Brennus: Don't worry, be happy? A challenge

[futurehermit]

Ok, so we all know about Brennus' awesome synergy of his UU and UB And, frankly, his starting techs leave something to be desired...

But, but, his traits have a synergy that I'm challenging you to exploit to the max!

Here's the gist of it: Charismatic gives you +1 and another +1 with a monument. Each of spiritual's half-priced temples give you +1 in addition to the +1 you get from a state religion.

What's the main limitation to early city growth, especially at the higher levels? You guessed it: happiness

So, let's try and make Brennus into a happy monster In fact let's try and make him the happiest leader on your continent, with the largest and most thriving early cities...

Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it (settings: Monarch, Continents, Normal Speed):

1) Build stonehenge, giving you immediate +1 in each city without having to build monuments (If you find you can't build it with the rest of what I'm challenging you to do, that is ok, monuments are easy enough to build! However, you may find a use for the prophet...or it may conflict with getting an engineer which you could use on the GL...decisions, decisions...)

2) Build pyramids, giving you representation which gives you an additional +3 Note, this will lead us also to running a specialist economy, which is fine since Brennus is not financial and we also want to grow our cities big meaning we'll need lots of surplus food anyways--more synergy!

NOTE: Both of these wonders--since we're not industrious--would be greatly aided by having stone in the capital. However, stonehenge can still be chopped and with stone in the 2nd city that will help with pyramids. If you don't have stone nearby in your test game start a new one.

3) Found 1 or more religions, 2-3 is better How you go about this is up to you, but we want to control some religions so we can get them all into our cities asap to get those 1/2 price temples up and running for extra Don't forget to adopt a state religion and spread that one to your cities first for the extra Brennus starts with mysticism so buddhism/hinduism is tempting...although that leaves your early worker with little to nothing to do...

4) Do NOT go for a cultural victory. I know that since we're founding religions and building a lot of temples that cultural is tempting here. However, the thing with going cultural is that you're gonna be raising the culture slider giving lots of kinda defeating our purpose here. Plus, we want to get the most out of the charismatic trait, which has a nice military bonus!

5) However, DO be prepared to run the culture slider at 20% once you have theatres and coliseums up in your cities for, iirc, an extra +5 This is cool when running a SE since you're not caring to keep your science slider maxed out. Plus, it helps to combat WW when it sets in (We want to try and avoid high levels of WW however!)

6) Maximize both of your traits! As I already mentioned, the 2nd 1/2 of the charismatic trait is a nice military bonus, so be prepared to go to war. This could be inevitable anyways since you're adopting a state religion, especially if Issy is around...Your spiritual trait is something you want to maximize as well. It will allow you to move in between: a) representation (most of the time) and police state (when cranking military); b) civil service (don't forget to cottage your capital) and vassalage (when cranking military); c) caste system and slavery (something I normally don't do, but with spiritual and a SE, this is nice!!!); and d) organized religion (when building), pacificism (nice for SE, but expensive, it's nice to move in and out of it with spiritual!!! I hope you can see why spiritual is kinda nice for SE...more synergy!!!), and theocracy (when cranking troops).

7) Try and build Notre Dame for another +1

8) Try and come up with more ways to increase early happiness and report them here!

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

EDIT: Ok guys, I have included a save (a VERY nice map imo) and a starting screenshot. I had started about 10 games and didn't get stone (more on this in a post I am going to make below) and had given up and the first game I fired up I got this one with stone available in a 2nd city position Have fun with it and keep us posted with how your games turn out!

 

[idiot_savant]

Sounds like fun... anyone have an idea of what "high" constitutes so we have an initial target to work toward?

 

[futurehermit]

Well, based on what I've proposed in my OP, I count 14+ whatever monarch gives you as a default. However, that requires researching through music and building Notre Dame. Prior to that, once drama and construction come on board and theatres and coliseums are built, with 20% culture rate, it looks like 13+ default.

 

[idiot_savant]

So, we would count only buildings, religions, sliders, etc.? I'm cool with that as adding in resources will naturally bring to bear the map question.

 

[mutax2003]

How about an initial save, that way everyone starts off on the same footing?

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, I will do a save when I get home (and will check to ensure it has stone before posting it).

Yeah, factoring in resources is too contingent on the map. Not to mention that I think it goes without saying that--since we are trying to maximize happiness--we will try and snag every early happiness resource we can.

I was also thinking I wanted to add two points:

1) In trying to get the most out of Brennus (who I think most people think isn't that great), we should try and maximize his starting techs as well. With mysticism imo that means trying to found an early religion (although that really makes early tile development tough unless you have lots of elephants nearby ). With hunting I'm not going to recommend early archery, as I don't think it's a good move, but I will suggest building another scout right away and going with a 2-scout start, trying to snag as many goody huts as possible and revealing the terrain a lot sooner than normal.

2) I've already mentioned why I don't think we want to use more than 20% on the culture slider for happiness, but I also wanted to reject at least one other source of happiness: hereditary rule. I am open to listening to debate on this, but I generally never leave more than 2 units in my cities and often only 1 (since I prefer to be the aggressor, dictating the wars). Leaving more units/city leads to greatly increased maintenance costs meaning that starts to cost mega $$. Now, representation does depend on the hammer-intensive pyramids so if we determine that pyramids aren't feasible (or if we want a variant for no-stone maps) then I think HR is the way to go. The benefit is it effects more cities, but the downside is we would need to leave 3 units/city to get the same amount of . So, let's try for pyramids first and see how that goes.

Am I missing any other sources of early-game happiness that we need to talk about?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

The last three emperor games I tried, I was poor in happy resources. It's hard to grow your cities when you are stuck with with happy limit of 3 to 6. A health level at 11+ doesn't do much when happy is so low. I like the concept of using Brennus to try for big cities with lots of . I might have to check that save out when I get home from work.

 

[futurehermit]

^^cool, the more the merrier!

 

[Meatbuster]

It depends on how many calendar resources you can have access to. If you have 2 or more, then they will beat the happiness from the monument so it may be better to obsolete it asap.

And don't forget Free Religion...

Wait, I see you picked Monarch as the difficulty. It may be impossible to ensure that Pyramids are built...

 

[futurehermit]

Guys, I love the pyramids, everyone on these forums knows that, but without Brennus being industrious, we just can't guarantee pyramids without stone (which tends to be rather scarce).

I would say we need to try and build our happiness strategy around hereditary rule (monarchy) instead of pyramids (with pyramids being a huge bonus if stone is available). What do you think?

We'd need to leave 3 units/city to get the same bonus as representation but even if we feel that is too many leaving 2 units should be reasonable for +2 / city and it applies to more cities, so that is a positive to the tradeoff.

Thoughts?

EDIT: That being said, the game I have posted does have stone available, so we can just debate this "in theory" for now and discuss the specific game in terms of how it pans out "best case scenario".

 

[Thyrwyn]

That does look like a wonderful start

 

[futurehermit]

let's just say it gets better

 

[cabert]

the start looks nice enough to build pyramids,
but frankly I hate brennus (RK can confirm he is just no good), his starting techs are not good, his UU his moot and his UB is useless.

 

[futurehermit]

the start looks nice enough to build pyramids,
but frankly I hate brennus (RK can confirm he is just no good), his starting techs are not good, his UU his moot and his UB is useless.

That's exactly why we're doing this thread

We're trying to see what we can get out of him

 

[cabert]

That's exactly why we're doing this thread

We're trying to see what we can get out of him

have a nice loss, errr, game

I like strategic challenges, but a growth challenge as been played very recently and DaveMcW showed he could have more than 150 pop points in his 5 best cities by 1200 AD. That's the new standard I confront my games with

 

[futurehermit]

No need to be negative. What's the harm in trying to get the most out of an underpowered leader?

I got this idea from Aelf's EMC thread where he feels like the game just deteriorates into the same old same old. So I thought, why not pick a crazy leader that few people play and try and do a crazy strat to get the most out of him?

 

[cabert]

No need to be negative. What's the harm in trying to get the most out of an underpowered leader?

I got this idea from Aelf's EMC thread where he feels like the game just deteriorates into the same old same old. So I thought, why not pick a crazy leader that few people play and try and do a crazy strat to get the most out of him?

sorry, i didn't mean to rain on your parade.
Obviously, some people took the challenge, so .

I simply wanted to say
- it's not easy
- I won't play

 

[futurehermit]

No problem. I don't forsee it being easy, but who wants to do the same thing time and again (as Aelf points out).

Sometimes when I get bored I'll pick a leader I never play and try something new. That's pretty much what's going on here

 

[Gwil]

Good luck - just to note I got my one major convincing domination win with Brennus. It was on Warlord however (I suck at Civ IV - Noble is a headache, urk!)

 

[mutax2003]

Alright, let's turn this into our game of the month. We will see who is in the best position by 1000 AD, and who has the highest at the end of the game. BTW, leaders or traits do not make or break a game, what is important is how you use your advantages to win the game.