Nobles' Club 357: Churchill of England

[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 Churchill of England, whom we last played in NC 275; we last played the English under Victoria in NC 349. The English start with Fishing and Mining.

• Traits: Churchill is Charismatic and Protective. Charismatic gives every city, Monuments and Broadcast Towers +1, and decreases the exp required for units to level by 25%. 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.
• The UB: The Stock Exchange, a Bank with an extra +15% generated over a standard bank. Banks are rarely build buildings as they are somewhat expensive (200 on standard speed) and maintaining 100% slider isn't hard to do when you can build Wealth, sell resources and excess techs, or just punch money out of weaker civilizations. That said, if you're planning on going conquering a few Stock Exchanges in economic backbone cities will keep your economy safely afloat. Unless you send an army that would make Genghis Khan faint to take over an amount of land that would make the Romans call you completely crazy, of course .
• The UU: The Redcoat, a Rifleman with +25% vs. Gunpowder units in addition to Mounted. These guys have an edge against the most common unit types they're likely to fight against, including their intended counter unit, making them an all-around excellent unit to use in their era. Rifling is a lengthy detour from getting "any" decent attacking unit on the way to Cannons, but Redcoats do have an advantage in that they can be drafted, and Banking is on the way to Rifling.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, Rocky climate. Medium sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A strategic resource swap, and an unworkable Fish was 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 357 Churchill 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]

Tempted to settle a Sugar for a 3 capitol, but not sure if that's the optimal move in this case. Not a fan of moving closer to water, and I might be tempted to use the sugar tiles as discount Floodplains to put cottages on down the line TBH. Of course getting Agriculture -> Wheel -> Pottery will take a hot second. Settling the capitol can be done T0.

Not sure, honestly. What do the experts think?

 

[chinemol]

not an expert, but given churchil is char, I'd like to grow the capital by simply farming rice and the eastern sugar, at least for the start.
might settle the sugar sw, so I'll waste a settler turn checking it out

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

I’d probably settle on the SW sugar. Three food CC tile and you can share the clam and the other sugar with a city NE of that sugar. Ideally I like to move inland but at least this move would take you away from the jungle. And it doesn’t seem like you’re moving away from much - possibly a strategic resource NE of the lake but you can pick that up with a city on NE of the sugar to share the clam and sugar.

 

[antimony]

I think Agri into BW is the way to go here, since seafood plus lake plus road-free coastal trade can hold your economy afloat (haha) for a while.

SW settle is better since only eastern sugar is farmable, but I'm not motivated to have any city further east if no additional resource and jungle unhealthiness; still, warrior 1E could reveal something significant.

 

[sampsa]

Agree with others, sugar settle is probably too good to pass and while losing 2 is not optimal it's no disaster so I'd go 1SW unless warrior move reveals something.

 

[Texas03]

Fun game! I played until like 500 AD on Immortal.

Spoiler :

Inviting start for GLH and I got that out pretty quick. Unfortunately I messed up my city placement delusionally trying to snipe Ghandis Gold in the north, so I only got 6 cities where 7 would be possible. But the cities are pretty strong if you do get GLH. Without GLH I would struggle for . CHM made Monuments less of a pain and generally has been huge for me to get good large cities for bulbing Philosophy and double bulbing Education. Now I'm on Nationalism and gonna take out Ghandi with Cuirs. After that the map is wide open as everyone else is pretty weak in tech with Augustus being the second best. Luckily for me Sitting Bull attacked Gilgamesh, but noone has attacked Ghandi yet so he is decently quick in tech.

 

[antimony]

Seems like a challenging but good map for this leader. Deity T70

Spoiler :

With a rather poor-looking starting area, I decided on Great Lighthouse fairly early, England starts with the right techs for it. Churchill's CHA also helps us whip liberally in this high food capital (York settler was a 6->3 whip around T34).

Tech path was Agri-BW-Myst-Sailing-Masonry. Great Lighthouse on T66, which is a bit risky on deity; I could have delayed Nottingham (and Mysticism, which was teched early to grab that fish) and work 3 mines earlier to get the GLH closer to T60. Note also that I settled York and Nottingham for better sharing of capital food, at the cost of killing a jungle spice to the west and settling York on a forest. Settled a 4th city just now a bit squeezed by Gandhi's culture, but I only want the water tiles anyway.

Suleiman and Toku hate Gandhi which means I'm probably safe on the short term. The bigger problem is finding a breakout strategy here. I could go Math, trade for IW and hope to see iron in my border for swords + cats... a bit of a gamble.

 

[soundjata]

@antimony

Spoiler :

there's more land to selle in the North West ain't there?

 

[AcaMetis]

Spoiler :

there's more land to selle in the North West ain't there?

Spoiler :

If you mean the area by the barb city culture, if you look really closely you can just barely make out a line of red culture (most likely Tokugawa) above the beakers per turn counter.

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

Yes, was hoping for a GLH powered island city (probably not actually an island) and then saw Toku settle there just after my Nottingham borders popped.

 

[Texas03]

Spoiler IMM T103 :

I replayed this. Wasn't happy with my performance last time and the late game war was so sloppy. Alas, I popped gold in Nottingham! This time I got the 7 city setup I think is optimal with GLH here. I went Agri - BW - Sailing - Masonry - Myst - Pottery - Writing - Poly - Priesthood - CoL - Maths and am now gonna bulb Philo and head towards CS. This time nobody got Alpha yet but Ghandi went CoL early and snagged it from me.

 

[antimony]

300 BC

Spoiler :

Will have to abandon that game. Only iron is 1W of Agra (as you can see from the suspicious 1 on grass) and although archers + cats let me take that city in 325 BC, Gandhi now has 9 cities and longbows making any further progress with classical units unlikely.

Maybe a better way would have been to settle more aggressively along the southern coast and let go of GLH on deity, then rely on non river cottages tech.

 

[Texas03]

Spoiler 1913 AD :

I went Space this time. I'm not an expert on space, but it looked more relaxing than conquering Augustus and SB. Gilgamesh was behind but he had 14 cities or something like that as well. I finished space like 25 turns before Augustus would have been able to in the end.

In the midgame I rushed with Cuirs and took Ghandi bar one city and all of Tokugawa. I vassaled Suleiman and gifted his cities back. After that it was Sim City with heavy workshop economy. Ghandi and Tokugawa have very good land with mature cottages also.

Cool map, but I can't imagine winning this on Deity if you don't get all the starting settles you get on IMM.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

I've been giving this a go on video. It's a great map - the most interesting of this map type I've played for a long time. So thank you as always, even if it's pretty unbalanced...

Deity NHNE.

A little on the late side but that's life getting in the way for you!