[BTS] Nobles' Club 185 - Suryavarman II of the Khmer

[Olafeson]

@unas876

Spoiler :

Now talking a more general look at the current point in your game. Let us do some basic math here. Hopefully i do not make any mistakes even when keeping it simple^^. Jesus Christ i spend so much time writing this horsehocky, i wonder if someone even wants to read that.

Size 6 capital in your game : Research Slider at 100%

- 3 FP hamlets for the capital, looks like one actually gets worked by your other city Haryharalaya , so only 2 FP hamlets.
- Commerce: 9 commerce * 1.75 (library,academy) = 15.75 research/turn (only considering the 3 FP hamlets), 10.75 research/turn if you only work 2 hamlets.
Realistic you will get maybe 2-3 more cottages down in your cap in the future.
Assuming your Commerce/turn in the cap : It should be around 21 commerce / meaning 31.5 research/turn at 100% research (capitol only).
So i can not see how you gonna grow beyond 35 base commerce in cap very soon. So even getting CS (bureaucracy) will not be very effective.
- Hammer : 8 Hammer/Turn (cows,copper, city hammer), pretty low even with marble for Pantheon/GL. You need more mines, and chop with math for the wonders.
Or an A.I. may get them. Not sure of course if you will be the first to aesthetics/literature by far or A.I. also has it, gets it soon.
- Food : 15 Food (if you assign the scientist to a tile), (Cows: 4, two FP: 6 , Cap : 2, Grass Cottage : 2, Copper: 1), -12 food goes for Capital population, leaving you with
only +3 food/turn. Very slow growth and even slower when you want to work some hills.
Grab the cottage you build at size 7, size 8 another grassland cottage , then size 9 grab a grassland hill, only +2food/turn left which ends at pop 10 in your capital.
Forced to grab a plain hill at 10 with + 0 food/turn. Baray lets you get +1 food/turn if you built it, but looks like you do not have math. Unless you want to work
irrigated plain farms to the east your cap will never grow beyond 8-10 population.

Rest of cities:

Rather mediocre land, no real cottage land as you stated. Only a gold mine and one gem mine in the future with IW. So it will be hard to get over 100 research/turn.
Also will be hard to grow them, with no food resources.

Basically no way to even stay close to Deity A.I. in tech using only CE. I think you have 2 options here.

1) Become a warmonger yourself. Maybe grab Literature and the GL, then go for construction and whip/chop an elepult army. Bribe Sitting Bull or Wang Kon into a war
with someone and snag some broder cities from them. You need more and better land or the A.I. will run away. Especially with only 4 cities.

2) - Stay true to your cultural victory, grab literature fast, build the Parthenon, also try for the Shwegadon Pagode (you have gold aswell), and switch into an early Pacifism for SE/Wonder economy.

-While still waiting for Shwegadon Pagode build jewish/buddhist missionaries (org. Rel.) and spread these religions around your cities.
With Literature grab the Seafood City, chop librabry and national epic and make some Great Scientists to settle them in cap ( academy) or more likely to bulb your way towards Lib (free Speech)/Printing Press or Divine Right/Constitution.

- Meanwhile Music, then Drama asap and Sistine Chapel (must have!) + Free GA. More workers, grab math and whip/chop basic infrastructure (libraries, granaries, theaters, monasteries and temples), using Music as a trait bait for Alpha, Currency, CoL, theology.

- Then decide if you can or want to win Lib. Or better bulb/tech to Philosophy or Divine Right to grab a leftover Religion for yourself and more cathedrals + Holy City with Shrine. I think Lib bulb needs GS, divine right bulb can be done with GA or GP.

Maybe better to go for Divine Right bulb with GA (own religion, chop Spiral Minaret and possible later shrine) -> CS -> Nationalism (Taj Mahal) -> Constitution (Rep). then Lib for Free Speech. Then settle GP for shrine and spread Islam around for gold. Get mercantilism too for bank (Holy City, and more free specialists)

If you want to win Lib probably better to start GA (Golden Age), switch to Caste System, crank out GS and bulb to Lib, grab Printing Press and go for democracy (Statue of Liberty, more Free Artists. Then go grab Mercantilism (more free artists, Bank for your shrine city if you still manage to get your own religion). This way possibly loses you your own religion though.

- try to get more religions to spread around in your cities . build cathedrals in your 3 cultural cities and run some artists, decide where 3th cultural city should be (eremitage there), maybe research corporations for wall street and more traderoutes. lean back, GP Farm switches to crank out GA to settle or Great work, turn culture slider up and hope no one DoW on you.
/SPOILER]

 

[Olafeson]

@monopole magnet

hi there, looks like you are new in the forums like me too . I am not 100% sure about that but i think when you post your game, it will be helpful for tell us on which settings you are playing (difficulty and speed). Looks like some difficulty below monarch/emperor judged by the scoreboard (700 B.C. and you are leading the scoreboard and no A.I. has more than 4 cities).

Spoiler :

Some mistakes i think you made early, which you will not be able to get away with on higher difficulty.

- Suboptimal start. Moving Settler 1 SW, loses river tiles, marble you lose a turn. You got a 12 turn worker but when settling 1W you get 10 turn worker, still get the phants in BFC (Big fat cross) and keep marble and river tiles. Also camp on elephants plains only makes it 1 food/3hammer/2commerce only 1 commerce better than a riverside grassland hill 1NE when you SiP. Otherwise only mediocre plain tiles. Also sucks that you settled on copper, but well bad luck i guess

- Definitely not enough workers. I can see 2 for only 4 spread out cities. Also one spend so many turns building this long road to Angkor Wat and not improving tiles or chopping. good rule of thumb is 1.5 workers/city.

-Speaking of chopping as far as i can see you only chopped 1 forest and it is already 700 B.C. you need to chop some more to get some mines and farms/cottages around your capital and also faster worker/settlers. Looks like you work some unimproved tiles in your capital and in the city on the gems too. Someone should never work unimproved tiles.

- Settling on the gems ruins the tile (with mine 1 food/ 2hammers/ 5 commerce on grassland hill when i remember correctly). Also no roads on gold/gems means no extra happiness in your cities.

- No pasture of the pigs at Angkor Thom but your worker already been there and improved the horses. Take your time and improve the pigs too before moving worker away.

- Cities way to spread out, increases maintenance cost cuz of distance to palace penalty and wastes worker turns. Also Angkor Wat has no food resources or even river tiles to grow with farms, also i think you have no IW yet, so cannot even free the gems from jungle. Basically a city that loses you money while giving nothing back.

- Building the HG in capital without stone and a non industrious leader is probably a waste of time. HG not the greatest wonder and you desperately need more workers/settlers. Hammers/turn probably better spend this way.

Anyway i am curious to see your further approach of the map. Good luck.

 

[monopole magnet]

@Olafeson Good point, thanks.

700 AD

Noble, Huts/Events off, Normal, BUG Mod

Spoiler :

I made another city to the east, but it got taken and razed by Barbarians. Note to self: Next time be pessimistic about building at least one defensive unit...

Geared up for war against Sitting Bull. Took one of his cities, but am now in kind of a stalemate. Plan is to finish him off, then build/tech up a bit.

Surprisingly enough, the barbarians have two cities that nobody wants.

I also met Zara Yaqob.

I encountered a bug with calculation of number of turns to build an improvement:

 

[monopole magnet]

1200 AD

Noble, Huts/Events off, Normal, BUG Mod

Spoiler :

The game has slooooooowed down. Almost every civ has adopted Juadism save for Hatty. I'm thinking about adopting it myself.

I took almost all of SB's cities and was about to finish him off when the peace pipe was shoved into our mouths through an AP resolution. Now I'll have to wait for a bit.

I noticed that SB tends to create a couple of terrible cities once he loses some. Perhaps this is a general trait of AI leaders?

Depending on how the Judaism/AP mechanic plays out, my plan is to either go for Wang Kon next, splitting Hatty off completely from Asoka, or taking out Hatty as she runs Hinduism and so hopefully AP won't mind. Bismarck and Zara are sitting on a different island.

I'm a bit planless as to research. I just go for military stuff.

 

[elitetroops]

@monopole magnet in NC threads we usually keep all text containing info about the map, AI leaders and so on within spoiler tags. Someone who hasn't played the map should be able to look at any page in the thread without accidentally picking up spoiler information.

About your game:

Spoiler :

Just by looking at your screenshot I can tell that you should not build Walls, Castle or Bank. Walls and Castle are just about never worth it. Sometimes you might grab them as a last minute panic whip, but this is when you have an enemy army already at your doorstep about to attack the next turn. Building them as a precaution is a waste of hammers. Banks are needed for Wall Street and Wall Street is pretty much only worth it in your corporate headquarter if you are going for space. In any other game, you might build a Bank in a city with a strong shrine, but otherwise forget about them. Build wealth or failgold instead if you need money.

Hard to tell about the best way to proceed without seeing more of the game, but taking out Egypt next has many advantages. Egypt has it's own religion, which is good as you said. Also, if you take out Wang Kon, you would have to fight in two directions from there, if aiming for conquest/domination. By taking Egypt first, your army can then continue through Korea to India.

From you 700AD screenshot, why all the longbows? When you go to war you want offensive units. In this case you should have elephants and catapults, nothing else is needed. If you are afraid of spears you could add one axe to the stack as defender, or maybe even one longbow (though rather a Sword as that is cheaper and stronger at offense). Having a bunch of LBs running around randomly is a waste. Having LBs as defenders in your own cities is also a waste. SB won't be sending anyone around your army to attack your cities. Most of your cities will never need anything but a single warrior in any game.

Overall, build less buildings and defensive units, build more offensive units, then any noble game is a breeze.

 

[unas876]

I played a few more turns here, still on Deity, am at 1 AD.

@Olafeson

Spoiler :

I don't think your math is entirely correct
I see now that I fluffed the early tech path, as I expected. You are probably right about CE here, its not the greatest idea. Wonder economy however is an entirely different beast and I wouldn't really know how to pull it off properly. Even if this wasn't Deity I don't think I could make it work without reading a strategy guide or whatever about it first. I mean, for starters: there is no stone and we are not IND. That means no Mids (also no GLH). And I know how to do two things basically: CE and SE. without cottages or mass specialists I always have trouble getting a good commerce output. Which by the way is why I tried this on Deity. On Immortal it just feels like you can win every map by just cottaging everything, which on Deity is not something you wanna do on a lot of maps.
And yeah, Bismarck grabbed the mass seafood spot north east way before I could do anything about it and he is teching like a beast. I'm very uncertain about this game, should have maybe made a few more screenshots. My only hope now is that my capital is gonna be good enough to keep up in tech and at some point I can maybe smack around Asoka if things go right, because he is in his own religion and everyone else apart from SB is in Buddhism. Unfortunately though they still like him. Hate that I can't get BULL to work so I can only assume its some first impression crap between the peacemongers.

Good news: Lain is doing a Let's Play of this map on his youtube, and from what I've seen so far he is also not cottaging his capital, so that'll probably help a lot.

 

[Olafeson]

@unas876

yeah i did watch the first episode of Lain´s Lets Play too, really suprising to see the barbs go monkeycrazy in the start, also he already got some blows from the deity A.I.

Hopefully he will make more Nobles Club games since it is more interesting to follow, when you can play the map yourself, RMG maps are often times kinda screwy.

Spoiler :

About your game, yeah looks like you are stuck and boxed in with only 5 cities. Maybe some screenshots with domestic advisor/technology screen to see your progress compared to A.I. in tech. I think more pictures/post would also be nice, especially the veterans of the forum can see more in some pictures about your game, than you can do yourself.

Looks like you managed to grow a decent Bureaucracy Cap with some cottages beyond size 9-10, so i wrote a bunch of big BullCrap eh?
Yeah maybe a swift attack vs Germany would help since he is on another continent and only has access to galleys, so he can not launch a scary see invasion.

Good luck with your next steps.

 

[monopole magnet]

1600 AD

Noble, Huts/Events off, Normal, BUG Mod

Spoiler :

Wardecced SB again and finished him off. By AP vote he got one of his cities gifted back to him which caused a slight delay. I then adopted Judaism as state religion and wardecced Hatty. I spent ages waiting in front of Thebes reducing her +90% defense with 3 Catapults. Doh!

Running Nationhood. Maintenance costs are starting to get high.

Wang Kon has vassaled Asoka.

Plan is to finish off Hatty, then go for Wang Kon.

 

[monopole magnet]

1884 AD

Noble, Huts/Events off, Normal, BUG Mod

Spoiler :

Finished Hatty except for her little island, then went for Wang Kon, then for Asoka. State Property really helped with maintenance costs. Domination victory.

 

[Olafeson]

@monopole magnet

Spoiler :

Nicely played mate, was a bit worried that maybe Wang Kon could be a tough nut to crack since he had a vassal and was kind of same size as you.
But looks like you finished him rather quickly.

I think this game was not too hard for you, maybe we see us in next Noble Club game, i think you can definetly move one difficulty lvl up and play next game as on Prince difficulty.

 

[MeowZeDung]

I played this map on IMM to a winning position, but was not that interested in pulling through the long slog to get to the victory screen.

Spoiler :

HA rush on Sitting Bull where I took his capital and 2 other decent cities while razing another. Took techs for peace. Wang Kon foolishly declared on me during the 10 turn peace treaty with SB and I took a good Korean city, razed another, and took more techs for peace. He also bribed Hatty in on me, but after killing a couple of her units she took peace. DOWed on SB again and finished him off. From there I was certainly in a powerful position, but I didn't handle the economy as well as I should have, and I didn't feel like digging out of the hole.

I am interested on starting to try my hand at Deity though. . . Are there enough Deity level players on these forums to make a slower play through with regular updates for advice worthwhile?

 

[Olafeson]

@MeowZeDung

Lel, if you do not find any expierenced deity players in this forum i do not know where else you going to find them. If you going to play next NC on deity i gonna join.
Though i am only a immortal pleb and till now i still have to wait till i can have my first deity victory in HoF.

You kinda need next lvl mechanics and gameknowledge for deity. Failgold, Fogbusting, whipping into goldoverflow, Bulb to stay in Tech race.

Fkin fat fingerfish deity A.I. , i swear one day. One glorious day i gonna beat the horsehocky out of you. Dressing up in a suit afterwards and walking through town like a PIMP.

 

[dutchfire]

IMM/Epic: 1340 AD Domination victory

Spoiler :

Turns out that the own continent is enough for domination, so Elephant+Trebuchets was enough to conquer Asoka and that was it. Had I kept an eye on this, could've won earlier I suppose. Now, I was preparing for economic recovery.

 

[MeowZeDung]

@MeowZeDung
You kinda need next lvl mechanics and gameknowledge for deity. Failgold, Fogbusting, whipping into goldoverflow, Bulb to stay in Tech race.

Those are the aspects of the game I like and am pretty good at. That's "fun" micro in my book.

My main struggle on Deity (and IMM to a lesser extent) is balancing REX and the economy. I know I must grab valuable city sites to have a prayer, but often times grabbing those sites tanks my research. If I happen to miss the window on Aesthetics/Math/CoL monopoly by even 1 turn, it can completely devastate my chances it seems.

 

[Olafeson]

@MeowZeDung

probably best to just start your own thread in the strategy&tips section of the forum and post get a catchy thread title and post some pictures and starting saves to lure people in. I guess even the expierenced players like AZ, Fippy, lain, etc. can struggle on deity, the bonus the A.I. receives is not a joke. If you are interested we could replay this specific map in deity difficulty (sury 185). Then compare the results. I just play older NC games on deity right now, but lost already 2 and the current game looks bad too.

 

[unas876]

Deity, 375 AD

Spoiler :

Alright, enough about my awful city placement, my bad luck with Bismarck settling the continent super early and all the rest of it. I've now seen a lot of Lains Let's Play and that told me most of what I need to know about that
I'm on my way to Lib, with any luck I can maybe make it to MT.

I realize that might fail because of my friend Osaka (shoutouts to AZ ), in which case I'm not sure if I can keep on keeping up and maybe self-tech it or make it to Rifling or whatever in time.
But here's the real kicker about this game. Even if do make it: what then?


Its like theres no great target, man! Bribing the whimps on each other, thats hardly gonna work. But all of them will likely peace vassal to each other, should I decide to take on one of them. Maybe SB would be possible, but then again: huge unit spammer, super longbows all over the place, he has like 13 towns and resists capitulating 10/10. I would love to attack Osaka, but I'll have Bismarck or Wang on me in no time.
I don't think I can win, but I guess I'll try until I know I've lost. Maybe I'll get lucky and get peace treaties from a bunch of guys at once or whatever

 

[Olafeson]

@unas876

Spoiler :

Pretty sure you can beat Asoka to Lib. He has no education yet and if he is not really close to it, you should get it.

Then on the other hand, i barely got a glimpse at your city count. Looks like you got 6 cities, since i assume you are last place on the scoreboard.

I am not expierenced enough to tell when each leader will accept techs/money for war, but i think if you declare on Zara , you can bribe Hatsche on him as well.
Basically only option i see here for Cuirassier War, as i assume that is your strategy.

It may be possible to bribe SB into war with either Wang or Hatsche, i think he can be bribed when cautious towards A.I. and pleased towards you.
You might need to gift him smth, or give him a crapcity in the tundra to the north and switch religions and civics though, to get him pleased.
Then backstab him.

Other option maybe:

Declare on SB and bribe Wang on him with maybe Education, hatsche also might join if you can somehow make her lose 2-3 points of relations to SB with maybe Civic/religion switch him. Then just make sure you also can vassal him.

Still with Sb as a vassal, not sure if you can win. Other option would be not to use Lib for MT but for Constituion and go for a Culture Victory Attempt, but then i think someone else got Sistine Chapel already i assume.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Prince/Normal/No events or Huts.
Figure I'd chill with one of these things; haven't done for a while.

Fun map where the situation finally gives me an excuse to do things that wouldn't normally be that great.

Also, unexpectedly, we had an AI try to AP cheese me. What kind of coward would do such a thing?

Spoiler :

And yes I was lazy and I think I didn't even chop the trees near my capital for shame!

Essentially due to the slow growth rate, one can be a bit more lax with the whips and also specailists can be a bigger deal since those plains tile aren't really giving you much. And of course wonders with settled great people. Not that I do that regardless...

I also picked a bad tech path. I went AH ---> BW, which resulted in many idle worker turns. It would have been better to get agriculture or even wheel before BW since that would allow me to either farm floodpains or build a road to that future gold city. Growth was so slow that I'd end up chopping warriors which is silly so a 2nd city site got made fast.

The AIs made wonders really fast for this level, mostly owing to Wang having stone. Henge/GW were taken before anything could really be done, and as a result the barbarians came from everywhere. They had the annoying tendency of bypassing warriors that I put on hills, and SB was too busy hiding in his cities to help spawnbust.



The marble in the capital allowed me to get the Temple of Artemis which made me pretty rich and the oracle. I oracled Feudalism which really wasn't that great of an idea especially with every strategical resource anyways and everyone seemed peaceful except for Bismark who looked weak. I also was too clever and built the oracle in 2 cities to get fail gold, but forgot to cancel the one not in my capital. Oops.

I think I had the idea of quick capping Kon with LB/Cata and quick vassals but at this point the worker count was so poor that I was tempted to switch into serfdom. Almost. And then the tech trades began as the AIs got Alphabet pretty timely as I dispensed the goodness of having a monarch around.



Cities were founded to the west to stop SB from taking those nice floodplains, and jungle gems for later. I also shoved a city down south to mess with Wang Kon and creative really shines here as the food easily flipped.

At this point I try for the Great Lighthouse.and spamming barays which is something I never do until late. This allowed me to take a shot at the Hanging Gardens. Both failed. I also take the desert spot to the east with more gold, because Bismark was getting smart and sneaking cities in the back. I proceed to go the typical CS ---> Music ---> Lib path and go for hardcore science. Trading for calendar and finishing the MoM not long after the Music GA comes along lets me go for that lib push.

Buddhism is really popular now, and as a result fearing possible AP shenanigans, I trade around a bit for theology and try to build the AP.... Bismark ends up beating me by a few turns. Curse the Great Library!

This gets a bit annoying as everyone loves Bismark, including Hatty who isn't even the same religion as him. He constantly spams Diplomatic victory but my population is big enough to block him from winning. (Hey, food is useful!). I meet Zara Yaqob which for some reason i never found and we get along pretty well, especially after I switch into theocracy and start building some HAs to turn into Cuirs.... I have no idea why I forgot I had elephants.



The rest is pretty typical. Lib Military Tradition, upgrade to Cuirs, beg everyone for a little so no backstabs and run over the SB menace that nobody really likes. I also traded Nationalism as a bribe to Yaqob which honestly was probably a bad move, but hey good relationships.

To make things easier, Wang decides to become a vassal. Maybe he knew he would get owned, but I'll take it.



Hatty's one of the 2 last remaining hindus, and thus an easy target. As usual she caps quickly. I make all my vassals do Theo (for Yaqob) and Caste (for Wang Kon) This gives me enough population to win a religous victory as Bismark's been pressing it the last 50 turns or so. Incidentially Yaqob was plotting war against Asoka, which would have been my next target. It's the thought that counts, so go him!

@monopole magnet

Spoiler :

That's probaly the first time I've seen Wang Kon actually do anything. He seems to have a beast start.

 

[Fish Man]

First 75 turns on noble. I'm not looking for a challenging AI, just trying to win science as fast as possible and on the lowest "fair" difficulty. Successful CS slingshot. I'll oilephant-rush SItting Bull and Wang Kon next.

 

[Fish Man]

Into the industrial era we go - can we make sub-t300 science win? Literally everyone else is lightyears behind, so I'll have to do it myself.