Nobles' Club 342: Stalin of Russia

[sampsa]

Lulz whoah ! You're all skipping Agriculture
This start screams to me : " grow to 3, double worker, chop". Oh, yeah, research Agri, BW, The Wheel in the meantime.

You're all crazy

You are probably right. I didn't even stop to think after what SIP revealed.

 

[sampsa]

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

No fogbusting in the east? The langoliers will come and eat your animals, son.

 

[antimony]

Meanwhile...

Spoiler :

Got around T75 math, trade for IW as usual, but no iron in my land, and everyone else seems to already have Construction. Definitely too slow to attack Incas or Bismarck on the other side. Darius is plotting, hopefully on HC (his worst enemy).

Seems the better play then is to use the GSpy right away to catch up in tech, but then I should have teched Alpha or Aesthetics for trade, not Math. Don't like to reload that many turns but maybe as a learning experience to see what espionage can do here.

 

[soundjata]

Deity T92

Spoiler :

In my first try I went casual (Agri > AH > etc) and barbarians did me bad

This time I went Agri > Archery > TW > Pottery (commerce needed urgently) > BW > Writing > MC and built 4 archers quickly after city2 so I am alive

T40 is very often THE TURN

There is a slight issue now in the West as Bismark is moving a little army towards me or Capac I suppose (50% dicey)

If I'm lucky, the plan as you have guessed is rushing engineering: no fishing, Agressive, Industrious, gold and silver in reach, what's not to love

MC will allow me to back-fill a few techs.
I need Masonry, Alpha, Math, Construction, Aesthetics and Machinery before I can do the deed. And a great scientist of course.

There are still a couple of AIs to be met. Our scout is running as fast as he can

Spoiler 5 turns later :

Oops!​

​

 

[Snowbird]

Spoiler :

Decided not to replay with settling on Corn, well, I would not do it in normal play with the initial scout position.

So, while I was chopping, HC got pillaged a bit by barbarian scums, but still built t50 Pyramids (and The Oracle at t51). Bismarck is probably going to expand and get some barb cities between him and me.

So my thoughts were to go AH and if horses, go HBR for tech backfill and attack potential. If no horses...probably still HBR (to get writing, IW and most of Alpha) and keep a spare settler for some tundra iron.

If I could get mids the winning would be more of a technical formality.

]

The settler in production was to be deer+fur although I am not sure it could be a net positive by the time of attack.

 

[Snowbird]

To T87- 700BC

Spoiler :

The bad things:
-No road for foreign routes or cottages (too much effort trying to develop the fourth city )
-Managed to hit advancement fear for AI, which is bad since I will probably try to steal MC from incas.

The trades (managed to avoid teching archery and some Alpha turns - probably I will regret this in the future.)

I sort of had second thought on giving incas HBR, but I think it will be fine. I don't think he will upgrade, and I plan to sabotage horses on T1 of war.

Situation

I have two HGa at the moment, fingers are crossed that no one trades iron to Incas, that would be ugly. I lost the western gold to Inca culture, because he also built a shrine. War is clearly the best way to deal with that nonsense.

Hopefully, I at least play through the upcoming war.

 

[Snowbird]

T 104 - 275 BC.
Well, I don't plan to finish -- too much mess made - with roading, trades, etc. But the position is cute and could serve as proof of concept.
Also, I am not a fan of not using the unrestricted leaders option. If noble club ever used this, then I would be interested. As of now. I'll go play against the storm instead.

Spoiler :

I switched to fishing, since that would give me foreign trade routes.

No surprise I had issues with gold even if it was in the first ring.

As I feared... HC had four dyes so using a spy to sabotage the resource was not an option. Just before DoW it also showed Feudalism at ~8 turns. Well, I was committed anyway.

The border city was very lightly defended and Cusco kept building MoM. I made another mistake by forgetting a spy on the horse -- initially I planned to sabotage it, but with the metal trade I should have rerouted it upwards earlier.

With the spare spy, I figured I could try a two-turn attack since I needed both the shrine and to remove cultural pressure.
Well, the first turn went passably, and then I figured the spare spie was one tile short from making to the city. So I dragged every HA I could, while defenders healed and I threw all of the injured guys on that stupid city. Pretty much like typical Red Army tactics in Stalin's time.

Luckily this worked

signed peace treaty for metal casting -- cheap forges are nice. HC never made to the longbows, but might peace vassal to Jao.

So in the end -- have a good chunk of land, mids, the shrine at +22, metal casting for trades, and some espionage points to steal more things from HC. As long as diplomacy works (which I never paid attention to), this should be winnable. Well, the shrine covers immediate expenses and Mids + land should pull through eventually.

I think there is marble for trade too.

HA with spies is a fun concept, I think must be the first time I used it while not settling on stone.