Nobles Club CVIII - Peter the Great

[JSS]

@MilesBeyond:

Spoiler :

- The gems city is way too far away for it to be useful for a long time (you need IW to access those gems, and you don't have the worker turns to road there this early and impove the place anyway).

- Don't build the mids without stone.

- Settle the wheat/gold place next before Hannibal gets it.

 

[MilesBeyond]

The state of the Russian Empire, circa 1 AD:

Spoiler :

Tech rate is cooking along quite nicely, with St. Petersburg turning out a respectable 50 beakers/turn. I just managed to bulb Philosophy, which makes life a bit easier. I've founded two religions (Confucianism and Taoism) but haven't adopted any state religion yet as it would seem impolitic to do so. Still, those temples help a lot with growth.

I completed the Mids in Moscow pretty quickly, and the GL in St. Petersburg even quicker. With Marble and a lot of hammers kicking around, I also built the Parthenon in Moscow (it was something like 8 turns... too good to pass up). I don't know if it'll actually make a difference (PHI+Pacifism=the 50% not making a huge difference?) but we'll see. Also built National Epic in St. Petersburg.

Novrogod is up and running nicely now, with those Gems turning in a substantial profit and those Pigs helping the city to grow quickly.

Kiev is actually a barb city that I captured (and renamed) and it's taken a bit to get going, but it should turn around soon.

Nappy decided he didn't like the Ottomans at around 1000 BC and decided to start tearing them up, then the Ottomans brought in Churchill on their side. Their time spent in warfare is my time spent in peaceful teching, so no loss there.

I'm about to risk a minor skirmish with Maya as I need that territory.

Currently running Rep, CS and Pacifism.

@JSS

Spoiler :

-Yeah, that was probably not a great choice. I actually had to self-tech IW to make it worthwhile.

- Unfortunately, Rep is pretty essential for me in this game right now, so I couldn't really NOT build the Mids. Fortunately with Moscow's decent production combined with chopping it wasn't too painful

- IMHO St. Petersburg can't afford to share that wheat. Unless you're talking about a different place.

Thanks for the tips!

EDIT: 1000 AD

Spoiler :

Things are coming along quite smoothly. St. Petersburg has left me with a gargantuan tech lead.

Diplomacy has taken a hit as I needed to adopt a state religion in order to make use of Pacifism, so instead of taking one of my own I adopted Judaism. Ottomans and Arabs now love me, but no one else does. Mayans especially are upset as I DoWed and razed their city to make room for one of my own, but they'll recover. I've now reached the magic number of 6 cities, and I plan on staying there unless something flips (I'm a peacemonger at heart). I'm only a couple of Universities away from Oxford, and a barb city I captured in the south means I now have Stone, making life even better.

I happened to nab MoM (again, very low production time). Since I'm going for Space Race, I'm planning on saving up all my GAs for late game, so it'll be a long term profit, but I think it will pay off.

Carthage declared war on me. It's not a huge setback, but it is highly irritating. He's mostly Numidian Cavalry and War Elephants, I'm mostly Axemen. He hasn't got the power to take my cities, while I haven't got enough Spearmen to take him down in the field, so he's running around pillaging tiles like mad. The only thing worse than seeing a Town reduced to nothing is seeing a Town reduced to nothing the turn after you research Printing Press. But through diplo I've managed to make enough money to turn some of those Axes into Maces, so we'll teach him a lesson or two.

In world news, Paris fell to the English. Churchill also managed to build the AP, but as he's Christian, a religion that I don't think anyone else even has present, I don't think it will be too big of an issue.

 

[shulgi]

IIRC Cossacks get +50% vs mounted units, not melee units. Hence why they're so amazing as they have no counters from that era (higher than Riflemen with a +50% bonus, and now the same bonus against enemy Cavalry...Slip some Cannons in and game over).
.

Thanks, this does make them better in my book. Still riflemen get +25% vs mounted so they are stronger than cavalry and an effective counter. I don't know how many cossacks I had in total in my war against England but they didn't fare too well - granted protective redcoats are tough but they were tough outside of cities too. I checked stats at the end of the game, I built ~30 cossacks in sum, upgraded ~20 and lost ~30, I lost a couple to Pacal / infantry or tanks in my final war but the huge majority was redcoats.

Post a screenshot of where you are in your game.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Annnnnd...

Game over.

Damn.

Spoiler :

Churchill decided to go for a Dom victory. He capped Nappy, Saladin, and Hannibal, and killed Suleiman. Meanwhile I'm teching up to prepare for his inevitable onslaught. I begin mass-producing Knights, then Cossacks. Maybe three turns after Hannibal caps, the four of them march on my territory. No surprise there. Churchill's first stack gets annihilated by my Cossacks, as does everything Hannibal and Saladin send at me. In retaliation, I do a quick raid into Carthaginian territory and raze all the cities that Churchill stole from him (in an attempt to prevent him from getting his Dom victory). Things are going great for a while... Until Churchill gets Rifling and Steel. Macemen, Trebs and Cuirs are one thing. Redcoats, Cannons and Cavalry are quite another. He wipes out my stack of 30-odd Cossacks and sacks a city guarded by 15 Rifles and I ragequit.

That's one of the biggest changes made by K-Mod: AI that plays to win. It got to the point where Churchill was going to DoW me no matter what I did, and 20 some turns into the war he still refused to talk. This wasn't about diplomacy, it was about Domination.

Though I have a sneaking suspicion that had I built a larger army, it would've turned into a drawn-out slugfest between myself and Churchill, during which Pacal would've gotten a Cultural Victory

 

[MesSer]

@MilesBeyond

So what do you recon you did wrong?
What could you have done differently?
When you compare your game to others around 1000bc, 0ad, 1000ad what are the biggest differences?
How is your status in the game when it comes to research/cities/tech and diplomacy in those different scenarios?

 

[on_land]

1665 Domination

Spoiler :

Continued from earlier in thread. I libbed MT and immediately made a mistake. Attacked Carthage and he bribed in France (friendly with me!) and the Ottomans (pleased). I was able to fight them all, but not make much headway in what was supposed to be my breakout. I figured it's not a competition, and I'm just trying to check out Immortal for the first time, so I reloaded to practice the better DOW play: first bribed Ottomans against Carthage and France against England, which was nice since England was in the lead. Decided to wipe out Carthage completely rather than vassal them, to relieve cultural pressure since we had a very long border. Who next, Pacal (bigger) or Suleiman (more advanced)? Decided Pacal so that I would later only have one front, and just before the DOW this happens:

Spoiler :

Sully peace vassals to me, one of many lucky breaks in this game. Pacal, refused to vassal until I had taken his whole empire except for 3 cities, so I just finished him off too. Now I had 27 cities, so the victory looked pretty secure. Double bulbed scientific method, and spent 2 lingering great people on a GA, ran merchants in Moscow during it, but got only one great merchant and a great engineer. These 12 turns were the only time I stopped whipping from getting MT till the end of the game, let the cities grow back and work those boosted tiles. Getting Communism was huge for decreasing costs (had been losing 100 gold per turn at 0% research for a long time, survived for 100's of years purely off plundering the 18 cities), and once the conquered cities came online finances were stable. The engineer rushed the Kremlin for better whipping, and merchant trade mission + another 1000 upgraded most of the cuirs to Cossacks.

England had vassled Arabia, so I attacked France first, and he refused to vassal even down to one city, so wiped him out. Arabia broke free just in time for me to attack it, couldn't have gotten more lucky not having to fight England at all. He capped and it was domination. I had become the AP leader with so many cities, and I probably would have won the religious victory, but I turned down the vote every time it came up, just trying to play through this domination strategy.

Spoiler :

Thanks to Marvinlegend for the map and Dalamb for hosting the series. Playing the games in these series and looking at how better players handle them has improved my game a lot.

 

[MilesBeyond]

@MilesBeyond

So what do you recon you did wrong?
What could you have done differently?
When you compare your game to others around 1000bc, 0ad, 1000ad what are the biggest differences?
How is your status in the game when it comes to research/cities/tech and diplomacy in those different scenarios?

Hey MesSer, some good questions

Spoiler :

What I did wrong is kind of hard to deal with because the best answer seems to be "everything" - as in, my big problem was that because I was going for a peaceful victory, I allowed Churchill to build up momentum to the point where he was unstoppable. So unfortunately, it seems to me like the only way I could have won was through a different playing style.

When it came to research, I had a substantial lead for a lot of the game, and I think that was mostly due to good science cities. Once I had Great Library and Oxford going in St. Petersburg, I was in pretty good shape. So I think research was fine.

Cities I could have done better on. I think that some of my decisions weren't the greatest (Novgorod specifically being one I could have held off on), but my biggest issue is knowing the timing on when I should found cities. Should I just REX until I hit that magic 60% mark? Was it a mistake to focus on an early GS when I could've been getting another Settler out?

Diplomacy I'm still trying to figure out in K-mod as it's much less significant. It plays a role, but no longer can you sit there just appeasing everyone. If you've got territory they want, they're taking it, doesn't matter if they're at Friendly or Furious. Which has its pros and cons - it makes the game more difficult, and the AI harder to exploit, but at the same time, it lessens the whole "making friends and rivals" aspect of the vanilla game's diplomacy, which is a part of it I always enjoyed.

 

[MesSer]

@MilesBeyond:

Spoiler :

I think the most important part and what you learn the most of doing, is to sit down, go through the game and reflect on what you did good and what you did bad.

The hardest part is to understand what you did wrong. Thus checking the amount of cities other people have and what those cities are doing is probably the most important thing to do.

I think your biggest mistake was that you had way to few cities. More cities gives you more freedom and also gives you the ability to produce troops and whatnot if you would need to due to whip/draft/production/rush buy.

In your next game, I would recommend that you try to first get 3-5 cities before 1000BC tech yourself close to currency and then end up with ~8 cities at around 1AD.

That would probably give you a much stronger position in the long run

Regarding what you said to require a different playing style. It is possible to stop wars, especially when you have a tech lead. Just talk to the leader and see what it would cost in order to stop a war. If that doesn't work, try to bribe someone in against the winning side to cause a stale mate. And do this way before they will vassal someone.

Regarding the K-mod thing. I haven't experienced that. I haven't played that much K-mod though, but if I'm friendly with someone they usually stay friendly and doesn't declare on me. Might be different if they think they can win the game. But, I have never been in that situation since I usually go down the war path.

 

[MilesBeyond]

@MilesBeyond:

Spoiler :

I think the most important part and what you learn the most of doing, is to sit down, go through the game and reflect on what you did good and what you did bad.

The hardest part is to understand what you did wrong. Thus checking the amount of cities other people have and what those cities are doing is probably the most important thing to do.

I think your biggest mistake was that you had way to few cities. More cities gives you more freedom and also gives you the ability to produce troops and whatnot if you would need to due to whip/draft/production/rush buy.

In your next game, I would recommend that you try to first get 3-5 cities before 1000BC tech yourself close to currency and then end up with ~8 cities at around 1AD.

That would probably give you a much stronger position in the long run

Regarding what you said to require a different playing style. It is possible to stop wars, especially when you have a tech lead. Just talk to the leader and see what it would cost in order to stop a war. If that doesn't work, try to bribe someone in against the winning side to cause a stale mate. And do this way before they will vassal someone.

Regarding the K-mod thing. I haven't experienced that. I haven't played that much K-mod though, but if I'm friendly with someone they usually stay friendly and doesn't declare on me. Might be different if they think they can win the game. But, I have never been in that situation since I usually go down the war path.

Some great tips, MesSer. I'm starting up a game in the next Nobles Club as well and hope to put some of this into practice. Also I think I won't play K-Mod this time, just to make it easier for people to comment on

 

[yena]

I played immortal, epic speed, and won a domination in 1505. Sorry, no screenshots.

Spoiler :

Settled in place and made the capital a production centre. Settled SE next to the gold for commerce, and then NE on the elephants for the initial military pump. I gave up on the usual aestics, literature, GL line, and researched curreny and CoL and military techs instead. My next cities were four barb cities in the N and NE, and I build another city S to block Carthage. Carthage declared war, but I was able to block them with some whipping in the front cities until Hannibal gave up.

Won Lib about 700, taking nationalism, then bulbing half of chemisty and getting MT before continuing to steel, followed by rifling. First war with Hannibal using cuirs/trebs. He capitulated easily after I had destroyed his stack and taken one city (that I returned afterwards). On to Pascal who was most advanced and the biggest future thread. By that time the first cannons had arrived, so I took five cities, including his capital, before he gave up. After some R&R the army attacked the Ottomans, who were helped by their Arab vassal. Because of this vassal the Ottomans never gave up, and I had to take all the cities one by one which was slightly tideous. After his master was dead, Saladin capitulated easily, leaving only France and England.

By this time I also had rifling so science was turned down to 0%, and all money put into cavalery upgrades. Once most of the army was modernized, I declared on France, waited until their stack appeared, and destoyed it easily with cannons and cavalery. France has rifling, but with cannons I took two core cities, and Napoleon capitulated, ending the game in 1505. Three hours playtime.

Pretty good game... I had some problem with the economy after the initial expansion but the commerce city with the gold mine saw me through, and after a while my rex paid off with the large population accelerating research (with specialists) and production. Didn't complete a single world wonder, just some partly builds for the failgold.

 

[tijup]

Noble, normal, no tech brokering, no random events.

Won in 1802, domination.

Spoiler :

Nice start, I peacefully REXed toward Pacal and Hannibal. There was 2 religions: Pacal, Nappy and
Hannibal were in hinduism, Churchill (ap owner), Saladin and Suleiman were buddists.
I never choosed a religion, and thus, avoid most of the crap.
Nappy went to war to Suleiman, soon joined by me (phony war), then Saladin and Churchill. He
finally cap to Saladin.
In the meantime, I teched to rifling while building a small mace army. As soon as I got rifling, I
updated my CR1-CR2 maces to Riflemen, and went to war with Pacal.
He bribed Hannibal to go along with him, which was a mistake
The fight with Pacal was straightforward, and Hannibal got me at one point.
He send 2 stacks of units, which were annihilated as soon as they came close of my cities, and
then, capitulated to me ! I didn't had time to send him troops that he capitulated to me.

The rest of the AI were pretty the same. When Pacal bribed Suleiman to war with me, he sent his
units on Hannibal's town, and managed to capture one (Utica). I sent 5-6 infantry to retake the
city to give him back to Hannibal, when he suddenly decide that he had enough, and capitulated to me.

The same thing happened when I went after Saladin+Nappy, I took one Saladin's city
before he capitulated, and Nappy got the same fate in the very same turn.
For Churchill, I DOWed him while regrouping. I partially killed his SoD, before he capitulated.

The funniest part is that I won by domination, and by conquest at the same time.

Nice map, thanks for your efforts.

 

[obsolete]

Immortal, NSC

Did some experimentations for a few hundred years, and didn't really micro. Then ended up winning early domination when I wasn't paying attention. Should have done this on deity if I knew it would have been so easy.

Funny thing is I always build SoL, this time I thought I'd just capture it to be cheesy. Instead it couldn't have been built in a worse location on my continent, so I never got to it. LoL @ the rookies who always claim building Mids is stupid because it's optimal to just capture it all the time. I wonder what maps they are playing!

Spoiler :

 

[Manco Capac]

LoL @ the rookies who always claim building Mids is stupid because it's optimal to just capture it all the time. I wonder what maps they are playing!

Duckweed said Mids are a terrible wonder. I infer he's a newbie.

 

[Izuul]

Immortal 1610AD "Diplo"

Spoiler :

It was really anything but diplomatic. I was a handful of turns away from capping Churchill when an AP victory vote was initiated by Saladin.

I settled in place, claimed the gold site with my 2nd city, the ivory+marble+wheat with the 3rd, and settled on the stone with my 4th.

Hannibal started plotting extremely early, and it was fairly evident the entire time that i was the target. I bulbed Math (used that to help get Alpha) with the intention of going for Construction for cats and eles to take on Hannibal, but two things led me away from that. 1) He attacked me before i got there, and 2) i was able to build the mids. I fended him off primarily with archers and axes with a couple spears and chariots mixed in. I eventually paid him off with either Poly or Med.

After things got peaceful, i did some wonder whoring, and built the MoM, Great Library, and Parthenon. The first two i wanted, the 3rd i was really just building for FG but finished anyway. I also managed to get Music first, as nobody in this game ever made an effort to hit to the top of the tech tree (I was the first to Aesthetics in 150 BC). I was also able to get a lot of land, settling 8 cities of my own, capturing 2 barb cities, and even flipping one of Hannibal's cities.

I triggered a GA in 540 AD which lasted for 36 turns of awesomeness. Libbed MT in 740 AD, finished Gunpowder in 840 AD, and attacked Hannibal shortly after. Not tremendously early, but more than good enough in this situation. My empire was really set up for food and production, not commerce, so i was able to make up for the lost time by pumping out a ton of units quickly.

Everyone fell easily except for Churchill who had MGs, Redcoats, Cannons, Grenadiers, and quite a bit of tech by the time i got over to him. Everyone in the game except Pacal was Hindu, so the tech pace for the AI really, really picked up later in the game as the trade-fest kicked into high gear.

Once i got Cossacks (took awhile as i spent most of the game losing money at 0% slider), Churchill was eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers and the help of my vassals. He had 4 cities left when the AP victory was triggered.

 

[Pengu]

emp 1580 conquest

Spoiler :

Well, this one wasn't hard but I was in trouble after awhile.
SIP and went ag/bw/wheel then oracle path.
Saw Hannibal was close and got out a settler fast and settled by the gold and cow.This forced Hannibal to settle south and he was a non factor for the rest of the game.I oracled col and just expanded fast, to block of Maya. I went up to 8 cities and this is when I went into trouble. My econmy came to a halt and I was making 0 gold at 0% science. But pts wise I was 200 pts ahead Maya and I was still ahead in tech. And I had totally blocked off Maya and Carthage so I could settle 2-3 more cities in my land at my leisure. Got a very late GLH and once I got currency my econmy started moving.Hannibl peace vassaled to Napoleon as Suli crushed Hannibal. I easily libed rifling and pumped put cavs. Even though I had been running conf as a long civ noone did declare until Napoleon at 1000 AD. Problem was for him that I had already started to pump out cuirs so his stack dissappeard quickly. This when I had like 30 cavs I capped in order Maya/Suli/Napoleon and Churchill(Hannibal was killed off). By now Sally had got Rifles and normally protective hurts but by now I had 50 cavs so I just steamrolled him. But as he refused to cap until he had 1 city left I refused to let him live and killed him off. This meant I got dom and Conquest at the same time but dom seems to be what I got.

 

[Terrible_Demise]

Spoiler :

This start is way too good. I haven't finished yet, but despite being equal or ahead in tech, AIs are capitulating in front of waves of my superior Cossacks!
It was funny that Hanibbal was plotting early (stacks of elephants and num cav) and declared war one turn before I would have declared on him. Poor guy

 

[hankinsohl]

Emperor, normal speed, no huts/events, 1630 AD Domination Victory

Spoiler :

I decided to try a few of the older Noble's Clubs, starting from the first one in this series.

This was a fairly easy game with no warfare on my part until I teched Cuirassiers.

I settled in place, and aggressively settled to grab happiness resources and to block off Carthage. My early tech rate suffered as a result.

Once alphabet was in I made a lot of tech trades and somewhat caught up in technology. Scouting revealed a lot of jungle to the north which I could block off with 2 new cities.

I opted to cut off Pacal with more aggressive settling - once more my tech rate fell.

3 barbarian villages were founded in the jungle I had blocked off. I started cranking out swords to capture them before the enemy AIs could.

I got a bit lucky - a costal plains barbarian village was attacked by one of the AIs and was reduced to a sole, heavily damaged defender. Fortunately I had 2 chariots in place and was able to mop up before the village fell to an enemy.

After capturing the remaining barbarian villages with swords - I was able to generate a level 4 sword in the process thus unlocking the HE - I began all-out teching towards Nationalism (by this time CS was already in). My plan was to take Military Tradition with Liberalism.

I didn't use Peter's Philosophical trait well at all. I established a GP farm very late and generated just 2 scientists - one established an academy in my capital and one partially bulbed Liberalism. I lost the Liberalism race to Pacal by 1 turn.

Tech rate picked up though - I built the Taj Mahal and then later got a 2nd Golden Age when my attempt to generate a Great Merchant failed; I used the Great Artist for a 2nd Golden Age, and was eventually able to generate a Great Merchant for troop upgrades.

I was able to remain neutral/friendly status with all the AIs by adopting Buddhism. All the AIs were Buddhist with the exception of Pacal who was Hindu. When I was 3 turns from Gunpowder, Carthage adopted Hinduism - giving me a bit of a scare, as now both my neighbors were non-Buddhists.

With Gunpowder finally in, I began cranking out Cuirassiers. I used a trade mission to upgrade a few war elephants and declared on Pacal. Unfortunately, Pacal was able to bribe Carthage into the fray and as a result I lost a lightly guarded border city.

Pacal and Carthage both were hopelessly outgunned/outnumbered though. Pacal fell after just a few turns as did Carthage a bit later. From there, I simply declared on/conquered the remaining AIs one at a time. Along the way, Riffling came in and my troops became Cossacks.

This is the first time I've tried using Cuirassiers and, I must say, it's incredibly effective. With a little more planning on my part I would have won the race to Liberalism and would have shaved several turns off my eventual conquest.

 

[krikav]

Playing a bunch of old NC games, wonderful resource!

Spoiler Immortal Conquest 1450 :

Expanded toward Hannibal, a city by the elephant first, then the gold.
Ample of room to expand.
After I connected stone (very late) I built the pyramids for failgold in one city first, then in the capital where I let it finish.
Destroyed Hannibal with Elepults, and then used representation and a few bulbs and golden ages to get quick curs (also uppgraded elefants) and chain-vassaled all others.

Best score I have had yet!