Nobles' Club 395: Catherine of Russia

[sampsa]

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).

WTH

At least you are honest about it!

 

[Fippy]

Great ambience music

 

[Fish Man]

WTH

At least you are honest about it!

It wouldn’t feel right not to be! Especially in the case of misleading newbies by casually suggesting that they should go for strats which rely on RNG cheese to be in any way reliable. I admit the sensible thing here would honestly be cuir/cannons attack or, if you rush, early rushing

Spoiler :

Sillyman with elephants

.

It takes a special type of madness and endurance to play this way. Some of my finished space games have over 300 sessions. Though, there is an added dimension of depth in terms of worker micro and combat strategy with using this. For instance, mines, even plains mines, gain much greater importance not because of hammers but because they offer the tools to warp reality itself, which is on par broken with whipping from a wet corn and granary. Also when fighting battles, you can advance the combat RNG one round by pillaging an improvement which can give gold (basically giving you a one time first strike) so putting as many units on tiles you can pillage as possible like it’s civ5 also becomes a viable strat. I may or may not be completely crazy…

 

[sampsa]

Well you are completely crazy. A mixture of blatant cheating and actual interest on optimal strategy is hard to understand.

 

[redmeat]

becomes a viable strat

Spoiler Also a viable strat for the play style :

It drops the endurance requirement

 

[soundjata]

Update T149

Spoiler :

This is the end of our second golden age, which we used to farm 3 great merchants and research Military tradition.
Self researched Guild and Nationalism. Traded for Music and Gunpowder.
Academy in the cap due to lack of better use of GS#3.

When the 3rd great merchant is born, we can switch into nasty civics:
Rep + Bureau + Caste + Merc + Pacifism >> Police state + Vassalage + Slavery + ... + Theocracy.

We are planning to switch from #1 in and ; into #1 in soldiers as fast as possible

Nobody has got Replaceable Parts so there is a window until Riflemen:

 

[CGQ]

First time playing in months!

Spoiler One of my best Immortal games! :

Won domination at 1515 AD!

Started by SIP, went AGRI>BW>TW>Pottery>Writing>AH>HR>Archery for my opening. I went HR since AH revealed horses. Decided to do a HR and around 700 BC I had an army of about 10 HA's and half of them had combat 1 since I built barracks in two of the cities. The elephants helped me raise the happy cap for whipping out extra units and despite Sulie having metal units I got some very lucky rolls and won a lot of <20% odd battles, allowing me to take 6 out of 7 of his cities. Sued for peace and got Math/Monarchy and after 10 turns and capturing a barb city, I finished him off. I missed out on free GA since Joao or Boudica I forgot which one beat me to music, so I did the usual bulb Phil, went CS, Paper, Had over 450 BPT by 300 AD so I was able to get Nationalism in 6-7 turns and used money from trading old techs and got essential techs such as Compass.

I had to switch to Caste/Pacifism without GA but used 2nd scientist to start GA, got two scientists, partially bulbed EDU and the other Lib for MT around 560 AD.
Switched back to slavery and after gunpowder, I whipped up a nice army of 45 Cuirs, some of which I upgraded from HA's including a combat IV one thanks to good rolls haha.

Sliced through his pikes and longbows like a hot knife through cheese. Wiped him out along with his 13 cities by 1060 AD.

Not long after, my army of over 60+ Cuirs effortlessly ate Pericles and my empire swallowed him whole, leaving no trace behind by the 1300 ADs. Interestingly, as I was about to take his last city, Boudica decided to join in and DOW'ed on him, but I managed to take his city anyways. She and Hanni had some beef and she's managed to take two of his cities earlier in the game. About a turn after I wiped Pericles off the face of the Earth, I DOWe'd on her. Her fairly large stack featuring heavily promoted grenadiers, longbows, maces and elephants all with either city raider promotions, stood no chance against my heavily promoted cuirs:

Despite my initial advantage, I had to heal my units for a couple turns and limp towards rifling. Unlike my previous foes, Boudica put up much more of a fight and felt like the final boss fight of this game, even managing to take back some of the cities I would capture. Getting Cossacks sooner would've helped but regardless, once rifling came in, things would finally change...except they didn't. I had very little gold to upgrade units, that is until..
Thanks to my captured marble, I managed to build the Taj Mahal in my capital, since no one else bothered to build it. Best part was...I captured the MoM from Pericles! Unfortunately I wasn't able to generate a GM from the extra long GA, just a prophet and scientist, so I used them to extend it and enjoy a 24 turn GA. I went from 17 Gold per turn to 370+ and was able to upgrade the rest of my Cuirs to Cossacks! Oh how the turns have tabled!
The tides turn and I take back all her captured cities. I capture some of her other cities and take her capital. She finally surrenders. I run culture and settle about 3 more cities and finally win the game!

I think I definitely could've won a bit sooner if I either settled the extra cities sooner or just went for Hannibal first since he was closer. It was a pain having to march my reinforcements across his civ and more annoying having to wait 8+ turns for Cuirs from the other side of the whole world to get there. I should've just built a Galley to port them to Portugal lol. Despite these mistakes I feel a lot less rusty on this game and I think I can finally move to Deity one of these days