Nobles' Club CXLI: Augustus of Rome

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 Augustus of Rome, whom we last played in NC LXXXV; we last played the Romans under Julius Caesar in NC CXI. The Romans start with Fishing and Mining.
  • Traits: Augustus is Imperialistic and Industrious. IMP means faster settlers and faster Great General emergence; IND means faster wonders and forges.
  • The UB: The Forum, a Market that gives +25% Great Person Points, a nice boost for a non-Philosophical leader.

  • The UU: The Praetorian, a stronger Swordsman widely viewed as the best UU of its era. Some people suggest researching Bronze Working > Iron Working immediately to get Praets online as soon as possible.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Pangaea, chosen leaders.
Spoiler edits :
Added clam. Extended southern river 1N to water wheat. Ensured AIs have a strategic resource nearby.
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 of 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 141 Augustus 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.
 

Attachments

  • NC 141 Augustus.zip
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Reserved.

The Romans have the Praetorian, an alternate swordsman, which totally dominates in its era. At 8:strength: they are as tough as macemen, which come much later. The standard tech order for Romans is bronze working > iron working, in contrast with almost any other civilization; you might go for Agriculture first if you don't start with fish, but other than that, beelining IW is the standard play. Settle your second city near iron (which you'll have somewhere nearby by NC conventions, but not necessarily in your starting BFC) and start grinding out prats. The AI will build your third city for you. :lol:

Augustus isn't ORG like Julius, so you'll have a little more trouble building a big empire so early, but remember this slogan: War is self-funding.
Click to expand...
Winners:
  • Tempesta13: Noble/Normal 4000BC to 780 AD (conquest)
  • NobleZarkon: Noble - NH / NE - Epic - Domination victory in 1495AD
  • rfcfanatic: 1525 AD Domination victory Monarch - NH / NE - Normal
  • tijup: Prince, Marathon, NH-NE, no tech brokering. 1180 AD, domination.
  • Pangaea: 1290AD Domination at Immortal
  • SmilingRogue: Immortal diplomation 1926 AD
  • Thrar: 1515AD conquest/domination, Immortal
  • pigswill: Emperor marathon 900ad domination
  • cseanny: Deity > Normal > 1130 AD Domination
  • hankinsohl: Emperor, normal speed, no huts/events, domination 1670
  • WelshGandalf: 1440AD domination on Emperor
 
Well my initial thoughts are SIP build work boat, then start a warrior until size 2, then start worker. After that I'm not as sure. I feel like I should make a play for one of the early stone wonders. At the same time I also need to secure a source of iron.

Any ideas on a tech path?

Also which stone wonder to make a play for 'henge or 'mids
 
marasaidw said:
Also which stone wonder to make a play for 'henge or 'mids
Click to expand...

depends on what difficulty you play. If Noble, you can go for anything you want. On IMM+ I would use Henge only for fail gold. Mids is a no-brainer though with stone and especially IND.

Great Wall may not have much value here, but on higher levels can lead to a GSpy for tech stealing, which is not bad. I might build it in a second city.

I like AG>BW>Masonry>TW or skip AG for now
 
I would settle on the stone. Sailing + Wheel sound counter productive and awkward to fit Masnory in there. 1N keeps the forest, gets the hammer bonus, hooks the stone up right away and all that goodness. This is likely not going to be my long term capital anyway, so I don't care about losing fresh water or cottageable tiles here.
 
By NC conventions we're guaranteed to have the resource for our UU "reasonably nearby" -- so I planned from before the map was created to go BW > IW > wheel > worker techs. I never decided on whether to go for a stone wonder. I turned off barbarians and went No Tech Brokering.
Spoiler :
So that was my tech path, and I built workboat > workboat > worker > warrior while the initial warrior explored, gaining some money, some experience, a scout, and Masonry from huts. I'm now looking to plant a 2nd city, but the only production centre I can see is white in the following dotmap:

Light blue will eventually be a modest production city, but white is closer. I don't think I want more than 2 cities before I go gunning for Sulieman with Praetorians.

I explored the area around Rome with a warrior; when I popped the scout I sent him clockwise around about half the continent, hoping to open up coastal trade routes post-sailing:
Spoiler world map :
I've met all the AIs, but haven't found all their homelands yet.

Still to be decided: whether to postpone praetorians until 'henge is done. I think I'll go for the white city, set it to generating praets, and build Stonehenge in Rome, then just churn out praets to conquer Sulieman. and maybe somebody else, if he has a close neighbour.
 

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@NZ: eek!
Spoiler :
You took Istanbul with your initial warrior? I feel embarassed for needing a half-dozen praetorians.
As to my situation:

4000 - 2350 BC

Pause for consolidation -- maybe. I'm waffling about what to do next and need some advice.
Spoiler :
I built my 2nd city on the White dot of my previous map. Rome paused to build Stonehenge, but then both cities ground out Praetorians to conquer Sulieman. I declared in 850 BC and destroyed the Ottomans in 700 BC. At that point I started dithering about whether to take the fight to my new neighbour, Shaka. I've been building infrastructure -- more workers, a floodplain city for eventual cottages -- but am beginning to think I should just build a few more praetorians and continue the war.

Status:
  • The known world. I still don't know much about Isabella's territory, but my scout is headed there. I'm a little surprised at how fast everybody grew their empires, particularly Shaka (my obvious next target).
    Spoiler world map :
  • My territory
  • The tech situation. I'm behind, and won't have Aesthetics to trade for another 11 turns.
  • The charts -- especially Power, where Cathy and Shaka are both ahead of me.
So, given all that, here's where I need advice:
  • Do I need to get cottages online before taking over any more territory? I'm back to grinding out praets in my original two cities, but I'm wondering if attacking Shaka will reall fund itself, or whether I'll just crash my economy irrecoverably.
  • Should I move my capital to Istanbul? There are enough trees to chop it fairly quickly. It might be necessary to do so after taking a few of Shaka's cities.
  • There's a possible producton city location 3SE of Cumae on the coast near the rice and clams. Is it worth settling or should I just get cities from conquest for now?
  • After I get Aesthetics for trade bait, I'm waffling over tech path. My tech rate is slow -- no cottages yet, consequence of early warfare. I eventually want catapults -- probably don't need them for Shaka, though I'll likely lose more praets than I'll be happy with -- so math > construction is attractive. But I likely need CoL and Currency for the economy. War techs first, or economy techs first? My builder instincts say economy, because despite what I quoted in message #2 I'm nervous about depending on warfare to fund itself.
 

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  • NC 141 Augustus BC-0455 pause.CivBeyondSwordSave
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290 BC

Spoiler :
As you saw I took out the Ottomans with my warrior, on Noble you can do that :)

Settled a city nearby that spot for the 2nd iron and another city near my capital. Was planning to rush someone else but the AIs are spawning cities like no tomorrow so decided to build a bigger stack including some cats. 17 Praets ready to go mostly CR2 due to barracks and barbs (@Dalamb - suspect No Barbs is a mistake if you intend to do a lot of fighting). Have the Pyramids for happiness and don't intend to research anything else - time to ground the rest of them into dust.

 
Smilingrogue said:
I would settle on the stone. Sailing + Wheel sound counter productive and awkward to fit Masnory in there. 1N keeps the forest, gets the hammer bonus, hooks the stone up right away and all that goodness. This is likely not going to be my long term capital anyway, so I don't care about losing fresh water or cottageable tiles here.
Click to expand...

This is what I would do. Settling on the stone makes for a really strong production city that can pump out your workers and settlers early, not to mention the mids. Palace gets moved later.

If you wanted to settle for a good longterm bureau cap here you would have to spend at least a couple turns moving hte settler south and hoping that river continues with good tiles around it.
 
Smilingrogue said:
I would settle on the stone. Sailing + Wheel sound counter productive and awkward to fit Masnory in there. 1N keeps the forest, gets the hammer bonus, hooks the stone up right away and all that goodness. This is likely not going to be my long term capital anyway, so I don't care about losing fresh water or cottageable tiles here.
Click to expand...

That doesn't work. You can't hook up a resource before researching a tech, even by settling on it.

I'll go warrior SW, but unless he finds something incredible, it'll be SIP. Probably teching BW first while building WB->worker, then use that worker to chop out another WB.
 
Thrar said:
That doesn't work. You can't hook up a resource before researching a tech, even by settling on it.

I'll go warrior SW, but unless he finds something incredible, it'll be SIP. Probably teching BW first while building WB->worker, then use that worker to chop out another WB.
Click to expand...

I assume he's talking about having access to stone without researching the Wheel by settling on it. Which helps a lot if you're going for the Great Wall or even just failgold on stonehenge or something.
 
Also mentions the awkwardness of Masonry, but I think you need that to actually get access to stone and thus the hammer bonus on mids etc.

Not started this game yet as I would like to try to finish the Napoleon first, but settling on stone is still an interesting idea as you're likely to move the capital to a good buro spot anyway, especially as we can see tundra/ice in the north, meaning this will be on the outskirts of a hopefully big empire (meaning higher maintenance).

Edit: Having a short go with it at least, before hopefully managing to finish the Nappy IU game (I'm terrible at playing games out, as it takes such a long time).

SIP though, as on stone doesn't give a hammer bonus over PH. You would save 8 turns on stone access (quarry 6 (iirc) plus a road) over SIP, but still need masonry. Not sure what is best, but think I'll continue with SIP and see how it goes for 50-100 turns.

The issue now, though, is worker first with Agri and do the wheat, or workboat. Hmmm. 12 turn workers are nice... Am thinking workboat and BW out of the gates though.
 
I like to settle on stone, but not sure if it's best here unless you go for GW or early fail gold. No hammer is gained, and that stone looks like the only production tile that isn't 0F so it's pretty strong to work. It does delay stone access a bit and eats some worker turns, but there's still plenty of time to do that and build the Mids. Essentially comparing the value of 8 worker turns vs the value of being able to work that stone tile, but SIP also keeps wheat in capitol BFC which gives more flexibility for 2nd city location b/c wheat doesn't need to be in 1st ring to get access to it.

I think I'm leaning towards SIP.
 
Yep, my intention is to save some worker turns with the stone after researching masonry. And I kinda wanted to pursue a wonder strategy to get tonne of GPP. All of that went down the crapper awfully quickly when
Spoiler :
Shaka ninja-daggered me with three Impis and three chariots by marching through Suleiman's lands. Shaka hates Suleiman for being a heathen and close borders. But nope, must march through hated person's lands to attack the player! :rolleyes:


@Izuul
Might not want to read this spoiler until you have met a few AIs in your game. :)

Spoiler :
You would think being Industrious and having stone would give us breathing room for Mids. But Shaka got them so fast in my game, I was shocked. I think he has access to early stone too.
 
unless Warrior reveals seafood that is unreachable otherwise, I think settling on stone is a mistake. clam and crab aren't exactly stellar food resources, so losing the wet wheat ain't so good

I think you can easily get TGW and GLH in cap while chopping Mids out in a 2nd city (IMM)
 
Turn 37.
Spoiler :
MuaHAHAHAHAHAH! :devil::hammer:


Just got out a settler and am not sure where to put him given I lack both Agri and AH. Hate settling on GH, but am thinking the one between wheat and sheep is the best. Towards an AI and it will have double food once I get some techs online.

Tech-wise I should do worker techs to get those foods online, but am a bit tempted by wheel and masonry too. Need access to iron and getting up stone for failgold/Mids.

Safe to say I think SIP was a good choice given the location of iron, and it's nice to possibly have wheat in outer ring of city 2 yet still accessible.
 
lymond said:
unless Warrior reveals seafood that is unreachable otherwise, I think settling on stone is a mistake. clam and crab aren't exactly stellar food resources, so losing the wet wheat ain't so good

I think you can easily get TGW and GLH in cap while chopping Mids out in a 2nd city (IMM)
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why anybody would think that a third 5 food resource is crucial to any city.
 
There are three plains hills though, so it doens't hurt to have a third food resource available. Given other priorities, it can take a while to get up a lighthouse too.
 
1400BC monarch nhne

Spoiler :
Well I settled on the stone. Teched BW>mason>IW>TW>AG>Sail(a mistake)>AH>Pot.

I've managed to build the 'Mids and GW. I've got two cities with barracks, so next I'm going to crank out some prats while moving towards Construction. If Sule looks vulnrable I'll take him on ASAP. Otherwise I'll just continue to expand.
 
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