Nobles' Club 282: Mehmed II of the Ottomans

[5tephen]

Spoiler Turn 5 tech decisions :

Worker is going to improve the two wet corns before anything else. Maybe farm banana if not under jungle and nothing else yet to do after that. Road to second city in worst case scenario.

Not really sure what the best tech path is here. The problem with TW and Ag as starting techs is we're a long way away from archery and bronze working.

Option 1 would be mining -> BW allowing me to whip 1st settler at size 4 and get some chops in early but if there's no copper then archery is going to come pretty late for barb defence with no commerce and not creative or protective with potentially a fair bit of land to myself could lead to early defeat without early barb defence. Would be a slow start from a commerce perspective and no happies yet for great use of whipping.

Option 2 would be hunting -> AH. My second city is almost certainly going 1N of the eastern cow to share the capital's wet corn and my third city is likely to use the western cow so plenty of use for AH fairly early but if going option 1, the cows can be farmed. Hunting gives discount to AH and if no horses I can get to archery early enough. Probably fishing after AH for commerce from the lake. Always painful not to have BW though. Might have to work some pretty crummy tiles to get an archer out in good time.

Option 3 which has never worked for me before so probably isn't a good idea is to go directly for pottery. I could build a cottage NW of Istanbul and could get out an early granary utilising my traits whilst going mining -> BW but probably too slow for barb defence and what's the purpose of being setup for aggressive whipping if I have no happy resource? Nice to get a source of commerce that doesn't require fishing as it keeps open the engineering bulb in case I'm more boxed in than I currently appear but this seems a bit speculative based on the information I currently have.

N.B. I haven't read the map spoilers so don't know if this is isolated or not which would obviously negate any thoughts of avoiding fishing and going for engineering bulb.

I think Option 2 would be best. Slightly torn on skipping hunting as unless there's fur or ivory it has little intrinsic use but given it's a gamble on horse or not for whether I need archery, I'm not even a big fan of chariot defence, it gives a discount to AH and I have time to get there first as the capital itself has no AH resources that need improving ASAP I think hunting is worth it.

Spoiler :

Edit: for reference deity difficulty.

 

[pigswill]

Monarch normal. 1ad.

Spoiler :

Settled one north of start. Expanded north a bit, no copper, found horses, researched HbR, HA rush v Joao, he's down to one island city. Got 10 cities, +9 gpt at 100% wealth, settler en route, barb city to capture. Way behind on research but got alphabet so building research towards currency. Sometimes the question is, can you afford not to expand?

 

[sampsa]

@5tephen

Spoiler :

I did play the early game quickly and mining-BW seemed rather obvious to me. The land shape doesn't look problematic concerning barbs. I somehow don't see you getting into -troubles with such land and starting techs, as pottery is 1 tech away.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Spoiler Diety T107 to T145 :

Not a whole lot of inspired action after taking out Portugal. I bulbed to Liberalism (taking Civil Service --> Philosophy, skipping Literature) while self-teching to Optics, resulting in Astronomy at 700 AD (T145). Found out Montezuma was just across the ocean, but he had already capitulated to Sitting Bull (1). I sent a Galleon west and eventually met the others, showing a moderately advanced world of differing religions (2). Surprisingly, I was the world's only source of leather (3). I grabbed Nationalism next for drafting, but lost the Taj by 5 turns due to no marble and spending liberalism on Astro. I think Astro gave an additional ~100 BPT, between additional commerce and resource selling gains though.

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3)

Spoiler Diety T145 to T215 :

Sitting Bull started bee-lining Rifling, so I teched to Cannons --> Rifling --> Military Tradition while drafting Janissaries and building trebs in preparation for fighting Caesar. The result was a long and bloody war (40 turns) that took capturing 13 cities (4), peak unhappiness of -23 in capital due to war and Statue of Zeus (5), before capitulation became an option (6). Caesar gave me Physics in tribute and then traded Military Science. Total units killed was around 250+ (7) at the cost of 29 cannons and maybe 20 other assorted units. Saladin swapped to Christianity and kept Sitting Bull and Monte busy with a war himself, but I think the outcome was rather inconclusive.

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Spoiler Possible next steps :

The tech pace in the rest of the world has picked up steam, but isn't horribly out of reach (8). At 1.1k BPT, I can catch up quickly if space is faster. Otherwise, I have been looking at getting a drop onto Sitting Bull and freeing Monte from vassalage (44% Land/41% Population). That would be some nice Aztec irony. Maybe a 20 boat drop between Ligurian and Mesa Verde?
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[5tephen]

Thanks @sampsa . I'm guilty of either overcomplicating my starts or autopilot to BW ASAP and hope that works!

@5tephen

Spoiler :

I did play the early game quickly and mining-BW seemed rather obvious to me. The land shape doesn't look problematic concerning barbs. I somehow don't see you getting into -troubles with such land and starting techs, as pottery is 1 tech away.

 

[konata_LS]

Monarch level, from T223 to the end.

Spoiler :

Settings as below, no huts


After the war with Joao, I suddenly realised my capital had another iron mine. Why? I checked the event log and found the answer:

Oh, the capital discovered an iron in 1525AD. But in 1525AD I was too busy fighting with Joao and only noticed that extra iron several turns later, after the wars ended .
With the strong from two iron mines, I decided to build HE in my capital.


Research Steam Power, got Consitution and SMethods from my vassal AC, then went for Corporation - AL - Steel - Railroad - Combustion - MS - Rifling. Upgraded some Cuirs to Cavs, a treb to Cannon and a galleon to transport. Attacked Pacal with Infantries, Cavs and Cannons. The war went well at the beginning, since Pacal had AL but no Rifling. When Pacal was reduced to 3 or 4 cities, he got Rifling and his longbows/Axes/Maces suddenly became Infantries, though he had too few units. Pacal disappeared on T273.


When the newly conquered Mayan cities came out of revolts, started a golded age and adopted Rep (Statue of Liberty captured from Maya), State Property, and Free speech. Upgraded Cannons to Artilleries. Attacked SB and Monty with Infantries, Artilleries, Machine Guns and Cavs. SB only had Rifles and Grens while Monty still used Muskets and HAs. They capitulated on T 285.



Eliminating Pacal slowed down the whole world's tech pace, as neither Saladin nor SB were a good techer.


Next turn, domination:


All the Infantries killed came from Pacal's side, as Pacal was the only AI who got Inf throughout this game. Built some tanks, but both SB and Monty capitulated before my transports full of Tanks reached their land .


IMHO, this is a good map for new players to practise how to leverage EXP's cheap workers, because there is some rich land nearby and these land tiles give many things (chopping, cottages, pastures...) for workers to do, especially during the early game.

Thanks for the map .

 

[konata_LS]

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Yes, on Deity Pacal would be a serious threat if he started with so many rich flood plains. Swapping Pacal and SB's starting place makes this game on Deity (I would say on Immortal as well, because Pacal tech like crazy) challenging but still winnable.

The screenchot below shows how Monty as a vassal can be "useful" to SB:

Even after capitulation, SB remained Monty's worst enemy .

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Eh...it was rather a question of fingers than intuition . When one selects a settler and wants to press G for "Go to", but the fingers move wrongly and actually press B instead. You know, the letter B is just below G in the computer keyboard .

Settling 1W is an afterthought, because scouting revealed that there are many nice coastal spots in this map. If I replayed this map later, I would try something different, like settle 1W and grab GLH.

@pigswill

Spoiler :

At Monarch level with ORG leader, it's certainly possible to afford the expansion. Just make sure to build enough workers and send them to improve the tiles.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

The screenchot below shows how Monty as a vassal can be "useful" to SB:

Take away Monty's ability to declare war and he still tries to be as much of a firestarter as possible. Oh Monty, never stop being Monty

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity normal speed no huts no events up to BC 4000 to BC 475 (T0 to T96)

Spoiler :

I did not meet the Romans until BC 1760 (T56) through a fishing boat. I thought it was semi-isolation up to this point. I wanted Portugal alive until I can trade for alphabet and monarchy, the two techs that you might get in semi-iso. Had I known there was another player, I would have researched iron working after pottery and take Portugal out with swordsmen. Later on Portugal even built the GLH and the Hanging Gardens. That ship has sailed.

Instead I had to follow through with the peaceful expansion plan. This is after research aesthetics and trading it for alphabet and mathematics. The Romans have all the space and all the cities. I planted a city next to the marble as the gathering point for a later attack and for holding the Romans back a little bit. I can backfill after code of laws.

My neighbours are starting to pull ahead in tech.

I played enough to read some spoilers after this post. Some complaints about barbarians. I went archery because I saw ivory and empty expenses. Statistics said I killed 12 warriors, 6 archers, 1 spearman.

I want to complain about barbarian galleys. They are everywhere.

Question for @CarpoolKaraoke after reading up to T107

Spoiler :

How did you research HBR by 875BC (T80) without a natural source of commerce? That's one reason why I decided against attacking Portugal with horse archers. Just cottages?

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Question for @CarpoolKaraoke after reading up to T107

Spoiler :

How did you research HBR by 875BC (T80) without a natural source of commerce? That's one reason why I decided against attacking Portugal with horse archers. Just cottages?

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

I think a combination of tech path and (maybe?) more cities - I had 7 by 975 BC.

I went Mining, BW, Fishing (2680 BC), AH (2240 BC), Pottery (1920 BC), Writing (1480 BC), HBR (875 BC). My reasoning for Fishing --> AH is due to to the double lake + Fish for size 5 Istanbul + size 1 Edirine (see pic). With double workers roading before settle, I get +17 commerce as opposed to +11 if I had settled Ankara first at 2680 BC, which you can't get with pottery 3rd. This makes AH rather quick, and spares 168 beakers for Hunting + Archery first out of 422 for HBR.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

@sylvanllewelyn

Minor addendum: I believe the only instances to tech Archery is when you're sure there's no copper and horse, or on rare occasions when you have a hunting start. This might end up being a contentious opinion, but I think barbarian behavior makes building archers only a tiny upgrade from warriors.

If you have an archer on terrain with +50-100% bonus, a barbarian archer may walk around it, which ruins funneling. A woodsman warrior it will hit with sub-optimal odds. If you're contesting open terrain to prevent pillaging, I'd rather hit 2 warriors (30h) than take a 50-50 with an archer (25h). Barbarian spearmen may show up as early as 2000 BC, but that is enough time to tech BW+AH first. I did lose a city during my first play of this game, but I'd argue that the situation was rather rare. I lost a warrior defending a hilled city vs an un-promoted archer twice in a row, which is incredibly low odds, and on par with defending with 1 archer.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Emporeror / Normal / Huts - I've just started playing again after years away. Very keen for feedback and suggestions!

Spoiler :

To T26: Moved warrior north, didn't see anything worth keeping, so settled on plains hill. Tech Agri/Mining/BW - can't see any urgent reason to tech anything else and there will be chopping and whipping to be done. Warrior continued north up the coast, popped a free scout, then died to a lion on a hill. Scout mapped out a decent area before being eaten.

Civ4ScreenShot0002

• fortydayweekend
• Aug 6, 2021

What to tech next? There are decent city sites nearby, including 2 cows, and further out ivory and more cows - so Hunting/AH will be needed, but maybe not straight away. There's a lot of empty land around and no AI to the north, copper is a long way off, so nearby horses and/or quicker Archery might be necessary.

On the other hand a cheap Granary would help whip out units and settlers in Istanbul, and there's no commerce resources so cottages on the rivers will be good too.

I'm going to go Pottery first and hope warriors are enough for now.

T26 - T54:
To be safe I founded second city on the plains hill east of Istanbul, should be a good size 5-6 city with cow and mines to crank out units. Next 2 cities were also reasonably close, but no barbarian threat yet.

Met Caesar's scout, he's somewhere to the north. Teched Pottery, Hunting, AH which revealed lots of horses, and then Writing.

Next cities: There's a good site to the south with 3 food resources but will need IW, fishing, and border pops.. but might still be worth grabbing to block Joao. Obviously the ivory/floodplains, probably on the plains hill to get cow and corn. Good spots up the west coast (wine/food), copper to the east, marble NE, good island spot SW of Istanbul with sugar/horse/gems.. that's 11 potential cities at least, 6 of them on the coast, with no commerce resources. Depending on how close the AI is I might not get to all them, but there's a lot of room to expand.

Only luxuries are Ivory, Wine and Sugar... connecting that wine will be necessary so probably go Monarchy / HR, which fits with no metal / being able to produce warriors. There's enough trees in Istanbul/Bursa for wonders or an army.

Options:
- I often go for Pyramids but if I'm going Monarchy they're not necessary, plus with low luxury / no commerce it would make sense to be working cottages and mines rather than farms & specialists.
- I'll need Sailing for trade routes so GLH is a possibility - there'll be a few coastal cities.
- Could try a Horse Archer rush on Portugal?
- With lots of cities I think I want Currency quickly but not at the expense of having more useful things to build along the way, and Monarchy should probably be first??

All up I think I'm going to go Sailing first, this will let me grab the food city on the isthmus, and open trade routes to Portugal and Rome. Then HBR, I don't remember using Horse Archers much so that would be fun to try - at the very least they will be good for barbarians and grabbing barb cities, and it could be a tradeable tech later. I might give GLH a shot after that.

Should be fine with just Ivory in the immediate future, cities will be small but I can keep building settlers in Istanbul and working cottages/mines/scientists. Hopefully one of the AI gets Alphabet and can trade me all the religious techs so Monarchy isn't too far off.

Played a bit further

Spoiler :

To T92
Decided to go Masonry first to have the best shot at GLH (finished in Edirne 775BC). Then HBR, which I traded to Caesar for Alphabet, which I then gave to Joao for Mysticism & IW.

Settled on the Ivory and the Horse/Sugar/Gems island. Another settler about to settle on the Wheat/Copper/Marble to the NE, which will be city #8. I want the next cities to be coastal, probably just 2 more. Some more islands would be nice but I've mapped out the coastline and the only other island is far away.

I've got one Iron and another I should be able to comfortably get in the north.

Joao is trapped in a small space, he has iron just inside his border (but he doesn't have IW yet, and doesn't have copper either). I've just been given a quest to build Stables, and my cities have run out of things to build other than units & workers... I think everything is pointing to a Horse rush on Portugal.

Currently teching Currency

Civ4ScreenShot0005

• fortydayweekend
• Aug 7, 2021

Civ4ScreenShot0004

• fortydayweekend
• Aug 7, 2021

 

[konata_LS]

Spoiler :

Tech Agri/Mining/BW - can't see any urgent reason to tech anything else and there will be chopping and whipping to be done.

Do you play with a mod which changes the starting techs of some nations? Because in BTS, the Ottomans start with Agri + The Wheel so you don't need to research Agri. If you play with such mods, your game may become quite different from standard BTS one.

With mod or not, at Emperor level there are usually many options for the player. So GLH gambit, peaceful REX, or HAs rush, all seem to be fine.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Deity (not diety) T96 to T215. Read some spoilers. Different experience from the others.

Spoiler :

I decided not to attack Portugal because their lands did not look rich. I had rich(er) lands to the North to expand peacefully into. I was concerned with occupying more land so that the Romans had less when I fought them in the future. I denied them marble and horse.

Since I expanded aggressively, Portugal had nowhere to go and was stuck with 4 cities. But some-time during the BC/AD, Portugal's cultural borders met the Aztecs before optics. I am not sure but I believe this also opens intercontinental trade routes without astronomy. That they have The Great Lighthouse is probably a minor detail?

Anyway, Portugal and Aztecs should have been tech trading. Maybe, as a result, the Native Americans stalemated with the Aztecs. The Aztecs gained military technology from Portugal.

As the Native Americans were not winning a lot, they expanded more slowly, so the Mayans landed cities on the Northern shores of the mainland. As of T215, the Mayans are both tech leader and cities leader with 9 cities, after myself.

Since I expanded more aggressively, my development was delayed and I only took liberalism by 880AD (T154) which is very slow. During the process I took Great Library at BC-075 since no-one wanted it. I did not attempt first-to-music. Much later I got a great artist manually from fighting over culture borders which I burned for a golden age.

Rome had 14 cities when I attacked with janissaries and trebuchets at 1040AD. Drafting and whipping continued during the advance, later switching to knights to reach the front-lines more quickly. Since Rome did not have horses, my trebuchets were safe from flanking attack. For a brief window they had no answers to janissaries. The bonus +25% is - - not - - trivial.

Landed communism 1220AD (T182). Romans were one turn from rifling but by then they lost enough core cities that I had the momentum to push through with numbers.

The Native Americans tried a cheap shot. Thankfully I had a stack of knights that could run across the continent.

The Aztecs then tried the same thing. I could not figure out who bribed them in. Since the Aztecs were at war with Portugal for a long time, I can gain +diplo modifiers with Portugal.

1420AD (T202) Rome finally agreed to capitulate. Yes - - they had 14 cities, and refused to capitulate until they lost 13, and only had the island left. This is beyond Sitting Bull persistence.

But instead I just took a peace treaty for constitution and biology.

(Obviously?) I had to finish them off ten turns later. Roman culture stops me from drafting. Paid 200 gold to Sitting Bull to end the war, whatever.

The kill-death ratios were impressive in the beginning and then became ugly once rifles were introduced.

I had to because, once again, they refused to capitulate and refused to cough up any technologies until they had ONE city left on the ISLAND.

Now I need to think of a way to deal with the Mayans. I think cannons can handle infantry. I have no answers against machine guns.

 

[sampsa]

Diety, emporer... what next, immartol?

 

[Fish Man]

t145 casual noble space playthrough

Spoiler :

Libbed electricity and then got communism in 3 turns. Switch to state property, and immediately break even at 100% with over 1300 BPT in a golden age. Ahhh...nice, relaxing game for the weekend.

These days I usually only play deity or noble. Deity when I want a challenge, noble to sandbox (because, on this difficulty, you can pretty much do and try anything). This map would've been so annoying for deity (far from impossible, but just a hassle to handle) because of the intercontinental stuff, and though a win would've been highly likely to the point of being assured, it would've cost me over a dozen hours of micro and headaches. So instead, why not try to switch things up...literally speaking, as I deviated from the standard space plan a bit to play around with libbing things beyond communism.

This was also the first game I've ever used a significant amount of non-river cottages. Well, only 4-5, and in the capital, but...since only about a quarter of the cap was riverside, and there was so much food, I had nothing to do with those tiles for a large part of the game, and thought to try something different.

Finally, hammams are so fun to play around with on isolation (well, I made this start iso by rushing everyone else on my continent). It's basically almost free representation in terms of the happiness they give. Best UB in the entire game. EXP is very nice too when you want to fill and improve a continent fast. You can basically whip a worker and then finish the next with overflow, one-chop granaries everywhere, and so forth. Just nice, relaxing stuff, to destress from a very hectic time.

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[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Sure, that's...totally how my Noble games look like .

 

[migalhone]

Spoiler :

Sure, that's...totally how my Noble games look like .

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

As someone who plays on Prince/Monarch, who doesn't reach 1000+BPT by the time we research Communism??

 

[konata_LS]

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Deity AIs are more stubborn than Monarch ones. How could AC refuse to capitulate until there was only 1 city left ...

Though you went for the similar peaceful expansion as I did during the early game, after Renaissance era your experience and attack units are really different from mine. But your strategy seems to work well.

I noticed something unusual in your screenshot: you settled a city Konya on the gem . What made you decide to settle on gem? Because IW took too long to research?

Since you already have Steel and SMethods, Artillery might be a possible solution to Pacal's MG, because Artillery has 50% attack bonus to all the sieges and MG is siege. To fight against Inf. + MG, Artilleries + Rifles are less vulnerable than Cannons + Rifles. But I'm not sure if you have enough time to research Artillery and build enough Arty. Pacal may go for Culture victory or Space quite fast.

@sampsa

Spoiler :

Do you think settling on grassland hill gem is equal to settling on gold?

@Fish Man

Spoiler :

It seems you've got tired of Lib Communism and wants to try something more creative . What about Lib Fusion next time ?

You research Communism before Feudalism, so did you go to SMethods through Astronomy? It's not common to see the players get Communism before Guilds and Chemistry. But on Noble, almost everything or every strategy is possible. Since you didn't plan a Renaissance war, delaying Guilds/Chemistry wouldn't hurt, and the intercontinental TR from Astro are important in this map.

 

[sampsa]

Do you think settling on grassland hill gem is equal to settling on gold?

Hmm, not at all? I don't think there is any city center bonus if settling on non-riverside grass hill gems. Also, grass hill gem is -1 while gold is -2, so the tile itself is also better.