NC XXXII: Louis XIV

[Ignorant Teacher]

Marathon / Emperor - Checkpoint 3 - 1250AD

Spoiler :

I waited 50 years more because I wanted to see if I could get the GScientist from Physics. I did and I also got the Communism spy. In this round I completed the Angkor Wat, the Spiral Minaret, the University of Sankore and the Taj Mahal. I would complete the Statue of Liberty, but Zara got a GE and rushed it. I was first to Lib and took Nationalism. I managed to get tech parity again because I shut off research for a while to buy the gold multipliers and salons in every city. Oxford was completed in Paris in 900ish AD. I'm now running Representation, Free Speech, Emancipation, Free Market and Organized Religion.
Suleiman decided he would attack AC and he did. At first, they exchanged a couple of cities and made peace. (Silly had a very big stack, BTW). Now I saw he was preparing for war and AC was the only possible target. I sold Rome Rifle before because I don't want anyone getting too strong. I'll try to win culture, unless it gets too boring. If it does, I'll do something else.
I had two GAs: Taj and a burned scientist. I still have 1Gspy, 1GS and 1GM. I'll hold them for a while until I am building some wonders then I'll start my double GA. Maybe when I get Radio.
I guess I'm not forgetting anything, forgive me if I am.

Land:

Techs and Diplo:

VCs (I accidentally deleted the demographics):

 

[Lansky]

Tried Deity/Normal... twice (adding in proper techs/units)

and it was not pretty. Lib went to the guy in the SE corner the first time around 1AD and the second time the western neighbor DoW'd me after building SP, adopting his favorite civic, and instantly dropping from friendly to cautious.

To cheer myself up I played Noble/Marathon and went for space

 

[Silu]

Well you have stamina I don't have it in me to try again, even though the initial WorldBuilder action would make for a somewhat different game. Sometimes Deity just feels like climbing an endless ladder while it's sinking into the ground faster than you can climb.

 

[byang08]

Questions about economy

Spoiler :

Is it better to farm the capital and run specialists or cottage it? The map has a lot flood plains and river tiles so I'm wondering if I should run any specialists. How do you guys decide which cities to have as your commerce/science cities?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Questions about economy

Spoiler :

Is it better to farm the capital and run specialists or cottage it? The map has a lot flood plains and river tiles so I'm wondering if I should run any specialists. How do you guys decide which cities to have as your commerce/science cities?

Spoiler :

I like cottage spamming and, whenever the map allows, will do so. I'm not really familiar with specialist research - I usually use them to get my economy going after a REX. Dirk1302 had a post in "The biggest mistakes newbies make" that I found really helpful. That's what he said:

Some rules of thumb,

Cottage as much as possible in capital to profit from buro.Capital has good production so it shouldn't be necessary to whip too often there.

Have +6 food in cities without much natural production. In this case infra can be whipped without too much pain, later these cities can work some plaintile workshops for production. Worst is those cities that have no food resource but lots of grasslands also on rivers and lakes. Cottaging all is criminal but i've seen it happen, begin by building 4 farms for +6 food, then work cottages. Even if your happy cap is at 6 it's right to play this way, you switch to cottages once you're there (or at pop 5 or so).

In production cities basically farm so you can work as much food decifit tiles (mines/workshops) as possible.

These rules are very general, if you're going for an early push around 1000 AD or so farm everything for more production either through whipping or workshops. Research comes from bulbing/specs/traderoutes in this case.

 

[byang08]

thanks

 

[Lansky]

Well you have stamina I don't have it in me to try again, even though the initial WorldBuilder action would make for a somewhat different game. Sometimes Deity just feels like climbing an endless ladder while it's sinking into the ground faster than you can climb.

I've resorted to having a friend pre-screen and "adjust" maps for my non forum generated attempts. By which I mean, maybe add a few mountains or ocean so that I can basically guarantee myself 4-5 solid cities and a few filler if I do not suck it up. It's cheesy and dumbing down the difficulty, but so much more fun than my standard "roll a random map and lose" routine. Granted I still lose a lot, but I learn more than 2 good cities and 6 bad ones is not enough for me to win yet. Oh, I also prefer Pangaea which gets ugly faaaaaaaaast

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Prince Marathon 1388 AD.

Spoiler :

Grr Sillyman has been a PAIN this game. OKies so here I am minding my own business trying to kill off Zara and take his land while not bothering anybody else and the lil sissy voluntarily caps to sillyman. Grrrr.

SO nNOW I am at war with Zara and Sillyman. If anybody's been reading my rpeorts you might remembar last report I kind of slowed down on building units during war with Zara cuz it felt like Zara was on the ropes and I had enuff to take him out. I didnt even leave much of garrisons in cities I had taken cuz it looked like Zara was so broken he wasnt going to be launching any counter attacks.

Well that WASNT counting on Silly and his HUGE army joining in grrrr. He takes two of Zaras old cities, slows my main attack stack down with his stacks and just generally being a dillhole and messing up my war grrrr.

I have to scramble a bit but I manage to retake the cities I lost and then I took all of Zaras I could. It seems like he had one city left but it was waaaay on other side of Silly's empire so I take one of Silly's cities just on principle and then get him to give fuedalism and some gold for peace.

By now thogh my empir ei slike 20 something cities big and my economy is TANKING. I am doing my best to recover teching to guilds for gorcers as fast as my sucky tech rate can do it. Meanwhile that Dillhole Silly goes into wheooh mode and wouldnt ya know it he attacks me AGAIN. I kill off his stack take another of his cities and make him give me gold for peace.

After that I spend a TON of turns trying to sort out my empire. But I also start building up my army again including knights and trebs and mouseketeers. Now soon after Auggie makes a move only he makes it on Silly. Which is just PERFECT for me so I attack him too and this time I DONT plan on stopping until Silly is D-E-A-D grrr.

War goes pretty good with Auggie hitting silly from west and me hitting from east. Auggie even doe sme a favor and kills off Zara's last city so I no longer have that we yearn to join motherland stuff in his old cities. Now in middle of war I techout curriasors and soon after that rifling for cavb so war is going pretty good now. At this point my BIGGEST headache was worrying Silly might cap to auggie which could have been a big problem since he already had asok as his lackey already and adding sillyman would have made him HUGE.

But I get lucky and auggie just decalres peace and doesnt cap him. So that left me free to finish off Silly on my own. And thats where game is at this point. Silly and Zara are dead and it leaves just me on my won and Wang and Auggie and his vassal Asok. The map looks like this:

I won good chunk of the map at this point and according to vic conditions:

I am VERY close to a dom win.

Here is tech sitch:

I am behind Wang a bit. Partly cuz of warring and having a sucky economy for sooo long and partly cuz again I didnt get hardly ANY great scientists. I got one to bulb Philo and then NONE until AFTER lib race was over. I had to tech out Paper and edu myself and by time I could tech lib Wang was 4 turns away and I had no way to catch him. ANd thats when GS FINALLY decided to show up. I had two in row after that but it was too little too late. Instead I use done to bulb printing press and another I used for academy. ANd instead of going for lib I just went ahead and teched out rifling then lib afterwards when I had Taj done.

So while I AM behind wang a little I am not THAT far behind and now my economy is pretty solid so I am pretty sure I can out beaker him now and just over take him.

Here are what demos look like:

Pretty decent leads in most categories so I am thinking I really dont need to out tech wang all that much. I am VERY close to dom win so I am thinking just takeing a cpl of his cities would be enuff to get it after borderpops and if he willing to cap by then that SHOULD be more than enuff. And I think:

These guys should be enuff to take on wang at least long enuff to get a cpl of cities and hold out for dom win. So I guess thats plan at this point. Auggie SHOULD be willing to open borders with me so I can get to wang's cities and if he does I will just attack by land and try to end it. If he doesnt I may have to wait till I get astronomy and attack by sea. I guess I COULD just attack auggie but he been nice and helpful this game so I DONT want to do that unless I absolutely have to.

So thats the plan at this point. Try to get to wangs cities, take a few and hope thats enuff to ge the win. Wish me luck

Kaytie

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Emperor/Epic to Checkpoint 4 1600AD and on to the end when I was killed

Spoiler :

Yeah so it all started pretty good. I cranked out a bunch of curaissiers and then rifles. Built up a nice pile while I teched steel out. Started the attack on Asoka probably around 1450 or so. That all went pretty well. Rolled up the cannon to help with the main part of his empire which was either captured or destroyed all the way back to his border with Caesar. He had two little cities in the far west, below Caesar and capitulated to Wang. So now I'm by far no. 1 in land area, but nearly last in everything else. So I spend from about 1650 until 1840 frantically building the infrastructure back up. Started up more cities wherever it made sense to do so in the land I had. Was up to 18 cities and number 3 in pop on my way to number 1. But all that time spend building and teching to try and catch back up cost me. By 1840 my military was small and outdated again.

I really just wanted to play out the game that way to see if I could catch up - which I nearly did and would have passed the AI's. But at the expense of military again, meaning that even though I was checking WHEOOHRN fairly often I was surprise attacked by Caesar in 1840 or so. He had loads of tanks, infantry etc. so I bailed.

If I had to play it over again, I would do Hatty in and then go for a cultural win. The start's good enough to keep up in tech and a concerted effort to go cultural and keep a small modern military to discourage attack would be the way to go here.

Despite the loss I learned quite a bit from this game. Looking forward to the next one!

 

[GGS]

Prince/Epic. 505 AD.

The progress has been slow but steady.

Spoiler :

In 875 BC the last rival, Augustus Caesar, was met. Rheims was founded 1S of the NE iron; Tours 1S of the NW cow. With a lot of cottages, the economy is functional. To achieve relative tech parity France traded-out HBR to a pair of western powers in 245/230 BC for eight techs. The theory was HBR was a tech they'd not easily trade to the eastern crew but when there are no choices, the path is clear.

The plan? War with Egypt. There are at least two barbarian cities between France and a weak India so the west can hold. The French field army is short on catapults but there are seven war elephants and four to come within six turns (so, it cost a golden age). Additionally, France has the greed quest for the Egyptian horses and Thebes is home to the Mahabodhi. On the down-side (there always is at least one) Zara Yaqob and Suleiman I are Buddhists and "friendly" with Hatshepsut so they are likely to be more than a tad steamed when France invades the five-decent-city Egypt on the next turn.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Prince, Marathon, 1406 AD, Dom win

Spoiler :

Well it kind of went like I was hoping. Got open borders with Auggie so I could march into Wang's land. Decared, took one city and then:

Which was enough for:

Which got me:

One of my best score ever if not THE best score ever . Its hard to tell cuz EVERY time I upgrade a patch or even upgrade BUG or some other mod my whole HoF resets so I have lost TONS of scores from past games . STill I can only think of getting over 200k twice b4 and both of those were on noble. One was just a pnagea map with Keshiks conquering EVERYTHING by like 1200 ad and another was this very flukey 800 ad or so ap win (I actually voted myself the victory. That thing where it says you cant get that option if you have "more" votes than necessary all by yourself is LITERAL. Turns out if you have EXACTLY the minumum number of votes needed to vote yourself a diplo win you still can hehe) The fluke ap was only like 210k The Keshik romp was also pushing 240k so it may have been higher but not by much and it was on noble and this is on prince so that makes it a lil more impressive to me anyways hehe.

Anyways thanks for the game this was a VERY fun map and sorry the game ended so soon. It would have been fun to see how pretty I could have gotten my cities with stuff like suprmarkets and factories and all the good buildings and corps and biology etc ( I never even teched astronomy so never got to use the UB at all) but oh wells I can always replay the map sometime hehe.

Kaytie

 

[wenamon]

Spoiler :

checking in a few turns early just because I am deciding on a city site to the East. I started by settling in place as my warrior revealed the stone to the east. I went Mine-masonry-BW to start and was lucky enough to pop pottery somewhere in there. I then made an attempt at founding judaism but got as far as mysticism as hatty beat me out. I stole her worker and then made peace as soon as possible. My tech continued in AH - Hunting - Fishing - Archery - popped IW - Writing - and now Polytheism.

First my initial dotmap



I ended up switching 2 and 1 just because I wanted to get the Cu online in case I wanted to rush Hatty very quickly. Was this optimal? I don't normally like to borrow from the capitals squares like this and initially toyed with having orleans built 1S but I thought I would go for the early stimulus provided by paris's corn and I think its helped.

Here is where I am now:



I am unsure if I should be settling right on the iron like the blue circle suggests. Should I keep my original site? Any thoughts on my opening moves would be appreciated as well.

 

[star15389]

Emperor, Normal to 275 BC:

Spoiler :

Finished dotmap; will hopefully found seven more cities. I rushed Hatty quite easily (she's still alive, but only has one city) and my economy isn't even suffering for it. She founded Hinduism and Judaism and built the Hindu shrine two turns before I attacked. Despite this there are no Hindu civs. Built the Pyramids and the Great Wall in Paris.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Marathon / Emperor - Checkpoint 4 - 1600AD

Spoiler :

Finally raised the culture slider. I had changed to Universal Suffrage and Augustus Caesar dropped to cautious. Asoka renounced his protection and is also cautious so I thought I'd better get some troops to protect myself. I'm running Rep, Free Speech, Caste, SP and Pacifism. I managed to get all the Electricity, Radio and Mass Media wonders in my culture cities, except for the UN. Cathy Hatty stole Mass Media from me and built the UN. I didn't care much because it's her vs. Sulleiman and it's sort of tied. IIRC, I could make either of them win, but of course I won't. Besides those, I also built the Kremlin, the Pentagon and the Three Gorges Dam in my production cities. They are now building military. I think I'll reshape them to make them more productive.

A very nice event:

My land:

The big three (still have to reassign the specialists from Paris):

Techs and Diplo:

Demographics and Victory Conditions:

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

@wenamon

Spoiler :

I am unsure if I should be settling right on the iron like the blue circle suggests. Should I keep my original site? Any thoughts on my opening moves would be appreciated as well.

I would place the city between the mountains, where it touches both the pigs and iron. (in my playthrough, I settled on the hill before I discovered Iron Working. whoops).

BUT - unless you are going after Hatty now (not my style, when there's lots of open land available), you might be better off taking the good southern locations away from her, then the iron later.

 

[Ecori]

Emperor/normal, Diplo Victory 1876 with a score of 55436

Thx for the game - enjoyed it alot! Proved to be harder than I first expected.

Question: How many Cavalries does the AI need to capture 1 worker? The answer is inside the spoiler.

Spoiler :

Well... For a very long time everything just whent down the drains. Bad diplomacy together with some very unfortunate backstabs on me almost meant the end to the French Civ.

Wank and Asoka was vassals of Agust so I descided to attack Zara again to eliminate him. He was pretty strong so I bribed Sillyman into the war. Everything was going smooth until I noticed this:

I knew the attack was coming so made a quick peace with Zara and withdrew my army and marched to Chartres. And offcourse:

Hmm.. It looked bad - really bad. August was a beast and he brought his 2 Vassals with him. The Defenders inside Chartres held out pretty good, my army might even reach it before it would fall. Then the AP proposed Peace with August - I offcourse voted Yes. Chartres fell that turn and when my army was rdy to destroy his SoD and reclaim it the AP dictated the peace
But 1 city was propably cheap anyway... Then the Worst thing happened: Zara capped to Silly and Hatty did aswell..
No free civs to conquer besides the monsters August and Silly.
Time to draft and mobilize the whole empire for war!

One good thing happened:

I attacked Silly, Zara and Hatty once my army was ready. Got stopped by the AP in the first attempt, but 10 turns later I was advancing nicely and Zara was down to 1 city. Then I saw August was amassing a giant army in Chartres so had to take the peace with Silly and his Vassals and start moving the army towards the Roman-french border. Luckily for me he waited some turns which gave me the chance to spamm out some Artilleries. Then he attacked and I was to be at war for the rest of the game:

Diplo situation:

2 workers was improving tiles by the border and it was a to big bait.
And here's my question: How many cavalries does an Ai need to capture a worker?
He used 23cavalries on the first and 15cavalries and 6 infantries on the other. What was he thinking? No tile def. My artillery ate them up. My casulties: 3 artilleries and 1 inf. Lost 5 inf in the counterattack, but destroyed the rest of his SoD in Chartres the next turn. My casulties 12units, his around 80! This disaster made Wang renounce his protection and was really a turning point. I pressed on and took 3 more cities before the counterattacks stalled my advance and pressed me back. Got a separate peace with Wang, but then Silly attacked. At war with 5 og 6 AIs and worst enemy of the last... This was to be a diplo win, but seemed more like a defeat. Lost some cities in the south, but got an AP peace and could concentrate on Silly and Zara. I now had tanks and killed off my research, if this was going to be a win tanks would have to do it. But I couldn't do it alone. Changed rel to conf (Wangs), gifted him Industrialism and bribed him to war with Silly for Mil Tra. Now I had an ally and my produktion killed Silly and Zara. And finally:

Def not pretty, but a win is a win...

Funny how so many wars can be fought without anny aggr leaders, when you mess up your diplomacy.

 

[Meatbuster]

@Ecori: Awesome victory, playing to the end. I would've given up the game long ago if I were in your place.

Emperor/Marathon 30AD-780AD (Choose Religions enabled)

Spoiler :

TECHS
Still keeping up fairly well. Nice that my compact empire is doing fairly well in the face of the monster known as Zara.

Liberalism went down at 500's AD. At some point, I was 11 turns away from Lib, Zara was 4. Missed it, so I went along the Gunpowder route after Education instead.
Capital produced a couple of scientists which built an academy, bulbed Printing Press, Education. Engineer came out, but with no wonders to build, bulbed Chemistry.

After Liberalism was lost I started trading around Education and amassed about 5000 gold and some cheaper techs like...

I'm teching Steel for my war against Augustus Caesar.

WAR
Somewhere down the line, I attacked Asoka in a rather uneventful and boring war, and capitulated him right before the end of this turn. I kept most of his infrastructure intact so he can be my trading partner. I am going to attack Augustus next after I upgrade into massed muskets and cannons.

On the other side of the continent, Zara and Hatty went to war on Suleiman. Soon after, an AP vote came asking to declare. I vote yes, resolution passes. So all members declare on Sully, but only Zara was really fighting the war. Even though Zara is this game's monster and top scorer... he actually lost a city to Sully! Looks like he isn't cut out to be top dog, and Sully will cut into his lead. Good.

City ADVISORY

DIPLOMACY
Louis (player) - Islam
AC - Islam
Hatty - Islam, vassal of Zara
Zara - Islam, war with Suleiman
Wang - Confu
Suleiman - Hindu, war with Zara

FUTURE
1. Tech to cannons, upgrade, attack AC with massed muskets and cannons
2. Maybe bribe Suleiman to peace with Zara if he's doing too well
3. Hope to outtech Zara to space or win via domination/conquest before then

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Ecori, hats off to you! Congratulations on pulling a win from that awful situation you were before!


Marathon / Emperor - Victory

Spoiler :

Nothing remarcable happened. Two or three Artists were born, had to pay people to make peace, set the slider to 100% culture and won. This was my first culture victory on Emperor. The map was so nice, that I could have won any VC. Thanks cas!

 

[Grey Fox]

I didn't realize people played these on other difficulties, why is it still called Noble's club?
I've been missing out it seems

 

[Silu]

This allows you to play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Prince, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

Actually, that leaves out Settler, Chieftain, Monarch, Emperor, Immortal and Deity! Damn, didn't realize there were restrictions. At least all the speeds are allowed