Nobles Club X - Zara Yaqob!

[dubrown]

My apologies if I missed it, but what exactly are the settings for this map?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

Hmm, I don't know exactly which settings you refer to. It's a WB scenario, you play Zara as the Ethiopians on this map. Other than that I believe it's the default settings if you choose "play scenario". You can choose difficulty level and speed.

If it's map specific settings in the map generator, I guess you need to ask rolo.

 

[dubrown]

Monarch/Epic Update 1470-1640

Spoiler :

When we left the action last time I had peace with Monty, was rebuilding and considering my options.

I would've needed more time to be enough prepared to war Monty another time, I did lack a bit in offensive power. But Freddy made the decision for me:


And a screenie later I noticed that the English should've been on this map as well, I must've missed when they got destroyed. Man, two AIs probably destroyed early by the barb uprising event. No wonder Freddy could grow so strong on his continent...


Well, my a bit unprepared army marched towards the Aztec lands:


War took time, I did really only siege two of his cities for quite some time, lowering defense with my very few surviving siege engines while building more.

I did a decent deal in the meantime:


And finally, had a strong enough attackforce to sweep through the two targetted cities (Partly because Monty suicided his big stack on my Oromo warriors, fortified on a forested hill with drillIV promotion. It turned out one was all that was needed to kill his 10 or something cats + Lbows and some X-bows and Jaguars...

The above one I razed, the one below I kept


As I was worried that Monty might capitulate to Freddy instead of me I decided to cut the war short if he did capitulate to me. Also, a decently strong Monty could be an ally I could have some use of in a coming war against Freddy and Asoka.


Now, I'm a bit worried about what to do next.My mind was set on a domination victory but that will not be easy. Here's the current status of the victory screen:


Look at the powergraph below, I'm quite weak compared to Freddy.


I will need to be a whole lot stronger, get my economy back on track and keep my tech advantage against Freddy and Asoka if I'm to have any chance to get that domination victory.

The other options available is still a AP-victory. I will have to spread Hindu to Monty and with some diplo tricks I may be able to pull that one of. Though it's not that a fun solution, although probably the quickest.

The other one is to aim for a space race victory. Techwise it should be possible to outtech the competition, Mansa wil be a valuable ally here and he's to small to be able to outproduce me in a spacerace. But I do have too few good production sites.

If anyone hasn't any better ideas I will try a domination victory in this one. At this point I have gunpowder, Astro and Chemistry as a bonus compared to Freddy/Asoka. I am in the middle of producing a Privateer fleet to distrupt Freddys economy a bit. He did put a hole in my economy by going Mercantilism anyway.

I doubt my advantage of Oromo warriors and Knights will stay long enough for me to be able to get a large enough army and to cripple Freddys mainforces before he gets the needed techs he lacks. Techgoal should be to get rifles/cav quickly and ship up as much as possible to Lisbon and use that city as a staging point for the war. A fleet of galleons should try to ship in a decoy force some way of Lisbon to see if I can split his forces a bit.

Off course it'd be the best if I could split up Asoka and Freddy first, but I very much doubt I can pull off such a diplomove at this point.

To be continued another day.

 

[dubrown]

Monarch/Epic 1640-1718 Religious Victory

Spoiler :

When I left last time I saw 3 options for Victory and said I would go for a domination, requiring me to take down the very strong German warmachine.

Now, I did prepare for that, but this option came first, and frankly. A war against Germany would certainly been doable and a domination victory possible but it would've taken some time. My economy wasn't brilliant, barely a profit at 40% research, I lacked vital improvements (never got around to building Oxford for instance...), the AI started to catch up a bit in research, I already lost my advantage with gunpowder, though I had still Chemistry Military Science up on them and a short while from Rifles, but the germans had all the prerequisits for Rifles so if I declared, they'd have it fairly quickly I believe.

So I chickened out and spread Hindu to the Aztec lands, Shortly after this happened:


I told you all I would have some use of Monty as a vassal, though not that warhelp I had imagined...

So you can see that my warmachine was far from ready for a campaign against the germans here's two screenies of my SOD so far, it did lack quite alot so a war would've been some years in the future.




Conclusion, pretty fun map. I didn't play a normal game at all and it showed, I got all sorts of trouble I normally not find myself in. The map itself was a bit challenging with the lack of food as the major concern, using the laketitles and the few foodresources available got far more important, but even so, early game growth was pretty slow.

My game would've likely been easier from a domination victory point of view if the same barb uprising event hadn't killed both the English and the Portugise before 2000BC. Now the Germans had all the room in the world to grow.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You play what you're given. Looks like you did good to me.

I love AP wins though .

 

[dubrown]

You play what you're given. Looks like you did good to me.

I love AP wins though .

Well, it actually gave me my highest score ever up to date. 65k or something. But I do feel that AP victories tends to be on the easy side of winning after you've pinned down the technique to do it, it's not that hard. I believe most of my NC games have ended with a AP-victory.

 

[dalamb]

Spoiler Thans, Dirk1302 :

Actually there's a third way which i choose, i build the second boat and start on the third, once the city reaches 4 i'll immediately switch to a worker with the intention of whipping it in such a manner that the overflow from the whip is enough to get the third boat finished.

Notice that it's very important that i whip now. the worker costs 60 hammers, i've invested 27 hammers atm. If i whip now 2 pop are needed to complete the worker (1 pop = 30 hammers on normal speed). This 2 pop whip will yield 60 hammers, 33 of these are used to complete the worker, the other 27'll go to the boat on the next turn which will subsequently be finished. If i'd waited one more turn i'd have invested 36 hammers in the boat. I could then only whip one pop of which 24 hammers would go to finish the worker, only 6 would go to the boat, 1 pop whips should generally be avoided unless your city is at size 2 and you need a monuent or workboat.

I'm not sure everyone needed this level of detail, but it helped me a bunch to get the guidance about when to whip. I did know about re-examining which tiles to work when pop increases, but the reminder was good since I haven't reached the stage where things I passively "know" surface to "active" at the right point.

 

[Dirk1302]

You're welcome dalamb, i enjoyed writing it.

 

[dalamb]

Yet another restart...

Spoiler 4000 BC to 715 AD :

I restarted after getting advice in this thread, and managed to place cities a bit better, I think. I settled Gondar to the south, given hills and a lake nearby and blocking off Monty a bit, then cities to the east to get horses and north near Mansa to get iron and stone. Yeha came last in the middle, once again partly as a blocker and partly to get the cows (overlap with Gondar, but G doesn't need it so much after 3-food lakes and mined hills) plus ivory.

Then there were two variants. The first time, Monty attacked me when I was totally (and stupidly -- we all ought to know about Monty by now) unready for him; the second time, I cosied up by switching to his religion and giving in to whatever demands, but by the time I really needed to push him back his troops were all over my territory going after Mansa, and I really didn't have the resources to manage what amounted to a multi-front guerrilla war.

So this time I've refused to open borders, and when Mansa's religion (Hindu) spread to some of my cities I switched to his for the extra happiness. As expected Monty attacked, and I was ready to stop him and counterattack to take out his civilization after a long hard fight. Unfortunately I missed some really important wonders, particularly Colossus, since I was totally focused on war production.

So, I restarted again, this time from early enough to get Metal Casting and forges in time to build the Colossus by 415 AD. Aksum was involved in unit production only until MC, and all the other cities are producing a variety of military units (archers in the really slow ones, since they're not needed for a while, and a mix of axes and catapults in the others). After Teo I got a GG and settled him in Gondar, which after Granary, Lighthouse, and Barracks has been doing solely military units.

Aksum went back to military after Colossus until the stone from the northern city came online, then went after Pyramids (7 turns to go) so I can get Police State if it's necessary during the Aztec wars.

Here's the current situation.

• The green blob is where Monty has his nearest city, which will be a PITA if I go after Tenochtitlan in the southwest first. I have to go after it next but there are jaguars in the intervening woods so I expect to lose most of my SoD unless I build a bunch more anti-melee axes first.
• I think I need to keep expanding cities for this long fight, which means using Aksum for settler production. The two orange BFCs seem like near-term possibilities; the one to the west is just lakes and fish, little production, but it'll have decent commerce with the lakes. The one to the east has marble, which I'll want for the Epics (Heroic in Gondar, National likely somewhere else if I decide to go for cultural victory). I'd backfill a city near the cows and gold in the north at some point, but my northernmost city can work one of the gold hills in the meantime.
  
  
  
  Advice wanted: is this mixed war-with-Monty but still-build-cities strategy reasonable? If so are the city placement choices also reasonable?

 

[Dirk1302]

^ Can you put a save up? I'ts easier to comment on a game that way.

Spoiler :

For instance i can see from the beakers/turn rate 715 AD that you can improve your cities/capital more than you've done but i'd need a save or screenshots to see what is missing.

From what i can see/read,

Why are you so fixed on collossus?, i agree it's a good wonder on this map but not a nearly as good as great lighthouse. Working sea tiles is always something of a last resort.

Hard to see on this screen, imo the city near Mansa should have both the goldmines in it's radius, does it?

I wouldn't be to fixed on an early war with Monty, just set him on someone else, there's loads of land to be developed without war, especially since you blocked Mansa completely .

 

[dalamb]

Sorry - not used to thinking about posting savegames.

Spoiler :

I missed Great Lighthouse; obviously didn't start soon enough, but the capital had a lot to do because of lack of food elsewhere. Re Colossos, on this map based on prior advice in this thread I figured I'd need to work a lot of 3F lake tiles anyway, just to get enough to work low-food plains hills and suchlike, e.g. Gondor, and rolo suggested the colossos was especially valuable under those circumstances. Re war with Monty: he started it! And without tromping him I'd constantly be worried he'd come after me again. My diplomatic skills are nonexistent aside from obvious stuff like religion.

 

[Dirk1302]

You didn't do a standard install but a mod install of bugmod 3.0, i don't know if that was intentional but people won't be able to load the save unless they do a mod install of bugmod 3.0. Since it's time that i had Bugmod again (lost it after my comp crashed a while ago) i downloaded it, it looks great, hats of to the bugmod team.

I put some comments in a spoiler.

Spoiler :

You're obviously doing fine. A few things i'd do differently:

- As i said i'd have founded Lalibela one S of where it is now ( i actually did in the game i played) then make 2 farms, grow to 4 and work the 2 gold + build a library. City is stagnated in that case but the 2 gold are huge in the early game, later on around the time CS is in i'd start growing Lalibela again. I see you're connecting the gold right now.

- You have 5 workers for 6 cities, i'd build/whip some more, more important they haven't done that much sofar, i'd chop the Mids in capital and build cottages there. Once these cottages mature you'll have far better science. Doing this as early as possible is especially important around the capital, The tiles around the other cities look a bit unimproved as well, working forest tiles is not really productive, i'd build cottages but building farms and running some specialist on the surplus food is also possible. It's crucial for a good game to build a lot of workers as early as possible, chop forests building new settlers/workers with the incoming hammers creating a snowball effect where you're empire grows fast horizontally and vertically.

-You have huge gold surplus, i'd raise the slider to 100% science, you'll lose gold rapidly but you can stay in the green by selling techs like aesthetics and later literature/drama to the ais. Personally since you're winning the war against Monty anyway i'd research CS now, convert to Bureaucracy, it's easier to research (or trade for) feudalism subsequently.

The slow start on building workers/improving the tiles undoubtedly has to do with the war with Monty,you have a big tech lead on Monty, it seems likely to me that you could have avoided the war with him by giving him some 4-5 techs in exchange for war with Mansa or more save Frederic for instance.

Btw i had forgotten about all the lakes on this map, this certainly makes Collossus a much better choice than i thought initially, there's another reason why it's rather good here, all the other Ais can be reached by workboat so you can delay astro for quite a while.So Gondor and rolo were right.

 

[dalamb]

@everyone: sorry to anyone who tried to help but hit that BUG mod roadbump.
@Dirk1302

Spoiler :

In an earlier game I chopped forests in what is XX in this game, Gondar in others, and had significant health problems for a while; I guess I got excessively paranoid about chopping, which was silly in this restart because I now have the effects of the Health event.

I realize now my northern city doesn't need to work the stone, and can't work everything I'd like because of lack of food, so 1S would as you say have worked out better.

I had no idea slow improvements would affect the war with Monty. In past games I hadn't seen much effect from gifting techs, but I realize now Monty gets so far behind in techs that I can afford to gift him a lot.

It seems from your comments that this game can do fairly well with a few changes, so I guess I'll continue instead of compulsively restarting yet again (I've heard it's a phase some players go through before learning to just plow on through; maybe I need to play more xOTMs to break the habit).

 

[Dirk1302]

You can continue to play this game i think since it's going well, just improve the tiles some more. Spoiler is a about gifting techs and bribing.

Spoiler :

Gifting techs helps Monty get to pleased, watch out though, if you get the modifier "fair and forthright trade" up to +4 further gifting doesn't make sense anymore since it can't get higher than that. What i meant is checking regularly if Monty was willing to declare on someone and offer him techs to do so, the idea is to do so every time Monty makes peace subsequently, just get him to war with someone else. You incur penalties too though so a little caution on whom you set him is recommended.Mansa is on your continent for instance and though he is peaceful enogh repeatedly setting Monty on him would be a bit risky, Frederick seems to be a good candidate though. I'll post a save from my game around 1 AD tomorrow to show this strat in action.

 

[Krick19]

Heh, well I'll revive this with a late play for me.

Prince-Epic-1960BC

Spoiler :

I settled in place, and my build path went

Warrior-WB-WB-Settler-Worker-Oracle(still building)

Tech went

Fishing-BW-Myst-Meditation-Priesthood-AH

Nothing much happened, just met Monty, got Archery from a hut, and settled Gondar to grab the gold/cows.

The world:


Aksum:


Gondar:

Could someone help with a dotmap/any advice you have?