Nobles' Club 263: Tokugawa of Japan

[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 final leader for the fifth cycle is Tokugawa of Japan, whom we last played in NC 182. The Japanese start with Fishing and The Wheel.

• Traits: Tokugawa is Aggressive and Protective. Aggressive gives all Melee and Gunpowder units a free Combat I promotion, and gives a +100% bonus to Barracks and Drydocks. Protective gives all Archery and Gunpowder units a free City Garrison I (+20% City Defence) and Drill I (+1 First Strike chance) promotion, as well as a +100% bonus to Walls and Castles.
  
• The UB: The Shale Plant, a Coal Plant that produces power without access to Coal as well as a +10% bonus. This building will be a lifesaver when you enter the industrial era without coal to power your factories, and a nice bonus in situations where you can trade away your coal for a ton of GPT and/or resources while enjoying power without the -2 that having Coal in your cities gives you.
  
• The UU: The Samurai, a Maceman with +2 First Strikes and the Drill I promotion, for a total of 2-3 First Strikes at base, as well as access to the entire Drill promotion line that Melee units normally can't get for even more First Strike shenanigans. But unlike regular Maces they can only be build with Iron. A very solid unit when combined with siege engines, unfortunately getting these units early enough to make a real difference in their era is difficult because Japan starts with Fishing, and that ruins all of the good bulbs that a Great Scientist could otherwise pull off.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Continents, temperate climate, medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A few resource swaps were done to give AIs nearby strategic resources.

Spoiler isolated? :

Not isolated.

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine: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 263 Tokugawa 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]

Warrior SW to check the river seems obvious. SIP if the Warrior doesn't find anything worth moving for, otherwise move inland and settle somewhere the river, whatever the best place is based on what the warrior finds? We do start with Fishing, so a coastal start isn't the worst. I think .

What do the experts think?

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I won't be able to play this week. I will take this slowly and seriously so no updates for a long time. Thank you for all the hard work!

Edit: I played a few turn. Not enough for an update yet. Did not read spoilers. Tough but not the toughest that the NC series has to offer. My stupid plan could work.

 

[Pangaea]

What was the 'rules' again? Move 6 tiles inland?

 

[sampsa]

I think moving is tempting - it's likely you'll find something along the river and it's a very slow start if SIP (4 tile that costs 30, no 3 tiles).

 

[Pangaea]

Tried to move

Spoiler :

Everything everywhere is horsehocky. Don't move. I won't bother with that game. Holy crap.

 

[Benginal]

Tough start, but a reasonable number of forests. SIP seems reasonable since moving will take at least two turns and there's no obvious plains hill nearby. Maybe mining -> BW while building a workboat? Thinking of trying for GLH.

 

[Nick723]

Tough start for sure. Immortal NHNE, to turn 78:

Spoiler :

SIP, build a work boat then a worker whilst researching mining -> bronze working. Timing lines up nicely with BW and worker ready to chop

Warrior reveals one potential city site to the south and border pop reveals copper north along the coast. Decide to make a play for the GLH although in hindsight not sure how good an idea this was.
Get it in the capital around turn 70 (fairly comfortable for immortal I think). Have met Mansa and Sury, likely they are our friends on this continent.

Just settled southern city and next one goes west on river. Probably tech to construction and attack Mansa, although I'm not very good at that sort of thing!

State of play:

Tough start - interested to see how others went about it! I definitely didn't play brilliantly, but hopefully the game is still winnable from here.

 

[Snowbird]

T5 heavy spoilers
I do not consider clam starts playable (maybe if the settler is on stone PH with a few sugar and gem tiles around)

Spoiler :

Checked some blue circles and went around gold. Settled on T5, but between 2 hammer center and gold it is probbaly faster than initial location.

Got closer to soft target, enough commerce and phants. Not worth playing out, IMHO.

Spoiler :

Honestly... tried yo play with SIP... I guess I could have salvaged that mostly due to Mansa being soft target, but did not found a gun pointed at my head, so...

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Tough start, but a reasonable number of forests. SIP seems reasonable since moving will take at least two turns and there's no obvious plains hill nearby. Maybe mining -> BW while building a workboat? Thinking of trying for GLH.

Up to 750 BC

Spoiler :

Deity no huts no events normal speed up to 750 BC

Khmer declared war on Mali on 750 BC. From experience Khmer is a very capable warmonger and will become runaway AI very soon. Mali is going to get smashed even with skirmishers. I could whip out axemen and pick up one coastal city away from the Mali but I won't. Mansa Musa is much more valuable as a trading partner. I might even try to push relations to friendly later on. Shared religion and gifting cities will do it.

No horses made this map more difficult. Otherwise, with the gold mine, I could have went horse archers on the Khmer and we're off to the next game. The physical distance made axemen rush infeasible.

The starting area is crap no question about it. But both Mansa Musa and the runaway AI is on your continent, not the other one(s). This alone makes the map winnable.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity normal speed no huts/events
Up to 500AD

Spoiler :

The Khmer are very strong and locked into war with the Mali. The nightmare scenario is the Mali capitulating to the Khmer. I had to attack even with a small primitive army. I had to do something.

Skanked two small cities. I think that counts as something.

My economy is s*** but wonders around the world are going slowly, or on my continent. No hurry to make contact with other continents.

Mansa is best friend. Earlier they requested construction from me. I gave it. Next turn they gave (yes GAVE) me feudalism.

I fully intend to play this out to the end.

And I did... until...

Spoiler :

I lost my last city in 1300AD. The Mansa was also losing cities.

The Khmer fought a two-front war and crushed both of us even together. Strategically I was not sure what I could have done.

 

[Snowbird]

I lost my last city in 1300AD.
Strategically I was not sure what I could have done.

Get obvious runaway candidate to pleased (hopefully later friendly)... and kill all other AI. Usually that works.

 

[Gumbolt]

The story of this tale.

Spoiler spoiler :

Some Ai are simply not designed to fight. Especially Mansa who has a low unit build probability and is one of the Ai most likely to vassal? Where the other Ai is creative and is designed for warfare.

The main issue with this map is the start. You have to either abuse ivory or take a walk to find a better capital site. The Ai here had no issues with starting locations.

Not sure Khmer are friendly at pleased. Where Mansa likely is. You would still need to grab land here which is rather tough on a start like this without warfare.

 

[Snowbird]

Spoiler :

Surry still has 90% cancelation at pleased and if Mansa is too be killed you want him at friendly anyway.

IMHO, unless you take walk like I did with map knowledge... the best bet is friendly Surry, dead Mansa, work towards Astro. A lot would depend on what player can extort from Mansa and how Mansa vs Surry relations go. I think it is good example then it is better focusing on actual winning (pursuing some victory condition - either post Astro domination or culture or diplo - diplo probably easiest assuming surry could vote for the player).

So winning instead of beating one particular problematic AI would be my advice.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Spoiler :

Surry still has 90% cancelation at pleased and if Mansa is too be killed you want him at friendly anyway.

IMHO, unless you take walk like I did with map knowledge... the best bet is friendly Surry, dead Mansa, work towards Astro. A lot would depend on what player can extort from Mansa and how Mansa vs Surry relations go. I think it is good example then it is better focusing on actual winning (pursuing some victory condition - either post Astro domination or culture or diplo - diplo probably easiest assuming surry could vote for the player).

So winning instead of beating one particular problematic AI would be my advice.

Response

Spoiler :

With Great Lighthouse, astronomy was my obvious first instinct. Suryavarman is also easy to get to friendly, gift two trashy jungle cities and share religion. What happens when everyone enters mercantilism though? I could not race the Mansa to culture and I wasn't sure I had enough economy to reach Mass Media.

It's definitely winnable, I just need to manage my economy better.

 

[Snowbird]

Spoiler :

If Mansa is dead global tech rate will be lower so less stress on your economy. Hopefully he also gives valuable techs in a peace deal or two.

Keeping big Surry and allowing Mansa to feed him techs does not lead to anything good, IMHO.

 

[konata_LS]

Prince level, normal speed. NHNE.

Spoiler Up to T 241 :

Tough start, weak starting techs, crappy leader traits

SIP. Tech Pottery-Mining-BW-IW. So many jungles to clean. The only good news is capital had iron --> UUs and cannons would be possible.

Some rare situations happened in my game. Usually at Prince level, I was the one with 10+ cities while AIs had only 6 or 7 cities. But here, Sury had 13 cities. Luckily got him to Friendly via shared religion + OR (his favourite civic). Even Mansa had 10 cities. I only had 7 cities . My land looked like a slice of cheese in a hamburger while Sury and Mansa were two big burger buns


Attacked Mansa with Cannons + UUs + some pikes. Mansa capitulated in T 240. Took Nationalism from him. My cities are not large, because of from defying AP resolutions.

Monty were at war with Washi and Peri. He cap to Peri. The other continent didn't like me due to religious differences. But if I adopted FR, Sury would drop to Cautious and might DoW me. So I had to stay in OR for a while.


Sell some resources to the other continent:


Next target would be Sury. He had rich lands and many units. I need more cannons. There will be a tough fight. Enemy spies destroyed my libraries in some cities, I had to rebuild it .


Must take a break now. It's a frustrating game .

 

[konata_LS]

Prince level, normal speed. NHNE. From T 242 to the end.

Spoiler :

Declared war on Sury. He had many Medieval units but fortunately he didn't have Rifling.

I almost fainted when I saw Sury's capital: double gold mines, Copper, 2 food resources, and more than 10 wonders!


After taking Sury's most cities, Sury was willing to capitulate. But I didn't accept his capitulation, for diplomatic and economic concerns: the other continent disliked Sury; the land around my starting place was really poor, so I desperately needed Sury's nice land.


After a long tough war, finally captured Sury's last city on T 291. But the situation was not optimistic at all: Pericles and SB already had Infantry.


Upgrated cannons to artilleries and some CR3 UUs to Infantry. Built some units and a fleet. Attacked Peri + his vassal Monty with Inf. + Artillleries + MG + Marines. I didn't have spare units to garrison the captured cities so I just created a colony, gifted all the newly captured cities to him.


Peri and Monty capitulated on T 325.


Declared war on Washi in 1911:


He cap just 2 turns later, mainly because Washi was the only AI without Assembly Line and still used Riflemen.


But after Washi's capitulation, the VC screen told me I had not enough land and population for Domination, which meant I had to attack SB .

SB's CG3 infantries and marines were a nightmare, and he had the highest "resist capitulation". It was an exhausting fight .
After losing most of his stacks, his capital and several core cities, SB finally capitulated on T353:


Next turn, conquest.


Most of the artilleries were lost while fighting SB. After taking down the city defense, the first two or three artilleries to attack SB's city were usually suicidal.


After all, the struggle was over .

Some personal thoughts

Spoiler :

With a weak leader in a slow start, this is certainly not a map for a high score attempt or someone moving up in difficulty.

On the other hand, this is a "no pressure" map for me. When playing as some strong leaders with good starting techs like Darius, WvO or Hannibal, if I have bad tech rate, I say to myself "why can't I hold a tech lead with a so good leader? I probably did something wrong". But in this map, I won't blame myself for falling behind in techs, losing Music or Economics races, or eventually losing the game, because Toku's traits are really crappy and the land is very poor.

Difficulty levels may also affect the win probability of a map. Some maps winnable on Noble/Prince may become very tough if we change the difficulty level to Immortal and above. I dare not imagine on higher levels like IMM or DEI where techs become more expensive for human players, how the players could fight against Sury's mass army and SB's PRO Mechanised Infantries.

Anyway, thanks for this "no pressure" map.