Nobles' Club 338: Willem van Oranje of the Netherlands

[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 Willem of The Netherlands, whom we last played in NC 289. The Dutch start with Agriculture and Fishing.

• Traits: Willem is Creative and Financial. Creative gives every city +2 for free, and gives a +100% bonus to Libraries, Theatres, and Colosseums. Financial adds +1 to any tile that already produces at least 2.
• The UB: The Dike, a Levee with +1 on Water tiles as well as River tiles. As an added bonus Dikes can be build in any city that has a coast/ocean tile within it's BFC, in addition to cities that are settled alongside a river. Note that a city that merely has river and/or Lake tiles within it's BFC cannot build a Dike, even though both would benefit from it. A city must either be riverside or have coast/ocean within it's BFC to build a Dike.
• The UU: The East Indiaman, a Galleon with 4 cargo space instead of 3, 6 instead of 4, and the ability to explore rival territory. The last ability allows the unit to go trough rival culture without Open Borders, and not be expelled from rival borders when a DoW occurs. Note that while an EIM can enter rival territory even while transporting units without the Can Explore Rival Territory ability they cannot enter a rival city without OB regardless, so the only units they can transport into closed borders territory are those with the CERT tag themselves (Spies and Great Spies, though since the ships are forbidden from entering port the spies will, presumably, have to row themselves to shore the hard way).

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Temperate climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A strategic resource swap to give an AI a nearby strategic resource, a very inconveniently placed Fish was moved elsewhere, and the river in your starting area was extended.

Spoiler isolated? :

Fully 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 338 Willem 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]

Deceptively awkward starting position, actually. Water to the right, water to the left, looks like water up top as well, two of which have visible tiles that lets us check whether it's coast without having to move a unit (and lets be real, if they both are odds are great the top is coast as well, putting us on a peninsula). Very real risk of a wrong move (or the lack thereof) ruining seafood, and without an obvious place to settle there's probably more than one option open. My perpetual blindness with Civ IV opening moves aside .

In this situation I think I'd be debating between SIP and 1S. 1S mainly to move what seems like a bit further inland, obviously settling a grass hill has no significant benefits otherwise (though a defensive bonus is nice, for the nightmare scenario where that actually comes into play). Would move away from forests and a couple river tiles, but it doesn't seem like those are in short supply in this area anyhow. SIP has the benefit of a T0 settle, and with Willem's Creative culture, perhaps better spawnbusting most (all?) of the peninsula by T25. Though with this amount of forest chopping out an army of clubby boys to keep an eye out, worst case, should be well doable.

So that's my take on the situation. What do the experts think ?

 

[sampsa]

SIP or sugar for me. 1S loses a forest and a turn for later gains, not to my taste.

 

[AcaMetis]

I'm guessing you'd move the Warrior 1SW to check for potentially ruined seafood?

 

[Fippy]

Dunno how you set up NC maps, in normal games you can also ruin seafood by SIP
With the warrior in good position i'd say in those games there could actually be less risk from sugar than SIP (and east).

 

[AcaMetis]

Setting up NC maps is largely a matter of just rolling maps until one stands out, and making whatever (usually very minor) edits to make sure the map is relatively balanced. For what it's worth

Spoiler :

zero seafood resources within 5 tiles of SIP were edited.

 

[soundjata]

This is not a bad capitol

 

[konata_LS]

T0 warrior move:

Spoiler :

Settling on sugar or SIP both looks okay. But I slightly prefer SIP, because settling on sugar would give my capital 3 coastal tiles which cannot be improved.

From T0 to T140

Spoiler :

Usually I avoid isolation on emperor, because isolation is often tougher than normal games and I'm not very comfortable with emperor level. But the leader is very good; the UUs are almost a transport unlocked in the renaissance era instead of industrial era, very suitable for naval invasion. So I decided to try this isolation NC and to see if I can survive to the mid game.



In Pangaea maps, I'm usually too busy grabbing land or attacking a neighbour; even there is capital stone, I don't have spare to build Mids. In fractal/continents maps, I often share a landmass with some AIs who like HR - in this case I also give up Mids, for example if I'm in the same continent with Giggle and Joao, I probably stay in HR to keep them pleased. Plus, Monarchy is the tech that can be acquired easily through trade.

But in isolation, it's impossible to get tech trade before Optics. There is no early happy resource in my capital. I haven't see any Wine in my island, which lowers the usefulness of Myst-Poly-PH-Monarch even more. So I took a gamble this time, a gamble that I rarely do in most of my games: settling the third city on the stone, far from my capital.

Finally my cities could grow.

This city had no food resource, and it remained at size 2 for a long time. The only benefit was its BFC tiles were initially covered under forests. I didn't build Mids in my capital for two reasons: first, my workers had no spare time to connect the stone city with my capital at the moment; second, the capital had relatively low and some forests were already chopped into workers/settlers. I needed a high spot and many forests for Mids. Admittedly building Mids slowed down my early development for a while, because all my workers moved to the stone city for chopping, thus the cottages around my capital were delayed.


Rep solved all the happiness issues. I also settled a city near the southern edge of the island to get the gold, sheep, and clam. Maybe that spot was a little too greedy, but with FIN coastal clam and +1 in every city (+2 with forge), the advantages were also evident.

Mids offered another benefit: no need of gathering warriors in the cities for happiness under HR, so I could send my warriors to fog bust the whole island and all the coast. The land shape was also easy to fog-bust. As a result, the coastal seafood were all free from barb galleys sabotage.

The power of Mids - the first AI my caravel met was Nappy. I couldn't get Maths trade from him, because he didn't have Maths : I had to self-tech maths . This was indeed surprising, because AI Nappy was one of the warmongers who tended to beeline maths-construction.


Luckily got Currency trade from Augustus. The problem was I couldn't even get Calendar through trade, because Biz was the only AI who had it . Once again I had to self-tech calendar before unlocking Astro bulb .

There are still 2 unknown AIs to meet, but the situation looks already quite promising, much much better than I expected. Mids are really powerful in isolation

OTOH, I have to say building Mids is risky, though I only realized after Optics contacts how risky it was. There are at least 3 IND AIs in the game, and if one of them had decided to build Mids (especially AC due to his favorite civics), my possibility to grab Mids on T80 would have been very low. Mids in this map is probably a high-risk, high reward approach, perhaps...?

 

[konata_LS]

From T141 to T257

Spoiler :

Forgot to mention something interesting in my previous post. When I found AC, namely one turn before I contacted Biz, the diplo screens indicated AC knew Stalin but didn't know Nappy. How could it be possible? Even if they were on two different continents connected by coast, their workboats should have made contact. Were they on two islands separated by the ocean? But none of them have Compass. Why??? I was really confused .
(And yes, as shown in the screenshot, Nappy backstabbed his good buddy Stalin . One of the luckiest things in this game was I didn't start next to AI Nappy the unit-spammer .)


Two turns later, my caravel reached a red coloured civ and an always angry face showed up . Nappy and AC's continents were connected by coast, but Tokugawa blocked all the connection between them. Nappy founded Buddhism, but Judaism randomly spread to Toku, which made Toku only cautious with Nappy and Stalin. Toku had open borders with no one. Toku-style diplomacy explained everything


Started building/whipping Dutch UUs on the turn I got Astro. After backfilling some techs like CS and Engineering, started building units like maces and trebs. One of my GP farms got a GSpy at 2% odds, so I angrily burnt him for a GAge . Adopting Caste during the GAge and generated some GMerchants to upgrade trebs to cannons.

I was hesitating for a while about the first target. Both AC and Alex were on a continent of their own. AC had many wonders including GLH and Hindu shrine. His build unit prob was lower than Alex, which made him a juicier target than Alex. But the risks and dangers were also great. The first danger was AC built Hindu AP, and two of my large cities got random spread. If AC called for AP peace, defying resolution would be costly. The second danger was Biz. AC and Biz were all Hindu and were Friendly towards each other. If I attacked AC, he might just peace vassal to Biz before he capitulated to me. It was impossible for me to get Biz to pleased and beg something, because I already suffered some penalties from trading with his worst enemy Nappy. Also, Biz was the WE of Nappy; any action to gain "fair trade" bonus from Biz would become "trading with our worst enemy" penalty on Nappy's side.
OTOH, Alex was in his own religion, and he only met Toku and AC, who were cautious or annoyed towards him due to peaceweight or different religions. Alex had less wonders than AC, and AGG army was slightly tougher to deal with than AC's. However, Alex couldn't bribe anyone to attack me or peace vassal to some AIs. In short, Alex was isolated both geographically and diplomatically. Not sure about others' opinion, but I often think in isolations, the success of the first naval invasion is very important. In my first war, I definitely wanted to avoid any complication like AP or my target becoming peace vassal to another AI. I chose to attack Alex first and leave AC alone for a while.

Sometimes AIs acted weird. Alex was an Aesthetics and Literature enjoyer (and looking at all the great people he settled in his capital )

Alex capitulated after losing his capital.

When I was preparing the naval invasion, Toku was plotting . His target turned out to be Biz. A few turns later Toku got dogpiled by Stalin . If I had known Biz would be busy with the war against Toku, attacking AC might probably have been better. But I couldn't predict when Toku started plotting neither which AI would be Toku's target (no OB with Toku so I couldn't scout his stacks). By the time Toku DoW Biz, my troups were about to land in Alex's island.

Religious Nappy with the Buddhism shrine and Angkor Wat A religious warmonger who founds a religion then spams units and missionaries at the same time is usually AI Montezuma. Was Nappy cosplaying Monty this time???


After Nappy, next target was Stalin. He capitulated after I wiped out his stack in the open field, without losing a single city. I guessed Stalin was already weakened by his previous wars against Nappy and Toku.

The Artist Tokugawa was even more surprising than Monty-cosplaying Nappy and Bookworm Alex. Toku was the first to Music and built Sistine:

Toku capitulated after losing his capital and several core cities.

Next target would probably be Biz. AC had a tiny territory of 7 cities --> not a threat at all. He also adopted Free religion, which ended his Friendly attitude with Biz. Biz was the largest AI with 16 cities. Conquering Biz's land would be enough for domination. Biz was a little weird though: he had capital gems but tech super slow . AC already finished Broadway and rushing towards Radio; Alex and Nappy both hard-teched Rifling after their capitulation; meanwhile Biz had no RP, Physics .

 

[chinemol]

ugly emperor 1967 space

Spoiler :

pyramids and glh, good optics date. bad great person farming for astro. didn't trade me many techs, also bismark got huge. got dow'd a lot. only reload was for a "augustus is pleased, surely it's not me". didn't take vassals. either it was too late or were hated. kept feeding tech to the toku punching bag to keep bismark busy, bought him off toku and had to do a def pact with toku to keep him alive and off his hands. still, bis was big, big army. didn't want to reload again, went for space

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Emperor difficulty, 700AD. Maybe will finish if I have time.

Spoiler :

When the game is finished, all cities on the map must have Islam and only Islam.

Need great prophet points.

Have to wait for someone else to found Christianity first so it doesn't appear in my cities. The game would be much easier if someone found Taoism early so I can build the Angkor Wat.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

Playing a bit sloppily as I was both short on time and attention (where have these weeks gone?) - but here's some (currently un-annotated) game play for:

Spoiler :

Hybrid scaling and fogbusting on isolated maps, up to Astronomy. 68 base commerce in capital.

 

[sampsa]

@CarpoolKaraoke Sorry for truepurpleism, but what is hybrid scaling in this context? I even googled but understood nothing.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

That had me confused as well and I also googled "scaling"
Hot take : it's about where to spread Hereditary Rule warriors...

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

@CarpoolKaraoke Sorry for truepurpleism, but what is hybrid scaling in this context? I even googled but understood nothing.

Haha, that would be me making up terms. I think of the game in terms of economic development - I'm choosing not to full expand infrastructure on the island to get to Optics for trade development faster, but at the same time, scaling up a full capital with an academy and rolling out late cities to prepare for post Astronomy economy.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

This is fun ! Stopping point at t55 :

Spoiler :

Except I'm being bullied by Barbarians and forced to defend in the city...



Hopefully, I can gain control of some land in the next turns. My wounded warrior has woodsman 2 but keeps getting pushed back. I need like 3 more if I want to gain territory.
So, coastal capital. The fish isn't as strong as the cows to begin with but we have Fishing and it lets us research straight into Bronze, effectively skipping the very expensive AH.
I know the GLH isn't great in iso (main) drawback being the delay towards the Academy but I cannot resist it. Utrecht probably builds the first library.
I would probably always settle coastal, here, but there is a strong consideration for not going Sailing but Pottery, instead, and playing to the leader's traits. Nothing wrong with setting up fast cottages and libraries.

I played this earlier to a T57 GLH (eot) with the same 4 cities & two workers and was bullied by barbarian warriors... It was then thatrealized I hadn't added barbarian techs... So, small improvement on a few fronts.
Getting the 4 cities asap is important to get the full trade routes bonuses from the GLH, so Utrecht has done nothing but grow to 4 (on workboat) and then whip settler.

Amsterdam has so little natural production that building the wonder is actually a little challenging The city is constantly setting up whips,
Starting with a Lighthouse and Worker whips when Masonry comes in (T43 we start overflowing into the GLH). I had two forest growths, which decided me to go for the second worker, and I think this is where I gained my 2 turns.

 

[soundjata]

@BornInCantaloup has found a winning move

Spoiler :

But I think barbs are a primary issue on this map.
How are you going to survive now?

 

[sampsa]

Spoiler :

CPK pushed very aggressively with the initial warrior. I don't know why I die close to 100% when doing that... That helped very much with the barbs.

I think GLH is a bad idea. CRE+FIN has obvious trumps and you can simply leverage them instead of risk losing GLH. And I don't think settling coast is great either.

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

This is fun ! Stopping point at t55 :

Spoiler :

Except I'm being bullied by Barbarians and forced to defend in the city...



Hopefully, I can gain control of some land in the next turns. My wounded warrior has woodsman 2 but keeps getting pushed back. I need like 3 more if I want to gain territory.
So, coastal capital. The fish isn't as strong as the cows to begin with but we have Fishing and it lets us research straight into Bronze, effectively skipping the very expensive AH.
I know the GLH isn't great in iso (main) drawback being the delay towards the Academy but I cannot resist it. Utrecht probably builds the first library.
I would probably always settle coastal, here, but there is a strong consideration for not going Sailing but Pottery, instead, and playing to the leader's traits. Nothing wrong with setting up fast cottages and libraries.

I played this earlier to a T57 GLH (eot) with the same 4 cities & two workers and was bullied by barbarian warriors... It was then thatrealized I hadn't added barbarian techs... So, small improvement on a few fronts.
Getting the 4 cities asap is important to get the full trade routes bonuses from the GLH, so Utrecht has done nothing but grow to 4 (on workboat) and then whip settler.

Amsterdam has so little natural production that building the wonder is actually a little challenging The city is constantly setting up whips,
Starting with a Lighthouse and Worker whips when Masonry comes in (T43 we start overflowing into the GLH). I had two forest growths, which decided me to go for the second worker, and I think this is where I gained my 2 turns.

Might be an angle to swap some of the settler hammers for warriors..... or you could commit to working only ocean tiles lol

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Yeah, I mean, Sampsa's right

Spoiler :

There's a ton of hammers spent in my save for little gain to show. An axeman popped and I had to research Archery shortly after

Alternatively, settling coastal, I could have Granaries and an active Library running 2x scientists by the same T55... Not a close call.
I'm too attached to playing the mini-game with my wonders.