Nobles' Club 331: Mehmed II of the Ottomans

[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 Moomed-I mean, Mehmed II of the Ottomans, whom we last played in NC 282; we last played the Ottomans under Suleiman in NC 292. The Ottomans start with Agriculture and The Wheel.

• Traits: Mehmed II is Expansive and Organized. Expansive adds +2 to all cities, gives a +100% bonus to Granaries and Harbors, and a +25% bonus to Workers (note that the worker bonus doesn't apply to excess directly converted to ). Organized cuts Civic Upkeep in half, and gives a +100% bonus to Lighthouses, Courthouses and Factories.
• The UB: The Hamman, an Aqueduct with +2. Too expensive to make good use of early game, when (Expansive) is still abundant and (at best) two extra citizens cannot cover for the cost of building a Hamman, but in the late game this is an excellent building to simultaneously fight back against factory/coal plant unhealthiness and Emancipation unhappiness.
• The UU: The Janissary, a Musketman with +25% vs. Archery, Melee and Mounted units. Base muskets are generally ignored in favor of units that have either a higher base , or in the case of siege-based warfare, a lower cost to get more bodies on the field. Janissaries are given the same treatment, though they're a pretty solid all-in-one resourceless stack defender package. For reference a Janissary on defence is not as good against Mounted as a Pike (though Janissaries are resourceless and not threatened by Maces/Crossbows, Pikes require Iron and can only defend against Mounted), much better against Melee than a Mace (Melee units tend to get bonuses vs. Melee units, but Janissaries are Gunpowder units, so their bonus applies while the Mace's bonus does not) and mercilessly play a funeral dirge for the concept of offensive Archery units.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Temperate climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

One strategic resource swap and a fair bit of seafood was moved to where it could be worked (or where one wouldn't have to settle a good land resource to not orphan a seafood resource).

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 331 Mehmed II 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]

Not sure what the best move is here (or moove, if you prefer ). I'm inclined to settle on the sugar 1NE because a 3 capital tile seems like it'll be useful when your visible food is plains cow and sugar, long term that'll only cost 11 from the Plantation improvement but will hook up Sugar immediately, and I definitely want to grab more of that river system. That is moving away from a ton of forests, but there's still enough, and it's not as if we start with Mining to research Bronze working immediately anyhow. That and double plains cow screams AH first for sure (maybe Hunting first to open up the option to go Archery later? Not sure).

That all said we do start with Agriculture, so it's not as if temporary farming the Sugar tile costs anything bar some worker turns. In which case maybe the PH 2N is a better settling choice? I'm not sold on it. Moving away from a plains cow, takes 1T to move there, kills a forest, doesn't grab as many river tiles as 1NE...seems like a lot of compromises for a 2 city tile, as useful as that admittedly is.

I'unno, I'm torn between SIP and 1NE while hearing the persistent siren call of the PH settle. What do the experts think ?

 

[Fippy]

no brainer sugar settle

 

[BornInCantaloup]

This is turn 50 :

Spoiler :

I wanted a quick access to Iron Working to start settling/developping the jungle.
I also was a little weary of crashing my economy : the start is very hammer heavy with 2 plains cows.
So : Alphabet beeline. The tech is now scheduled for T55.

(Tech path : AH, Pottery, Writing, Alphabet
Istanbul : Worker, grow to 3, Settler, Worker, grow to 4, Settler, grow to 5, stagnate
Edirne : grow to 4, stagnate
Ankara : grow to 2, stagnate)

Now, it went "alright" and I think the reasoning was defensible but I'm a little bummed because Zara Yacob has already settled all the relevant jungle
So : no access to the gems/bananas for me, no extra riverside.

I can target the Western barb city and backfill a couple of slow spots, possibly grab another resource that is a little far away
But I am not looking at any easy plan to kill Zara or develop further (no horses, no great resources). The anwser is probably Construction but that always has ways to turn out ugly.

 

[antimony]

I'm now 2 NC behind but looking forward to play it. (Might try Ramesses on deity since Egypt is very strong.) Janissaries are interesting, their bonus means that they are effectively 11 strength vs. many units but promotions are not as effective since percentages are additive, is that correct? Are they a decent breakout unit vs. longbows, given siege support and if Cuirs are out of reach due to losing Lib race, for example?

 

[elmurcis]

What can be better than Plain Cow? Sweet Double Plain Cow!!!

 

[AcaMetis]

Exactly how promotions and combat odds work is complicated. In any case the big weakness of Jans offensively is that Trebs take a long time to tear down Castles, whereas if you go all the way to Steel for Cannons any enemy that ever had any chance of being a threat will have upgraded their pre-Gunpowder units already, leaving Jans without any relevant bonuses. You can definitely make Jans and sufficient Siege support work, but they're not going to be better than rushing Cuirs, if you've got the resources to build those.

That said there is one really mean trick you can pull off to bypass Castle defences pre-Steel: Spies. Outside of the usual city revolt approach you can sabotage a city's Walls to break the anti-siege bonus that Castles provide. And once the defences are down they're down, whether a new Wall is cold whipped immediately afterwards or not. It's not an optimal approach by any measure, but something you could choose to play around with if you wish.

 

[sampsa]

Yep, slam dunk settle on sugar. Why? Because the weakness of plains cow starts is slow growth. Size 1 3pt makes everything slow. Now that will be 4pt, which is significantly better. 2nd plains cow is very strong and with 5pt growth isn't so bad anymore (plus the insane 7pt ).

To be fair, even if this wasn't a double plains cow start, settling on sugar is still best, probably by far. Grabs extra river tiles and doesn't waste a turn.

 

[soundjata]

@BornInCantaloup thanks for your kind opening

T69

Spoiler :

We got 5 cities
We researched Math before Mining and traded Math for Bronze+Masonry with WK
We are desperately trying to grow Istanbul (moocow effect) while making a great scientist.

Spoiler NEED hammam :

We need to chop the path to cottages

Someone has traded elephants to us

Spoiler :

Spoiler Colours :

 

[elmurcis]

Alpha Cowari reached; T790 (1771AD), wooo hooo

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Decided that it was time for some absolutely casual fun. So went for Emperor, NTT, No barbs, Mara game. Not sure about teching but game was "Archer rush" (Emp/Mara thing) -> pure Axe-rush -> semi pure Axe-rush (with 2nd wave adding some Catapults) -> Axepult -> continent was clear. All of that came with very very very marginally surviving economy (we talk about trying to stay above 0 gold (both in cash and per turn). Even razed one capital (with ToA and Holy City! Even barbarians have higher standards) just to not get too massive costs before warring is over.
Eventually job was done. Total loss was 12 archers, 38 axes and 5 catapults.
UB came in really handy - on paper it ain't massive but position on tech tree for war recovery felt perfect.
At moment I realized that 2nd continent has 2 evenly sized empires that are at war (could even make graph with power since both numbers were there), it was clear that road for 1st (and 2nd) Cow in Space is wide open. Eventually went "classic AI" tech route to get Mercantilism and also Serfdom (really helps with clearing jungles and/or settling many cities in short period). Together with Collosus (GLH was built elsewhere) and timed MoM golden ages, what was once broken place turned into nice land. Beeeelined Factories, Added Mining Inc. on top (really handy boost - it was +23 hammer/city with few trade-ins) aaand it was time to launch. Some things (timing of some GA etc.) felt a bit out of place but still felt decent for fun game. Not always I have patience to sit out ending part

 

[antimony]

Settle on sugar and working the plains hill forest makes the EXP trait immediately pay off: a 10T worker! Too bad it will only have roads to build initially on deity tech costs.

 

[antimony]

Deity T44

Spoiler :

Because of 2nd sugar, I opted to build the worker in 10T, farm sugar and start first pasture on T16, instead of worker in 12T and start pasture on T13. Perhaps as a result tech has been lagging behind growth, e.g. I researched AH-Mining-BW-Fishing, but settled the fish corn city many turns before fishing was available, so it grew to size 3 on corn before whipping workboat. Third city (rice) was placed to secure grassland gems (that line of jungle including bananas are in Ethiopia's land), even though I won't have access to them for a while. I see one more OK city spot along the river SE of cap, after which I can build up the economy with Pottery-Writing, but not sure what comes next. No horses in sight and Zara on my northern border has ivory which could be scary later. I could tech Math to trade for Alpha, or Iron Working (though I understand people rarely self-tech that on deity, I wonder how long before AI will trade it to you?)

EDIT: On further looking at the map, I could pack one more city by moving the "s" spot to the plains hill while adding a city 1S of copper, which can share corn.

 

[antimony]

@soundjata

Spoiler :

I was looking at your city maps in previous NC and noticed you were more efficient in packing cities on the map which I tried to replicate when trying deity in this game and 330. Looking at your map here I see the choice to settle north first before east for the rice, which might have aided in securing this spot before Zara. I am still figuring out how to weigh pushing territory boundaries vs settling the most productive spots first on deity (also to which extend I can share food to fit more cities e.g. in the Ramesses game where I can 5 in the starting peninsula but the food situation is not great.

 

[soundjata]

@soundjata

Spoiler :

I was looking at your city maps in previous NC and noticed you were more efficient in packing cities on the map which I tried to replicate when trying deity in this game and 330. Looking at your map here I see the choice to settle north first before east for the rice, which might have aided in securing this spot before Zara. I am still figuring out how to weigh pushing territory boundaries vs settling the most productive spots first on deity (also to which extend I can share food to fit more cities e.g. in the Ramesses game where I can 5 in the starting peninsula but the food situation is not great.

Spoiler :

Interesting question
I have the natural tendency of prioritizing blocker cities early indeed. But I feel it can often be counter productive...

Apart from securing strategic resources (city 2 on copper for example), I think the earliest cities should generally aim at acquiring new food resources.

But sometimes we have the choice between that and securing a spot that is weaker but not reliable (the AI might settle it soon).
-Case of Ankara (city 3) in this game-

I think it is a matter of how much space you NEED to have chances in the middle game.
In this game I counted food resources and thought: "We need bananas because otherwise there's too little food"
Then I went on an tangent (Construction > Calendar) because elephants could be traded
I dont like my city 5 because it should have been better "packed" 1W, able to share the corn before border pop...

 

[antimony]

Thanks @soundjata

Some more thoughts on the opening.

Spoiler :

I did replay the first 30 turns or so to check if my initial idea of T10 worker -> farm sugar -> T15 AH was sound relative to T12 worker (working a 1C tile) -> T13 AH.
Farm first results in worker-warrior-(size 3)-T28 settler - T30 warrior.
Pasture first is worker-warrior-warrior-(size 3)-T31 settler, with a few more (~5) beakers.

Early warrior could help depending on the barb situation, but 3T early on settler seems strong.

Regardless, I realize now that my teching issue was linked to not going Pottery and beyond before Mining-BW. The effect of slow research was especially noticeable when my worker was just building roads waiting for BW (idle worker situation would have been even worse if there wasn't copper in the capital).

 

[soundjata]

Thanks @soundjata

Some more thoughts on the opening.

Spoiler :

I did replay the first 30 turns or so to check if my initial idea of T10 worker -> farm sugar -> T15 AH was sound relative to T12 worker (working a 1C tile) -> T13 AH.
Farm first results in worker-warrior-(size 3)-T28 settler - T30 warrior.
Pasture first is worker-warrior-warrior-(size 3)-T31 settler, with a few more (~5) beakers.

Early warrior could help depending on the barb situation, but 3T early on settler seems strong.

Regardless, I realize now that my teching issue was linked to not going Pottery and beyond before Mining-BW. The effect of slow research was especially noticeable when my worker was just building roads waiting for BW (idle worker situation would have been even worse if there wasn't copper in the capital).

Spoiler :

Yes I also opened with a farm on the sugar and it seemed like a good move (grow!)
Choosing the right order between Pottery, AH and Bronze (insert archery sometimes) is imo one of the most difficult task in this game
In generous starts, BW is an easy decision. But sometimes (this map in particular) you just can't afford it.

 

[antimony]

Turn 103

Spoiler :

Zara was truly a friend here. Besides getting his ivory for two health resources, I was able to successfully beg Masonry after Math, giving me T80 Construction and by T91 I could declare on Wang Kon with a total army of 7 Phants, 14 Cats and 2 Axes, which... turned out to be overkill since I am about to get his last city with 7 Phants and 10 Cats left. Unlike most other AIs who would add one defender a turn when you threaten their cities, he just sat with his favorite civic (Caste System) and didn't add any defender in all 13 turns.

Techwise I begged Sailing from Zara to prevent him getting bribed into war (unlikely I know given that WK had nothing to give him) and traded my HBR + Construction for his Currency. I continued towards CoL and CS, and now it looks like my 2nd GS will be there just in time to bulb Philo (1st GS built an academy in cap). Therefore the play seems to be to adopt Buddhism and then Bureau-Caste-Pacifism to tech my way to Cuirs. Ideally I would want 2 more GS for bulbing Edu and then possibly 1 GM to upgrade my elephants later, but see below...

My main question now is what to do with the army. It's about the time where all my opponents are getting longbows so further elepult wars seem out of question. Each unit beyond the mandatory military police in each city is basically costing me 1 gold and then more with Pacifism. I could put my well-promoted elephants as MP in cities and delete my warriors, but then when I upgrade and go to war with Cuirs I will need to build new MP and warriors won't be available as a cheap option. Cats are also useful defensively but the only bad diplo I may have is Pacal after switching to Buddhism, and I should be able to prevent a DoW from him. Also I have plenty of happiness resource now and do not see a need for Monarchy soon. So basically, should I just delete most of those units?

Oh, also for more context, Zara is building 12 espionage/turn towards me so I'll lose visibility of his research soon, but he has Feudalism next turn and Engineering already. Pacal got the great artist for Music and has Theology (which is why I didn't bother with the Aesthetics route), and I'm not sure exactly what HC is teching for, but he's the only one with Compass.

 

[antimony]

Turn 197

Spoiler :

Diplomatic (AP) Victory

I played it safer than the previous NC deity game by getting Lib -> Nationalism in 275 AD instead of attempting Lib -> MT. I could build Cuirs by 600 AD and then declared on the Maya after amassing a stack; I was friendly then with Inca and Ethiopia given shared Buddhism, whereas Pacal had the Hindu holy city with the AP. It took until about 1200 AD to get all but one Maya cities. Because he had the AP and controlled normal (non-victory) resolutions with his own votes, I had to deal with a few peace and give back city resolutions, which slowed the war down a bit. In the end I built some Trebs to help take down his massively fortified (stack of pikemen with 80% defense from culture alone) AP city, and it was easier from there.

However, at that point both my other neighbors had signed a defensive pact and were back ahead in tech with Rifling and Steel, whereas I was still a few turns from cannons. Since they were still friendly and by that point I had met the two AI from the other continent, one of which already had Hinduism, I just sent a missionary to convert one Khmer city to win the AP vote. Feels a bit scuffed but a win is a win.

Note: While going to war with the Maya, I decided to not trade my techs going towards Cuirs (gunpowder, MT) with Zara and HC. In the end that was probably a mistake since they got those techs way before I could capitulate the Maya. Maybe I should have figured the two other AIs would be behind by virtue of having less trading partners, and plan for a naval invasion after I got the Maya cities. In that case I could have traded freely with HC for example who already had Astro.