Nobles' Club LXXXVII: Hannibal of Carthage

[GGracchus]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

i'm not blaming you. i'm only playing up to emperor so far. so, i think it'll be fun to crack down some stronger than usual ai armies. and on the other side once i got communism with 40 cities, it should be really fun to massing huge army, maybe even backward ones, to hunt down a runaway ai or two. of course, everything is based on how much spare time i could squeeze out. with 2 jobs and a newborn, hardly any. that's really my deity challenge.

Spoiler :

Good luck getting 40 cities. You can fit 12 without the islands and without Lincoln's territory, if you HA rush Lincoln you might be able to fit in a few more before Charlemagne steals the rest.

 

[obsolete]

Deity - NSC

Spoiler :

AIs teched very slow this map, except for Pacal who took off like a mofu after a while, but for some stupid reason decided to ignore Rifleing despite going far up past the physics barrier.

Vassaled Americans, then Pacal and Stalin in rapid succession, and kept Charle constantly swaping his SoDs with others then I swung down in his back-door and took everything on the cheap.

 

[Manco Capac]

deleted.

 

[dalamb]

@all: Sometimes I respond to someone's comment about the map with something along the lines of "oops, I goofed" and something like a . That's usually just me -- don't take it as my assuming you were criticizing me personally. I really do want to make good maps, and given that I never have the time that xOTM map-makers invest, such as playing it out a long way to look for problems, comments about general things that were good or went wrong, that I could conceivably avoid without huge effort, are really helpful. Making a map plus starting the thread currently takes about 1-2 hours every 2 weeks, usually closer to 1. I wouldn't mind adding a couple of steps that push that up by 20-30 minutes, though adding an hour starts to push it beyond what I can manage in some weeks.

I am thinking it would be good to put a short list somewhere about the limited set of "edits" (plus regenerates) I do, with the invitation to make changes to that list (as long as they don't involve huge amounts of work).

 

[mtr12]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

Well, the potential is definitely there for Charlemagne and Huayna to become runaways. But I think that from a Noble's perspective this is a fairly difficult map to play since all the land (before Calender) sucks except for the capital, so dotmapping is fairly difficult.

Pics as promised. Corps in large empires are broken

Spoiler :

Medicine Beeline for Sid Sushi.


Diplomacy is integral to cultural games. 2 Defensive Pacts virtually guarantees no DoWs.


Got it to Legendary with hardly any Cottages haha. This was my weakest city before Hermitage, I had to put it here because I didn't expect many GA's. If you are expecting a lot of GA's, put Hermitage in a strong city. If not, put it in a weak city.

Also notice how many Sid Sushi resources I had. The Corp was getting me about 15 Food and 60 CPT.


Winning Screen. Sooooo much cpt haha

 

[Archredbeard]

Took a laid back approach on emperor, since i read about the huge land

Spoiler :

Decided to gun for TGLH and got it, after that i just spammed cities everywhere, blocked Lincoln off, then spammed cities on the peninsula, also on the islands to deny Charlie etc Libbed Astro in 1175ad then got the rest of the techs for a cavstomp in 1500ad, declared on Lincoln 1540 and capped him 1570 after 3 cities captured, then declared on Pacal and capped him around 1600.
Funny thing happened, i demanded 3 resources AZstyle in the peacenegotiations, but he would have none of that and declared on me I then took 2 more cities as well as Mutal, then he was broken, again. I declared on Stalin, and he saw the light after I took one! city, then it waas Hammys turn. He needed to loose 3 cities and me on the outskirts of Babylon, before he kissed the ring. Charlies turn, he was stubborn and i had to take 4 cities, he had been in war with HC all the time.
HC was a real pushover, I just liberated one! city he had taken from Charlie, then I took out hes SOD and after that he bowed down for a 1775 ad conquest win

 

[Archredbeard]

@all: Sometimes I respond to someone's comment about the map with something along the lines of "oops, I goofed" and something like a . I really do want to make good maps, and given that I never have the time that xOTM map-makers invest,

Friend, dont worry about it, I bet we are many who are happy that you are willing to put the effort as well as the time into making this serie. Will there be a difference from time to time? Of course, thats the nature of the beast as they say.
Does it matter that not all maps are equally easy/hard to play ? Not in a million years. If someone gets the hard end of the stick, well, just sit this one out and go for the next map.
I read the comments beforehand, thats why I aimed for Emperor, though, i am really enclined to try it on Imm now

Long story short, Dalamb making this serie!!

 

[mtr12]

Spoiler :

How do you guys win this game via Conq/Dom/Space? Seems to me that outside out capital, our land is fairly production-poor, and there aren't enough resources for Mining Inc to significantly help.

Do you guys just use Rushbuy?

 

[GGracchus]

Spoiler :

How do you guys win this game via Conq/Dom/Space? Seems to me that outside out capital, our land is fairly production-poor, and there aren't enough resources for Mining Inc to significantly help.

Do you guys just use Rushbuy?

Spoiler :

I used State property, especially since my capital was in the south, away from my cities on the peninsula.

 

[krikav]

Imm/Marathon, 1775 UN victory.

Spoiler :

The start was really amazing! So much fun priorities to make.

But was this really normal size? Feelt like it was huge...

Lincon got boxed in in the middle, and got backwards in tech, after I had GLH abused and settled on almost every little island, I crushed him with knights against his axemen at around 300 bc... Poor lincon!

I played a diplomatic heavy game, tried to please everyone with their favourite civics.
Didn't thought I would get diplomatic enough, so I charged down and took all capacs cities, made him vassal since I didn't have the energy to go out and hunt him down on the islands..

Pacal got vassalised by stalin, but later broke free, and asked me if I could protect him. Sure thing..

Killed charlie with the aid of bulldog stalin and with cavalery+artilery.
And when hammy got enough of me and declared, I gifted all units to pacall, and he mopped things up for me.
When pacall got a few cities from hammy, there was enough for the diplomatic vote to go through.

I had no problems with any runaway AI.

 

[krikav]

I did some serious analysis on this opening on normal speed. (I usually play marathon).
I got to say I find the theorycrafting on normal abit more interesting, workerturns and turns in general are more important...

I got the idea from the thread:

Vocum Sineratio: The Whip (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193659)
Under the headline "Worker" you can read: about the optimization.
"if you start with Mining there is an interesting optimization available when there is a 3F tile inside the inner ring of your initial city..."

I applied it in a slightly different way in this opening however.


The idea is to go BW -> Agri, and then probably sailing but the analysis doesn't go that far.
Buildorder is Workboat -> Worker.
Kind of interesting, since most people recomended worker first in this opening.

The crux comes in with Mr Hanibals traits, financial.
I utilized the extra commerce from the clams, to get both BW and agri quicker.

Ending up at turn 27, with population 2, a clam improved and the corn improved (or possibly the wheat, haven't tried).
And you are halfway to completing sailing.

The setting is normal/immortal
The buildorder goes like this:

Build Tech Work Tile(s) Comment
--------------------------------------------------
T0: wb bw corn
T1: wb bw corn
T2: wb bw corn
T3: wb bw corn
T4: wb bw corn
T5: wb bw corn
--------------------------------------------------
T6: wb bw clam In essence, these two turns trade
T7: wb bw clam 2 food in the "bar" for 4 commerce.
--------------------------------------------------
(We have now grown to population 2, 0/24 in the food bar, workboat 8/30)
T8: worker bw clam+clam
T9: worker bw clam+clam
T10: worker bw clam+clam
T11: worker bw clam+clam

--------------------------------------------------
Now we have one turn to bw, however we are so close to bw, that we can afford to
work something other than the clams, we put some extra hemmers into the worker...

T12: worker bw corn+wheat
T13: Revolt to slavery!
T14: Whip the workboat, finish building the wb, tech agri, work silk one turn.

--------------------------------------------------
Workboat finishes, improve clams.

T15: worker, agri, claim
T16: worker, agri, claim
T17: worker, agri, claim
T18: worker, agri, claim
T19: worker, agri, claim
T20: worker, agri, claim
T21: worker, agri, claim

--------------------------------------------------
Worker now finishes at the same time as agriculture. Go improve that corn!
Build a warrior/workboat/barraks to grow.

T22: warrior, sailing, clams
T23: warrior, sailing, clams
T24: warrior, sailing, clams
T25: warrior, sailing, clams

T26 Corn now finishes, and if you work that one, you will grow next turn!

T27: You have now grown to pop2, work corn+clams.

End of analysis.
--------------------------------------------------

One can tweak around abit at t6, t7, t12 and t14, to better steer the final result into either commerce, extra food in the bar, or toward tech. Any changes are marginal, however.

From the position that arises when the analysis is done, I think that it is good to build a settler, and to run and improve the wheat.


Comment about working dual clams:

Spoiler :

When you work two clams, you have 15 commerce, but somehow this is magically transformed into 19 beakers, a gain of 4 beakers.
If you are working a single riverside corn, you have 10 commerce, which is tranformed into 13 beakers. (a gain of 4).
So if you can streach up to 15 beakers, you get one extra for free!

 

[krikav]

Might be worth to mention, that I still think that a worker first opening is stronger.
But the workboat first opening is almost as strong, you have abit less food/pop but you are ahead in tech.

 

[Archredbeard]

Spoiler :

How do you guys win this game via Conq/Dom/Space? Seems to me that outside out capital, our land is fairly production-poor, and there aren't enough resources for Mining Inc to significantly help.

Do you guys just use Rushbuy?

Well, late game production on green land is easy, just get some farms to feed the population, then workshop/windmill/watermill the rest until cap in the city, you get tons of production that way if you are in SP. You still get a decent output in free market, though a huge empire screams for SP, imo.
Just remember, always food first, then the rest is easy
Brown tiles are really nice workshoptiles, if you have the farms to feed them that is.

 

[vranasm]

@krikav

about the commerce

not sure which beakers you reference, but it works ~ this way:

1) there is innate 1 bpt regardless of slider
2) if you are teching some tech with prerequisite the cost of tech isn't cheapened but your bpt production is multiplied by the amount of prereqs you have.

I quickly looked at the 19 bpt x 15 commerce and it is 1 + 18/15 = 1+ 1.2*15 --> you teched tech with 20% prerequisites bonus.

 

[gorf37]

Signing-in on Emp.

Spoiler :

I've been enjoying this one. It's a good challenge to get the most out of weak land. My strategy was pretty simple, GLH abuse.

Built Stonehenge, GLH. Settled the horse for barb defence. Focused a lot on spawnbusting. Although that didn't prevent barb cities from spawning on the western peninsula, I took them with swords.

As soon as the # of coastal cities available became clear I rushed to build some offshore cities. First went on the 1-tile island with 3 seafood between us and charly. It took a lot of whips to overflow enough for moai, but oh is it ever a beast now. The second went on the sheep/iron island. I've now had caravels for ~20 turns and am finding even more islands. Will have to read-up to figure out how many offshore cities is optimal for my situation. I'm guessing 2 more (probably both on the sheep island even further west).

Managed a messy diplo situation by ignoring religion (2AIs in Buddhism, 2 in Hindu, 2 in Confu). It's a bit painful, but with the land I have only free religion is really attractive anyways. Just libbed astro. Will be having a look at the tech tree today and consider how best to reach tanks/bombers.

 

[Grashopa]

Here is worker first which I believe is a lot stronger.

Spoiler :

Ag-BW whip a workboat with 15 extra hammers into a warrior. Turn 28 gives you pop 3 working corn/wheat/clams with 2 fog busters. Turn 35 is pop 5 working 2 clams/corn/wheat/mine. Probably 3 pop whip the settler at pop 6 to get him out early then warrior so we can get back to pop 5 working all improved tiles. The extra CHA happy is nice so just whip settlers/workers into the GLh. I think I went wheel pottery after BW for the granary whipping before the lighthouse/GLh.

 

[obsolete]

Hah, I decided to go workboat first since I believe it is stronger. However, Grashopa is a solid player so I really don't know now. Probably a close tie and depends on opening style. I didn't bother running the numbers on it, but I guess the two openings are probably close.

Now, if I started my capital on a plains-hill, and had another forested plains-hill to work... I guess that COULD change things into my favour quite a bit

 

[mtr12]

If Hannibal had Hunting, Workboat First would probably be stronger too, since BW is a long way away. But since Hannibal has Mining, that counts in favor of Worker First, since you can quickly get chopping.

 

[Grashopa]

Probably a close tie and depends on opening style. I didn't bother running the numbers on it, but I guess the two openings are probably close.

I didn't really analyze either, but I did think that having the extra CHA happy meant whipping for this high food start. And riverside corn and wheat gets you a headstart on food. I typically always delay BW and probably switch to slavery and HR at the same time more often than not, but in this case not going immediate slavery means less hammers when you can grow to 7 so early.

Mining-BW does hurt worker first more, but it hurts both and worker first still means a lot more food which means more hammers which is more important than commerce here. At least I'm guessing if I had to go mining BW I'd still be able to get GLh comfortably which is my only early commerce worry having peeked at the map type spoiler. Though maybe not (I'm playing deity and GLh can go early)...

 

[krikav]

I toyed around the idea to start building a second worker once the capital reaches pop2,
the wheat is not yet improved at that point, and also you can revolt to slavery before the wheat is improved.
Also, with these very strong 6-yield tiles, wouldn't it be better to go for a settler at pop4? Perhaps put one chop in the settler before you 2-pop whip him?

It seems to me that the city site just north of the silk, is very strong, and that one should go Agri->BW->Sailing->Myst->AH, in order to get that city up to speed very soon, working the cows.

After a 2-pop whip, you can get the city settled around when sailing is done, and you can grow to pop2, to whip out the monument as soon as myst is done, reaching for them cows.
Or..

Spoiler :

am I too colored by the extra information I have from playing the map several times? Knowing that there are hidden horses there?