Nobles' Club CLVII: Mansa Musa of Mali

Hub.

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.

From experience I know that this map type gives each player roughly equal land but linked by a narrow strip of tiles to a larger artic/tundra area. One AI will often get to this first and thus dominate in city count. The cities settled there would be marginal for a human player but I think can lead to a runaway Deity AI. Only time will tell.

With such a strong capital and starting techs I've decided to go Agri->pottery->AH before considering whether to go hunting-archery, which I'd avoid if I could even with skirmishers. Then the 12 turn worker can farm the corn, half-build a road on the adjacent tile, mine the gems, cottage the FP, and then finally pasture the cows all pretty efficiently. AH before pottery might have made more sense even with a wasted turn of worker movement. Meh. I see no reason to go for early BW with a very strong and balanced first 4 tiles to work and a map that gives you all the time you want to settle your land.

Met Gandhi first, never a bad thing

What MegaLurker said. The central territory is rarely "good" but some AI will probably get a lot of cities out of it at higher difficulties by settling a lot of lousy locations. I also get the impression Hubs have less food than some map types. Not sure I'd ever use it again, but on the principle of trying "unusual" map types sometimes, I figured I'd try it. Once. My records don't show a previous map of this type, but I'm missing a few where the mapmaker didn't say in the OP what script s/he used.

I'm OK with the edit. As long as you state them in the map section. However, I didn't read before loading the map. Plays a few dozens of turns until I figured it's not right.

So, I suggest we put the map type out of map spoiler.

I only played this map script a few times when I was trying to follow the Corporation guide article. Haven't played that map script ever since.

Corporation: The Power of Sushi

With this commerce-heavy start I decided to focus on juicy FIN cottages. FlyingSwan, I saw your comment about going for early Alpha in Blitzkrieg's thread and followed that advice (don't normally self-tech it).

Worked out pretty well, soon had a good trading partnership with Gandhi, helped by adopting the Judaism he founded. I didn't look at the spoilered map details, and have never played this script before, so for quite some time thought I was alone with Gandhi. Exploration got stalled because I kept getting scared off by this barb spear who was milling around the land-bridge to the central hub:



Didn't figure that was an immediate problem, as ice signals the edge of the landmass, right? The unusual fact that this ice was at the equator went unnoticed for some time ...

But eventually Monty turned up, scowling with impotent rage as ever. He was a heathen Buddhist and DOW'd me pretty quickly. What a joke. Still hadn't found his territory at that point but knew he must have been a ways off, and with this map being chokepoint central, a few skirmishers would easily see off whatever stack he mustered. As it went, I never saw a single unit of his apart from the one that made first contact. Poor, stupid Monty.

Fairly straight beeline to CS so had a nice Beauro cap with an academy in 600BC. Developed lovely friendships with my Jewish buddies Gandhi and Bizzy, for plenty of techtrades and bribes. Mostly dogpiling poor stupid Monty, but also set Vicky against Stalin, and they've been hammering each other on and off until the present day. Joined in phoney wars with my bribees for the diplo bonus. Vicky also joined the one true faith later, after running the Conf I founded for a little while.

When I thought it was just me and G I was considering space race, partly because I haven't done one for a while, partly because intercontinental wars can be a chore. But once I realised all civs have a land connection, good ol' Lib MT --> Cuirstomp seemed the way to go.

Here's the current lay of the land. It's 685 AD and Lib is in, plus all Cuir prereqs. Think that might be my earliest lib date ever!

The empire (excluding a couple of cities in the far north and south that wouldn't fit in the view):



The capital:



As you can see I got a lucky extra gems there, around 400AD I think.

Little stack of Elephants awaiting upgrade:



Got one of my scouting warriors to woodsman 3 so was able to get the HE before warring starts, which helps

Relations:



Gandhi vs Monty and Bizzy vs Vicky are recent bribes, Vicky/Stalin has been chugging along independently, as mentioned.

Tech situation:



So all looking good for a fun romp home! I feel *terrible* that my two best buddies are the obvious first targets - Gandhi due to proximity, and Bizzy due to a nice collection of wonders in Berlin. Only possible fly in the ointment is that Gandhi is currently AP resident - hope I can cap him between votes. Also slightly annoyed that the lazy so-and-so hasn't bothered building a shrine in Delhi.

Should perhaps have tried my first IMM game on this map, but my move up from Monarch is still fairly recent.

SIP. Build worker -> warrior x3 -> settler. Tech went Agri--> AH -> BW -> Pottery -> Hunting -> Archery -> IW -> Alpha, backfilled some tech (barely bc AI so far behind). Settled immediately east (grow capital's cottages) and west (mostly for gold and some production but also grow a couple cottages for cap. Had east/west cities work cottages while capital worked heavy food and hills tiles. Built Stonehenge somewhere in there. Settled NE, S, and SW of the western city (for iron & chokepoint). Science was basically destroying AI. Couldn't even backfill trade much. After Alpha went Maths -> Currency -> CoL (founded Confuc) -> Metalworking (at same time as I got MW, I built Oracle & grabbed Machinery!!). Also, teched Theology and grabbed Christianity.

Gonna raze that barb city in the NW b/c it's in a crap place. I've already earmarked a good settling location. Since Ghandi spread Hinduism and Judaism to me, that makes 5 religions I can spread. I'll settle another 4 cities which means I can whip all 5 religions' temples and I'll be going for Culture. Heading up Aesth -> Lit -> Music -> Drama. Then I'll get CivServ (figure I can let this drag b/c I'm soooo far ahead of AI in tech and already have Machinery). At that point, while spreading religions & whipping temples/monasteries, I'll Lib push and once Liberalism is in, go Free Speech, turn off tech and hyperdrive culture slider. Build tons of siege and mounted units in production cities to prevent tech surging AI from DoW on me.

This is my first culture attempt in a LOOOOONG time, so I hope I'm going about this smartly. Last time I tried to go culture, I waited too long to decide (was well into the 1100s AD) and ended up getting dogpiled in 1800s while waiting for city 3 to go legendary (had another 230 turns on marathon!!). Lesson learned. Decision is made at around 50b.c. Should be good with all this great land, severe tech lead and separation from AI.

Capital:

Northern Empire:

Southern Empire: I noticed upon looking at this pic that I probably should've settled the southern most city 1N to get Whale. But, honestly, going cultural I doubt I'll even see Optics.

Tech Situation:

Wondering what you mean by "fairly straight forward beeline to CS". How in the world did you get it by 450BC?! I thought I was teching crazy. Maybe I should've beelined and backtraded instead of self-teching and blowing AI away / not being able to backfill...What path do you take? Which techs did you forgo?

Apologies for not giving much detail on the opening moves! Also, I didn't mean to make it sound as if getting such an early (by my standards at least) CS was "no big deal"

When I said that I focused on "juicy FIN cottages" I meant that I really prioritised cottages and libraries early. Tech order was agri-pot-AH-BW-writing-alpha, and once alpha was in I started trading with Gandhi straight away, hunting & myst the turn after alpha and archery the turn after that. I cottaged the floodplains before pasturing the cow, and built a library before building my second settler, running two scientists as soon as I had enough food surplus. This gave me an academy in 1100 BC, which really accelerated things as by 1025 BC both the FPs had developed into villages.

After alpha (in 1975BC) I went currency, fishing, math, COL, then CS. Backfilled poly, sailing, masonry, priesthood, mono, IW & monarchy from Gandhi while researching CS! I guess all the trading helped keep him at parity, and therefore useful, while also increasing diplo bonuses meaning that he was willing to trade techs pretty soon after discovering them. While none of the techs I got from him directly contributed to the beeline, I was pretty lucky with all of that. I was able to see his research from very early on, which seemed strange at the time, but with hindsight it's clear that he'd scouted more successfully than me and was directing his EP towards other civs. With such good relations, and this espionage bonus, I was effectively able to double my research rate from very early in the game.

So I guess the most obvious gaps in my research by the time I got CS were MC and HBR - no Med or Aes either. I'm normally keen on the top branch of the tech tree, GLH, MoM, free great artist from Music for a 15-turn MoM-powered GA (at epic) and all that good stuff, but with no wonder resources about I decided early to ignore them and just exploit the FIN trait. I suppose this decision was also influenced by the fact that SPI meant I wouldn't feel the need to wait for a GA to switch civics.

So there were a few things in the early game that are fairly unusual for me, another being that I was very light on the whip in Timbuktu, letting it grow, working cottaged riverside tiles most of the time. Happiness from gems, gold, religion and phants allowed a decent size pretty quickly.

Here's a log screenie of the relevant dates:



(It was 600BC, not 450 )

Good luck with your game! I need more posting experience before I offer anyone advice, but with that amount of religion messing with your population's heads, culture seems a strong play to me.

Good luck with your game! I need more posting experience before I offer anyone advice, but with that amount of religion messing with your population's heads, culture seems a strong play to me.

Click to expand...

I was actually eying up a culture victory before I went for Theology (normally I wouldn't prioritize that tech so early). When Gandhi sent over the Jewish missionary alongside the Hindu he already spread to me, I was sold. Probably will try for Philo -> Taoism, too, so I can get +300% from cathedrals etc.

I tried the same approach on Monarch, I got CS in 455 BC, and have 5 cities, i'll get 7 by 0 A.D. Don't feel like I did very well....

also, One of my biggest questions in every game is what tech path to begin after the goal of CS has been reached. Not much for calendar resources here.. I really am not sure what to drive for next. Stopping for the night.

So here's how things stood at ~1500 BC:


I'm mostly trying to expand at this point. It's a pain because while there's plenty of rivers, none of them actually connect. Instead I opted for putting most of my cities on the coast. Unfortunately I don't have access to copper, so Colossus is pretty much out of the picture - shame as it would have been great here. Start's not completely isolated but is fairly close as I'd only just met Gandhi a turn or two before.

And here's how things are now, at 500 BC:



I'm really not sold on the placement of Walala, but I wanted to get access to the Iron sooner rather than later. At this point my plan is to hit Gandhi with Elepults and hopefully wipe him out. It won't be easy, as I scouted his territory earlier and all of his cities are on hills and most have 2-3 Archers. I'm currently researching HBR because I researched Construction and completely forgot it was also required for Elephants. Hugely annoying to have to self-tech that one but what can you do. No one has Alphabet.

Finally, since that picture's a bit zoomed out, here's a close-up of the centre of my empire:

Emperor. I am now at cavalry+rifles and knocking down Gandhi. Stalin and Monty are backwards and have been at war. I joined the war on Monty. Gandhi has some island cities, not sure if I want to capture them, or just cap him. I'd like to get most of his mainland though, and build FP there. Then the question is what to do next. I need to go through either Monte or Stalin to get to Willem, Viccy and Bismarck, who are technologically on par. Maybe I'll try bribing them into war. I hope I can quickly cap Monte, he could be helpful in future wars. Conquest looks easiest.