Nobles' Club CV: Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire

[The Oz-Man]

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 Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire, whom we last played in NC XL; we last played the Ottomans under Suleiman in NC LXX. The Ottomans start with Agriculture and The Wheel, so early Pottery is viable (and may be more so given our fearless leader).

• Traits: Mehmed is Expansive and Organized. Expansive gives us +2 health per city, double production on Granaries and Harbors, and--perhaps most importantly in the early game--25% faster Worker production. Keep in mind that the Worker production discount only applies to hammers, not food. Organized cuts civic upkeep costs in half and gives us half-priced Lighthouses, Factories, and Courthouses.
• The UB: The Hammam, an Aqueduct with +2 Happiness. More smiley faces is never a bad thing, particularly if good resources aren't available.
  
  
  
  
• The UU: The Janissary, a Musketman with a 25% bonus against melee, archery, and mounted units. A Gunpowder beeline means you could get to see these guys in their element, and they rule the field before other gunpowder units arrive.
  
  
  
  

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Archipelago, Low Sea Level, Archipelago script. This makes for a more navigable watery start--you can shuttle things around on Galleys if you want, but land masses are generally larger.

Spoiler edits :

Checked to make sure no one was isolated and also made sure we had at least one early strategic resource--it didn't matter which. Changed a floodplain to corn to take advantage of Agriculture. Redirected a river as cleanly as possible. Added a land bridge here and there to help AIs with marginal starts stay competitive with people on larger landmasses--and to give us access to the south.

Finally, a cut and paste of our standard doctrine:

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 105 Mehmed 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.

 

[The Oz-Man]

Reserved for results. Thanks to dalamb for letting me try my hand at this. I'm a bit early putting things up, but I'm going to be gone for much of the day tomorrow and wanted to make sure things got rolling.

Results:

Spoiler :

Pengu - 1901 Conquest, Emperor

The Oz-Man - 1828 Diplomatic, Monarch

 

[Marvinlegend]

And thus the countdown for the final three maps of the cycle began and I seem the first to download, maybe because it's not even yet day here.

Thank you for the map, will try to play it today!

 

[vranasm]

hmm mehmed... hmm good food... hmm good hills... one could ask what can go wrong?

with so much good there is always question if you find good city 2

seems like clear case for SIP, maybe tech AH->mining and then let's see what happens

 

[The Oz-Man]

To 1565 AD, Monarch, no huts/events, I really should be getting to bed but I don't know when else I'll be able to play this weekend:

Spoiler :

Gandhi and Monty are vassals. Ottomans are the most advanced people in the world, with Rifles and Cavalry loaded onto a massive fleet of Galleons. Tech has slowed down post-Scientific Method (losing the Great Library sucks, and I did a lot of bulbing rather than settling), but the lead is still significant and the horde is still huge. The plan is to tech Communism before declaring on Augustus and his peacevassal Mansa (who only got one city--not what I thought was going to happen!), wiping Mansa off the map, and taking Rome and the nice wonders therein.

Early strategy was Maths and Calendar for happiness (Hammams saved my bacon), grabbing wonders where I could (MoM, Great Library, and of course the Great Lighthouse), and cutting Gandhi off from the nice jungle land. Got Monty's religion (Hinduism) and converted, much to the chagrin of Gandhi. The map can be circumnavigated pre-Optics, and I got the bonus when Hannibal found me and traded a map off to me.

My favorite part of the map was that, thanks to everyone's different tech priorities, only two people on the map ever shared religions: Monty and I. Augustus, Gandhi, Mansa, Chuck, and Hannibal all founded their own religions (Judaism, Taoism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism, respectively). The AP is Jewish and I've got one Jewish city, which is why Rome is looking juicy. I'm thinking after war with Rome I'll shoot for a UN victory so I don't have to shuttle people around anymore.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm a bit early putting things up, but I'm going to be gone for much of the day tomorrow and wanted to make sure things got rolling.

I don't count 5 hours into the day as late lol, something to play on the trip home today

 

[krikav]

Oooh, sweet, Memed was the first leader i fell in love with. This should be a awesome game!


Without moving warrior, I do agree on SiP. That fish can be left out and utilized by a second city later on.

AH -> Mining feels like a good choice, however...
We do have the ability for insta-pottery, and we play as a expansive leader.
Haven't opend the game yet (still at work..) but I think we have time to go for pottery before AH, and still get AH in time for when the worker is done with the corn.

Mining have to come quickly for those juicy riverside grassland hills.
I think that it is too much food, to postpone BW, so most likely after Pottery->AH->Mining I would go BW, but need to play up to that to make that call.

 

[Smilingrogue]

Not a fan of the warrior's position there. Why you have to be North, loin-cloth man?

The estuary seems to suggest there's coast to the South. SIP may mean some sea-food down there gets lost permanently. But SIP is the best option here, me thinks. Going to play and post a long, boring report with shiny pictures. Thanks for the map, Oz-man.

Edit: Actually, that's probably not an estuary and one of those weird bulges the river takes in flood-plains.

 

[May Day 10]

Ill give a shot at early-game tonight.

What is "Insta-Pottery"?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Ill give a shot at early-game tonight.

What is "Insta-Pottery"?

I believe he means we already have both pre-reqs.

 

[May Day 10]

Ah, OK.

So someone mentioned "Insta Pottery" is good with an Expansive Leader.... How does the synergy between those 2 exist?

 

[ecuwins]

^ Half priced Granary ---> whip whip whip yo behind off.

 

[krikav]

Yes, I mean that we have both pre-reqs. Sorry if I'm imprecise.

Getting the granary up quickly effectivly doubles the yield you get from food.
And since we have half-price granary (expansive leader) I think that a reasonable fast granary is a good idea in most opening strategies.

AH should probably get first priority though. Those cows are a 6-yield tile, and is very favorable to work!



Given the map, I suspect alot of people will want to build GLighthouse.
Where do you think is more favorable to squeeze in fishing->sailing->mason?

 

[Izuul]

Pottery lets you build Granaries and Expansive leaders can build Granaries at half the normal hammer cost (30 vs 60).

 

[Habitus]

Any seafood on the coast of our river shouldn't be lost by sip, 3S or 3E2S/3E1S (depending on coast) should be picking up anything.

 

[vranasm]

I am not sold on the pottery thing... yeah granary is super important and all, but this start doesn't exactly scream cottages...

but pottery opens writing (or is another discount together with AH) and writing will be high on shop list imo.

 

[Ororo]

This seems like a good game to get myself back into shape before SGOTM. Will try this on Immortal/Normal.

Agree with vranasm that pottery just doesn't seem that attractive that early on. After all, you should really try to improve your special tiles first, then add a couple of mines to help with settler/worker production and then finally consider cotagging your riverside tiles. Otherwise you'll drastically hurt your early game expansion.

AH, on the other hand, seems a no-brainer to me.

But then again, I feel pretty rusty so my advice shouldn't be taken too seriously.

 

[krikav]

I am not sold on the pottery thing... yeah granary is super important and all, but this start doesn't exactly scream cottages...

but pottery opens writing (or is another discount together with AH) and writing will be high on shop list imo.

You are absolutely right about that. There isn't even any flood-plains around.
Most things dictate that on this map, our main income source should be through the great lighthouse.

If the "early-pottery" idea is to hold water, it must stand on the granarys merits soley.

 

[krikav]

This seems like a good game to get myself back into shape before SGOTM. Will try this on Immortal/Normal.

Agree with vranasm that pottery just doesn't seem that attractive that early on. After all, you should really try to improve your special tiles first, then add a couple of mines to help with settler/worker production and then finally consider cotagging your riverside tiles. Otherwise you'll drastically hurt your early game expansion.

AH, on the other hand, seems a no-brainer to me.

But then again, I feel pretty rusty so my advice shouldn't be taken too seriously.

You are absolutely right that the absolute number 1 priority, is to improve good tiles in our capital first.

We just have to count the worker turns.

For pottery to get a "go", we must first ensure that we will not lose any worker turns on any important resource.

As it is, training a worker is 15 turns, then he must improve corn for another 5 turns.
Then spend 1+4 more turns to improve the cow (We have to spend a turn to move)
Then we would spend 16 or 17 worker turns improving the mines (depending if you improve riverside first or not)

We must get AH at the 21st turn at the latest, and then mining latest at turn 26.
If we can squeeze pottery in there, we are allowed to do so.
We can also research pottery after those two improtant techs.

 

[Izuul]

We do have the ability for insta-pottery, and we play as a expansive leader.
Haven't opend the game yet (still at work..) but I think we have time to go for pottery before AH, and still get AH in time for when the worker is done with the corn.

I can't play right now to test this, but...

Roughly 11 turns for Pottery and 13 for AH on Immortal. 15 turns for Worker + 5 turns to farm corn, + 2 turns to move to cow = 22 turns and the worker has a move left to start on the cow. That's likely a two turn delay where you would have to build a road, and you will probably also be waiting another 2-3 turns for Mining to finish. Sure you can build roads for 4-5 turns without technically wasting worker turns, but that isn't the most productive thing you could be doing here.

I would be interested to see if you could make Pottery first pay off, but my instincts are telling me that getting the cow and a mine or two online quicker is the better option. *shrug*