Nobles' Club 276: Frederick of Germany

[sampsa]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

I don't want to cuir rush against protective.

Cuirassiers don't care whether AIs longbows are protective or not, and he won't have anything better than that. Not having iron is a reason to not go cuirs though, if you have no way of getting it then I guess you need to tech even further or go for an engineering based attack. Honestly though, going music and towards lib doesn't point to that direction, but exactly to cuirs.

 

[konata_LS]

@Wrathful @jnebbe About the iron issue:

Spoiler :

I self-teched IW and managed to grab this city spot (orange circle) before AC. Luckily, wonder-spamming and building missionaries distracted AC from expansion for a while.


This iron city was founded in 550BC. I'm not sure if grabbing this spot is doable on Immortal, but on Prince before 500BC it's highly possible.


But claiming iron costs me a very heavy price. Self-teching IW delayed Alphabet and Currency. I didn't have time to try any early wonder, no mids, no GLH, even no failgold. The iron city was very far from my capital, maintenance fee was high: without courthouse it costed more than 5 per turn, a huge sum before AD. All these put me on the edge of strike during the whole classical era. Even in 520 AD I only had 120 per turn, much less than your BPT around 300BC. I got civil service in 500AD <--you see how backward I was .

 

[yyeah]

Wow awsome start, i wanted to play Freddy last days, and it looks like preety nice map to go with. I struggle on Deity since i dont play too much civ however... man this is a center, i dont even dare to move SiP and for mids.
And yea we all know what to bulb on Continents . I hope You didnt put Zulu next to me .

Edit: actually iam considering moveing on corn 1N but this will probably take another city spot duno is worth is and we are wasting good tile... hmm but it isnt wet .

 

[Wrathful]

Spoiler T174 :

I decided to go forward with my plan of Libbing Astronomy. I do feel that there is a lot of value in keeping tabs on what the other continents are doing and also getting better trade routes. I am also wondering if I should even attack somebody on my continent. They would probably all vote for me, so maybe I should go for the other continent. Only Churchill is a question mark but I can probably placate him by adopting his favorite civic.

I started up a golden age and farmed plenty of great scientists for bulbing and some merchants as well. I also won the music race; don't know if that was a good use of my time but that's what I did. Looking back at it, I wish I had cottaged a bit more, especially around Munich.

I upgraded some triremes into caravels and set out to find everyone. It seems that the north is impassable however. This caravel will probably end up shipping off another great merchant.

The first leader I found, Washington, was a bit behind and also seemed to be isolated since he won't offer Archery in trade. He has plenty of land though. Definitely a good first target.

In the mean time I started a second golden age and got out the last of my great people. At the end of the golden age I switched into more warlike civics. I am teching towards Steel while prebuilding some units. I want to stagger out the whip anger here. My tech rate is rather bad, but costs are low so it balances out. I don't see the value in getting Steel super early if I don't have any units finished yet.

After finding the last two guys the world situation is pretty clear. The Greeks and Romans are doing respectably, with Churchill trailing behind and the other continents left in the dust. I suppose Washington might become a problem eventually with all the land he has. He definitely is the target here. If I try to attack Charlemagne or Gilgamesh the other will probably get bribed in; they are best friends after all.

Three great merchants combined to give me a big pile of cash.

I continued building up an army while making my way to cannons. I also scouted out Washington, mainly to find his army. He did have a small one, mostly Horse Archers and catapults.

When the time came to trade for iron I panicked a little bit because Augustus no longer needed my copper. It turns out seafood can be smashed by your own units too. I didn't know that.

Even after upgrading all my trebs I still had close to 5000 gold left over. I will probably take the deal again and upgrade more guys later. Regarding tech, I should probably get to Communism before I take too many cities on Washington's continent and crash my economy. The great spy would be nice too for a third golden age. I am hopeful that the votes from Washington's land, my current territory, and the other guys on my continent will be enough to win diplo.

@konata_LS

Spoiler :

Yes, Augustus had that spot long before I could have gotten there. I would have tried to get it if I had the chance. Even with just building wealth I think it would pay for itself. Congratulations on your game by the way, it looks like you went on to dominate despite some early economic trouble.

And yes, PHI is quite good indeed. In my opinion it is the best trait in the game.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Regarding tech, I should probably get to Communism before I take too many cities on Washington's continent and crash my economy. The great spy would be nice too for a third golden age

Another thing you could do, especially since you're ORG, is pre-build six Courthouses and Forbidden Palace on your starting continent, then more your (relatively very cheap) Palace over to your target's continent once the first city comes online. Both continents will have a palace building and as such won't generate colonial maintenance, without having to tech/adopt SP.

Of course in your particular situation (enough money to make Scrooge faint, few cities with little production capabilities beyond Slavery) it's obviously better to tech to Communism and focus 100% of your production on units, especially since you're going to need transports for them as well. But the FP trick could be useful for someone else, maybe .

 

[NothingBesideRemains]

I've been lurking this place off and on for over a decade; got back into Civ recently and decided to finally make an account so I can post about my Immortal attempt on this one [which will be difficult for me as I won't be reloading, which is definitely a habit I can fall into!]. Thanks to all who keep this thing chugging it along, it's nice to have great Civ IV content still!

Looking at the start from the image, I'm thinking about a start 2N1W of the Settler, in order to allow a 2nd/ 3rd city to start directly on the stone. I also like keeping a large chunk of freshwater lakes in 1 city for a bit of a Moai bump down the line, given the stone. 2N1W instead of 2N, to potentially save any seafood that might be in the NE and would be potentially spoiled by settling 2N. Will be moving my scout 2W1S first, to see if there's anything off the hill that might change things, but doubt it.

Thinking about mids and GLH, but will try to limit myself to just 1 or the other [unless I go GLH first and mids goes late], as overkill on the wonders is definitely a bad habit I'm trying to break after habitually doing it when reloading games.

 

[krikav]

Deity NH/NE

Spoiler T75 :

SiP->Agri.
Went fishing after Agri, going BW right away looked abit problematic, not much commerce and I want alot of techs. (Want sailing, want masonry, want TW, want AH etc etc).
Lost a pair of worker turns while waiting for BW. Decided to go for two workers before the settler to kickstart chopping abit. Also for security, want to chop some warriors possibly.
Got good fogbusting net in the west, and one warrior can block the path from the south.

BW is in, figure I'll settle this way. 1E of sheep would be insta-connected, but haven't had time to check the coast for seafood, this way I have room for another city out there.

Settler out, slavery revolt.

August built TGW T45... have to hurry if I want pyramids. I built quite a few warriors and that felt good when this horde came out from the jungle.

Churchil wounded this guy but didn't kill him, he attacked a warrior in the forest with 1.2hp. A second spear came along a few turns later but 3 warriors handled him.

It wasn't even august...
198 failgold was nice though, got through pottery+AH+sailing.

Got some nice spots, but losing out on all the shiny wonders was abit depressing.
Not sure if I should try charge down into the jungle of if I should just backfill abit.
I don't chop anything more now. Laying down cottages on some flatland grassland now.. Not impressive but probably needed now when pyramids where lost.
After writing, I think I'll go med->PH->CoL.

 

[Wrathful]

Spoiler T209 :

About 30 units loaded into the galleons and set off for Washington. At this point England, France, and Rome are beginning to make contact with the other leaders. Churchill actually started plotting too. Looks like Gilgamesh or Charlie might be in trouble.

This has to be one of the worst deals I've ever seen the AI propose...

I landed in Washington's territory on T179. A small force split off from the main army to take Miami and claim iron. I hope that city doesn't autoraze. His army is currently in his capital. By my reckoning it will take him 5 turns to get to that hill tile I marked, or some other tile to the north or south. Of course, his army isn't much to worry about. He doesn't have good units, nor does he have very many of them.

This seemed like a good deal to me. Augustus already has Education, and even the likes of Gilgamesh have Banking I think.

And Miami autorazed after all. No iron for me yet. Well, it was a lousy city anyway.

I took this trade too. Pericles got Astronomy on his own.

And I made this trade as well, to unlock Cuirassiers and later Cavalry. I may be able to broker the tech later. (After making the trade I remembered that I can't build Cuirassiers without iron. Too bad.)

Washington's army turned up exactly where I predicted it would be! That made me chuckle. In any event, these units won't be able to do much wherever they go.

I'm not sure where Churchill got all this gold from, but I know where it's going next! I was able to sell him Economics for a nice sum as well.

It's good that I built a money reserve, since my economy is starting to crash now that I'm capturing more of Washington's cities. War weariness is starting to hit pretty hard too.

Pericles recently teched Scientific Method. I'm hoping he will head down the Electricity line and build the UN. I remember him doing that sort of thing in previous games. Usually he goes for a culture victory in my experience. Communism is not in danger by the way; he lacks Liberalism.

At one point an AP resolution called for peace with Washington. You can probably guess what everyone voted for. I defied, leading to fairly severe happiness problems in my homeland. But I figured that that Washington will soon be dead, thus eliminating my war weariness and bringing things back to normal. He is down to three cities.

Poor Munich seems to be worst off. I guess I deserve it for whipping there a few times. I think I have to run the culture slider.

I was thinking about starting a golden age to make the switch into state property, but that doesn't seem very wise right now. It would be a bit of a waste. Probably better to do it when all this unhappiness clears up and my new cities come online. I will just take the turn of anarchy. In the mean time, the culture slider will probably be needed here.

At last, Communism. Was paying 600 gold per turn before swapping into State Property! I decided not to go into Caste yet. There are many things to be whipped (lots of workers) in the new continent. I also don't want two turns of anarchy.

Not sure what to tech next. I'll pick Biology for now; it's good trade bait and I don't need better units at the moment. I think I'll attack Gilgamesh or Charlie next. They don't seem to have many units and are behind in tech.

Washington crumbled at last. I now have a solid 20 cities, though the new ones need a lot of work. Churchill attacked Gilgamesh with a paltry force after plotting for a while, leading to Charlie being dragged into the war too. I am shipping over my veterans to take out Gilgamesh before he gets better units. I think he will be tougher than Washington, but he is also a lot smaller and is PRO to boot. After that I will go for Charlie. Hopefully Churchill doesn't peace out so we can build a shared war diplo bonus.

I finished Biology and am getting Rifling now. Charlie got Replaceable Parts and I'm worried that he will beeline Rifling.

Now might be a good time to fire off the golden age and switch into Caste for better workshops. But there are still a few things I wanted to whip. I'm also considering building the Kremlin. I've never built it in any of my games but I've head that it's overpowered. Failgold would be nice at the very least. Washington left plenty of forests behind for me.

 

[NothingBesideRemains]

Up to T117, AD50, Immortal no huts

Spoiler :

Went for GLH and made it; didn't realize there was no food on the nearby island but still getting good value out of the traderoutes with an island city at least. Started going mids after, but not too aggressively as expected just some failgold. Got the mids, and by ~1000BC oracle still available so started researching myst to try for that but only made it about 1/4 through production before it went at something like 800BC. Great value out of M Statues and various other resourced wonders for failgold, maybe like 600 gold total. Gunning for HG in the capital which got mids, to keep a pure engineer pool for the option at Mining corp later on once I conquer my continent, or maybe a rushed Taj depending on how timing works out. Avoiding GL & National Epic for now, as I lack marble [considered sending a settler on the SE coast to grab a marble city but timing just doesn't work out], and Trying to be more direct about a Cuir rush instead.

Really early Merchant from the GLH and decided to bulb machinery instead of saving for a better traderoute [Temple of Artemis only went ~300BC so didn't have any TR modifiers for a trade mission]. Got a scientist shortly after and bulbed Philo. This may have been a mistake as Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism [by me] and Taoism [by me] all went on my continent [Christianity later on, as well], so risk of a love-fest on the buddhist continent, but few wonders popping up over there so they might be luddites anyway. Late Alphabet by the AI's delayed some desired techs I wanted to trade for, but now I sit with a good tech advantage and in a good position.

Planning for a Cuir rush, currently in Augustus' Judaism, so will target Churchill [lots of coastal cities in mine, he has MoM, and I want to crush him first in case rifling comes in on my continent before Cuir rush is done, to avoid the protective rifles], and then Greece and then Rome. Will try to go all / nearly-all cities rather than vassaling, to go for a delayed but more comprehensive late-game push to the other continent. Need to grab the Iron to the West from a Barb city that popped up, so hoping some elephants get up to 10 exp in that war to unlock the HE before Cuir rushing starts. Planning to use my Music GA to golden age early enough to get some GS's for 1x bulbing Edu & Lib, and maybe try to get another GM while I'm at it, for upgrading. Trying to time the GA late enough that I can switch to Fascism for cuir whipping.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T181 :

Did an academy, got Music and bulbed Philo (got Tao). Lib MT T140.
Did a GA with the music artist somewhat early, then I grew cities very large and did another one. Can't remember how many bulbs I did.
This guy I just Squeezed out, about 0 GPP in most cities now.

Capital was large, and made pericles got Economics early on so he would build a customs house too.

16500g, a bargain for an army!
I started out by going for cuirs, but it took forever to sync up HAs and GMerchants and I got PP in a trade too, the cash I could save by going 0% wasn't worth it so went straight for rifling instead. Attack is ofcourse delayed but now it's really explosive instead.

Boom!

DoW T176 and Churchil is off the board T181.

Abit overkill it seems!

 

[sampsa]

@krikav

Spoiler :

edit

Spoiler :

seriously that is fkn epic, 16k upgrades followed by a 5T demolition

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

I feel like I've just learned an important lesson RE: Why banking establishments are said to be more dangerous than standing armies. 'Cuz I don't think ol' Churchill's Stock Exchanges helped save his day there .

Can we get a screenshot of your military strength graph achieving a Space Race victory ?

 

[shakabrade]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Lol. Building Courthouses at T0 of the war. Such confidence!
I think I never had more than 5k gold in this game. This is one crazy display of Phi.

How do you plan on winning? Do you have some galleons for export? AC should be easy to befriend. Maybe you can get to nice space VC with 2 great teching friends and take the rest of the land. The challenge is to generate more Great People for Gage.

 

[krikav]

Sure thing @AcaMetis

Spoiler Graph :

I rerouted toward August right after Churchill was gone. The poor Roman doesn't fancy getting Rifling it seems, but his Grenadiers/Muskets are tough enough! DoW T184 and he is still alive and well.

 

[krikav]

@shakabrade

Spoiler :

I don't think I have ever felt this confident in any way in civ4 ever. It was kind of ridiculus.
Regarding VC, I don't plan that much really. When I continued playing now I saw that August didn't have rifling so I'm doing abit of opportunistic grabbing against him now. Teching steampower->AL with the intent of getting those nice supercheap factories up.
Got Physics in a trade too, so industrialism should be that far off.

More GPeople aint going to happen I think. When I got the last one all cities where empty of point and next one requires 1600 (or was it 1800?), so that well is dry.

*Edit* Courthouses... I was building a few of those, and then jails too. I was thinking that perhaps I should do some espionage against pericles later on. Tanks/Spies perhaps? */Edit*

 

[shakabrade]

@shakabrade

Spoiler :

I don't think I have ever felt this confident in any way in civ4 ever. It was kind of ridiculus.
Regarding VC, I don't plan that much really. When I continued playing now I saw that August didn't have rifling so I'm doing abit of opportunistic grabbing against him now. Teching steampower->AL with the intent of getting those nice supercheap factories up.
Got Physics in a trade too, so industrialism should be that far off.

More GPeople aint going to happen I think. When I got the last one all cities where empty of point and next one requires 1600 (or was it 1800?), so that well is dry.

*Edit* Courthouses... I was building a few of those, and then jails too. I was thinking that perhaps I should do some espionage against pericles later on. Tanks/Spies perhaps? */Edit*

Spoiler :

Well, you are ahead quite a bit so I thought that you could try something memorable. Tanks + Spies could be nice to see in action. In that case it makes sense to leave many of Churchill's towns alive. But you do not really need that much tech to conquer your continent.
Maybe it makes sense for you to use Cavs + Fighters from Carriers and skip tanks and Bombers (I think that most of Pericles' cities are reachable by the ocean and some which are not by inland sea or you can just beeline some cannons to meet there early enough). No need for Industrialism, Electricity and Radio. That also allows you to transfer your troops quickly to HRE or America and have aerial support there as well. Probably a better win date if conquest is planned and no units lost. The units you have could stil be used and Factory production can be put to research to Flight instead of Tanks. Airships can be prebuilt.

 

[jnebbe]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Insane, surprised you could get 2 GS+6GM in that time.
I saw someone else used GMs to upgrade their army, is that the best play when you don't have much pop to work with? I went cuirs but just couldn't whip out enough and rqed

 

[krikav]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

I did use one GMerch for a academy, one for philo bulb and one bulb into education (I think) and one into liberalism.
I also generated one GArtist and paired that with one GSci to run a second GA.
So in total 12 Gpersons? GPerson timer is up at 1600 now, so I got that 1400 one at least.

If it's best play is hard to say.
The cost of upgrading is 20+3*hammer_difference, so for a HA (50H) to a Cuir (100H) the cost is 20+3*50=170g. For Cavalry it's 20+3*70 = 230g.
So you are paying 3.4 or 3.3 gold per hammer you want to bring to the battlefield.
So objectivly, it's sort of a very horsehockey ratio.

But it's one of the best ways to convert GPPoints -> hammers, so when you can generate alot of GPeople this upgrading business is one way to turn all those GPeople to something useful.
And it's the GPeople that are broken/overpowered here.
Here, most of those GPeople I generated was done from multiple cities (at least 6 cities contributed) during golden ages while in pacifism being philosophical.
Only the last two (tree?) lagged behind outside the last GA, and the first two GScis where done without either too.
But for the bulk of the points, I was generating GPeoplepoints at 400% of normal. So, say a Gmerchant in the middle of the pack, at 700GPP.
That one costed about 700/ (4*3) = 58 GPeople turns and if we value those at 2 food per turn (starvation can make it even better though) thats 120 food.
The GMerchant then generated 2700G which then converted to 2700/3.3= 818 hammers.
120food to 818 hammers is kind of nice.

Spoiler Second GA screenshot :

But it's also more subtle than that... It's that you can build HAs for a long time in preparation and you can generate the GMerchants a long time.
Then when all things are in sync, you have your techs and you have your HAs and you have your GMerchants then all of a sudden by the stroke of a wand all tech+GPeople+Hammers you have generated materialise on the battlefield.

At T176 when I'm about to DoW, my empire is in kind of a sorry state. If I would just delete all cavalry I would do 250BPT sustained, and all cities except capital are small and suffering from whip anger. The GPeople well is dry (all the low hanging fruits are gone as the next one cost 1600points).
But everything was in sync to summon the greatest power possible to the battlefield.


On this map, where I managed to get 10 cities peacefully, with loads of green land to farm. Population was not an issue at all, and it might have made more sense to do the cuir upgrade sooner, and then just start whipping cuirs straight? But on other maps where you are more starved for land doing this GPeople->Upgrade trick is of even more use than on this map.
But on other maps, you might have bad food potential, and playing a non-phi leader, so how big of a role it plays differs from map to map.
On this map, I would say that the best possible thing you can do, is to get pyramids for rep and take it from there.

 

[krikav]

@jnebbe your game (T129)

Spoiler :

I checked your postings quickly. Fishing first seems abit off imho, but your reasoning is solid (need the commerce fast to reach all techs in time for GLH).
First big mistake I see is that you didn't farm both corns. That second city was without a improved food resource for so long probably set you back alot.

Second mistake I see is that you spent alot of time with your second city to build TGW without stone for failgold.
You did go fishing first, which sacrificed some production/food for commerce and that might have been a okay tradeoff even though it's always risky to forfeit production for commerce in the very early game.
But turning hammers to gold at a 1 to 1 ratio (and delayed to boot) like that is no good.

After that, you lost some good or decent spots to Churchill in the middle region. Which might make sense since you got GLH and wanted to prioritize coastal.
But there are not that many good coastal sites around, and I think that at least partly the reason why Churchil got those spots was as a consequence of mistake #1 and mistake #2.

From that spot you are in at T129, I do think that cuirs are the way to go. You are abit starved for land and you got good commerce due to GLH and you have cities with good GPeople potential even if it's abit fewer than I had.

 

[sampsa]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

Krikav already pointed out some ways to improve, but I'd add one more: grow. The reason krikav got so many out is because he probably had several very big cities. I wouldn't be satisfied with a size 9 capital by 1AD on this map, I'd shoot for at least 15 or so, depends on the resource trades, which are easier to acquire on deity to be fair. It's just that the golden age is so much more powerful the bigger your cities are.

Despite some mistakes, I'm pretty sure you can win from your T129, like you say you are far ahead in tech...