Nobles' Club 283: Catherine of Russia

AcaMetis

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May 21, 2018
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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 Catherine of Russia, whom we last played in NC 214; we last played the Russians under Peter in NC 271. The Russians start with Hunting and Mining.
  • Traits: Catherine is Creative and Imperialistic. Creative gives every city +2:culture: for free, and gives a +100% :hammers: bonus to Libraries, Theatres, and Colosseums. Imperialistic adds +100% to Great General generation and +50% :hammers: bonus to Settler production (note that the settler bonus doesn't apply to excess :food: directly converted to :hammers:).
  • 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:move: unit Tanks start rolling around.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Inland Sea, temperate climate, medium sealevel, +1 AI to balance the board.
Spoiler edits :
The usual resource swaps, and a nearby source of Stone was swapped with Marble.
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 283 Catherine 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 what is demigod :
The difference between Immortal and Deity difficulty is akin to the difference between Noble and Immortal. Players eventually reached a point where Immortal was too easy, but Deity was still out of reach, and so neither difficulty provided a fun experience. "Demigod" is an otherwise standard Deity game where the AIs are only given their Immortal level starting units, in an attempt to bridge the gap.
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.
 

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*In best Shakespeare voice* To settle on Gold, ye experts of Civ IV, or to not settle on Gold? That is the question.

Looking at the screenshot I see SIP as being thoroughly food starved city until Biology, with two plains cows and a floodplain for visible food. The only open tile that can have another resource is a plains hill, so at best that's a plains hill Sheep added to that thoroughly underwhelming collection :shake:. But where to move? I'm one of those silly people that prefer to work Goldmines over settling on them, but unless there's strong food tiles around that's not going to happen for a very long time. I guess send the scout 1NE -> 1E on the plains hill to scout as much of the north and east as possible, and if there's nothing tempting...gamble on settling 2NW, maybe? That could just as easily backfire as it could pay off, though.

So yeah, not sure what to do in this situation :). Settle on Gold or rush for whatever extra source of food might be around and pray it's enough to feed the goldmine? What do the experts think?
 
Looks nice for you know what :hammer:
 
Assuming nothing is found, I really don’t see much wrong with just SIP.

Not much growing needs to be done early on, at size 4 working the two cows and two mines that’s 14 base hammers (21 for a settler!).

Whether you settle on the gold or not I don’t think you have enough food to really whip and so this is probably faster and gives more commerce than working cottages.

Later on the gold can be handed off to a city in the north to allow the capital to grow a bit.

I actually love these hammer heavy starts for imp leaders.
 
Not much growing needs to be done early on, at size 4 working the two cows and two mines that’s 14 base hammers (21 for a settler!).
Well, compare that to SOG, which is 16:hammers: towards a settler at size 2 and suddenly 21:hammers: at size 4 doesn't sound that much. A lot faster to set up (=worker can immediately chop) thus I wouldn't seriously consider not getting a 2:hammers: cc with this start. Not sure which plains hill I'd go for though, but scouting should reveal that.
I actually love these hammer heavy starts for imp leaders.
Agree with this though, those cows are yummy for Cathy.
 
There looks to be flood plains in the fog to the west of the scout. Settling the grass tile 1W of the scout picks up both cows and the gold, it's tempting to run the scout that way and see if there is an actual food resource.

But I think the best play is scout to the PH to check for food. 2H plant is worth the 2 turns to move if it's got some food. SIP has two tiles in the fog that aren't forest and the tile 2-1 of the settler looks to be coast/lake.
 
SIP has two tiles in the fog that aren't forest and the tile 2-1 of the settler looks to be coast/lake.
Yup, 2E seems to be a hill, so can't be that important. 2N1E is clearly a floodplain.
Settling the grass tile 1W of the scout picks up both cows and the gold
Can't say that I'm a fan. Loses a turn and a lot of forest, probably less river tiles too, kills a green tile instead of brown.
 
Let's give this a go.

Spoiler T0-T1 :

+1:hammers: +1:commerce: seems too good to pass up so I've settled the gold. I don't think I could work the gold until pop 4 or so, and I think getting up to speed quickly matters more. The extra commerce lines the worker up with animal husbandry, as well.


 
Yup, 2E seems to be a hill, so can't be that important. 2N1E is clearly a floodplain.

Can't say that I'm a fan. Loses a turn and a lot of forest, probably less river tiles too, kills a green tile instead of brown.
Only reason for east is to pick up (hypothetical) food.

Spoiler :
I settled 1N of the gold after the scout move revealed the Sheep. Slow initial worker but enough food to work the gold and still grow
 
Spoiler T1-T32 :

First settler is out T32. I'm not really sure what the right priority is for settling here. My gut says east for pigs and a cottaged river valley, but north for sheep / corn and southeast for ivory / copper make sense too. I want to keep my borders pushing forward, so the north site and the horse site look worse in that light.

I teched animal husbandry > bronze working > wheel. Wheel was a bit of filler, but I need to pick a second city site to make a good decision on the next worker tech I need.

Moscow built worker > warrior > scout > warrior > warrior > settler. I think worker > warrior instead of worker > scout was a mistake, but I didn't realize I could build scouts at first! I don't think I need this many warriors but I didn't want to start a settler until Moscow grew to pop 3, so the cow tiles cranked out 2 turn warriors. I probably don't fog bust enough, so maybe this many warriors is fine. After getting eaten alive by barbarians in NC282 this seems fine.

Here's what Russia looks like so far, and my current expansion plans.



What do folks think about a first expansion site? I think I'm going to ignore what's written in the screenshot and grab the pigs (labelled "Second?"), but I'm not sure what's best here.
 
T36 AH and BW is in, beware of copper/horse spoilers.
Spoiler :


I went up on the gold with the settler. Think I went westwards with the scout. Was annoying to see the green sheep when I settled.
Went for settler at pop2 working the two cows.

Civ4ScreenShot0000.JPG


Ideally, I probably wanted to place this city SE of the oasis to get copper, but thats begging for trouble with Ragnar. I ended up going for a much more conservative location 2W 1S of the pigs, on that hill tile.
North is fogbusted and barbs in general seem to be kind.
StPeters will get on 6->3 settler whip duty.
Agri is just in and corn+floodplain is being farmed. TW next and pottery after that.
Ivory in the south but location seems abit awkward.
No need for fishing, so I'm abit tempted to try a push for machinery/engineering bulbs.
Civ4ScreenShot0001.JPG







T51
Spoiler :

Pottery is in, StPeters will finish granary this turn. Bit of a mismatch with settlers/workers. No worker is ready to tag along with the settler from Moscow now.
Probably best to go for the horses to keep upkeep under control. Will run into a brick wall commerce wise now and until cottages are down.
Civ4ScreenShot0002.JPG

 
@Fabled
Spoiler :

I think you should go for the sheep first. It's already improved and you got a corn there too, really good spot.
The pigs spot is nice as well, but it's abit slower than the sheep.
Sheep spot has the advantage that it can be connected w/o TW too, but now that you already have TW thats less of a factor. :)

The "Low priority horses" I think you should place 1N to get the floodplains too, or perhaps even 2N to kill a plains tile and save the grassland and a forest.

The ivory/copper spot.. Maybe settlement 1N and aiming to farm that floodplain is preferable to settlement on the PH. I haven't decided on that myself yet.
 
Deity T28
Spoiler :
Spent an extra turn moving to spare the gold tile, leads to T32 settler at size 3. A bit slow for my taste, but shouldn't be an issue with so many nice city spots. HAs or cats is what I need to ponder on.

Civ4ScreenShot0348.JPG
 
Regarding settling on gold...
Spoiler :


Moving up and scouting a location that would exclude one of the cows on the off chance it had food didn't seem like a good gamble.
I don't have any screenshots from T0/T1, but I think I just wandered west to see if there was some desert gold or something other yummy in the west around the floodplains that would warrant moving in that direction.

But yeah, missing out on that green sheep was bad.


 
You guys are just trying to proof that settling on gold is cool point by now ;)

;)

I'd argue that SIP is better than settling on gold. You can start working the gold on Turn 26, which evens out the commerce bonus by T30. The bottleneck for overall early will be commerce, not hammers, especially with AH, Mining, BW (so many forests), The Wheel, and Agriculture likely all before Pottery. I also like double plains cow (7.5 yield towards Settlers), and the mass of riverside grassland from SIP.



Spoiler T51: :


Screenshot (338).png

 
Satan's voice:satan:: Settle on the plain cow :devil:! <-- :jesus:: Don't do that. Just don't. :nono:
^Just joking :lol:.

Russian starting techs looks good with this start, as Hunting + Mining leads to AH and BW. Gold mine is nice, but the food looks a little low. Maybe move the scout on the PH to check if there is more :food: around?... :think:

Monarch level, from T0 to T160.
Spoiler :

Settings as below, no huts:


This was a chaotic and confusing experience :crazyeye:. Changed plan and tech path several times.

Moved the scout on the PH and saw the grassland sheep. Settled 1N of the gold. AH-TW-BW. Then Agri-Pottery, because my second city had Corn and some flood plains for cottage.

Initially planned the peaceful REX, but after meeting Ragnar up north and Monty in the south, the "peaceful expansion until Renaissance" was quite unrealistic. Especially when a neighbour started plotting for a while:


Open borders with Ragnar and saw his impressive stack of Axes + Swords + Spears :scared:. Under panick, I decided to abandon early Aesthetics-Literature and went for HBR-Archery-Maths-Construction. Started to spam Axes and Archers. Luckily, Ragnar was plotting against Mansa, not me. I whipped/chopped Elephants, catapults, HAs, Axes and Swords to dogpile Ragnar. Please do not ask me why I built HAs in an Elepults attack, because even myself didn't understand why I put 2 :move: HAs with 1:move: Elepults :crazyeye:.
Took my first vassal on T140.


Having Ragnar as vassal slightly improved the diplomacy, because he was liked by most AIs . Monty was Annoyed (for border tensions + my refusal of joining his war against Izy) with me but Pleased with Ragnar. So, after Ragnar became my vassal, Monty's real attitude towards me returned to Cautious.


Gifted a newly captured barb city to Ragnar, because that barb city was nice but too far from my capital.


Open borders with all AIs who were willing to do it, except with Mansa, because he was the WE of most people. Maybe that was why Mansa did not tech very well in my game, as he had no trading partner.


Boudica started plotting while I was at war with Ragnar. Not sure her target was me or Monty, because she started plotting when she was only Cautious with me. Better safe than sorry, so I moved all my surviving stack from captured Viking cities to the southern border.


Her target turned out to be Monty, and she bribed Pacal to attack Monty as well. I was afraid that Monty cap to Boudica, so I declared on Monty. After I captured 2 cities from Monty, Monty capitulated:


After two wars, my economy was already garbage. Too busy building units and forgot to build enough workers. As a result, many forests remained unchopped and some cities were working unimproved tiles for a long time :sad:. In 960 AD I was still researching Civil Service :wallbash:.

Must take a break from this chaotic situation. I should have built more workers and chopped more :blush:.

 
Last edited:
@Fabled
Spoiler :

Your plan looks good. The Dye city could be delayed for a while, since you'll need Calendar and IW to develop it.


@krikav
Spoiler :

Settling on gold is less crazy than settling on plain cow.:lol:

Your expansion and economy looks much better than mine on T50. How many workers do you have with 3 cities? I feel like I was in constant shortage of workers but not sure when to build/whip the 2nd or 3rd worker after finishing the first settler. Do you build your second worker in your capital or in StPeters?

Your settler moves towards the northern Stone. Do you plan to grab Mids? With these high :food: spots you settled, Rep specialists would be tempting.:think:


@sampsa
Spoiler :

Your settling on PH is a wise choice indeed :wow:! cow + grass sheep + gold with 2:hammers: cc makes a really strong capital :goodjob:.


@CarpoolKaraoke
Spoiler :

SIP is not bad. It makes you grab Marble earlier, which gives you the possibility to Oracle something or get some failgold from ToA.
 
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