Nobles' Club 297: Cyrus of Persia

AcaMetis

Emperor
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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 Cyrus of Persia, whom we last played in NC 236; we last played the Persians under Darius in NC 238. The Persians start with Agriculture and Hunting.
  • Traits: Cyrus is Charismatic and Imperialistic. Charismatic gives every city, Monuments and Broadcast Towers +1:), and decreases the exp required for units to level by 25%. 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 Apothecary, a Grocer with +2:health:. Not likely to be useful early game, as health is generally not that much of a concern and Grocers are rather expensive buildings to build. But after industrializing you generally find yourself in dire need of extra health and with production to spare, so a building that can get you up to +6:health: by itself is pretty useful at that point.
  • The UU: The Immortal, a Chariot with +50% vs. Archery units which gets defensive bonuses. A very early and cheap 2:move: unit that can punch through Sitting Bull archers and easily manoeuvre itself into a defensive position when necessary. Why, yes, this is indeed a good unique unit.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Pangaea, Medium Sealevel, Temperate climate.
Spoiler edits :
A few strategic resource swaps to give strategic resources nearby AIs...or was that the other way around? Either or.
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 297 Cyrus 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.
 

Attachments

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Not sure what the best move is in this situation. I'd guess sending the scout 1SW->1SE to scout as many tiles around that plains hill as possible, and if nothing really enticing draws us to it..settle in place, I guess? Or maybe 1SE to get more river tiles and ruin a plains tile rather than a grass tile? I think that's a justifiable move, we've got production coming out of our ears with double plains cow and don't start with Mining anyway so the hills are kinda eh, but I'm not sure. I'm fairly confident with the scout movement, no so much what comes afterwards if the scout doesn't find a glowing neon sign that says "settle the plains hill!"

What do the experts think :)?
 
For me the candidate city spots are:
Plains Hill - if we find a food resource
1N on the Ivory - default
SIP - if we don't like either of the other options.
1S - if there's corn/pigs 3S of the settler
I don't see a way to justify eating the forest 1SE and losing a turn.

I feel like moving the scout 1SE-1W onto the hill gives the best chance of revealing crucial information.

It also seems like the key milestone is Worker + AH, rather than just finishing the Worker, so having access to the commerce on the sugar matters (IIRC it should be 13 turns on Deity and 12 on Immortal to research AH)
 
My main reason for moving 1SE would be to grab more river tiles rather than moving away from them, but yes, giving up a T0 2:hammers: +1:) city tile for something that might pay off in several dozen turns does sound questionable.
 
Spoiler edits: :

A few strategic resource swaps to give strategic resources nearby AIs...or was that the other way around? Either or.

Spoiler T69: :


This game felt like a Who Wants to be a Millionaire quiz game:

Step Repeat: Who has: "Fear my archer! or Fear my chariot!" ?

Step 1: Violence or Non-violence?

Screenshot (529).png



Step 2: Which road to Carthage?

Screenshot (530).png


Step 3: ????? Campaign.


upload_2022-2-28_13-26-21.png


Step 4: ~10 turns to turn the economy around.

Edit: Campaign Sheet:

Screenshot (531).png


 
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Spoiler :
So definitely not a hard game, as expected :lol:. But a nice contrast to the previous Cyrus NC map and hopefully an opportunity for a newer player to experience a part of the game they might not have experienced before, I would hope :).
 
My main reason for moving 1SE would be to grab more river tiles rather than moving away from them, but yes, giving up a T0 2:hammers: +1:) city tile for something that might pay off in several dozen turns does sound questionable.
Yeah, settling on the ivory seems like the correct choice to me (without opening the save or scouting at all)
It's not great in the long term, but the capital will have great production in the short term, especially with the imperialistic bonus for settlers.
 
Obvious questions to @CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

May I look at your financial screen? How many "free supply" unit slots do you have? Or are you in the negative even with no units? Do you want to switch from slavery back into tribalism to reduce civic upkeep?
 
I would consider settling on Sugar, especially since these come in multiples and one can see a corner of river in the west(hoping to farm another riverside sugar).

So, I would scout opposite direction (in of the pigs, gems, etc) - 1SE, then likely 1SW.
 
I would consider settling on Sugar, especially since these come in multiples and one can see a corner of river in the west(hoping to farm another riverside sugar).

So, I would scout opposite direction (in of the pigs, gems, etc) - 1SE, then likely 1SW.

Interesting. I’d be put off moving away from the second plains cow with an IMP leader as I’m already thinking about how quickly I can build settlers even at size two. Also, as it’s an NC game, we know (I think it’s the rule anyway) that horses will be nearby, so we’ll very likely want to go AH so we can see where they are.
 
Obvious questions to @CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

May I look at your financial screen? How many "free supply" unit slots do you have? Or are you in the negative even with no units? Do you want to switch from slavery back into tribalism to reduce civic upkeep?

Spoiler :

Pre Save - 1240 BC

and Post Save - 900 BC
 

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t126 emperor, nh, ne
Spoiler :
it was going well, gifted cities to joao and pericles to keep them happy. boudica was my concern, then this happens, first time I see it
 
Spoiler T69: :


This game felt like a Who Wants to be a Millionaire quiz game:

Step Repeat: Who has: "Fear my archer! or Fear my chariot!" ?

Step 1: Violence or Non-violence?

View attachment 621532


Step 2: Which road to Carthage?

View attachment 621533

Step 3: ????? Campaign.


View attachment 621531

Step 4: ~10 turns to turn the economy around.

Edit: Campaign Sheet:

View attachment 621534

Spoiler :

That seems like classic overexpansion. Were you able to turn the economy around? Seems better to grow the economy more before you attack, and get better cities too. It's not like there's any rush on this map.

Impressive (real world) play time though!
 
Feeling some feels (T113, demigod)
Spoiler :

Launched my attack around turn 70. Took out Carthage, and out about half of Gandhi, then took peace in exchange for some techs. 1 turn before I could attack him again, Joao got feudalism and instantly vassalized him :mad:

Debating now whether to take on Joao's longbows with immortals just so I can finish off Gandhi...
Civ4ScreenShot0025.JPG

 
Spoiler :

That seems like classic overexpansion. Were you able to turn the economy around? Seems better to grow the economy more before you attack, and get better cities too. It's not like there's any rush on this map.

Impressive (real world) play time though!


Spoiler :

Yep, economy turned around in 10 turns T69-T79.
 
demigod to t75
Spoiler :


settled on ivory, ah->mining->tw->pottery->bw i think
ivory+CHA+800 land tiles screams elepult, thought the gold would allow for 5 cities
parked my scout on one of the sugars to prevent jungle growth, as a result I didn't find the NW rice or NE cows or the SW floodplains til much later, had to settle 2 pretty marginal cities.

hannibal has amazing land but attacking him would stretch my empire really wide and I'd get eaten up by culture on both sides. Napoleon seems like a good target


*edit played to t124. attacked Napo while joao was also attacking him which minimized elephant losses. On t124 boudica dowed me, took 2 cities and now I have 15 units in my backline
 
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Satan's voice:satan: : settle on the cow :devil:! <-- :jesus: : don't do that. Just don't :nono:.

Settling on the Ivory is certainly good. But I don't think SIP is a bad choice. 12 turns worker is nice, but what will this worker do before getting AH? Farming that Sugar doesn't seem appealing to me. A farmed Sugar is only 4:food:, equal to a dry rice - maybe even worse than a dry rice, as dry rice still gives +2:health: with Granary. Plus, the jungle can be seen at 2NW of the scout, and settling on Ivory might end up getting some unwanted jungle tiles in the capital. If I played at Noble level (techs are cheap), or if there was a Corn instead of Sugar, I would definitely settle on the Ivory. But I'd like to try this map at Emperor, so I hesitate between settling on Ivory and SIP. Send the scout towards the south to check if there are other :food: resources, perhaps?... :think:

Emperor NHNE, from 4000BC to 680AD
Spoiler :

Sent the scout SE to check the resource but found nothing. Decided to SIP. AH-TW-Mining-BW-Pot. Chopped 10+ UUs :ar15:

Who cares about AI's capital Copper. Who cares about walled cities. Cower before the might of Persian Immortals :ar15:

As a result, Hanni disappeared in 1640BC. De Gaulle disappeared in 1240BC. Captured TGW from de Gaulle.

Persian UUs were quite good for capturing barb cities :sniper:


When I saw Joao had a stack near my borders, quickly gifted a city to Joao and beg Fishing from him :whew:. IMP settlers were cheap anyway. After getting Joao to Pleased, the diplo situation was good, as all the AIs except Gandhi were Buddhist, and none of these AIs could plot at Pleased.

IMHO, one of the real "dangers" in this map was this:
Peri only had 3 cities in 400BC


But at the same time Joao already had 9 cities and was still expanding.


Joao and Peri had similar peaceweight and in the same religion. I started to worry if Peri would peaceful vassal to Joao. And this worry became true: soon after Joao got Feudalism, Peri vassal to him. 10+ cities Joao with his fast techer vassal :eek2::


Joao DoW Gandhi in 680AD. I had to close borders with Joao so that Joao's units could not reach Gandhi through land. Losing the traderoutes from Joao made me feel sad, but I didn't want Gandhi capitulate to Joao :sad:.


 
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From 680AD to 1520AD
Spoiler :

Settings as below, no tribal village.


Hanni's former capital had 4 food resources and was a nice GP farm :yup:. This city would also whip Cuirs like crazy after I adopted slavery:

...and my capital had plain cows and sugar :huh:.

Lib MT. Pre-built WE, generated GMerchants and upgraded WE to Cuirs. Attack with Cuirs.

Some weird things happened in my game :crazyeye:: I didn't understand why Emperor AI Boudica had no Feudalism even in 1000AD - in my game at Monarch (NC 283) she got longbows around 900AD. After I pillaged her only Ivory, the war with Boudica became "Cuirs against Archers" :crazyeye:.
As shown in the screenshot below, she had no longbows, no maces, no pikes. The best defenders in her cities were some crossbows and gallic warriors :crazyeye:.

After Boudi's capitulation, gifted Feudalism, CS and Guilds to her so that she could spam units to help me in the upcoming wars.

Then DoW Joao and Peri. They were still fighting against Gandhi.
We have enough on our hands right now :ar15:


Joao capitulated soon after Peri broke free:


2 wet Corns + flood plains + gold mine. Joao's former capital was really nice.

...and my capital had plain cows + sugar :hmm:.

It seemed Peri put all his :hammers: into shiny wonders and missionaries :satan:


It was hard to understand Gandhi's behaviour. Whaaaaat? "A Civ is very powerful" is a reason to become this civ's vassal, not a reason to refuse to be the vassal, right? :dubious:


Such attitude was indeed irritating [pissed]. Since Gandhi didn't want to be my peaceful vassal, I just took this vassal by force. Fear my Cuirassiers :ar15:
Since no one built Taj Mahal yet, I decided to build it and research Economics, so that I could adopt Free Market at the first turn of the GAge :yeah:. The free GMerchant would help me tech towards Rifling :yup:.

But on the same turn of finishing Taj and getting Economics, after I only captured one Indian city, domination :blush: :


TBH I don't understand what these AIs are doing. None of them has Printing Press or Education at the end of the game.:huh:


Built many Cuirs. CHA mounted units are really cool :cooool:.


All the opponents were still using Medieval units. Only Joao got Gunpowder from me, after his capitulation.


Edits: I've just noticed something weird about the number of archers. I only built 2 archers during this game, but why the statistics show I have 3 archers? is this a bug? :confused:


Then suddenly remember an unimportant event that I completely forgot: Joao settled a tundra city Faro very close to my southern borders. Faro was under my culture pressure since it was founded. After one revolt, Faro culture flipped to me in 325AD.

When a city :culture: flips to another civ, it usually gives 1 or 2 archers to its new master. Even I disbanded that city (no food, only tundra and ice tiles), the free archer remained. That explains why there are 3 archers while I only built 2. The extra archer is the one who came with Faro, that :culture: flipped city.



Some personal thoughts about the map and leader:
Spoiler :

A high :hammers: capital is tasty for IMP leaders and a potential early rush. With such powerful UUs, even the capital's :commerce: is below average, people can put these :hammers: into Immortals to capture some nice cities from the neighbours. Apart from the early rush, Immortals are also quite good for early defense against barb archers, or for capturing some barb cities.

This map also provides the new players with the opportunities to know the advantage of the extra :)- from CHA and the importance of growing cities. I'm not encouraging "stay with 3 cities of 20 population for 200 turns" - what I want to say here is that "10 cities, each city at size 14" are much better than "10 cities, each city at size 4". With gold and Ivory, even before HR, no :)- from state religion, Cyrus' cities can reach size 8. After HR and Calendar, the cities will only become larger and nicer.

Persia has very nice UUs and awesome leaders. Darius is undoubtedly one of the strongest leaders. Playing as Cyrus is fun as well, especially with larger cities and massive highly-promoted CHA units :cool:.

Thanks for the map :)
 
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Spoiler T70-T160 :


I backtracked 10 turns from the end of my conquest when I remembered the game started on ivory. With a slowly rebounding economy, I swapped plans towards bulbing Math and teching HBR/Construction.

With that many cities early, I could afford to swarm the map. Portugal falls at 100 AD with the help of De Gaulle.
Screenshot (532).png


And then I backstab him.

Screenshot (533).png


Which leaves Boudica all alone:
Screenshot (534).png


And domination victory margins at 1000 AD.

Screenshot (535).png


Screenshot (536).png

 
Emperor, Normal Speed (Diplomatic Victory)
Spoiler :

I settled on the sugar, farmed the other nearby sugar, and stayed compact, sharing many tiles and expanded to 6 cities.

With the aggressive neighbors I decided to take out France first. France started plotting very early before I was ready and I thought he'd come after me because we shared borders, even though he really hated Ghandi. Fortunately, he dowed on Ghandi who was way across the map from him. France built quite a few units including siege and even managed to take one of India's cities. I gifted India iron to keep him alive.

Meanwhile I got construction, built a bunch of catapults and declared on France. He went down fairly easily. Next up, Boudica. I didn't bother maintaining good diplomatic relations with Boudica and sure enough she dowed on me - but wasn't series. France weakened her small stack and I mopped it up after which she took peace.

10 turns later I had a bunch of trebs ready and I declared on her. She didn't put up much of a fight.

Carthage declared on India who was down to 4 cities. India offered to vassal to me, but since I was fighting Boudica, I declined. Carthage subsequently vassalled a 1-city India.

Next, I built a bit of infrastructure including some banks and courthouses everywhere and researched up to steel. I then upgraded all of my siege to cannons and dowed on Carthage. Carthage had rifles and cavalry - but not too many units. My cannon made quick work of him.

New to me was that Carthage - while still holding a vassal, took capitulation. Once he capitulated, the 1-city India capitulated on the same turn.

By this time I had a swarm of units and the game was basically over. I could have taken a diplomatic victory via the Apostolic Palace but I wanted a domination victory. So I dowed on a 4-city Greece who was ahead of me in tech. He went down quickly.

Unfortunately, even though I had vassalled everyone but Joao, I still didn't have enough land for a domination victory. So I dowed on Joao. Joao had artillery by this time versus my cannons but I had a massive numerical advantage in troop size and a huge production base.

Still, I didn't feel like playing out the 10 or so more turns it would have taken to win domination so I took a diplomatic victory via the AP instead.
 
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