NC LXIII: Pericles of Greece

dalamb

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The Nobles' Club series started out as a way for Noble-level (and below) players to improve their game. Most of the original participants now play at much higher levels, so this has become a way for advanced players to help others learn to play better. You can play your own game at any level and with any mod, but it would be nice to comment on the games of other players and give them advice.

Our next leader is Pericles of Greece, whom we last played in NC XXXIV. The Greeks start with Fishing and Hunting.
Pericles.jpg
  • Traits: Pericles is Creative and Philosophical. CRE give +2:culture: in each city, meaning they grow without your having to built monuments and libraries, and also lets you build those libraries (plus theatres and the UB, Odeon) for half the hammers. PHI gives you +100% Great Person points and half-price universities.
  • The UB: The Odeon, a Colosseum that gives +2 :) instead of +1, 2 free artists, and +3:culture: -- a nice boost if you're going for a cultural win.
    Odeon.jpg

  • The UU: The Phalanx, an Axeman with +100% defence against chariots, the usual bane of axemen.
    Phalanx.jpg
And the start:
start.jpg

Spoiler map details :
Tectonics, Mediterranean, Wet. I generated a lot of test cases before generating the game map, so here's some general characteristics I've seen.
Spoiler what the script seems to genereate :
Read "is/are" as applying to the average of what I've seen, and not necessarily specific to the game map. This kind of map looks roughly like the Mediterranean Sea, but sometimes the Straits of Gibraltar get closed off. Normal climate gives a lot of plains and deserts, which is why I picked Wet. Some starting positions seem to be quite mediocre. Some seafood starts have lots of food (including some on land); others are more "normal". The South is often, but not always, narrower than the North, but on the few maps I investigated thoroughly they tended to have fewer AI in compensation. The south has flood plains, though not necessarily in Egypt. There are lakes large enough to have seafood -- which will likely cause the AI to build more ships than it can sensibly use. I've seen a fair number of resources in places with no food nearby. It has almost twice the usable land as most maps we've used -- more so even than Highlands.
Spoiler edits :
So, to be fair to Immortal players, there are 16 AI instead of 6, which brings the "usable land per civ" down to about the average we've had during the series. I regenerated until I got one that met several criteria:
  • At least 3 decent seafood starting locations actually occupied by civs (since I was hesitant to second-guess the script as to whether some of the unoccupied seafood locations were appropriate starting locations)
  • Gibraltar is open.
  • Land distribution met the "typical" I'd seen while investigating (a few had far less land than usual, or an exceptionally narrow "north")
I made sure that all the seafood starts were taken by civs with Fishing, and that we had copper reasonably nearby for our UU.
Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:

There are no hard and fast rules here: fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do suggest that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards. You can post as often as you like; here's one suggestion:
  • 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 didn't, 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)
This is just a guideline. If you're trying to improve your game, then posting more frequent updates, in as much detail as you can manage, is the best way to get suggestions from other players. If you come to what seems like a major decision and you want some advice, post an update, regardless of what game-year it is.

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.

Special Thanks go to Bleys and TMIT, who really made this series a great one, r_rolo1, mapmaker extraordinaire, for his maps for most of the series, and all of you for playing.

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 "NC 73 Pericles Noble" (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! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

Note: The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.

For players on Monarch or above, you should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:
Spoiler how to add techs to the barbarians :

  1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
  2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
  3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
  4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
  5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
  6. Exit the worldbuilder.
  7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.
 

Attachments

Signing in, Emperor Normal No Huts/Events.

SIP looks pretty certain, thou I'm only seeing 2 hills other than the one we're on, plus only 2 Riverside Grasslands, be an interesting game anyway due to what i read in spoilers :)
 
I don't think I saw mention of the map size
 
Standard Size I assuming due to him saying
Spoiler :
"instead of 6 AI in map spoilers"


O, and i'm going to be using BBAI with this, just for when i'm posting for advice :)
 
Will start this soonish. Probably going to give up on my Rags game as near the end it got a little tedious (and everyone who wasn't my vassal DoWed on the same turn :eek:!) Hopefully this goes better.
 
Prince/Normal/No huts/events/ to 1580 AD

Spoiler :


Stone yarrr. The first thing I noticed was that the land outside our capital is utterly pathetic. Plains hills is nice, but plains up the wazoo is nice. There's a entire no man's land between me and Hannibal where it's just utterly terrible. I went food stuff ---> BW because there are too many forests and they keep growing.

I figured I could axe rush Asoka, but silly me forgot the wheel. It was already 1500 BC before I knew it and by the time I could get a phalanx army, it'd probably be epic fail. Asoka would be a nice buffer zone to whatever jerk was to the west. Oh... Monte, very well then.

Anyhow I get writing and find out his major cities are on hills. Oh well... I place a city to the west to stop Asoka from coming in and the CRE trait pushes hard against him. I also decide to start the great wall after hooking up stone. The fail gold proves helpful in fueling my research. Meanwhile, I had gone for pretty early writing and since Pericles is PHI, a great scientist comes along and becomes the first of many to settle into the city.

There was a massive hatefest going on, and I see a dogpile in the Bcs with Charlemagne and co. None of my problems. I build the pyramids and expand in a straight line south. I'm easily no.1 in tech, thanks to 6 beaker specialists and 9 beaker Great scientists. The Great Library helped too.

Hit Lib at exactly 1000 AD with minimal tech trading, and grabbed sistine for some reason. I even took Notre Dame, and I never get it since the AI loves engineering so much. But they were all kinda slow due to all the distractions. I also bother with whales for once. The NE was horrifically placed, I'm not sure why it went there.

Anyhow my empire is still very small and Mansa of all people gets ahead of me in score. That could not be allowed, so I give Izzy a bunch of techs so they can go at it. I decide to build an army and attack Asoka with cannons, who has been very annoying and capture the AP....

Civ4ScreenShot0018-1.jpg


And with Asoka out, now on to this douche
Plans... repair my damaged fishing and kill this douche. Meanwhile, I'll keep a small garrison to the east in case Hannibal tries anything funny. Also a Great Merchant just came out, so he'll be helpful. . Looking at Monte's techs... hehehe


Civ4ScreenShot0019-1.jpg
 

Attachments

Will start playing later tonight or tomorrow. Likely Noble with no huts/events. Maybe try and fail at Prince.
 
Playing Monarch/Normal. No huts or events.

I'll be uploading the results to youtube as I go, in 12-15 minute installments. First video is active; 2nd is uploaded and processing. 3rd is compressing for upload.
 
Well i'm planning to play till about 1AD today, so i'll probably watch your first few videos later :)
 
@Habitus
I just finished recording video #4, and it ends at 400 BC, so you shouldn't see any spoilers if you watch once you're at 1AD :)
 
Just noticed, your Immortal WB only has Emperor bonus techs, and Deity only has Immortal bonus techs :) While it saved me time making an Emperor save up to play (ie didn't need to remove Agriculture from Civ that don't start with it in Immortal save) it does make the game abit easier for people who are going to play that difficulty (thou barely, since its probably a 2 turn research for AI)

Basically Immortal needs Agriculture added in, and Deity needs The Wheel added in.
 
Emperor/normal to 850 BC, taking a break to think the thing through.

I settled 1S if anyone is interested how it looks that way and decided for landlocked start (ignore seafood)

Comments as always very welcome, I would actually love to know if from this position you would go for cats+something war against neighbors or not. since I think I could wait for renessaince breakout, but with this land... well who knows.
Early war could be probably better.

Spoiler :


As it seems it's a bit crowded map, which is fine for a change.

I started with agri->ah->mining->bw, worker first, which led to 2T of waste worker turns before worker had enough to do (mine the first mine)

He could preimprove wheat and gold for city 2 which was nice.

I blocked enough land for 6 cities.
The copper was "WTH" moment for me :-), maybe the intent of mapmaker was make us rush?

Right now I finished aesth and traded for alpha and shopped some backfills tech for writing, next turn could be next big shopping, for IW etc.

I am absolutely unsure where to proceed from now on :-) I prequeued math for constr+currency.

The land isn't great... one could argue that it's actually bad ;-). hannibal claimed himself as first target of war.

Some screens
Spoiler :

Civ4ScreenShot0839.jpg

Civ4ScreenShot0840.jpg

Civ4ScreenShot0841.jpg




 
@vranasm

Spoiler :
I SiP and then went for the 2 gold sites for cities 2/3. Your southern most site is pretty much where i settled 4 (i was 1E due to Carth settling their city near there abit more E in my game). Due to Monty founding a religion in my game i'm pretty sure i'll just Dogpile India once he declares on them, as that didn't happen in yours and having no horses/phants I'd probably wait on the 6 cities until you can bribe someone in on Carthage to help you, or on Rifles. Land isn't that great, but i think the map script in general is all this sort of land.
 
@vranasm

Spoiler :
I SiP and then went for the 2 gold sites for cities 2/3. Your southern most site is pretty much where i settled 4 (i was 1E due to Carth settling their city near there abit more E in my game). Due to Monty founding a religion in my game i'm pretty sure i'll just Dogpile India once he declares on them, as that didn't happen in yours and having no horses/phants I'd probably wait on the 6 cities until you can bribe someone in on Carthage to help you, or on Rifles. Land isn't that great, but i think the map script in general is all this sort of land.

Spoiler :


but we have copper though and axes+spears+cats war could work... but I don't really think that I am set up that way, would be war around 1Ad probably.

Construction would be fine for the UB though. That's why i have mixed feelings.
 
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