Nobles' Club 313: Darius of Persia

[AcaMetis]

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 Darius I of Persia, whom we last played in NC 238; we last played the Persians under Cyrus in NC 297. The Persians start with Hunting and Agriculture.

• Traits: Darius I is Financial and Organized. Financial adds +1 to any tile that already produce at least 2. Organized cuts Civic Upkeep in half, and gives a +100% bonus to Lighthouses, Courthouses and Factories.
• The UB: The Apothecary, a Grocer with +2. 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 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 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 :

Continents, Temperate climate, medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

Strategic resource swaps, and a few Fish were moved from unworkable positions to workable positions.

Spoiler isolated? :

Not isolated.

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 313 Darius 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.

 

[AcaMetis]

On the one hand I'm tempted by the plains hill, on the other hand I'm not tempted by moving away from Corn. I mean the PH isn't going to be hurting for food regardless, floodplains galore, but Corn in nice. If only to capture with capital culture so that another city can share it easily.

I guess Scout goes 1NW->1SW to scout the river, settle PH if there's food, and if not...maybe 1W instead of 2W? Is a dry Corn worth a plains hill? I'm not sure. What do the experts think?

 

[Izuul]

I'd move the scout down by the PH to see if there's more food over there.

 

[sampsa]

...or move scout on the corn, planning to settle 1W if nothing important is lost. Moving scout to ph means SIP I guess if nothing of interest to the west. Hard to say which one is better. I don't like to settle on fp in general when there is a reasonable alternative.

 

[Nick723]

This ^

There’s 99% more food to the east. The tiles have that look about them

 

[Izuul]

Yeah, that makes sense too. 1W is the clear settle at the moment given what we see in the opening screenshot.

I'm still not sure which i would rather reveal with the scout though.

You can't really settle on the PH without knowing there's food there, so moving the scout to the corn means either 1W or SIP. Moving the scout maybe 2SW keeps the PH settle in play, but if there isn't food there, you do run the risk of losing resources E or SE of the corn by blindly moving 1W. I think that would still be OK though. Corn + a bunch of FPs is still a fine capital, and you wouldn't lose any resources to the south if they happen to be down there.

 

[drewisfat]

I favor scout to plains hill, if nothing spectacular, SIP. Compared to scouting corn/settling 1W:
- Bigger upside potential from scouting while keeping any eastern food in BFC
- 3 capital hills vs 1 if I'm foggazing right
- Worker improves corn 1 turn faster
- Free corn irrigation
- Definitely not settling on copper/horse/iron
Worth killing a fp imo.

 

[sampsa]

Makes sense, even though I don't share your enthusiasm about hills. I also wouldn't be concerned about settling on copper/horse/iron. Extra FIN fp cottage and +1cc (313) is very competitive compared to 151-tile. Just saying that these things are very minor. Overall I think I'm leaning towards scout to hill and SIP, too. If there is food to the west, the ph settle is just too good to pass.

 

[drewisfat]

I live in completely flat Florida. What I wouldn't give for at least one hill

 

[triplebassist]

It's hard to see in the screenshot, but I think that the AI suggested tile is coastal. I think 2SE and 1 S 3E are water tiles. I don't know if I'd want to settle there but I definitely have concerns about SIP taking away the ability to get a coast city later. I guess that means I lean towards checking out the PH as a potential settling spot

 

[konata_LS]

Admittedly I haven't had time to play BTS for nearly two months. Was quite busy with real life. Also, a survival game called Valheim released a recent update Mistlands adding exciting new creatures and structures to the game; some youtubers such as Booster, Threadmenace, and NickRawcliffe all uploaded or streamed many new contents about Mistlands, so I spent most of my leisure time watching Valheim videos . Those Valheim videos are almost adventure movies walking into Norse myth and Scandinavian folklore . Some videos are hilarious - for example I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the chapters "not building...building...not building..." As a result, when I had some time to go back to BTS at the beginning of this month, I already forgot many details or game mechanics . So I decided to play this map, as Darius is a forgiving leader for newbies: even the early game is a complete chaos, the situations won't become too hopeless .

Emperor normal speed:

Spoiler :

Settings as below, no tribal village

Moved the scout on the plain hill showed settling on the plain hill wouldn't get any resource . Settling 1W would probably be decent. The flood plains on the north west looked interesting - the scout would check that area next turn.

Moving the mouse towards the score showed there were 1000+ land tiles. The game might be long, and some AIs may become quite big. It also meant that the neighbours were often far, probably this was not the ideal map for immortal rush.

The scout moved along the river towards north west and found riverside Ivory, then a gold mine with grassland cow. The ivory and gold/cow spots were good enough for my second and third cities, so the scout remained in that area to prevent barbs from spawning. Met Saladin on the west. Peri came from the northern jungle area. I couldn't see their borders for a while, so they were not close (actually Saladin's capital was on the western coast of our continent while I started near the eastern coast). Thus, I didn't see any urge to run across the continent to attack a PRO neighbour who didn't plot at pleased. Plus, on T5 after the capital's border pop, a marble showed up. The marble (production bonus for GLib + Parthenon), ivory (SoZ), and gold (Shwedagon paya) combined with nice neighbours, all pointed to the peaceful Aesthetics-lit-Music and fail gold. The land nearby was enough for at least 6 or 7 good cities. Another concern about the fractal / continents maps was, if the human shared the continent with 2 AIs, wiping out one AI before astro would lead to a semi-isolation with the remaining AI. I'd prefer to avoid semi-isolation at the moment. Although Roosevelt met me around T50, but it didn't change my plan about staying at peace before renaissance era. Roosevelt could plot at pleased, but his "build unit prob" was very low. Plus, he had no shared border with me until my Cuirs started capturing his cities.

The early game was messy . On the turn I finished BW, I was still building a settler in my capital and planned to adopt slavery after my settler came out. But by a misclick I switched to slavery on that turn, while building the settler (I mean, when people finish BW, the game gives the player three options, the first one saying "let's get the revolution started', the second one saying something like "the old way is the best", the third one leads to the civics screen. I should have clicked the second or third option, but my fingers moved wrongly and clicked the first option ). My scouting was terrible. There were two horse resources near my capital, one on the west, another one near the eastern coast, but my warriors didn't check those areas until I placed down my third city . The barbs from southern tundra caused some troubles: I thought Saladin's archers wandering around the tundra would help fog-busting, but it didn't (I guessed Sally's archer might die to the barbs, as outside cities, on a tundra flat land, even a pro archer couldn't survive two barb archers' attack on the same turn). Barbs pillaged my pasture twice . Had to 1 pop whip an immortal to save my city from a barb archer . After whipping twice settlers from my capital, I realized I forgot to build a granary there .

Saladin founded Hinduism while Peri founded Buddhism. I decided to convert to Saladin's religion, as Saladin was much more religious than Peri. The risk was, Saladin got very early Axemen. Any AI with early access to metal could start plotting, even the normally peaceful ones (another example was AI Darius with capital copper started plotting in 1440BC, at 39:04 of the video, even he founded two religions). So I decided to go for early Writing-Alphabet to let Saladin spread his religion to me. Early Alphabet also enabled me to gift techs to Saladin: if Saladin started plotting when he was still at Cautious, I could at least gift him some techs, make him pleased, then beg Fishing from him. After alphabet, I went for Aesthetics-literature.

The result of a messy early game was the pig remained unimproved in 225AD, two workers were moving towards that piggy . I didn't improve the pig earlier because the pasture got pillaged by barb archers twice, so I thought "why build a pasture only for getting pillaged next turn" . Also many forests needed to be chopped - I had not enough workers

After Aesthetics, fail gold from Parthenon and other wonders supported the research towards music and CS. I forgot to cancel the building 1 turn before finishing SoZ. Angrily reload once here .

Both Roosevelt and Peri liked wonder-spamming, but surprisingly, GLH and Mids were all built by the far away AIs. An AI who built GLH even faster than Roosevelt - maybe Augustus Caesar in the game...? Capac or Pacal might be possible as well

The religious situation looked not good, as Buddhism and Hindu were all founded on my continent. Later Peri founded Confu and Roosy founded Christianity, which meant all AIs on the other continent must be under Judaism. Optics contacts might show a troublesome lovefest between the unknown wonder spammers .

Peaceful expanded to 8 cities before renaissance era. Captured a barb city. When attacking the barb city garrisoned by barb archers, Persian immortals performed much better than normal chariots.

Diplo looked good: Saladin became Friendly thanks to shared religion; Peri and Roosy were all pleased as well:

The tech trading became a little tricky. Peri was Friendly towards Roosevelt so Peri was willing to trade all his monopoly techs to Roosevelt. Saladin was still cautious towards Peri and Roosevelt despite different religions. All these AIs were generous about tech trading. Peri founded Confu and next turn he traded CoL to Roosevelt; 2 turns later Saladin got CoL as well . Same for almost all the other techs: one AI got Feudalism and a few turns later every AI had longbows, Peri got MC and a few turns later every one could build forges . The frequent trades between the AIs forced me to think carefully about what to research and how to trade."Know your enemy" was of great help about tech trading, as it listed the AIs will trade tech that how many % of other AIs know. After reading "know your enemy", I traded a tech with Peri and Roosevelt first, then traded with Saladin, because Saladin was Friendly towards me; if I traded with Saladin first, Peri or Roosevelt might hit WFYABTA limit. I got several monopoly techs such as HBR and Guilds from Friendly Saladin. TBH I rarely met such frequent trading among the AIs in an emperor game without Mansa - normally only AI Mansa enabled so many trades.

These AIs tech really fast as well, or I was slowed down too much by the disastrous early game: Roosevelt was the first one to Paper. Shortly after I got Nationalism, Peri also had it. Soon after I got lib, Roosevelt also got it and he immediately went for SMethods-communism.

The AIs on my continent were all at peace. Much to my surprise, a GGeneral born in a far away land .

Maybe there were some backstabbers such as Sury or Shaka among the Jewish lovefest...? Or maybe the unknown AIs had different peaceweight, so they were only cautious despite shared religion? If Augustus and a low peaceweight AI like Mehmed or Hannibal were Jewish, they were probably only Cautious; plus, both AC and Mehmed were sensitive about border tensions.

Luckily, the demo screen showed the insignificant difference between the biggest AI and the smallest AI, so the unknown AIs were unlikely to be a master with 2 vassals. <- this knowledge came from Lain's write-up (Lain noticed through the demo screen the other continent consisted of 1 master and 1 vassal, in the last screenshot of his post). To some degrees I agree with Henrik's opinion about Lain's gameplay: Lain usually chooses low-risk strategies, those who want to see high-risk approaches may find Lain's games a little unexciting, but people learn so much so quickly from Lain's videos or write-ups.

 

[konata_LS]

Emperor normal speed (continued)

Spoiler :

When I was whipping cuirs, a carrack showed up: actually the AI who founded Judaism was Joao . My assumption about the far away AIs was wrong: actually Joao built GLH, not Augustus . Too bad Joao only traded map at Friendly, so I had to send my own caravels to find the two remaining AIs.

Peri and Roosevelt were all teching fast but they were militarily quite weak. Roosevelt grabbed the free GSpy from communism and he was probably racing to Physics as well. Peri already had constitution. Saladin was slightly behind Peri and Roosevelt in terms of tech, but he was the most powerful AI on my continent (Sally had a stack of 20+ medieval units in one of his cities, although not shown in the screenshot below) and already got Gunpowder. Even Peri and Roosevelt were weak, I decided to attack Saladin first, because - look at Saladin's research . He was pursuing his PRO Riflemen

Oh, this explained the GGeneral born in far away land .

The biggest surprise was WK DoW Kublai twice . I thought Kublai was much more aggressive than WK, but in reality WK started the war . It seemed WK and Kublai were not only busy killing each other, but also put great effort in pestering each other with spies .

My assumption about the other continent was wrong as well. The far away AIs were not in the Jewish lovefest. Actually WK shared a continent with Kublai, and Joao was isolated. Joao's religion randomly spread to WK because Joao was the first to astronomy.
Look at Joao's tech: he ignored many other techs but went straight for optics - astronomy . He played his isolation game like a human player. What a gamer

Saladin was the toughest opponent; his CG3 longbows and muskets were disgusting. He capitulated after losing his capital. Roosevelt refused to talk for a while but changed his mind after losing Washington. Captured Hindu shrine from Saladin and MoM from Roosevelt. Pericles was doing Pericles things: democracy before replaceable parts, physics before rifling.

Maybe it was time to adopt Rep? Rep would lose the civics bonus with Joao, but the captured SoL made Rep irresistible .

After astronomy, most AIs were under mercantilism .

Well... even without trade routes, I badly needed to trade the resources from other continents. The health situation was dire: before astro, I even had to build aqueduct in my capital to avoid starvation. Astronomy was required for building galleons anyway.

Built a fleet, many inf. and artilleries. Attacked Kublai and WK, because their land was larger than Joao's, so attacking them would give me more land toward domination. Besides, the endless feud between Kublai and WK exhausted them both. Unfortunately after their capitulation, I didn't have enough land for domination , so I had to build some tanks and attacked Joao.
During my war against Joao, domination on T291:

For me, the most interesting part of this map was AIs' intercontinental trade routes before astronomy. During the whole classical and medieval eras, I was wondering why Pericles and Roosevelt tech like crazy even with only average land: none of them had too rich spots like triple gems or triple golds. But after their capitulation, I understood why: Roosevelt had some islands reachable by sailing.

Same for Peri:

Both Roosevelt and Peri started with Fishing, so they only need Sailing to settle these islands. Roosevelt might have sent some swords to capture the barb city on the island as well. These island cities gave Roose and Peri intercontinental trade routes long before Astronomy, which largely accelerated their tech pace. This probably confirmed the importance of trade routes economy: the best Traderoutes are intercontinental ones .

Lost 10 galleons because I forgot to bring enough frigates / ship of the line to protect the galleons . My fleet hastily charged into Kublai's coast and some ships were sunken by his frigates

Joao was the only AI who got infantry. But I didn't meet too much resistance in Joao's land, probably because he was too busy with Apollo Program.

The end game events shows the islands (orange circled) in the north of the player's continent like thick eyebrows

Thanks for this interesting map with eyebrows island

 

[soundjata]

Deity T55

Spoiler :

I deviated slightly from the suggested settling strategies and decided to SOS, after a 2NW move from the scout suggested it would be a much better overall capital location ; thinking in terms of GO opening à la @sossos.
we are comforted by this choice on T5

BW>Archery
We go worker > settler.
City 2 is poor on production but it is central (again) and can be settled safely without a warrior.
We build 3 archers for good safety. (it is a huge map >1000 land tiles)
AH>TW>Pot>Writing.

We accepted production being abysmal and got commerce aplenty in return (ivory+ spices)
We start improving the Corn now
Maybe Pericles could get elepulted? (can we have enough production for that?)

 

[konata_LS]

Deity T55

Spoiler :

Maybe Pericles could get elepulted? (can we have enough production for that?)

Spoiler :

It's always a pleasure to see and discuss different approaches of the same map.

It seems Peri is determined to adopt a different religion from Saladin . In my game, Peri founded Buddhism while Sally founded Hinduism. In your game, Peri is Hindu and Sally is Buddhist.

If people want some early wars, then, as you noticed, Peri is a better target than Saladin, and Elepults is much more reliable than suiciding Immortals onto Phalanxes.

Spoiler after you scout Greek land and get IW through trade :

Peri has Copper but no Iron. Can't remember if Saladin has extra iron or not, but I don't think Sally will trade strategic resources to a heathen Peri. So the strongest opponent that your Elepults might encounter is longbow. Peri can't build xbow or pike unless he randomly pops Iron from one of his mines.