Nobles' Club 189 - Mao Zedong

[Pedro78]

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 Mao Zedong of the Chinese, whom we last played in NC CLIX. We last played China with Qin Shi Huang in NC CLIXXIX. The Chinese start with Agriculture and Mining.

• Traits : Mao Zedong is Expansive and Protective
• The UB: the Pavillion, a Theatre with an additional 25% culture multiplier

• The UU: the Cho-Ko-Nu, a Crossbowman with an additional first strike and that causes collateral damage (max 60%)

And the start :

Spoiler map details :

Hemispheres, high seas

Spoiler edits :

Handpicked AIs. Regenerated a bunch of times to get some AI position characteristics. Moved our starting warrior to a more relevant position. No edits were made to the map.

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)

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 189 Mao 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 Prince. 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.

 

[Pedro78]

Spoiler about map difficulty :

On the higher difficulties I'd keep an eye on demographics and general log to get an idea of what's going on on the other continent. That's all I have to say

Edit : For those who want to play Deity/Normal/NHNE I attached a save with barb techs already added so you don't have to open WB

 

[sampsa]

T0

Spoiler :

I cried for 10 mins because of the fish. I think it's between SIP (intending to possibly found on the pigs later, or just ignore the fish) and 1SW. 1W feels weaker to me, as you can see that there is land 2N1E of the settler. Place for a city to grab the 2nd crab. I chose to SIP because there is likely something 2E.

 

[Pedro78]

@sampsa
If you're gonna lose the fish imo it's stronger to settle on the wine and skip fishing - when you've got grass pigs and fp + oasis there's no need for these crabs early. Of course move warrior 1SW to make sure that you're not killing any other fishies

But here I would most likely SIP : you have commerce + forests to chop WBs, plus a good second city on the pigs.

Edit -

there is likely something 2E

I didn't think of that but that's another reason to SIP

 

[Rusten]

I agree with settling on the wine. Extra commerce tile in city center and as Pedro mentioned the pig is a powertile while the crabs can be ignored for now and picked up with a secondary city. I'll play this one I think -- Mao is fun.

Not sure why T0 discussion is in spoiler tags?

 

[Pedro78]

@Rusten
Cool! Haven't seen you play for a while. At some point you were talking about making YouTube videos, do you still plan on making these someday?

You're right about the spoilers, I just tend to overuse them just because they keep things nice and clean.

 

[sampsa]

Yeh, I guess I missed that settling on the wine doesn't kill a crab. That sweet 3 tile for exp civ too.

 

[Rusten]

@Pedro78
Yes, I want to make some videos, but now I didn't play for ~3 months so I at least need to shake off the rust first.

 

[sampsa]

Rust on, rust off, rust on, rust off, Rusten-san.

 

[Daniel Acheson]

Looking forward to playing this not really played Mao before, I will probably SIP in the hope that a second city can make use of those pigs.

 

[Snowbird]

I agree with settling on the wine. Extra commerce tile in city center and as Pedro mentioned the pig is a powertile while the crabs can be ignored for now and picked up with a secondary city?

Doesn't settling on the wine potentially kill the fish?

 

[Pedro78]

Doesn't settling on the wine potentially kill the fish?

It does, but the logic behind that is that ocean fish won't be usable for a long time anyways (would be different if we were playing with a creative leader of course). Hemispheres also usually gives lots of land - even with high seas you usually have enough land to settle not to care too much about a single ocean-fish (you'd rather have a faster start).

On a sidenote I chose high seas because the standard settings usually force you to add one or 2 extra AIs because there's way too much land. A lot of land can be fun and so can extra AIs be, but that usually makes for very long games, which spoils the fun for many people.

 

[sampsa]

Doesn't settling on the wine potentially kill the fish?

Very likely it kills the fish. But the only known way to grab them is to kill the pigs by settling on them.

 

[Fippy]

Would agree that settling on wine looks best for now, but warrior move 1sw is needed before..might be more seafood that gets destroyed

 

[Fippy]

..but more important than that, did i just see Izuul oO

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Yeah, ok... I'll throw my hat in the ring. I've never done one of these, so this will be interesting. By way of introduction, I'm a long time player who has never progressed beyond Prince (and even that is often too challenging for me). I'm hoping that I'll get some help here to remedy that, so I'll be asking for quite a bit of feedback. Thanks in advance to those who choose to provide it.

I'm thinking that given my situation, posting in shorter intervals will be more beneficial, so here's the result of my first 20 turns (I'm playing on Prince difficulty)...

Spoiler :

I settled on the wine as described by Pedro78 above. As it turns out, those crabs are going to feature heavily in the first few cities anyway, but I think fishing can be delayed a little by choosing to settle here.

Once my first worker was up I worked the oasis until the pigs were improved (more commerce than an unimproved FP; the PH didn't allow for growth; and I didn't go with the other forest tiles because I figured that rapid growth was best here - does that sound right?).

Tech wise, I went AH (for the pigs), then the wheel, leading into pottery in order to get cottages started ASAP. After that, I'm planning to go BW to chop settlers/workers.

Here's what I'm thinking with regards to city placement:

Spoiler :

The northernmost city seemed obvious for the crabs. The site to the east of that was more problematic.

Trying to apply conflicting advice that I've received means that this city could be placed one tile west of its current location (to have a food resource in the first ring); where it currently is (to be on a PH); or 1 tile NW (for multiple food in first ring + sharing tiles with city site to the west, but loses sheep).
The southern sites seem a bit far away, but I can't see any better placement for them. (help?)

I'm not really happy with the western city - not enough food for my liking, but again, I can't see anything better there.

On top of it all, I don't have any firm convictions about which order to settle them in. I'm looking forward to seeing what other people have done.

 

[sweetjohn33]

@Gunboat Diplomat

Spoiler :

Tech wise, I went AH (for the pigs), then the wheel, leading into pottery in order to get cottages started ASAP. After that, I'm planning to go BW to chop settlers/workers.

Early cottages are good but probably not as good as having a couple of cities earlier. So for that reason I think BW would be better to get before the wheel/pottery. You'll still get early cottages but it should speed up your settling by a fair bit. And about the order of cities: I would settle the cities to the SE first (gold city then corn city) because that will block off the remainder of the peninsula to any AI. On prince AI expansion is not very rapid so you don't have to worry as much but I think that's the right move, especially if you plan on moving up levels in the near future. Make sure to connect your cities by road, river, or coast ASAP as that adds from a trade route. 1 From the city center and 1 from the trade route will essentially pay for the city already. And for the sheep/crab/shared wheat city I would settle that city last (or once the double crabs city pops it's borders) on the spot where you have it mapped, have it borrow the wheat to grow a pop and then whip a monument ASAP. Because moving that city anywhere forfeits a food resource, and the PH site does have the ability to share the wheat without a border pop. Hope the advice helps!

 

[Pedro78]

@Gunboat Diplomat

Spoiler :

Sweetjohn gave good advice.

I would add that the city 3S2W of Beijing is pretty crappy and shouldn't be settled for a long time (although you will probably want it ready to whip units when you reach your main war tech). The southern corn city is questionnable, especially when you haven't scouted any further. One thing I'd probably do, though, is to settle a city 1SW of the gold. Build / chop a monument while working the gold, helps a lot with early commerce (would be my third or 4th city)

 

[dutchfire]

Anyone going for some weird machinery gambit? E.g. Oracle -> MC, or some bulbing scheme.

 

[Pedro78]

@dutchfire Don't forget that fishing ruins the Machinery bulb. Ofc if you settle on the wine you can skip fishing, but it's still hard to tell whether one will go for early Machinery on T0