Nobles Club CLIII - Lincoln of America

[elitetroops]

@GC:

Spoiler :

Regarding roads, connecting cities is important, yes. Ideally you have the road in place before settling to get immediate trade routes, though this is not always possible.

I was talking about the very first things you do with your worker. A road is not required to get the full benefit from working the tile. The tile yield is the same with or without road. A road is only required to give you access to the resource for happiness or health bonus. When your cities are small in the early game, that bonus is not needed, hence connecting resources with roads is not a high priority at that time. Your aim should be that when your city grows a pop, it has a good improved tile ready to work for the new citizen. To achieve this you usually don't have time to build roads until you have laid down a few other improvements.

Also note that you get the resource bonus only once, so on this map for example connecting both gems with roads is a waste until you reach a point in the game where you could benefit from trading the second gems to someone else.

 

[Ironlungs76]

Played up to T100 IMM, so far so very good!

Spoiler :

Met GK early (turn 5-6). He settled 7 cities in quick succession and I HA rushed him, wiping him out by 400BC.

Tech path Mining - BW - Pottery - Writing - AH - HBR - Hunting - Archery - Currency. Bulbed Maths with a fast Philo GS for full HA chops.

Now considering taking the fight to Sitting Bull or Mehmed, as given the commerce rich start I seem to be quite a distance ahead in tech and with 15 HA's sitting around with nothing to do...

Will probably attack SB and bribe Mehmed in once I've reached Currency.

Nice map so far

 

[Gumbolt]

Seems to of taken forever to complete this. Distracted hugely by SGOTM stuff. The large amount of land really makes this a harder fight.

1630ad Domination win. Immortal. 210659 score.

Spoiler :

Teched up to lib and took MT.

My main issue was most of the Ai left had 14 or so cities.

Ottoman fell first with Cuirs. He eventually vasselled to English who he had initially been at war with. The English had good numbers and with CG2-3 LB were a pain.

After a good fight I pretty much had to wipe out Ottoman and reduce English to 8-9 cities before he Cap'd. I moved onto Sb who again had CG 2-3 LB but fell as his troops had less knights.

Afterall of this I was ready to move onto French who by now had Cuirs, cannons and frigates. ( Not helped by defensive pact French had with Sumerians. I had not noticed.) I managed to land my stack of 20-30 units using galleys. I eventually landed the rest of my force with galleons avoiding all the French Frigates. Took 6-7 of French cities and a ceasefire before the French cap'd.

In mean time I had to use a force of 15-16 cuirs to track a fllet Sumerians sent all way to SB borders before sending it all the way back to Mongols land to land. I didn't know the Ai could change attack locations based on where I moved my cuirs.

In any case he landed them and all 20-25 units died a healthy death. Mace/vultures/1-2 Pikes and pults/trebs. By this time I had frigates too and this is probably why he landed his forces before mine and French Frigates took out his fleet. (Took out the empty ships anyway.)

By this time I had about 90 cuirs. Of which I used about 40-50 on taking down 5-6 Sumerians cities. At which point he capitulated. Game over with 15 Greeks cities left. Greeks had rifles.

I ended game with 55-60 or so cities.

 

[Gator Country]

@elitetroops

Finally the light bulb comes on. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[dalamb]

@Gator Country:

Spoiler :

I don't have advice about the specific questions you asked, but do have one comment: you mentioned rushing Ghengis, but "rush" means "rush". IMHO it's getting a little late if you still want to do an axe rush you might want to get started building axemen soon. As culture starts to build up in his cities, you get to the point where you really need catapults (Construction) before you can attack him. Ironlung's HA attack would work without catapults; that approach is best with some Flanking-promoted HAs to attack first, hopefully surviving, followed by Combat-promoted ones. Remember not to promote until you see whether you need another flanker or another combat; there's no need to commit in advance to what proportion of each you need.

With Lincoln being PHI I'd have been inclined to use a 2nd GS for Philosophy and Oracle something else like CoL, Metal Casting, or maybe even HBR if you were going for an HA attack.

 

[Gator Country]

I'd like to ask a rather general question WRT city placement - when considering locations early in the game, which should take priority, good food or a strategic resource? Example - after scouting the map a bit, I find one location where I could claim two or three really strong food resources, and another location where I could claim, say, copper, but with only fair food to start, but could be made strong with farms after CS. Which site would you take first?

@dalamb

Spoiler :

Yeah, I think I goofed around too long and my window of opportunity to rush GK has closed. So far he's actually been pretty quiet, only demanding one cheap religious tech (Med, IIRC) as tribute. I gave it to him. I expect he'll become a real pain as the game progresses, though, and I'm just going to have to wait until I build a proper conquering army with siege weapons to deal with him. In the meantime I'll build plenty of archers to defend my cities, and pick one location to plop down a barracks.

WRT the Oracle, I'll keep that in mind. My natural inclination was to grab the available tech that cost the most beakers.

 

[elitetroops]

@GC: The question is, what do you need at that point of the game. On the higher levels when barbs can be a real problem, then sometimes you have to go for the strategic resource first just to stay alive. On noble this is not a problem, so then the question is, do you need the strategic resource right now for offense? If you are not planning to rush someone immediately, and by immediately I mean immediately, then the strategic resource can wait. Of course, other things have to be taken into consideration as well. Is it your only available strategic resource and there is a big risk that your neighbor steals the spot very soon, then maybe grab it earlier.

Usually there is no hurry to hook up copper. It's actually often even better to not hook up it even if you could, assuming you don't need axes for barb defense, which you don't need on lower levels. Without copper you can keep building cheaper warriors for military police in your cities, instead of wasting the extra hammers on axes. The military police (that one unit you need in your cities to prevent unhappiness for "we fare for our safety" when they grow past a certain point) can be any land unit, so the more you can use cheap warriors for this purpose, the better. Delaying hooking up copper of course requires that you keep an eye on your neighbours to see if you are in any danger of getting attacked. If you are using BUG mod, then a red fist will pop up next to their names on the scoreboard when they are planning to attack someone. If a neighbour that you aren't on good terms with shows this fist, then it could be a good idea to prepare at least som defenses in the border cities.