Nobles' Club 353: Napoleon of France

[Tecumseh1]

@antimony

That all makes sense. I have a monopoly on Aesthetics right now but nobody wants to trade for it yet. I might have done a silly thing by using my great engineer to bulb metal casting. Barb galley had already destroyed 1 fishing boat and I panicked. But I'm putting down forges except in Lyons. Also settled 5th city north of Orleans for grassland cow. Lot of jungle up and throwing 3 workers to help cottage. There is a barb city north on coast with river + banana + dye. It is 1 tile away from Pacal. Is it worth sending a small HA army to get that spot? I don't have calendar yet and would need to trade for it. Two more cities I could settle in jungle with rice city (seems kinda crappy), and then east coast for cow + gems. Those can probably wait and risk of someone else settling it is low. I had to self tech HBR (no trades available) and now self teching CoL. I was hoping for HBR + Asthetics trade for CoL (and also similar trade to get Calendar from Gandi) but it didn't work out.

 

[sampsa]

@Tecumseh1

Spoiler :

In general when you are aiming to win liberalism, already getting a GE is a big distraction. i.e. you'd rather run specialists in a way that your capital doesn't spawn a early. The reason is that every non-GS is delaying you. MC is not useless of course, but it is away from the fastest course. Calendar is away from the fastest course, so it's best to just get them via trade later, when you can.

 

[Tecumseh1]

wars what is it good for (the end):

Following the great advice here I was able to get a respectable cuirs date. I was well ahead of AI on my tech path (they still didn't have Nationalism and Education). Used the free GA from Music to start a golden age as I went for MT. I got 1 GS (used for Education) and 1 GM which was used to upgrade my horses and elephants. I had like 25+ cuirs when I attacked Toku. But he had his whole stack on a border city I attacked and I was stubborn and ended up losing my whole army to his stupid Samurai. A few trebs would have been useful. I also should have gone for a 2nd GM as it took me a while to upgrade everyone. Need bit better planning on GP generation. At this point I stopped playing. On Monarch I would have tried to dig out of a bad hole but not good enough yet to do that on Immortal.

 

[sampsa]

@Tecumseh1

Spoiler :

No worries, you are clearly improving if you are able to lib cuirs on immortal. You are correct that 2 gained from a golden age is very low. I'd try to get at least 3. There are two possible reasons: 1) your cities were not big enough or 2) you simply didn't run enough specialists. I try to grow as much as possible before starting a golden age and also fill the -bar as high as possible to run a -deficit for 7 turns.

Another thing you need to pay a bit more attention on immortal is war tactics. Locate enemy stack and try to find the best way to take it out. You can for example declare and wait. He will come to you and you can take the fights on open field. If you have stuff like cr2-cannons you are happy to collateral his stack inside a city, but for cuirs it's different. Also you can consider a spy revolt if you have -points towards the victim.

 

[Tecumseh1]

One more blunder regarding GPs. I had brain fart and forgot pacifism required state religion and I had not switched into a religion before golden age.

 

[sampsa]

Yes, you need to spread a religion to at least the cities you plan to run specialists in. In my cuirassier games I close to never go to org rel (I tend to go with minimal amount of buildings) so often need to build one monastery for missionaries. Capital tends to benefit most from a monastery.

 

[antimony]

wars what is it good for (the end):

Spoiler :

Following the great advice here I was able to get a respectable cuirs date. I was well ahead of AI on my tech path (they still didn't have Nationalism and Education). Used the free GA from Music to start a golden age as I went for MT. I got 1 GS (used for Education) and 1 GM which was used to upgrade my horses and elephants. I had like 25+ cuirs when I attacked Toku. But he had his whole stack on a border city I attacked and I was stubborn and ended up losing my whole army to his stupid Samurai. A few trebs would have been useful. I also should have gone for a 2nd GM as it took me a while to upgrade everyone. Need bit better planning on GP generation. At this point I stopped playing. On Monarch I would have tried to dig out of a bad hole but not good enough yet to do that on Immortal.

Spoiler :

I think the reputation that Cuirassiers are overpowered hides the fact that they require a lot of tactical maneuvering to take underdefended cities and bait stacks on favorable terrain, and even then you need to be prepared to have a good stream of reinforcements. Of course their speed helps with both of those things. In contrast siege based armies are slower but with sufficient numbers you can brute force your way through highly defended cities with comparatively less losses.

Also having barracks and stables or some unit XP civic is going to help. 2 promos right away makes a huge difference.

 

[JSS]

Deity 1715AD

Spoiler :

Early techs went AH -> Mining -> Hunting -> Archery -> BW -> Pottery -> Mysticism -> Writing. Took out a barb city north on a hill next a flood plain between me and Pacal and got a CR3 axe, which helped me build a nice HE city to the west of my capital. I then slapped another city south of that city in order to stop Pacal from settling my land.

Most of the good land that was available was jungle, so I went for a later attack and went for cannons instead of cuirs. Gandhi was going pretty hard towards lib (had both paper and philo in 300AD or something which I was not in a position to compete with with my jungle cities), so I chose to beeline cannons and then traded my way to rifles.

I attacked Pacal while he was at war with Suleiman and his vassals, bribed Toku into the party and the war was easy. From there it was smooth sailing.