Nobles' Club 270: Napoleon of France

[AcaMetis]

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 Napoleon of France, whom we last played in NC 244; we last played the French under De Gaulle in NC 249. The French start with Agriculture and The Wheel.

• Traits: Napoleon is Charismatic and Organized. Charismatic gives every city, Monuments and Broadcast Towers +1, and decreases the exp required for units to level by 25%. Organized cuts Civic Upkeep in half, and gives a +100% bonus to Lighthouses, Courthouses and Factories.
  
• The UB: The Salon, an Observatory with +1 free Artist, providing +1, +4 and +3 GA . Not a bad bonus for cities facing cultural pressure, but your Great Person Pool will never be free from Great Artist pollution again.
  
• The UU: The Musketeer, a Musketman with 2 instead of 1. If you're attacking someone with Mounted units and are afraid of Pikeman sniping the strongest units in your army, bring along Musketeers as stack defenders. They can keep up with their allies on horseback. Somehow .

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Shuffle, Temperate Climate, Medium Sealevel. Shuffle is a mapscript that randomly chooses between Pangaea, Fractal and Archipelago.

Spoiler edits :

Resource swaps to give AIs nearby strategic resources, and one unworkable Fish was moved to a more appreciable location.

Spoiler isolated? :

Not isolated.

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 270 Napoleon 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.

Spoiler 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.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

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.

 

[AcaMetis]

Well, that sure is a riverside PH capitol with quintuple food . Barring anyone having interesting suggestions I think the choice of settling is obvious, but how to proceed from there? Worker first to improve dry corn and build strategic roads for chopping until Mining -> BW comes in, Warrior first growing on the 3 Corn tile while researching Fishing, how to play this opening?

What do the experts think ?

 

[Nick723]

Nice start! And another good city in view up north.

My instinct when there is an agriculture food resource is to go worker first and build boats later. Probably go mining->BW->fishing, you’ll need warriors anyway before boats.

With shuffle never know what the situation is, but it could be that we want to go inland quickly else risk being shut in.

 

[krikav]

Thats alot of food!

Yes, on the PH seems pretty obvious. I would check number of AIs, and the land tiles available though, moving warrior NE seems best.
There could be some merit in settling 2E with the settler, thats still in reach of the corn, and it would claim alot of land with capitals culture.
The yummy fish spot could be reserved for city2, and by then mining/BW is probably ready to get workboats out fast.
But thats probably overcomplicating things...

And if settling on the obvious PH, then I think worker first and farming the corn is best. Need to see at T5 when it's time to commit to tech, if fishing or mining->bw is the way to go, but I would guess fishing, if only to get those 2F2C tiles early.
It's abit annoying when workboat competes with warriors for early hammers, so if the barb situation requires it, then workboat will have to wait.

 

[Major Tom]

I like the idea of settling inland. Seafood cities as strong backfill should give great flexibility. A gamble, but gains could easily outweigh any losses.

 

[Izuul]

Wow that's a lot of food. Pretty good spot for CHA i guess.

 

[Fish Man]

Chaotic evil: SIP, kill the fish ...

 

[sampsa]

Settle 1NE to kill'em'all

 

[Nick723]

I tried this as a OCC challenge on deity and settled 1N. Obviously the considerations for OCC are different but I wouldn’t worry too much about killing one fish.

I find if I deliberately kill seafood I’m fine with it, it’s when you accidentally do it (or have no choice) it’s tough to take!

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T43 :

By all means, build pyramids T43 and before SH. Why not?

My starting warrior sprinted on a NE trejectory, and then I was to worried about panthers to try bring him back, instead opting for staying very close to Zaras culture, then I tagged along an AI archer and found a nice lookout spot, from where I have seen the others.
Looks like we are many on one continent, or a pangea, and that I'm boxed in by Zara.
I saw in demographics that the average number of tiles for the AIs where 8.33, and with 6 AIs thats 50 tiles. The smallest AI had 6 tiles, so that means that there is 4 AIs that had a capital completely landlocked, and one at 8 tiles and then it's Zara with 6 tiles.
Before seeing T43 Pyramids, I was kind of confident that I could pull off a GLH build powered by granary and whips, but now I got abit more uncertain.

I hate settling away from the AIs like that, but having copper brings such peace of mind. Might not even have to build any axes though.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T66 update :

I was just about to do a 4pop whip for GLH to completion when Zara the sly fox finishes it before me. Grr!!
Well, I do the whip anyway and get 207 failgold which will carry me to HBR, if I can't build it I guess I have to take it!

Four barb cities have spawned between me and Zara! So even if Zara gets one million spears, I think getting HBR to capture barb cities makes sense.

 

[Spielban]

I settled 1W(plains hill). but my second city is 3N1W of Capital. (between fish and cow)
I thought that i could whip workboat from my 2nd city and it is closer to seafood(and i am charismatic so safer from happiness issue). so i settled there even though i found copper first.

Spoiler :

GLH gone at BC1800...

 

[sampsa]

@Spielban

Spoiler :

I wouldn't worry too much about missed wonders. Well, unless you've sacrificed a lot to get the wonder, but then again that was your choice and it backfired. You don't need to build any wonders to crush the game.

 

[krikav]

@sampsa but I want the shiny wonders!

Spoiler T98 :

This was more or less the plan, to sprint toward Aksum and get GLH.
However, since Zara was adamant about not teching HBR despite having construction and ivory, well.. I took some more cities too.

 

[keaaa]

Been following these thread for some time, but never taken part of a Nobles club before. Currently trying to master immortal, and this game looked like a nice start.

Spoiler Spoiler (275BC) :

Forgot to take any screenshot from the start. Settled 1W on the PH, and went mining -> fishing -> BW, before moving towards HBR and a first scientist for math. Felt somewhat closed in by Zara and his culture, so plan was to go after him

Moving on Zara

This went quite well, took 2 cities, and one more will go on this turn. This city also have TGL!

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T201 :

After taking Zaras stuff I ventured back to the normal path, eventually libbing nationalism.
I did do two GAs, one with a person and one with Taj, paci-pushes in both, although I screwed up and did only have about 20 HAs/Elephants to upgrade when I could have afforded 40. I also had problems getting my iron away so wan't really possible.
Dogpiled on Sury+Zara and killed Zara and made a vassal of Sury.
By that time, Gilga & Toku had rifles, but chain-capitulating through Shaka->WvO went nice. After that I mostly just declared on both and let the vassals take some beating. Probably suicided 40-60 cavallery against Toku-rifles to get some cities against him.

Eventually, Gilga thought it was a good idea to hold a AP vote, and me and my crew voted for yours truly, and thats that.

 

[krikav]

@keaaa welcome to the forums, nice of you to take part!

Spoiler :

Good choice to go after Zara, I would have perfered personally to postpone and attack him say... T140-T150 something? But he certainly needs to go.

Bulbing math feels abit like overkill, but you seem to have done good with it, 3 workers also feel sufficient although T92 feels abit late. If you had your heart set on a HA rush, I think it could be streamlined alot.
One worker also looks like he is farming over a floodplain cottage, I would slap him for that.

I see you are teching monarchy. Do you have either alphabet or currency? Either one of those techs is very good, almost crucial to get if you go for some early warfare. Helps so much with economic recovery after conquest.
Monarchy isn't that usefull here anyway I think. Happines can be sorted out somewhat by other means, and there are no wine.

 

[keaaa]

@krikav thanks for your input! Really appreciate it!

Spoiler Spoiler :

Im new to using HA rush, but after watching Lains channel on slack, I have really fallen in love with it. Still have a long way to go streamlining it, both on tech and details...

When you do a HA rush yourself, how many cities do you normally go for first? At what turn do you aim for the rush and when is the "latest" it's still a valid path?

You also absolutely right that my economy was ruined after the war - so will do as you say next time and go after alphabet and currency before monarchy

I played until 10xxAD yesterday, and have 1 turn left for lib. Not sure how to continue, but will post with some screenshoot later today.

 

[sampsa]

HAs: I think 3 cities is most typical, 4th will likely slow down the HBR-date a bit, but as compensation 4 cities can produce more than 3 can. It makes sense to think what techs you really need. For example, you have a gold start, maybe even pottery is just a distraction.

 

[krikav]

@keaaa

Spoiler :

I'm not sure if you also saw inspiration in my game? For me, HAs was abit of an afterthought.
I needed something to take down the barb cities, and I didn't have iron.
I figured that if I could throw away 6-8 of them to get Zaras capital with GLH and then gotten peace, that would have been worth it.
HBR is also pretty decent tradebait, I think I got most of alphabet for it.

But if you are set for a HA rush, then attacking at say.. T70? T80 probably at the latest is very nice. Ideally you want to hit someone without spears, or at least pillage their iron early on so they can't reinforce with more spears.

There was a map with Pericles which Lain played, that I think are excellent at practicing a nice HA rush. No time to dig it up from his thread now, but I'm sure you can find it.
A NC game from last year when we did play pacal also had a nice setup for HAs.

Alot depends on the map, sometimes with creative leaders you can go writing and get your beakers that way, sometimes it's cottages, sometimes it's gold.
Sometimes you can also oracle HBR.
I would say #1 mistake most people do is to overbuild stables & barracks. Having some strong HAs to crack cities open are good, but not everyone need to be strong.
Second biggest mistake is probably to not have enough workers to chop everything down in a hurry once hbr/archery is in. But that goes for almost all early rushes.