Nobles' Club XCIV: Stalin of Russia

Tectonics, default settings.

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:

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.

Woof. That's a lot of crappy brown land. Maybe an early rush is in order

Horses! Up yours, Hannibal and Tokugawa and other people I haven't found yet.

Thought I'd step up to Immortal. Quit at 1560BC. This is not a map to be trying to step up a level...nearest neighbour is protective, and no decent site for even a second city.

The capital is great though (for production). One of the best I've seen. It could wonderspam/troop-spam by itself but you can't win a game with one city... perhaps if I had gone AH and seen the horses The Oz-Man speaks of, I might've gone with that. I went for axes but by the time I had 6 axemen, Hannibal had 5 cities... urgh.

Settled 1E, started worker worker. Went Ag-AH-Wheel, then either Writing or Bronze, I forget. With IND I almost exclusively go Specialist economy and after spotting stone that basically sealed the deal, however even if I didn't get mids I could have been okay probably. But I did get mids, and the hanging gardens and parthenon in capital, and working on TGL. Missed Oracle completely.

Settled 3W 1S for the sheep tile and to share corn. Then settled the Horse spot to the east, then the Marble spot to tile share the wet corn, then the eastern sheep and then two cities on the penninsula at about the same time. backfilled with vladivostok south of capi and then the other corn city down south. Commerce really hit the floor there and I experienced a couple turns of strike because of lazy micro, but managed to get currency soon enough and was ok.

Initially I saw the vast plains wasteland and thought 'ok, obvious play is 3-4 cities and HA rush Hannibal. Well I was slow to get HB Riding and with marble and stone around, as so often happens with nobles clubs games, there were many paths open and I chose the peaceful (wonderwhoring) one. Also I am growing to love the IND trait, and I am falling into a pattern where I have to rex hard early, then spam forges and workshops and tech bureau/guilds at minimum before I will ever declare on anyone. So here's where I'm at, running Rep with a good amount of libraries, 2 great scientists so far and teching music for the GA. Still don't have any forges...













edit: Stepping back, there really looks like an opening for an AP diplomation. Even Taosism, I could probably spread to Hannibal and possibly Joao. Then conquer Japan, run OR and THEN spam monasteries/temples/forges in OR, then AP. The should render the other AI for easy conquest. Yep, sounds like a plan. I'll give it a go and report back later this weekend.

If I recall correctly "Tectonics" maps tend to produce lots of plains tiles, which don't have as much "good stuff" (food, especially, but also forests and other resources) as many other map scripts. Hills tend to be concentrated together, rather than spread out among many sites. This means you may have trouble placing cities, and the map may be a little "less fun". However there ought to be some lessons Nobles could learn from operating on such a map -- and I'm hoping more experienced players can give a few tips (in spoilers) that I could add to that 2nd post.

Any suggestions?

Settled 2 more cites on the last green land available. Bulbed Philo but Taoism had already been founded. Luckily Carthage founded Christianity and I finally got a religion spread at around ~650 AD. So I took that and ran with it, chopped out some missionaries, swapped to OR and currently building monastery/temple/forge in OR and caste. Tech is still pretty good at 0% thanks to Rep. bulbed Machinery with a Great Engineer, and used another one to fast-build Sistine Chapel. Built AP in my horse city and won residency because Joao and Carthage haven't been spreading it in their cities like I have. Could cheese this one but I will do a treb and musket war instead on Carthage and Joao and see where that puts me. Bulbing Philo was a misplay as I don't much care about Lib at this point. I may detour to Nationalism for the free GA but otherwise I'm going to head towards Chemistry.

So in general I think this type of map script is easier for human players because AIs just handle it badly. Tech path went Agr>AH>Wheel (hut)>Bw>Myst (SH chopped out in St. Petersburg)>Writ>Masonry>Med>Priest>Pottery>MC (Oracle)>Math (bulb)>Construction>>Currency. Ended up trading for IW/Alpha, etc. Later I went towards Asthetics (put some turns into waiting to bulb math pre-construction> TGL/HE then bulbed Engineering, headed towards CS, then picked up Guilds right before gunpowder. My economy is mostly specialist/guild-caste workshops.

So I only settled 2 cities, the 1st was ST. Petersburg to get the Gold hooked up asap to help fuel research so I could get to Oracle techs in time. This city wouldn't contribute with production until quite later. My 2nd founded city had some nice trees and in PS/forge would be give quite the production. So the plan was to use Math chops from most forest outside my boundaries for the Mids and save most forest in Capitals BFC and Novgrod for Cat/Axe.

So maps like this do very well with running Representation specialist, in conjunction with building wealth/research as needed. Police state and early forges give huge amounts of production so getting the Mids is automatic imo, especially since were IND. You don't even need stone......it's nice if you can get it, but obviously not necessary. So back to police state/forges. I had like 14 forest prechopped once I had forged and switched civics so that alone is worth 14X45= 630 or around 12 Cats, which is exactly how many I made.

So from only 2 cities (gold city didn't make any units) I was able to produce quite a few units and easily overwhelm the map. Each new conquered city becomes production monsters as soon as they chop out a forge. So the trick becomes balancing maintenance with research. Once you find that balance its a walk in the park. So yea, I always here people state that Mids are too expensive and that it delays expansion, etc. I've never agreed with that sentiment, well, not at least for IND leaders (no stone needed).

The important thing is leveraging tech/production in such a manner that you can control the land/map/AIs around you. If you can find a way to do this, regardless what the method might happen to be, then it's a good thing .

Anyways, when I attack Jao I split up my forces and was able to quickly Catipulate him right around 1100ish AD. As you can notice he is nice enough to have almost finished Astronomy for us!! I've still got room to settle around 13-14 more cities on my continent if I wish. So the plan from here is to have my Vassals research up towards RP/Communism while I tech Chemistry>Steel>Railroad>Combustion.

With a big navy and cannon/anything the game will be over shortly. So to recap, with low food starts or very few good sites to settle, then always think about the MiDS for easy research, but more importantly, the huge production boost.

Settled 1e. Sent scout exploring in a spiral around starting location sorta.

Techs went agri, AH, wheel, masonry, bw, writing, math, myst.

Built worker, warrior x2, settler, warrior, settler in capital to start.

Settled 2nd city 1s of gold hill to the west, seemed like the best spot over there since i'd get gold and eventually a decent amount of green + the sheep I think it was. Mined the gold right away.

Settled 3rd city 1nw of the sheep and border pops on capital let me get the marble shortly thereafter.

2nd city made 2 workers, 3rd city built worker then library. After 2nd settler started pyramids in capital. Finished them in 1550bc with 4 chops into them, then started a library. Set capital to library next and promptly lost my capital to a lone barbarian archer the turn it completed . Guess I know now not to leave a lone warrior as defense but I figured he'd hold out against a single archer with all the bonuses.

Will probably try the map a couple more times and hopefully atleast make it to 1ad

Usually I can count on huts for some useful early gold. Look at this list: BW, IW, fishing, 29G, map, warrior before the death of the super-scout.

Russia did SiP and Moscow went worker, warrior, warrior, settler, axeman, worker, axeman, settler, axeman, axeman, Oracle (for MC). The reduced tech line was: agriculture, AH, wheel, pottery, masonry, mysticism, priesthood, writing, monarchy in 3Ts.

Tokugawa 3560, Hannibal 3040, Joao II 3000 are the immediate competitors. St. Petersburg was founded equidistant on the sheep/horses/iron in 2440. Novgorod 1SE of the local gold in 1920.

Does it get better? Sure. Carthage was just captured by swordsmen and axemen; the casualties were modest. The plan? Hannibal has a city NW and a city E of Carthage which must go before the the vodka flows.

too easy, hannibal had no resources.... I was play with strike till cottages kicked in then had 8 great city. Fun for a bit. Like the mapscript tho