Nobles' Club 142: Hatshepsut of Egypt

[Pangaea]

Not reading any spoilers yet as I just started playing, but that's one really quick victory rfcfanatic and Learner! Like I've said a few times before, I don't get how you guys can play so damn quick

Congratulations on the wins though, I'll read about your exploits later

 

[Choggy]

Immortal/Normal/NHNE - 1AD

Spoiler :

This game is has been a REXathon since killing Izzy, the amount of good availiable land is just insane. I'm currently at 15 cities and despite that I'm only 4 turns from part-bulbing Education. I could keep expanding I suppose, there's enough land for well over 30 cities and I've got Vicky and Hammy penned in, alternatively I develop my existing cities and get a huge tech lead before killing somebody.

 

[cbucks]

1645 immortal domination victory, spoilers below

Spoiler :

sorry, no pics. I tried to replicate what grasshopa did and was able to take out the other three civs arond 525BC. From there, i just played lazy and was planning on getting a space victory. Little did I know that there is enough land on the initial landmass to get a domination victory. If I had known that, I would have pressed forward asap and cut off researching. Oh well, I'm too lazy to replay

 

[Noble Zarkon]

@Choggy

Spoiler :

How do you manage expansion and box the other AIs in whilst keeping your economy afloat? I really struggle with that balance on a map like this!

 

[Choggy]

Immortal/Normal/NHNE 1060AD (Lib->MilTrad)

Spoiler :

I stopped settling cities after 1AD (although I did capture a barb city from under Hammy nose) and then just focussed on developing the cities I had. I've left Vicky and Hammy to their own devices up to now, they're sharing the same religion so I couldn't get bribe either of them to war. That does mean when I whomp them with Cuirrs they're not going to have highly promo'd units though. No idea what's going on on the other side of the map, but judging by the wonders being built I think our half is ahead on tech.

I've finally managed to get round to building a Great Wonder myself - Taj Mahal will be along in a couple of turns.

@NobleZarkon:

Spoiler :

Well, the Egyptians are one of the best REXers in the game with Creative trait and a cheap UU that eats barb archers. But if I'm going to REX then I really go for it - I only build workers and settlers - even garrison units are optional for non-border cities.

Maintenance costs do hurt, there's no getting around it when REXing so apart from a few key cities (such as my Cap, a second Settler pump, a unit pump/scientist bulb city), any other cities I settle I will only allow them to grow to the point where they were working their special resources (even if it's only a 1-pop city working a single food resource). Then they go on worker building duties (15 cities need a LOT of workers ) which prevents them from growing in population, connects up my resources and starts spamming cottages and mines ready for when they can start growing once Currency is in. That keeps the maintenance down to a point but it's still high - I was at 30% on the research slider well into the AD's.

However having a poor tech rate is only a temporary issue with REXing, once the cities are up and running and working cottage tiles or in the case of production cities building wealth then even at 50% on the slider I was still generating a lot of beakers from working so many tiles and so quickly made up the ground I'd lost in the tech race.

 

[dalamb]

This looked like it would be more fun that slogging through the wars with Augustus.

Spoiler :

SIP, settled Memphis 1W of the horses, and chopped/whipped too many war chariots and took out Izzy. By "too many" -- I have 3 who never engaged in combat, so I could have attacked several turns earlier. I'll be sending them to explore the rest of the landmass.

My initial warrior got quite a bit of gold, and 2 units of experience (giving Woods III), so I've unlocked the HE should I try more warring later (possibly not until catophants). There were villages I thought Izzy would have taken, relatively near Madrid; I guess she happened not to explore that directon.

Madrid and Barcelona (a floodplain city) are going to get a lot of cottages; I will build up my economy before expanding much further. I figure I ought to plant a couple of more cities soon, though. It would have been nice if some folks had posted maps showing where they sited their next few cities; I'm seeing a lot of no-food locations and am puzzled

Spoiler maps :

• Southwest
  
• Central
  
• North
  

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Noble - Marathon - NH/NE - 750AD

Spoiler :

I restarted as I crashed my economy, this time I took out Izzy with my initial warrior on T9, then built a city near the horses and churned out a bunch of WCs. I eliminated Viccy and Hammy by 1700BC.



Took the gamble that with a triple gems, two double gold and a double silver site that I would be able to keep tech pace even being isolated. Kept the 4 cities until I got Currency then REXed out to the current 15. All the early religions went to the other continent but I got Confu from CoL.



Have Optics and my Caravels have now met the others and I am ahead on techs, I'm thinking space from here probably.

 

[Grashopa]

It would have been nice if some folks had posted maps showing where they sited their next few cities

This is a great map for learning. I'm looking forward to seeing the 1 ADs from a couple of the early posters. I think there will be quite a bit of variation to learn from.

 

[ThatOne]

1160 AD Domination Victory (Noble/Quick/NH/NE)

Spoiler :

image:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Teched hunt/animal/mine/bw/myst/medi/monarch/sail
send 4 settlers north to block the 2 civs in and had those cities grow, while had 3 south cities spamming to kill spain. then spammed to kill other 2.

Spoiler :

Do have currency, but none cities are making gold atm. Economy is recoverable.

 

[Choggy]

Immortal/Normal/NHNE 1600AD Dom Win.

Spoiler :

I didn't know if there was enough land to get the Dom win without going onto the other continent but in the end it diddn't matter, I was building the UN anyway when it got tripped. Vicky was an easy target and Hammy never had enough cities to be a problem, after that I just spammed settlers to fill the gaps and it worked.

Final Screenshots below:

Spoiler :

I don't have a 1AD save, here's what looked my empire looked like after 100 AD.

Spoiler :

Pangaea, thanks for the map. I'll echo Grashopa's sentiments about it being a great learning map. I don't normally play Continents maps because they can end up bieng a bit samey but this isn't your typical Continents map and it was a really good one for Hatty.

Regarding the 'other' way to play to the map

Spoiler :

i.e WC stomping everybody early on and then just settle the map out to Dom. I reckon it's do-able on Immortal but I'd already made my mind up how I was going to play the game early on so took the eaiser option. It'll be interesting somebody pull it off, I imagine it would be a quick game.

I was thinking about replaying it at Noble for a laugh after I finished this game but I see ThatOne's beaten me to it!

 

[Grashopa]

Spoiler :

As for WC stomping - in my previous Hatty games I've never had this much space. I didn't know you could get dom - I was just playing around in order to see how my game would compare against the others who posted starts with BCs education. Tech vs expansion is always interesting and this game is crazy with the amount of land you have if you take everyone out with WCs.

I was wondering (before knowing you can get dom) if anyone was going to try to bulb astro and finish conquest overseas with WCs or something. Should be doable.

 

[cseanny]

Immortal > Normal > I'm waiting to post my Victory screen because I have a Pre 1000 Ad (by quite some time) Domination Victory and I want to see who else my compitition is lol.

 

[WelshGandalf]

How the heck to you get 15 cities by 100AD? I need tips please, though I suspect it may just be whip/chop more....

I played the start twice (Emperor/No events/normal speed), first time I got to 8 cities and on the 2nd attempt I managed 10 by 1AD, which I was quite pleased with. I did this by...

Spoiler :

Started worker -> warrior x2 or 3 -> worker -> settler
Hunting -> AH -> mining -> BW -> Writing

Capturing 2 Spanish cities, razing the 3rd, capturing 2 barb cities and settling 6 (including my capital). I did have a half-decent economy going though as I had heavily cottages my capital & the former Spanish lands.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Noble - NHNE - Marathon - Domination victory in 1175AD

Spoiler :

I thought I was going for Space but then saw that simply settling the whole continent gives you a Domination victory! So I churned out Settlers, each new city built an Obelisk then Culture and I was running Caste / Pacifism and got a few GAs to pop borders.

Ended up with 49 cities and a score of 121,755 - only my 3rd ever score over 100,000!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Some were curious about this - here's my dotmap from 1700BC, I think on this map Calendar is a high priority, with everyone dead I had to research it myself lol .

Spoiler :

 

[tijup]

Prince, Marathon, No Huts, No random events.

Finished a couple of days ago, won by domination, in 1500ish.
That map was great fun, I will definitively re-try it in a few days.

 

[Choggy]

@WelshGandalf - haven't seen you around since the SoM series (sadly) finished..

Spoiler :

No whips. Isabella had farmed the FP's in Madrid so I used that city exclusively to build settlers and chopped out settlers from the cap. Every city I settled built a worker as the first build which kept maintenance costs down and they subsequently hooked up resources/roads for the next city. The usual advice about building a granary as the first build didn't apply here, in fact the last thing I wanted was population growth.

I also spawn-busted as much as I could which meant the barbs could only settle one city so I was able to send out settlers unaccompanied. I could have actually settled over 20 cities by 1AD had I wanted, what prevented me wasn't building settlers but the state of my economy.

Immortal > Normal > I'm waiting to post my Victory screen because I have a Pre 1000 Ad (by quite some time) Domination Victory and I want to see who else my compitition is lol.

Well...get on with it! This I want to read...

 

[Pangaea]

LOL. As expected, it sounds like people are doing utterly bonkers things with this map

I've only played to 2000BC or something like that, and was out getting hosed yesterday in celebration of turning a tick older the other day, and am already on the first beer today, so doubt there will be much progress over the weekend...

Spill the beans cseanny

 

[Hurricane Jane]

So, I’m new here on this one site and I’m pretty new to some concepts of the game this site has shown me. I frequently played the game for the last three years with quite some pauses in between, but while I always steamroll settler and chieftain I already have problems on Warlord sometimes, but if I play secure I’m lightyears ahead of my neighbours. How different things work on Noble, then. Most of the times, I tend to have an okay opening, but that’s where it falls apart. Most of the times I’m too sluggish on military strategies, cultural victories don’t really work to me (most of the time I’m too early into culture maximizing and eventually my army is outdated and destroyed), I always lose the space race against the likes of Mansa Musa, Cyrus or Pacal, and really the only leader I’m ever thinking of trying Prince with is Hannibal on a watery map and maybe the Incans on a rivery start, which shows I love a solid trade economy or just being overpowered.

But well, I’m going to try this one anyway. Let’s see what I think about everything myself here. I do like the traits of Hatshe, the turn saving aspect of SPI is really nice, though it’s not really useful in the lategame. CRE’s cheap Libraries are something of utmost importance to me, as I often neglect Monuments as border poppers for new cities and go straight for the Libraries. Although you don’t need extra culture to pop your borders in a new city anyway as a CRE leader. As I am very well a sucker for more room and to defend my city placement chances from opposing players I actually love CRE almost as much as PHI.

Well, I already said something about bypassing Monuments. I think Obelisks are pretty poor with Hatse. Building an Obelisk just for 1 additional culture just isn’t making the cut for me. And those 2 priests could be nice for getting a GP early on to build a shrine quickly, but that’s really the only reason I guess. Building an obelisk just for economy is not really durable. The UU is a entirely different story. You can get it out even after your first research if you’re lucky. And both first strike immunity and extra power? Immense. If someone is near and I’ve got horsies I know what to do. They only fear the spear.

And the start… just, wow. I don’t know what my warrior is gonna reveal but I see soooo many river tiles here. If there are some more decent resources I’m really gonna like this.

Quick/Noble (I play quick just for learning purpose. I think longer games are more fun, though)

Spoiler :

So, here we go. Probably my opening bid will be AH to hook up the pigs and pray for horsies. After that, probably Mining -> BW -> Pottery, but who knows..

Opened with Warrior 1NW. Thought about moving 1NW with Settler for Ivory, but SIP instead. (Don’t know what was the better choice here) In the end it turned out okay, getting riverside corn and still having one Ivory in the BFC. So went AH + worker out of the box. Scouting already discovered me two golds and Izzy being horrendously close. I didn’t find the horses until I was already halfway BW, but I wanted to go for a second city early to kill off Izzy and take her Holy City.

I wanted to hook up the horses early, so I figured my worker could best build the road towards the horses to rush into my War Chariot plan. Actually went Fishing to build a Work Boat in my second city. After that Sailing for hooking up Horses, then Pottery – Hunting – Writing - Alphabet


Settled second city just below the corn on the eastern coast. Actually I finished Izzy off by turn 40, after capturing some workers, killing a settler and taking over double HC Madrid by beating a single Warrior. Can it be easier than this? I just needed 2 WC’s to take Izzy on. Took 3 workers from her by the way, so I could just see the REXREXREX flowing in.

50 turn cutoff point:






Well, on turn 50 I just thought “wow, this map is crazy. No other enemies for space, so much food, so much luxuries… just, wow. Amazing.” I already thought of winning the space race here, just in need of some production cities for it though. I went for Currency after Alphabet, extra trade routes with all this REX just seemed okay. But I didn’t know if this was the best choice. Went CoL after that, just to get that third religion up and running in my empire. After getting that, just Aesthetics – Mysticism – Poly – Literature to get the GL up and running.
Calendar was the next tech I had to rely on, so after Mathematics I would go to that. After Calendar I thought the Lib race was on, maybe with some offensive techs to take out Lizzy and Rabi. But I want the 25% bonus for building from Monotheism as well. After that; Monarchy – Metal Casting – Construction for some decent warmonging beelines against Lizzy and Rabi. Don’t really want CS with so many cities anyway. Went for Music in the meantime for an early GA. After that: Feudalism -> HA -> Machinery -> Guilds. But seriously, by turn 100 I felt so far ahead I could just feel something for a Cannon rush. That means something for me. This map is absolutely ridiculous if I can land such an easy lead on Noble.

100 turn CO Point

 

[Nials]

FWIW, Quick is harder than Normal and the game is generally balanced around Normal speed, so you might want to reconsider your game speed if you are struggling to beat Noble difficulty.