Nobles' Club 395: Catherine of Russia

[redmeat]

Spoiler So I did run this gambit... :

Monarch, attempt to lib superconductors, engineer rushes Kremlin, whip research institutes everywhere next turn.

Obviously I had map knowledge and settled the plains hill 2s. Ag, BW, wheel -> axe rush Suleiman. In 3 cities, he had 4 archers combined. Tons of forests in ottoman lands, we go for 4 wonders. Mids first in Istanbul for 3 reasons: early happy cap is a huge drag, we want to get the engineer points going, and we'll be running out of money and teching with rep scientists helps. #2 oracle. Would have liked to go cc, but we were running late and took currency instead. #3 glh. Lots of coastal cities - it will help a lot, and we don't need corporation for superconductors. Then hanging gardens in Istanbul next to mids. More engineer points.

Col, cc, then paper because scouting was tough. AI hadn't chopped or roaded much and I needed a map trade to get glh trade routes. Would have liked to go metal casting next to get forge and engineer going in Istanbul, but went calendar first because of happy cap issues.

Was aiming to get Oxford up relatively early, but first went aesthetics to set up funding for high slider. 1-pop whipped walls in all cities (not the capital I think) after putting 40 hammers (a little less with forge) into it. We have stone, so the whipped wall has 100/50 hammers. We don't resolve the whips until all cities are ready. Now we give away stone so that the overflow isn't divided by the bonus resource, and feed it into Paya, which doubles the 50 overflow because we have gold. 1 pop -> 112 gold in each city (100 without forge, 125 with organized religion which we never adopted).

In the meantime we went education and whipped universities. Moscow actually 5-pop whipped oxford, because 2 AI had Aesth and I didn't want to let the overflow go to waste. No marble restricts options here.

After education, off to astro. Squeezed Music shortly before astro because 2 AI had the prereqs and I wanted to get the artist. No trades for anything noteworthy.

Everything in slavery. Forges were whipped early without much overflow considerations, then mostly courthouses and harbors (+4 commerce in most cities due to glh), then observatories - for max overflow, first into Paya and Colossus, after the wall whips were through we took our stone back and whipped into Moai.

Scimet, physics, and electricity before chemistry because I wanted an engineering trade. I did get it in time, then gunpowder, chemistry, biology. Interrupted half way through biology because Joao was going for economics. Courthouses in most cities meant I had tech vision of Joao and Willem which were the only threats to anything tech wise. Not a massive delay - 5 turns for guilds, banking, economics and half of biology instead of 2 for Biology.

Joao of course went towards lib after losing economics, so I golden aged to shave off a turn. Refrigeration was 3 turned I believe. Boudica got philosophy early, and after Joao got it too I got a trade for it from Willem. Saved a turn but it wasn't critical. Worst case I could have used the physics scientist to bulb philosophy to save a turn. And we're there!

Spoiler :

Spoiler The beeline :

Spoiler 2 turns later Kremlin :

Realized that it was a 4-pop whip in many cities, I guess the reason I thought it was less was that any time in the past the issue arose I had factories and coal plants.

t192 we get a neat build list on the right and 421bpt @0% slider (missed building an observatory in one city, so one research institute is a turn late)

Spoiler :

Not going to finish this, but was fun to try

 

[soundjata]

Update T118

Spoiler :

Oh no. Mehmed has longbows.

But we've got 1.7x his power (19 elephants, 18 catapults and 9 axes...)

He's been funneling mini-stacks towards Greece, because there is a gangbang on Pericles. The stacks are coming back to be destroyed in Yekaterinburg.

His mainland is almost undefended. Edirne has Pyramids, Parthenon and Statue of Zeus

I feel quite in control of the trading game at the moment.
Bulbed philo with the first GS. Traded little so far but accelerating now.
Hoping to get MC from Jao and Music from Willem. Then beeline MT/Gunpowder!
I can start a golden age in 2 turns with the second GS, and switch into fancy civics. (Representation yay)

Jao is the tech leader, rolling with the great abusehouse. (He libbed nationalism)

Willem (16 cities) might become a serious contender if we don't do anything about it.

 

[MilesBeyond]

How much of a faux pas is it to use mods? I sometimes want to join in NC but have a hard time playing anything but AdvCiv these days. Not sure if a slew of things like "Oh I put that guy there because AdvCiv only has vision-based fogbusting, not proximity-based" would be interesting or annoying and defeat the purpose.

 

[soundjata]

@lymond could rule this I guess.
We're pretty open here afaik.

 

[konata_LS]

Spoiler Borderline spoilery side note :

With strong starts, going for cavalry right away actually seems much more frequently conducive to the overall pace than cuirassiers.

You were talking about Pangaea-ish / inland sea warfare, I guess? because on continents/fractal/archipelago settings, people usually research astronomy before MT, especially when they're on the smaller continent.
Skipping cuirs is an interesting point. In some off-line emperor games I did also Cavs attack instead of cuirs, but it only happened twice, and it required a strong leader + marble + good neighbours (like Gandhi or Zara close) + large land. Although it's very rare - in most of my emperor games I throw my cuirs onto AIs' rifles or cavs onto AIs inf. So, such Cavs attack can happen on deity, but as you said, it needs a strong start.

Spoiler Borderline spoilery side note :

With better play early on AND better trades (first no one got MC for trade, then no guilds), I think that applies here as well.

"better play early on" is actually one of the biggest differences between deity players and those who play below immortal. At lower level people often neglect early phase choice, like settling the second city near a grassland sheep but forget to research AH I did it more than once. By contrast, Many deity players have a solid early build-up and strategy choice, they also spend much time to discuss & refine the early tech path, city placement, as what you and @ BiC discussed above.

Thanks for sharing your experience and insight. It'll certainly inspire many players who want to play better or move up in difficulty levels.

Update T118

Spoiler :

Oh no. Mehmed has longbows.
...
...
Joao is the tech leader, rolling with the great abusehouse. (He has libbed nationalism through education)

What about -

Spoiler :

what about sailing across the water and attack Joao? since Joao put lib before feudalism . You might extort education in the peace treaty
^just joking

I sometimes want to join in NC but have a hard time playing anything but AdvCiv these days.

As posted in the OP, "You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice." Although it would be nice to point out the Mod you use and/or give a brief description about its main features.

 

[MilesBeyond]

As posted in the OP, "You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice." Although it would be nice to point out the Mod you use and/or give a brief description about its main features.

Lol guess who's got two thumbs, checked the OP like three or four times for this information before posting, and somehow managed to gloss over that sentence every time?

 

[redmeat]

Jao is the tech leader

Nice that he didn't adopt Confucianism to steal your seafood. Would this affect your choice of target?

 

[lymond]

How much of a faux pas is it to use mods? I sometimes want to join in NC but have a hard time playing anything but AdvCiv these days. Not sure if a slew of things like "Oh I put that guy there because AdvCiv only has vision-based fogbusting, not proximity-based" would be interesting or annoying and defeat the purpose.

WB files, I believe, are provided so you can use other mods. Many here use at least BUG, BUFFY or BAT. If you are using a game-changing mod, I recommend just letting folks know and maybe a little summary of what that mod does.

Noble's Club has mainly been for fun and learning the game.

 

[redmeat]

You were talking about Pangaea-ish / inland sea warfare, I guess?

More strictly I'd say gunpowder based mounted is typically out of the question on deity from isolation. Other than that I consider them similarly valid options also in semi isolation and continents type maps - but local, usually not oversees. Whether this looks like the prudent route to take depends on a number of factors. Diplo, trades, is lib an option, can we grab enough land to go for space after, etc., and going astro before mt doesn't categorically preclude it.

Incidentally, I had a t244 space launch from isolation with Cathy relatively recently, in which I took out a backwards and also isolated American (can't remember which one) with cuirs into cavs, taking all his cities without vassaling him, with the main continent being a massive one religion love fest I didn't want to deal with. So it's situational.

Spoiler Map type and AI identity spoiler on NC303 :

My first ever straight deity win ("straight" referring to settings - I had won some demigod maps before and I had read all the spoilers before playing), was NC303 Washington. After astro bulb in isolation I took 4 AI with cavs and galleons. But that was a very unusual setup.
Even the deity setting was cheating here - thought being "unless Pacal gets a free settler, he'll peace vassal to or be devoured by Toku and the game will be a lot harder"
I think the above were the only two instances in which I ever went pure mounted oversees on deity.

"better play early on"

Spoiler On this map :

I still think it's tricky. Writing this after my first attempt it "felt" like I should have done better, but improving on it by a wide margin proved difficult in several attempts of redoing the start. In my last go (not reported) I had an 800BC academy, but only by skipping AH. And that's a tough sell to sacrifice 3 6-yield tiles. I haven't been attempting deity until a couple years ago, and one thing that hit me in the early game was that increased maintenance and tech cost made it very challenging to go BW AND AH before pottery without any real commerce source. Not necessarily gold or gems - but at least a financial lake or some squirrels. It was so notably apparent that "pottery before BW OR AH" attained almost rule-like status, and I ascribe my initial settling and tech choice here to this artifact. Of course I was and am aware that others manage just fine but the superficially subtle choice of whipping the first settler to grow on floodplains a little longer like @BornInCantaloup has done can make a big difference. That said...

When you say "deity players", I'd like to draw a distinction: there are deity players, and there those who can win some deity games. I'm in the latter category. Although I've won deity games with about 2/3 of the leaders now, all were from reasonably favorable setups. Not talking about map finder type op starts, all natural rolls, but still, not the plains hill sheep as food surrounded by forest with Isabella type thing either. And even when things appear to be going well, I lose a lot. Like, on track for a 800BC horse archer attack with Lincoln and math bulb? Scouting chariot finds Willem has longbows at 1000BC. Screw that. Think my Wang elepult is going well 500BC attacking 11 city Kublai who has surrounded us? He sends his 36 unit stack with phants, catas, keshiks and everything else straight past my 12 unit "army" to my capital. I'm nowhere near winning the type of "hard maps" that are floating around on here and elsewhere.

That said, I don't necessarily aspire to that either. What I find interesting about deity play is that you no longer get away with a major weakness on most maps, which arguably you may all the way up to immortal. Mistakes yes, but not categorical weakness. Attempting deity helped me to crystallize those weaknesses by slapping them in my face.

 

[soundjata]

Nice that he didn't adopt Confucianism to steal your seafood. Would this affect your choice of target?

Spoiler :

Nah it would make me accept losing 2 seafood as a significant but not game breaking nuisance.
For now I aspire to join the Hindu club.
Thinking Organized Religion for a few turns to avoid wasting resources on monasteries.

Edit: I can use Confucianism to get 3 religions in major cities for a relaxed Free Religion eventually.

Also had Jao adopted confucianism, he would risk being in bad terms with Boudica, which would be a danger for him

 

[redmeat]

Spoiler :

Nah it would make me accept losing 2 seafood as a significant but not game breaking nuisance.
For now I aspire to join the Hindu club.
Thinking Organized Religion for a few turns to avoid wasting resources on monasteries.

Edit: I can use Confucianism to get 3 religions in major cities for a relaxed Free Religion eventually.

Spoiler :

revolt before GA for spread or run organized in GA? That's one of those situations where MoM is really convenient if not spiritual. Can run 5 turns OR and have 7 of paci left.

 

[soundjata]

Spoiler :

revolt before GA for spread or run organized in GA? That's one of those situations where MoM is really convenient if not spiritual. Can run 5 turns OR and have 7 of paci left.

Spoiler :

Good question!
GA with Pacifism + Parthenon will be a killer. But the window will be just 7 turns indeed. (And I want to profit from big cities, including Edirne)
So probably suck up the anarchy while switching into Bureau+OR. I need to do that before I capture Edirne (11 cities cap on double revolt in 1 turn), and I need to research monotheism right away.
Micro wise, I can relax a little bit the GP generation in Yaroslav. (golden age not urgent)

 

[redmeat]

Spoiler :

Good question!
GA with Pacifism + Parthenon will be a killer. But the window will be just 7 turns indeed. (And I want to profit from big cities, including Edirne)
So probably suck up the anarchy while switching into Bureau+OR. I need to do that before I capture Edirne (11 cities cap on double revolt in 1 turn), and I need to research monotheism right away.
Micro wise, I can relax a little bit the GP generation in Yaroslav. (golden age not urgent)

Spoiler :

Pretty sure the cap is up to and including 12, more costly at 13

 

[redmeat]

You were talking about Pangaea-ish / inland sea warfare, I guess? because on continents/fractal/archipelago settings, people usually research astronomy before MT, especially when they're on the smaller continent.
Skipping cuirs is an interesting point. In some off-line emperor games I did also Cavs attack instead of cuirs, but it only happened twice, and it required a strong leader + marble + good neighbours (like Gandhi or Zara close) + large land. Although it's very rare - in most of my emperor games I throw my cuirs onto AIs' rifles or cavs onto AIs inf. So, such Cavs attack can happen on deity, but as you said, it needs a strong start.


"better play early on" is actually one of the biggest differences between deity players and those who play below immortal. At lower level people often neglect early phase choice, like settling the second city near a grassland sheep but forget to research AH I did it more than once. By contrast, Many deity players have a solid early build-up and strategy choice, they also spend much time to discuss & refine the early tech path, city placement, as what you and @ BiC discussed above.

Thanks for sharing your experience and insight. It'll certainly inspire many players who want to play better or move up in difficulty levels.


What about -

Spoiler :

what about sailing across the water and attack Joao? since Joao put lib before feudalism . You might extort education in the peace treaty
^just joking

As posted in the OP, "You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice." Although it would be nice to point out the Mod you use and/or give a brief description about its main features.

I hope you don't mind a more personal observation, it's in any case meant in the most constructive way possible: It may sound silly or trivial because often conflated colloquially, but there is a difference between memory/knowledge and attention. You obviously have acquired a quite broad and rich knowledge base about this came, so when you say

settling the second city near a grassland sheep but forget to research AH

you don't forget about it. You just don't pay attention to it. Appreciating the difference might help to streamline certain aspects that go wrong unnecessarily. "Unnecessary" in this case meaning that you could give yourself all the advice you need. Paying attention to where attention is needed is a big part of improving, and in your case, it appears to me, it's, well, attention

 

[MilesBeyond]

Pretty out of practice, noticing some major mistakes already.

Playing with AdvCiv, differences worth noting for now:

CRE gives +1 culture per turn, but 10 free culture upon city founding (immediate border pop). IMP is unchanged.
Whips give 24 hammers per pop rather than 30; whip overflow is less generous - i.e. Slavery is overall a fair bit weaker, albeit still very strong.
Barbarians spawn in lower numbers at first and will reach their zenith later, probably in about 25-30 turns or so.
Fogbusting depends on vision alone; proximity will not help you.
Barb Galleys can occasionally spawn with land units aboard, which they will deposit to cause mayhem.
AI is much more intelligent overall but specifically researches more purposefully. Case in point: It's turn 50 and no religion has been founded yet.

Playing on Prince; I find AdvCiv Prince to be roughly comparable to vanilla Emperor or so; YMMV.

T50:

Spoiler :

SIP

Agriculture -> BW -> AH -> Pottery -> Writing

The RNG gods tragically smote our Scout early on; sniped by a Lion despite being in a Forest with Woodsman. RIP in peace. Means we have much less information about our area than I'd like.

Really not sure what to research. AdvCiv changes AI research priorities considerably; the old "Aesthetics for tradebait" no longer works as effectively. Moreover, as you can see, research costs between eras are higher. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a lot I need from the remaining Ancient techs right at this moment. Horseback Riding to rush Suleiman, maybe? Alpha is also a more viable self-tech than in vanilla (AI beelines it less and is cagier about trading it).

Axeman is in St. Petersberg because he just finished building; I have no idea why that Warrior is still in Moscow. Oversight on my part I guess.

Not sure if connecting Copper this early was a mistake; maybe should have gotten more fogbusters, first.

North looks worse than it is because, as mentioned, Barb hit peak intensity later in AdvCiv. That combined with Prince difficulty gives me a little more room to breathe than you'd think (apologies for any blood pressure spikes the above screenshot gave Deity players). Nonetheless, I think it's safe to say I've fumbled that. That combined with useless Warrior taking up space in Moscow teaches me I really need to pay more attention to unit deployment. I'm also struggling to adjust time-wise: I've played a lot of Epic/Marathon lately and it's majorly skewed my ability to think in turns. I'm used to being able to do a lot more scouting even before the first Worker goes down, let alone Settlers come out. Come to think of it, been a while since I played someone IMP, too. That's not helping my figuring. Oh well, probably better for my game to play on Normal anyway.

I also think Novgorod might have been a mistake; seems like a site that would be better for backfilling; up north with the Flood Plains might have been a better third city spot.

In retrospect, Novgorod doesn't need to be getting out a third Worker right now, and there may have been better use for Worker turns than that St. Petersberg Cottage.

Playing Russia always makes me a little wistful for release and the "18 Strength Cossacks coming on Military Tradition without needing Rifling" days. Ahhhh...

 

[redmeat]

AI is much more intelligent overall but specifically researches more purposefully. Case in point: It's turn 50 and no religion has been founded yet.

Oracle tends to go much later then? Might change from a "never build" to a "must build" if I could consistently go there after writing and sidestep the prophet points

 

[MilesBeyond]

Oracle tends to go much later then? Might change from a "never build" to a "must build" if I could consistently go there after writing and sidestep the prophet points

That's a good point, yes. Oracle tends to go later. Most early wonders do, in fact; even AIs who start with Mysticism will hold off on Stonehenge for a while and instead pursue more needful things. Conversely, previously "safe" wonders like Great Library are now a lot more competitive.
,
But yes, that's an interesting wrinkle I hadn't considered. Oracle seems much more competitive now, especially considering the increase in tech costs between eras (in this case, all the entry Classical techs are ~75 beakers more than in vanilla). Too late to take that route now but good to keep in mind for the future.

 

[konata_LS]

Spoiler On this map :

In my last go (not reported) I had an 800BC academy, but only by skipping AH. And that's a tough sell to sacrifice 3 6-yield tiles. I haven't been attempting deity until a couple years ago, and one thing that hit me in the early game was that increased maintenance and tech cost made it very challenging to go BW AND AH before pottery without any real commerce source. Not necessarily gold or gems - but at least a financial lake or some squirrels. It was so notably apparent that "pottery before BW OR AH" attained almost rule-like status, and I ascribe my initial settling and tech choice here to this artifact.

Yes, different early tech paths lead to different pros & cons. That's one of @ AcaMetis' successes, because NC maps offer several options thus create space for discussions, comparison between options, and playing skill improvements. Pottery before BW generates better , but has an informational downside: it cannot inform you about the Copper location, which may change your decision about the city placement. Same for AH.

A notable example is NC 281, stimulating three pages of lively debates about "BW first or AH first". Some people emphasised on early chopping and expansion (surrounded by IMP neighbours, no pig or sheep nearby), others were willing to pay the to know where to find horse. The specific part of that NC is its leader was Sitting Bull whose UUs required no copper (yes, I need to remember that so I won't axe rush SB anymore), copper location became insignificant. But what if the leader was Gilgamesh? Sumerian starting techs are only one step from AH, but his 6 vultures are good as well. It'd be even harder to choose between the information provided by BW or by AH.

you don't forget about it. You just don't pay attention to it. Appreciating the difference might help to streamline certain aspects that go wrong unnecessarily. "Unnecessary" in this case meaning that you could give yourself all the advice you need. Paying attention to where attention is needed is a big part of improving, and in your case, it appears to me, it's, well, attention

That's true. "forget that tanks need oil" is truly forgetting some knowledge; "forget to research AH" is lack of attention. What frequently happens in my games is I auto-pilot dozens of turns, save, and exit to desktop; but several days later when looking at my screenshots I immediately realise my mistakes . More often than not I keep noticing my mistakes while posting my write-ups in NC threads. Such as in the SB map mentioned above, I ignored a double fish city spot the whole game. so embarrassing .

 

[redmeat]

More often than not I keep noticing my mistakes while posting my write-ups in NC threads

That's kind of what I meant. If you did your writeup before you play, you'd be playing immortal and up.

ignored a double fish city spot the whole game

Spoiler Mao: 'Hold my beer' :

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out

 

[Fish Man]

Been a while since I posted here. Took a shot at deity since this start looked appealing (thanks for that, btw; in the future if possible, I'd love to see more of this and less of single dry rice or plains cow with 2 river tiles semi-iso with Shaka type stuff xD).

By the way, full disclosure, ever since about 2-3 years ago, I've been playing with not only major reload-spamming but also mine control (I discovered you could alter the RNG to a degree by working or not working mines, each of which "used up" one RNG value and caused the game to essentially generate a new one by using that seed to roll for a resource pop - this is not 100% because no matter how many mines you have, sometimes combat odds are too bad to do anything, and sometimes you can't prevent meatheads like Shaka or Monte or chads like Hannibal/Justinian from clicking on rifling). What I did/am doing is probably not the most reliable result normally, especially a rush this late which runs the risk of slamming into longbows.

Deity NHNE t164 1040AD -

Spoiler :

I horse archer rushed Willem, which proved to be wise. Long-term he looked big and scary but by 350BC he was teching PAPER before metal casting or feudalism and defending his holy city with ONE archer (yes, one), and his capital and other cities with not much more. Classic Willem syndrome...anyways, his big empire was a massive drain on my economy at first but spamming courthouses helped fixed this. I libbed MT and quickly capped Suleiman, who gave me RP (that he got from Pericles, of all people!), as well as printing press and scimeth, and me getting first to communism myself (and building Kremlin in Moscow, as is fitting).

After shipping 50 cuirs to Boudica (who capped poor Joao), I'm going to 3 turn rifling and annihilate her with cossacks while she leisurely makes her way to physics. She bribed Hannibal on me, who is probably going to attack me with...numidian cavalry? Because he went democracy before guilds, alright (I didn't even try for this outcome, he really really wanted emancipation, I guess!).

In keeping with my playstyle, I'll probably stop after Boudica and do my sub-t250 science victory thing on this map, which should be more than doable given my massive territory and over 1000 beakers/turn at this point.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

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Spoiler :

Spoiler :

One more random thing...I changed Joao's early/middle/late diplo and city music to the soundtrack of a game made by a Portuguese developer for a meme a year ago, but it fit so well that I didn't even change it back, leading to some very nice diplo ambiance this game! Check it out -
Late

Middle

Early

.