Nobles' Club 220: Pacal II of the Mayan Empire

[AcaMetis]

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 Pacal II of Maya, whom we last played in NC 169. The Maya start with Mysticism and Mining.

• Traits: Pacal is Expansive and Financial. Expansive gives you +2 in each city, a +25% bonus when buildings Workers, and a +100% bonus when building Granaries. Financial adds +1 to every tile which already produces 2+, be it due to the nature of the tile or the resource/improvement located on it.
  
• The UB: The Ball Court, a Colosseum with +3 instead of +1. Combine Ball Courts with Pacal's Expansive trait to grow your cities to massive sizes, or whip them into the ground to the point where even Montezuma would call you crazy .
  
• The UU: The Holkan, a Spearman that does not require a resource and is immune to First Strikes. They're reasonably effective defensive units, but Axes will murder them. Their immunity to FS will generally come into play against Archers (particularly PRO archers and Skirmishers) as well as Keshiks, which trade in the HA's own immunity to FS for +1 FS instead.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, tropical climate, High sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

Moved a distant, certain to be ruined due to AI capitol placement Fish over to the player's shores. Also swapped the starting position of two AIs in an attempt to make the map less of a nightmare, although whether that made the map easier or harder remains to be seen.

Spoiler specifically :

15+ cities Mansa Musa or 15+ cities Kublai Khan? I went with the latter, seemed like the less nightmarish situation, but that may have been a mistake on my part...

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 220 Pacal II 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 labelled 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.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

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.

 

[krikav]

Ooooh, ivory!
<3 <3

 

[Major Tom]

And stones

 

[AcaMetis]

Yep . So, where do the experts think one should settle here? SIP seems like an obvious choice to me, but I thought the same on the Asoka map and that sure proved me wrong . So are there any fancy moves or plains hills I'm missing this time, or is SIP the best choice?

 

[krikav]

Oh, the start is tough to decide.
One is almost overwhelmed by the different options. Coastal starts are usually crazy that way, and here we have traits and stone to complicate decisions even further.

We are a exp leader, so getting at least 4 hammers in the inner ring would be lovely.
If we can't manage that, getting 3F in inner ring could be an option, that way we can grow to size2 and then work two tiles, getting the exp bonus for the worker.

Settlement on the stone is one thing that stands out alot, we have mining/myst and thus masonry is super cheap. Perhaps rushing TGW here is possible play.
Not sure how all things line up though, have to start playing for that...
But that does give a extra hammer in the center, guaranted to bring up the total to 4H after borderpop T6.
But perhaps growing to size2 on the cow is still better.
Perhaps fishing->masonry->BW (clams are lovely with FIN)

Warrior move SE makes most sense I think, only thing that can give up more info T0.

 

[sampsa]

SIP (or 1NE) is really slow due to starting techs, but not sure if there is anything better. Settling on the stone is a fast start (EXP!), though you are kind of sacrificing your capital. Well, 160 some 115T later isn't a huge price. Another idea would be to wonder inlands by the river hoping to find corn or wet rice...

 

[earthy]

I would be tempted to SIP here and tech hunting-AH-BW. improve the ivory and then cow, settler at size 2(then cry because the worker has nothing to do).

First settler or two would try to grab some land along the river, then backfill on the stone and 1s of the pigs, maybe go for mids.

 

[sampsa]

One idea

Spoiler :

Settle on stone, go BW. Settler at size 1 working mine, after mining worker goes to chop. Settle 1SW of pigs for instant connection, unless it kills seafood. That is 2nd city T25 I think, should be worth something. AH still two techs away though and fishing would bring some ...

@earthy There is also settle NW NE which grabs the hill so worker has something to do. Maybe settler at size 3 in this case.

 

[krikav]

Clearly a fun start with so many divergent ideas and possibilities! If people could post updates at intervalls early on it could be very interesting to compare!
I'm preoccupied with another game for a while longer though, but will join in on the fun later.

I had so much fun with TGW last game, so I'm tempted to go down that route...

 

[earthy]

@sampsa I feel like we kind of box ourselves in that way. SIP is a slow start for sure, but it guarantees us 2-3 good backfill cities and we have a good chance to move inland for more land. I'm afraid that if we settle the stone then pigs, an AI might place their 3rd city with our cow/ivory in the second ring and we'll be boxed in.

 

[sampsa]

I agree, expansion along the coastline like that can be risky, especially on deity. However, we do have ivory, if you know what I mean.

 

[krikav]

@earthy Thats crystal clear reasoning, but it's two killers for cities we get though, and with ivory on top of that, things have to be really really dire for us to not be able to claim more land by force if we have to.

 

[sampsa]

Deity T25

Spoiler :

I think I like this, as it's so much faster than SIP. Holkan will arrive in time for the first barb wave, which shouldn't come from multiple directions.

 

[sampsa]

T50

Spoiler :

Qin completes GW T27, atta boy. Starting area is so rich that it's very OK to settle closely. Not that I had a choice anymore . I think I'll settle 4th to the south to share clam, get cottages up and go towards construction. Qin's 3rd and 4th cities are basically a bunch of huts in the jungle which should slow him down. I think the game is shaping up nicely with lots of fun stuff in the future.

 

[Pedro78]

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Beeline HAs from here? Could attack before T75. Flatland Nanjing and Susa look appealing. Could transition into Elephants later, commerce doesn't look like an issue here. And you'll always have Mansa as a trading partner. High seas will keep everything nice and packed. Looks like a really sweet map.

 

[sampsa]

@Pedro78

Spoiler :

Yeah certainly an option that I had pondered only briefly. I pretty much know that I can successfully handle elepult-war, not so sure about HA-war on deity. Maybe I just need to be more confident. Will need to think about it a bit more, as yeah, the prize is more cities way faster if I can pull it off.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Personally I think Elepult might end up working out better than a HA rush. It's a later attack date, but it's not as if those jungle huts are worth anything until someone clears the jungle and slaps down some improvements. Preferably the Iron Working obsessed Qin and his double speed workers, methinks .

Either way, definitely curious to see how this game will go .

 

[earthy]

Spoiler t16 :

After moving the warrior I spot a hill to the southwest that can be mined. I decide to settle 1W so I have another tile to work early and hoping for a bit more forest, but it turns out it's all jungle. The banana is nice for a 3f 1c tile though. Teched hunting into AH, and about to improve the ivory and then the cow. Will hopefully mine one of the hills next before they both get covered in jungle, and that should just about take my worker to bronze working. Farming the banana would be nice but I don't think it's worth teching agri at this point.

I'll have to explore a bit more after I can fogbust the jungle but it seems possible that no one is to my south. I see some ocean to the west so that might be a little jungle peninsula where the continent ends. I see there's some forest around the cow to the north so that could be an option, but even if I can't get it I should be able to get four decent cities here.

 

[earthy]

Spoiler t50 :

nice cities @sampsa . Looks like you're a bit ahead in improvements here. Not sure if that's because of the better starting location or because I went a bit overboard with the fogbusters. Probably should have just got the first settler out at size two, but it felt like if I was building the mine I should use it so I grew to size 3 in 5 turns, getting out two warriors to fogbust the jungle. I also lost the horse to Cyrus, at least for the foreseeable future. It's possible with a library I can someday get it back, but I'm not sure. On the flipside I did gain two river tiles, and will eventually have a pretty damn nice capital. Now the question is whether or not to go for mids, and with so much food in such a tightly packed location I think the answer has to be yes. Rep/COL will be very strong here.

Plan is: Mutal grows to size 4 after worker, whips settler for clam/fish city. Lakamha whips workboat, grows back to size 2 and builds a worker. Chicken Itza I'm not too sure. Maybe it will work a cottage & whip a granary at size four or something. I may also want to consider whipping a settler there to gift Cyrus so I don't feel the wrath of his immortals..

 

[Tobiyogi]

I wanted to find out if settling on the ivory would bring 3C but it's only 2/1/1. Settling on stone is tempting as well, we keep the good tiles, have +1h and save a cottage tile for later.