Nobles' Club 302: Louis XIV of France

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 Louis XIV of France, whom we last played in NC 255; we last played the French under De Gaulle in NC 284. The French start with Agriculture and The Wheel.

• Traits: Louis XIV is Creative and Industrious. Creative gives every city +2 for free, and gives a +100% bonus to Libraries, Theatres, and Colosseums. Industrious gives a +50% bonus to all Wonders (World and National), and gives a +100% bonus to Forges.
  
• The UB: The Salon, an Observatory with +1 free Artist, providing +1, +4 and +3 GA . Not a bad bonus for cities facing cultural pressure, but your Great Person Pool will never be free from Great Artist pollution again.
  
• The UU: The Musketeer, a Musketman with 2 instead of 1. If you're attacking someone with Mounted units and are afraid of Pikeman sniping the strongest units in your army, bring along Musketeers as stack defenders. They can keep up with their allies on horseback. Somehow .

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Temperate climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

The usual strategic resource swaps.

Spoiler isolated? :

Not iso.

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 302 Louis XIV 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.

 

start, with double wet corn on the river. Obviously not moving away from that, so I think the best place to settle would be 1N on the riverside wine: Not as good as a 2 city tile, but a 2 city tile and auto-hookup of +1 at Monarchy can't be bad, nor can having a few more river tiles and potential resource tiles. Not that early commerce is going to be an issue anyway, between the riverside corns and starting techs, I think.

What do the experts think? Is one of the four Plains hills reachable T0, or even the marble tile, more enticing? Or 1N it is ?

 

Just a noble player, but I'd SIP to keep the plains hills since the second corn will be cover by our borders in 3 turns (assuming normal speed) anyway, though I'd be open to 1N if the warrior had been in position to check for possible food to the south for a second city to work the marble and the southern plains hills instead of Paris.

 

I'd definitely settle on one of the wine tiles. In addition to what AcaMetis said, the then free riverside green hill is also nice, especially with IND. The abundance of food will make tile sharing helpful/mandatory.
Hard to say which wine tile is better, probably the western one (more river). But I'd at least send the warrior to check out one of the unforested tiles gained by an eastern wine center (3E or 2E3N of settler). Eastern wine capital would free up the SW plains hills for a nice overlap city (corn&green mine) if that direction is worth settling.

 

Firing up the game, as Louis is the kind of guy that looks nice in principle.
He's been known as the Roi Soleil (King Sun) after all

Deity T45

Spoiler choices :

We've been acting safe on the --research Archery, build one archer and hope for the best-- early game approach.

A couple of barb fights went to our advantage but immediate neighbors are warmongers and we need a plan against their dicey rolls.

Where should we send our new settler?

X location looks good in principle but has several drawbacks :
- Worker intensive (desert gold)
- Techno intensive (requires fishing + Masonry)
- Too close to Alex for comfort

Alternatively 3 west of Paris is of immediate use.

At this point we could decide for HA rushing ** and/or Elepultage

Other options ?




** would be good to summon @shakabrade for expertise in that case

 

Kinda noob here, just won my first Prince game, but why not SIP? The marbe would come in handy for maybe an Oracle rush or being able to build wonders (even better with IND) An insane amount of food and nice hammers (because of PH) and a bunch of forests to chop.

------

PS: I'm learning the forum's language, What's BFC?

 

Big Fat Cross, the total tiles a city can work after the first border pop.
Settling on wine doesn't lose marble, though early marble matters a lot less than early stone. Idea of settling on wine is that you will have an extra in the city center. This is because all cities are guaranteed 211, but if the base yield has a higher value it will use that instead. So settling on wine is 212 (Note, base yield does not include the 1 from forests, which disappear upon settling). Plains wine full yield isn't terribly attractive on its own and we obviously can't improve that until monarchy. The +1 every turn of the game is at least something though, and we will acquire wine the instant we hit monarchy not having to improve it. It also gives us one extra grassland river tile, and frees up the green river hill we spawn on, which with IND is likely an important mine.

 

Double corn looks super cool, it just allows so many things. On Fractal, there should be some consideration about the amount of food available. Settling the best capital, sometimes, deprives you from the best ulterior cities. It is more important to have 2-4-5 functional cities than it is to have a great capital. It often happens that claiming all the food in the cap leads to having poor options for further cities. Here, conspicuously, settling 1N kills the spot 3N1W.
Being IND, 1S2W is an option (go Sailing).
T52 summary :

Spoiler :

I went NE, settled my 2nd city further East on the mystery tile, got DoWed T52 (things happen), gg wp.

 

/

Spoiler Diety T75 :

I've spent 2 hours playing the opening thrice to ~ T75. Tried gifting cities, tried settling farther away, tried building tall. Alexander declares war regardless.

 

IND + Marble call for a peaceful builder game or even a culture win - Louis is actually one of the best leaders for a victory, although the victory path always depends on the map and neighbours. Louis is a good leader: nice starting techs, strong early game. But for this particular high map, I slightly prefer the two other French leaders, because I didn't see any early - resource. The +2 from CHA can take maximum advantages from these two wet corns.

Mining - BW - Pot seems a natural choice. Even not sure if I'll spam wonders, I do agree that Marble + IND might change the tech path. If surrounded by peaceful AIs like Gandhi or if isolation (= no early DoW), I would definitely go Myst-Poly-PH, maybe oracle something or at least get some failgold, then Aesthetics - Literature. But if there is Shaka or Monty nearby, I'll just forget about that Marble during the early game.

From T0 to T108

Spoiler :

This game is cursed from the beginning for me

Settings as below, no huts:


Settled 1N, namely on the wine. Mining-BW. I planned to send my Worker to mine that grassland hill (the initial place under the settler) after he farmed the corn. But a forest grew on that hill while my worker was improving the corn . As a result, my worker could do nothing but to build road before BW.


The only lucky thing was Alex researched Myst and built SH, so it slightly delayed his military build-up:


Gifted a city to Boudica. When Boudica's religion spread to Orléans, immediately converted to it. Since then she remained at Pleased. 3 cities HA rush Alex. Ignored some border cities and went straight to Athens, because Alex's Copper was there. If playing as CDG or Nappy, I would definitely keep SH for the +1 - per city. But SH was redundant for a CRE leader. Plus, I disliked the pollution. So I razed Athens and pillaged the Copper mine. Besides, Alex's land was on a small peninsula, which meant the spot wouldn't get stolen by AIs. Athens was a good spot; I would resettle that spot after Currency.
Captured 3 cities, cease fire and redeclared. Alex disappeared in 375 BC.


I thought finally I could build some infrastructure, grow more cottages and recover from the war. Unfortunately, just one or two turns after Alex was gone, Biz was plotting . Why didn't he give me some time for recovery ?...
No time for recovery. Moved all the surviving HAs to the northern border. Temporarily stopped building libraries. Workers chopping Archers.


Biz's stack located in Celtic land. The target was definitely me .


Biz DoW me on the next turn. Given that there was no Spears in his stack, my HAs just wiped out his units on flat land. He made peace after losing his stack:


As shown in the screenshot above, economy is apparently dead: only 50 at 100% research in 175BC. I thought HBR would be enough to get Alphabet via trade, but the problem was these AIs just refused to tech Alpha . The screenshot below is the tech situation in 175BC

Well, maybe I should self-tech Alpha so that I can build to finish Currency . The capture can barely support 2 more turns of full research. If I can't finish Currency before the runs out, I'll probably end up again on strike .

Suffered heavy loss in the war with Alex. My chariots were just smashed by AGG Phalanxes . HAs died to AGG Spears .


All the Phalanxes and Spears killed belonged to Alex. All the Swords and Axes killed came from the war with Biz'. Alex didn't build a Sword, because immediately after DoW my HA captured a Greek Worker who built a mine in a suspicious 12 plain tile.


Forest grown before BW, warmonger neighbour, distant DoW, heavy units costs, bad economy, most cities without infrastructure...


Have to take a break from this struggle. Maybe I should watch some LP videos to learn more about post HAs rush recovery.

 

Erm... there is a second corn which would have to be irrigated next anyway? And afterwards you have BW to chop

 

@soundjata

Spoiler :

Your second city is better than mine. I settled Orléans near that lake to grab Horse + Ivory+ Rice, later Boudica stole that grass cow/stone spot from me. Your judgement about the situation is right: with Alex so close, peace is not an option.

About your third city, I don't think the spot "x" is good, for three reason: 1) you need Fishing and 30 workboat; 2) too few forest to chop; 3)as you've noticed, too close to Alex. Since you'll go into wars, you may want forests or some high spots. IMHO, 1NE of that dry rice might be a good choice because of the natural from Horse and Cow, with 2 forests to chop. 1S of the Marble would be also good (I settled Lyon here): many forests to chop, can share cottage with the capital. But I only play at Monarch/Emperor, so Deity players' suggestions are much more valuable than mine.

@BornInCantaloup @CarpoolKaraoke

Spoiler :

This map becomes extremely hard on Deity, as Alex has Copper in his capital. Deity AIs with Copper start plotting very quickly.

@Qactus

Spoiler :

A little embarrassed about it... in fact, I realized there was another corn only after I chopped two forests . Thanks for pointing it out!
Maybe the grown forest is less bad than I imagined, as 1 extra forest is equal to 20 extra .

 

Spoiler T112: :

Alright, let him do the inevitable. Grinding out the fight.

Spoiler T131: :

Recoverable, economically.



Greek land was absurdly rich:

 

Farm both corns, farm wine, lots of things to do with worker even if no BW.

Less bad? It's a great thing for sure.

 

Spoiler :

Granaries in all 4 cities + 4 racks + 3 stables is what you built prior to the rush it seems.
How about Libraries ? Did you skip Writing before researching HBR ?

Intuitively I would skip granaries (can't grow, won't grow...) in favor of a few libraries. Use scientists instead of cottages for research, use mines (and chop) instead of whipping for production.

Might you elaborate on your buildup strategy?

 

Wouldn't someone recommend settling on a hill and gathering a few archers there in case of a violent neighbour ?

 

I'd send the warrior SE first. If additional food resources are found one could consider settling on the marble.

 

If a violent neighbour threatens your capital something has already gone horribly wrong. Better to settle a forward city on a hill and use that as bait while your capital continues to fuel your empire.

 

love playing with Louie, but I'll find it hard not to wonderspam. gonna go on the wine unless sth strange happens. hope to score my third inmortal NC win!

 

No, no, no, You have to try for the Pyramids and the Great Lighthouse off of 2-4 cities, props if you also found Buddhism. Dying is a byproduct of greatness, nothing to be ashamed of.