Nobles' Club 271: Peter of Russia

[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 Peter of Russia, whom we last played in NC 259; we last played the Russians under Stalin in NC 227. The Russians start with Hunting and Mining.

• Traits: Peter is Expansive and Philosophical. 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 ). Philosophical gives all cities +100% generation and a +100% bonus to Universities.
  
• The UB: The Research Institute, a Laboratory with +2 free Scientists. A nice boost when going for a Space Race victory, but being the latest UB in the game it'll probably come too late to make a real difference.
  
• The UU: The Cossack, a Cavalry with +50% vs. Mounted units. Barring the odd UU these guys aren't going to get sniped by another 2 unit until Tanks start rolling around.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Tropical climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

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

Spoiler isolated? :

Not isolated.

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 271 Peter 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]

Could settle 1N for a 212 capital and more mystery tiles, but I think SIP on the 221 capital with T0 EXP Worker bonus wins out. Beyond that the only other option I'd consider is 2N, but the Scout is unfortunately out of position to do it's namesake job, so I think SIP is the best option.

Or do the experts have better, bolder, and/or sillier ideas ?

 

[krikav]

Oh! Peter is a awesome leader, fast starts with bonus on workers and granaries, and paired with mining to get fast BW. There is nice synnergy with that, early granary and early whips.
The pigs complicate this opening abit... Agriculture first is probably best, but then we have both pre-reqs for AH which makes it very cheap.
But could be mined too ofcourse.
Will be really fun to see multiple different openings here.

Regarding the settler... Well 1N isn't any good I think, hammers win over coins. But 2N looks like it could be good, more rivers and more mystery tiles that could hold jackpots.
Scout NW+NW first and think.
And if 2N looks tempting, the settler can move first NE to see the tile 1E of pigs, and if it's something we can't stand to lose with the 2N settlement, we can always move back and SiP, but on T1.

 

[Pangaea]

SIP looks mighty fine with EXP. That's a 10-turn worker I think? Much better than an extra coin 1N. 2N looks even more promising than SIP, but maybe not worth it when we're already on a PH. Looks better river-wise, but SIP isn't bad either. And a slight bonus later with the banana. Scout NW will reveal more about what we gain by SIP, and possibly NW-NW what can be gained by moving 2N.

Peter is a good leader. Philosophical is always very strong. Maybe Agri-AH opening here, since we have both food types. With so many resources visible, we may not get even more in the dark tiles, but you never know.

Have extracted the Deity save... I may have to step down later, but worth a shot *gulp*

(If there are horses, maybe we can skip archery?)

 

[krikav]

Deity NH/NE

Spoiler T58 :

I did as I mentioned in the pre-game analysis, scout NW->NW, nothing remarkable, settler went NE then NW on top of the PH 2N of starting location.
First interesting choice was once I was nearing worker finish and agriculture. It was possible to delay the worker 1 turn to get some overflow into warriors, but I choose to just finish the worker and let him hang around and chill for one turn before agriculture was done, that way I get to pop2 faster.

After agri I stop and count, and AH is so much cheper than BW. The chances for horses are higher than the chances for copper and it sure looks like barbs could be problematic so if nothing shows then archery would be next.
I don't think BW would provide me much benefit in a future where I go BW->Archery. The secondary pig also promises a very nice second city location, so I go for AH.
The turn after this, a barb warrior show himself in the north.
I don't know about you, but I looove seeing barb warriors. They help to fogbust away those nasty nasty archers.

I went and farmed the wine instead of mining the PH, and I was rewarded just a few turns later with forest growth, kind of good, but also problematic for the worker who where planning to go there after the pigs.
Alot of nasty barbs spawning, and haven't met anyone yet.

Was very happy to see horses, had plans for TW anyway as connecting the pig city would be nice.
An alterantive city spot would have been up by the floodplains/crabs which would be connected anyway.
All 3 warriors went up and secured the spot for the second city. A barb warrior crossed the river to attack and died.
South of my capital I was very happy to see a injured barb warrior, which means I'm not isolated!

I built 3 chariots but still had to suicide a warrior to save my improvements. All 3 chariots where injured and had bad odds, but after this guy gives his life I get 98% odds or so.
This was the only causalty so far! Barbs where kind and attacked the northern chariot across the river, and another attacking warrior was injured and was very easy pickings

Thinking abit about city placements. Will probably ignore the marble/whale and just go for one city that reaches floodplains/crabs instead.
North-eastern fish should probably be placed 1W from where I marked it, as it then reaches some riverside and gets another hill, nice production spot pre-workshops.
Eastern sheep should probably go 1N, no point grabbing that much desert.
Copper in first ring on that PH which gets a good source of food only at callendar? Or go for corn in the first ring and hope Pacal doesn't steal the copper..?

A barb city spawned on the south-eastern fish, that decided it for me, I went for copper in the first ring, with an axe or two I have a much bigger chance getting that barb city than I have with only chariots.
I have managed to tank my economy, but I did get to pottery. Now I'll just cottage up.
Myst is tempting, alot of cities need borderpops, but I also got OB with Pacal which is likely to send missionaries soon as he got the monasteries.

Long term... Cuirs looks nice. I got marble/horses and PHI should give nice bulbs along the way. Not too sure how much utility there is in the Cossacks, but it does add a tad toward going for that mounted approach.
Thinking about it now, I kind of want to try out the dandy method @shakabrade wrote about in the recent Gilgamesh game with mounted+airships.

 

[Pangaea]

Yes, this has been rough so far. So... many... barbs!

Deity. T35.

Spoiler :

Scout went NW-NW, saw marble but nothing else. SIP. Then Agri. Scout went up north-west and then east, where I parked him for a while. Then 4 (!) lions started chasing him. He ran to safety, only to get ambushed by a panther from the dark. Survived by a hair, and picked Combat since there are no forests to hide in anyway. Then an archer and then another archer show up. Pacal must have killed one of them, but the one in the north killed a scout so is now an almost fully healthy Combat archer. Some warriors around too, so lately the scout has been busy escaping from those. Suppose the flock of lions have died off.

Once Agri was in, I thought about whether to go AH or BW next. Decided on BW. It fit nicely, really (apart from another pig close NE). Farm the corn, mine the pig, farm the wine, go into forest, chop upon BW. With AH the worker wouldn't have had all that much to do until BW, and would have had to mine the PH for example.

Originally I wanted to settle north somewhere, but it was simply too dangerous, plus I suddenly realised we lacked AH, so settling there would have been a terrible mistake. Kind of was where I did too, but I had problems with barbs and didn't dare venture into those naked grasslands to see. Therefore settled the second city half-blind close to the corn south of the capital. Turns out there was copper just out of the BFC

As seen from the above image, I didn't dare to wait any longer for safety, and went Archery after BW (at that point I saw no copper anywhere in sight, and most of the north had been unfogged).

Archery is online here, and think I have to build one after the worker, as barbs can invade any moment. Think it's usually around T35.

Have picked Wheel for now, as that actually felt more important than AH. Currently we only have the one pig, and it would be good to connect these cities. Perhaps AH is still the correct choice though. Wheel unlocks Pottery, however, with cheap granaries, which is good too. And we need wheel anyway in case we find horses.

Not seen any AI borders yet, but clearly they are to the south somewhere, and we may be able to claim a good chunk of land up here, although the large desert isn't a pleasant sight. Stone + marble could be important later. But first I probably need some archers to get control of this deforested land with few defensible positions (at least in sensible locations).

 

[krikav]

@Pangea
Rats, I thought it was safe to read your T35, but you have found stuff I had not.
You can probably safely read my T58 @ AH (and once you scout just a few more tiles in the south-west.)

Spoiler :

I had not met the other two AIs, only pacal/Gandhi for me, and it took a loong time to find those too.
Barbs where nasty against me too.

You didn't like the more rivers up north? I thought that was worth moving away from the Banana for.
Nice that you went for BW, good with diversity! I got abit screwed with AH since I was planning on mining the PH and got hit by a forest regrowth. (Of all tiles, why there!!)
Such horrible luck with copper just outside of BFC, but probably good decision there and then. Corn in first ring and getting a peak under culture for much visibility further away.

Agree fully with archery, barbs are nasty.
Kind of hard to figure out what to prioritize after writing imho. There are some calendar but not much, then there is wine& marble, and there is stone far away too.
Tough puzzle.
TW and Pottery earlyish is probably best here.
I like when there are no AH resources to distract from the granary+slavery synnergy with exp leaders.

 

[Pangaea]

Oh deary. T54 now.

Spoiler :

Good thing I went Archery!!

Couldn't get rid of them, though, too many, so had to stay in the city. Otherwise I'd get farmed. Warriors especially love to bust improvements, and they took away everything we had built, except the farm in the second city (archer on top, but thankfully he attacked and died). I would 100% be dead without archery.

After they had busted everything up north, they set their sights on city 2 instead.

Glad I went Wheel after the last update. Took a while before we got there because there is zero commerce here (another reason I went Wheel, on the path to Pottery). Our workers could then dance around the barbs and connect the two cities, and I could get another archer down from the capital. Was probably needed, because three barbs attacked in the same turn.

So then... turn 54 and it looks like turn 20 (city count aside).

Have finally collected enough coins to get to Pottery in hopefully 5 turns. Paying some unit upkeep now due to several archers, but we'd probably be dead without them, so there is that. Been busywork so far. Maybe too far behind already. Heh. Am seeing some border to the south, looks like Pacal. Hope we can still claim some of this land, if the blasted barbs would settle down a little.

 

[krikav]

@Pangea
Brutal, my kill count when things calmed down was 7 warriors and 4 archers.

 

[Pangaea]

@Pangea
Rats, I thought it was safe to read your T35, but you have found stuff I had not.
You can probably safely read my T58 @ AH (and once you scout just a few more tiles in the south-west.)

Oh, sorry about that. Don't have AH yet, so probably best to still postpone reading yours then. Barbs were mean to my improvements

 

[Pangaea]

Allright. Played to T70, so should be safe to read the above spoiler. 4 cities, but still had some barb issues. Should be sorted now, tho.

Spoiler :

Hit "Next turn" from the previous update, and this chap comes to say hello.

Always a pain when you get them early. Admittedly not super-early now any more, and with archers, they are more easily dealt with. This bloke doesn't crush any thing, nothing in his path I suppose, and dies on a CG2 archer in the capital.

AH and... HORSES!

Sweet to get it workable in one of he cities too, although priority #1is to improve the two pigs. Some cottages are up as well. Think I'll cottage the last FP in Rostov. We need commerce. Capital on the other PH would have been better really, but now I gotta sleep in this bed.

Gandhi and Ramesses have got Alpha, and Suleiman Oracled CoL. Changed spy points from Ramesses to Suleiman at some point, because Ramesses seemed to be doing poorly, and IMP leaders tend to do well. Maybe I get tech view on him at some point, but for now he's moving away due to 5-6 EPs on me per turn.

Map overview

Pacal ruined the spot NE of rice, but I would probably never have got that area anyway. Hopefully I can get the stone-ish location before Pacal or somebody else gets up there. Got half a mind to get over there to block off land, but it would cost us, which the economy perhaps can't take. The copper spot will probably be lost soon too. But assuming we can claim the rest of the north, one would think there is iron somewhere up here, which makes Cuirs a possibility.

Certainly not a grand start, and this time the barbs ruined the southern corn. A guy is working on it, but all these pillages set us back. Don't have full control of the SE jungle yet, but the rest should be okay now.

Since we haven't met them yet, the last two AIs must be on an island of their own -- or separate from each other. They have built some wonders (Great Wall and Mids).

 

[Pangaea]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Checked out your save. Goes without saying really, but I prefer your position over mine. Avoiding archery is always nice, gets you faster to writing. Also: only 3 archers and 5 warriors. Wow! Strange that you have only met two AIs. Maybe Pacal have blocked off the others for now?

Moving to the northern PH was a good choice too. And it must have helped to fogbust the north better than in my game. My setup busted the south better, but maybe Pacal would have done that anyway. Admittedly I had all improvements ruined, but you are ahead of me despite playing 12 turns less, which should give you a massive advantage as the game progresses.

Will continue my game further tho, maybe play to 1AD and see where we are. If I can claim some of the land up here, maybe we can still get to the races. Very rough start, tho! :-|

 

[krikav]

@Pangaea

Spoiler :

It's nasty when you get hit to hard and have to resort to calling back your fogbusters, after that all hell can break lose when they leave open breeding grounds for more and more barbs, it's a viscious cycle. :|

The natural fogbusting from settling 2N almost certainly helped alot. Also got a few barb warriors spawned early on. Perhaps due to the AIs not getting up to me and killing them off and then having them replaced with archers in short notice is partly the explanation?


I'm very far into the game now, T139. No time for writeup yet but from last checkup I feel like I have more or less acting on urgency after urgency constantly.
My lofty plans for Cossacks with Airships will probalby have to wait for some other game.

Regarding your position, well if you can get on your feet and stake out that northern land you are probably in a better position than one can hope to dream of in alot of the "Post a tough deity map" or "Prepare to cringe". So everything is relative.

 

[Pangaea]

T90. Game gone already?

Spoiler :

Had two settlers ready, but waited until Writing was in. A mishmash of borders further south, but I had to delete the warrior I moved a few tiles south to reduce maintenance a little. All three of them have sent missionaries, so we have Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Whipped a bunch of stuff this turn, so cities are a little smaller than they were. Economy is well shagged however, and annoyingly both Gandhi and Suleiman have gone Aesthetics, so getting Alpha, never mind all the other stuff, looks tricky (lol, I see Ramesses has it too now...). Not feeling good about this game. Neither did Gandhi. He gifted us Masonry. Nice, as that allowed us to improve the marble.

Land happens to be blocked off now, so will be able to settle the north later. Not great land there, but should still settle it later. A barb galley just showed up, but I hope it sails south instead of dally around near the would-be crabs.

Perhaps saving a few GS is the way to go here, since the economy is poor anyway, and we can't run the slider much (so Academy may be a waste).

This is why I usually prefer Immortal. A bit of bad luck early on Deity, and I'm out of the game. There is so little room for errors, whether self-made, combat luck or other factors (like AIs going for the wrong techs).

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T102 :

Commerce was really tight, and Pacal seemed to refuse to road even his own territory, apparantly busy building those sweet 1F1H workshops.

T81 Sully has gold for trade, the only thing I have he wants is the copper, so I 1pop whip the axe I had in queue and prayed.
T82 we sign the deal and I get a sweeeet sweeeet +1 happines.

It would take some thousand years before I could get my hands on any of those resources. Barb galleys where rampant and I where a looong way from calendar. :| Not sure what I should have done. Perhaps just had my troops outside and been ready?

But I needed the conquest gold too, now I get to aestethics and I get somewhat good trades from it too.

Had to put a turn into Alpha to get that from Ramsy, Ramsy won't trade IW..? I found that odd, but thought that it might be due to him plotting?
I didn't get Maths from Sully either, had to put a turn into that too. And then I got IW from Gandhi too.

I built a workboat in the other barb city, trying to lure away the barb galley, that did work but there where yet another barb galley too.
Eventually, that second galley got "stuck" up north, and I could work the fish, but then some moron (I'm going to say it's Pacal, but I think it was Ramsy) lured it down to my poor fish.
This city had only 2 archers defending it, one of them was strong though and didn't even get a dent from my first chariot. Luckily the beast of an axe that won at incredible odds on the previous barb city succeeds again.
If the first barb city was bad enough for my economy, this city was even worse. I apparantly have a hard time keeping my greed for land under control!

Sully finishes MoM in his pop17 city! Oh my...

First no road, and now no missionaries? You are shaping up to my worst enemy Pacal...

Too busy building settlers and trying to steal MY land it seems. I whipped these two settlers as soon as I saw him exit the jungle, but I didn't really think he would marsh all the way across the map to get this spot, but it turns out he doesn't have iron, so I have to settle both these cities even though I'm in no way ready for that.

I did get a good chunk of land though, shouldn't be complaining.

The only bright side economically/techwise is that Shadowgon Playa isn't built, and I did manage to get some chops into it, and that was enough to eventually get me to compass which gave me excellent trading value.

 

[krikav]

@Pangaea

Spoiler :

In hindsight, both Gandhi and Sully (and pacal?) is cultural and tend to go for aestethics, so going there myself to get trade value was probably bad. Should have gone straight for compass or perhaps CoL.

If you don't feel like continuing to fight a uphill battle (Did you see my progress in BOTM208? ), I would love to see you roll again and try to showcase a more slimmed version to cuirs, my greed wrecked my economy and I have been struggling to keep up since.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler alert, full map knowledge now.
This is yesterdays game, haven't booted up it yet.

Spoiler T139 :

Forgot to mention, T100 Sully DoWed Gandhi.

T107, Pacal finishes SwedagonPaya (I looked up the spelling!) and I crank up my slider. Have been doing 0gpt at 0% slider for a while now, finally gotten sailing through built research.

Mmmmhh, I'll teach y'all about a thing called compass fellas!
Calendar from Sully, MC from Pacal (when I give him 150g), 455G from Ramsy, and litterature from Gandhi.
With litterature in, I sprint for Music!
After that I broker MC to gandhi to get Monarchy too, and all of the sudden I have waaaay to few workers to improve all the wine and all the plantations.

But Pacal beats me by a turn. Grrrr!
After this, I put music on hold and instead go drama which I can get in two turns, so I can bulb philosophy.

I hate giving this guy stuff, but a beggars can't be choosers. The next turn, Ramsy begs me for Music and I oblige right away, bumping him right up to friendly.

Sully takes Gandhis capital and makes a vassal of him. And I rejoyce in the gems I'm going to get.

Even with Phi, I feel like I'm way behind on GPGeneration. But I do manage to get two guys out, but that depletes almost all stock of GPP in all cities.

Pacall went up to friendly and had teched nationalism, so I gave him education+theology+50g for Nationalism. That was a slight gamble as he then could have gotten lib if he had the techpower to 3 turn it. Turns out he was going for Divine right already though. But I probably overflowed some 300-400 beakers in lib just to make sure
The Taj-Build up north-east is probably not going to happen. Sulliman built sistine chapel in an eyeblink and is sure to get Taj before me even though he doesn't have nationalism yet. And thats going to hurt with his large empire and MoM.

Well... I get to MT, but I'm not sure how good that is. I don't have any HAs (lacking archery!), and I have about zero points in GPP so no trade missions in the pipeline.
The sea of cottages I built to stay afloat during the hard times earlier is starting to mature though, so perhaps one option is to go straight for cavallery...? That would probably sync up production and techrate better.
If not that, then whipping some 5-10 HAs and then upgrade those with 0% slider while also whipping cuirs straight is probably what I have to do.

Sullyman is going completely berserk, but he doesnt' plot at pleased so I think that even with a heaten religion I'm totally safe as long as I stay in HR.

What I really need to do, is completely obliterate Pacall for all the injustice he has caused me and the Russian empire.

* Not building roads to connect us and give me traderoutes when I needed it desperatly.
* Not sending any missionaries for ages and ages.
* Trying to steal city spots way inside my heartland.
* Getting music one turn before me.

So thats the main plan, how to deal with Sully and how to win the game gets far lower priority.

 

[Jarno]

SwedagonPaya (I looked up the spelling!)

You mean Schweggedy Peggedy?
My favourite wonder together with Chicken Pizza

 

[Pangaea]

T105.

Spoiler :

Continuing with Aesthetics was pointless when 3 of 4 AIs had it, and soon later it was 4 of 4. I went for Metal Casting instead, which nobody had, and stayed at 6 cities. Pretty awkward, because I had nothing to build except units -- for the cities that already had library+barracks. Started on walls in the capital, and chariots or workers elsewhere. Many started to decay, and overall it looked like a total clusterf***.

The AIs sent another batch of missionaries.
(At this point, those workers also roaded down to Pacal, so we could finally get foreign trade routes)

Turn 102 and we have Metal Casting, which nobody else have yet. Doesn't look like anybody have started to tech it either

Some worst enemy statuses going around, but it's usually not a big problem early on, with relatively small techs. Only traded Math+IW for MC+5g this turn, with Pacal. Then one-turned Fishing. Next turn I got Currency with one of them, Darius I think, and Aesthetics+Sailing with another guy, probably Gandhi. Then one-turned Mysticism. Hoped to get CoL and Calendar, but it wasn't possible. Got CoL tho, so that was okay. And Medi+Poly+230g with Ramesses. However, this was after rejecting a demand from Ramesses for MC (asshat!!), which prompted him to start plotting. Not good.....

However, we got a lot of techs out of that, and I've lined up Civil Service next (and we did end up building an Academy, because we simply had to tech something fast, instead of parking a GS or two for a thousand years hoping for a 'deep' bulb). Looks like we can get Buro by roughly 1AD, which I'm pleased with given how bad things looked a little while back.

Funnily no Alpha yet. When everybody else have it, it does nothing for me really, so I opted for other techs.

The land doesn't look great, but it's improving. Have spammed cottages because what else was I going to do when we can't improve any of the proper resources... :-| Would love Monarchy and Calendar, but for now it feels more important to get CS, which hopefully enables us to grab those 'backfills'. Have gotten spices and sugar from the others, so that was nice. Wish we could get the gold from Suleiman, but he was the only other AI with access to marble, so we had nothing on him. Settled another city too, with two workers improving sheep. With some luck I can get another happy for that, although most have been traded between AIs now, so not accessible any more.

 

[Pangaea]

Have a question about priorities, perhaps particularly to @krikav

Spoiler :

Read your T139 spoiler, and really well done getting to Lib first, and developing the empire like that. How did you get there that fast? Because that seems fast given the standstill economy a while back. Did you build a lot of research for a long time? For example instead of building forges and the like?

Think I struggle with this, because the game opens up a lot after these early techs. All wonders are gone in my game, mostly to Ramesses, so no failgold possibility, but then you also have options in buildings, mainly about forges, but also (AP) monasteries and temples, particularly in the capital, and maybe also a capital market for happiness and 0% slider.

This is a view of my game when I fired it up again. No wealth/research anywhere atm. Is this wrong?

Ramesses came over with 4 units, and was going to declare on us. Maybe a dagger war or whatever it's called, because it wasn't a huge stack. Successfully begged, but the fist remains. Bugger!