Nobles' Club 375: 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 348; 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 :

Shuffle, Temperate Climate, Medium Sealevel.

Spoiler shuffle? :

A mapscript that randomly chooses between an Archipelago, Continents, Pangaea and Fracal style mapscript.

Spoiler edits :

Strategic Resource swaps to give AIs nearby strategic resources.

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 375 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]

The blue circle makes me suspect the water tiles are, in fact, coast (easily confirmed by seeing if the Plains tile 1N of warrior has Fresh Water or not - if not it's definitely coast), and if there's any seafood that would make a city 1NW or 2N of the Warrior a good idea. That said if we SIP we can't settle 1NW of Warrior, and the blue circle alone is not trustworthy when it comes to coastal city spots, so: Send the Warrior 1NW to scout the coast and tile 2W of the warrior's starting position. If there is something that would make a city 1NW of Warrior a good idea, and there is not something like Corn on that tile 2W, settle 1S(?). If there's nothing that would make a 1NW city any more temping than a 2N city, or there's a good food resource 2W that settling 1S would move away from, SIP.

Any experts wishing to correct me, or was that a good read of the situation ?

 

[Izuul]

I mostly want to know where/if there's a 2nd food tile. If it's 2W of the warrior then we can't move south and need to SIP. Warrior NW seems like a good move as it reveals that tile 2W of his current position and also checks for seafood. If there's no food 2W of the warrior I'm probably going to settle 1S.

 

[Thrasybulos]

From what we can see, I would want my capital 2W1S.

Said capital doesn't have to be the first city founded. This is the USA, after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States

 

[soundjata]

By the power of the brown cow!

 

[chinemol]

I'm gonna gamble and maybe loose the game, but Roose

Spoiler :

in a shuffle map

= TGL, all other normal and rational considerations in a game go out the door. So, let's try to find seafood. Coastline seems to be NW

 

[pmarc]

Semi-late wonder on demigod

Spoiler Turn 78 :

Warrior went north and saw the fish, settler went south, saw rice and settled to avoid losing a turn.

Hunting -> AH -> Wheel/Pottery -> Mining/BW (got BW around T50), then Sailing and Masonry. Paused teching after Writing. No one I met has Alpha yet, so I'm not sure how to approach tech trading.

My plan was to build the first settler using rice/cow/elephant, then focus capital on cottages while New York takes over the 3 animal production tiles to eventually build great lighthouse, which finished this turn. I gambled a bit on the wonder date in order to keep expanding. I have a settler finishing now (2-whip) in capital to get the western corn by the coast.

Only the Inca are near me to the south, Julius is further SW and Toku somewhere west? I might be able to expand to 6-7 cities, but I'm not so confident about reaching the renaissance peacefully with those neighbors, even if Charlemagne will make a convenient target for the low-peaceweight AIs here.

 

[notslin]

Just deity things. Gave it a quick try.

Spoiler :

My warrior went on an adventure in flat ground and found a bear. Oh no!

Without the warrior, I couldn't fog bust. Five barb cities popped up near my borders. I kill 5 wandering Spearman, grab three barb cities, and block off enough land to have roughly as much land as the AI. I messed up my economy, though.

On 100 AD I settle a city that has two tiles touching Toku (edit: well, 3 of his tiles, including diagonals). What's the worst that could happen? Despite bad economy, I thought I could maybe attack him with trebs in like 20 turns (700 AD) if I'm lucky.

The next turn (125 AD), Toku starts plotting. (He was cautious with me, and his worst enemy was someone else.)

Then two turns after that (175 AD), Toku declares and moves his stack into the city.

I didn't play great, and I probably should play easier levels, but the early DOW is something I struggle with.

 

[Izuul]

Took a stab at this one on deity (1000 AD)

Spoiler :

Tough map. I haven't lost yet, but i think the game is trending in that direction.

There are quite a few challenges here. First, you have to survive the barbs which are quite bad. Tons of jungle to the south and no immediate neighbors to the east or west is definitely a recipe for barb trouble. I settled 1S and teched Hunting > AH > Archery. I think on Immortal you could get the 2nd city horses hooked up fast enough to get chariots out and skip Archery, but on deity it's probably a bit too slow. Also, anybody that decided to SIP or move north for the fish will get the horses in the capitol and probably have an easier time.

Beyond the barbs, there are three dangerous neighbors here. I was fortunate enough to avoid that potential problem as Toku attacked Capac and JC eventually went after Charlie, but i wouldn't be surprised if any of the 3 of them attacked the player in a different game.

Then there's also the land to contend with. I had to settle a jungle city to block Capac from coming north onto me. It originally had the cow tile, but his holy city was 3 tiles south of the cow and stole that quickly essentially leaving that city with nothing until iron working (gems) and calendar (sugar and banana). Good long-term city, but really a drag to have to settle that as a 3rd city. I did get the other nice river spot to the east of the capitol, but the overall city quality here is pretty mediocre with several of them needing IW and/or calendar to really contribute much.

I also ended up with 3 barb cities near me in my game. 1 to the NE by the cow and wine, one to the east by the incense, and another to the SE by the banana and sugar. With horses + ivory and several barb cities to capture plus dangerous neighbors i decided to go straight for HBR and maybe follow it up with Construction. I picked that up, traded it for Alpha and stuff, built some HAs, but only got the NE cow + wine spot. JC got the other two barb cities and was already turning into a monster at this point.

My first thought was to try to go after JC with cats and elephants before he could get any stronger, but i ended up not doing that for several reasons. First, he got Feudalism at 500BC! Yikes. And then Toku also got out of his war with Capac leaving a dangerous neighbor to the west who hated me for refusing to help him during war times (apparently 4 times). I was also just finally starting to get my land developed at this point so it didn't feel like a great time to attack.

I teched on to Engineering, but the tech pace in this one is quite fast with Capac, Caesar, Suleiman, and Kublai all freely trading with each other. I've been consistently behind them and locked out of most trades. JC currently has 15 cities and now has Hoy Rome as a vassal so I'm pretty sure he's just going to run away with the game. He's pleased with everyone but not friendly with anyone, so there's a chance he could get into more wars, but I'm not sure that's even a good thing as he's probably just going to steamroll whoever he attacks.

Meanwhile, I'm grinding my way through Toku with medieval units, and i stll have a long ways to go to finish him off. The other AI are currently on Rifling, Communism, etc. At this rate they will probably have infantry before i even finish killing Toku.

 

[soundjata]

Took more than a stab at this game on deity but

Spoiler :

It's just too hard for me.
Barbs are a pain + the probability to avoid getting dowed in the first 100 turns is slim. The tech pace is fast.
There must be a way to grind through the map using cataphants but there are so few good tiles available near the start...
Finally we are industrious and organized. Good luck making use of those traits in the early game here

 

[pmarc]

Continued this on demigod, now 760 AD

Spoiler :

Pre-Alphabet, I researched Metal Casting for trades since no one had it (Caesar used Oracle for Code of Laws). In hindsight I should have still gone for Code of Laws because nobody else ever researched it early enough and Caesar wouldn't trade it, obviously. I was safe for a while as the eastern warmongers focused on attacking Charlemagne, so I decided to tech all the way to Cannons. Got a Great Merchant from the GLH city to bulb Civil Service, researched Philosophy for more trades (incl. Machinery) and then researched Engineering -> Guilds -> Gunpowder while generating 2 scientists for Chemistry.

Got a lot of infrastructure for production: forges in most cities, AP monasteries and temples, then barracks. HC has the Hinduism AP, so I believe the key here is to keep HC and Toku on my side while starting war with Caesar first, even if he's the strongest AI. He has Hinduism as a minority religion so the AP might still mess things up.

Got a 3rd Great Scientist and triggered a golden age to finish Steel and switch from Caste/Pacifism to Slavery/Theocracy. Building some maces in the meantime to support the cannons.