Nobles' Club 285: Mansa Musa of Mali

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

I absolutely adore the doughnut shape of the map!

Same, that's why I chose it. Though this was actually the first map I rolled again, funnily enough . I had this big plan in mind, with all of the AIs being hand-picked this time (Izzy/Sully for religion, Brennus for religion and OR favorite civic, Joao for HR favorite civic and being a nuisance (or a victim, whichever ), Wang and Nappy to balance the field)...and the game was like "nah bud, here's a map that's a lot more interesting than anything you've got planned."

Shrugged my shoulders and ran with it all the way to the bank. Civ IV RNG really does know best .

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

@krikav
Limit-pushing by combining my opening with yours:

Spoiler T78: :

Settling on silk, and going the empty nestled city route while stealing workers from Joao.

Something with how the game programs around UU's is seriously funky. Joao is willing to move archers on flat vs a skirmisher.

I took Oporto with 3 skirmishers when he vacated most archers with a galley.

 

[dontworryabouttsunami]

This looked like a nice easy start and a strong leader so I decided to make it my first Immortal game. I even settled on the PH, toward tundra and away from Financial flood plains, like a real big kid. Going well so far (to ~1000 AD).

Spoiler T165: :

It's interesting to see how differently most of you approached this map from me. I had Izzy and Sully as Buddhist friends, and Joao was sitting on 2 cities until the ADs, so I decided to go full Mansa Musa and not build units at all (keeping an eye on diplo of course).



Djenne was a nice city (it has the pig firmly in its grasp now, along with a Plains Town Izzy built for me).

I've had some fun building Marble wonders, though I missed Oracle (you need so many techs so fast in the beginning I can never bear to research the religious ones). I got Parthenon, GL, and Sistine and I'm planning to turn off my slider at Rifling and go for a culture win (something else I've never really done before on higher difficulties). I've intentionally avoided meeting the Celts and the French, but I know they're out there from Wang Kong's map, and the Celts are kind of running away with the game. Joao is plotting war and I hope they're his target, but that does seem kind of optimistic. Oh, actually maybe he's already at war with them and I just can't tell since I don't know they exist. I'm going to grab Gunpowder right away though and get some defense up -- I libbed Nationalism so I'll be able to put some up quickly.

I have 9 cities but one of them is awful -- my culture was taking forever to reach the Iron and I didn't want to lose it so I kind of panicked and settled right on it. At least it has some flood plains to work. Isabelle gobbled up the barb cities to the southeast -- my production was pretty bad and Timbuktu was always busy with wonders because I am noob, so I never took the time to assault them. I did settle the south eastern horse and steal it away from Isabelle's captured city. I'm also culture pressing her border cities pretty heavily (Murcia is already majority Mali).

Mali at 1050 AD

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Oh, actually maybe he's already at war with them and I just can't tell since I don't know they exist.

I believe you might be able to get a hint about that by checking who Joao's worst enemy is. IIRC the game does say who people's worst enemies are even if you haven't met said worst enemies yet, and if Joao is in a war chances are he's none to fond of the people he's at war with.

 

[Andriy Fadyeyenko]

Spoiler :

I took a slightly different route to conquering Barcelona than the T192 Gang did... sadly I won culture victory before I succeeded.

On a side note, I managed to get all three of my culture cities to reach Legendary on the same turn, pretty nifty.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

T64 demigod

Spoiler :

I settled on the southern of the two silks. The thinking was to settle closer to the centre of the map and block more land, while accepting that I'd lose a floodplain and potentially a river tile or two in the late game. I then teched BW while building a warrior until I reached size two. At size two I switched to a worker and then, when BW was in, switched to slavery and whipped the worker.

I then went agriculture, AH, hunting, archery, fishing, pottery, writing.

Until AH was in, I built one riverside mine and worked that and a floodplain at size two while chopping everything. There wasn't anything decent to grow on to so this felt OK, albeit it was a bit strange to not really be improving tiles or growing the capital. Chopping just seemed a lot better than spending 7 turns farming a floodplain and, the big downside of the settling on the southern silk, was that I only had one hill to mine anyway. I think I even one pop whipped a second worker taking the capital down to size 1.

The idea of blocking land - which I maintain was valid - also turned out to be of zero value given that city two went directly south to claim the corn and fish. It also meant that there was a small gap between my capital and city three - the crab and wheat spot - even after that had popped borders once and the capital twice. It didn't end up mattering but Joao is not who you want on your borders when there are gaps to exploit.

Settled my fourth city turn 64 and got writing the next turn. At this stage I had four workers and was just about to finish a granary in Djenne but had no other infrastructure.

Hard to compare with going AH first, but judging from @CarpoolKaraoke's screenshot from T60, it's comparable. I think my tech might be slightly ahead and Djenne better developed but the capital in worse shape and I've no forests left. I'm playing faux deity but I'm not sure that makes much difference in terms of player expansion; it's just that the AI only starts with one settler.

I've met Isabelle, Joao and Wang but not Sully. I shouldn't have read other people's T60 write ups because this made it clear that it was a pangaea.

T116

Spoiler :

I stayed on four cities while getting granaries and a couple of libraries up. Then went for aesthetics. I ended up holding on to it for ages rather than trading for alphabet, iron working etc on the basis that I didn't need them. I self-teched the religious techs (inc mono) and masonry and then literature.

I settled Niani for the marble and Walata for the silver (and the happiness). I converted to Christianity courtesy of Izzy - as did J-man - and felt all safe and snug.

Organised religion and whip overflow from the temple and the monastery allowed me to build the GL in Tombouctou despite only having one mine, a grassland cow and some plains cottages as natural production. It was pretty late - 175BC - but nobody else had aesthetics. I also managed to build the parthenon in Awdaghost by chopping and building a few mines. I settled in 450BC and built the parthenon in 25BC - I think before building a granary. I also won music T116. I'm still failgolding Shwedagon which is another nice thing about holding on to aesthetics.

I settled the gold/sheep spot and the wheat/crab spot once I'd gotten to literature and met the rest of the crowd along the way. I'm not uber popular but it's not a problem given Izzy won't open borders with the heathens.

I self teched COL and have now traded that and aesthetics away for sailing, IW, calendar, metallurgy and currency. Civil service is coming in four turns and will be able to bulb philosophy in four too. Possibly a bit late to found the religion. I built an academy with my first scientist, which was probably a mistake.

 

[konata_LS]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Congrats on your win! Nice game

Railroad seems a wise choice for this map, not only for MGs, also for of your troops. Without railroad, it would take 7 turns or more to move units from your capital to the front. Railroad' increased movement is a huge boost under Normal speed, but I guess it becomes less important under Marathon. It's somewhat like Indian Fast worker, 1 extra is of great help under Normal speed and becomes insignificant under Marathon.

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

Forgot to mention several days ago (busy with real life). But I must say you successfully created a "versatile" map, because this map offers several possibilities for people at different levels or of different playing styles. For Monarch and below, this map provides a very good practice of early expansion, CE, and empire management, since AIs at lower difficulties expand slowly and the players can at least peacefully build 9 cities. For higher levels when the land available become limited for the human players, people can try some Skirmishers rush, or leverage SPI trait, get Ivory from Izzy and do some Elepults, or try some Engineering based attacks. Besides, this map gives also a good opportunity to leverage SPI at all levels, since sometimes the players have to adopt different civics (like OR to please Brennus) to get some trade then switch back, or jump between Caste/Paci and Slavery/OR. Fun map indeed .

Though some people playing at Monarch and below (like me) may have a surprise after Medieval era, because at lower levels when AIs don't start with a free scout, they may take many turns to find the human player. At the beginning, the long coast line and two neighbours' border made me think it was a Continent map (similar to last Mansa one, NC 262) where Joao, Izzy and I shared a continent. But at Medieval era I surprisingly met Sully and WK. After Paper, I realised the map was actually a donut shaped landmass. What a nice surprise! You've got very creative ways to avoid repetition

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

T64 demigod

Spoiler :

I then went agriculture, AH, hunting, archery, fishing, pottery, writing.

Hard to compare with going AH first, but judging from @CarpoolKaraoke's screenshot from T60, it's comparable. I think my tech might be slightly ahead and Djenne better developed but the capital in worse shape and I've no forests left. I'm playing faux deity but I'm not sure that makes much difference in terms of player expansion; it's just that the AI only starts with one settler.

Spoiler :

One way to think about the comparison is that there's a 12 turn window between AH->BW and BW->AH. In that span, the pasture gives you +2F1H per turn for +36 into Settler, whereas 12 turns of chopping gives +60 hammers. The opportunity cost then (aside from keeping 3 forests), is what the worker does with those 12 turns. For me, that was pre-roading my city for extra initial commerce, and prepping a farm.

Of course, if you factor Krikav's worker steal, BW before Agriculture + AH hands down becomes the best play, as shown in my later T78 merged strategy post.

 

[Fabled]

I'm a bit late to this game but I wanted to play something faster than my shadow game so I loaded this one up for a bit.

Spoiler T90 :

Settled on the silk. I've been grabbing the good food spots plus iron. Barbs won a bunch of close combat rolls so I've had to improve a few tiles multiple times, plus Timbuktu and Djenne have ~20 turns of whip unhappiness to wait out since I needed emergency skirmishers. At least I managed not to lose any cities or workers, although I was forced to grab archery in the absence of strategic resources.

Looking back, I should have teched sailing before writing, and probably archery before iron working. I nearly lost this run to barbs but archery came just in time. Seeing how I don't have any libraries up yet writing was way too early. Lighthouses for coast commerce is good here, I should get that online in the northern cities ASAP.

I think I can grab more land to the east (the barb city for sure, I don't know what else is out there, but if the current civ sizes are anything to go by I can probably go construction and kill Joao or Isabella with swords and catapults.

 

[dontworryabouttsunami]

Spoiler :

I believe you might be able to get a hint about that by checking who Joao's worst enemy is. IIRC the game does say who people's worst enemies are even if you haven't met said worst enemies yet, and if Joao is in a war chances are he's none to fond of the people he's at war with.

Spoiler :

Thanks for the tip! I couldn't see his worst enemy -- or anyone else's for that matter, though later I did, so I guess they didn't have any at the time. So I had to assume I was his target (Isabelle also bordered him, but I had major power issues). But I built some longbows and then rifles, he stayed in war mode for centuries without doing anything, then eventually attacked the Celts (horrible decision on his part). So it was smooth sailing for me to a...

Spoiler Cultural Victory (1816 AD, T277): :

Where I left off at 1000 AD, I was thinking if I could just stay out of war long enough to get Rifling and Democracy (and Drama) I'd feel good about my chances. All went as planned. Isabelle went into Free Religion and dropped down to Cautious and periodically demanded things from me, and I slavishly acquiesced. I met the French and the Celts in the 1300s, annoyed with me and at war with each other. Sully and Brennus were the big dogs in the game, vassaling Wang Kon and Napoleon respectively, and then thankfully getting into an endless war with each other, leaving me free to culture away.


I decided to go as far as Railroad (for Machine Guns) before killing my tech slider. I thought I was going to have to run with only three religions, but I very felicitously flipped a city from Isabelle that had two more, so I was able to get five cathedrals in my second two culture cities. So after about a century of building wealth, missionaries, temples and machine guns, I coasted my way to a cool culture win. My #2 and #3 cities even hit legendary on the same turn, which I think is pretty nifty for a first culture win (seven turns after my capital tho ). (DON'T WORRY. That clock is inaccurate. I was not playing at 4:29 AM.)



So no war all game and I'm one for one on Immortal. Thanks Mansa and your OP traits


(Manny Musa wouldn't hurt a fly!)

 

[SittinDown]

@Fabled

Curious - did you go Hunting first? I like the idea of putting your tech order in as messages in the game, especially for the forum.

 

[Fabled]

@Fabled

Curious - did you go Hunting first? I like the idea of putting your tech order in as messages in the game, especially for the forum.

Yes, as a prereq to animal husbandry. Now that I'm typing that up, it sounds wrong. I might have been too tired to notice I could start AH without hunting.

 

[SittinDown]

Yes, as a prereq to animal husbandry. Now that I'm typing that up, it sounds wrong. I might have been too tired to notice I could start AH without hunting.

Ah - right. Most of the others went Agri -> AH who were going after improving the cow. Not that Agi is that great here - but farming the FP's is warranted on this map. It's a bit of an awkward start either way.

 

[krikav]

The only reason I went agri into AH, and not hunting into AH is...

Spoiler :

Because second city for me had wheat.
There is also a very strong city abit south with corn.

Had it not been for these two resources, I would gladly have prioritized away agri, which is a very costly tech, in favour of getting the other goodies faster.

 

[Fabled]

That's a compelling reason for agri -> AH. That was probably correct in my game, too, but I didn't see it at the time.

 

[SittinDown]

yeah, not a bad play, just thinking it through. at first I was like "There are no camp resources... why hunting first", but it makes more sense after krikav's comments.

Plus there's the commerce difference between settling on the PH vs the Silk. not sure if with the Silk you can get to AH before the first worker is out. (with the PH start, I'm not sure with a 12 turn worker what your worker will be able to do right away - I guess build some roads?).

 

[Fabled]

Settling on the silk gave me AH just as the worker reached the cow tile, so it lined up well.

 

[soundjata]

Update T105

Spoiler :

We're approaching the target of an "early engineering", which could be ~15 turns away, accounting for Bureaucracy and Academy being on the horizon. (great library was completed a few turns ago and we played a little bit of @krikav overflow trick : whip forge, remove forge from queue, switch into OR the next turn)

We need to trade for Machinery + construction.
Since Metal Casting, we went for Aest > Poly > Lit > Music and traded for the rest (9 technologies ). Isabella is done trading with us.

I met Nappy and realized @CarpoolKaraoke was correct. What a useless encounter! Naps has a very bad a-priori against us and the scout gets deleted before meeting the other moron (i am spoiled about it ofc)

I am stopping now because, instead of going for CS immediately i could follow CarpoolKaraoke suggestion and go for Philo instead (trade for CS with it)


Apart from being a good trading chip (but we are already at WTH limit), philo could be used to generate GP quicker. It does not seem relevant because we are prioritizing infra (forge 5/6) and growth atm, next come units.


Napoleon just declared on Wang
Barb city Harappan can hopefully be acquired.

What do you think ?

 

[civac]

Are you doing the whip trick right. I'm really tired right now but that feels counterproductive.

Edit: I think the idea is whip structure with OR with plenty of overflow -> immediately switch out of OR, take structure out of build list -> regrow with whatever -> 4 turns afterwards put structure back into build list -> following turn switch back into OR.

That way you get the OR bonus on the overflow part of the whip twice. However, building is 5 turns delayed. I wonder if its even worth it for, what, 10 extra hammers?

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Update T105

Spoiler :

We're approaching the target of an "early engineering", which could be ~15 turns away, accounting for Bureaucracy and Academy being on the horizon. (great library was completed a few turns ago and we played a little bit of @krikav overflow trick : whip forge, remove forge from queue, switch into OR the next turn)

We need to trade for Machinery + construction.
Since Metal Casting, we went for Aest > Poly > Lit > Music and traded for the rest (9 technologies ). Isabella is done trading with us.

I met Nappy and realized @CarpoolKaraoke was correct. What a useless encounter! Naps has a very bad a-priori against us and the scout gets deleted before meeting the other moron (i am spoiled about it ofc)

I am stopping now because, instead of going for CS immediately i could follow CarpoolKaraoke suggestion and go for Philo instead (trade for CS with it)


Apart from being a good trading chip (but we are already at WTH limit), philo could be used to generate GP quicker. It does not seem relevant because we are prioritizing infra (forge 5/6) and growth atm, next come units.


Napoleon just declared on Wang
Barb city Harappan can hopefully be acquired.

What do you think ?

Spoiler :

Yeah, I think in total sum the only thing I got from non-Buddhists this game was Feudalism. Maybe gift a city in the middle of nowhere if you're worried about the trade limit?

That barbarian city will have to be razed if you want to work extra food.

I think you might want to consider twice about going the Engineering route for war. It looks like it is going to be expensive starting at T120. From the tech window, it looks like the AI has machinery and is teching Civil Service.