Nobles' Club 284: De Gaulle of France

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

To keep it short and simple: My intended challenge - and solution to said challenge - this map involves managing diplomacy. Once you scout the map I'm sure you'll see what I'm talking about...and how the game decided to not play along with that lofty idea of mine .

 

[Fabled]

Well, I managed to "only" play a 4 hour session today. It's hard to keep focus that long but I think that I managed it, although the last ~10 turns were starting to slip.

Spoiler T146 :

I'm feeling good about this game. There have been constant wars raging for the past 50+ turns, and I think that's bogged down the tech leaders enough to keep them within reach.

T61 put Rheims down 1W of the copper (thanks for spotting that one krikav). This city has become one of the best in my empire.



Trade routes with Rome help keep financing my development at this point. T79 I settle Tours to secure ivory and gems. At this point I've picked a game plan: tech to elephants and catapults and then go bonk people.



T81 I settle Marseilles to the south to secure furs. This wasn't a great plant, I didn't realize I wouldn't control the deer tile so it takes a while to chop out a library and get this city going for real.



T90 settled Chartres to secure iron. I'm OK with waiting for a library and border pop since that lets me share corn with Paris. This game has pushed me from "it's OK to share tiles between cities" to "it's very good to share tiles between cities since that enables you to work the best tiles every single turn".



T94 settled Avignon to secure another river. This city has been an underperformer, without food resources it's taking way too many worker turns to make this city productive. I got about 200 failgold from the pyramids and that's going to let me finish construction. A few turns after settling Shaka declares on Toku and Toku declares on Charlie. It's good to see Charlie get tied down, I've been worried about him running away with the game.



T110 Mehmed declares on me. He has one city so I'm not concerned, but he set up well and takes Orleans before I can get my troops back from massing on the Incan border. I retake Orleans quickly, but this adventure steals a dozen or two turns from Orleans and puts off my declaration on the Incans. I kill off two more stacks he has en route through Roman territory, and he's willing to sign peace. I don't really want to go kill him yet, since I can't hold (or maintain) the city but giving it to Caesar is also not an option, he's strong enough already.

T145 I capture the last Incan city, and the capture gold lets me finish teching currency. The swing in currency and unit support makes a goofy looking spike in my GDP chart, I think I finished that war in the nick of time.





My next step is to consolidate my stacks and hit Holy Rome hard and fast with elephants and catapults. I have a power ratio of 1.0 with Charlie and elephants should be enough to deal with whatever he has on the ground. It would be more convenient to hit Rome, but I don't think I can punch through praetorians without having a better production base. We'll see how it goes, though.

 

[krikav]

@Fabled

Spoiler :

Very nice that you see benefits with tile sharing. Now it's just a matter of doing obsessive tile micromanagement to reap the full benefits.

Mehmed likely did not have one city. It's just that when you are in war and they refuse to talk, the number of cities they have (shown in the leaderboard) dissapears, as that info is no longer available too you. BUG provides info available to you in a more convenient way. In normal unmodded civ4 the only way to see how many cities they have is to talk to them and see their list there. In war you can't do that so thats why bug doesn't show the number either.


Avignon looks kind of sad, agreed. Thats the sort of cities you pretty much have to have 2-3 workers there from the get-go to give it the attention it requires to get going.

Chartress might be overloading that corn abit honestly, and it's getting later in the game too and capital is likely to call dibs on that corn every single turn from a certain point.
In my game, I regret cottaging those lakeside tiles, they should probably have been farmed.
With civil service, alot of green needs to be farmed here.

No monument in marseilles? Getting first ring resources with monuments is very much doable.
Charly was super kind to me and spread buddhism in that city right after I got the monument up, so I got the deer quickly.
Library might be too ambitious for that city, 90 hammers is costly.

GJ knocking Capac out of the game!

 

[Fabled]

@krikav

Spoiler :

So far I'm butting up against the happy cap so Chartress gets the corn while Paris gets cottages. I can see how that would change later, though.

Monument would have been a good call, I don't think I had the tech in place at that point. I also might have forgotten, I don't build monuments very often.

Having Capac's land is good, but I'm not sure how I'll ever afford to tech again at this rate. I've been limping on at 0% slider since going to war and I don't see that changing soon. We'll see what happens.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T124 :

T102 I spawn a GEng that I planned to rush GLib with. But the same turn, good guy Charly offers up marble.
Settling the guy shaves off a turn from Glib so I do that.
I also whip... and aqueduct iirc? And finish that thing super fast.

Really fast, holy moly!

T105 I get casting from Julius for drama+litterature. T106 Capac demands drama in tribute and ofcourse he gets it! Leave me alone you scary bastard!
T108 Charly finishes AP and I can vote for him bumping him up to friendly. I get HBR from him and
T113 I finish CS and trade CS+HBR for machinery with julius.

I wait until next turn with revolt to policestate+burocracy to get Theo too for theocracy. 2 turns of anarchy is ok.

I sell alot of techs for cash too, that was probably dumb as I'm swimming in gold from all failgolding.
I come to my senses here when I start whipping units and even though I can still route whip overflow into Chichen Itza and Haga Sophia, I dont. Overflow from 2pop xbow whips (Whipped at 14 hammers or lower, thanks to policestate+forges) finishes catapults instead.
I want a shabby looking Shaka-Stack to charge into Capac or Julius.
I have alot of buddah monasteries and temples too, and the 4 hammers in some cities are lovely, but they also make setting up sensible whips hard
Workers are set to farm all green tiles now, might even start to convert some cottages.

Hmm... I have apparantly overdone it alot with failgolding. Perahaps pillage my iron and build archers/warriors for upgrading...?

I really wanted a GSci here to bulb philo, but I get another GEng. Settling him feels like a waste, but I really don't want to run a GA with hardly any cities and no population, and I do want hammers now.

Perhaps building sankore is a thing? I think I have up to 10 buildings so it would yield 20bpt from that, and add 2 GSci GPP in capital where I have natepic.
But I should probably really just be pushing more units faster.

Yeah... more units faster. This was probably a dumb trade.

And Capac builds a worthy prize! It's at least 10-15 turns to wander there though.
If I'm to attack him, I need to take out his good northerns cities fast. His tundra crap can wait. The evil fiend is pushing for nasty kniggits too, good thing I have elephants.

 

[krikav]

@Fabled

Spoiler :

With currency now you should be fine.

14 cities is lovely, whats your worker count...? You could easily have 20 workers by now and then getting everything done in a hurry would be no problem.
I see you got MoM, so doing a golden age could help economy recover fast too. Perhaps even a brief stint into serfdom to do some cottagespam?

 

[Fabled]

@krikav

Spoiler :

I'm sitting on 12 workers at the moment. I definitely want more, but enough of my cities are tied down building wealth to keep me out of strike that it might be a bit before I can get more built.

I did snag MoM from Capac, so I do think I'm absolutely still in this game. Some time to step away and eat has helped me see things more clearly.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

T117

Spoiler :

I played this part earlier in the week but as I recall I finished teching construction and then went aesthetics because nobody had it and it seemed like useful trade bait. Meanwhile I chopped/whipped about 7 catapults, 7 axes and 3 spears. I declared on Charlie and took the underwhelming city of Augsburg. He was already at war with Shaka, who'd just been back stabbed by Toku.

I think it was about then that I was rudely interrupted by my employer and Charlie got some breathing space.

It didn't last and after I got alphabet in trade for aesthetics and I then used the two to bribe Jules on Charlie. I'd managed to get Jules to pleased with a city gift at some point. The map was so squashed that I couldn't find anywhere I could settle a city near his core and it was only when he captured a barb city in my south west that I could gift him some Tundra. It was very much squeaky bum time until that point.

Mehmed then declared on Charlie too. I was very confused when he emerged from Jules territory as I'd assumed he was on the other side of Shaka/Toku. I still don't understand the map shape.

I asked my new war allies to waste their time taking the junk city of Mayence and they appeared to oblige. Jules took it but I got Nurembourg and Aix-la-Chapelle in a war filled with cease fire cheese given how unpopular Charlie was. I should get Vienne next turn - unless one of the crowd that are at war with Charlie get feudalism or Shaka has a stack in the fog. I need to thinking about bribing people off because I'm surprised nobody has feudalism yet and it's going to be very annoying if I don't get Vienne because Aix-la-Chapelle will be food starved and will be a revolt risk.

I just teched metallurgy and popped my second GS. I bulbed machinery and engineering so my people can now learn the relaxing pastime of fishing in 50AD.

My provisional plan is to attack Jules with trebs and then adopt Islam to keep myself safe from HC and Mehmed. My people are still worshiping oddly shaped stones and the such like because I've been too scared to adopt a religion. Toku and Shaka won't like it, but as long as they're still slugging away at each other ineffectually, that's fine. They won't trade with me anyway given how stingy they are. The only problem is that this war can't go on forever and once it stops they'll like each other again.

Also, the AP is bound to make an unwelcome appearance soon.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

@krikav

Spoiler :

That makes sense. I guess I thought the stone looked awkward to settle and I wanted to proactively resolve my issues with my neighbours. I also felt a bit safer having an army if Jules or HC got a bit frisky.

Everybody hated Charlie as well so I was pretty confident I’d have an ally and that the alternative of buddying up to him was likely to make problems with everyone else longer term.

The other thing that put me off the pyramids was that HR felt like the easiest way of dealing with HC and there’s no point building the pyramids if you’re not going to be switching between rep and police state.

Did you consider an axe rush? Charismatic happiness and promotions, lots of forests and copper in the BFC and a neighbour you meet turn two. I was sorely tempted. I just figured that if I did that I’d probably just end up with Charlie’s land instead of my own and HC and Jules would have been even bigger.

 

[krikav]

@Mr_Trotsky

Spoiler :

The HR thing makes alot of sense. As I mentoined previously, there was a period that was excruciatingly stressfull when both Capac and Julius where cautious (Capac even Annoyed).
Tbh, I didn't really factor in the potential loss of HR when I considered pyramids. It was more "Stone! Ind! Gogo!"
You are also right that he is the odd man out here. Only Julius is somewhat close in peaceweight. The only reason they keep their cool in my game is because Charly converted Julius.

I didn't really consider an axerush. My warrior went on a awful scouting pattern at the start, so I basically only had tundra uncovered at the copper reveal. And no target seemed sufficiently close to make such a venture fruitful.
Had I scouted Charly early and seen that he had a flatland capital perhaps I would have been swinged in that direction, but even still... He is PRO.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Agreed that there was a long period during which “it’s only a game” was completely ineffective in lowering stress levels. Unfortunately I’m back in a similar position after the six turns I played this afternoon pre-toddler meltdown. Toku and Shaka are now at peace and at a loose end. I don’t have a good way to get them to pleased.

Charlie and JC ended up in the same religion in my game too but Jules was still happy to join in with trampling on Charlie for a small fee.

Re axe rush, I guess I felt protective was to some extent offset by charismatic but that’s probably not true. Charismatic would only really help with getting from CR2 to CR3 and not CR1 to CR2 and I doubt enough axes would survive to get a second promotion. I suspect that, as I’m more used to siege warfare, I tend to dismiss protective as a material concern - yeah, your first one or two catapults/trebs/cannons might get worse odds but once the collateral takes effect it’s pretty inconsequential. That’s obviously not the case with an axe rush.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T137 :

Even though I kind of would have prefered to start swining against Capac, this looks too good. I cound 26 units and can't see any doomstack.
Best thing is also that both Mehmed and Toku is willing to be bribed against him. They demand astronomical sums to go in alone though. But once I declare they become less stingy.
Begged 50g from Capac to avoid having him getting bribed against me or otherwise disturbing my plans.

Mehmed always builds a crapton of units, and being a war buddy with him is good. Toku is usually no slouch either.

My idea was to take Cumae asap, getting a nice foothold. If nothing else I can probably just hole up in that hill city while I wait for the guys to start weaing him down while I continue to spam units.
My suicide catapult doesn't dent the longbow.

Promoting elephants with flank to get them immune to first strike is a nice trick to ensure that it at least hurts the longbow. This guy managed to withdraw too! Gave him vision promotion and named him Sneaky Elephant for that.
I have so many maces because I upgraded 6 axes to maces for 750g I figured that with enough CR maces I could punch through Cumae no matter how much he reinforced it.

Charly doesn't want to fight Shaka alone and holds a vote in which I and Charly bully the others into action! Everyone in the world except for Mehmed who apparantly dodged Buddhism piles in on the fierce Zuluman. Lovely to have Capac preoccupied.

I couldn't resist shiny.

During the aeons of bombardment, Julius sends some XP boost.
I have a smaller detachment starting to soften up Antium as well, because It was safer to go there with reinforcements rather than wandering the flatland to my main stack. Spreading to thin in medieval warfare isn't a good idea.
This is also why it's very good to have knights, or at least HAs/Chariots too, to snipe of stray units around the doomstack.
Here I could jump up on the hill, killing the last catapult with an xbow that saved it's promotions as a health-potion.

The 10 xp is enough to get the scout medic3. And I get a tough as hell nutcracker treb too.

Sent a suicide catapult over the river, the combat penalty doesn't affect collateral damage.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T143 :

Capac wants me to adopt HR and sure.. I agree. My cities are small now and julius cities are still in revolt. Getting some diplo points with him doesn't hurt

Seems like Mehmed finally has punched through too.

I try to play somewhat risky with units. Much rather prefer 97-98% fights that give 2 xp, rather than 99.9% fights that give 1 xp.

Possibly the least useful wonders for me. I have 3 coastal cities, I have globe in capital and I'm swimming in happines resources. But it's a lovely city!

Tried to get education, but that was too much to ask for apparantly.

The turn after he capitulates he libs economics.
He is my piggy-bank of techs now.
Think I'll go for Mehmed now. I can catch his main doomstack offguard and possibly wounded in a city in revolt. Having him as a vassal would be superb.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

@krikav

Spoiler :

I played to exactly the same turn last night!

It’s interesting to me how different the tech situation is in your deity and my faux deity game. I played on a bit this afternoon and at around 850 AD nobody has lib or even education. Shaka is closest! I appreciate that every game plays out differently but it does suggest that the extra settler makes a big difference and not just by cramping the player. It really helps the AI’s economic development.

 

[konata_LS]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Once again difficulty levels make the tech choice different. You met early an IMP AI and decided Mining-BW, because Deity IMP AIs expand very fast. Cottages can be delayed for a while. On Monarch, I put Pottery before Mining, because Monarch AIs expand much slower, so land grabbing is much less urgent than Deity.

Having JC as vassals is nice! As vassal, he usually builds many units and can help you in the war

@Fabled

Spoiler :

Your situation looks really good! Land is power. With Currency and MoM, the post-war economy recovery won't take long.

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Managing diplomacy... Do you mean beg something from Shaka before going into wars? Or bribe Mehmed to attack someone else?

The diplomacy seems subtle in this map, as you know, HC and Charlie starts with Myst, they might found two different early religions. It's highly possible that the human player will be sandwiched between two religious blocks.

 

[krikav]

@konata_LS Since Julius is down at one city, and a terrible city at that, I don't expect him to do much at all. The purpose of taking him as a vassal was simply to gain access to the tech he had.

And yeah, there is often a terrible rush for land in the early game. But in most cases, getting more cities earlier still wins out over early pottery, even when there is no immediate rush for land.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Managing diplomacy... Do you mean beg something from Shaka before going into wars? Or bribe Mehmed to attack someone else?

The diplomacy seems subtle in this map, as you know, HC and Charlie starts with Myst, they might found two different early religions. It's highly possible that the human player will be sandwiched between two religious blocks.

Begging and/or bribing other AIs before going to war yourself, yes, but also potentially bribing distant AIs off one another before they end up creating a giant AI vassal block you're too distant from to militarily break up before it forms, or negotiating stop-trade agreements with Charly/Mehmed to prevent distant armies from being able to reach you at all. That was the idea, at least. In practice, well, maps rarely turn out as I expect them to, and this seems to be no exception in that regard.

I honestly don't even pay attention to what AIs start with Myst and/or are religious zealots anymore. Who founds a religion and manages to convert others is so incredibly random that I couldn't base a map off of specific religion situations to save my life, although being sandwiched between two religious AIs does end up being a part of the map's diplomacy as well. If that's what actually happens. That said it is a nice situation if it does happen to play out that way, since it's a good example of how being IND and/or having Stone doesn't necessarily mean that building Mids is a guaranteed good idea, as on this map you might be better off keeping a heathen HC happy by running his favorite civic.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

T154

Spoiler :

I bribed Shaka off Charlie to be safe and took Charlie's last city.

I then traded COL and MC for feudalism with JC. Both he and Shaka got feudalism just after I took Charlie's last city which was a bit lucky as his culture would have been really annoying if I'd not wiped him out. Although it would have made someone else almost as unpopular as Charlie so maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad outcome. Giving JC MC just before I attacked him was not ideal but vassalage was useful to get CR2 trebs and some diplo points with Mehmed.

I then traded feudalism for currency with HC and then gifted currency to Toku and Shaka which got them both to pleased meaning I was beloved by all.

Whipped trebs/ pikes and crossbows and stacked on JC's border. He started to send his stack through my territory towards the south-west for some reason. I closed borders and bounced his stack south-west of Cumae and a turn later declared. It was on a hill but, as Charlie had been good enough to settle two GGs, in Aix-la-Chapelle and JC good enough to give me feudalism, I had a few CR3 trebs so got pretty good odds straightaway. His entire stack was then in Cumae and I was able to wipe it out over three turns along with a smaller stack he moved in after it returned from capturing a barb city.

I then made a ceasefire because I'd lost a few units to attacks from Cumae and stray units. I under built crossbows and even shock axes didn't do great against praets. I was two turns from civil service so I decided to wait for maces before pushing. This wasn't ideal because JC was fairly well liked and attacking him dropped Shaka to cautious. I'd already got a peace treaty with him so not an immediate concern but not desirable long term. I perhaps could have waited until I had maces before going in so I didn't have to declare twice. However, I wanted to catch his stack in Cumae which I think was just about worth it.

Shaka kindly demanded machinery and bumped up to pleased again and stayed there when I redeclared on Jules. With his stack gone it was a question of grinding him down. He eventually got engineering and knights but I could smash his two sources of horses and I'd built up enough trebs for castles to not be too annoying. Mehmed dropped to cautious and I had to give him about 200 gold to get him back to pleased.

JC is down to five cities - three absolute junk - and is willing to cap. I'm definitely going to take Ravenna (after checking he can't peace vassal to anybody) because it will eventually put cultural pressure on Rome and I'm thinking about taking Neapolis. I'm not sure whether maybe it would be preferable to leave it to JC to avoid border tension with Mehmed and it probably won't be much use to me given the Ottoman culture. It's more that Mediolanum will keep flipping otherwise.

I don't think I'm going to push on after capping JC because the only reasonable target is Toku and if I cap him I'll drop to cautious with with a few other leaders which I don't think is a price worth paying for capping a relatively backward six city Toku. I've got a golden age coming in eight turns and I think I'll trigger that once enough of my Roman territory is out of revolt. I guess I'll head down the chemistry line and concede lib. I think I can still bulb chemistry as I don't have paper.

Everybody is disgustingly pleased with each other and I'm only able to maintain my popularity through shared civics and staying out of a religion. Not sure how Shaka/Toku are going to react to my golden age... For me this is the hardest but also most fun aspect of this map.

 

[Fabled]

I got destroyed by Julius Caesar during a late night civ binge. I might go back to the last save I posted here and try again, I know my quality of play was abysmal.

 

[konata_LS]

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Your initial plan works to some degree, because some players, like @ Mr_Trotsky , bribed Shaka off the war with Charlie.

Stop-trade agreements depend on the peaceweight and AIs, as you planned. According to "Know Your Enemies", Toku will sign trade embargo at Cautious. So theorically, the player could bribe Toku to "stop trading with Shaka" to avoid a potential Zulu invasion. But some random reasons may interfere. In my game, Toku converted to self-founded Taoism and he closed border with all the AIs, without asking him to do it .

And yes, HR is a useful way to compensate the different religion penalty with HC. Though the most dangerous time is from "the player convert to Charlie"s religion" to "the player adopts HR". In my game, I became HC's (he founded Judaism) worst enemy after I converted to Charlie's Buddism. The diplomacy with HC gradually improved only after HR.

@krikav

Spoiler :

At Deity, it's often important to find a balance between the early expansion and early , I guess? On one hand, land grabbing is one of top priorities on Deity; on the other hand, Deity maintenance fees are much higher than Monarch and below.

Several years ago I saw someone who tried a game at Immortal but ended up on strike before reaching Pottery .