Nobles' Club XC: Napoleon of France

dalamb

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 Napoleon of France, whom we last played in NC XIX; we last played France under De Gaulle in NC LXXV. The French start with Agriculture and The Wheel (which happen to be suitanle prerequisites for Pottery, if you want to get an early start on a granary or some cottages).
  • Traits: Napoleon is Charismatic and Organized; the :) from CHA synthesizes with the lower maintenance from ORG to allow for a bigger empire with bigger cities earlier than you might get with other leaders. CHA also gives faster unit production, which can help with warmaking.
  • The UB: The Salon, an Observatory that gives a free artist. It's usually considered weak, since the artist would only be useful if you were trying for a cultural victory.

  • The UU: The Musketeer, a Musketman with 2 moves instead of 1. Many players consider musketmen weak in the first place, and the Musketeer much weaker than the Oromo or Janissary (the other two Musketman-based UUs). However, there might be circumstances under which the extra move is critical in getting a unit to where it needs to be if you happen to be at war during the relevant time period.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Hemispheres, tiny islands, 2 continents -- for real, this time!
Spoiler edits :
Swapped several AIs to get us a good Agricultural start, put a good techer on our continent, and give one AI the seafood start he'd prefer. Improved the starting area of an AI who originally was in sad shape. Checked that nobody had too much territory into which to expand unopposed -- but I'd appreciate a report from any Immortal+ players who get far enough on how that worked out. Rerouted our starting river to touch our 2nd corn.
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.
Click to expand...
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 90 Napoleon 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, just in time for the weekend. Signing in, Emperor,Normal. That marble screams for Great Library, Parthenon and possibly the oracle, plenty of forests. Maybe a Xbow rush from the oracle bline is possible?
 
I'll give this a go this weekend. Napoleon's pretty fun, and that's a good start for him.
 
Well, if they're gonna let me build every wonder available, I might as well do it. :lol:
 
Monarch/No huts or events/ Normal Speed
Spoiler 1800 BC :

Went Mining ---> AH---> Mason---> BW

Maybe I shouldn't have put off BW for too long. Stonehenge easily finishes, giving me +1 happy in every city but I lose the GW by one turn. :(

There's nobody I can see so GW would be nice...




Spoiler 1000 BC :

Screw city placement! I have Stonehenge!

Went to priesthood via Poly, build ToA (yay!) ; Got Oracle ----> Aesthetics, so I can immediately build Parthenon and make my way to lit. Decided to wait a little and grab currency too.

Chop! Chop! Chop! 5 cities, with 2 easy backfill spaces plus Orange is going slow and all these wonders....



Spoiler 350 AD :

Mids soon go afterwards; never even got a chance to bother with that. I bet it's the same douche that took my Great Wall.

Eventually Wilem's Hinduism spreads to us. Easy switch since I can't find anyone else.

A great prophet appears and is settled. A second guy comes out and I use him to bulb Theology, getting the AP. The cool thing about this is that Orange loves Free Religion. That means in the future we can both switch to FR and I'll be sure to have his votes. :lol:

We finally meet Mansa and he hates us. :( He's willing to trade but I don't know if I should piss Wilem off



Great Library is cool too, Sistine next?


Lawl



I had to check if it was Monarch. I think I can hold off Lib for a while. ;) I do think I should get some army though since neither of them are particularly trustworthy.
 

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This map...

Spoiler :
...was way easy (and yes, I actually played on Monarch this time). Cutting off Willem is a breeze, and when you do that, you have the entire rest of that very nice continent to settle at your leisure. I got lazy near the end and made things harder for myself than I should've, but if you can exile Willem to the jungle (I did it with three Settlers chopped out of Paris), then it's all over but the shootsing.

I'll do a better write-up tomorrow. Needless to say, the game ended with, "What? It's 3:30 in the morning? Okay, screw this, I WILL RUSH BUY THE UN."
 
Seems like a great start once again. Will give this a go on Immortal in a couple of days.
 
This map is ridicolously easy, but still fun.
Spoiler :
Went for Priesthood for the Oracle, getting Code of Laws. After that teching for Construction and Horsebackriding for the obvious elephant-rush. Meanwhile, just mass expanding. The lack of bronze in the neighbourhood made dealing with the barbs a bit more problematic than usual. I still wound up with 8 cities when I was able to start massing up on the phants, at this point Willem still only had 3 (all with academies allready installed :D).
Spoiler :
Just about to attack Willem


I was able to leave Willem with only his newly-settled city and grabbing Monarchy (and some other stuff) from him. I had just enough money at that point to rush out Feudalism so I could vassal Mansu after taking Timbuktu. (I also quicly finished of Willem, cause I don't like the colour orange)
Spoiler :
After taking the first city of the Mali

After that I quickly settled the rest of the top land. Making sure that all my cities had a courthouse as soon as possible. After that I sat on 30 cities with a Vassal with 9 more.
I didn't feel like conquering the other continent, especially because it just wasnt neede. So I ended with an 19th century Space Race victory
 
Re the map, revealing stuff about the AIs and my edits:
Spoiler :
I'm a little sad it wound up being so easy, but since I didn't add any resources anywhere, and actually improved one AI start (more land, hills, and forests on Toku's originally scrawny peninsula), somebody would have got our start. We originally had Willem's start, he originally had Mansa's, Wang originally had ours, and Mansa originally had Wang's. Regardless of anything else I would have given us agriculture resources somewhere. OVerall, the shuffle gave us agriculture instead of fishing food, gave Willem a sea start near some islands that might have been good for a CRE/FIN, and put Mansa with us instead of on the other continent.

So, my question for the experts is: I know I made the map better for us, but did I make it too much better?
I've added a brief comment in the 2nd message that some people found this very easy and people new to the thread might want to step up one level of difficulty.
 
As promised!

Monarch, no huts/events, Normal speed!

Early Game:
Spoiler :
This kind of start screams for an Oracle beeline. I normally trade for religious tech if I plan to wage war (which I want to do with Napoleon just because he's such a fun leader for doing so!), but after the worker techs and Masonry I went straight for Priesthood. Chopped the Oracle for about a five-turn build and took Code of Laws to found Confucianism.

Willem has it really rough on this map. Mansa wants to expand north because that's where the stronger sites are for him, and it's really easy to cut him off from the north just by settling along the floodplains. I was able to beat him to the wheat/copper site south of Paris and then cut him off along that whole southern part of that continent.

Diplomacy was wacky; I'd stupidly lost a city to a bunch of barbs since I was convinced I was getting the Great Wall, but I was beaten by a turn. So Willem retook my city. ...so I had to declare war on Willem to take it back. Yeah, it was kind of messy. I sometimes forget how nasty the barbs can be on Monarch relative to lower difficulties. :p

So Mansa was the primary early trading partner, but to be honest I didn't do a whole lot of it just because cutting off Willem meant I was able to found 18 total cities peacefully (and I could've easily had more). Grabbed some wonders--Sistine, Great Library, Parthenon, Shwedagon Paya (for, oddly, Theocracy), Statue of Zeus (AI denial--that's such an easy wonder to build that I can't really help it sometimes!). Lib'd MT in about 1100 AD, then had a GE build the Taj for me and burned Economics' GM and one of Paris's GP to make the fun go longer.


And then I started killing guys:
Spoiler :


Willem was only able to found four cities. :lol: He also founded three religions, and he had all of them shrined except for Islam by the time I arrived.

So I just kept his cities and started pumping out Galleons on the east coast. Wiped Willem out easily.

I was a bit nicer to Mansa, though...



But I did take the (shrined!) Christian holy city from him, which meant I owned every holy city except for two.



...so, yeah, let's go get those.


To endgame:

Spoiler :
Tech screen when I declared war on Wang:



Tech path at this point was toward Mass Media--Wang had built the AP in a city with a bunch of wonders I wanted, so I figured I'd rather obsolete the thing than

A. have to deal with villain status and
B. have to burn the city down.

Luckily, it was coastal...



...and luckily, it was also where he had parked his stack.



Toku had capped to Caesar, so I figured I'd take care of Chuck first and complete my shrine collection. I had to take a few more cities from him since his forces were more spread out, but he capped as well. Every shrine in the game, whoo!

That left war with Caesar and Tokugawa to finish things up, which involved gunning down loads of Praetorians.



But the war was going slowly (Caesar had a SoD that was weaker than mine but still did enough damage that I doubted I'd be able to keep and hold Rome), and Caesar was teching to Rifles. Of course, I was teching to Tanks, but it was 3:30 in the morning, and I didn't feel like going through another big build-up and flying a whole bunch of Tanks to the other continent.

So I let him buy me...



...took that cash home, and spent it on one more wonder.




Fun game! Aside from his uniques, Napoleon is probably my favorite leader in the whole game. It's so easy to expand and get the increased happy cap to cover the cost of expansion, so he ends up being a top-flight REXer despite being neither Imperialistic nor Creative, the traits that make REXing easier.

Map spoilers:

Spoiler :
And since Willem can be so easily cut off and the other continent seems to tech very slowly, I don't think this one will be too bad as far as difficulty's concerned.


Great map. Thanks, dalamb!
 
dalamb said:
So, my question for the experts is: I know I made the map better for us, but did I make it too much better?
Click to expand...

Spoiler :
I'm playing this right now on deity and Mansa has about 14 cities at 100 AD. That's a bit much for that date IMO. Willem was stuck at 3 cities for a long time, but now has 8. I have tons of room should I want to expand to 20 cities, there should have been at least 1 more AI on my continent and Mansa should not get so much room IMO.

I don't think our start was too good, I just think there was too much unevenness in the land distribution.
 
Immortal Normal – I’m rusty since I don’t play much these days, so I wasn’t expecting this much of a romp. I haven’t finished a game in ages – and I still don’t have the patience to finish this one either. I'm also rusty at taking screenshots, which shows since I forgot most of the key ones.

This was easy though – I’m in a winning position at this point – man, I forgot how good Napoleon is as a CIV. Let’s just pretend that…

Spoiler :
I built about 100 infantry & artillery with my 30 city production empire and chain capped the other continent…that would be the next step at this point, or just build a bunch of nukes and bomb the other continent down.


Anyway, on to the game…

Spoiler :


I had a harder time blocking Willem than others (tough on immortal with their fast early game), but still was able to claim most of the northern part of the land. Got Henge with a couple quick chops. Like others, I built oracle for early COL, settled a couple southern sites, and then ultimately blocked Willem in with a couple west cities. The couple settled prophets from Oracle helped fuel the expansion. Toughest part about the early game was barbs – I actually even lost one of my cities to a sneaky barb for two turns!

Built GLib in the late BCs and Schwedegon Paya – free religion is nice on a map where we had four religions on our landmass.

Anyway, all the nice land plus the 2 pop whip courthouses allowed me to have this at 1 AD:



9 cities, and 2 more settlers on the way to their locations. Paris is only size 10 because I’m an idiot and forgot to build a granary until the late BCs – it’s amazing how many basic things I forget to do when I don’t play much. From there – basically up to lib, with a few wonders and finishing settling out the land. Nappy can keep settling aggressively because he can chop out courthouses so fast.

Easily won lib, although Willem started to go WHEOOHRN on me while on the way there:



Also, as I was filling out the landmass, Willem settled behind my borders, right on my only source of horse. So I built longbows to protect against a potential sneak attack by him, while readying a force to take that city. Him settling that horse city really slowed me down in this one - I had to waste a bunch of time building some elephants, cats and longbows instead of just massing cuirassiers immediately. Obviously built this:



And finishing my golden age, I’m finally ready to claim horses! They're right under Middelburg...



Obviously I didn't need much - he only had a longbow and an elephant protecting that city. Once I got horses, switched everything to cuirassiers while teching up to cavalry. Willem went down easy - of course the stupid capitulation mechanics bite me - he capped to Mansa who was pleased with me. All that meant was some extra war weariness, because neither of them were a match for my mass cavalry army. I kicked them both off the mainland, and started to right my economy. I got to communism right after capping Mansa, and from there it's game over. Too much production at this point and too many cities:



I'm about even with tech, since Mansa traded a few to me after capping. So clearly, with 30 cities, the game is over, but I don't have the patience to finish. Builds here:



 
Spoiler :
So yeah, Plenty of forest. plain hill start. SIP means double wet corn and a pig you can work later. The capitol is insane settler factory once you block wilhem. And the coast to the east is decent site for another city to split the tile too...

on your way to block will you can grab that doube gold to fund expansion too. the map and the trait just was too good for early play. The hardest part was dealing with all that empty space = damn barbs.
 
NetGear said:
Spoiler :
So yeah, Plenty of forest. plain hill start. SIP means double wet corn and a pig you can work later. The capitol is insane settler factory once you block wilhem. And the coast to the east is decent site for another city to split the tile too...

on your way to block will you can grab that doube gold to fund expansion too. the map and the trait just was too good for early play. The hardest part was dealing with all that empty space = damn barbs.
Click to expand...

Spoiler :
I built one worker, whiped one more and chopped a third.
I then chopped SH and The Wall.

Easiest way to handle barbs on this map I guess.
 
Okay, fun map, so big thanks to the OP for sharing and all that ;). I'm a regular Immortal player but Imo it's not going to benefit a struggling Noble user get better at his level, so I played on the default Noble settings with no huts/random events. :D

Onto the game!

Spoiler :
- Tech Path!

- AH/Mining/Masonry/BW/Myst/Med/Prst/Wrt/Fish/Math/Currency/Sailing/CoL/CS/Asth/Lit/Drama/Music>towards Liberalism(grabbed Nationalism)>towards Biology

- The plan!

- Upon scouting the land around me I only met 1 AI, William so I assumed I was in semi-isolation. Got some good scouting in and saw that there was a lot of land to expand too but was short on happiness resources. After seeing marble in the Capital and Stone nearby the best choice (imo) was to get the Pyramids (running a low slider during expansion) and eventually tech towards Drama/Construction for Theaters/Colosseums which would allow me to run the culture slider at 20% and pick up more than enough happiness.

- Initial build order!

- Worker/worker (lots of high food tiles to improve, mine, and chop, so imo best choice)/warriors to happy cap/warriors(7total, 6 fog busting)grow to 7/monument/worker/SH/worker/settler/Library/settler/worker/worker/settler/settler/settler/settler/@Pyramids took Representation then grew to happy cap (10)/ran 2 scientist/settler/settler/workerX3. For the new players out there, if you're not worried about getting boxed in by surrounding AI's or trying some deliberate early city strategy always grow your Capital to Happy cap. It lets you really take advantage of gaining more production, research, and it delays new city maintenance cost which slows things down.

- Brought 3 workers and founded 2nd city (with road) @ pigs/stone/bronze/hills/ and then built the Oracle, grabbed Currency, then chopped out the Pryamids while growing to 6 pop. Then went settler/settler/worker/worker

- 3rd city was founded on Fplains below 2 gold, taking corn and 5 FP (no gold at all). Improved FP first, hills last, then grew to 8 pop followed by settler/worker spam. The rest of my cities focused on building gold while chopping workers (in que behind gold building). This city would later build the Parthenon too.

- How I played the rest out!

- I expanded to 16 cities by 500 AD and would be at zero slider during the expansion phase, accumulating gold, with brief max research spurts. I could have squeezed in 3-4 more cities but I was happy enough with what I had. I used a large worker force (26 total) with 3 groups of 5 workers spamming farms everywhere (after CS) in my initial 7 or 8 cites, grew them to happy cap then switched to Bureaucracy/Caste/Philo/Religion with my Golden Age (GA from Music) and focused on research and GPersons (4 GS, all settled in Capital......Every single one will be settled there). At the same time I had begun chopping a few more workers in all my new cities, spamming farms, and began rapidly growing them (I had whipped granaries in all new cities before starting my golden age). When I was satisfied with their growth I switched back to slavery and whipped Courthouses, Forges, theaters, and in heavy food cities, colosseums (need more happiness via culture slider for bigger cities).

- In 1080 AD I just finished researching Economics and my Capital looked like:

- Running 12 total scientist (10 from me and 2 from TGL) and had 5 settled GS and settled GM with a total research rate of 474. Empire wide was just under 1,000. My final GP rate was 147 so I was still quickly getting new GPs.

- I suppose the plan is to eventually draft a bunch of Rifles or Infantry, take over my continent, then focus on research and launch a space ship or nuke everyone to death lol.

I'll attack a few save points for anyone interested. Once again, thanks to the OP 'cause Napoleon is fun to play with, regardless of level.
 

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I'm considering Engineering rush with a start like this.

Oracle (in the second city) -> CoL
Switch to Caste to farm those GS.
Profit?

Early Caste + excellent food can hopefully make up for the lack of PHI trait.
 
Ororo said:
I'm considering Engineering rush with a start like this.

Oracle (in the second city) -> CoL
Switch to Caste to farm those GS.
Profit?

Early Caste + excellent food can hopefully make up for the lack of PHI trait.
Click to expand...

On deity? You'll have to selftech Asthetics and Metal Casting, and expand sufficiently whilst running the 5 scientists in your cap. That's doable in immortal timeframes but on deity? Not convinced.

Phi really is required for a successful engineering beeline on deity, imho. The great advantage is that the two GS still arrive in time whilst running only two scientists in a second city. This means you can do so much more with your capital, like oracling metal casting, pumping settlers/workers, or working cottages, to put you in a good position production wise for trebs.

On the other hand, a crossbow rush is very doable without phi if you oracle metal casting in the capital - you only need 1 GS (or GE) for machinery and you can get that from a second city around the time the trades become available. You can always augment your army with trebs later on.
 
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