Noble's Club CXXXIII: Boudica of Celtia

Noble Zarkon

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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 Boudica of Celtia, whom we last played in NC LIX; we last played the Celts under Brennus in NC XCVI. The Celts start with Hunting and Mysticism.
CeltiaBoudica.jpg

  • Traits: Boudica is Boudica is AGGressive and CHArismatic, two warmongering traits. AGG gives half-price barracks and drydocks, and gives Combat I to melee and gunpowder units, meaning they start a little tougher than other units and get to the better promotions faster. CHA gives +1 and means that promotions happen more quickly.
  • The UB: The Dun, a Wall that gives Guerilla I to units built in the city. Unfortunately this doesn't synthesize with the UU, which already gets Guerilla I. It would be nice if it were "advance one step on the Guerilla chain" but that sort of promo doesn't happen in Civ IV.
    CeltiaGallicWarrior.jpg
  • The UU: The Gallic Warrior, a swordsman that starts with Guerilla I. This gives a small advantage on a map with many hills, but many people think that isn't enough to make this an interesting UU. A Guerilla II swordsman might not be as useful as a Guerilla I/City Raider I on most maps; on a hilly map its ability to get to its destination faster could be helpful..
    CeltiaDun.jpg
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Big and Small, Rocky (for a few more hills), Normal Continents, Islands seperate.
Spoiler edits :
Changed one coast tile to land so that an AI had earlier access to metal. No other edits - generated 3,000 maps in MapFinder and choose one I liked!
Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine: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 number Leader Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels). (Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Prince). 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. 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.
 

Attachments

Immortal turn 99.YIKES!
Spoiler :
I've sent my empire to the brink of financial ruin. On the brink of strike with nothing I can do.
Opening:
SIP, Went AG>mining BW. managed to chop out the mids but took too many barb cities. planning on settling double gems to fix economy but this is gonna be a tough game. Currently researching Currency. AI's met are HC, Wang, Mao, Willem.
 

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settle on stone I think.CHA and Stonehenge is good..
You don't need to settle on the stone to get stonehenge and the other stone-based wonders. I wouldn't want to move off the river.

Thinking about where to move the scout, albeit groggily at this time of night. 1S gets the view from the hill, off to the southwest, but part of its view is blocked by forests. Maybe 1N1NW to see what's to the north, in case moving settler 1N might be reasonable? costs a turn now, but irrigates the rice post-Civil Service without giving up a riverside grassland for farming.
 
Immortal turn 99.YIKES!
Spoiler :
I've sent my empire to the brink of financial ruin. On the brink of strike with nothing I can do.
Opening:
SIP, Went AG>mining BW. managed to chop out the mids but took too many barb cities. planning on settling double gems to fix economy but this is gonna be a tough game. Currently researching Currency. AI's met are HC, Wang, Mao, Willem.

gift
Spoiler :
wangkon
the city near the dye

settle a city near the corn + 2 gems

trade for sailing next turn

economy = restored
 
You don't need to settle on the stone to get stonehenge and the other stone-based wonders. I wouldn't want to move off the river.

It is a clever thought, though. The stone gives you an extra hammer/turn out of the gate, and while you are giving up the river, you aren't giving up fresh water, you aren't giving up any of the visible food, etc.
 
You don't need to settle on the stone to get stonehenge and the other stone-based wonders. I wouldn't want to move off the river.

@dalamb,as VoU says you don't lose the fresh water and gain a Hammer per turn plus you don't need to tech the wheel to hook up the stone.So knocking out the Mids and The GW by 1600bc was possible.You are right though,you don't need stone for Stone henge,I had already chopped it out before masonry came in.

Its turn 62 and a Great spy has dropped.Settling him and running representation is what I would instinctively do,although an infiltrate city mission could work out better if I can find a tech whore..

View attachment NC 133 Boudica BC-1520great spy spawn.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
AD0025 Noble NHNE

Spoiler :
Settled 1E Built Stonehenge and GW, almost run out of steam when I got currency but I totally didn't realise HC was on this tiny strip of land to my west, very surprised when he cropped up there so I'll knock him out soon, he's doing what he does best, religion wonders and nothing else so its putting cultural pressure on me. I have a GP from SH so his holy city will be nice...
 

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No need to give a city away. as soon as I traded for sailing, i went up to +4 gpt and that was enough to get me by until i settled the double gem. currently sitting on 9 cities. Economy is slowly coming alive. It's now turn 125 and I'm researching Civil Service.
 

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@Whutom

Spoiler :

Very nice job on your city placement, that's a pretty good dot map so far.

1) Vienne strikes me as being a bit weak as a second city. With the cows and a hill in the first ring, it can start contributing to the expansion from the get go, but it's awfully brown, and likely to be a drag on your economoy for a bit. Also, why does it have a market queued up?

2) I like the placement of Tolosa here, but in a game where you are have constructed Stonehenge, you should maybe give up the gems (which you are going to have to dig out of the green anyway) for the river. Alternatively, you could have settled on the hill to the east, and picked up both gems.

3) Verlamion might be a bit of a reach. It's going to be a very strong commerce center eventually, but you are going to need a lot of worker turns to get there. One hint that you may have settled this location early is that you've been there for 14 turns, and still haven't improved the cows.

4) Why did you wait until T104 to settle Durnovaria?

5) Um, where's your settler for the other gems? (Edit: oh, there he is. Um..., why is he parked?)

The demographics look good.

You've got open borders with HC, so you should probably have a unit over there scouting things out, figuring out where your targets are and which cities you want to keep. Writing is a WAR tech. In a similar vein, don't forget to scout the barbarian cities, so that you can plan your dot map around them if you like the location.

Five workers for seven cities, including several that need to be carved out of the jungle, is a problem. One thing to keep in mind is that you need fewer improved tiles if you are running specialists. For instance, maybe Durnovia can get by with Corn + Cows + 2x Specialists for the moment, and thus the cottages can wait? Likewise, does Camulodunum really need another hill mined, when it already has fish + sheep + furs? When you are about to whip a granary, and then presumably whip a library?

Bibracte seems to have an awful lot of trees left in a game where you've got so much land to expand into.
 
@whutom,would be interested in hearing your thinking behind moving to the grassland hill?I cant see that much advantage as you wont be able to work the oasis till turn 6 and you,ve lost out on a hill that would be good as a windmill later game.

edit;in the turn of your save its possible to bulb THEO with a couple of trades,might be usefull if you want to go down a war route with GuerillaIII gallic warriors...
 
Playing this on Prince / Epic / Huts / Events.

I normally play without Huts and Events but fancied a change - got a nice Swordsman quest while building my army and they all now have Drill 1, OK for a freebie!

Spoiler :

I settled 1SE on the plains hill for early productivity, I had the advantage of map knowledge so that may have influenced me!

Built just two cities (second one is a two gem city on a river), managed to get Stonehenge, the Great Wall and the Pyramids whilst waiting for Iron Working, then mobilised an army to take the cities HC had kindly built for me :-)

The Incans are gone so I have the Buddhist holy city as well as the Christian one (used a GP to bulb Theology and a GE to build the AP). Through an AP vote also got a Korean city assigned to me.

There are a couple of Barbarian cities to the South which I will take soon then it can go any way I want really!
 
Spoiler :
Settled in place. I built Stonehenge and The Great Wall before building my first settler. I settled my first city by the western corn/cow to block the incans then settled 2 cities north before trading for iron working with alpha to start settling the jungle. rexed to 10 cities peacefully.

Mao/Huayna and I formed the hindu bloc so hatred for wang kon was strong. Mao declared early on Victoria and i bribed him on to wang in which the incans willingly joined in.

it's about 1440 ad and i'm trying to cruise to a cultural victory. the war between my hindu neighbors and my unfriendly neighbor wang continues. I shut off research and i'm generating 1551 gold per turn. about 90 turns away from victory and I still have a nice tech advantage over the field that I can use to keep the wars going if peace is declared because all of my cities are guarded by warriors.

I could have played it much better I think. I had criminally too few workers while settling the jungle which really hurt getting those cities online, specifically the gem cities.

monarch difficulty
 
@Whutom

Spoiler :

Very nice job on your city placement, that's a pretty good dot map so far.

1) Vienne strikes me as being a bit weak as a second city. With the cows and a hill in the first ring, it can start contributing to the expansion from the get go, but it's awfully brown, and likely to be a drag on your economoy for a bit. Also, why does it have a market queued up?

2) I like the placement of Tolosa here, but in a game where you are have constructed Stonehenge, you should maybe give up the gems (which you are going to have to dig out of the green anyway) for the river. Alternatively, you could have settled on the hill to the east, and picked up both gems.

3) Verlamion might be a bit of a reach. It's going to be a very strong commerce center eventually, but you are going to need a lot of worker turns to get there. One hint that you may have settled this location early is that you've been there for 14 turns, and still haven't improved the cows.

4) Why did you wait until T104 to settle Durnovaria?

5) Um, where's your settler for the other gems? (Edit: oh, there he is. Um..., why is he parked?)

The demographics look good.

You've got open borders with HC, so you should probably have a unit over there scouting things out, figuring out where your targets are and which cities you want to keep. Writing is a WAR tech. In a similar vein, don't forget to scout the barbarian cities, so that you can plan your dot map around them if you like the location.

Five workers for seven cities, including several that need to be carved out of the jungle, is a problem. One thing to keep in mind is that you need fewer improved tiles if you are running specialists. For instance, maybe Durnovia can get by with Corn + Cows + 2x Specialists for the moment, and thus the cottages can wait? Likewise, does Camulodunum really need another hill mined, when it already has fish + sheep + furs? When you are about to whip a granary, and then presumably whip a library?

Bibracte seems to have an awful lot of trees left in a game where you've got so much land to expand into.

Spoiler :


1) My thinking was, I had stonehenge built so within a matter of turns (around the time Vienne's borders would expand for the first time) it could control three or so PH's, good for production whilst having a grassed cows (I was convinced it'd give me 5 food...) whilst Bibracte would have copper. Luckily iron popped between the two, so strategic resources and hammers are spoken for.

2) I agree that was a point to consider. My priority was to work a great production tile (mined copper) and have food (corn) off the bat so it made sense to build between, although in retrospect having 10 turns to wait until I could get the corn had I built on the riverside would be good, I also wanted the gems within 10 turns so the city could pay for itself. Although I have begun to regularly take control of Noble games I often seriously stumble until I tech Currency to pay for the expansion. I met the other civs quite early on so I was concerned about not expanding far enough.

3) Verlamion was the result of me expanding from worrying about WK's city spamming, and being protective he'll be a royal pain in the ass when I eventually take his cities,
I was getting genuinely concerned about my expansion running out of funds cos I don't have huts on (free gold 75% of the time on Noble) and I was aware once the jungle was cut away it'd be great for commerce. I discovered HC being on the tiny strip of land to my west straight after Verlamion was founded, so I panicked and developed Durnovaria much quicker to compete. I will develop Verl ASAP.

4) Continuing from 3) I had no idea HC was on that tiny peninsula west of me, Expand towards your enemy, as long as you know where your enemy is...Nooby mistake, sorry :blush:

5) My research would seriously suffer if I settled again especially in the jungle which will take several turns to become self-sustainable.


I considered running specialists although my last few custom games (non NC) have been doing specialist economies with PHI leaders, without PHI trait I was skeptical. I might try running 2 scientists in Durnovaria since land is a scarcity.

Thank you for your constructive feedback :)
 
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