Nobles' Club 360: Mansa Musa of Mali

[BornInCantaloup]

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

My choice was Agri-AH-BW. I improved wet corn, plains cow (important hammers to produce some fogbusters) then dry corn while growing to size 4, then built settler. I think because the FIN oasis is close in power to an improved tile on T0, having only one worker from size 1 to 4 isn't so bad.

Interesting.

Spoiler :

My first thought was : work all 4 tiles asap. Having a FIN oasis first ring sure is a treat.
I went Agri, BW, worker at size 2 (1 chop before improving 2nd corn), AH... and it didn't fit quite perfectly. AH was a little late and I had to road some tiles before improving the cows.

With a single worker, do you not fall into a situation where you cannot really take advantage of BW when it comes in ?

Many combinations are possible here. BW or AH first. If worker, size 2, 3, 4.
In any case, I think having so many worker turns by the capital (+ floodplains) makes a good argument for an early second worker. How to get it best is TBD.

 

[antimony]

T52

Spoiler :

I agree with @BornInCantaloup that Ag-BW and 2nd worker would lead to faster expansion. I still have a lot of capital forests. I preferred AH before BW for the production towards warriors (even though fogbusting didn't turn out to be that bad), and to potentially see the horses that are often found with so many cows in the starting area.

Arguably Kumbi Saleh should have been 1E for wheat in the first ring, though I liked additional help for cottage growth, saving worker turns and sharing the wet corn. In particular, I can't grow that fast anyway: happiness looks like the limiting factor for this starting position.

I'm a bit unsure what to do next. The fish/marble/cow city to the north is potentially strong and I can chop the Great Library in the capital. However, am I confined to too small a territory if I don't grab the NE fish spot now?

I have to also hope the trade for Monarchy works out e.g. by partially researching it so an AI would trade it for Aesthetics. Is this a map where you would self-tech Monarchy given how much it helps your growth?

 

[soundjata]

Deity 1AD

Spoiler :

Nice trolling with the luxury resources @AcaMetis

 

[AcaMetis]

Not going to lie,

Spoiler :

didn't even notice that at all. This is one of those maps where I had some idea of what I wanted the map to be like, then the Civ IV map generator went "actually, here's something that looks like it'll be more interesting" and I, well, went with it .

 

[chinemol]

T52

Spoiler :

I agree with @BornInCantaloup that Ag-BW and 2nd worker would lead to faster expansion. I still have a lot of capital forests. I preferred AH before BW for the production towards warriors (even though fogbusting didn't turn out to be that bad), and to potentially see the horses that are often found with so many cows in the starting area.

Arguably Kumbi Saleh should have been 1E for wheat in the first ring, though I liked additional help for cottage growth, saving worker turns and sharing the wet corn. In particular, I can't grow that fast anyway: happiness looks like the limiting factor for this starting position.

I'm a bit unsure what to do next. The fish/marble/cow city to the north is potentially strong and I can chop the Great Library in the capital. However, am I confined to too small a territory if I don't grab the NE fish spot now?

I have to also hope the trade for Monarchy works out e.g. by partially researching it so an AI would trade it for Aesthetics. Is this a map where you would self-tech Monarchy given how much it helps your growth?

View attachment 698270

Spoiler :

unless ther's an island or a really oddly shaped landmass, if tou settle the northern fish city one south you'llsecure both wheat and a fish

 

[antimony]

Spoiler :

unless ther's an island or a really oddly shaped landmass, if tou settle the northern fish city one south you'llsecure both wheat and a fish

Spoiler :

Yes but I think I want to develop the coast fish before dry wheat no? I guess it depends how soon I will get sailing for coast vs. non river cottages.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

T52

I agree with @BornInCantaloup that ...

Oh, it was very much a question left up in the air. I opened the map on monday but was going out of town for a few days and didn't really have time to focus on the question.

This is my T50 :

Spoiler :

So, if an early second worker is desirable,
Agri -> BW + Worker at size 2 gives : 8hpt + 1 chop = 5 turns worker
Agri -> AH + Worker at size 3 gives : 12hpt = 5 turns worker
Most notably, Timbuktu spends 6 turns growing from 2 to 4 regardless of whether we improve the 2nd corn or the cow first.
Agri -> AH + Worker at size 4 also gives a 5 turns worker (+ overflow) that is well timed with the research of Bronze Working.
I chose this last option as I did not want to spend turns not working the oasis and did not find a relevant use for the earlier worker turns.

Settler for Djenne was double chopped at size 4 (hill forests), then the 2 initial workers teamed up to improve its cows while Timbuktu would work on the 3rd worker.
One worker would remain by Djenne to chop the 4th worker at size 2,
The other would team up with Worker 3 by Timbuktu to double chop the settler for Kumbi Saleh. Timbuktu finally grows to 5.
Worker by Djenne roads to Kumbi Saleh then improves the wheat,
Workers by Timbuktu improve a lone cottage then prepare to double chop the settler for city 4 (maybe sharing the corn 4S of Timbuktu and requiring a border pop to work the clams - Timbuktu has all the food it needs for now and should start working cottages at happy cap ; the corn could help kickstart city 4). This one will complete next turn, eot. I think there is still time to claim fish/wheat in the north east.
[edit : I'll probably just backfill the western cows with city 4, I didn't really consider that, before. Should also have chopped different forests, then, to be in position to road + pasture asap]

A little torn about Djenne, I should probably set up a 1pop granary whip at size 3 or maybe just cottage. It's possible the granary isn't really crucial at this point.
Had to road the cows in order to maintain health in the capital, or else it would not reach 60H + 40 from the chops to complete its settler. Timbuktu will be able to provide the extra worker(s) that are needed.

Willem has ivory up for trade, which would be nice to get. Wonders seem to be going late-ish, with only the SH and GW already built.
The land seems fine to develop but I wonder if a play for Horseback Riding should be made.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Spoiler :

Yes but I think I want to develop the coast fish before dry wheat no? I guess it depends how soon I will get sailing for coast vs. non river cottages.

My 2 cents :

Spoiler :

At this point (post Writing), I think the trade for Alphabet (however you get there) should very clearly take precedence over researching Sailing. Sailing first would be a long delay towards Alphabet (maybe 10 turns, depending on how aggressively you keep settling) and that is a big no-no. It's not clear to me that Sailing could pay off in the meantime, if at all. Sure, there are islands but the benefits from Alphabet far outweight anything else.

Things are less evident regarding Fishing. It probably depends on how many tiles you would conceivably be working in the short term. I can only see 2, being the clams and the NE fish.
It could be a good idea to make a proper dotmap, so as to gauge precisely what sort of maintenance hits you're gonna take. Is this a 5, 6, 7 cities set up ? There's an argument for settling double-food cities, so as to skimp on maintenance, or single-food cities, so as to increase the global happy cap and ensure all/most land tiles can be worked rather early.

The more and the faster we want to settle, the more researching Fishing would also lead to a noticeable delay towards Alphabet. For that reason, I'm a little reluctant to go down that route.
Fishing also means Workboats and those hammers compete directly with setting up granaries (although I concede one could conceivably afford both a workboat and a granary ).
The NW fish already requires a border pop. I think I wouldn't mind delaying Fishing until after that city has popped borders (likely post Alpha, then).

Going back to Wheat/Fish, I would likely favor settling NW of the wheat. You're right that the fish is the better tile but it gives an additional excuse ( excuses not being meant to be the best reasons
) to delay Fishing until after borders pop and dump hammers right away into the granary.
NW of the wheat is the better long term spot, with more land tiles to work, but that is likely a very dubious reason to decide from.

Put otherwise, it's not like we need Fishing to claim these spots. Fishing could certainly pay for itself but it has other costs.

 

[antimony]

@BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

I actually researched fishing before pottery which probably explains part of my delay on writing. My reasoning is that the discount is worthwhile and so far research has not been the limiting factor for anything.

Changed my mind the: next cities, I decided on clam/SW fish for city 4 and NE fish for 5. Eventually settle on marble (I don't care about the quarry yield much) and also have a city on W cows sharing the corn, like you propose, which would be 7. Maybe island cities later...

The problem with the W cows is that it provides neither commerce now does it claim land. I see it could be a good settler / worker production spot while other cities grow cottages, but given the severe happiness limit on growth here it seems I have to build workers in all cities at some point anyway.

 

[aitkensam]

Immortal Domination

Spoiler :

1510AD. Standard-old Cuirs/Cav game. Hannibal was quite advanced so killed off Louis and Monty to be able to reach Dom threshold without the trouble of Hannibal.
Lib->MT was around 700AD. Huayna plotted on me even though same religion. Fortunately could beg when he was on my border and he immediately attacked Willem.
Used a lot more Caste System than normal this game which probably hurt my end date but did help with tech.

 

[Krugi]

Emperor T249 (1695 AD): Domination victory

Spoiler :

Not much to say after the previous reports. Whipping ~10 galleons and mass-producing cannons allowed me to cap Monty and Louis quickly; a Great Artist culture bombed Orléans to speed up victory by a few turns. No need to attack Hannibal or the ridiculous barb island.

Pretty bad result, but I should probably still move back up to Immortal. This game fell into my lap.

Thanks for the map!

 

[CGQ]

Spoiler 1280 AD Demidog I need help :

I managed to get a nice cuir army and took out both Dutch and Incans. Ragnar had Hyuna vassaled so I made peace with Ragnar immediately after killing off Hyuna so I could tech Rifling and get calvary. Problem is, now I got over 72 Cuirs waiting to attack and now Ragnar somehow beat me to rifling. Now he has calvary and I haven't even gotten to rifling yet...

I know I can easily outproduce him but even despite being 2-movement units they still take a bunch of turns just to reach his borders and rifles will just shred through them. What do I do now? Is this winnable? I don't have astronomy to build galleons to attack French or Monty.

I was doing so good but it's crazy how fast I fall behind in tech when I go to war. Is this still winnable? Maybe I should've capped Willem much sooner and went straight for Ragnar/Inca? I just didn't wanna deal with revolts, motherland unhappiness bs, etc.

 

[soundjata]

1280 AD Demidog I need help

Spoiler :

For sure Cuirassiers vs Rifles is not good, unless you have a 3 to 1 ratio or something...
Good news you have 25 cities so your win is unstoppable
Can you gear your empire for research and aim for a fast Physics?
A dozen of Airships + what you have currently would certainly ruin Ragnar chances.
Another tip: When ready to attack Ragnar, DOW him without moving your army first, he should offer his SOD on open terrain => easy whipeout!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Delighted to see this series still going, hoping to play some more Civ IV until Civ VII arrives as after 4,000 hours in Civ VI I think I'm done. IV is a game that always draws you back!

 

[antimony]

@CGQ

Spoiler :

I agree with @soundjata, try to bait his stack to come out. And then take every border city you can with Cuirs. He only has 9 and every city you take is a big chunk of his unit production lost.

It was probably a mistake to peace and tech when you have 72 Cuirs because you'll never have the money to upgrade that many, better use them while they are relevant even if you can't conquer all of an AI (unless it provokes a stronger AI to attack you, always consider the diplomacy).

Can't open the save now, but I would say with that many cities, if you need to go past rifling to win (i.e. you want infantry and tanks), your next step should be communism for the huge economic boost of state property, blanket the landscape with workshops and watermills and start working towards those techs.

Regarding vassaling vs. elimination: you can basically start capitulating enemy AIs as soon as offered when you think you have enough cities to win the game with respect to research and production capacity, so typically when you're already the biggest empire. Sometimes you can do it earlier if you're worrying they will vassal to someone else instead. In any case, taking more cities in war should be based on the value these cities provide to your empire. Motherland unhappiness is not that bad and a vassal gives you +1 happiness everywhere. With someone like the Dutch, it's tough because their leftover cities will have a lot of culture, so you may need to take all but the more remote outposts to have workable cities.

 

[CGQ]

Spoiler :

For sure Cuirassiers vs Rifles is not good, unless you have a 3 to 1 ratio or something...
Good news you have 25 cities so your win is unstoppable
Can you gear your empire for research and aim for a fast Physics?
A dozen of Airships + what you have currently would certainly ruin Ragnar chances.
Another tip: When ready to attack Ragnar, DOW him without moving your army first, he should offer his SOD on open terrain => easy whipeout!

Spoiler 1545 AD This is Hopeless :

I tried to get physics quickly and built airships. My stack is now nearly 100 Cuirs. Problem is now he's got everything. SAMs, machine guns, artillery, and destroyers. I don't know where I went wrong but it had to be earlier in this game. Time for cheesy reload xD

 

[Implo]

Spoiler Deity 4000 BC to 300 BC :

Hi,
Fun game with some potential to "bust everything".

SiP and Agri - BW. To wiph and chop.

I actually put one chop into 1st and 2nd warrior. Before improving second corn. Just because production is so slow early.
That helped with fogbusting and I had zero to no barb problems. rexed 2 cities.

Then Pottary - AH - Writing.

After seeing how weak William was I decides to do a HA with a math bulb towards William.
He got the GLH and was very slow with only 3-4 cities and seamed rather weak except his easy pillage copper and iron.. and ofc his elephants.
Got some decent trades from math, HRB - Alpha. Self teched currency.

Som furtunate religion got william as only hindu, so i could just attack and CS as i wanted to min/max the attack. Only pain was to kill elephants with HA.. but 1-2 to soften up worked just fine.
Ended with a peace deal with one city left. Got AES and calander.

Now wondering what to do.. guess just finish with some coastal cities. Cottage everything and prepare for currii or cav rush. Can really have a crazy tech game here. So space or even diplo might also be an option.
Read other games, and yeah.. really low happy cap on this map.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

hoping to play some more Civ IV

Prince / Marathon / Huts but No Events

Turn 0/1500 (4000 BC) [12-Sep-2024 16:46:21]
Player Comment Settle in place
Timbuktu founded
Timbuktu begins: Worker (30 turns)
Research begun: Agriculture (19 Turns)
Tribal village results: technology

The Technology being er Bronze Working!!