Nobles' Club CI: Pacal II of the Mayans

[dalamb]

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 Pacal II of the Mayans, whom we last played in NC XXVI. The Mayans start with Mysticism and Mining.

• Traits: Pacal is Expansive and Financial. EXP means +2 , allowing bigger cities sooner if you can find happiness resources (or build Ball Courts!). It also gives faster granaries, harbours, and workers. FIN gives +1 on tiles that already have at least 2.
• The UU: The Holkan, a Spearman that needs no resources to build, and gets immunity to first strikes. A Holkan rush on a neighbour who doesn't have axemen yet is weaker than an axe rush but might be feasible under some circumstances; you can get the rush going faster since you don't need to find and hook up copper.
  
  
  
  
• The UB: The Ball Court, a Colliseum with +3 instead of +1. Along with Pacal's +2 from EXPansive, it can help your cities grow more in the early game (relatively early, given that you need to research Construction first).
  
  

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Fractal, chosen AI, default parameters.

Spoiler edits :

Swapped leaders around to get the ones I wanted as neighbours. Moved us 5W1S to the gold to leverage FIN. Arranged for our UU to be more useful.

Spoiler :

Nobody nearby has copper, so the Holkan has an advantage.

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:

There are no hard and fast rules here: fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do suggest that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards. You can post as often as you like; here's one suggestion:

• 4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
• 1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, where you're thinking of putting cities, etc)
• 500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
• 1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didn't, met other
• continent if applicable, etc)
• 1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
• End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)

This is just a guideline. If you're trying to improve your game, then posting more frequent updates, in as much detail as you can manage, is the best way to get suggestions from other players. If you come to what seems like a major decision and you want some advice, post an update, regardless of what game-year it is.

We also welcome players to ask for specific game advice, as we have a number or stronger players who lurk and help out with solid tips, and of course, we help each other. Replies to specific questions should also be in spoilers, with a simple "@" in front of the person the answer is directed towards.

Special Thanks go to Bleys and TMIT, who really made this series a great one, r_rolo1, mapmaker extraordinaire, for his maps in the early days of the series, and all of you for playing.

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 101 Pacal 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 Noble. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

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.

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.

Edit: I goofed with the original save and inserted a scout instead of a warrior. That set of save files is in the "NC 101 Pacal Scout.zip" file in case anyone wants to play what the first few players got. The corrected one is "NC 101 Pacal" as usual.

 

[dalamb]

Reserved.

 

[vranasm]

manipulated or roll?

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Pacal doesn't start with hunting. Why the scout?

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Yes why do we have a scout, and this start is a bit to easy.

 

[i_imperator]

After that awful justinian start, im very happy to see this! double gold, irrigated corn and hills cow!!!! Almost seems to good to be true!

I may try this on immortal due to this start, but if things go bad i will do a standard run on emperor. Sigining in!

The Settling position looks very intresting here by the way, we could move 1E to gain all of the resources,eccept the corn and clams but we loose direct access to the river. SIP dosent look bad either.

 

[The_Daddy]

First time playing a NC game, i settled in place currently playing through on noble normal.

 

[vranasm]

The Settling position looks very intresting here by the way, we could move 1E to gain all of the resources,

why would you do such horrible decision moving from strongest food resource towards resource you won't improve before t100 AND leaving 12T worker for 16T worker?

if you're really hot about those spices just make clams+spices city

 

[lymond]

Pacal is my favorite...too bad that map has been jimmied

That Justy map indeed sucked large donkey pellets, but this may be over-compensating a bit


My guess is that, when jimmy-ing the map, dalamb deleted the original settler and warrior, but mistakenly put a scout back in position. Also, on fractal maps you would not have peaks in the BFC

 

[lymond]

Yep...V is right, i, corn is the best resource visible so it would be brain dead to move away from it.

 

[Jex]

Yum, that start looks delicious. I see no compelling reason not to SIP, and many compelling reasons to do so.

 

[dalamb]

If we start with hunting and get a scout, I probably messed up the Emperor and above saves by adding hunting to us as well as the AI. If so, sorry, and I'll fix it ASAP. The critical AI tech is Archery at Monarch so you might consider taking the Monarch save and playing at your usual level; the AI would lack a couple of techs but at least would be better defended.

I've been meaning for a couple of years to completely automate the multi-savefile process so there's no room for human error, but that project keeps simmering on the back burner, so to speak.

I hope to have things checked out within an hour or so, but have been having intermittent internet problems.

Edit: Lymond was right. I didn't mess up the techs. I often move the initial warrior/scout to give better visibility, and this time inserted a scout instead of a warrior. Fix is up, with the original bad "scout" .zip file renamed so somebody can choose to play what the first few of y'all played if they so choose.

 

[The_Daddy]

I played almost through on noble, could easily win a domination game, but might restart at a higher difficulty for the first time.

 

[Golden Skull]

I was just checking out the saves and thinking of starting a game, but why no save on Prince level? That's where I am, working on taking my game above Noble, but I'm not sure I'm ready for Monarch yet.

 

[klonoklown]

@ Golden_Skull -Choose custom scenario when you bring up Civ, there you will have difficulty option in the upper right hand side of the screen.

 

[Golden Skull]

Thanks! Now I realize that those saves are for the purpose of assigning techs to the AI (and maybe for other reasons that I don't know about).

 

[spaced]

Hey all! I've been lurking for a bit, trying to improve my game, but I figured it was time for me to jump into one of these. I've had Civ IV for many years, but I hadn't played it much until a few months ago when I got bored and dug it out of the closet.

I've been playing on Noble for several games now and I haven't had any huge problems, but I always have a nagging feeling I could be doing things much better/faster, so doing one of these games and seeking some advice seems like the logical thing to do. I'll post my screenshots/saves here, and if anyone wants to give me some pointers, I'd appreciate it.

Right now I'm at 725 BC (normal speed, Noble). This is my first time playing Pacal, but I like the trait combo (who doesn't like financial?). I'll put everything else in spoiler tags, since I gather that's the way people do things here.

Spoiler :

SIP seemed like the logical choice, as others have mentioned. Went straight to building a worker and researched ag to get that wet corn ASAP. After that, I went for BW for chopping/whipping purposes. Alas, no copper around.

Met Ramesses to the N, built a warrior after that to explore things a bit faster and went to hook up the gold. I put some hammers into a barracks while waiting to get to size 3, then went worker -> settler. Tech-wise, I went for AH to hook up the pig and see if there were any horses around.

What do you know, the location to the East that I was already eyeing for my second city happens to have some horses, so settling by that lake with cow and another wet corn (!) seems like it will be a no-brainer. Went wheel -> pottery to take advantage of (a) faster granaries and (b) financial trait. More early cottages and faster pop growth seems like a recipe for success.

As you'll see from the screens, I settled 1 NE of that lake. I miss out on the clam but grab the gems, which seems like more than a good deal to me. Tech-wise, after pottery I have several options. Head towards HBR for an eventual HA rush? Get IW for expansion into the jungle (that area with the four dyes, wet corn, and gems seems pretty tasty)? Try for an early religion? (without Mysticism? yeah right)

Spoiler :

I ended up going for IW to immediately settle the dye/gems area to the N/NW for my third city (which is confusingly named Chichen Itza - what, I don't get 25% defense in all my cities now?). 1W of the gems seems ideal. I have to wait for a border pop to get the corn, but I get all 4 dyes plus the spices within my BFC. (Was this a great starting location or what?) Anyway, what I didn't think of before I settled that location is that there aren't really any forests around to chop out that monument, so it takes a while to get this city up and running, but at least I can get the gems going right away. Also, in a pleasant surprise, there's Iron right by my first city.

I go for hunting -> archery -> HBR since I've hooked up the horses and I figure it's time to build an army. I've since met Mansa and Izzy, but Ram seems like the logical choice for a sacrifice on my Mayan altar since I've already blocked him in (more or less) and he's much, much closer. Now I just need to scout him out, so I go for writing to get open borders with him.

Turns out that he's even more of an ideal victim than I had thought. Thebes is a monster city with two clams, a dry rice, pig, and ivory, and on the coast too (all the better given my financial trait)! But wait, there's more: he's only got two archers defending, plus another scouting my territory, and his second city just has a warrior guarding it. He's got iron, but he built a cottage on it, so he prob doesn't have IW. He'll be easy pickings as long as I don't give him the time to make use of his resources.

I build up my army, consisting almost entirely of HAs. In the meantime, I can go for either alphabet or mathematics. Normally, I'd do alphabet -> currency, but given how much chopping I'll be doing while building my army, plus all those dyes and spices around, I do math -> calendar instead.

Spoiler :

I build up a raiding party of six HAs, plus a couple Holkans I had built earlier in case he had horses, and leave behind several more HAs and other assorted troops to guard in case any barbs come calling. I give half of the HAs two combat promotions, and the other half two flanking promotions, using the flankers to soften things up for the ones with higher strength. I take Thebes in one go, losing 3 HAs in the process (edit: he whipped out a third archer when I declared on him), but stealing a worker. His second city to the south, with its lonely warrior, doesn't put up any fight and I take it with a single Holkan straggler with a CR promotion. I raze the city since it's only size 2 and he settled directly on the sugar, which doesn't seem like an ideal location.

Right about the same time I declared on Ram, I settled my 4th city to the SW, between the wheat and cow, and south of the marble. With mostly desert around, it doesn't have much potential besides hooking up the aforementioned resources, but my planned city directly to the E of Mutal (between the sheep, gold, and iron) ended up having a barb city pop up nearby, so I'll have to take care of that later. Maybe I should have done some fog busting?

Anyway, that's how things stand at 725 BC. Obviously, don't look at the screens if you want to avoid spoilers.

I'm not sure how you put the images within spoiler tags like I've seen others do, but I suppose the thumbs are small enough not to constitute spoilers; I guess I need to use an image host instead of attachments to hide them in the tags. Sorry the screens aren't really high-res - my comp is pretty old (one reason I'm not playing Civ 5).

For those interested, I'm also attaching my most current save (it's BUG/BAT mods).

I'd appreciate any comments from more experienced players (or anyone, for that matter).

 

[The Oz-Man]

To 1310/Rifling:

Spoiler :

Screw holkan rushes--gold plus Financial plus land plus marble within shouting distance equals REX REX REX. With early IW I was much more willing to settle the jungle than the AI, who seemed to expand slowly for some reason.

Lib'd MT in 1000 AD (surprise!) and went after Christian heretic Ramesses, taking his continental holdings and capping him since I didn't want to follow him to his little island offshore. Mansa peacevassaled to Izzy, but he only got five cities. Now he has zero cities.

Izzy's got a lot of land but is crazy behind and has only a fraction of my power--it's going to be a long war, but I'll just tell my citizens to shut up and play Mayan Ball if they're not happy. Taking her out won't quite cinch Domination, so I'll probably make a run at Brennus (who built the AP on his stupid little island). But yeah, game is won, all over but the shoosting.

Oh, and I settled the 5E1N site where our capital supposedly was before. It's a really great site--lots of food and some production. It ended up being my HE city despite being a little far removed from the front. But I've got enough strong production cities that are closer that it can just build ships in preparation for Operation Intercontinental Smackdown later on.

 

[dalamb]

@spaced: To include images directly you need to find a site that hosts photographs (such as photobucket.com, but there are plenty of others), upload the image there, and create a

tag to insert in your document. On Photobucket you can hover over your image thumbnail and it will offer you several choices of URL format, including with IMG tags, which you click on (it's automatically copied to the clipboard) then paste into your message.

 

[MrKlew]

Doubt I'll play this one, I'm currently involved in an offline game, but was wondering about the map. What does everyone think of settling 1N? You lose the gold but get the pigs and corn in the first ring for quicker expansion. A second city where the native village is could pick up the other gold along with the clams and spices.