Nobles' Club 345: Saladin of Arabia

[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 Saladin of Arabia, whom we last played in NC 300. The Arabians start with Mysticism and The Wheel.

• Traits: Saladin is Protective and Spiritual. Protective gives all Archery and Gunpowder units a free City Garrison I (+20% City Defence) and Drill I (+1 First Strike chance) promotion, as well as a +100% bonus to Walls and Castles. Spiritual allows you to swap state religion/civics without suffering Anarchy, and gives a +100% bonus to all Temples.
• The UB: Madrassa, a Library with double the culture output and 2 Priest slots. Not a bad building for when it becomes available, as the extra culture can swing an early cultural battle in your favor, and being able to run priests means that whenever you need to generate "any" Great Person to start a Golden Age you have the option of running more specialists before Code of Laws, or without quickly swapping out Slavery for Caste System.
• The UU: The Camel Archer, a resourceless Knight with +15% withdraw chance, although they require Archery tech to build. Knights are usually completely ignored by players as Cuirs are only a little further in the tech tree and much better as a breakout unit because they can ignore Walls and Castles. That said Camel Archer do guarantee that you have a Mounted unit you can build in preparation for upgrading an army into cuirs even if you lack the Horses and Iron that cuirs normally need, and when you have to trade for either of those resources it's definitely ideal to have an army ready to upgrade.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Tropical climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A strategic resource swap, and a few unworkable Fish were moved somewhere workable.

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 345 Saladin 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]

I'd planned to post this exactly on (my local time's) new year, but family called. I'm sure people won't mind the ~30 minute delay, considering this is still 11-12 hours earlier than normal schedule .

As for where to settle, my first instinct is the Marble. T0 settle, 2 city tile, fresh water from the lake, not coastal but it's not like SIP could do much of anything with the coast anyhow . Lighthouse Lakes I guess, but going all the way to Sailing just for that? Not worth.

Any experts want to make a case for 1W or 1NE? Or perhaps some other crazy direction I didn't even imagine ?

 

[Nick723]

The other option that merits consideration for me is on the bananas, especially if the water to the east is more coast.

With Saladin’s starting techs I can’t see the pigs being improved until after the second city is founded anyway.

 

[antimony]

Happy new year! A bit of spoiler after initial scouting (around T10).

Spoiler :

Settled on marble, capital has wet corn, rice and bananas so 3 farms. On the other hand no commerce and no good cottage site nearby, which is unfortunate since Agri-AH-Pottery would be a reasonable opening for Arabia. Best chance for early commerce is fishing, with lakes and a fish 2nd city in SW, but either we slow build that boat or wait until T40 for Agri-Mining-BW-Fishing....meanwhile the other best nearby city is a cow. So yeah, tough map.

 

[antimony]

A better opening... (T51)

Spoiler :

Restarted the map around T40 since the 2nd city was very late and messed up the fogbusting a bit.

On my 2nd try I must have gone further NW with the initial warrior since I saw a rice-gold spot near a river, which would make the Agri-Mining-BW opening much more workable. So I stopped growth at size 2 (corn + rice farms) to produce a settler by T30, worker was just done with the banana farm at the same time so could move with the settler to city 2. Next warrior while growing to size 3, then 2nd worker in capital.

Barbarian attack on T40 was still fairly tough, had to chop and even whip for extra warriors which hurt the economy a bit, would have been at a total stall without gold. With this in mind I opted to go Fishing-Pottery after BW for the economic recovery. Fish city just settled on T51, maybe should get 2nd SW fish soon before Zara and sit on those cities for a while. Louis may get those NE cows but the idea is that with a good enough tech position IW can be traded for and a lot of that SE jungle becomes productive.

But thank you for this first game of the new year, I wonder if someone handled those barbs more effectively!

 

[danjuno]

Surprised no one has suggested 1W so far given the proclivity for PH on this board.

 

[sampsa]

Surprised no one has suggested 1W so far given the proclivity for PH on this board.

Much better than SIP of course, but on marble doesn't lose a turn (and a forest).

 

[Snowbird]

With Arabian starting techs I would consider settling on Banana and leaving pigs for a second city (might be a second city on sugar).

 

[antimony]

T74

Spoiler :

Economy mostly recovered via roading + working lakes and a few cottages (incl. on sugar and bananas), allowing me to expand again with cow and 2nd fish cities, with space for one more city in the middle near pigs. Researched Pottery, Writing then AH. Libraries soon in my first 3 cities. Note the lack of strategic resources in our territory. On the other hand I have marble and a good amount of food, so I would focus on getting the great library and great scientists generation on the short term, with the further goal maybe Astronomy? (If other Civs are iso or semi-iso they might end up behind in tech, leaving the option of overseas conquest and/or a cheeky diplomatic victory attempt since Astro is also on the way to the UN.)

 

[antimony]

T169 - 1090 AD

Spoiler :

Built TGL in 275 BC, got Music artist in 100 BC, traded for Monarchy and Calendar and switched tech path to Currency/CoL/CS. Around Currency also settled 3 more cities for a total of 8. Middle spot near pigs, southwest coast for bananas and northern lake. Latter was a bit choked culturally since the two Ethiopian holy cities popped there on the border.

Religion situation: buddhist France, hindu Vikings and jewish Ethiopia / Native America. For most of the game Ragnar and SB were at war (Ragnar winning), Ragnar was the worst enemy of Zara / SB and SB the worst enemy of Ragnar and Louis. So I mostly traded with Zara and Louis, and got to take advantage of SPI in this game to swap freely between Judaism and Buddhism for diplomacy and to boost different cities via Pacifism.

Was aiming for 4 scientist and 2 merchants but ended up with 5 and 1. Bulbed Philo, Paper, Edu x2 and Lib. Lib-MilTrad in 820 AD, feels a bit late, peaked at around 200 beakers per turn. Without 2nd city in river-gold area, I assume it would be even worse (commerce from water tiles, specialists and building research/wealth doesn't scale that well). At least I got time to set up infrastructure like stables in every city and forge in bureau cap, and used the merchant gold to pay for Louis' ivory and prepare a round of elephants to upgrade to Cuirs.

My goal was to attack Zara who was behind Louis in score, especially when SB quite strangely peace-vassaled to Louis. But then in the 800s Zara got a golden age during which he built the Taj and so rose quite fast in tech/power. Also SB broke from Louis and peace-vassaled to Zara instead.

So in the end I started war on France in 1050 with about 25 Cuirs, with a few more on their way. Took two border cities at the outset and a third later, bisecting his territory. Now healing and waiting to wipe the counterattacking stack that decided to come on the slow NE road in my territory instead of retaking Marseille, which he definitely could have done.

Meanwhile I traded MilTrad to Zara for Optics and Guilds and more gold. Sending a caravel and planning to go Astro next, since I don't expect to beat Zara to rifling.

 

[antimony]

T195 - 1350 AD

Spoiler :

Captured all but 2 of Louis' cities, for 20 total. Very good land. Pyramids was in Lyons and GLH in Tours (the latter kind of weak since everyone who matters is running Mercantilism). After the war swapped to Representation-Free Speech-Caste-Mercantilism-Free Religion. Half of the beakers in the screenshot below are from specialists. 2 turns to Rifling, might get some value trading it to WK. Both ZY and WK will not be reachable tech-wise but they will eventually be friendly (will soon swap to Judaism). Both unfriendly AIs (Ragnar and Toku) are far from Rifling even if Ragnar beelined Military Science. Will pause here to play other maps but I think there is a path to victory via taking land from Ragnar and Toku with Cavalry while boosting relations with ZY/WK for a future diplo win, no matter which of the two builds UN. There is a risk of ZY winning religion though (if WK becomes friendly with him) or culture (he's at 6 to 11k culture in his top 3 cities.