NC 184 - Roosevelt

[dutchfire]

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 Roosevelt of America, whom we last played in NC CXXIX; The Americans start with Fishing and Agriculture.

• Traits: Roosevelt is Industrious and Organized. IND gives +50% on wonders (both World and National) and doubles production speed for forges (for early-game production). ORG reduces city maintenance costs (allowing bigger empires sooner) and doubles production speed of courthouses (also nice for bigger empires sooner), lighthouses (for faster growth of coastal cities) and factories (for late-game production). Roosevelt is known as the best TGLH-Strategy leader.
  
• The UB: The Mall, a Supermarket that gives and . It comes quite late in the game, so some players consider it very weak compared to other UBs. The extra cash might be useful in keeping research at a higher rate in the late game, where it could make a difference in a space victory race.
  
  
  
• The UU: The Navy Seal, a Marine with March promotion (can heal while moving) and 1-2 first strikes (one of few late-game units to have them), making it a very strong late-game military unit. Like the UB, some players consider it weak because they're in too strong a position at that point to need it (or have won the game already).
  
  

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Medium and small map with snaky islands.

Spoiler edits :

Added a single tile near England to connect islands there

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine: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 184 Roosevelt 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.

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.

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.

 

[dutchfire]

Should be working now

 

[Bleys]

Wow, its amazing this is still going.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-nobles-club-bullpen.273515/

 

[Xpl]

Wow, its amazing this is still going.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-nobles-club-bullpen.273515/

It's truly a testament to the legacy and longevity of Civ4, and perhaps for some, that of the Strategy and Tips community here. The first NC I posted in was [URL='http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=419265']NC LXXII Ragnar[/URL] and that brings back memories. That was the second cycle too!

Warrior 1W and Settler 2W and perhaps settle on one of the Calender resources? Get as far away from the hills that seem to be on a different island.

 

[sampsa]

Deity/normal/NHNE

T50

Spoiler :

Settling on the sugar seems clear to me already from the opening screenshot and claiming 2 more sugar is a nice bonus. Mining-sailing-mas-AH-wri-(wheel)-(BW)-(math).

Getting GLH next turn, T51 should be really safe.

T65

Spoiler :

Unfortunately no foreign trade routes so far except Saladin. No obvious 4th city spots found either. Anyway, everything seems smooth and this should be a very easy game with GLH.

 

[sampsa]

on map difficulty

Spoiler :

I suggest everyone who is torn between playing on immortal or deity play it on deity. These maps with lots of islands can be much easier than normal.

 

[Xpl]

Spoiler :

This is my second playthrough of this save. Difficulty is Emperor. Made some unoptimised early game decisions first time around, coupled with the fact I didn't document much of it led to me reloading.

Here are my 50 turns.

T1 Warrior 1W Settler 1W
T2 Settle.
Build Worker, working silk (3f1c). Queue techs: Wheel -> Mining -> BW
T16 Worker finish. Queue 2nd warrior and grow to pop 3. Worker, move to corn, build farm, then move to river hill 1N of silk (1), mine hill, move across river 1S, build road, move into forest 1S (1), road. Road and BW finish same turn. ready to chop on T29. Pop 3, switch to 2nd worker.
Move Worker 2E to second forest (original spawn location) [1], build road.
T34 2nd Worker finishes. 2nd worker chop west forest (T37), 1st Worker chop (T36). Both go into settler.
1st Worker roads dye 1S of cap. 2nd worker roads silk 1SW after finishing chop and then both road the forest grass hill. (1)
T40 move to 1S hill. Swap to slavery. Settle T41 New York (1N corn). Queue granary. Both workers now stack together and chop forest hill to go into granary. T43 move to farm corn (1), then mine hill then build cottage on riverside silk in cap. Meanwhile grow to 4 in cap. T50 whip granary at 2 in New York and 2pop whip settler in cap. Conveniently cottage finishes too, aha.

Can I optimise this further? I count 5 wasted worker turns, mostly from moving into forests and hills and passing through New York to get to the corn. Don't really mind those.

I think settling 1W is strongest because you don't waste turns reaching the corn with your worker and the rotations through the west hill to roading the forest and dye timed nicely.

Also, amusingly my first warrior is fogbusting in the hills for my third city (1S gold) and inbetween him and the cap a barb spawned in like 3 tiles lol. Thank goodness for noting down all my turns!

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

White third city, red are filler with silver priority for happiness. Will want to settle south of New York first and beat Saladin to the eastern island.

 

[dutchfire]

on map difficulty

Spoiler :

I suggest everyone who is torn between playing on immortal or deity play it on deity. These maps with lots of islands can be much easier than normal.

Spoiler :

I actually had two failed tries at Emperor (during playtesting), but I tried to settle south way more aggressively, which angered Saladin.

 

[hankinsohl]

Thanks for posting the game Dutchfire.

Spoiler :

I'm giving this a go on Emperor. My plan is to Wonder-spam and take a bunch of island territory.

I ended up cutting off Saladin too - he's at 3 cities. He created a stack and sent it my way - but he cannot attack at pleased; I accepted his religion when he demanded and so I don't think I'll have any problems from him.

The drawback is that I haven't opened borders with him and since he hasn't met anyone other than me (and likely won't for some time due to borders), he's currently refusing to trade.

 

[sampsa]

T100

Spoiler :

The map is just made for a GLH-strategy. Many many strong spots that you can peacefully claim. Barb archer ruined my plans for the pig-city and the delay helped Saladin to beat me to it. Still, it looks possible to get at least 15 good cities without war. Have currency and calendar, probably just trying to take steel with lib and conquer. Hard to see what could go wrong, I can always please Saladin by religion and others are no threat (3 and 4 cities). Churchill has spammed wonders, but it's a bit hard to access him quickly so I'll just go the safe route.

 

[Gumbolt]

Good to see Bleys still about. Been many a year since he really posted. Yep NC still going stong. Might try this at a later point. SGOTM always keeps me busy.

 

[diegobueno]

markets, forges, nice amount of resources, drama early?
lots of land to take+org leader + all buildings super fast lh, ch, forges + half cities have 2 base (hills)

my first instinct is glh and rex, i see 4 cities potentialy good, but should i try to take saladin that blockme or rex east? (i see barbarians that way)
the problem is i only have ha, unless invade the copper island on SE.

 

[hankinsohl]

Possible game bug

Spoiler :

I have a peace treaty with Saladin (5 turns remaining) and am at pleased with him.

Yet, on the very next turn he attacks me, breaking our peace treaty.

Saladin has not met anyone but me, so even if it's possible to break treaties via bribes, that cannot have happened here.

Has anyone else run into this bug? Or is it not a bug and I'm overlooking something. I've attached an autosave of my game for review.

 

[sampsa]

@diegobueno

Spoiler :

markets, forges, nice amount of resources, drama early?
lots of land to take+org leader + all buildings super fast lh, ch, forges + half cities have 2 base (hills)

Lh+forges for sure, cheap courthouses are good of course but not the most pressing thing if you are not going for early conquest. Markets? Just no, it's such an expensive and weak building, rather just grow and work coast. I also don't understand why you want to go drama early as there is lots of anyway.

my first instinct is glh and rex, i see 4 cities potentialy good, but should i try to take saladin that blockme or rex east? (i see barbarians that way)
the problem is i only have ha, unless invade the copper island on SE.

I'm sure GLH+rex = win, on any level, so far my deity game has felt like an easy immortal map. On lower levels I might get tempted by expanding via war pre-liberalism.

 

[sampsa]

@hankinsohl

Spoiler :

Looks like a bug to me. You can stop the declaration by begging, though.

 

[hankinsohl]

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Unfortunately, if you beg for 10g to begin a new peace treaty, he'll break that treaty as well.

 

[ArchGhost]

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Unfortunately, if you beg for 10g to begin a new peace treaty, he'll break that treaty as well.

I have had this happen, AIs breaking peace treaties to DoW, several times, so I doubt it's a bug. Or at least, it's not a mechanical bug with the game but rather a graphical one from BUG/BAT.

I don't know the exact circumstances of your scenario, but I've been able to recreate mine at will: If an AI decides to roll war against you for a refusal, and you beg to get a peace treaty, they can simply stay in war prep for the whole duration (they don't HAVE to stop plotting on you, though they often do or switch targets) and declare the instant it's up. If you add any more peace treaties they simply break them; only the original one is binding if there are concurrent treaties.

I've had a random continents game where me, Monty, and Sitting Bull were all on the same continent alone, I took steps to make Monty like me and have them hate each other as much as I could (spread a different religion to SB and shared Monty's, bribed Monty to attack him) but could never get that whiny Aztec SoB to Friendly. Monty peaces out with SB after the first war, and goes red fist again a couple turns later before his treaty could possibly be up, so I know the traitorous punk is going for me. I immediately beg 1g for peace and go on about my business. When the treaty is up with SB, I try to put him back on him -- but he won't bite, telling me he's too busy, and I see him moving a stack up to my closest city. That little turd wants to hit me. So I beg more peace, and 6 turns later beg more peace just to make double sure. When I still had 4 turns left on the most recent treaty, he DoWs and attacks. Sitting Bull being useless as he is, I could never get him to attack Monty, so from the point he decided to go for me all those 20+ turns ago, it was going to happen one way or the other. Freakin' butthead. Playing Spain, I had gotten up to Engineering by now and promptly rolled him up with super promoted Trebs with Crossbow backup; his maces/longbows never had a chance. I was able to handle it with the grace period I managed to get, but he still attacked me, the little twerp.

 

[sampsa]

T115 (1AD)

Spoiler :

Game is progressing at a slow pace, because there is so much to do. I'm a bit lost as to what is the best plan, but I guess I'm still going for cannons. Used GM to bulb civil service, won taoism (didn't really want it though) and going straight to nationalism (aiming for Taj to generate , but that might be too slow).

Sal is pleased even without religion, so there are no worries. Churchill is not expanding and has blocked Mao's expansion too. Maybe I should just expand to 20 cities, just because I can?

No failgold yet, Churchill is spamming wonders at a rapid pace. Claiming both marble and stone pretty soon, so that will change things.

 

[dutchfire]

Looking nice @sampsa.

Getting all workers and settlers in place can be slow on this kind of islands game. There's also not so many forests to chop, slowing down city development.

I'm still planning to give the game a serious shot, hopefully this weekend.

 

[sampsa]

Yep, I think it's a very good map (and leader) to practice islands-type of game. Many players might find it a bit vexing, because there is so much you need to take into account every turn, but I am enjoying the game tremendously.