Nobles' Club LXXXVII: Hannibal of Carthage

dalamb

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May 9, 2006
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Kingston, Ontario
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 Hannibal of Carthage, whom we last played long, long ago in NC V. The Carthaginians start with Fishing and Mining.
  • Traits: Hannibal is Charismatic and Financial. CHA gives +1:) and another +1 for monuments and broadcast towers, which can mean larger cities sooner. It is also a warmongering trait, since promotions take fewer XP. FIN gives +1:commerce: on every tile with 2 or more :commerce:, thus helping build a strong economy that can support expansion or research.
  • The UB: The Cothon, a Harbour that costs an extra 25%:hammers: (100 versus 80 on Normal speed) but gives +1 trade routes. Great for a Trade Route Economy (TRE), especially with the Great Lighthouse and perhaps the Colossus.

  • The UU: The Numidian Cavalry, a Horse Archer with +50% versus melee units; unfortunately its base strength is 5 instead of 6.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Big and Small, Normal Continents, Islands Mixed In, Medium sea level. A map type with coastal tiles if you want them, but not completely "watery" like Archipelago.
Spoiler edits :
Made sure we had a coast start (for our Fishing) and horses within shouting distance (for our UU). Changed a lake 1W into a plains hill and added the river.
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 in the early days 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 87 Hannibal Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels)You can 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.
Spoiler what's up with specific difficulties :
In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Noble. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

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.
Spoiler huts and events :
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.
 

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Nice, this was just what I needed! :)

Thought about the opening:
Spoiler :

I would assume that moving the scout NE would be a good move. This would enable us to see if there is some fish out there, that would be blocked by a SIP.
If nothing like that shows up, I would play SIP.

 
Thoughts about buildorder, tech and tiles:
Spoiler :


I see 3 major alternatives in this start.

Workboat first, working grassland forest hill (1f 2h) and after the borderpop, you can work the silk (1f 2h 1c).

Worker first, teching BW with the intent of mining the plains hill, to quickly build a workboat.

Worker first, teching agriculture with the intent of improving the corn.


I'm leaning toward the third alternative... The improvement comes in abit later, but 6f 1c is way better than 4f 3c... And also, we would have a worker ready to improve the weat, and to mine the hill!

 
Spoiler :

I'm leaning toward the third alternative... The improvement comes in abit later, but 6f 1c is way better than 4f 3c... And also, we would have a worker ready to improve the weat, and to mine the hill!


Spoiler :
Best thing about this is that you have 3 tiles you can improve with the worker before BW. Those worker turns are lost forever (quite a bit of drama :D)if you go the WB route. unless you can get the worker and the wb done very close to each other via the whip. just wondering. :scan:
 
Spoiler @krikav :
i see 3 major alternatives in this start.

Workboat first, working grassland forest hill (1f 2h) and after the borderpop, you can work the silk (1f 2h 1c).

That's almost always going to be a little bit slow. With a 3P tile, it's reasonable to emphasize hammers to get a work boat trained as quickly as possible. But 1F/2P tiles aren't nearly as good for that.

On normal speed, you should instead grow with the corn (and silk) to hit 22 food exactly, then emphasize hammers. In all, it's (slightly) faster than the "not quite enough hammers" approach.


That said, worker first looks MUCH stronger to me, for the reasons you mention.
 
Spoiler :
Agri -> BW -> Sailing -> Masonry -> GLH

Worker first. You probably won't even need to build a workboat for a long, long, long time.
 
1907 AD space Immortal/Normal
Spoiler :
SiP'd and went GLH. Building the city on the PH with rice+gold blocked off Lincoln. I peacefully expanded to 12 cities, but unfortunately Charly got to ~20 cities peacefully, and HC got to about ~15 cities peacefully too. This meant that Charlemagne was the dominant force. I was in SP because there wasn't really good cottage land, and I was thinking of using inf+arty on the world, but Burger King had too many troops, so I started going for space. I thought I was going to lose when everybody got Apollo, but I grabbed internet and ended up getting something like half the end of the tech tree thanks to internet.Charlemagne started getting overambitious at around 1850 with modern armor and capped pacal, then DoW'd HC. I bribed him to peace to prevent him winning UN, and went for space easily.
 
Spoiler :
This doesn't look straightforward at all. All the land sucks except for our capital and won't be viable until Calender. The only way this game is gonna work is with extensive tilesharing.



SIP, Worker/Warrior/Settler, Research Agri/BW/Sailing/Masonry.
 
Monarch/Normal/No huts, events

Spoiler to 800 BC :


Crabs aren't the most exciting thing, but those wet grains sure are. There's a lot of stuff to chop as well, and the terrain to our west doesn't look too hot. Probably going to expand along coasts.

Chopped out a settler and other worker, and due to lack of warrior cover, settled Utica 3 tiles north of the capital. There's also horses there. It can use Carthage's corn while the capital works on the crabs and wheat while I chop a monument out. I had researched sailing and chopped a lighthouse, but oops, no masonry.

In the meantime I chopped out Stonehenge, and maybe collect some gold, but surprisingly it finished. Masonry finished and work on the GLH began, Utica worked on the Great wall as this seemed to be a pretty big landmass with only Lincoln nearby which actually finished too. I guess nobody liked wonders this game. So no fail gold, but it's pretty easy to expand at this point. Stonehenge gives easy border pops and happiness per city, and great wall means archery is unneeded. (Barb spears are stupid!)

Not that exciting of a city, but mostly to grab that gold and close off lincoln. Now to focus on expanding...



Spoiler to 300 AD :



After settling this city site, I spotted an island with sheep which seems perfect for my leads. A work boat was sent to survey the area, and it turned out to have iron, sheep and fish!. That will be helpful.

Pretty slow expansion by this time, but there seems to be a lot of open space left. There's also a possibly decent site to the east in the ice.



Spoiler to 1200 AD :

A stupid barb city had formed to block me, but since I have not much in the way of units, I settled just far enough away to take the food. A few swordsmen were sent out to take the city, but Lincoln beat me to that as well as another Barb city. Fortunately, there were still 2 more to take. Meanwhile, Pacal and Stalin attack Lincoln, and with everyone involved in their own wars, I silently take Military Tradition with lib, though I probably should have grabbed Constitution as it took a while for stuff to happen



Spoiler to the 1800s :

I had to bribe Stalin and Pacal out of the war, so I could conquer Lincoln myself. Apparently nobody liked him, so by the time I came, he didn't put up much of a fight.



With that done, Pacal was next. He didn't have many advanced units, but for some reason his knights were giving my cavalry trouble. Maybe I should have built more. Stalin was bribed on me but he was easy pickings and I bribed Charlemagne on them.



After Pacal went down, I went after Stalin. Grenadiers aren't that great, but his capital proved really difficult to attack. He did decide to capitulate, which is good since it would have been a pretty nasty fight.


Spoiler 1896 Diplo :

In the meantime, I was busy spreading Hinduism, the AP religion, and finally switched in to it. Pacal was the only non member, so by spreading it to him, I should have enough votes. Unfortunately, there were a number of annoyances, like the vassals jumping in and out of hinduism and spreading religion to my island cities proved annoying. In the meantime the rest already had infantry, and I decided to attack Babylon who may or may not vote for me. (Probaly not). Fortunately he gave up quickly, with artillery doing damage and infantry/cav cleaning up.

With that there wasn't much to do but twiddle my thumbs til the next vote. Gah, an election really? In the last few turns I start taking Chalemegne's cities. He was warring with Capac who shockingly had mech infantry somehow. But whatever...





As a funny side note, I actually think HRE captured the AP.
 

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Spoiler :
Gonna have 9 Cities by 0 AD, not sure if that REX is good enough though. Also will settle the eastern islands. Research is in the crapper, Huayna has a few techs on me since I made a ******ed trade. But I have Calender, and my economy should explode after Currency. Also the other AIs are teching pretty poorly, Stalin is horribly backwards as usual too.

Started researching Aesth as tradebait, then I realized that nobody wants to trade. Maybe it's time to switch to Currency...

EDIT: WTF why does Charlemagne of all people, perhaps the strongest AI in the game, have that much land? This won't be fun...

 
Liberalism 1090 AD.

Spoiler :
I'm pretty much tying the tech leader Huayna. Huayna and Lincoln are Friendly.

I'm pretty sure I can win this peacefully if I get around 20 cities. Will probably be first to Econ, Lategame Sid Sushi, and I have every religion in my empire, as well as heavily Cottaged cities. Just need to sign DPs with my Friendly buddies, and easy Cultural win.

Tbh it kinda surprises me that I'm one of the only players who looks for Cultural solutions to these NC games haha.

 
Emperor/Normal, No Huts/Events, Cultural Victory 1908 AD.

Spoiler :
DP'd with Huayna. Lincoln dropped to Pleased since he went FR, but I used Astro to bribe him into a religion so I could DP with him at Friendly too. Because of that, I got away with defending my cities using Warriors...or nothing at all.

My Hermitage city, despite having many useless tiles in the BFC, was pulling over 1000 Culture/turn. Sid Sushi net me about 56 RAW CPT.

Took quite a few pics and will post them after dinner. The game was sorta boring, but then again, it's Culture so what do you expect? :)
 
Regarding the map.

Spoiler :

According to the 2 finishes, this is, by TMIT's definition, a hard game on IMM/DEITY. AI has so much land and can run away with ease.
 
@dalamb
Spoiler :
i'm not blaming you. i'm only playing up to emperor so far. so, i think it'll be fun to crack down some stronger than usual ai armies. :D and on the other side once i got communism with 40 cities, it should be really fun to massing huge army, maybe even backward ones, to hunt down a runaway ai or two. :lol: of course, everything is based on how much spare time i could squeeze out. with 2 jobs and a newborn, hardly any. that's really my deity challenge. :crazyeye:
 
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