Nobles' Club 330: Ramesses II of Egypt

[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 Ramesses II of Egypt, whom we last played in NC 290; we last played the Egyptians under Hatshepsut in NC 274. The Egyptians start with Agriculture and The Wheel.

• Traits: Ramesses II is Industrious and Spiritual. Industrious gives a +50% bonus to all Wonders (World and National), and gives a +100% bonus to Forges. Spiritual allows you to swap state religion/civics without suffering Anarchy, and gives a +100% bonus to all Temples.
• The UB: The Obelisk, a Monument with 2 Priest slots. Getting very early Great Prophets is more for the AI than the player, since the former should be left to the task of founding and spreading religions while the player builds up their empire and bulbs their way through the tech tree. But if you're looking to rush someone who hasn't build a Shrine yet early, or you want literally any Great Person for a Golden Age, or you actually do want a Great Prophet to pull some manner of clever scheme, the Obelisk will allow you to get out the required Great Person that much easier, and earlier.
• The UU: The War Chariot, a Chariot with 5 and innate immunity to First Strike. A straight upgrade over the basic chariot, particularly against archers, these guys stand a chance at winning fights that regular chariots don't.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Pangaea, Temperate climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A strategic resource swap to give an AI their missing nearby strategic resource.

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 330 Ramesses II 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 what is demigod :

The difference between Immortal and Deity difficulty is akin to the difference between Noble and Immortal. Players eventually reached a point where Immortal was too easy, but Deity was still out of reach, and so neither difficulty provided a fun experience. "Demigod" is an otherwise standard Deity game where the AIs are only given their Immortal level starting units, in an attempt to bridge the gap.

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.

EDIT: Replaced the .zip with a fixed version - Team 1's starting units were previously assigned to team @, which caused everything to break. Strangely enough the error only appeared in the no huts version of the Demigod save, which is made after the huts version, which didn't contain the error, so....

 

[AcaMetis]

Not really any particular location that screams "settle here!" to me. I'm guessing move the Warrior 1S to reveal as many potentially relevant tiles as he's going to, than depending on that either SIP or settle 1W if there's nothing amazing (not sure which is better, there's pros and cons to either but they seem relatively minor?) or if the Warrior does reveal something nice...I guess settle 1S for the 212 city tile?

Not too sure on this one. What do the experts think ?

 

[soundjata]

^ This man has no chill you can hardly start a game and now there is another one

 

[AcaMetis]

Current schedule for new NC games is every two weeks, which I think is sufficient time to play through a map...if you grab them while they're fresh off the press .

 

[sampsa]

For me either blindly SIP or warrior 1S to consider settling 1S. Not a massive fan of losing a turn and a forest for no extra though.

 

[Fippy]

I would go 1s either way..there just isn't anything lost north and south has a river.

 

[coanda]

Well, you lose one turn and one choppable forest. No huge loss, but there's a loss. Probably pick up some additional floodplains though unless that one peeking out of the fog of war is a one-off.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

If I’d rolled the map myself, I’d go 1S. As it’s an NC map, we’re Egypt and we’re already being tempted to go AH by the piggies, I’m wondering whether there might be something interesting and possibly equine on one of the four bare tiles you’d lose

 

[Henrik75]

I think 1S yes for extra river tiles and +1 commerce

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I had forgotten about this map. Now I remember why.
This is turn 50 :

Spoiler :

The resource placement and lay of the land are atrocious



Tech path goes : AH, Mining, Bronze, Fishing, Pottery, Writing, Placeholder.
Thebes goes : Worker, grow to 4 (!), Worker, Settler, Settler, Whip Granary ~~~~ Settler at size 3 would be very awkward since the city does 9H/t without an extra farm/mine.
Memphis is the only decent location in sight and the clear 2nd city. Settled late (turn 40), it grows to 2 and borrows the gold so Thebes can whip.
Cute little things :
Thebes has the maxest of overflows and will grow 3 -> 4 in a single turn. It will reach size 4 exactly the turn Memphis can whip its worker.
Heliopolis will complete its boat next turn with 30/30H.

Tech path from there on leaves me clueless. It seems late to commit to Ancient wonders.
There's a barb city and Thebes' border pop will unlock Horses.
A ton of commerce can be had with Calendar (but no food in sight...). Also, there's stone, there's no way I settle the stone Have I mentionned the resource spread is atrocious, yet ?
Conceivably, I can attempt to grab the copper as a spearhead, build some mines and War Chariots while teching Mathematics. There is ivory somewhere lost in some god forsaken part of the map, which appears to qualify most of our surroundings
Hammers are a little scarce, I wouldn't mind the copper.

Spotting mistakes :
Health is an issue. I should probably have settled Heliopolis 1N to gain 2 forests and lose 1 floodplains.

 

[Izuul]

The Demigod save appears to be busted.

 

[AcaMetis]

So it is, looks like I forgot to mark the Team 1 starting units to their team. I'll upload a fix in a sec...

EDIT: Fixed version is up, but how the error managed to get in there I have no idea. My usual workflow is to make the huts saves, make the demigod save by adding Immortal starting units to the Deity save (using @ as a temporary "team" for copy/pasting the unit blocks, which is then replaced with the right team number), then make no-huts saves from the huts saves. I have no idea how an error that wasn't in the huts save managed to get into the no-huts save. It defies explanation .

 

[antimony]

Deity T27

Spoiler :

Three opponents met but they don't seem very close by. There are 3 good city spots in the peninsula around my capital: horse-stone (sharing pigs), fish (sharing gold) and south river floodplains (with exact location TBD based on possible seafood in SE corner). With IND, stone and plenty of chops, the Pyramids seem within reach: I'm thinking of building a 3rd warrior to help fogbust north and 2-whip chop the settler at size 4, while my worker farms the floodplain before chopping and roading the SW forest where my warrior currently stands. Horses would also be nice if only to use war chariots as scouting and barb defense.

Alternatively, I could first settle the northern river area to secure that chunk of land, which could be important on deity. Only concern is the lack of food unless the few fog tiles reveal something.

 

[antimony]

Deity T80

Spoiler :

Settled 2nd city on horse/stone to try to get the Pyramids, but Augustus built them on T59 at which point I got 308 failgold, which helped me get 100% slider up to now (Pottery-Writing-Math-Sailing). Only Augustus has Alpha and he also teched Math so I don't have anything to trade him for it, unfortunately. Pericles is also getting Math soon (I put my points on him at the start), whereas Mehmed (who is mutual worst enemy with Augustus) has horse archers.

I have 5 cities and a free settler NE after Rome took the clam spot that settler was going to. I see Mehmed has a settler going probably towards his archer at the spot marked "s". I could settle that first (some forests and cottageable tiles). I could also settle where I am now to get elephants (but really nothing else of interest) and set up for a construction army. Mehmed seems like the only possible target though given the diplo situation, whereas I could be friendly with Rome and Greece if I adopt Buddhism (which hasn't spread yet).

Should I go with construction - elephants or get that extra river city to the north and tech more towards Aesthetics for trade value?

 

[antimony]

If anyone has some advice about tech trading.

Spoiler :

So I ended up settling the plains 1S of the "s" spot above and have another settler on the way to pick up elephants. I self-teched Alphabet T88, since only Augustus has it and I have nothing to offer him. On the other hand everyone has Math. Now I can get Iron Working + Myst for Alpha from either Mehmed or Pericles. Augustus has Currency and Construction (won't trade them), Mehmed has HBR (won't trade it), Pericles is getting Currency (in 9 turns). Augustus and Pericles are buddies and don't like Mehmed, Augustus being his worse enemy.

Obviously I need HBR and Construction if I want elephants (which would be good offensively and defensively against Mehmed's HAs and everything pre-longbows). I can self-research HBR in 8, and Construction or Calendar in 12 (also Aesthetics in 10, though it would be purely for trade value).

Some scenarios I'm considering:
- Make the Alpha for IW (+Myst?) trade with Mehmed now. Research Construction and then trade it for Currency with Pericles later (possibly with Alpha, unless Augustus gifts it to him or some other unwknown AI trades it). I would be around T100 and still need HBR.
- An alternative if we don't do elepult war would be to research Calendar to trade with Pericles, since IW + Calendar would really help develop my jungle area to the north.

 

[sampsa]

@antimony

Spoiler :

Judging from the screenshots (didn't play this map), elepult war seems like a decent idea. You are building libraries though, so you aren't taking the game into that direction really. Perhaps the best thing to do now is just to chill towards cuirs. Pericles is a wuss and very easy to take out.

It's hard to get real value from alphabet on deity, so I'd just take what you can now. Sounds like you will be able to get currency via trade soon.

 

[antimony]

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Point well taken about the libraries, if I was planning pre-cuir war I should have used barracks as a hammer sink when nothing else needs them. I like the idea of building on that land until I'm ready to take out Greece (who will be a very good trading partner until then). As a SPI leader would you adopt Buddhism for diplo with Greece / Rome at the risk of angering Mehmed?

The map has very few "natural hammers" in most cities. I used most chops trying to build Pyramids, or for settlers and granaries (for some recent cities without good production tiles, I put 1 chop + 1 whip to get granaries as soon as they hit size 2, not sure if that's a good move). As a result I'm low on workers and am currently building a few more in anticipation of clearing / improving the jungle up north.

 

[sampsa]

Spoiler :

As a SPI leader would you adopt Buddhism for diplo with Greece / Rome at the risk of angering Mehmed?

Yes. Ignore Mehmed for now, but I think you need to backstab Pericles later. If you build enough diplo with Augustus he won't mind you taking Greek cities.

 

[antimony]

T154

Spoiler :

It's Cuirs time. Got 16 now across 2 whip round (HAs upgraded with a GM, then Cuirs), with another round whipped next turn. I lost the Lib race to Pericles around 560 AD but Augustus traded Gunpowder to me for Edu which saved some time in catching up. That is despite running the slider at 100% and building research everywhere from about CS onwards, thanks to a big gold windfall when everyone was trying to build Parthenon at the same time and I took all their failgold in tech trades.

I plan to take the two cities north of my territory then march towards Athens/Sparta. His best units seem to be Knights and Elephants but most defenders are Macemen/Longbows. Meanwhile Mehmed to the north is quite weak (no Knights or gunpowder yet) and Augustus has Muskets but no Cuirs. I begged both since Pericles could in theory bribe them. Luckily Shaka has also been keeping both Arabia and Rome busy with wars in the west.

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

Pericles had rifles 2 turns after I declared so it seems this won't work. In retrospect Mehmed would have been a better target since I knew he didn't have gunpowder, but instead of replaying I will probably try other games to practice the early game on deity.