Nobles' Club CXXV Alexander of Greece

[byang08]

It's a challenging but winnable map, I enjoyed it.

 

[Tommah]


Thanks for kind and encouraging feedback mates ! I suggest you to try making Nobles' Club maps, because you seem like experienced and great players ! Just tell dalamb that you wanna make maps and he'll be happy to see somemore helpers ! I can't wait to try your maps, I'm so excited !! This is why I make NC maps, this is what NC is in its best form!! I'm so happy I could die, thanks to you, buddies !!

You're right this map is just dandy.

 

[Robert FIN]

@Murky, Tommah: Well, I agree- kinda ! Its bad map ! But let's go straight to the main thing; This is probably not right place to put this, but is it just me or was Civfanatics down yesterday evening?? I couldn't enter here.. I tried my laptop and phone but didn't help. What happened??

 

[ben-jammin]

Well I forgot to save and then went back to Shakabrade's Deity map so lost the autosaves Started over because I think this is a map that's a lot stronger than most on here think and I'll show you how to abuse it. Granted I tried it on Deity and didn't continue after getting only 5 cities (one marginal, one not coastal) +GLH.

Immortal to just after Lib:

Spoiler :

Opening tech path was (I think) mining->sailing->BW->masonry->wheel->AH->writing->Alpha. You can delay or skip entirely most of the worker techs because you a)wont need roads to connect your cities to trade routs because of sailing+coast and b)need only seafood and mines as worked tiles for quite a while.

The most crucial part of the strategy is of course...



Quite late especially with an Industrious leader on the map but there was a lot of pressure to grab the needed city sites so a lot of the GLH was actually completed with overflow from 2-pop whipping settlers. The trade routes allow us to tech fairly quickly while still expanding. And with few strong techers in the game I went Alpha first, and this is why you want to skip a bunch of the early techs on this map:



That trade coming after getting IW+ for alpha elsewhere, of course. With copper, all coastal cities each with at least 1 seafood to work, and no other AI having it I go for Metal Casting which nets me this very sweet trade:



Early math means my first GMerchant bulbs Currency. Our empire with the expansion phase nearly finished:



You can see there is a settler on the 1-tile ice island. It's a nearly worthless site normally but with the GLighthouse+offshore trade routes it will contribute about 10 commerce more than it costs me as soon as it's settled. The crappy barb city remaining to the north is captured shortly after this screenshot for the same reason, and also unlocks the Heroic Epic for me. So this map allowed me 10 cities, all coastal, with only 3 of them not really being able to contribute hammers.

Why going for MC (especially being able to trade it for math+) was a strong move:



Copper, math chops, brokering MC for numerous good techs, and so many water tiles being worked that the Colossus immediately gives me about 20 extra commerce per turn. The tech situation after my first GScientist bulbs Philo:



So I was first to Currency, CoL, Philo, AND Metal Casting, with zero cottages and only one commerce tile in the entire empire. The power of GLH abuse, which on this map is almost as good as it would be on an archipeligo.

I thought this was kind of funny:



Barb Galley spawn where it cannot move. This is also quite helpful, because no more barb galleys could spawn up there.

The game at this point would ordinarily be your standard bulb/tech your way to a Military Tradition lib and then roll up the map, but in this case we have no horses, and only one AI with multiple sources who will not trade them to us. The easiest solution is a detour through machinery->engineering to get our hands on them the good old fashioned way. The target is Hannibal:



He was going to be the target anyway, but actually declared on me while I was preparing, which was fine. I bribed Saladin on him which kept a lot of his units tied up if only for a few turns. Why Hannibal? He has horses, he has a bunch of techs we want, and his land is nice (particularly the gems, because all my cities have forges). His cities are also placed such that I can hold on to them without much culture pressure at all. I take him down to 3 cities and he capitulates.

While this is happening I bulb education. Now ideally I would self tech or trade for nationalism and lib MT. But Hannibal and a couple others already have nationalism, and there is one AI that can already research Lib. This makes nationalism a very poor choice, and makes it far too risky to try to lib Replaceable Parts. So instead I Lib Printing Press, which nobody else has, and put a bulb into Chemistry instead. Which allows me to make this trade with my vassal:



So now I can have Hannibal research MT while I do Replaceable Parts to trade for it. I can make Hannibal give me his horses, and I should have time to vassal one more AI with cuirs and then finish the map with either cavalry or cannons.

That Lib date was probably only possible because the entire world was at war for quite a while.

 

[enKage]

AAAAAgh

I decided to try to win on immo for the first time or at least play a winabkle start. I thougt I will play the last available noble series game, entered the forum and what I see?

ALEX! No RIVER! NO GREEN TILES!
1) One of the worst civs - awful starting techs
2) Leader sucks, I dont like specialist economy, maybe because I dont know how to play it effectively
3) Starting position sucks

Anyway, I will give a try to play 100 turns,

Need to decide: SIP for better use of philo trait, or on plain hill for fresh water but loosing 1 claim,

 

[Izuul]

AAAAAgh

I decided to try to win on immo for the first time or at least play a winabkle start. I thougt I will play the last available noble series game, entered the forum and what I see?

ALEX! No RIVER! NO GREEN TILES!
1) One of the worst civs - awful starting techs
2) Leader sucks, I dont like specialist economy, maybe because I dont know how to play it effectively
3) Starting position sucks

Anyway, I will give a try to play 100 turns,

Need to decide: SIP for better use of philo trait, or on plain hill for fresh water but loosing 1 claim,

Hmmm...

1) Greek starting techs do stink on general but they are actually pretty good on this start. You need fishing here and hunting opens up AH research.

2) forget about the specialist economy. It's an antiquated approach that's too restrictive, offers little flexibility, and doesn't work well in practice. The strength of philo is faster great people and more of them over the course of a game. That's very powerful regardless of what type of game you are playing.

3) can't really argue with this, but it is playable if you approach it right, and this was also evident in the opening screen shot, so it probably wasn't the best time to move up a level.

 

[enKage]

OK, hunting opens AH, thats a good thing, but I dont have exp on immo and don/t know how many initial techs I wil be able to research to make this game fluent and not to fall behind other civs to much. Mining + BW would be on time after finishing pastures? Food resources are not so great, even though there a lot of them, so I think early sailing and choped lighthouse is a must.

I really think of skipping AH, mining + BW first, than sailing, AH for cheaper writing, otherwise I will try to skip till alpha

 

[Izuul]

My game so far (Immortal):

Spoiler :

Opening tech path was Mining > Sailing > BW > Masonry > Wheel > AH > Writing > Math > Currency (bulb). I built the GLH and pushed coastal expansion to the west grabbing 6 decent spots. Since i had Ivory and Hannibal was weak with 4 cities i just teched Construction and took him out without much issue. I decided to leave him with 1 city b/c he had a good bit of tech that i wanted and wiping him out entirely wouldn't have benefited me at all. I traded Engineering for Feadalism and capped Hannibal + got CoL in the deal. On the next turn i traded him Engineering for CS.

With those techs i went after Rome who had been fighting Hatty for quite some time. I had actually initiated that war right before DoWing Hannibal by declaring on Hatty myself and then giving JC a couple of cheap techs for him to pile on. Anyway, JC only had 6 cities and not a ton of troops so he went down easily as well.

Along the way i teched paper, traded Hannibal for Philo, double-bubled Edu, and I'm now a few turns from Lib. Nobody else even has Edu yet, so I'm safe to wait 6 turns on Hannibal to get Nationalism so that i can trade for it and grab MT with Lib. Rome has horses (serious lack of horses on this map!) so i can demand those off of him and start building some Cuirs. It's really odd to go from Construction war to Engineering war to Cuirs, but that seems to be the way that this game is heading...

 

[enKage]

Hmmmm

I hate Alex :]

I took immosave but forgot to add archery to barbs (normal, huts, events)
Anyway, I just wanted to play 100 turns opening sequenca

Spoiler :

I went mining > BW > Sailing > wheel > Pottery > Masonry > Writing > AH > Esthetics

Masonry for GLH, but it was build on 750 BC At least I had gold to tech esthetics. I should build it / chop in Sparta instead

Barbs were not a problem, I built only 4 warriors and this is my only army till now propbably need to recruit some Rome is WHAOUHN (or similar)

Now 7 cities, 6 workers, , LH Granary Lib in capital, Granary Lib in Sparta, most claims pillaged by barb galley -_-

awful capital. Sparta will be far superior. Corinth - future GP farm. If I played longer, I will move capital to Sparta and make Athens a moai/HE city. Both Sheep will go to marginal city with better commerce potential. - BTW where are rivers ????
I would also build up military ASAP and try to take some land from Hanni.

As for my 2nd attempt on Immo it is not so bad with such a leader (I hope,)

Is this game still winnable?

Spoiler :

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/5708/5ul6.jpg

Savegame = BAT mod

 

[Izuul]

You would be in a good position with the GLH, but without it you are in a pretty tough spot. 750BC is pretty late to try to get the GLH, i think i finished it in 1320BC in my game. I'd recommend starting over and see if you can land it at an earlier date and still get those city sites. I think that would be a good learning experience.

 

[dalamb]

@enKage: Please put discussions of this specific game in spoilers. Maybe we need to revisit this convention sometime, since every game there are people who don't want to do it, but it's been part of the culture for quite a while.

 

[enKage]

@enKage: Please put discussions of this specific game in spoilers. Maybe we need to revisit this convention sometime, since every game there are people who don't want to do it, but it's been part of the culture for quite a while.

whoops, mea culpa, edited

 

[pomthom]

Trying this on Immortal, normal speed, NHNE

Spoiler :

Boys it's been hard... but interesting! I'm so slow it's unnerving, but fortunately all other civs are also very slow.

I must be around 1AD and haven't built a single cottage and a single wonder
My cunning plan is to hold my tech'ing with specialists and bulbing until I conquer better commerce and already cottaged sites (and choose a new capitole).

Squeezed out only 5 cities (3 of them poor) after a lot of "better" spots were taken away from me by AIs or Barbs. My second city went all the way East between the Gold spot and the fresh water Clams lol: indeed Robert ): that was a BIG mistake because the spot was not very good (I knew that when I settled it obviously) but mostly it stalled my expansion on closer sites. Now I have uncompfortable AI breath oozing down my neck. Oh well at least I have Gold...

But I did manage to get the Fish/Copper/Elephant/Clam site which is what might save me.

I sorta beelined Construction and am preparing Phants and Pults to conquer Hannibal who is closest and biggest. Still no Engineering in sight but I gotta go faster!

 

[Patchface]

@enKage:

Spoiler :

Your GPP is at zero. Did you pop one or have you not been running any scientists?
You don't need big income to tech when you're Phi. Bulb and trade monopoly techs aroundd to stay afloat until you get within reach of a key military tech. This scenario screams cataphant rush to me (Construction) and 375BC isn't too late to start one esp. with 6 solid cities. The other option, since you maybe haven't popped a GPerson yet and you're teching MC, would be to build a forge and run a GE and bulb Engineering for a treb rush.

 

[Izuul]

Immortal 1515 Conquest

Spoiler :

Continuing on, i took out Hatty with my medieval stack, and then added some Cuirs to go after Minos. I got a really late Lib in this game, like 1200ish AD. I caught Persia's entire stack in an a former barb city that he had taken off of Hatty that was NNW of Hannibal's capital. The city only had only regained about 20% of it's cultural defense when i attacked allowing me to slaughter him easily. I then had to defy a resolution and take 2 more lightly defended cities to break Cyus completely.

Sal had some Grenadiers when i got over to him which i thought might cause some trouble, but he mostly marched his stack around doing nothing until he finally suicided it against me in a city i had captured. I had just gotten Steel a turn prior and upgraded some trebs and cats to cannons, and i think they actually did a good bit of the defending. On the next turn he was willing to capitulate, and that was that.

Spoiler :

 

[Tall German Joe]

Imm, NHNE, Conquest, 1440 AD

Spoiler :

sorry I haven't posted an update on this game. long story short, my attack on Hannibal went awesomely, and I took peace for a ton of techs when he had 1 cities left. I then noticed he had horses, so I declared on him again 10 turns later, but he wouldn't cap immediately, so I had to kill him. I then took out rome (1 city to cap) and minos (2 cities to cap) with medeival units, and hatty w/ cuirs. saladin took 2 cities to cap with cuirs/cavs, and then obstinate cyrus took 4 because he tried to backdoor me with a very large stack (too bad for him though that my empire was producing at least 5 cavs a turn and it took him 5 turns to walk to my city).

I couldn't take any pictures because I played this on the plane, and I had turned my graphics down all the way so that my laptop's battery would last longer. and, apparently, with these graphics settings, I can't take screenshots. =/

fun game though, thanks robert! I only ended up improving one of your special clams.

 

[pigswill]

Emperor 1080ad.

Spoiler :

Got up to 6 cities then went for lib, had to research a bunch of techs myself because the AI were really slow. Wars broke out recently and are expanding fast, AP dragged me (and Hats, Jules, Minos and Cyrus) into war with Hannibal. Just libbed steel, start GA next turn: whip out cannons and stuff while teching towards milsci and see what happens.

 

[awldune]

Emperor 1635AD Conquest

Spoiler :

My third try at this map, the first two I felt I was doing well but then got backstabbed by Cyrus (both times!)

Expanded westward and got the Colossus and TGLH. I was lucky to pop a great engineer to rush the Mids also.

Libbed MT, traded Saladin for horses. Everyone was looking fairly strong, so I waited for cavalry to bust out. Should have libbed Replaceable Parts or Rifling if possible instead of MT.

I really wanted to start some trouble on this map but none of the AIs would bribe (JC didn't like me.)

Took out Hannibal, then JC, then Hatty, then Minos. I got Hannibal to tech Physics for me so I could augment my cavs with airships.

Then back around for Cyrus and Saladin. I hate fighting PRO Saladin, but artillery softened him up.

 

[enKage]

Thanks to all for feedback.

As I said, I am new to immo (3rd game?) and just starting to know new strategies. This game tought me to put more pressure on GP. I very rarely use them early, that is the difference between winning most of my emperor games and falling behind other civs on research.

I believe this game is still winnable, but for far better players than me. I will practice emperor again but trying to introduce more early specialist to my games. Maybe next noble club game I will do better than this time and show you more advanced savegame.

 

[pomthom]

Say wuuuuuuuuuuuuuut ????!!

Immortal, Normal speed, NHNE - 1090 AD... and something really weird happened

Spoiler :

I conquered Hannibal's last city... without attacking it

Here's how it went: I was Elephant/Maceman/Catapult stomping Hannibal Lecter to his last 2 cities, including his capitole (I decided to skip Lib race and spammed Elephants as early as possible to attack him - which was a good call since HE DoW'ed me just when I was getting ready ). So here I go and capture his capitole (1 other city reamaing) and KABLEMO: I automatically get his last city for free!?! I literrally had no units close to that last city, I cannot be mistaken about this. I sorta inherited it (dying wish??). And yeah he 'dead.

Has anyone ever witnessed something like this? Maybe someone can understand something from the logs, so I attached the save (1090 AD). If someone fancies testing if it does the same thing on their computer I also attached the last autosave before it happened (1080 AD)... If you guys confirm it's weird I'll report the bug.