[BTS] Nobles' Club 193 - Catherine

[elementoffear]

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 Catherine of Russia, whom we last played in NC CXXVII. The Russians start with Hunting and Mining.

• Traits: Catherine is Creative and Imperialistic. CRE gives +2, which means cities expand without needing a cultural building; it also gives faster colosseums, libraries and theatres. IMP means 50% faster productions of settlers, and doubles the rate of Great Generals. The combination means Catherine is good at REXing.
• The UB: The Research Institute, a Laboratory that gives 2 free scientists, which boost late-game if you're going for a space race (or high-tech late game war).
  
  
  
  
• The UU: The Cossack, a Cavalry unit that gets +50% versus mounted units. Cavalry are a powerful UU in their time period already, as Horse Archers are in theirs.
  
  

And the start :

Spoiler map details :

Big & Small with all default options

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:

There are no hard and fast rules here. Fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do suggest that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards. You can post as often as you like; here's one suggestion:

• 4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
• 1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, where you're thinking of putting cities, etc)
• 500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
• 1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didn't, met other
• continent if applicable, etc)
• 1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
• End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)

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 189 Mao 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.

Last note : This is my first time hosting, so I probably made some mistakes, if you notice anything wrong let me know and I'll try and fix

 

[elementoffear]

Saved for probable fixes I'll need to add

edit: (as requested, better snapshot of start):

 

[Gasp]

Good thing we start with Hunting I'd move the scout west, probably on the grass hill to see what's there. Settling 1E looks good

 

[Pedro78]

Looks like a nice start.

@elementoffear it would be perfect if you made a screenshot of the starting position where we can see the whole revealed land and with resource bubbles turned on

 

[Pangaea]

What Pedro said. Screenshot without resource bubbles? Thankfully easy enough to spot the resources here, even for me. That's double gold, yes?

Also, the Cossack is great. I'm not sure what evolution they go through that causes them to fly, but they're pretty awesome before that.

 

[dutchfire]

Good thing we start with Hunting I'd move the scout west, probably on the grass hill to see what's there. Settling 1E looks good

This is what I'm planning to do.

 

[Pedro78]

Also, the Cossack is great. I'm not sure what evolution they go through that causes them to fly, but they're pretty awesome before that.

If you can ride a horse you can pilot a chopper

 

[Anysense]

Two-hammer start with double cows combined with imperialistic looked good and I thought I'd give it a try on deity.

Spoiler 1560 BC :

Moved scout to see if its worth moving west or whether I miss food if move east. Scout revealed nothing special, and after considering 1SW gamble I moved settler on PH 1E. With only plain cows for food Moscow grows painfully slow, it takes 9 turns to grow to lvl 2, but settler is already 7 turns at lvl 2, so its actually a fairly fast start. Later it turned out I missed horses... Hell with the horses, AI's took care of the barbs for me. And it seems that Hatty the Lightning Rod is going to take care of the warmongers.
Did not research much. AH obviously for cows. Agri? There was only that corn to the southeast which I expected to be claimed by Gilgamesh quickly. But he didn't bother. That is opdd, such a lovely sot with corn, cows and double wine... I grabbed it and switched to Agri just in time to begin imroving corn on the turn the city was founded. Finished Writing and researched Wheel (not sure of the latter).
Expanded to 5 cities and built 3 libraries, first GS is on the way. Everything seem to go too smoothly, its just too good to be true. Probably should hook up horses asap.
Hatshepsut offered to open borders... Thanks, Hatty, but I don't want to take your place on someone's blacklist.

Spoiler :

Overview

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[elementoffear]

Looks like a nice start.

@elementoffear it would be perfect if you made a screenshot of the starting position where we can see the whole revealed land and with resource bubbles turned on

What Pedro said. Screenshot without resource bubbles? Thankfully easy enough to spot the resources here, even for me. That's double gold, yes?

Also, the Cossack is great. I'm not sure what evolution they go through that causes them to fly, but they're pretty awesome before that.

Done (1st comment in thread)

 

[Pangaea]

Started on this one and have played 65 turns, so 1400BC. Immortal.

Spoiler :

After moving the scout, I struggled to decide where to settle. Was tempting to move SW due to plains cows, but feared there was nothing. After more pondering, I settled NW. Apart from the wine spot, there is lack of food every which way, so not a good area. Stuck between plains cows, desert, jungle and foodless ocean. Had some issues with barbs too, as it's a huge area. Thankfully a barb spear invaded Gilgamesh instead of us, and apparently died on archers. Feared I had to divert to Archery.

Just settled the fourth city, and feel like I have more control on the barbs now. Pretty ugly, but it is what it is. Went straight for Alpha basically, so should be able to backfill a lot soon. Hopefully Gilgamesh is plotting on Hatty and not me.

Spoiler :

 

[Pangaea]

Played a bit longer and was finally starting to get more into the game, when I realise it will be futile. Or at least that I can't be bothered. 500BC.

Spoiler :

Of course it makes perfect sense to plot war on a neighbour you are cautious with, rather than the neighbour everybody hates, who you are annoyed with, and recently were furious with. Awesome.

 

[Olafeson]

Played a bit longer and was finally starting to get more into the game, when I realise it will be futile. Or at least that I can't be bothered. 500BC.

Spoiler :

Of course it makes perfect sense to plot war on a neighbour you are cautious with, rather than the neighbour everybody hates, who you are annoyed with, and recently were furious with. Awesome.

Oh, that is unfortunate Pangaea. Looked like you had a good game until the DoW. Looks to me like you have only 3 turns until Gilgamesh will take your city. Whipping 1- 2 Elephants will probably not be enough. But i think you could maybe recover from the blow of losing a city. It is immortal and not deity and you have decent land, good score , then access to elephants and his stack is not like very huge. Would be nice to see if you could still win the game.

 

[Pangaea]

Don't have access to elephants yet, nor metal hooked up, so warfare is futile. Could gift away a city and beg archery, but then I'm still just shooting myself in the foot, so I moved on to other games instead. Probably possible to come back, but I don't feel like playing such an uphill game, especially so food-starved. Hopefully others are more lucky (less unlucky). Looks like heaps of people have downloaded the game.

 

[dutchfire]

I played this a bit on Immortal, my diplo situation was better than Pangaea, but I overexpanded and lacked commerce.

 

[Olafeson]

Did play this map on immortal (Huts off / events on). Lately only played civ 4 games for myself with Events on, just more interesting for me with the Miniquests

Spoiler :

Pretty standard game. Was lucky in the start, Egypt was Arch enemy of all other civs and had only 3 cities, so Gilgamesh declared war on her, she was building wonders and also was surrounded by jungle so she didn t stand a chance. Was observing the war with some chariots and got lucky that Gilgamesh just barely didnt manage to take her cities and so i could grab them for free with only 2-3 chariots i build to take a barb city.

Afterwards Hatshe was lying in the dust, i got myself with the help of the marble the GL and the Parthenon, switching into caste system , getting some GS and winning Lib, then teching to MT for cuirs and with Golden Age from Music GA and Taj Mahal + preproducing HA and upgrading with 2 GM, Suleiman was pretty easy to take.

Teching to Steel to finish off Ragnar and Brennus with Kossaks and Canons, and later Gilgamesh who was pretty huge ( he already had tanks) but lost to a war on 2 fronts against me and Ragnar who i gifted some units and attacked myself with Infantry and artillery.

Then just sitting back teched Mass Media and let my vassals elect me to a Diplomatic victory. Joao made a colony (Lincoln) but i prefered the easy route of Diplomatic victory instead of building up a Navy and taking him out.

Was a fun game but a bit easy ( at least in my game) with

Spoiler :

marble

, elephant and catherines good traits.
Guess on deity, this game would be quite a nailbiter. Also i think i got some nice events, which ofc make it again easier to win.

 

[Anysense]

Its rather a pain on deity if you try to play peacefully, but the military solution is pretty straightforward: elepult Gilgamesh, then Hatty and use the conquered land to win the game.

 

[unas876]

Imm, 1240BC

Spoiler :

I probably should have gone for the pigs near Gilgameshes borders, now they are wasted. But on the other hand I thought hes CRE, he's going to get that eventually and I didn't wanna settle too close to him to avoid an early DoW. You could argue that it doesn't matter if I attack him early myself with Elepults, but I haven't decided on that quite yet. It's a little bit late already I think. Would have to get HBR, pray to god that I can trade that for Alpha and Maths and then go for Construction. Not a terribly easy task with this land, but I'm usually kinda screwed if I don't have good cottage spots or food + Mids.
There's still plenty of land to the west that could be settled and there are also some spots to the north that would be decent once IW comes in, but I can't really afford to expand anymore right now. Don't even have the gold mine set up yet since I thought it better to block Gilgamesh instead of going for the gold earlier (2W1S of Rostov you can see it).
I think there are pretty much two choices:
1) Gift my next settler to Gilgamesh (that guy DoWs me pretty much every game he's in...) although he should declare on Hatty if he was gonna plot on someone (everyone hates her), try to somehow finance further expansion and tech to Alpha. Basically play it peacefully with the help of the Marble.
2) What I said above, try to Elepult Gilgamesh, possibly Hatty afterwards, she's usually nice and squishy.

I tend towards option one. Hatty and Gilgamesh don't appear to have much room left to expand into so I could mop them up later with ease and they should be at each others throat instead of mine. The problem with Elepulting now would be that Brennus and Suleiman would probably get most of my territory in the west and northwest, so I'd gain territory but lose it on the other side.

Not sure yet, any input welcome.

 

[Anysense]

@unas876

Spoiler :

You seem to have selfteched a lot, that's the root of your problems. Through Alpha beeline with sloppy micro I got to Construction in 800BC with attack date ~600BC (deity). Why Alpha? Build research is unusually strong here with such hammer-heavy cities, particularly the capital. BW is a bit off the point as the capital is an awsome settler/worker pump without chops. The only reasonable detour is the Wheel, if you really need chariots for protection, easily affordable on immortal.

 

[Olafeson]

@unas876

Spoiler :

In my opinion you could have had a way better start with settling 1E from your starting location on the plains hill.
You waste one turn and you lose some river grassland tiles for cottages, but gain 1 extra hammer in your capital from the start throughout the whole game for free. Leads to faster worker, faster improving the cows and faster Settler/Worker production.

Same for the Spot of St. Petersburg and Rostov? (the city in the desert at the coast). Settle St. Petersburg 1W on the plains hill (1 extra hammer, hard to attack for Gilgamesh, still grabs the corn and the marble. You can t improve the wine anyway until later in the game + the 1 extra farm you can put down on the river does not make a huge difference, it is only + 1 food. Also Rostov should be your 2nd city or 3th city in this game, not the 4th, juicy flood plains and the gold will boost your early research.

I only count 3 workers for 4 cities and 2 settlers in production? You need more workers. I think you should not settle any more spots until you get to alpha and have at least the gold mine and the flood plains with cottages. Otherwise you will cripple your research with maintenance cost.

 

[Anysense]

Yeah, the settling pattern is a bit odd. If you can settle with food in the second ring, it does not mean that you have to.