Nobles' Club 296: Stalin of Russia

[pi-r8]

Played up to 131 (Demigod)

Spoiler :

Yeah, I didn't think that going for all three of those early wonders was optimal, I just couldn't resist trying it out when I saw an industrious leader with stone and an isolated start. I think I've recovered OK. Tech is still slow but I'm catching up. Easy to throw down coastal cities with the GLH, and the great wall means I don't have to pay any maintenance costs for protective units. I've also built the Parthenon and Great Library.

I managed to get out a library in time, so my pyramids city made a great person before the great wall (capital) city did. Great Spy would indeed be useless here. Unfortunately it produced an engineer... and then a SECOND engineer at low odds. I used the first to bulb metal casting, but lost out on the Colossus by a few turns. I'm trying to decide now if I should use this second one to bulb machinery and go for optics, or research music and use him to build the Sistine Chapel for a culture victory. Someone else already got the music Great Artist so I feel like I don't have time to build it normally, even with marble/industrious.View attachment 620733 View attachment 620734

finished it out

Spoiler :

Cultural victory, turn 302
Pretty easy since the other continent was constantly at war. I built sistine the normal way since no one else was going for it, and bulbed machinery with my GE.
lincoln was the most advanced by far, despite being a vassal with 4 cities. If it wasn't for him I could have won liberalism and a lot more wonders.
I double-bulbed astronomy, and traded it around to instantly catch up in tech.
researched divine right for the wonders, and got some trades from it too. I don't think I've ever done that before.
The Great Lighthouse was really "great" for about 25 turns, then all the AIs went into mercantilism. Then I switched to mercantilism too. Definitely not worth it.

 

[soundjata]

finished it out

Yo that was fast I don't want to be spoiled but what's your "in game" time ?

 

[pi-r8]

Yo that was fast I don't want to be spoiled but what's your "in game" time ?

About 10 hours. I stayed up late to finish it. Classic "one more turn" syndrome.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

Turn 274 culture win

Spoiler :

Won music; built Sistine. Got two more GS quickly from Great Library but despite being on four cities and in rep it still took me to T150 to get optics. Met GK in two turns and traded music for calendar and alpha. Bulbed astro and got it T153 which is slow but not terrible given all the other tech I got.

GK was already at war so I rejected his demand for astro. His war lasted for another forty turns and then, after getting peace, he immediately declared on me. Fortunayely; he obviously wasn't prepared and declared with only frigates to smash my seafood. It took him eleven turns to bring galleons and it was that turn he agreed to negotiate. Proof that sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Could have been game over as I was still eight turns from rifling. That was the only event of note and hopefully lesson learnt for the future.

A couple of odd things tech wise. I won lib T182 which was absurd for deity. Lincoln could have teched it for perhaps twenty or thirty turns and I only ended up going for it for free speech. I think it actually hindered me because it meant I took constitution and decided to go for democracy to build the SoL. I'd defintiely have been better off just building the last two cathedrals in Moscow earlier and turning the culture slider up fifteen turns earlier.

GK got to assembly line and built the pentagon before teching rifling.

Definitely a forgiving map but my first deity culture and first deity isolation win so I'm not complaining: We built socialism in one country like a true Stalinist. Thanks as always.for a really interesting map

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

@Mr_Trotsky

Spoiler :

Yes the liberalism date is weird. My Lincoln got liberalism --> astronomy 660AD.

Throwing out a challenge to all archery techers and great wall builders to try a (worker --> barracks --> warriors) start with the Aggressive leader.

With Boudicca, the cost is lower and the reward greater, so it's worth it. With other leaders, why bother?

 

[Anysense]

Spoiler :

Moved scout SE and Settled 2S1E. Teched AH and the Wheel. I built only one chariot before settler - bad mistake. I did not realize how much worse barbs are in isolation compared to a normal game. Another mistake was to research Agriculture for rice in second city, I did not get BW in time and got slaughtered by barbarian hordes.

 

[sampsa]

With Boudicca, the cost is lower and the reward greater, so it's worth it. With other leaders, why bother?

If something is better under different circumstances (in this case, a different leader), is it automatically bad under current circumstances? In my opinion, very clearly no.

 

[konata_LS]

Satan's voice : settle on the pig! <--: don't do that. Just don't.

(Post edited according to soundjata's advice)

Monarch NHNE, up to 940AD.

Spoiler :

Actually I have no special preference about isolation. But that marble makes me really curious to see if IND + marble would pay for the detour to Aesthetics-Literature on isolation. So I decided to play this map until astronomy.

Settings as below:


Move the scout onto that riverside PH and saw the gold. Settling on the riverside PH became obvious:


Initially I wanted to skip Agri, because there was only a dry rice near the starting place. But some turns later, the scout revealed a wet rice and dry wheat. In this case, Agri was worthwhile. Agri-AH. Since the capital has Horse, tech TW to build some chariots. Then BW-Pot-Writing-Masonry-Myst-Poly-Aesthetics- Lit. Grabbed GLibrary and got some failgold with ToA and TGW.

Barbs were really troublesome during the early game. I had to build extra warriors and chariots. Lost a chariot to a barb archer . The barbs stopped coming when my warriors and chariots fogbust the whole island.

Planned to get some failgold from Oracle, because PH was required for Monarchy anyway. It was a little weird that no one built Oracle for a long time, so I just finished it. After all, cheap forge is nice.


The island was quite nice, so I was a little greedy and settled 6 cities before Astro - for example it was too hard for me to resist the temptation of that Pig + Clam + Iron spot . I settled all my 6 cities in the northern part of this island, because I didn't want to settle in the massive jungle down south before Astronomy.

After Optics, sent caravels and met Saladin and Genghis. Got Alpha, Calendar and Currency from them. 2 GS bulb Astro. Not the best date, but it was the best I could do.


My caravels met SB, Lincoln, and Nappy. GK was at war with SB and they made peace.
Won circumnavigation and GA from Music, but still didn't know who was the last AI. Meanwhile, a suspicious city in Nappy's trade table caught my attention :


Nappy had a city called "Tlatelolco" - it's an Aztec city name. So the last AI could only be Monty.

If it was Louis not Nappy, I might think Louis flipped Monty's city; but it's Nappy here, so I guess Nappy might be at wars with Monte and captured an Aztec city.

5 turns later, Monty's angry face showed up : it seemed Monte was at wars with Nappy and lost some cities. Instead of capitulating to Nappy, Monty peaceful vassal to GK, now GK and Monte were at wars with Nappy.


The tech situation in 940AD: no one had Philo or CS. Half of the AIs remained in Classical era.

The game looks winnable from here. Lib Chemistry or Steel and attack with Cannons would be possible. Though I won't have time to finish this. A relative lent me some novels of Agatha Christie; her stories are so amazing that currently I spend most of my leisure time reading her books . Besides, isolation is challenging but I still feel "how to deal with the early DoW" is one of my main weaknesses - in an off-line game, AI Monte DoW me in 925BC. So when I have time to play civ4, I'd prefer to practise the early diplomacy in not isolated maps.

This map is certainly generous: stone + marble for IND leaders, gold mine and some river for early , not potential run-away AIs. After Astronomy, the human player could at least expand to 10 or 11 decent cities in the island. Iron, Copper and Horse are all available, so the player won't have to look for overseas Iron to build Cannons or Cuirs. Isolation might be too tough for people who move up to a new difficulty, but this NC is a very good map for people who wants to try their first isolation games at a level they're used to play.

Thanks for the map

Some personal thoughts about the leader and the map:

Spoiler :

In this map, I wonder if Louis would perform slightly better than Stalin, maybe...? When there is capital Horse, after AH Louis would immediately build chariots for early barb defense since Louis has already TW. Besides, Louis' cheap libraries and cheap wonders would grab GLib even earlier. CRE faster border pop reduces the fog tiles, so it diminishes to some degree the barb threat. Louis has no Hunting, which means after connecting Copper we can still build cheap warriors for - under HR, and get more failgold from Colossus.

 

[soundjata]

^ spoiler alert!

 

[Whisker]

Played this one to bitter end. Deity, no huts, events on.

Spoiler Had a runaway AI problem. :

Slowly settled my own continent. Optics 600AD, met Monty and Gengis ~800 AD and Lincoln soon after. Was roughly at tech parity at this point, except Lincoln already had Astronomy and war boys for some reason had gone deep in religious branch of the tech tree. Met rest of the crew by 1000 AD. Saladin was tech leader first, then Lincoln.

Long story short. The other continent was in constant state of war, but I never had tech lead or enough numbers to mount an oversea attack.

Everyone hated SB, but he held out surprisingly long. First to capitulate was Napoleon, Monty declared him while already warring SB. Nappy weaved the white flag only after couple of turns. SB capitulated to Gengis who in turn declared Monty. Monty started to grow at alarming rate 16, 19, 23 cities. SB got decimated, 27 cities and Monty turns full force to Gengis.
I desperately try to mount attack with my 8 galleons worth of units. I take one city and Gengis surrenders to Monty. At some point Monty demanded Nationalism from me and I was still protected by peace treaty. Monty turns his attention to west and declares Saladin. Saladin falls after like five turns and Monty declared domination victory on 1680AD.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

Of all the outcomes I expected on this map "Monty wins a Domination Victory" was not one of them. Keep on trucking, Civ IV, you never cease to surprise me .

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

@pi-r8

Spoiler :

Nice win.

Did you have any AP issues in your game? I realise that another way I was lucky was that I never got the AP religion (Islam). This could have been a big problem as the Islamic bloc ended up in a holy war with Monty who was in Napo’s religion. I can imagine that there were a lot of other votes targeting those two and the diplo would have been a real pain if I’d had to vote on those. Also, I assume you didn’t found any religions and just relied on random spread?

 

[pi-r8]

@pi-r8

Spoiler :

Nice win.

Did you have any AP issues in your game? I realise that another way I was lucky was that I never got the AP religion (Islam). This could have been a big problem as the Islamic bloc ended up in a holy war with Monty who was in Napo’s religion. I can imagine that there were a lot of other votes targeting those two and the diplo would have been a real pain if I’d had to vote on those. Also, I assume you didn’t found any religions and just relied on random spread?

Spoiler :

Thanks! No, I didn't have any AP issues. AP was buddhism, but the other continent was split about 50-50 between buddhism and hinduism, so it was just a constant series of failed "stop the religious fighting" votes. And yeah, I didn't found any religions- tried for philosophy and Divine Right but was too late on both. Luckily I got 4 to spread to me, though.

 

[Fish Man]

Played this one to bitter end. Deity, no huts, events on.

Spoiler Had a runaway AI problem. :

Slowly settled my own continent. Optics 600AD, met Monty and Gengis ~800 AD and Lincoln soon after. Was roughly at tech parity at this point, except Lincoln already had Astronomy and war boys for some reason had gone deep in religious branch of the tech tree. Met rest of the crew by 1000 AD. Saladin was tech leader first, then Lincoln.

Long story short. The other continent was in constant state of war, but I never had tech lead or enough numbers to mount an oversea attack.

Everyone hated SB, but he held out surprisingly long. First to capitulate was Napoleon, Monty declared him while already warring SB. Nappy weaved the white flag only after couple of turns. SB capitulated to Gengis who in turn declared Monty. Monty started to grow at alarming rate 16, 19, 23 cities. SB got decimated, 27 cities and Monty turns full force to Gengis.
I desperately try to mount attack with my 8 galleons worth of units. I take one city and Gengis surrenders to Monty. At some point Monty demanded Nationalism from me and I was still protected by peace treaty. Monty turns his attention to west and declares Saladin. Saladin falls after like five turns and Monty declared domination victory on 1680AD.

I think someone hacked into your computer and played in place of AI Monty, because I've never seen an AI win domination with standard settings, much less someone with caveman-level teching ability, and this fast.

 

[AcaMetis]

Imagine if it was an AI survivor game. Lowest total points scored record, easily.

 

[Whisker]

I think someone hacked into your computer and played in place of AI Monty, because I've never seen an AI win domination with standard settings, much less someone with caveman-level teching ability, and this fast.

Yeah, never seen that one before either. Of course it might have something to do with the fact, that I have usually either already lost or given up the game by the time any AI would be in position to win domination.