Nobles' Club 225: Mao Zedong of China

[scheines]

Spoiler T235, Pt II :

So, I managed the Taj, which brings the tally of GA turns to 36. Given the mess of prophets I kept getting, I thought that wasn't too bad of a use of my GP.

Tech wise I go PP next. I basically axed any and all great person farming because Delhi is such a wreck. I cottage up a whole bunch of cities, including Xian, which I made my capital. Since I grew a bit bigger than I planned, the maintenance cost for Asoka's east coast cities was > 12.

My first contact is Justinian. Tech chart below has me in an OK place. I followed PP up with Astro. Always forget I don't need Astro to build caravels, but it's necessary in the end anyways.

What's the play on isolation when you meet civs? Do I trade astro away to backfill?

With the 3rd GA I went free speech + religion. Nearly everyone is in their own religion, and I want to avoid making any enemies. I go US + emancipation willingly for probably the first time in forever because I am very cottage heavy. (41 towns, 46 villages shortly after this civics switch)

Here's the state of affairs @ 1625 AD. I have met everyone, including a GK and Churchill who were both plotting when I met them. I am teching rifling just in case.

Don't see why Churchill would declare, but GK demanded 700 gold from me, which I rejected, and the -4 from trading with his enemies has him annoyed. Monty is also annoyed, which in conjunction with GK makes me a tad worried.

After rifling, I would typically go space race in this scenario. I am very cottage heavy and suited to the late game. I'm near the top in tech and I think I've got the infrastructure to only widen that gap as the game progresses. Also, hauling a bunch of troops takes so much time that it could negate a big chunk of any tech lead.

However, I'm curious to see what more seasoned players would do for domination here. Zara and GK don't have banking or paper, so I'd have a plenty of time to reach a decisive victory with rifling. The way diplo started out (I was eager to make some trades and picked up a pair of not-so-great enemies to have), I am more inclined to be aggressive in this case.

Side note - what determines when a city gets foreign / overseas trade routes? I have some coastal cities with them, and some without?

 

[earthy]

@scheines

Spoiler :

What do you mean by "taking it in 1 turn excluding siege"? Do you mean to say after you bombard? If that's the case I would think about just sacrificing catapults to save time instead of bombarding. It may take 5 or 6 turns to bombard a cities defenses down to 0, but if you just sacrifice 2 or 3 catapults then the defenders will be so injured that you can take it in one turn. This lets you steamroll through to the next city provided you have additional catapults on the way to join your stack. If you're worried about reinforcement from whipping, take a look at the Info screens and see what civic they are in. Someone in caste can never whip, and likely won't be able to move units from another city in 1 turn that early in the game. If that's the case then it's no big deal if you need to take 2 turns to attack a city.

re:cottaging - Definitely cottaging now and farming or workshopping it later is better than working an unimproved tile. That city has so many ways to spread irrigation anyways, it's not like you're going to be working 10 farms. I don't really agree with the only cottage the capital mindset though... Pretty much every tile that's green or on a river gets cottaged in my games, unless it's a resource/hill/etc. They start off small, but they really do help you a ton when they're built up.

re:backfilling techs - I tend to wait until I meet all or most of the civs unless I'm desperately behind. You don't want them trading your tech to their friends before you can.

trade routes - A lot of the AI probably have banking in your game. This enables Mercantilism civic, which means no foreign trade routes but you get a free specialist per city. AI love this civic and a lot of them are probably in it, which limits your traderoutes. Coastal cities post astro automatically "get" trade routes, but the game calculates the most valuable ones automatically, and the ones with domestic trade routes probably just have no one else to trade with.

 

[scheines]

So is there a limit to how many cities can have a TR into another city (eg all my cities can’t trade with a single AI city)? I guess that is the only way I can think of for some cities to not get the get the more valuable foreign ones?

On the topic of cottaging, I guess I just got the impression from others when I started playing that specialists are far better than cottages early game, which leads me to usually farm every tile I can early. Save for the capital and maybe another early city or two w/o water or food.

Is this a case of people having different philosophies on ideal ratio of specialists vs cottages, or is it a case of me being an idiot ?

 

[earthy]

I think that is how it works with traderoutes but I'm not 100% on them. It's a bit strange because with domestic traderoutes it's the opposite. For ex. if you settle 1 island city, all your other cities can get overseas traderoutes with it.

and in regards to cottaging, I think it's a case of you reading the same outdated strategy articles that I did when I started playing . I think I've probably asked many of the same questions here. The consensus seems to be that you get commerce where you can and don't worry about specialist economy vs cottage economy too much. The best way to achieve commerce is map dependent, so you need to be flexible about it. There may be situations where you have mids and need short term beakers more than long term, so running scientists to help bulb a key tech is better than growing cottages. Maybe you're in isolation and need bulbs to reach astro. Maybe you don't have many tiles but lots of food. Sometimes it even makes sense to work mines and build research if you don't have many good tiles. In general though, long term a cottage will win out over specialists, especially if u don't have mids. On a grassland it's food neutral(whereas specialist is -2F), so working a cottage won't slow your growth, and late game it has huge commerce potential. That being said, great people are very strong so we do want to work some specialists so we can get great people out. But generally we're doing it for the great people, not because specialists are better than cottages.

 

[sampsa]

I think cottages are very good especially early on. For me, the biggest issue with running specialists early on is that you don't have a good use for an early . Well, an academy can be OK, but not always. Bulbing is where the real deal is, starting from say philo (~1300). In general, trying to go without cottages is almost always a huge mistake in my opinion.

 

[Imploding]

Hi,

Great NC! Had fun!

Deity NH

Spoiler MY game :

Settled on the PH. Went Hunt-AH- BW. Grew cap to 3 pop and got out 2 more fogbusters. Think that paid off huge!
Settled 4 cities. Noticed Asoka was kind of slow.. he did not get GW in my game.. maybe he had some trouble with barbs

Decided to go for AXE-CATA push. And get HBR and elephants with capturegold.
Asoka did me a solid by getting: Oracle, MoM and The parthanon.

Took 4 cities. Peace for Calendar and IW. Took the rest of his cities. ended up with 13 before Astro.

Had academy in cap. and 1 GS bulbed astro. Think I got Astro around 680 AD. Which seemed really late.. but the other guys were slow.
Bribed monty on justin. Justin got bismark in on the action. GK and Zara where figthing aswell.

With MoM and some 12 turn GA i managed to lib communism then I Then decided that a space victory would be fun.
Just hit enter for a long time while I got all my production and cities up. I ended with 23 cities total, all on my own landmass.

Justin decided to attack me around 1800 AD, with a impressive naval assult, but at that time I had robotics and protective mechanical tanks. Those guys are no joke. The UN came to the rescue tho!

Ended up launching a spaceship around 1865 AD.

Got a pittifull score.. but the earlies spacerace I have won!

Fun map and fun NC, keep em coming!

 

[sampsa]

@scheines Nice, detailed write-up, so let me comment on a few things you might improve on.

Spoiler :

T1 you chose to put 1T into warrior. Wouldn't it be better just to get that worker out asap and put pre-AH turns into farming a floodplain? Also, your T12 screenshot reveals you moved worker directly into cows. Better to move 1N, farm, cancel, move to cows next turn and pasture. These little things add up. I think going for a quick BW is often a good idea, but with this many and such low food I think here it's a mistake. Well, @krikav did the same so at least you are in good company. I'm not sure how you managed to get 4 warriors out while growing to size 2 (probably working a high -tile instead of floodplain?), but I think it's an overkill. Definitely start a settler at size 2 if you have 4 warriors already, safety is not an issue. Getting that 2nd city settled asap is nearly always winning versus delaying it, especially here since it's close and can immediately work floodplains. If you want some rule of thumb when to start settler @2, I'd say plains hill city center and low food are good indications to consider it. If you have 3 good tiles (say +-yield is 5 or more) I'd nearly always go size 3. If you have 2 strong -resources, consider growing to 6 and whipping the first settler. Also, putting into barracks should be avoided this early, unless AGG and you plan to finish it quickly. Early game should go to some units for protection but mostly to settlers/workers. Fast expansion always beats slow expansion, if you can do it.

2nd city spot well picked, it's easily the best available site (sheep, distance, flood plains sharing). I think rice-stone is not a bad spot, but the cow in the south is better (better yield, can grow cottages for capital). Maybe if you have use for that stone. Good call not going for that cow+copper spot I think, it's just too far (@krikav ). I think going hunting after BW is another mistake. Wheel-pottery is important here for a few reasons: connecting 2nd city for +2 (requires only one road on a floodplain), cottages, and last but not the least, EXP granaries. Improving ivory is not that important since you have plenty of good tiles in those floodplains and growing to -cap is a bit slow with these tiles.

In T49 screenshot I can see more things that could be done a bit better (full marks for fog busting though! ). You haven't connected your cities (+2!), but have built a road on ivory that was connected via river anyway. I think 3 workers is too many, better to get out 3rd city faster. The mine in Shanghai is moot as you probably won't be working it a lot. Worker in Beijing is mining, but that mine is worse than plains ivory. If you wanted fast it was better to just chop. Mines in general are not great when things like floodplain cottages are available. I think going archery is good (well, I didn't and deservedly died ).

T57 screenshot if you can't put a chop into that worker, just grow working max food (put 1T into warrior, then switch to archer) and whip that worker later. After you have a granary, all workers/settlers should be whipped if possible. This is because growing size 3->4 costs 26, but a granary gives +12 when growing 2->3 so the real cost of growing is only 14 and you can transform that into 30. When slow building a worker/settler you are transforming that 14 into only 14.

Despite criticizing many of your decisions, your position is good in T68 screenshot. I think Xian is a big mistake though. Now I'd go for that cows+copper spot because it's secured by an archer and will be much more productive immediately compared to a city with nothing immediately available. As you probably already guessed, the filler between Beijing and Xian is also not good, because there is no food. It's important to realize that it doesn't matter if Asoka settles these spots or not. They will be weak cities for a long time and will only slow him down. It's clear by this point that you will be at war soon anyway. Blocking only makes sense if you are planning to play peaceful.

War elephants were a good choice I think, because you are so far from machinery. I think overall your play was strategically good, but many things could be done more precisely and this precision would do a huge impact in your game.

 

[krikav]

Nice with alot of activity in this NC game, really fun!

@scheines

Spoiler :

Sorry, I see that I have not taken a look at your earlier screenshots. @sampsas feedback is really good.
Should I replay this, I would probably still have gone hunt->AH first though, but after that likely TW->Pottery and only then BW.
Early BW here doesn't really make any sense, and I think what lured me in that direction was the mysterious plains tile close of the capital.

I can add this too:
You seem to think that the floodplain-farms are a waste? Sort of a stop-gap before cottaging them and that the workerturns where almost wasted? This is not at all the case here. Those tiles can be farms for most of the game since capital has so little food as it is.
I think these floodplains where one of the last few tiles on the continent that I cottaged after I had basically cottaged everything else.

You speak about "Asoka has IW" and that you see him as a trading partner? This is only the case if you manage to get him to friendly!
In semi-iso you can only count on getting trades for monarchy+monotheism+alfabet and basically nothing else.
Unless, ofcourse... you are semi-isolated with Mansa.

You speak of getting alfabet so you can build something to grow.
This might be true in some cities that have too good hammertiles to refrain from working, but in most cases it's best to just stop working hammertiles and work max food instead while possibly growing on warriors if you have nothing better to put hammers into. (you can delete warriors as they spawn if you don't need them).

Also, your zoom-out screenshot is really foggy, difficult to see anything.
Do you know you can adjust the "Field of view" slider to zoom out and get a better overview?

@Eagle777

Spoiler :

I think the map lends itself to do whatever you feel like, once you claim superiority of the continent.
If we imagine one pivot-point rifling+steel, one at assembly line (infantry) possibly with artillery.
And the next at tanks+bombers (flight, radio, industrialism)...
If the AIs have steel/rifling it depends abit on how your leftover army looks, and if you have boats ready soon or not and how good you managed the recovery, but if you are quick enough you can likely supplement and strike at just assembly line, but it's likely easier to just relax and tech to industrialism before you strike.

Ofcourse space victory is entierly possible here too, and UN could be quite doable too with no-religion+theocracy to buddy up with zara+justinian and replace all towns with farms.

@Imploding

Spoiler :

Good to have you around!

 

[krikav]

A general point about cities:
T170 I had 21 cities. I think this was abit too much pre-astro, but later between T200 and T250 or so (after astro) I added 9 more bringing total on the continent up to 30.
There is certainly room for this, and if one doesn't want to strive for a very early victory date but instead go to space or do a lategame warfare approach, I think it makes alot of sense to settle these as soon as possible so that they get to contribute as much as possible.

Earlier in the game, settlers are quite an investment, but at T200, 100 hammers isn't a significant investment at all, and neither is the -10gpt cost that initially comes with a new city.
So unless you are really snailing toward some sort of tech to resolve economic crisis I think that the common wisdom of the early game to not overexpand should be reevaluated at these middle or late stages of the game.

 

[elementoffear]

Well thanks everyone for all the help , and the OP for the really interesting game, I personally learned a lot from this one!

 

[krikav]

General thoughts about cottages:
In many of my games, and especially in pangea or pangea-like setups, I do get by with only a few cottages, and only in my capital.
I do this because the capitals commerce paired with an academy and library, and the natural commerce from the rest of the empire, can usually get me enough teching power to get the little one needs to self-tech, outside of bulbs and trading.
Farms help much more with early whipping of maces/trebs/HAs and farms compete with cottages on the lucrative riverside.
The only place for cottages left is on non-riverside grassland. And putting 10 citizen-turns into working a 2F1C tile just to have it reach lighthouse-coast status isn't that exciting really.
Especially if most cities will be put on a 4->2 whip rotation soon anyway.

Later in the game, (if things go well) I can get my techs from peace treaties, or I capture cities with mature cottages...
Or I just get by without techs.... Because that can easily happen.
And there are MANY a game where I have completely ran into a brick wall after reaching rifling/steel.
"Oh, 40 turns to tech scientific method..? Well, thats unlikely to happen! "


Putting down cottages is something that is essentially risk free though.
If one dosn't have a clear plan, or if just the situation itself is shakey and unclear, laying down cottages and maturing them is a very good investment that opens up more opportunities later on.

Then we have situations where trades are few, (isolation, semi-iso, or on a continent with techers like GK and Tokugawa. )
Well, then one can't count on bulbing a tech and trading it around for more techs which you in turn broker for all of the rest you need... And having the raw teching power yourself is crucial.
Having to self-tech alfabet to even get metalcasting and monarchy in a peacetreaty from Genghis Khan after you have bashed him with axes+catapults at the same turn as Mansa libs astro on another continent isn't really lucrative either.

In general, I think I probably build too few cottages in my games, because I see a certain allure and prestige in being the technologically inferior warmongerer.

 

[sampsa]

I like to build a lot of cottages. Maybe that's why I don't value capital academy as highly as many do, it's less important if is coming from the whole empire. One approach can be better than the other, depends, but more important is that you understand why you are doing what you are doing i.e. the implications of your strategy.

Absolutely agree with krikav that floodplains farms are good with this capital. I guess it's a matter of taste if you want to have all 3 farmed or not, but certainly at least one. If a city has both farms and cottages, it's better to farm the best tiles first (floodplains) and add cottages (to grassland) when the city is ready to grow.

 

[krikav]

I'm 100% sure, that if I could travel back in time 10 years I could completely change how the general guidelines for cottages would be.

Perhaps everyone would then today adhere to some guideline such as:
"Well, you got to build those 2 cottages per city ofcourse.
Sometimes even 3-4, and in a capital maybe even more, but rare is the city that doens't have it's two cottages."
Such a guideline is ofcourse somewhat nonsense, but it's still better than much other nonsense.

 

[dr£ddlord]

man, i just got to the space race, vassalised Asoka on Monarch and Churchhill and Justinian together beat my navy using attack submarines with tactical nukes and I just gave up. My ICBMs all got shot down by their SDI's (they both got laser before me). Justinian discovered fusion so I thought I'd lost the space race.

I was way ahead on score though. Thats the 2nd time thats happened on Noble Club to me.

 

[scheines]

@sampsa Yeah in hindsight I don’t know why I was worried about timing the worker. I guess I was thinking those turns go to waste if early. I’ve had krikav suggest the 1T of something before but with roads. I guess I didn’t think of it b/c I didn’t have the wheel yet.

For the warriors coming out so fast, I think it was the cow (3H) tile.

With regard to whipping workers and settlers, I really agree. Hate seeing cities stagnate. But I think I had a case where it was either idle on workers / settlers, or build warriors / archers I don’t need. Should I make army units and delete them to grow (kind of like what krikav suggested vs building research)?

 

[sampsa]

For the warriors coming out so fast, I think it was the cow (3H) tile.

I went AH first and got out only one warrior before growing to size 2. 2 warriors can secure that 2nd city site even on deity. I'm not saying your 4 warrior fog busting plan was pointless though, but it did delay 2nd city a bit.

But I think I had a case where it was either idle on workers / settlers, or build warriors / archers I don’t need.

By idle you mean stagnating I guess? I'd build archers, then delete warriors if you really don't need them or they cost too much maintenance. You probably now understand why all those tiles in capital are not so necessary and you'd like to have cottages instead of mines.

 

[scheines]

"Well, you got to build those 2 cottages per city ofcourse.
Sometimes even 3-4, and in a capital maybe even more, but rare is the city that doens't have it's two cottages."

Doesn’t that contradict the concept of specializing cities? Or does this advice pertain more to buildings only?

 

[sampsa]

I don't think krikav was entirely serious. Being half-serious myself I'd say the concept of specializing cities is kinda nonsensical though.

 

[krikav]

Doesn’t that contradict the concept of specializing cities? Or does this advice pertain more to buildings only?

Don't take that advice to heart! It was a joke!

I was saying that most of the rules of thumb that seem to survive in civ4 legacy comes from just random ideas at the start of this game when people intreprepreted it entierly different.
If I could go back in time, I'm sure that I could establish different rules of thumb and they would be more or less taken for law today, as things like city specialisation is today.


@sampsa
Yes, it's kind of nonsensical, when your empire wants to take a certain turn, go in a certain direction, it makes sense that _all_ cities should be able to go in that direction.
But specialisation on the level of "Well, this city only has a few stray cottages, lets not build a library here." I think is good.

 

[Excal]

T312 1884AD

Spoiler :

finally Monty is mine

huge -14 war weariness in a couple of my cities (he has StatZeus + every conceivable building against war weariness )
and a ton of heavily promoted artillery/infantry
Justin joins war which helps

RushBuy very flexible here