Nobles' Club 348: Roosevelt of America

[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 Roosevelt of America, whom we last played in NC 307; we last played the Americans under Washington in NC 341. The Americans start with Fishing and Agriculture.

• Traits: Roosevelt is Industrious and Organized. Industrious gives a +50% bonus to all Wonders (World and National), and gives a +100% bonus to Forges. Organized cuts Civic Upkeep in half, and gives a +100% bonus to Lighthouses, Courthouses and Factories.
• The UB: The Mall, a Supermarket with +20% and +1 with Hit Musicals, Hit Singles and Hit Movies. Generally regarded as a useless UB that comes far too late to make any sort of difference, it nevertheless manages to be a welcome addition to a rush-buy strategy for it's increased gold output, or a standard Caste/State Property hammer economy to help offset Emancipation anger.
• The UU: The Navy SEAL, a Marine with 1-2 First Strikes and a free March promotion, allowing the unit to heal while moving. Usually dismissed as irrelevant since few games ever reach the era in which these guys show up, Navy SEALS nevertheless set a new standard for terrors from the sea that Ragnar's Berserkers only manage to reach due to taking City Raider promotions into the gunpowder era.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Temperate climate, Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

The usual strategic resource swaps, and a few seafood resources were moved to more workable/favorable locations.

Spoiler isolated? :

Full iso.

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 348 Roosevelt 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 the best capitol I've ever seen, but SIP seems like a fast track to expanding away from this barren wasteland, at least [IMG alt=""]https://forums.civfanatics.com/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]. I guess Warrior 1N first in case there's like Corn above, and spend a turn moving to/settling the Stone if there is? Otherwise I don't have a better strategy than "just SIP". Seems like coast to the south-east and possible even west, so I'm a bit weary of ruining potential future city spots.

That's my take, at least. What do the experts think ?

 

[Ita Bear]

Man, this is a tricky one! So many plains and tundra tiles, not an awful lot of food... That said, it does have its benefits!

Spoiler :

I moved the warrior north but there was nothing of note, so SIP. Thankfully America starts with agriculture, so AH first, then mining, masonry, mysticism (industrious + stone makes for an easy Stonehenge and hopefully Pyramids). There's potential city sites to the east (though need to expand city borders for fish), south (though just rice...) and west (plains hill with nice flood plains). Plan now is wheel + pottery to cottage the flood plain. AH revealed horse, so the early American defence force will consist of chariots and warriors. Stonehenge is possible in under 10 turns (Epic speed) and Washington is an excellent candidate for the Pyramids.

 

[Whisker]

Loss, Deity 1856AD
Monty won space victory. I had fleet of 10 transport full of infantry and artillery en route to his coastal capital, but was too late. Also not certain if that would have been enough, the crazy feather head had researched whole tech tree, so the attack would have been against mech.infantry, tanks and air-support.

 

[AcaMetis]

Ah...hah.

Spoiler :

I knew Monty's land was amazing, but I was not expecting "Monty wins a space race victory" levels of amazing. I guess it's a good thing I put him there. Yeah, I actually forgot to mention: I swapped starting positions. Monty's original starting position was given to Roosevelt, Roosevelt's orignal starting position was given to Hannibal, and Hannibal's original starting position was given to Monty. I was going for "harded iso map" this time around, but Hannibal at his original starting position seemed a touch...excessive .

 

[Implo]

Diety NH T0-T152

Spoiler T0-T152 :

Kind of bad leader but interesting hammer start when IND.
So had a half mind on wonder spamming and see where that ended up.

SiP and AH first.
The river horses just made everything more accessible with techpace and hammers.

Suspected ISO or semi ISO after initial scouting. Demos. So was thinkin GLH was nice either way. Bot for us.. but maybe more important to deny AI's a strong economic wonder. Was also thinking GLH + ORG is a nice setup for city spamming.
Low Food so mids was just mediocre here.. but with stone and IND its almost mandatory. Think i had 17 t build time.. with chops 2 chops it was compleeted in 13 turns. With of setteling inland I ended up with mids first and a lucky late GLH.

Just settled alot of cities and went for early CoL (have better city placements and rund rep specialist). Got a farly nice asto date @ 425 AD turn 132. Not sure if thats good or not. But with the amount of cities i guess its good.
TAJ was dirt cheap and chainng together some non MoM Golden ages.

Fun map. and strong position.
Some strong techers and the AI's look to be heavy unit production mode. Not sure what timing to use for an eventuall attack.. maybe tanks?

Really not sure how to wrap things up.Maybe space is a thing here? I see at least 5 more city spots on islands.

 

[antimony]

Interesting map for this leader! I'm going to play shorter turnsets, shadow game style.

Spoiler Deity T0-14 :

Warrior 1N in line with @AcaMetis's suggestion, no resource found so SIP. Warrior proceeds to loop clockwise around the coast. The idea is to sacrifice some fogbusting now before barbarians spawn to look for possible ocean fish affecting settling decisions. That warrior will likely stop at point "f" marked on the screenshot below to fogbust, while next warriors will go N and NW.

Worker T13, Animal Husbandry T14 achieved by swapping to working lake on turn 8. Could have done the swap on T9 instead but I value beaker overflow a bit more than production overflow on a 2 plains cow start (and especially because the AH beaker overflow carries its 1.2 multiplier into The Wheel, which has no multiplier). Finding horse (more production + chariots to help with barb defense) supports the idea to delay Mining-BW in favor of commerce.

Also I looked at the map details spoiler before starting.

Spoiler Medium-term plan :

In isolation, with no happiness resources in our first few cities, Pyramids is looking really good, costing only 200 base hammers with IND and stone. If we grow to size 4 and work all these production tiles, we generate 16 hammers per turn, so a 13-turn Pyramids before even considering whip overflow or chops! (Well let's be honest, that capital is not getting whipped with such little food.)

That opens up a possibly greedy strategy to get Great Lighthouse as well (164 base hammers for Roosevelt including 30 for the Lighthouse). Settling on the "s" to the east provides 6 hammers per turn working a plains hill mine, plus up to 4 chops depending how many we save from the capital, so a 14-turn build if we use all 4. That said it won't pay off for a while and it's not working risking losing the Pyramids (around turn 60 is safe for both wonders on deity, if I remember well), so I can revisit that later .

Spoiler Short-term plan :

Assume we want to grow to size 3 before making first settler with 2 cows + horse (15 hammers per turn for settler, so 7 turns, 6 if we manage to pour 10 overflow into it).
- Worker is starting pasture on T14, so first cow pasture will be up T17, second one T21, and horse (losing one turn moving) T26. Horse road on T28 also connects our capital to the southbound river.
- City is at 2/22 food, will be 8/22 on T17, grow to 2 (1/24) on T22 and grow to 3 (1/26) on T28.
- Warrior is 2/15, can work lake one more turn and switch to cow so it's out on T18, and then another warrior T21.
- Research is at 11/101 on The Wheel, which will be done on T23, then Pottery T33.
- Earliest possible settler is T34, then the city can get a 2nd worker on T38 to start cottaging.

Two issues with this:
- By T21 we have two more warriors out to fogbust (great!) but we will also generate 5 + 6*8 = 53 production in the next 6 turns after that, we don't want that many warriors (we start paying upkeep at 6 units incl. the worker) and dumping extra hammers into a barracks isn't great either.
- Worker doesn't have much important work to do between T28 (horse road) and T33 (pottery).

Settler at size 2? (2 cows is 12 hammers per turn for settler, so 9 turns, 8 if we manage to pour 4 overflow into it.)
- Work lake for 2 turns, warrior will be out T19 with 4 overflow (19/15) and 2nd warrior on T22 with 4 overflow as well.
- Settler is out on T30; city can grow to size 3 by T36, then build a 2nd worker for T40 (or maybe a bit later depending on military needs).
- City 2 founded on T31, worker can farm rice with only 1 idling turn (can make half a road on the rice), then start cottaging on T36.

All in all we get a 2nd city 4 turns earlier at the cost of 2 turns delay on capital growth and 2nd worker. Commerce will likely be slightly ahead but close. We are limited to 3 warriors before T30, so losing one to barbs can hurt, but after that we have chariots. Less fogbusting also means more barb cities could spawn however.

 

[soundjata]

@antimony

Spoiler :

A small remark in the "context" of this game: I would not be worried about building too many warriors in the beginning. As shown recently by @CarpoolKaraoke it can be quite efficient to push enough fogbusters early, especially in isolation.

 

[Fippy]

Yup some warriors might die, or if you have more than the free upkeep amount you can move them forward fast - and not worry about running into an archer.

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

Yes, on further thought, I also decided to go for the safer option, considering also how fast barb spears spawn on deity. Plus the 1 commerce on the horses will help. In the end, given that we're delaying BW post turn-40, I didn't want to stack too many greedy choices.

 

[antimony]

Spoiler T15-35 :

Built warriors until size 3, working the lake one turn to finish 5th one right before growth with some overflow into settler. Despite unit upkeep, Pottery was done on T33 by switching from cow to lake a few turns, without delaying settler (just out now, founding city 2 next turn). Worker built some roads, but is still one turn out from completing cottage.
Island is almost completely fogbust, I know there is one barb archer hiding in the fog to the west. A lot of crab and one silver on the tundra coast, nothing but that marble inland so far.

Small mistake spotted: I should have roaded the forest to stone, which would have also connected the river.

Spoiler Next steps :

Tech is still the limiting factor and because of that, I think I need to grow my capital first to work more commerce tiles and build a granary. I can work horse 2 turns but after that switch to cottage to grow to size 4 in 7 turns (T42), then build a worker in 4 turns (T46).

Meanwhile city 2 can work cottage for 2 turns instead of improved rice and still grow to size 2 by T43, then size 3 by T48. First worker will finish farm on T41, 2nd cottage on T45.

Earliest Masonry time is T50 I estimate (with T42 mining). At that point stone should be roaded and 2 workers in place, so quarry online by T52.

What should capital do between T46 and T52?

- Build a settler. Could complete it in 6 turns if I time 10 overflow from the worker. Pyramids can be completed in 13 turns at size 4 with stone (T65) as previously discussed. If I go BW after Masonry I would get that tech it around T60-T61 so I could potentially save 1-2 turn with chops. Nice timing too for BW just before Pyramids as I can revolt to Slavery and Rep together.

- Let city grow to size 5 around T53/T54 (requires passing horse to city 2 for some of that time, slowing its growth a bit). Then after stone my workers can build a grass mine after the quarry, boosting my production to 19 (!) at size 5, which combined with putting some (non-boosted by stone) production into the Pyramids in T50-51, should result in a 3-turn earlier date on the wonder (T62). Chops would not help here, and overall my workers are left with little to do.

Clearly first option seems better here. If I go with settler, then the SW sheep city is connected via coast after capital border pop (T50), so it probably breaks even right away. Workers will be busy there after they finish T52 quarry, but also shouldn't forget there is one more cottage next to the rice opening up with T50 border pop.

Considering all this GLH to the east doesn't seem feasible anymore. Around T75 for GLH can be late on deity, and we would sacrifice early development of the commerce-rich SW sheep city, as well as early Writing and its synergy with Pyramids (due to going Sailing first).

 

[chinemol]

inm 1200 AD

Spoiler :

didn't want lib anyway!
SIP--> AH, wheel, masonry, sailing
GL, Pyramids, MoM, Parthenon, GLib
got circunnavegation, got greedy with lib. my question is will: cannons do? spent a lot of hammers into courthouses, forges, harbors, observatories, etc. I'm tempted to go all the way to seals or tanks

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Rules question. I played for 5 turns so minor spoilers.

Spoiler :

Say I build a city and it reaches 100 culture. Can my culture reach the tile labelled "land"? Can my galley move there? Can a barbarian galley move there?

 

[Fippy]

Rules question. I played for 5 turns so minor spoilers.

Spoiler :

Say I build a city and it reaches 100 culture. Can my culture reach the tile labelled "land"? Can my galley move there? Can a barbarian galley move there?
View attachment 684845

Your galleys can move over ocean tiles with (your) culture, barb galleys can never enter ocean.
But the main question i'm not sure about
I think culture does not spread on 3rd ring ocean.

 

[Qactus]

Rules question. I played for 5 turns so minor spoilers.

Spoiler :

Say I build a city and it reaches 100 culture. Can my culture reach the tile labelled "land"? Can my galley move there? Can a barbarian galley move there?
View attachment 684845

Yes, with enough culture (two border pops after settling) you can cross there with a galley.
I had the same question once and it got answered here:

Ocean tiles, Galleys & Culture

Sorry, how does this work again? After capturing mainland Greece my Sentry HA spotted a Greek galley and island to the south of Sparta where Pericles seems to have some more real estate. How many border pops would I need from Sparta in order to be able to send galleys over there?

forums.civfanatics.com

- First ring covers your coast
- Second ring (BFC) covers the ocean tile west of the one you marked "land"
- Third ring covers the tile marked "land"
- You can now move a galley there and from that tile you can sail onto the (neutral) coastal tile
- Your culture will expand on ocean tiles with yield, it will not extend to open sea (no yield ocean).
- Barb galleys can not cross the ocean tiles

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Follow up to @Qactus

Spoiler :

No. It doesn't.

It matters. I would not have gone for The Great Lighthouse if I could not settle offshore islands.

 

[Qactus]

Follow up to @Qactus

Spoiler :

No. It doesn't.
View attachment 684852

It matters. I would not have gone for The Great Lighthouse if I could not settle offshore islands.

@sylvanllewelyn

Spoiler :

Damn, I'm sorry I gave you misleading information.
First I thought the tile distance to cross would be the same as in the example I linked. But now I see the difference: While the distance from city to island is the same, in my case that PH peninsula next to the city provides an extra tile of coast, allowing the culture to spread one line further into the ocean.
I hope you'll find another possibility for intercontinental trade routes to make the GLH pay off.

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

On the one side I'm glad people managed to learn something from this NC map, on the other side it's kinda unfortunate my carefully laid out plans got send to the bottom of the ocean .

(I thought culture would spread over any ocean so long as the ocean had tile yields, which clearly is not the case).

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

I think GLH is so cheap for Roosevelt (plus saves the 30 hammer monument at that particular spot) that it pays for itself even with no offshore islands, if you manage to get it in time. And if you had to choose between that or Pyramids, I'm not sure one offshore island really tips the scale. But anyway, I was more worried about the opportunity cost of failing it. And on any level below deity you should have more breathing room to build both Pyramids and GLH and have less chance of AIs running Mercantilism by the time you meet them, which boosts the long term value of GLH.

Further question:

Spoiler :

If you could spread culture through ocean tiles, we know it enables (pre-Astro) domestic trade routes through them as well?

EDIT: Tested on WB and it does. It seems ocean within your border counts as coast for your civilization (in terms of access, not yields) for all practical purposes?

 

[antimony]

Spoiler T36-52 :

Lost two warriors to archers including the fogbuster for the SW corner, so I built two chariots after the T46 worker instead of a settler. Island may be completely fogbust now if it's a straight coastline in NW corner, or there might be tiles poking out.

On the good news, the reduced unit upkeep and my population growth meant Masonry was 2 turns earlier than expected (T48), and BW will be done in T58, leading to a T61 Pyramids date with 2 chops. Before that the workers can cottage west of rice and build one road, maybe on a cow to eventually connect the sheep city (forgot I was missing a coast tile for that connection pre-sailing). Bonus is that one of the two chops east of the lake unlocks another cottage site.

After Pyramids, Washington builds a settler (hopefully in 5 turns with Pyramids overflow, didn't bother to calculate), after that Writing should be done so it can go on to build a library. After Writing I probably need to pause to consider next steps.

New York would become unhappy next turn, could switch to a worker. Washington grows in 6 turns and needs a MP as well, but the chariot going out to intercept that archer should be back.