Against All Odds: The Struggles of the Noyyau

Author's suggestion: Play this in the background.

Welcome to Against All Odds: The Struggles of the Noyyau!​

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Social group for debates and questions.

Current Civics.

Previous Civics, Map of the World, and other information.

Better maps of the foreign continents.

Overview of the current Noyyau Army.

Spoiler :

INDEX of main events (note: this section is badly outdated)

Establishment of Monarchy
First sighting of the Latvian invasion
Battle of Robertia: the Latvian invasion is stopped
Invasion of Czechia
All Czech cities razed
Map of the Kingdom before the Invasion of Iran
Invasion of Iran, war against Spain
Conquest of Tehran, foundation of Shinto
Conquest of the Spanish and the Malagasy
Latvian Treachery, Battle of Wark
Invasion of Latvia, Shinto Shrine, Converted Picts
Latvians eliminated

NOBLE HOUSES

Spoiler :

Holdings of the Noble Houses

House Spirictum
House Greek
House Caterpillar
House Florentianus
House Giacola
The Council of Sedai

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This story will be my experiment with the IAAR format. When I reach the Classical Era and the nation becomes a Kingdom, I will post a detailed overview of the civilization, and you can choose to control a unit, maybe a group of units, or interpret a member of the royalty (or other influential figure, depending on civics and current situation).

I will play a certain amount of turns, and inform you of any news I deem relevant. Of course, if anyone wants extra information, ask and ye shall be answered!

I would like to encourage roleplaying your instructions.
While there is no problem in telling me “Move my Axeman 1N, explore in that direction for 3 turns, and heal if damaged.”, something along the lines of “The chief of the group of Axemen bowed to the King, and pledged that he would return after having explored the northern wilderness.” sounds much better, doesn't it?
You can do both, if you feel that you want to include some precise instructions that did not fit in the “in universe” description.

For this game, while I will try to keep to civ's rules as much as possible, I consider the “story” part to be more important, so in some cases I might open WB and modify whatever is needed to fit the narrative.

There are no strict rules for you, the participants. Be warned, I might not do everything you command (this isn't an Anarchy game), or might adapt your orders to a particular situation. Of course, I will try to keep you informed as much as possible, and will interrupt the game with requests for instructions if the situation so requires.

Settings

This game will be played with the mod Rise of Mankind – A New Dawn, starting with rev. 942.

I have made several personal modifications to the mod, small tweaks that better fit my personal taste:
-The wonders Venetian Arsenal and Willow Run are now National Wonders, but provide only +100% production bonus to Naval and Air units respectively.
-The Metropolitan and Capital Administration buildings have their Maintenance lowered to +45% and +50% respectively.
-The Irrigation Canals provide a +1 bonus for each river tile.
-Engineer specialists provide +3 and Great Engineers provide +6 and +1.
-Citizen specialists provide +1 and +1.
-The Lumbermill improvement provides +2, but does not provide an extra near rivers.
-Resource spawn locations have been slightly modified to better spread across the Totestra map. Seafood in particular has been made to spawn only on Coast tiles, to avoid the all too common situation of a seafood resource out in the ocean and unreachable until a coastal city reaches its third workable ring (and that's going to take a very long time).
-Removed the upgrade path from infantry units to mounted units (e.g. Musketmen do not upgrade to Mounted Riflemen, and Infantry does not upgrade to Motorized Infantry).
-The Armored Car has 2 movement points.
-The malus for the civics Free Market and Federation has been reduced, and Democracy gives a small bonus.

Game settings:

Spoiler :

-Yes, Deity. There won't be much of a story without a real struggle for survival.
-No Tech Trading and No Tech Brokering: this will keep the Deity Ais from running away in tech too fast. And trading among themselves at discount prices. However, we can still keep up with two other mechanics that exist in AND: Tech Diffusion and Tech by Conquest.
-Start as Minors will have everyone at war and unable to conduct diplomacy, until the discovery of Writing.
-Limited Religions means each civ can only have one holy city, so the tech leader won't hog all the holy cities, making it possible for all religions to appear and spread. And cause religious wars!
-Realistic Culture Spread makes culture border expansion slower, and dependent on terrain: while those Flood Plains will be yours with your first border pop, that forested Hill behind a river will take ages to obtain! This also makes Forts quite important: they act as a small city by controlling the surrounding tiles with your culture, so you can claim those resources not in the direct proximity of your cities, without having to pay all those pesky maintenance costs for a new city.

Totestra's major drawback is that it is SLOW. While the map is being generated, we'd better go do something else for a while. (No this isn't Warlords, I just like the menu music).

Spoiler :

 

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Nice!
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You shouldn't have done Ruthless AI. It cuts a great deal of the rping side of the AI and makes it hate you no matter what is happening in the game. Even your best friend is just scheming to backstab you on the perfect moment.


I truly mean it, my warlike side that most here have probably already seen from the games I play/interact and outright distrust for any rival civ are side effects of having learned Monarch to Deity (yes, I didn't skip any) playing with Ruthless AI. There comes a moment all the AIs go against you because hooray!

I.e. The strongest AI understood that it was better to attack you then to annex another AI, to have more chances to attack you harder. If you try to win, you will pass through this moment, and all the rest of the world will aim at you.


I really think you gave yourself a tremendously difficult burden with Deity and Ruthless AI.


And why didn't you put Great Commanders? Now I think our chances decreased by half. Great Commanders + Barbarian Generals, it's marvelous! And no Surround and Destroy?! Why you remove the most epic options Noyyau .

 

I love the title

 

Exactly the reasons I chose Deity and Ruthless AI, I don't want this to be easy!

I'm perfectly aware of the "the whole world declares war on you" moment, but that's a wonderful reason to go and conquer someone everyone!

Otherwise I'd feel guilty invading a Pleased neighbour just because I have an idle army and want to give them something to do.

I don't like Great Commanders, to me they feel way too overpowered, but the main reason I don't use them is that the AI has absolutely no clue how to use them, wasting their GGs without giving them a proper stack to command.

Surround and Destroy, while I do like it, again the AI doesn't yet know how to use it. Though I have to admit that, especially in naval warfare, it can be utterly devastating if properly used.


P.S. anyway game options can be changed during the game (python magic!), if it'll really become an Always War I can just turn off Ruthless AI.

 

That's funny, I didn't see Great Commanders being actively used on conquest, but to be honest I've never seen someone try to invade me in C2C. I say C2C especially because defensively I've already seen Great Commanders being properly used and I've also seen the AI totally aware of Surround and Destroy.

I'm away from RAND for sometime and I'm playing C2C now. Seeing these things in C2C made me believe the devs on RAND would have done the same (I remember that the AI didn't know how to use any of the 2 options around revisions 700-800 of RAND, the time that I stayed on the RAND forum).

And by not being easy you chose the most difficult. Last time I tried Deity on RAND when I had 5 cities and was almost at the mid of the Classical Age, before 0AD, the most developed AI was in the Renaissance with 20 cities. I know Tech Trading was enabled, but I don't think that was the only reason for the AI to get so developed. Good Luck! I'll try to help you as much as I can.

 

The only ones who ever really invade me in C2C are barbarians. Those sons of good women often build up big armies.

 

I'll be watching this (and hopefully participating). I don't have much experience with the mod, but eh that makes it more fun. Really looking forward to roleplay elements.

 

C2C and RAND share a lot of code, but not everything. And personally I've never seen the AI use smartly their Great Commander nor move units for a S&D bonus. Might be I was unlucky, maybe I just didn't notice, or didn't give them the chance.

Anyway, with Barb civs on, I don't think the AI will have an easy time expanding THAT much, even with Deity bonuses, as the newly spawned barb civs will have a decent sized army to defend them! But with the new AI code that's been introduced lately, I do hope to see a lot more action!

Good thing this isn't C2C
We'll see our fair share of barb activity, but I really hope we won't have another barb SoD like the one that almost wiped me out in the beginning of An Illustrated History. That had been scary.


Anyway, I played "just a bit" (and somehow got to turn 198 when we're finally a Monarchy, I swear it didn't seem to take a long time!), and am already up to 158 screenshots!

So expect a few initial updates depicting the Ancient Era, before we get to when you can choose stuff!
I'll try to make these relatively quick, as time permits.

 

Author's suggestion: Play this in the background.

Now that the map has finally been generated, it's time to set a few important BUG settings:

Spoiler :

-Archer Bombard, despite the name, is a ranged attack that is not limited to Archery units, but is available to Siege, cannon-armed ships, and a few other units as well. The AI is really trigger happy with this ability.
-Despite the fact that I like the concept, I disabled Influence Driven War. First, given the number of units killing each other in AND, the values of gained/lost culture need to be adjusted, but I have yet to try and find my own balance for it. I'm not even sure if this is modifiable in the XML or if it requires python surgery. The other reason is that the “culture gained or lost” message appended to each and every fight happening in someone's culture makes the screenshots look really ugly.
-Barb civs can spawn if a barbarian city reaches at least population 6, to make it so that they don't spawn immediately all over the place.
-Realistic Timescale balances the tech costs against the actual turn, meaning that if you go too far too early in the tech tree, tech costs will start to rise significantly.

Finally, one “house rule” that I forgot to mention in the introduction: I will allow myself to upgrade only non-mechanical units (the idea is that you can reasonably make new and better weapons for an existing unit, but you can't “overhaul” a Catapult or a ship so much that it becomes something completely different).

The sun rises on a small tribe of hominids. Since time immemorial, the tribe has lived a nomadic life. After years generations of wandering, they are ready to settle and build your first city have found a place so bountiful in food and game that they will surely remain here for longer than usual.
Chief of the tribe, the people have vested absolute power in you, trusting that you can build a Civilization to stand the test of time! because you're the biggest and the strongest and anyone disagreeing with you gets clubbed in the head!

Spoiler :

The tribe had always wandered. A winter here, a summer there, moving on when food became scarce, or the weather made it too difficult to stay.
This new place, however, seemed really good. Plenty of food, forests rich with prey, hills to run to when the great river became angry and flooded the area.

Spoiler :

This is a really good starting location. Thanks Totestra! I will spend a turn to settle on the jungle, as that gives us:
-the Crab in the BFC, instead of having to wait for the 3rd ring expansion.
-the hills in the first ring, to be workable immediately.
-the wonderful Flood Plains Plains is usable and not wasted as the city plot.
We don't need to have those Cottons immediately available, since it'll be a while before we discover Calendar to make use of them.

Spoiler :

”Urrgh!”
“Ugh, ugh, aarrggh!!”
“Nnn! Nurr!!”
“Yaaahhh!!”
(sound of a blunt object hitting and breaking a skull)
“Nuuhh! Aaauuu!!”
“Nnyyaauuhh!!”

Thus Noyyau was founded.

Spoiler :

Scouting and hunting parties left the new encampment, to explore their new territory. They encountered some smaller tribes, that were friendly enough to give them gifts and even teach them how to hunt the strange animals that lived in the water.

Noyyau can be left empty for these first turns, as we need to explore as much as possible before animals and soon after raging barbarian archers start spawning, making our scouts' lifespans quite short. Why archers? Because this is Deity! The AI start with several free techs, including Archery, and the barbarians get all the techs known by most civs... so right now we're more ignorant than even the barbs!

Spoiler :

After several weeks of travel, the scouting party encountered giant scary beasts, that made them run away without looking back. On the run, they encountered another small tribe, that was thankful for the warning of the coming behemots.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile, back at the camp a tradition slowly formed of telling stories of the past, carried on mostly by the elderly of the tribe, recounting their past glory days of hunting.

Spoiler :

Chance encounters with other humans usually resulted in friendly exchanges of gifts. The scouts were smart enough to avoid the larger animals, and did not miss the chance for some hunting when the occasion presented itself.

Here you can see the Hunting module in action. When you kill an Animal unit, the nearest city gets a certain amount of food and hammers depending on the animal's strength. There is also a small chance of capturing said animal, which can then be brought back to your territory to be either butchered (a higher yield than just killing it) or create a couple of buildings.

Spoiler :

A friendly forest dwelling tribe taught the wandering warriors how to better survive and travel in their habitat.

Spoiler :

The tradition of storytelling grew in a series of rituals, that helped pass on various knowledge to the younger generations. Despite their physical frailty, elderly people were revered for their wisdom.

Spoiler :

Sometimes, a messenger would return from the scouting parties, bringing incredible tales of heroism and fighting prowess.

Our first build is a Worker, since we know both Agriculture and Hunting, and have Corn and Deer right there waiting to be improved. The first building is the Myth of the Hero, giving us an extra hammer. When your total production is 3 hammers, that's a 33% increase!

Spoiler :

Wandering the forests, the warriors were surprised when they encountered other people moving with a purpose, rather than just eking out an existence. These strangers, however, kept their distance and it was clear that they wanted nothing to do with the burly men with clubs.

Spoiler :

Over time, it was discovered that some rocks from the nearby hills were especially sharp and durable, making it far easier to carve wood.

Spoiler :

Sweet, Obsidian! This allows both Axemen and a Stoneworker in Noyyau, for extra hammers.

Spoiler :

More strangers were sighted wandering the world. It seemed that the Noyyau (as the tribe had taken to call themselves) were not the only ones inhabiting this place.

Spoiler :

Another friendly tribe, living in a densely forested river area, taught the wandering warriors some of their ancestral secrets of life in the jungle.

All this luck with the huts means that later on the RNGod will find a way to restore the balance of the universe...

Spoiler :

The only survivor to ever make it to Noyyau from the tribal scouts that had agreed to join the Noyyau so long ago brought a terrifying tale of a tribe divided between masters and slaves, and of the sudden attack of feral beasts that devoured everyone.

Spoiler :

Following the course of one of the rivers, the Noyyau Warriors encountered another village, and for the first time were met with a hostile response. By now at home among the forests, the tribal attackers were quickly dealt with, and soon after a beast that had been lured by the smell of meat was captured, to be brought back to Noyyau.

Spoiler :

Our first Farm is complete, and we also finished the Elder Council, giving an extra beaker. It is now time to make a few defensive units, before it's too late.

Spoiler :

On the long way back to Noyyau, the Warriors one day stumbled upon a group of travelers. Before they realized what was happening, their journey was over.

Spoiler :

The life of a Scout was difficult, and full of peril. It is not surprising that most disappeared in the wilderness, never to be seen again.

Spoiler :

 

Yay first update!

 

No Tech Trading and Realistic Timescale. Now things should go properly. This will be interesting.

 

What does Realistic Timescale do?

 

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That looks extremely disgusting.

 

Welcome to America my friend.

 

That's exaggerated. They are very good though. And healthier than other options, note I didn't say healthy