Noble's Club 208: De Gaulle of France

[Fippy]

Old units + cannons relies on scouting and fighting weak AIs, it's ofc possible due to AI stupidity
Tactically interesting strat imo, like landing on solid defensive tiles. Pikes being the main defenders, i would bring plenty.
Imo not worth doing if Rifles or Grens are only a ~dozen turns away, but can be good with a weak tech rate (cos steel is already so expensive).

 

[krikav]

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Yes, don't sweat it, dozens of things that can go wrong completely.
Having cannons flanked by knights is no fun.

It's something that I usually open with, say I have a nearby target and I'm teching to steel first (or lib it), then you have built these small units (maces/pikes/trebs) once you hit steel you upgrade trebs and hit your neighbour the next turn. This can happen at a early enough date that it's just a complete slaughter and very cost efficient war.
All the time you tech/snail toward rifling (or grenadiers if you are starved for commerce) to have something stronger to follow up with.


In this map, things are complicated by isolation so a Astro "detour" is needed. Sure, we are really close so galleons with circumnavigation can ship units to Mao in one turn.
I suspect that if you want to pull of a stunt and get a really early date on this map, it involves naval grenadiers somehow. (Build maces, promote to CR2, upgrade).

 

[gavenkoa]

if you have to give away an important tech to someone and have a choice of who to give it to, try to give it away to someone who's not going to trade it around quickly.

Thanks for this tip. Earlier I was selling/reselling to everyone. I thought if one AI got tech it available to others almost immediately.

But I can bribe AI to "stop trading" / "begin war" to make relations negative.

At which relation level does AI stop trading? I traded with -2 definitely.

 

[AcaMetis]

At which relation level does AI stop trading? I traded with -2 definitely.

It depends on their attitude level, not the exact number, as well as the individual AI. Some will readily trade techs even when they're Annoyed, others won't trade at all unless they're at least Pleased. The one consistent rule is that AIs will never trade with their Worst Enemies.

As far as bribing AIs, if you want to break up an alliance block, definitely bribe someone to war over just a stop-trade, if possible. The latter rarely does much and only imposes minor penalties, whereas a war has a chance to escalate as AIs bribe in other AIs. Of course it also has a chance to accomplish absolutely nothing as both AIs just sit there and build units for a few turns before signing a peace treaty, but at least that's -3 for declaring war that'll never wear off.

 

[SquidInk]

Thanks for all the advice. On second thought going to beat up someone will likely take forever to prepare for (but that conquer gold though....). Not sure it's what I want to do after reading your posts... Plus my best production cities are my culture cities so I am not building culture if I am building an army...

Spoiler :

I wasn't super keen on getting Rifling because it's yet another tech path to go down. That's why I was thinking Knights + Cannons + musketeers and maybe a pinch of Grenadiers...

I guess what I may do in the immediate is try to grab Economics first for the extra trade route and, hopefully, the great merchant (and incorporate Sid Sushi later probably). I'll then shift to culture and slow research GunPowder, Chemistry, Corporation, Scientific Method, Bio, and Medicine. The AIs are no military threat to me without Astro, and Chemistry will give me the warships I need to defend from a potential invasion later...

 

[Olafeson]

say I have a nearby target and I'm teching to steel first (or lib it)

Oh, that sounds interesting. You did take steel as the free technology for Liberalism in your games ? In deity games? What is a good way to achieve that without losing Lib to an AI? Or does it mean you take chemistry as the free tech "on the tech path way" to steel, to get there quicker?

What is your bulb + tech path, and how can you avoid an A.I. beating you to Lib when going for a tech like steel which has very hard prerequisites (engineering, gunpowder, chemistry).

 

[Olafeson]

Spoiler :

Also cool to see that this NC game is played a lot. I personally skipped the map after playing the first 50 turns. As i revealed my island i was not confident in my ability to beat this isolation game. The island looked to poor for my taste besides the nice marble and stone, to try to beat it on deity. Decided to rather watch Lain struggle on the map. Or not struggle and win like he usually does.

But curious to see how many other players will succeed (or fail) on this map. Especially if someone like Squidink can pull of a culture victory with this island.

 

[krikav]

@Olafeson

Spoiler :

Libbing steel on deity is certainly ambitious and nothing you can hope to achieve in any game or even half, but when it works out it's loads of fun.

I did it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/immortal-university-xviii.319650/page-4
I see now that I didn't write up so detailed the period up until lib. It's often a quite uneventful period, and quite often it's alot of focus on tech trading and keeping an eye on options.
But the period after lib->steel and a massive whipfest and civic-swap dance is quite detailed.

It's not as if you can pick and choose, sometimes you have to settle for lib-chem or pp or nationalism or whatever you can get.
Usual recipie I follow is 1bulb into education and one into lib, but it can be 2 into edu, 1 into edu and one into chemistry or PP can also be the case (well, into PP is more common if you go for lib-rifling, which is imho way less effective and even more exotic. (Probably just me who don't know how to do it good.)

Things that tilt you in that direction is a close neighbour, lack of horses (or just a tough neighbour that would give you unacceptable losses if you go cuirs).
You also need good teching power and/or GPgeneration. (In that shaka game I had good opportunity for GPerson generation and I had a killer capital, only ting that was lacking was some trait like phi/fin).

You also have to keep eyes on the general pace of the AIs, and if on a continent that means checking wonders abit. If you see univ of sancore built in a distant land when you reach CS, or if taoism is founded abroad at a early date it's best to simply scrap any hopes of such a ambitious goal. (Might be best to simply ignore lib at all.)

With regards to pre-reqs, it helps alot if you manage to trade for both engineering and gunpowder.

 

[krikav]

And yes, I'm extremly delighted that there is so much activity in this NC game!!
I have a Kublai map generated for NC209 (which was scheduled yesterday...), and will fix the WB-files shortly.
I _think_ that I have managed to strike a good balance that will provide a map that is fun and easy on normal difficulties, but still prove a worthy challenge on imm/deity for those who seek that.

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

Also cool to see that this NC game is played a lot. I personally skipped the map after playing the first 50 turns. As i revealed my island i was not confident in my ability to beat this isolation game. The island looked to poor for my taste besides the nice marble and stone, to try to beat it on deity. Decided to rather watch Lain struggle on the map. Or not struggle and win like he usually does.

But curious to see how many other players will succeed (or fail) on this map. Especially if someone like Squidink can pull of a culture victory with this island.

Spoiler :

My opinion of libbing steel: don't count on it on most deity iso maps. The huge detour to astro + complete unpredictability of what is happening on the other continent means there are factors influencing whether AIs reach lib 600 or 1200AD or anywhere in between almost completely out of your control.

You read the situation after you meet all the AIs and the judge to see if you can make it. Because spending 2 bulbs on astro and THEN getting another GS or two to bulb edu takes a lot of time, that you don't have if Mansa and HC are best buds by 500BC and then swapping techs every other turn. Here in this game the high sea level + some of the worst techers in the game + GLib was the perfect combination of factors that made libbing steel possible (at least for me). Mostly the AI tech rate here was so pathetic I've seen the game go faster on many immortal maps, which is no small thing to say considering the gap between those two difficulties. And of course you have Sitting Troll who does weird and nonsensical things like declare on WK (my game), or get gunships before infantry in Lain's playthrough.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to bulb chem or lib or anything else much useful after 2x bulbing astro and reaching paper. The bulb path shoehorns you into PP -> sci meth -> physics -> electricity, and if you've gotten THAT far without the AI reaching lib then you're probably playing on monarch or using a HoF start. It's also basically impossible to bulb lib after astro because lib requires edu which requires paper...and then you run into the aforementioned problem.

 

[SquidInk]

@Fish Man

Spoiler :

Yeah, I am 150 turns away from victory. A whole lot will likely go wrong until then and I am not sure how I'll manage to keep my culture slider cranked up. I do have 4 Great artists saved up for culture bombs and I am slowly working towards building temples and cathedrals, but I should have started that process much, much earlier.
The future is very, very uncertain right now... Not sure how I'll continue to get that fail gold without staying ahead of techs the unlock wonders...

 

[Anysense]

@SquidInk , not sure what can trouble you on Monarch, no nasty Deity AIs screwing your culture game up by winning space in 17xx. The situation wasn't exactly calling for culture, but those little monarch buggers are falling behind in tech and should not be able to hurt you in any way.

 

[krikav]

@SquidInk

Spoiler :

I understand perfecly the worry.
Most often when I go culture, it's more or less right after lib->nationalism (for free speach+hermitrage), and you do manage to get some trades and get to muskets or perhaps even grenadiers, but it's usually impossible to get trades for rifling.
And then, as you let your empire stagnate techwise building carefully ornamented stone gargoyles everywhere, the other AIs soon catch up, reach parity and then surpass you techwise.
After that, it's a long road where you are hopelessly behind and whatever muskets you have is of little comfort as you start to scout infantry, anti-tanks and SAM-infantry.

It's important that you have diplomacy under control when this happends!
That being said, there is alot of things going for you this game.
Most importantly, you are on your own island (not a landtarget), making you waaay less likely as a target for war.
But also, the AIs are kind of stunted on this map, and likely to be at each others throats much of the time.

 

[SquidInk]

Turn 331 / 1911 AD: Cultural Victory

Spoiler :

Well it took longer than it should have, but I finally achieved victory. After last time, I switched to Organized Religion to build missionaries and started building cathedrals. I also cultured bombed with 6 great artists so that sped things up nicely. Not having to have an army was ideal to run Pacifism.

I was so far ahead in tech that I kept up well with trades and selling old techs. I did switch back to 100% research at some point to get Communism. State Property was a massive boost to my economy.

Caste system was great for improving the workshops and running merchant specialists in the cities that had coastal tiles and.or a surplus of food. I did end up turning some cottage into farms also.

Thanks again for creating this map; I enjoyed it. This is also the first game I played fully in a while.