Nobles' Club 334: Suleiman of the Ottomans

[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 Suleiman of the Ottomans, whom we last played in NC 292; we last played the Ottomans under Mehmed II in NC 331. The Ottomans start with Agriculture and The Wheel.

• Traits: Suleiman is Imperialistic and Philosophical. Imperialistic adds +100% to Great General generation and +50% bonus to Settler production (note that the settler bonus doesn't apply to excess directly converted to ). Philosophical gives all cities +100% generation and a +100% bonus to Universities.
• The UB: The Hamman, an Aqueduct with +2 . Too expensive to make wide use of early game, when is still relatively abundant and (at best) two extra citizens cannot cover for the cost of building a Hamman, but in the late game this is an excellent building to simultaneously fight back against factory/coal plant unhealthiness and Emancipation unhappiness.
• The UU: The Janissary, a Musketman with +25% vs. Archery, Melee and Mounted units. Base muskets are generally ignored in favor of units that have either a higher base , or in the case of siege-based warfare, a lower cost to get more bodies on the field. Janissaries are given the same treatment, though they're a pretty solid all-in-one resourceless stack defender package. For reference a Janissary on defence is not as good against Mounted as a Pike (though Janissaries are resourceless and not threatened by Maces/Crossbows, Pikes require Iron and can only defend against Mounted), much better against Melee than a Mace (Melee units tend to get bonuses vs. Melee units, but Janissaries are Gunpowder units, so their bonus applies while the Mace's bonus does not) and mercilessly play a funeral dirge for the concept of offensive Archery units.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Pangaea, Temperate climate, High sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A strategic resource swap to give an AI a 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 334 Suleiman 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.

 

[AcaMetis]

Two plains hills the settler can move to in one turn, and 2 city tiles are always tempting. That said there's an awful lot of tiles that could have resources on them still covered, and moving away from something like Gems not buried in Jungle would be tragic. I think since either Plains hill is the obvious go to for settling the capitol, and since settling either leaves the other open for a potential second city in case it's a good (or even better) city spot, the best approach is to send the Warrior 1S to see if there's anything worth sticking around for (maybe even settling 1S to get that second Spice tile in BFC?), and if there isn't send the Settler towards either Plains hill? If the Warrior finds nothing it's a complete guess as to which plains hill makes a better capitol, but I'd guess the east PH is the better option, despite the forest sitting on it, since it seems greener and has at least a Spice tile?

Yeah, not sure how to play this one. What do the experts think?

 

[soundjata]

Warrior 1S reveal the more interesting tiles I think (but neither settler NEE nor settler 2W)
If it finds nothing, then it is a gamble between SIP (to keep both mystery tiles) or 1W of pigs,.on the PH.

Now it also depends on how quick we can research AH.
There is no point on producing our first worker so fast that he can only road and farm green tiles. Is there?

 

[AcaMetis]

IMO it's worth it to build roads if a worker has nothing better to do, speeding up movement and hooking up resources for early diplo shenanigans (or possibly even early resource trades) is good. It's just that there's usually better things to do .

 

[soundjata]

Yes true. In any case, Size 2 in cap is reached quicker by SOPH.

Useful addendum: We do have (100%) the resource for our unique unit near the Capitol!

Spoiler :

 

[soundjata]

Sorry that I'm spamming. I'm eager it is summer

T111 Deity

Spoiler :

We are watching Genghis pummel Hapshepsut
But she's got defenses


Konya is a city gift to GK. Under what condition can we get the liberation bonus? We did not get it here.
It kinda worked (because we are alive), but he stole the Iron that I improved
I would definitely be happier with a fifth city of my own. But it would also have cost a few turns on engineering...

We just bulbed that (shy of a few what a shame) and now we need now to climb the power ladder.

We are not at zero, as we followed a piece of advice from @Henrik75 excellent guide : build units beforehand!
GK, as expected, is pretty high

Who should we be attacking

We've got good population : 33 pop => 1000 roughly

Extras

Spoiler :

Statistics: Infrastructures rather lean. Could be more I think.


Tech screen. Not too bad. I had to self tech Aesthetics and Construction!
Also I gave everything to Zara (Machinery for Currency just recently) as he is now the best buddy of Hatchet.
The 2 bigger threats (number of cities) are the least advanced


Resources At least we got metal.

 

[antimony]

T99... I did try the no-whip challenge.

Spoiler :

Diplo situation is very similar to @soundjata although I didn't need to gift a city. Charlie would be the main threat if he plots.

Early game:
- Settled in place to get the pig+corn for faster expansion. Worker - grow to 4 - 2x settler then workers and settlers mostly in cap. Grow to 4 because pig+corn+forest PH+mined PH = 17 food+hammers per turn for settlers with IMP. I went expanded aggressively but avoided getting too much in GK's culture.
- Tech: AH-Mining-Pottery-BW-Writing-Math. A bit of a weird path, but I wanted the PH mine as mentioned above, and cottages wouldn't be useful that early, but then Mining-BW leads to too much idling time for workers. Settlers 3 and 4 benefitted from chops, but then didn't chop anything until Math.
- First GS on T79 for Academy. Libraries everywhere (helped with chops post-math) just to not lose my tiles to AI culture.

Note about chopping: I was quite conservative about chopping (except for settlers and libraries) and kept a few pre-chopped forests for emergency due to no-whip, but maybe that doesn't make sense... an early DoW would probably have been game over in any situation. Instead I could have chopped granaries (post-math) for growth especially to help the grow-starve cycle for GP generation. At the moment I have 300 hammers worth of forests but that doesn't feel like a lot for military purposes.

Situation right now:
- Recently got Currency and traded it for CoL and Monarchy.
- Got a 2nd GS a few turns ago.
- I could switch HR + Caste right now for 1 turn. Caste is not really useful due to low pop and libraries everywhere, but it's "free".
- Isa already has Philo but not CS or Paper, perhaps she is going for Taj Mahal, lots of wonders in her holy city of Barcelona.

Main decision at this point: whether or not to bulb Philo.
- Can switch to HR + Paci instead which is more useful (if still only 1 turn of anarchy).
- Going a standard Liberalism route, BUT will I win it against Isa, and if I do what can I use the free tech on?
- I haven't tech Meditation yet so the alternative is to go the Engineering-Guilds-Chemistry route.

I'm not sure what is the win condition here. The Lib route is useful towards State Property, but Engi-Guilds-Chem provides a quicker route to Steel and all the workshop hammers without the +1F. It would also delay civil service. I don't think I can realistically Lib steel, and instead of Philo + 2x Edu bulbs, I could use them for Engi + 2x Chem.

EDIT: The Lib route has more upside as long as we actually win Lib race (even if not for Steel directly). I think Pacifism will generate 1 more GS easily. So that's an extra 5000 beakers or so that will make up for higher base beaker cost in that route. Better trading potential too, right?

 

[Whisker]

@soundjata
About city gifting rules:
You can see in the diplomacy screen if the gift is liberation or not (at least in Buffy). In order to be considered liberation, the city needs to:
1. Be on tile that already has their culture (e.g. contested tile that has 60% of your culture and 40% of their's)
or
2. Be located closer to their capital than your capital

Also there are some rules about what cities they accept at all.
3. Any city if they have less than three
or
4. Be located close enough to their current territories

 

[soundjata]

@Whisker Thank you
I knew about 3. (or) 4. (City must be less than 9 tiles away from the target cap)
Now I know about 1. (or) 2. (neither of which passed the test in this game indeed)

Another question if you happen to know...
In another game I managed to liberate a city to Mansa, going through the city screen because there was no other way to talk to Mansa (none of us has writing)
in this case I got the liberation bonus but not the +4 fair trade. Any way to avoid that or any rational explanation?

Edit: Illustration of the case 2. (how to measure diagonal vs lateral distance?)

Spoiler :

I happened to stumble upon this liberation request by accident but it illustrates very well the distance rule (and distance calculation rule)
2 tiles adjacent laterally count as a distance of 1
2 tiles adjacent diagonally count as a distance of 1.5
Canterburry is closer to Ramses cap than mine (7<8) and can be liberated.
(it would also be +4 fair trade as we can talk)

Actually no thank you. I'd rather keep this city

 

[elmurcis]

Not sure about details but isn't it down to how long AI is known and how much trading has happened before (just observations). I mean, getting +4 at 1st turn of meeting cost like 10-20 gold but trying to get +4 late game (like UN victory "buy up") can cost 1-2K of gold per +1 improvement.
Even early city gift wears out with time if there is no additional trades happening (drops to +3 etc.)

 

[soundjata]

^ Yes indeed.
The +1 (you liberated our cities) is permanent
Whereas the +4 (fair trade) will fade away with time and depends on the "relative value" of the city gift compared to some "other number" representing the overall AI power?

 

[antimony]

Done with this one.

Spoiler :

Definitely lucky from a diplomatic point of view that Isa and GK shared the same religion. Narrowly averted a war during my research phase, as I was able to gift a tech then beg 1 gold from Hatshepsut as she had a stack on my border. Then just before that Peace Treaty expired I was able to bribe GK and Isa to declare on her.

Lots of great people. GS 1 -> Academy, GS 2 -> Philo, GS 3 -> part of Edu, GS 4 -> Golden Age, GS 5 -> part of Lib, then a great merchant for upgrades. Probably not optimal (golden age didn't do much here, should have saved it for the Steel research and unit building phase, or just to bulb something later), and I wonder if the Chemistry bulb path would have been faster, but at least it denies the AI getting Lib. Also it was easy to trade for everything on the path to Engineering as well as Feudalism and Guilds before I got Steel.

Lib -> Chemistry on T130 (375 AD)

Then while researching Steel I started building Janissaries and Catapults using my workshops and a few green mines. Getting the iron was tricky, despite getting the iron mine back from GK's culture, he reclaims it just before I get the Steel tech. So I trade a bunch of GPT for Charlie's iron and upgraded just before declaring on him and voiding that trade.

T146: 10 Catas upgraded to Cannons. I decide to attack Charlie. Just like GK he has a lot of cities, but is behind in tech his units are still medieval. Also his core cities have great land and nobody else would mind me attacking him, except Hatshepsut who has been weakened quite a bit by GK. Fortunately for me Peter founded Islam and switched religions (despite him having the AP for Buddhism in Moscow!), ruining his diplo with Charlie. I could even bribe him to join the war. Charlie's stack is in Nuremberg so I start the war north in Florence, while Peter keeps him busy at the south border.

T168 - Got Charlie's best 3 cities including his Buddhist shrine in Prague. But right after that, GK (who joined the war on his own) conquers Nuremberg and caps Charlie. Predictably the absence of slavery means we have to just watch the conquered cities lose most of their population to starving (so might as well run as many artists as possible to gain some tiles). Also no slavery makes it a bit harder to deal with the -5 happiness from defying Charlie's AP resolution.

I decide to go after Isabella next because she has the weakest military and a lot of wonders including two shrines in Barcelona.

Isa capitulates after Cordoba and Barcelona are taken (T175). Next I attack Peter (who in the meantime was already in a war with Ethiopia). He just got cossacks, but I still don't lose too many Rifles and Cannons. At that point the diplo with Mongolia has gotten worse (he switched out of Hinduism, but I keep it to ensure Zara remains friendly). GK asks for tribute which I give him (700 gold), so I can heal and add to my army.

GK declares on Hatshepsut just before I declare on him, and keeps moving his main stack towards Egypt rather than defend his cities. I have two stacks of rifles and cannons, one for the east (near my and Egypt's border) and one for his core cities to the south. He gets at most Cuirassiers which don't do much damage at this point. Zara joins the war against GK and Egypt peace vassals to Ethiopia. When GK capitulates to me on T212 and his cities get out of revolt, I'm sitting at just 2% below the domination land limit. Zara will get to artillery and infantry soon so I'm not really looking for more wars.

I try to boost culture to increase my borders, but it's clearly not enough, so I settle for the AP diplomatic victory on T238 after gifting a Buddhist city to GK, the only AI non-member of the AP at this point.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity difficulty no slavery. I can never do that. Also another reason why janissaries are awesome.

Spoiler :

I believe janissaries will defend the cannons only if the stack is on a hill or a forest tile. Would you please share the movement path of your stack?

 

[antimony]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

The janissaries are indeed dominant until your opponents get grenadiers or riflemen. That's part of why I went for Charlemagne first since he was behind in tech and stuck with a medieval army, and then Isa before she had Conquistadors which would also have been a strong counter. After that I had my own riflemen so the rest was fine.

With barracks and theocracy the units start with 5 XP so all janissaries had at least combat I (eventually most had combat II, but I would save the 2nd promotion for healing usually), which with the 25% bonus against mounted/ranged/melee means they would be defending over the cannons even on a flat tile, I think. Opponent siege would attack my cannons first but catapults are not very threatening. Also City Raider II on the cannons mean they would also rarely die from attacking a city with medieval defenders. I checked and lost until about 6 cannons before my opponents had rifling.

Not facing the enemy's big stack (if it exists) in their territory really helps avoiding losses too. Like attacking north to avoid Charlemagne's stack and bribing Peter into attacking him to keep same stack busy on the other side of his territory. As I said, I think a lot of that game relied on manipulating the diplomacy, and I was lucky it worked out because it's not always like that, especially with zealot AIs with opposing faiths like Isa and Charlie, and volatile warmongers like GK. The fact that all opponents were kind of balanced with no runaway leader also helped a lot.