Nobles' Club CXVII: Montezuma of the Aztecs

[Zindaras]

@Dubioza:

Spoiler :

Why would you have your research slider on 60%? Or at 20%? Or, well, anything above zero, really. You're going for a cultural victory. You don't need science for that. Also, I personally believe the true powerplay in late-game cultural victories lies with the Corporations. Sid's Sushi/Creative Constructions/Civilized Jewelers give you such a huge culture boost, why would you ignore them?

 

[Dubioza]

Thanks for replies!

That was my first CV attempt, so I did what I thought was best. I was checking all the time how fast I'd get 50k culture on 100% slider almost 100 turns before. It was 90-75-95 while on 80% it was 95-90-100. So, not that big of a difference; and 20% research instead 0% was 7 turns per tech instead 200.

I could've stop teching completely after Lib tho, cannons ruled all the way. Will do better next time!

And yeah, Uranium is usable after Fission - I thought I had it by then already.

EDIT: I founded one Corp few turns before end - I think I could've found one earlier instead of 4.GAge, but I'm not sure...after that I switched to FReligion and all I got later was one GPriest.

 

[Zindaras]

Thanks for replies!

That was my first CV attempt, so I did what I thought was best. I was checking all the time how fast I'd get 50k culture on 100% slider almost 100 turns before. It was 90-75-95 while on 80% it was 95-90-100. So, not that big of a difference; and 20% research instead 0% was 7 turns per tech instead 200.

I could've stop teching completely after Lib tho, cannons ruled all the way. Will do better next time!

Well, I always just try to get it as quickly as possible, which means 100% culture and either stopping before reaching Scientific Method (the more difficult approach) or stopping after getting the three corporations (the easier approach). This game, I went the Corporations route given that I had a triple-shrine city. Also, I saw from your save that you founded Cereal Mills. The corporations that yield culture are really powerful if you're taking that route. Together, Sushi and Constructions gave me 100 culture per turn in my three main cities (multiplied by about 4-6, taking care of about a third of my culture needs in my practically wonderless second and third cities and a quarter of Tenochtitlan's culture needs), plus adding food and production that turns into even more culture. I consciously saved the Great Merchant from Economics to turn into Sid's Sushi later on.

I'm also rather surprised you didn't build the Cristo Redentor or the three hit wonders. I always nab those just (Universal Suffrage to rush them while going full money, then full culture for the rest of the game), though I'll admit I'm not sure if I'm getting my money's worth there).

 

[Dubioza]

Thanks again! Useful info!

...though I'll admit I'm not sure if I'm getting my money's worth there.

Those wonders were available ~30 turns before end and would took ~10 turns to complete them normally. So I ignored them.

I founded Corp only few turns before end, after 1850 - but I'll keep that in mind for future games!

 

[Choggy]

Emperor Normal NHNE 1818 UN Diplo Win

Spoiler :

SIP, then settled towards Pacal. 9 cities by 1AD, took CoL from Oracle in 1160BC. Lack of happy resources was always a concern early on so spent nearly the whole game in HR once I had Monarchy. Pacal settled on the Iron near the Elephants to the west and that little 1 pop city somehow founded Christianity.

Pacal got Elepulted into extinction in 900AD for being a cheating little AI scrote.

Tech rate was really slow all game, I think the amount of land everybody had to settle really slowed us all down - took Oracle->MT in 1300AD by which time I had ~20 cities. Waited until Cavalry before stomping Capec (died 1645AD) then Sitting Bull (died 1720AD) which gave me 46 cities.

The tech rate on the other continent was even worse - the surprise REX civ wasn't Joao (15 cities) but Lizzy (20 cities). Izzy also had 20 cities but she was settled most of her cities on poor land so was never in the game. Built a load of transport ships to invade Izzy with a mountain of Cav and Machine Guns whilst beelining MM for UN but the pointy-spear approach wasn't neccessary, having already diplo'd Joao and Izzy into liking me more than Lizzy when the UN vote came up they both voted for me and I won by a landslide.

Easy game, but hard work. Cottages and lots of gold/research infrastructure ensured I always had a healthy tech lead.

Thanks for the map Dalamb!

 

[dalamb]

I decided to continue this game past the dotmap, and as usual have bogged down. The game is certainly winnable, it's just tedious.

Spoiler Status :

I have 8 cities; I could have had one more if I'd split pigs/corn to the south. Late in the game I discovered the supposed "late commerce" city from the dotmap was too close to the elephant city. I moved it north of the lake. It'll still eventually generate some commerce; between it, pigs/corn city, and elelphant city most of the grassland will be worked cottages eventually.

Spoiler territory :

Everybody but Sitting Bull is Hindu. SB got Huana to switch to Judaism for a while but I spread Hinduism to a few more Incan cities, gave them a few techs, and got him to convert back.

Spoiler diplomacy :

I'm ahead in most demographics:

Spoiler demographics :

But par with SB in power, which is worrisome.

Spoiler charts :

Spoiler mistakes :

The AI weren't exploring much, so I got a lot of huts, one of which was Metal Casting This led me to the stupid mistake of oracling Machinery, the most expensive tech (not so useful without Iron, except for the occasional watermill or windmill) instead of Code of Laws, the most useful tech. With so much space for cities I expanded peacefully, which, along with the late CoL meant I made very little use of the Sacrificial Altar. I have a bunch of jaguars but without siege yet they're too weak to take on SB, the obvious target.

Plans and questions.

Spoiler :

I am going for feudalism to be able to make longbows for better defence. After that I originally expected to go for paper and education; I have a 60% chance for the next GP to be a Scientist for bulbing. Before finishing Liberalism I'd have to backfill techs, like Civil Service for Nationalism.

My economy is in bad shape but I expect to be able to get a couple more cities to build commerce, and the cottages keep growing.

I'm not sure what to do next. Without Iron I can't go for Military Tradition and Cuirassiers; there's a lousy iron right next to Pacal's borders that I could settle on top of, but it has no food and I expect it will be under serious cultural pressure from Mutal. The nearest other iron belongs to SB, so I have to tackle him pre-Cuirs. I suppose a large enough army of jaguars and catapults would work, but I need a stronger economy to be able to afford that many troops.

I probably won't settle the island cities, despite having done some prep for doing so (pasturing the pigs, for example) which means an AI will eventually do so.

Advice welcome. It'll be later in the week before I pick up the game again.
Edit: attachment deleted

 

[Dubioza]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

It may be silly for me to give you advice; but if you need iron badly, one lame city may be worth it (or settle 2N of iron)? And if you're worried about about Mutal's culture maybe Pacal should be your first target - at least in my game Mutal was worth taking early with few WW's and shrine iirc.

Just noticed, 2N of iron is Pacal's territory already and he's friendly. Humm, dunno then Tricky situation you got there...still, if lack of iron is in the way of your plan, one bad city on top of it may be worth it - even if it'd build only culture?

 

[Tempesta13]

@ Dalamb

Spoiler :

One general thought seeing all the available wonders in your game that you have the bonus resource for: Usually it's a good idea to build them if only for the fail gold. With the resource for 100% production you are getting 20 gold per turn from a 10 hammer/turn city building one of these wonders. Twice as effective as building wealth - just have to wait until it is actually built to collect the gold.

Also there is no reason to have a warrior/archer in each city (or a few archers). 1 unit is enough unless you need more for HR happiness. You already have a largish army by your SE city. The only AI that can attack you is Sitting Bull and you don't share borders with him and are unlikely going to be a target. He doesn't declare much anyway. You are paying 1 gold/turn for each unit you have. It's good to be able to defend yourself but you can just do it with diplo/tech

Trade Currency and Sailing to Pacal for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Both Pacal and HC's favorite civic is HR - no reason not to be in HR right now to get them to friendly. You have a tech lead so this also means you can bribe Pacal or HC on Sitting Bull at any time you want (once they are friendly). You are 100% safe and extra units not being used for HR garrison are slowing down your research.

Building Wealth is good when you don't have anything useful to build but with all this $$$$$$$$$$$$ you can get from Pacal you will be running 100% slider for awhile anyway. Switch cities on Wealth to wonders or workers - fail gold and 2-3 more workers are both more important than Wealth right now. Hopefully some of those wonders will be built before you run out of Pacal's cash and you will be at 100% for even longer.

- Switch to HR and OR - happiness and production will be much better (move some of your units to you capital and Texcoco so they can grow even more with HR)
- Build/chop Great Library/National Epic and Parthenon - this is a clear Lib map with marble. These wonders should have been a priority from the start.
- Switch research to Civil Service and switch to Bureau. AIs typically tech Feudalism so Civil Service is the better option - just trade CS for Feud later.
- Farm a couple scientists - use one to bulb Education
- Go Lib>Nat route and build Taj - use 2nd scientist for GA while building Taj
- Tech to Military Tradition/Rifling and whip a 20 cav army and attack Pacal.

You could Lib>Military Tradition but with no way to know how close the other continent is to Lib I wouldn't risk it. Depends on how fast you can get there I guess.

 

[Smilingrogue]

@ Dalamb

Let me just start off by saying I am incredibly jealous of your hut luck!

Spoiler :

You don't need Iron, mate, you got Elephants! If war's on your mind, you should have teched HBR eons ago and nailed Pacal with Elepults. And Machinery isn't useful just because of Crossbows, it unlocks the excellent Maceman unit too and incidentally, that 8 strength behemoth with City Raider Promotion available to it can be built with Copper or Iron. (We generally don't see a lot of Mace rushes despite Mace being a solid unit because unlocking them is awkward needing both Civil Service and Machinery and Machinery shuts out the Lib bulb).

With an early Machinery from Oracle, you should have gone after Optics and met the other continent for more trading partners.

If I were you, I would Elepult Pacal, secure Iron, Lib Steel, roll the entire continent, get to Combustion, Flight and all that good stuff and introduce the other continent to the power of SCIENCE!! Do tie up Huayna and SB first before nailing Pacal.

 

[dalamb]

Let me just start off by saying I am incredibly jealous of your hut luck!

If you pop enough huts you get lucky sometimes. I get my share of maps (ugh) and warriors. However, in this game my opponents just weren't exploring right. I got a lot of huts because they left alone huts that were only a few tiles outside their borders, which meant that I got huts late enough that I'd filled in enough prereq techs to get something nice. I guess their warrior/scouts went one way and the huts happened to be the other.

Hut luck doesn't make up for weak game play, though.

 

[mighty gandhi]

Emperor,Conquest win,1898 AD

Spoiler :

Sitting Bull declared on me,easily made peace.Great economy(strange for Monty) vassalled early Pakal,then the rest of the continent.Usual super-fleet and kill them one by one.

 

[Gumbolt]

Okay given this a whirl but just noticed the low sea level.

Up to 1000bc.

Spoiler :

Techs - AG, Mining, BW, TW, Pottery, writing, Aesth. (1 turn off Aesth)

Settled in place. Worker, many warriors to size 4. Settler, worker, worker.

2nd city 1NE of the corn near the flood plains.

3rd city on the southern of the 3 ivory.

4th city 1N of the gold.

Mayans have 2 cities so far and have spread Hindu to all my cities. So hindu, Ivory and gold for happiness.

Capital - Barracks (part built), Granary and library. (Size 6 working 2 scientists.)
My second city has 7 cottages. The gold city is working one of them. It has Monument, granary and a whipped library. (size 7)

Ivory city has monument and granary.

Gold city has only recently been settled but is mainly there for happiness.

So far I could easily settle 3-4 more cities with the cottages I am running.

Will play this on next week if I get the chance.

 

[Gumbolt]

Up to 425ad or so. Will play this on later.

Spoiler :

I eventually traded for alphabet from the AI. Got IW/Poly/AH/fishing and archery too.

I settled the 2 pigs/corn cities near my capital. One on the copper the other below my capital with pigs in inner ring.

I headed for music. (150bc) Built Glib in capital.

Captured the northern pig/marble/deer city with 4-5 UU. Baited 1-2 defenders with warriors.

At this point I headed towards construction. Bulbed philosophy. Teched COl. 1 turn off CS. Bit behind my usual 1ad for CS but the attack on Mayans was needed.

Built 7-8 pults, used my existing 5-6 Jaguars and followed up with phants for Mayans. He was teching like crazy. He has drama, MC, machinery, cal, mono and monarchy.

Delcared and took his 3 big cities. I have the 26 gold hindu shrine so this will help. Will probably take 2 more cities and take as many techs as possible.

I have 10 cities now and all Ai are pleased with me. HC has a decent 10-12 unit stack but ony swords so far. He may yet attack SB.

 

[Gumbolt]

Up to 1270ad.

Spoiler :

Left Mayans with 1 city and grabbed his 3-4 techs. With 14 cities teching was somewhat slow. Positioning myself for a late game map due to size. Whipped court houses, forges, stables in a lot of cities. Mayans became HC Vassel.

Eventually got cuirs around 1050ad or so and started my assault on Incans. He had one big stack of 20 or sao units but no pikes. He did have +25% defences due to wonders. He is currently down to 5 cities and his original capital is mine. Took out Mayans final city. I have about 50 cuirs to finish off HC. Will need to attack SB soon.

I have not used any golden ages yet. I lack machinery, eng and fued plus and a bunch of other techs but I may be able to get this from HC for peace.

Ap was built in a distant land.

 

[Gumbolt]

Up to 1530ad.

Spoiler :

Finished off Incans with Cuirs. Left him with 1 city. Met 3 other Ai and traded for 2-3 techs. Took the Incans as my vassel and took PP and 2 other techs for peace.

I soon declared on Sb with about 40-50 cuirs overall. He fell quite quickly. he had a 20-25 strong stack but nothing that would be a problem in the field. Mid war I built TM and whipped about 20 galleys. With a 12 turn golden age I tech astronomy. Then headed toward rifles. Got Sb down to 1 city and took RP for peace before spending 3 turns on rifles. With about 30+ cities at this point I started to whip cavalry in most cities.

Landed a mix of cuirs and cavalry on Spanish land and quickly took out 7-8 cites. She had a 60 or so strong stack but 20 of these were a mix of pults and trebs. I attacked it with 20 units and took out about 40 units. At this point she capitulated so I took peace.

About 15% off land required for victory. I now have around 110 cavalry on the map. The English have a vassel of JoaII.

Should hopefully be able to wind this up quickly. The English have about 23 cities. I will probably need 15 or so of them.

 

[Gumbolt]

All over 1550ad. Score 275584 Domination win.

Spoiler :

The war against English and Portuguese was swift. I stormed in with 30-40 cavalry in a 3-4 prong attack. Took 3 cities on first turn of war and would of probably easily rolled over all 23 cities. English had no real stack.

In any case after the 3 cities fell the English cap'd. I had 50 cities to their 20. The portuguese also immediately capitulated too.

Game ended pretty quickly really.

1 turn slower than Izuul. Should of paid more attention to details. Maybe should of run 2 golden ages. Could of used first golden age much sooner. I never used a 1 GP golden age. Still happy with date.

 

[dalamb]

@Gumbolt: congrats on the win. What did you mean by "never used a 1 GP golden age"? Was your sole GA from the Taj? If so, then, yeah, that would probably have let you finish a few turns earlier.

 

[Gumbolt]

@Gumbolt: congrats on the win. What did you mean by "never used a 1 GP golden age"? Was your sole GA from the Taj? If so, then, yeah, that would probably have let you finish a few turns earlier.

Thanks. Only used Taj for my golden age! Probably should of finished a bit sooner.

 

[Amao]

Noble/Normal/NHNE 1380AD Conquest, Score 237913

Spoiler :

Recently found that if I did over-expand, courthouse could really help, even on Noble level. And monty's UB is really good on high food maps.

I chopped SH by 2600BC, but it didn't stop my initial expansion. 3 cities by 2000BC. Oracled CoL and self teched to Civil Service at around 300BC, then researched Construction and started war preparation.

Declared on Pacal on 175BC. And razed a low food city and kept the capital. City count up to 11 by 1AD as I started to systematically taking Pacal's city with Cat/Axe and Elephant combo. By 200AD, mayan was all gone.

Took some time digesting Mayan land, and waiting for the main stack to move to the southern front. Picked Capac as the next target as he was fast enough as a tech trader and was building wonders for me. Declared on Capac on 700AD, and by 1000AD, all inca's cities were either mine or razed. By then, I had knights.

I was pop rushing like crazy in almost every city. And was too happy so that even I opened up GA, i didn't switch into Caste System for generating more Great Persons until very late.

Declared on SB next, and he was gone by 1130AD. And I had already found the other continent and building massive Galleon fleet. Also took some cash upgrading all knights into Cuirassiers when I got MilTrad. Then invaded Joao first. This time, I took vessels because micro was very tedious by then. The war the other three took from 1240 to 1370 and there was a few turns of peace because I had to wait my stack to get through some non-road land to reach Izzy...

Tech wise, Lib to Communism at 1190AD, but the economy was very good. In the end, I've fully switched into farm/windmill/watermill/workshop economy with all of them were fully powered (Biology, Electricity, Communisim (SP+CS+GA)). I also managed to get 3 GP powered GA and another one from Taj. But failed in generating 4 different GP in time to get another one. anyway, the game was over and I had 7 turns of GA wasted... And I finished Railroad with 3200+ beaker per turn with a positive cash flow at 100% research.

I feel this game is much easier due to high food and many rivers. High food for monty is everything with CoL.

Spoiler :

1AD

1000AD

Final Score

 

[yyeah]

1812 conquest/domination vict same turn deity.
rly fun map to play i didnt eexpaect that i add monty to leaders witch i won deity theres not a lot of them xD.

Spoiler :

i managed to settle i think 12 or 13 cities nad go for lib i won it in 780 ad preety late but i went natio 1st and bulid taj nd i belive in this 8 turns i had lib i start 2 another golden ages in meen time i went for 2 great merchants that allow me to upgrade some horse archers to cru..sth xD and rest of that mony i spend to reserch rifling upgr all to cavalery and i start to taling my continent xD i went cavalery instand of cru...sth becouse i was rly ahed in tech so window for cavalery was bigger and yea .. 1200 ad Huayna cap,1310 pacal cap, and 1590 ad sitting bull cap,
i wasnt sure of win that map becouse elizabeth was 23 cities monster and jao cap to her but well i went for paratroopers infatry artlery got like 3 big stacks of it xD suporrted by rly nice navy with fighters and all that good stuff xD i added soem tanks later offcourse xD unfortunatly i had to reserch all by myslef becouse my vassels decide to go culture allmouse right after they capitulate xD but anyway i crush jao then elizabeth and spain.
Thanks for map rly fun map to play, becouse on deity usually i dont have option to bulid navy and water units usually you need to focus on land units and u cant afford to bulid like carriers
so yea rly fun map to play xD
http://ifotos.pl/zobacz/1234png_wwhwqnx.png