Nobles' Club 319: Julius Caesar of the Romans

AcaMetis

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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 Julius Caesar of Rome, whom we last played in NC 288; we last played the Romans under Augustus Caesar in NC 272. The Romans start with Fishing and Mining.
  • Traits: Julius Caesar is Imperialistic and Organized. 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:). Organized cuts Civic Upkeep in half, and gives a +100% :hammers: bonus to Lighthouses, Courthouses and Factories.
  • The UB: The Forum, a Market with +25% :gp:. A minor boost, which only few cities will truly benefit from, tied to an expensive building makes the Forum an overall underwhelming UB.
  • The UU: The Praetorian, a Swordsman with a show-stopping 8:strength:, albeit at the cost of losing it's innate +10% City Attack and costing slightly more to produce (45:hammers: rather than 40:hammers: on Normal speed). Praetorians can also be upgraded directly into Rifles and Grenadiers, meaning they can be build until you've researched both Rifling and Military Science.
And the start:

Spoiler map details :
Fractal, Temperate climate, medium sealevel.
Spoiler edits :
A few strategic resource swaps.
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 319 Julius Caesar 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.
 

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Not a bad start, but only a single plains cow in sight isn't overly tempting. The Warrior can't scout anything meaningful up north (we can see there's forests, and jungle besides), coast doesn't matter for the capital so I guess 1SE to check if there's any kind of food on that hidden plains tile. If that tile doesn't contain food move either 1NW or 1S and pray there's more food hiding in the fog? Or 1SW, even, though that will sacrifice a forest. I'm inclined to try my luck with 1S given that it would yield a better capitol as far as we can see (keeps riverside and 2:commerce: capitol tile), but that is an awful lot of brown down south. Maybe 1NW is the better guess? Tons of forests, but forests are useful, and there's at least one open grass tile that might contain another food resource.

How do the experts wish to tackle this one :)?
 
Looks like the 2 mustery tiles you lose from moving 1S are just forest so not a big deal
I think they are a rather big deal, since the city lacks decent tiles (and green river tiles are decent).

I think I'd check the tile 2S of warrior, if nothing, perhaps move settler NW to gain green tiles. Not saying SIP or 1S are necessarily bad, just quite committing.
 
It's a real rough scouting situation. The risk of missing out on a res when only 1 plains cow is showing is huge. Even a second plains cow makes the start much much better. I agree with Sampsa on first scouting the tile 2S of the warrior (so move warrior 1SE). If that's a resource great, we can settle 1NE which is ideal. Otherwise I think we have to move settler 1SW to scout out down there. If it finds something, we can settle on that hill, if not move the warrior 1S onto the hill. If that finds something we can settle on the wine hill next turn. If we've found nothing at all I'd move the settler 2N (so 1NW of starting position) and settle there turn 2 with the assumption that the fog tile 2W of there is a res.
 
I messed up a lot on my first attempt so had to restart.

Spoiler Quick summary of my second attempt :

So I Praetorian'd India and Mali, then after some years of on and off peace it took me until 1924 to wipe out the Mayans, straight away I passed the UN resolution and won Diplomatic victory, which was unexpected.
I actually carried on a little bit afterwards, I went to war with the Zulus and found Shaka to have the largest army of Infantry Ive ever witnessed in a civ4 game.
 
This capital looks awful. Maybe settle on wine and size 1 settler to find better lands...
 
Deity/Normal to t50:

Spoiler :

Scouted north, found nothing of note, so moved settler down to the wine hill.

t0 - warrior and settler moves.png


And thank goodness I did:

t1 - settle.png


Demographics screen reveals Mansa is in the game, that there are no Charismatic or Creative civs, and that there is at least one Expansive civ. Always useful to know.

Meet Gandhi on turn 4 and find his borders on turn 7 - north of the jungle belt and north-west of my capital. Get an espionage advantage on him on turn 8 which means we are not alone together. Meet Mansa turn 30.

By turn 31 our capital looks like this. Can't complain about that, can you?

t31 production.png


A barb city spawns on t40, which is fairly useful. I can't use that land for ages, Gandhi is REALLY unlikely to take it, and it helps with fogbusting.

t40 barb city.png


Very quickly the problem presents itself. How on earth do we get commerce on this map? There's almost no riverside grassland ANYWHERE. There is a gold tile out west but there doesn't seem to be any food near it. We need to get to Iron Working to develop the jungle land in order to get some beakers going, but we need beakers to get to Iron Working. Rough. Meanwhile, we need to block off land to stop Gandhi getting it, but that would tank the economy even more. I can't build anything but workers, settlers and warriors, and I need Mysticism and Pottery at some point too!

It gets so bad that I actually start working 1f2c coast tiles by choice.

t45 - working 1f2c coast lol.png


At turn 50, we're certainly REXing, but we're also tanking:

t50 - 4 cities no commerce!!!.png


Four cities are down, the barb city is blocking off some land for me, but I think I would like to get another city down to block the banana/dye site. Not sure!

The plan for the next turnset is roughly:

Pottery -> Mysticism -> Iron Working
Drop cottages on every spare tile I have (including non-Riverside grassland :cry:
Get workers clearing jungle to help commerce
And, most crucially... pray for iron! If we get iron, we can take the barb city and then most likely wipe Gandhi with pure Praetorian muscle and no siege, then see how far ahead Mansa is and try to get him with Catapults?



I can sense this is going to be a tough game.
 
Deity/Normal to t115:

Spoiler :

Got a bit carried away at the start of this turnset and forgot to take screenshots, but I broadly followed the plan I wrote up in my previous post. Settled two questionable jungle cities as I crawled towards Pottery and Iron Working. Predictably (dare I say?) we are blessed with Iron - thanks, kind map maker :lol:

Not being exceptionally food-rich, the plan is to chop Praets far more than whipping them.

t86 wood to praets.png


t89 praet spam.png


Gandhi appears to only have Archers and Chariots (thanks, again!) so this shouldn't be too bad. We grab the barb city as a warmup:

t90 gem city cap.png


And declare war a few turns later, on turn 94.

Cities fall quickly:

t95 vijay.png

t99 delhi.png


I use my war income and my improving commerce rate to manually tech to Calendar.

t105 - HAPPY NOW.png


This is the second game in a row where I've self-teched it early-ish rather than trading for it. I have a nice amount of calendar resources which will really improve my commerce rate and let me grow my cities. Surprisingly, this is a tech Mansa doesn't have, so I take the plunge and grab some small techs from him before he gets Calendar from somewhere else:

t105 - not great trade but ok.png


I hoover up Gandhi's territory and leave him with one city. The culture pressure from this isn't too bad, so it seems far more worthwhile, on balance, to grab all this delicious tech from him (I played around with combinations and he accepted this offer):

t106 - he said yes to this yay.png


Of course, he peacevassals the very next turn to Pacal. No problem!

I still have a nice stack of Praetorians, some of which have 8-12XP (e.g. City Raider III, or close to it). No point in not using them. I'll need some siege to soften Mansa up though. I tech to Construction and queue Catapults. I also trade for Ivory to get a few War Elephants in the stack. It's possible Mansa will get Guilds before or during the war, and Praetorians won't enjoy Knights pecking them in the open field.

At 1AD, as my buildup continues for the second war, here is the empire:

t115 empire north.png

t115 empire south.png


Antium is having one turn off the cows to manage overflow - this tile combination lands me on 29/60 hammers into a War Elephant so I can whip it with max overflow next turn.


Reasonably pleased with this position after a challenging opening. A few things to think about for the next turnset:

Spoiler :

1. What is the aim for the Mansa war? Wipe him out completely or take his northern cities up to Timbuktu (which has a few wonders, but nothing amazing) and then vassal him ASAP? He is going to end up about a generation ahead of me in tech, so leaving him with a few cities, targeting his research to certain techs, and using him as a trade buddy seems the best plan to catch up. Because...

2. What is the plan to manage Pacal? He is starting to tech really fast and is also securing most of the wonders. When is the opportunity to declare war on him? It almost certainly won't be Praetorians and my *guess* would be that he will get to Rifling before I could launch a Cuirassier war. I'm about to be in his favourite civic, so the diplo aspect will be fine, but actually stopping him from winning the game will be interesting. I haven't scouted all the way through (deleted my Scout to save money when I started stacking units) but he seems to have a lot of land, and GOOD land. Seems like this is a continents map, but I don't remember seeing any Great Generals spawn, nor have they built many of the wonders.

3. How to best use the Indian land? It feels too late to develop cottages and there isn't that much river up there anyway. Chain irrigation, workshops and whipping seems best (Delhi and Bombay both have enough food to be fantastic hammer cities), but Civil Service is some way away.
 
Sorry to be triple posting - not sure if anyone else is playing this, but I'm finding it a really enjoyable map.

To ~1500ADish:

Spoiler :

When we left off, I was building up siege units to supplement my veteran Praetorians and invade Mansa Musa. I forgot to take a screenshot of the DOW itself, but that happens at around turn 125 and we make good progress:

t129 mansa war.png


After taking the other two cities and securing the whole peninsula for myself, I cap Mansa at turn 141:

t141 mansa cap.png


We've also met Shaka, Darius and Bismarck at this stage. The first two are also in Hinduism and don't have Optics so I'm not quite clear at this stage what the continent looks like. I discover later in the set what the issue has been. Perhaps I could have scouted better to meet them in the BCs.

It appears Bismarck has researched Optics from isolation.

Anyway, with Mansa capped and the economy back in the toilet, we really need to think hard about how to stop Pacal winning the game. I finally get access to a world map, which reveals he has crazy good land and a lot of wonders:

t147 - pacal land.png

t147 - pacal wonders.png


You can see that Shaka and Darius share a continent with us, but that it is separated from Pacal by a single mountain tile. I remember reading aeons ago that this screws up the AI's targeting and means that they won't attempt to hop around the mountain and invade with ships because they see you as some sort of "land target". Is that right?

In my head, a plan is starting to come together where I can aim to win domination without ever going to war with Pacal. We should be able to catch up in tech by either infantry/artillery, or tanks - then aim to get enough land or vassals from the other AI that we can win before Pacal gets to space or culture. I'm not at all confident I'd ever be able to find a moment to attack Pacal with good enough tech.

Somehow, I manage to direct Mansa's research to Liberalism before Pacal gets there. I don't get a say in which free tech Mansa takes, but it's nice that he stopped Pacal from getting it.

As the economy starts to pull back, we leverage having Mansa as a vassal, and our good diplo with the neighbours, to barter up our tech pace. The first tech I manage to research which gives me this chance is Printing Press:

t156 - printing press barter mansa darius bismarck.png


As with many such games, the plan is a series of beelines: first Communism, then Biology, then Assembly Line, then Combustion (to build a modern navy and improve my oil), then Industrialism (to build tanks, but this can come last because we need Combustion as well and may as well have the navy built and ready). I can get good value out of Mansa in this phase of the game. I'm finally teching faster than him but he still has decent research power and he is still quite a bit ahead of me in tech. I can push him to research certain techs for me which I can trade for later. I fiddle around in the tech tree trying to find the best options. Later in the game I'm hoping to get Electricity from him for Railroad, which will speed things up a bit.

With the economy in better shape (read: I can built Wealth and Research everywhere :lol:) I finally get around to backfilling a few marginal sites:

t179 mediolanum.png

t180 arpinum.png


Note also that Shaka has invaded and vassalled Darius. This is a shame - my game plan for beating Pacal now means I'll have to fight them both at once and an industrial-era Shaka has a LOT of units.

As I continue racing to catch up with Pacal, Gandhi founds Mining Inc in his one remaining city:

t198 gandhi mining inc.png


I'm not sure if I'm quite experienced enough to know if this is good or not. My read has always been that on Normal speed the AI is better with Corporations than the player. The number of turns where the decision is relevant *tends* to favour State Property for the player, over investing hammers and turns in spreading the corporation. So I can't really tell if I want Pacal to be in State Property or running corporations. This might slow his spaceship down a tiny bit.

We reach communism by about 1220AD, Biology a bit later, and by 1470, we finally have Assembly Line and start to industrialise. This goes even faster than usual due to the Organised trait boosting the build time for Factories.

The value of the food-heavy land in Gandhi's former cities becomes apparent about now, as we can run *a lot* of Workshops. It's important to continue to focus on Worker micro in this portion of the game - working enough farms to grow to the desired size, then bulldozing them for workshops, but being conscious of the impact that coal plant :yuck: can have on the food situation. Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and swap a tile from farm -> workshop -> farm a few times - but may as well do it than have your workers sitting idle.

t207 assembly line - trade mansa rifling mil trad.png


As I continue to rush towards the endgame techs, I get some *very* bad news and decide to end the turnset:

t212 pacal DOW bismarck.png


Bismarck (who is fairly backwards at this stage) is now at war with Shaka/Darius AND Pacal/Gandhi, and will definitely roll over to one of them before too long. I don't have the capacity to get into this war myself at this stage. I am the resident of the Apostolic Palace so might be able to get a ceasefire resolution through, but I assume Shaka and Pacal will vote it down or even defy it. If the plan is still to avoid warring with Pacal (and it will need to be - it looks like he will have Gunships and Mechanized Infantry by the time I get Tanks), I need the German land to get myself to domination.

I still think this is doable, but it's going to be a real slog and if Pacal launches a spaceship (doesn't look like he's going fast culture) very early then I probably won't have enough time to win domination. I'll write it up either way, win or lose! :)
 
To the bitter end! (1/2)

Spoiler :

So... Pacal/Gandhi and Shaka/Darius are both at war with Bismarck. I attempt to stop this with the AP, to entirely no avail:

t221 peacekeeping fail.png


And, in fairness, why would they?

Next turn, we get the bad news:

t222 - oh dear.png


So... here's the plan:

  • Build up a LOT of tanks and a navy
  • Send two-thirds of the tanks to Bismarck's island and DOW Pacal/Gandhi/Bismarck
  • Send one-third of the tanks to Mansa's territory (the buffer between me and Pacal) and use them to try to hold back any invasions from Pacal (no offensive moves at all)
  • Use a tiny group of spares to immediately wipe Gandhi from the game
  • Take the whole of Bismarck's island, eliminating him too
  • Sue Pacal for peace at the first opportunity and rebuild for the final war against Shaka/Darius
Seems plausible? No... me neither. Let's give it a shot!

t223 - builds.png


I make a fairly big mistake by building Heroic Epic *and* Ironworks in Timbuktu. This is complete overkill - one of them could have gone somewhere like Nubian to get more tanks built per turn.

Ten turns later, with the stacks getting bigger and bigger, I successfully beg for gold from red-fist Shaka. His red fist disappears.

t235 successful shaka beg.png


And, at turn 240, we declare war!

t240 - heeeeeere we go.png


Step one goes well:

t240.1 - india dead.png


Same turn, we land two big stacks of units on Bismarck's island. Here's the battle plan. Red arrows are next turn's troop movements and the yellow arrow is the movement for the turn after that:

t240.2 - bismarck island invasion plan.png


It doesn't really go as smoothly as this. Although we don't struggle to take Stuttgart and Dortmund, Pacal's dormant stack in the captured city of Hamburg stomps down to try it on with me. I incur heavy losses against Gunships and Mechanized Infantry, then capture his city of Hamburg and turn back to Bismarck's other cities.

My valiant tanks on the Mansa/Pacal border don't really stand a chance. Nor does Mansa. Pacal gobbles two of his cities as I race to take Bismarck's. On turn 246, Bismarck breaks away from Pacal and I manage to buy peace from him for a measly 200 gold. If all the rest of the plan works out, we won't ever need to be at war with him again.

t246 - peace for 200g.png


Next turn, I wipe Bismarck:

t247 - bismarck dead.png


There really is no time to waste. Pacal is building spaceship parts and one of his cities is approaching Legendary culture. Also, who's to say whether he won't want to immediately declare back on me when our peace treaty expires?

Two turns later, we DoW Shaka/Darius. First order of business is to smash a stack of 60+ obsolete units which had been left in the one German city Shaka managed to snipe before Pacal vassalled Bismarck:

t249.1 - killing 50 obsolete units.png





Will finish in the next post as I have a few too many screenshots to share.
 
(2/2)

Spoiler :

At this fairly crucial moment I struggle to take screenshots. Shaka and Darius have naval parity with me which makes it a real challenge to get my units across to their "island". Slowly but surely, we land units in Darius's territory and trudge through Infantry and Anti-Tanks. Shaka also has Infantry and seems to have somewhere in the region of nine million Cavalry to smash into me, turn after turn after turn. This is inconvenient but in the long run possibly quite helpful - because it allows me to accumulate war success against him.

After 10 turns of back-and-forth I establish a proper foothold in Persia and start pushing in. However, Shaka decides now is the moment to counterattack!

t263 - cheeky prick!.png


:mad::mad::mad: Not only does he snipe one of my core cities with obsolete units, he then RAZES it!

I take vicious pleasure in crushing this stack. It's the last invasion he tries.

On the same turn, I wipe Darius from the game:

t263.1 - darius dead.png


I've captured two of Shaka's cities and destroyed many hundreds of his units. With his vassal gone, he is immediately ready to capitulate - offering me another city in the deal.

I crunch the numbers carefully and decide it should be enough.

t263.2 - shaka cap.png


Nothing else to do now. Too late to try to war with Pacal. All cities are set to build culture and I start mashing End Turn.

On turn 268 (1790AD!) Pacal launches his spaceship.

t268 pacal launch!.png


But... it's too late, sucker:

t271 domination.png


We pip Pacal to the post. He gazes mournfully from his spaceship upon our tank-infested globe.

Just to be crystal clear about what a monster we were dealing with:

pacal wonders.png


Chichen Itza went Legendary shortly before the spaceship launched, and Mutal was nearly there - but a third city was lagging behind.

Finally, stats (280 tanks built actually isn't as many as I thought):

stats.png


And score:

score.png


It's a shame - the later finishes are usually the better games but there's no good mechanism in the score calculation to reflect this.


Thanks for the game! Looking forward to giving Monty a try!
 

Attachments

  • NC319 Julius t271 domination victory.CivBeyondSwordSave
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(2/2)

Spoiler :

At this fairly crucial moment I struggle to take screenshots. Shaka and Darius have naval parity with me which makes it a real challenge to get my units across to their "island". Slowly but surely, we land units in Darius's territory and trudge through Infantry and Anti-Tanks. Shaka also has Infantry and seems to have somewhere in the region of nine million Cavalry to smash into me, turn after turn after turn. This is inconvenient but in the long run possibly quite helpful - because it allows me to accumulate war success against him.

After 10 turns of back-and-forth I establish a proper foothold in Persia and start pushing in. However, Shaka decides now is the moment to counterattack!

View attachment 651171

:mad::mad::mad: Not only does he snipe one of my core cities with obsolete units, he then RAZES it!

I take vicious pleasure in crushing this stack. It's the last invasion he tries.

On the same turn, I wipe Darius from the game:

View attachment 651172

I've captured two of Shaka's cities and destroyed many hundreds of his units. With his vassal gone, he is immediately ready to capitulate - offering me another city in the deal.

I crunch the numbers carefully and decide it should be enough.

View attachment 651173

Nothing else to do now. Too late to try to war with Pacal. All cities are set to build culture and I start mashing End Turn.

On turn 268 (1790AD!) Pacal launches his spaceship.

View attachment 651174

But... it's too late, sucker:

View attachment 651175

We pip Pacal to the post. He gazes mournfully from his spaceship upon our tank-infested globe.

Just to be crystal clear about what a monster we were dealing with:

View attachment 651176

Chichen Itza went Legendary shortly before the spaceship launched, and Mutal was nearly there - but a third city was lagging behind.

Finally, stats (280 tanks built actually isn't as many as I thought):

View attachment 651178

And score:

View attachment 651177

It's a shame - the later finishes are usually the better games but there's no good mechanism in the score calculation to reflect this.


Thanks for the game! Looking forward to giving Monty a try!
Wow! It looked like a very funny game! I really enjoyed just reading through it lol.
 
Spoiler :
"We pip Pacal to the post. He gazes mournfully from his spaceship upon our tank-infested globe."

Great win, and interesting how razer close it was from space and culture.


Poetry :)
 
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