careful, this is not the same as a 50% production bonus to making settlers as might be suggested Firaxis. For example, a city with 6 and 6 would normally get 12 hammers to a settler. But an imperialistic civ gets 6 and 6*1.5 = 9 which means a total of 15 hammers to the settler. This is not the same result as 12*1.5 = 18 hammers to the settler. Also, Great Generals were fun at first but I've found them to be not that useful. Medics are nice but after one or two great medics their usefulness decreases. In other words, Imperialistic isn't quite as good as it sounds.

Starting Techs: Hunting and Mysticism

Well these are perhaps the two worst starting technologies. In his current teaching nobles to play thread, VoiceOfUnreason lists 27 different technologies that should be gotten before these two. Hunting let's us build camps on deer, fur, and elephants while Mysticism let's us build monuments, Stonehenge, and get a quick religion.

Unique Unit: Landsknecht

This is a replacement for the pikeman, which, maybe not surprisingly, is a unit I don't build very much. The Landsknecht is exactly the same as the Pikeman in that it requires Engineering and a source of iron and gets a 100% bonus against mounted units. But the Landsknecht also gets a 100% bonus against melee units. Unfortunately, they get nothing against archery units which is particularly troubling since the longbowman is the only unit of the era we have trouble attacking anyway.

Unique Building: Rathaus

Yay, something good to say about Charlemagne! To go along with his lame traits, starting techs, and unique unit, is what is lovingly referred to as the best unique building in the game. That's more debatable the protective being the worst trait, but the Rathaus is certainly terrific. It's a courthouse that decreases maintenance cost by 75% as opposed to 50%. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is! And it will allow for pretty much unlimited expansion once we get Code of Laws. I'll also admit that the Rathaus does make the Imperialistic trait more appealing since those settlers can be settled guilt-free.

Poll Explanation

I like to think of myself as an aspiring immortal level player. But as ALC 30 can attest to I can still be beaten by a challenging Emperor level map, let alone Immortal maps. The purpose of the ALCs was originally to explore different strategies and try nontraditional gambits in the quest for getting the most out of each leader. I'm worried that I won't be able to do anything that is Charlemagne-esque if I play on Immortal. I'll be catching up on worker techs for the first fifty turns and therefore won't found an early religion. This slow start will also see limited use of Imperialistic as I will likely not be building enough settlers to take advantage of the trait. The Landsknecht comes at what many lovingly refer to as the worst time for warring. And ... well nevermind, the Rathaus is awesome. So I'm interested to hear your feedback and therefore the poll question.

Lower Level Gambits

Settler first. This I might actually do even if we do choose to play at a higher level. Barring double animals or a bunch of deer, worker first will likely just annoy me as I need to research every worker tech myself and my worker will undoubtedly spend a lot of time snoozing. And we're imperialistic. It's true that we start with a scout, but even so, we should be able to fogbust a decent nearby second site and settle it before barbs start entering land (yeah, we're not playing deity just yet).

Founding an early religion. . Hey I haven't done this in forever. I miss the days when owning the holy city and running that religion let you see the crosses of all the other cities running that religion. Early religions are now terrible strategy-wise, and I don't contest this at all. But they are quite fun and allow for a different path down the tech tree and other ALC things.

Landsknecht plus trebuchet rush. This is the one most likely to happen on a low level that won't happen on a high level. The idea is simple. Get all those worker techs we need and then beeline engineering. We then build a bunch of trebs and landsknechts and take cities until the enemies gets too powerful while building rathauses to keep our economy alive.

All others ideas are welcome as well as any comments, questions, or concerns you have about the next ALC which will start in three weeks!

Might I suggest anyone planning a Landsknecht/Treb rush should also bring a few Horse Archers/War Elephants, just in case you can't crack those Archers/Longbows? I've tried Landsknecht rushes and they're slowed down even by Archers.

TheDanish said:

Might I suggest anyone planning a Landsknecht/Treb rush should also bring a few Horse Archers/War Elephants, just in case you can't crack those Archers/Longbows? I've tried Landsknecht rushes and they're slowed down even by Archers.

Click to expand...

No sense forcing a terrible UU.

HRE is a weakish civ with questionable traits (though godly if you abused overflow before firaxis bugged it for 3.19), an awful UU, and a very strong UB that doesn't compensate for the first 2. Starting techs are lackluster although charlie is one of the leaders who can pull settler 1st on a lot of starts, easing that somewhat.

PRO starts as a fallback to stay alive early on; later on we have a few interesting options to use it offensively. The obvious is rifles; they get the protective bonus and know how to use it especially with a tech lead. Less obvious is a treb + xbow war, with some minimal support troops. This type of war is a TERRIBLE idea against opponents that can build knights, but if you can deny the AI iron or especially horse, it won't have anything to threaten xbows in the field reliably as your promos will give you an edge on everything via cover, shock, or drill spam.

Rifle war is more probable and conventional though, as are any of the standard early rush gambits as IMP does cut some needed in getting a 2nd city to a strategic resource to pull it off and early gg help is welcome.

HRE won't run away with many games but you're not going to die easily and that's usually enough.

The Rathaus is overrated, considering that you can skip courthouses completely in most games and just go for state property. It's good, in that it might just make courthouses worth building in situations other than total economic disaster, but it's not great.

Charlie and the HRE are pretty decisively the worst leader-civ combo there is, being genuinely bad in essentially every area - traits, techs, and uniques (courthouse notwithstanding).

I say focus on playing the map and go higher - Rathaus will shine more if the maintenance is more of a pain, and as HRE isn't an amazing civ, doing something interesting may be easier this way.

Would it be possible for you to post the initial save in Worldbuilder format? I'd like to shadow these games but am still moving up to Emperor. The Immortal saves are quite beyond me at present.

I feel sorry for you.
Even if Charlemagne is closest representative of Czech. Rep. I can ever hope for, I wouldn't play him.

I can see 2 things you could do for our amusement:
1) protective LB/XBows rush
2) LK+Trebs beeline.

Both of it was done by AbsoluteZero in his fantastic videos on Deity.

If you roll start with PH in 1st ring I would seriously consider settler first.

@TheDanish

Actually with trebs there is almost no difference what you bring along . I assume you could go even with axes ;-), would cost you just little more trebs.

NihilZero said:

The Rathaus is overrated, considering that you can skip courthouses completely in most games and just go for state property. It's good, in that it might just make courthouses worth building in situations other than total economic disaster, but it's not great.

Click to expand...

So, as I understand that logic, Praetorians are overrated because you can just skip them and go with Musketmen?

Charlie and the HRE are pretty decisively the worst leader-civ combo there is, being genuinely bad in essentially every area - traits, techs, and uniques (courthouse notwithstanding).

Click to expand...

As far as techs go, I'd rather start with Hunting and Mysticism than Fishing and Mysticism. Hunting gives you access to Animal Husbandry (and Protective Archers if necessary) from the start, and Mysticism does allow you to start working on border pops, and with Imperialistic, Charlemagne has a good edge on settling to block. Not that Charlemagne's tremendous or anything, but I've yet to have a genuinely bad game with him. His opening is solid, he gets a midgame economic boost, if circumstances are right, you can pull off the aforementioned crossbow/trebuchet war, and protective really comes into its own with gunpowder units.

I'd personally call Isabella/Spain pretty decisively the worst leader/civ combo. Lousy starting techs. Slightly to moderately overrated traits. I'd argue that the Conquistador is even more worthless than the Landsneckt, as it comes later and gets a bonus against troops that are already fairly obsolete. Isabella has to pursue Engineering to make use of her UB, but unlike Protective Civs, she also has to build Macemen in order to have a truly viable offensive stack.

I think TMIT's analysis is spot on:

HRE won't run away with many games but you're not going to die easily and that's usually enough.

Click to expand...

Bandobras Took said:

So, as I understand that logic, Praetorians are overrated because you can just skip them and go with Musketmen?

Click to expand...

Before I spend any time on this, just how serious are you being here?

Benginal said:

VoiceOfUnreason lists 27 different technologies that should be gotten before these two.

Click to expand...

27.5 - neither of them is good enough to get before the other. But integer math got in the way again.

NihilZero said:

Before I spend any time on this, just how serious are you being here?

Click to expand...

It seems a good enough comparison; saying an economic advantage at Code of Laws is overrated because you get access to a sufficient substitute with Communism seems parallel to a military advantage at Iron Working is overrated because you get access to a sufficient substitute at Gunpowder.

I'm not sure the analogy is really a very useful one. City upkeep costs, and the efficacy of courthouses, grow as your empire does. In a lot of games you are unlikely to possess a very big empire before the renaissance, which means that the return on all those hammers spent on courthouses is unlikely to be very good since communism will soon be available thus ending the age of the courthouse. It varies from game to game, obviously. Sometimes courthouses are absolutely necessary. Other times they should be ignored completely and the hammers spent on something more useful.

To put it another way: at Code of Laws it's pretty unlikely that you will need courthouses. The need for them grows over time, and then at just around the time you might consider building them they are effectively obsoleted by State Property.

Upon discovering Ironworking, on the other hand, Praetorians are at their best. Their dominance wanes over time somewhat.

I can't believe I gave a serious answer to this...

NihilZero said:

I'm not sure the analogy is really a very useful one. City upkeep costs, and the efficacy of courthouses, grow as your empire does. In a lot of games you are unlikely to possess a very big empire before the renaissance, which means that the return on all those hammers spent on courthouses is unlikely to be very good since communism will soon be available thus ending the age of the courthouse. It varies from game to game, obviously. Sometimes courthouses are absolutely necessary. Other times they should be ignored completely and the hammers spent on something more useful.

To put it another way: at Code of Laws it's pretty unlikely that you will need courthouses. The need for them grows over time, and then at just around the time you might consider building them they are effectively obsoleted by State Property.

Upon discovering Ironworking, on the other hand, Praetorians are at their best. Their dominance wanes over time somewhat.

I can't believe I gave a serious answer to this...

Click to expand...

The UB courthouses each offer attractive prospects to courthouses though, as does ORG btw. Rathaus /turn will often be upwards of 4-5 reduction of maintenance cost on high levels, and that is independent of the slider. Depending on your ability to farm AI for gold, this can make it a superior econ building to many of your alternatives. It isn't totally obsoleted by SP by the way; 7 /turn for #cities maintenance isn't a joke and cutting that by 4 isn't either. More importantly, if you DON'T go SP (and there are on occasions compelling reasons not to do so), they are very very strong with corporations.

IMO the ikhanda, sac altar, etc are better but it's still a good UB. It isn't nearly as overrated as the dike.

I did say the Rathaus is

good

Click to expand...

and it is indeed good. Just not as good as people say. ORG courthouses are good too, and you get another UB slot into the bargain -maybe even a Hammam if you're lucky enough to be Mehmed.

You pretty much need courthouses of you use corporations or you'll be crucified by corporation upkeep. That's an another argument on favour of State Property imo, but let's not open that can of worms again (I still remember the fireworks last time there was a SP vs FM debate here ).

Charlemagne seems more like a play-the-map type of leader. I'd like to see our starting resources before deciding whether or not to build a Settler first. Couldn't you get away with that on immortal as well?

NihilZero said:

I can't believe I gave a serious answer to this...

Click to expand...

Thank you for doing so, anyway.

I do like the idea of corporations with rathauses. I don't go the corporation route very much myself, instead favoring state property. But if we get a lot of land and therefore a lot of resources either for the corp or that we can trade for resources for the corp heading that way could be fun.

Early religion seems out. It's certainly more useful on Pangaea when you can count on spreading it to at least one or two other civs. Any thoughts on playing the usual fractal map versus changing map types?

Settler first might very well happen even on a higher level. Especially if we have a forested plains hill in the start.

NihilZero said:

I did say the Rathaus is



and it is indeed good. Just not as good as people say. ORG courthouses are good too, and you get another UB slot into the bargain -maybe even a Hammam if you're lucky enough to be Mehmed.

You pretty much need courthouses of you use corporations or you'll be crucified by corporation upkeep. That's an another argument on favour of State Property imo, but let's not open that can of worms again (I still remember the fireworks last time there was a SP vs FM debate here ).

Click to expand...

Well, when rating top UB it's worthwhile to point out that few if any are gamebreaking, so calling one among the best isn't saying as much as might be implied in a "best UU" discussion

Also, I'm not sure I had a major part in this old SP vs FM debate, but I'll say pretty strongly that you're making a misplay if you always pick FM or always pick SP.

SP offers 2 major benefits: no distance maintenance and food on shops/watermills. Heavily cottaged or farmed empires see very little benefit from its tile improvement boost, and if distance maintenance is consistently < 3 post-courthouse (very common for a contiguous land empire with forbidden palace) it can be strictly inferior to free market or even mercantilism...PRE corporation consideration!

On the other hand, SP is a fast and easy transition for those wanting to settle a lot of land in the mid game ASAP, or to transition from GPP heavy early game onto a bunch of tiles where shops/mills have no growth and minimal setup time.

When to use what is one of the standard play decisions based somewhat on switching costs and how you set up your early game. My point is that this is relevant to HRE and its UU: corporations are much cheaper for HRE than anybody except shaka/zulu (where it's only 5% better) and as a result HRE is given some bias towards corporations beyond that of normal civs. That doesn't mean it's always a good idea; it means it's a good idea more frequently.

@TMIT, Why are dikes overrated? Agree with the rest of your analysis here.

HRE is not a tremendous civ to start your game with. However each trait has it's uses. Imperialistic can be very good and is seldom 100% useless. It's main use comes in the early game which is good. Same goes for protective, it not only gives some safety early game. You can stack strong gun powder troops in your cities, MG's upgraded from grens with CGIII to defend against collateral i'm thinking of, then just declare on a stronger neighbor and let him sac his units on your cities. Take him out after. It's the typical underdog trait.

Rathouse is a very good UB, Landsknecht is truly worthless.

Dirk1302 said:

@TMIT, Why are dikes overrated? Agree with the rest of your analysis here.

HRE is not a tremendous civ to start your game with. However each trait has it's uses. Imperialistic can be very good and is seldom 100% useless. It's main use comes in the early game which is good. Same goes for protective, it not only gives some safety early game. You can stack strong gun powder troops in your cities, MG's upgraded from grens with CGIII to defend against collateral i'm thinking of, then just declare on a stronger neighbor and let him sac his units on your cities. Take him out after. It's the typical underdog trait.

Rathouse is a very good UB, Landsknecht is truly worthless.

Click to expand...

I guess that Steam power is really too late a little bit to shine. They offer some versatility for dutch in city placement if you think all the time about making good cities for levee, but I think there are better candidates for best of best spot.

For example Hammam is imo much better UB.