Nobles' Club 241: Washington of America

[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 Washington of America, whom we last played in NC 164; we last played the Americans under Roosevelt in NC 233. The Americans start with Agriculture and Fishing.

• Traits: Washington is Charismatic and Expansive. Charismatic gives every city, Monuments and Broadcast Towers +1, and decreases the exp required for units to level by 25%. Expansive adds +2 to all cities, gives a +100% bonus to Granaries and Harbors, and a +25% bonus to Workers. Note that the worker bonus doesn't apply to excess directly converted to .
  
• The UB: The Mall, a Supermarket with +20% and +1 with Hit Musicals, Hit Singles and Hit Movies. Generally regarded as a useless UB that comes far too late to make any sort of difference, it nevertheless manages to be a welcome addition to a rush-buy strategy for it's increased gold output, or a standard Caste/State Property hammer economy to help offset Emancipation anger.
  
• The UU: The Navy SEAL, a Marine with 1-2 First Strikes and a free March promotion, allowing the unit to heal while moving. Usually dismissed as irrelevant since few games ever reach the era in which these guys show up, Navy SEALS nevertheless set a new standard for terrors from the sea that Ragnar's Berserkers only manage to reach due to taking City Raider promotions into the gunpowder era.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Medium Sealevel, Temperate Climate.

Spoiler edits :

An Iron within one AI's capital was changed to a Copper (I assume you can guess why by this point).

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 241 Washington 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.

Spoiler 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.

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.

 

[AcaMetis]

Seems like a straightforward case of SIP to me. I don't see any reason to move away from a double fish coast, not when you start with Fishing, nor do I see a reason to justify spending a turn (and a forest) moving either 1N or 1S. And if there is a reason I don't think the Warrior could find it due to all the forests blocking his vision, anyway.

Here's a question for the experts anyway, though: How to play this opening? Starting with Mining -> BW is obvious, the only tiles you can improve without them requires either Animal Husbandry or Fishing Boats, but what does the capital do? Start slow-building a Fishing boat right away (5 turns of working a forested grass hill and 4 turns of forested plains hill will complete a 9 turn workboat with 3 overflow), work 12 Coast to speed up tech a bit and swap to the forested plains hill once borders pop (5 turns of just the city's hammer and 7 turns of forested plains hill finishes a workboat in 12 turns), work coast and slowly put hammers into a fishing boat until swapping to the plains hill finishes a worker on time to start chopping (working the forested plains hill a worker takes 12 turns to build, thank you Expansive), something else entirely?

 

[migalhone]

I'm in love with EXP, faster workers . The bonus health makes not settling near fresh water ok, and the cheaper granaries are a relief. Good pairing with CHA since you get 1 more , and an extra one more with a monument.

I would move warrior either NE or SE, both directions seem good. With no tundra tile on sight, i guess this is somewhere in the middle of the map?

Having fishing + agriculture is also nice, as in you don't get screwed when starting coastal.

Settling in place gives access to 2 fish after 1st border pop. Would building 2 workboats in a row be a bad ideia, working on the forested hills to get the 1st workboat out faster?

Would take a long time but when it was done, city would be size 3-4 and have more food/production for settlers/workers.

@AcaMetis getting to Bronze Working and Slavery seems good: 7 chops plus double fish to pump out settlers and workers should be very good. The other tech choices should be mainly decided by what our fearless warrior reveals in his intrepid explorations

 

[AcaMetis]

Would building 2 workboats in a row be a bad ideia? Would take a long time but when it was done, city would be size 3-4 and have more food/production for settlers/workers.

One thing about building Settlers or Workers is that you really need improved tiles (specifically improved production tiles if you want to directly benefit from IMP/EXP) to make the extra pop worth the time spend growing them, and turns spend building Mines are turns not spend chopping forests. I'd definitely prefer to finish BW and a Worker before growing to size 4, so I've got time to build some improvements while the city grows and can focus on chopping afterwards. I'm just not sure how to make the timing work out, and whether that involves building one or two (or zero?) workboats the slow way.

 

[migalhone]

Workboat is 30 hammers, and by SIP plus working a forested hill you get 4 hammers a turn. Considering the 1st border pop happens in 5 turns, the fish will be workable before the workboat pops out. The 2nd workboat should take 1-2 turns less.
I think the 2 worboats can both be working the fish before city hitting 4 pop, thus the added food will speed up settler/worker production.

 

[Snowbird]

IMHO, 2nd WB is not worth 30 hammers so early. 1st one... depends on what is unforested east. It could always be wet corn and gems.

 

[sampsa]

The start feels actually a bit annoying for an EXP leader (well, they often do if not a plains hill start ). Maybe if there is something nice to the east... Settling on the plains hill 1NE of warrior wouldn't kill either fish. EXP/CHA is great for whips, but it's not going to be a fast expansion that way.

Maybe SIP, start with a boat, mining-BW times nicely to whip a worker at size 4?

 

[AcaMetis]

The start feels actually a bit annoying for an EXP leader (well, they often do if not a plains hill start ).

Rest assured that I rolled plenty of starts that would have been even more annoying .

Spoiler :

I'll give you three guesses as to which AI was picked to be your default neighbour if the map turned out to be semi-iso .

Maybe if there is something nice to the east... Settling on the plains hill 1NE of warrior wouldn't kill either fish. EXP/CHA is great for whips, but it's not going to be a fast expansion that way.

Maybe SIP, start with a boat, mining-BW times nicely to whip a worker at size 4?

Had not considered that approach . Let me give it a quick test, actually (on Deity).

(One Barb Spear that dies to my starting Warrior fresh on a hill at 95.6% odds later )

Tried the approach of slow-building only one WB, and otherwise focussing on growth. Timing lines up fairly well, growth especially. I got a T23 flip into Slavery, though no turn to put into the worker beforehand (I think? ), so no immediate whip next turn. First Worker on the field T26. Enough production to get out a second Warrior in the meantime, though.

Focussing on slow-building both WB ASAP, only stopping to line up growing to size 2 more efficiently, seems fairly comparable. T24 flip into slavery, one turn later, with no chance to prepare a whip. Much more production overall, though (effectively 37, an extra WB and partial Warrior, over 18 before). Of course a lot of that production is invested in the work boat, and an extra warrior is very useful for scouting and fogbusting early on (especially when you don't just randomly win the barb combat lottery, I'd imagine ).

 

[Snowbird]

Not sure of what you value in testing (I'd check on first settler completion or something like that) but simple 1WB, grow to size2 build worker, starts chopping (which is the whole point of having worker) on T24 without need to waste turn of production(and research) while revolting. You can one pop whip WB at some point (probably just before growth to size three) if you really into that thing so much.

 

[dankok8]

Way back when I won one of my fastest Dom wins with Washington on Emperor. I'll try to give this one a try.

 

[Imploding]

Interesting.. start.. not straight forward..

Thinking about SiP - WB. Working hammers to get production as follows: (3+3+3+3+(border pop?) 4+4+4+4+2) gives a 9 turn WB. If I'm calculating it correct.
with 6 food +2 in wb transit.. gives 8 food @ turn 10. and working a 5 food tile. Grab size 2 (maybe size 3 might want a second warrior out) and get a 8 turn worker. Will be okay timing with BW i guess..?

Tech: Mining - BW and chop everything.
TW - pottary seems obvious after that..
Might make a play for GLH?

 

[MeowZeDung]

Emperor to 920 AD:

Spoiler :

The opening was interesting and a bit of a challenge. I actually played 2 games, the first going AH > TW > Mining > BW and was doing alright before my rust, the RNG, and a barb spearman screwed me after settling my 5th city. I reloaded and went Mining > BW and ignored AH for quite a long time and I felt that this path was vastly superior. Even without prior map knowledge regarding the copper I think I would have been better off with quicker BW and then diverting to Archery to deal with barbs rather than early research of AH.

I met Monty first, which is always interesting, but it turns out peacefully expanding to 5-6 cities on this map is very doable on Emp and probably Imm too. I settled 2 in short order then leveraged Exp granaries and all those forests to build the GLH. With 5 of my eventual 6 cities being coastal and all the trade partners available, GLH is pretty great.

I took a bit of a risk and rushed for the Stone/Corn site inland near Hammurabi's borders once I saw the corn. That stone has been responsible for at least 2k failgold so far this game with all the chop/whip overflow I've sunk into Mids/Chichen Itza/Sankore/Angkor. The Gold and Copper netted me another 1-2k from Shwedagon/Colossus.

I took MT with Liberalism in either 780 or 820 AD, I forget which. The Music Artist was popped for a GA, which let me adopt Judaism (spread throughout empire by Hammy), switch over to HR/OR/CS, power out my second GS for the Philo bulb, research CS, then switch to Bureau/Slavery before the GA ended to avoid anarchy.

Mansa has been a wonderful trading partner, and he kindly researched Nationalism just in time to trade it to me the turn I was finishing up Lib. Gunpowder just finished researching and the stack of 9 HA's I built over the last few turns have been upgraded with some of that wonderful failgold. Every city whipped as soon as Currs were in the queue.



My plan currently is to cap chain Hammy > Monty > Zara > Mansa > Liz, but I have some questions:

First, since Hammy is at friendly, would it perhaps be better to start with Monty or Zara (the only 2 buddhist civs) and hope for some shared war diplo to push Hammy toward a peace vassal? His empire is sizable, so I don't know if I could reach the necessary threshold before conquering basically the rest of the continent.

Second, if peace vassaling Hammy is not an option, what would be an appropriate stack size be before a DOW at this point on Emp? He has Feudalism. I can hit his first city 1 turn after declaring, and his capitol 2 turns after that. Currently at 9 Currs in the stack, and a wave of 5 about to emerge from cities next turn.

Third, similar to the Hammy peace vassal question, I'm willing to bet I could arrange things so that I get Mansa to friendly after taking out Hammy/Monty/Zara. Would it be realistic to expect a peace vassal from him at that point if I adopted his religion or got him to adopt mine? TBH, at that point I'll probably have enough momentum that it won't matter, but I thought I'd ask.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@MeowZeDung Your questions:

Spoiler :

I never managed to make peace vassals work or me. Obviously "I can't make peace vassals work" does not mean "peace vassals are not useful". So I am not sure if I have anything constructive to say in this matter.

I would not attack Babylon. I like friendly AIs not constrained by WFYABTA. The Great Lighthouse is also a consideration; Babylon does not have many coastal cities.

If you want to attack the Aztecs and then the Ethiopians, then I would completely eliminate the former and capitulate the latter. Aztecs are weak and their cities are coastal. Take all Ethiopian coastal cities and then keep going until they capitulate.

I don't think 9 curaissers or any unit is enough numbers. Nothing can beat them in the field but you need to heal, garrison cities, and fresh units to keep attacking. Surely you should begin the attack but you will need to continue producing, even whipping, units until the war is almost won.

If I were in your situation though, I would attack and capitulate Mali, then attack and capitulate England. They tech too quickly and I would like to slow them down. Once you capitulate the Mali, the physical positions are such that the Mali lands serve as a buffer and launching pad for attacking England. After you capitulate those two, switch to Buddhism. Direct their research and trade with them. Those two research techs quickly. Once you switch out of Judaism, Babylon will no longer be friendly, but by that point Babylon would not be useful to you anymore.

FYI I played my own game to a winning position but I won't finish it. I can't say more because you haven't finished your game yet. I could tell you that I also built The Great Lighthouse. I think this is the consensus strategy for this map. After that point, our games began to differ.

 

[MeowZeDung]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Excellent advice, thank you.

Unfortunately I still managed to bungle it. I moved my stack down to the Malinese border and begged gold from Zara and Liz before I declared. . . only to realize that I had gifted Mansa a tech upon request five turns earlier. Sooooo I waited and massed a larger stack. Declared ASAP and steam rolled a few cities. I truly thought I would cap him before experiencing issues. Zara thought differently though and declared on me as soon as he could. Bribed by Mansa I'm sure.

No biggie I thought. I'll still steamroll MM in like 3 turns now and then demolish Zara's stack and sue for peace.

MM vassaled to Zara.

I played it out a bit longer, got MM down to his last city, and still have a big military advantage over Zara having now taken 2 Ethiopian cities, but his Knights are so maddening. Garrisons of 2-3 currs losing cities behind the front seemingly from out of nowhere is so frustrating and tedious to recapture. All the while Liz techs like crazy and will have rifles by the time I have cavalry, which means I'd probably need cannons or artillery, and I just don't want to deal with it

Technically winnable from where I am at something like 1200 AD, but I'll just move on to the next game instead.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@MeowZeDung

Regarding your game

Spoiler :

Obviously if you "don't want to deal with it" then stop. We play games for fun.

If I were in your situation, once Mali vassals to Ethiopia, I would start razing Ethiopian cities. Don't get tied down. Once Ethiopia capitulates to you or becomes too weak, Mali will submit to you. Who cares if England's ahead, you got more land. You can wait until modern warfare or nukes.

And since you have decided to stop playing I can talk about my game

Spoiler :

TGL at BC 1080

Aesthetics at BC 0700 trade around for maths, alpha, iron working

Self research meditation, priesthood, code of laws

Bulb philosophy trade around for metal casting and compass

Research civil service, paper. Trade civil service away for machinery.

Bulb education

Liberalism by AD 0400, get nationalism. With Mansa Musa around, no chance of trying to go literature music. It's shooting for liberalism ASAP. Also no window to cuirassier.

Trade nationalism for gunpowder and optics, draft muskets and built catapults (later trebuchets).

Take out Aztecs, meet China.

Build army, take out China.

I stopped playing with the largest empire nut backwards. I didn't want to slog through nuclear war.

 

[azatol]

I'm going to give this map a second try, as my first try I got confused about how to handle it.

Spoiler BC Spoilers :

I'm not sure where to settle when there's so many pointless spots. I built one city inland that was a mistake.

I tried to built on some of the river tiles towards babylon but I got pressured by barbs, and ended up losing a new city.

Then a bit later, I had all this production but all I could make is axes. I tried to axe rush babylon, but I started late, and couldn't get his capital against bowmen. What do I do with all the production?

I guess I'll try to settle quicker, along the coast?

 

[sampsa]

@azatol (deity T49)

Spoiler :

Yes, you should definitely settle quickly along the coast. There are several excellent spots to the north, not sure about south since haven't fully scouted it yet. GLH is pretty good on this map and especially below deity you should go for it. On deity it's a bit more complicated as there is the possibility of losing the race.

 

[sampsa]

T67

Spoiler :

Won GLH, now it's the time for settlers. Of course a bit cocky, but I'd say the game is in the bag. Diplo will be excellent (everyone will hate Montball) and I have room to expand towards south. Got horsie, there is always a way to get iron so I guess it will be cuirs (boring, but effective).