Nobles Club CXXXVII - Churchill

[Izuul]

@Izuul and elitetroops

Spoiler :

Pretty much Izuul wrote really. AC is close, has good land and can easily become a military threat. Izzy is a mile and a half away. She'd have longbows before my Axes get there

It felt more and more like the game was getting away from me, falling further and further behind on tech and not able to get the economy started. Had a lot of decent land after the war so I hoped it would propel me ahead once it developed, but it hasn't happened at all. The economy is in tatters and research is only crawling along thanks to Rep scientists. I'll try to whip some courthouses when I fire up the game again and we get to CoL, but other than that there isn't much I can do. Hammurabi will attack at some point too, with catas and other nasty units. Won't be a cakewalk.

Would appreciate if you (or somebody else) could take a gander at the save so I can at least improve for the future. Tried to focus on cottages in the capital this time, but it doesn't seem to help a great deal, despite having gold. Maintenance is simply murdering me.

Spoiler :

Well currently i think you should be building wealth and not units. You have tons of units already, and I don't quite understand the huge number of archers, especially in the places you have them. Why two archers in rome? You aren't in HR and Rome's not going to be attacked, so there's no reason to have more than one unit there. Also, 2 turns exploring shows where's Hammy's stack is, and you don't have any guys over there. 5 archers, 2 spears etc in Cumae while his stack is in Borsippa and will hit you in either York or Nottingham. At this point you need to stop most unit production (maybe keep a couple cities on phants and/or cats), get your existing units in a better spot, and just fight a largely defensive war while focusing on economy recovery until you are in a position to go on the offensive and take more cities.

I think you began to go wrong after taking out AC. It looks like you self-teched Myst, Sailing, and then Masonry. I assume Masonry was because you had taken the stone in Cumae and wanted to take a shot at a late Mids. There's nothing wrong with these techs, but could you have gone for Alpha earlier and traded for them rather than teching them yourself?

In 1080BC after taking out an AI, the emphasis needed to be on the economic recovery. Currency and CoL are important here, but you went for things like Aesthetics and Construction and then built tons of Archers and HAs even while you were teching towards Construction and vastly superior units. Those units are just dragging down your economy without having a clear purpose.

I think you would've been better served to get Currency and CoL and maybe run CS for awhile for border pops and rep specialists.

 

[Pangaea]

Spoiler :

Well currently i think you should be building wealth and not units. You have tons of units already, and I don't quite understand the huge number of archers, especially in the places you have them. Why two archers in rome? You aren't in HR and Rome's not going to be attacked, so there's no reason to have more than one unit there. Also, 2 turns exploring shows where's Hammy's stack is, and you don't have any guys over there. 5 archers, 2 spears etc in Cumae while his stack is in Borsippa and will hit you in either York or Nottingham. At this point you need to stop most unit production (maybe keep a couple cities on phants and/or cats), get your existing units in a better spot, and just fight a largely defensive war while focusing on economy recovery until you are in a position to go on the offensive and take more cities.

I think you began to go wrong after taking out AC. It looks like you self-teched Myst, Sailing, and then Masonry. I assume Masonry was because you had taken the stone in Cumae and wanted to take a shot at a late Mids. There's nothing wrong with these techs, but could you have gone for Alpha earlier and traded for them rather than teching them yourself?

In 1080BC after taking out an AI, the emphasis needed to be on the economic recovery. Currency and CoL are important here, but you went for things like Aesthetics and Construction and then built tons of Archers and HAs even while you were teching towards Construction and vastly superior units. Those units are just dragging down your economy without having a clear purpose.

I think you would've been better served to get Currency and CoL and maybe run CS for awhile for border pops and rep specialists.

@Izuul

Spoiler :

Those are good points and I should perhaps have forgotten about Aesthetics and gone for Alpha myself. But the play I often do is to get Aesth and then trade for Alpha and other stuff (IW in this case). All the archers in the NW city was a reaction to Hammurabi plotting though. He had a big stack there and I expected a DoW any moment, so had to go into full-scale chop-whipping to get a defence out. That is why I went for construction too, so I could get out some phants eventually, and neither party wanted to trade it). He has thankfully stopped plotting now, perhaps as a consequence of actual defence now. I did find where he had moved his stack though, so re-routed forces over there a while ago. Don't think he should be able to break through if he declares, which may still happen as I turned down a command to stop trading with Izzy. But since the worst threat of war is over for the time being, I've managed to whip out some courthouses and have started building wealth in a handful of cities, and am failbuilding some wonder, while slowteching towards Civil Service.

The big challenge I always seem to have is economic recovery. I do often go for Aesth and trade it, since the AIs rarely go there, but perhaps you are right I should forget about that and go straight for Alpha, Currency instead. Mysticism was to get out monuments btw, because there was a culture war for resources on the border with Hammurabi. I got them out before him, so in that sense it was a success (until the bugger culture bombed Nottingham's gold). I got out archers because they are Protective btw, and I just needed units in case he attacked. If I had numbers and a superhealer in the city under attack, he wouldn't find it easy to take.

Hope I can get things under control, but I clearly need to work on getting the economy in order much quicker. It's been a theme lately, especially on Immortal.

 

[Pengu]

Until 350 AD

Spoiler :

Did settle 1 N as I despise to loose a fp. Rome was very close and thankfully it wasn't JC, who really is an annoyance. But those prets are bad and we are close so I did decide to harass and worker steal from him. With Hammy also kind of close and some very good land between us I was satisfied to just block AC from getting metal/horses as I wanted to block of Hammy as much as I possibly could. I did met Izzy later but she is far away into the jungle and I have little intention of messing with her. My 1st 3 cities went by the 1st gold mine, 2nd gold mine and 3rd gold mine. That would block Hammy off, make an expansion possible and a war against AC going. With only archers to defend him his cities fgell 1 by 1. When he had 1 left I made peace to pick up his techs as I didn't want to give alpha to the others. Izzy just out of nowhere demanded 100 gold and she then dowed me with 1 archer.... After that was gone we made peace few turns later. Did met Darius a bit later as he is to an island south of me. Don't know if there are others close by. After 10 turns were up I redeclared and wiped AC out before Hammy got feu and could vassal him.
Izzy founded Buddism while Hammy was 1st to col and philo so he is in confu. The choice which religion to join was an easy one. As Hammy was more advanced, closer to my borders and was angry cause I twice declared in AC confu it was. And Izzy was angry anyways cause I didn't give her tribute. I haope to get Hammy to pleased before he dows me. Izzy hates me so she will in the future. Hammy stole techs from me which makes me like him less but I have no reason to take anyone out as I have 12 cities with room for 5 more. Trying to get to beu will be harder as my slider is at 0%
But all in the name of blocking of the AI's.

And until 1410

Spoiler :

Well, I settled a bit too agressivly and got no research for a few hundred years. But at least it prevented Hammy and Izzy from getting too big.
Once I got going it got better but was once again really behind. Tried to get lib but of course once AGAIN lost it by 1 turn. Sigh.
Well, my plan is to go the cannon route as I won't get much use out of the cavs after maybe 1 or 2 civs.
Besides Rome who is dead, the ranking is incredibly close. All between 1640 and 1400 pts. I still don't have chemistry though as I made a detour for Astro as I wanted the overseason trade.
All have between 10-20 cities and the tech race is pretty even with me coming last. Still up in the air and going to be rough again if/when I have conqured my continent.

 

[elitetroops]

@Pengu: what difficulty?

@Izuul&Pangaea:

Spoiler :

Yes, I can understand that JC is the best target for early warfare. I myself am more the kind of guy who like to expand as long as there is room, then go to war when necessary for further expansion. By that time we have borders with Isabella as well. So I guess my question was more about why you found it better in this case to do an early war than to expand peacefully. Maybe I should try to do it more often myself to further my appreciation for the noble art of early rushes.

@Pangaea:

Spoiler :

As I'm no expert on early rushes, I'm no expert on recovery either. But I think a market in York could be useful. You have room to run more specialists and it certainly wouldn't be harmful to pop a GM in this spot.

Why OR? You adapted it 250 years before you even had a state religion and since you got your state religion you have only built one barracks in a Buddhist city. As it's high upkeep, I've started avoiding OR quite a lot, unless I'm in the middle of some building stage.

Also, I'm curious about the placement of York. I prefer to settle it more inland here, for example 1W of pigs with London in the same spot. This claims a bit more land and makes for a stronger production site. Then there is still room to add a city in the desert that can use all 3 food tiles if you want that for a GP farm, or settle south of desert for fish and another one on the coast for corn/horse. Your York claims all 3 food resources and makes it quite hard to place any other good cities in that direction, especially as you can expect Hammy to grab any open land west of your borders pretty fast.

 

[Amao]

MOD can remove this message. Thanks.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

2nd attempt - Monarch / Epic / Huts & Events / Normal Barbs

Spoiler :

Camped my Warrior on the hill between the 2 corn and stole a worker from AC in due course. Got up to 4 Cities quickly and got the Elephants on line for an Elepult rush on AC.



Rome has fallen but Praets are annoying so have taken peace to regroup and get my GG to the Front line for a super medic.

 

[elitetroops]

All of you are so violent! Isn't the purpose with PRO to sit back, relax and let your opponents bash their heads into your walls?

To see how the peaceful rexing approach compares, here's another attempt, IMM 1AD:

Spoiler :

The north:

Paya is being built for failgold. There's quite a culture war going on with Hammy and on top of it all Borsippa just went holy, so I'm even putting up a monastery for more culture. Not sure if it's worth it though... Overall I have way more libraries than I normally would as it was for long the only culture building I could build and Hammy with his Stonehenge stole all my lands. The gold west of Nottingham will hopefully soon join the mighty English empire.

The south:

Room for two more decent cities, then I can go into the rainforest or out in the archipelago. Unfortunately AC took the barb city SW, I just didn't have enough army to take it before his Praets got there.

With AC and Ham at pleased I shouldn't need to fear any DOW from them. That spanish hag might become a nuisance one day, but I'll be ready for her when that happens. So far there has been no real need to prepare an army.

Tech situation:

Spoiler :

All of them suddenly have a lot of gold... Interesting! Perhaps I should sell some Aesthetics? It appears Aest alone could get me almost all their gold (only 365 from AC) + Masonry&Priesthood!

Overall my main concern in this game is that my /turn is still quite low. What could I have done better to increase my commerce until this date?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I did try the peaceful route but it's a commerce poor map hence the aggressive second go

Sent from my Android phone

 

[elitetroops]

The time of peaceful rexing is about to come to an end:

Spoiler :

Got iron hooked up from the NE island one turn ago, I have a nice stack of musketmen and longbows ready and most cities are working on catapults already, which will come out as cannons! Then smoke shall darken the western sky for several decades, and when the smoke clears, the Roman citizens shall be liberated from their current oppressor!

Rather late lib date imo. Surprised that it didn't go earlier on this difficulty... But nobody on this continent has edu yet and from other continents I've heard nothing but news of Great Generals emerging, so I dared delay it until I was ready to grab Steel. I figured I'd try cannons this time here as the rocky climate would slow down cuirs and I also want to use redcoats later when I get there.

 

[dmd175]

Spoiler :

Played a few successful prince games and one Monarch so decided to go Monarch here.

I have an aversion to not SIP but I took the advice of the 4000 BC posters and went 1N. I am happy with that capital location for 3 FP.

One nice thing about CHA is I got a woodsman III warrior. Does anyone know if that healing bonus stacks with medic III if I were to further promote?

PRAETS!
I never want to see them. So after meeting Rome I only built one city and avoiding wonders, made 6 axes with pop/chop and headed westward.

Spoiler :

Tech path was (IIRC): Ag BW Wheel AH Writing Alpha. Traded at least for archery, PolyT, Pottery. Working on Math.

Now...
--do I turn the surviving axes north and take a swing at Hammy, just to do some damage? He has CG1 bowmen... but also stonehenge and each of his purple tiles that pushes south will push my blood pressure higher?
--tech: after math, I guess construction for pults, CoL, and currency in some order. Or aesthetics? Hammy seems to have marble and I do not.
--wonders: I've been trying to wean off, esp since recently got hooked on SH. I'm thinking about GLH in Rome and Mids in London.
--Push east toward Izzy or just to Hammy?
--settle an island city for trade
--also want thoughts on people of city NE of London, e.g. fish/pigs/corn. I would have settled that right on the desert tile to use it up. I realize this makes it more of a sea city but then I can more easily share two of the food tiles to a city 4W of that location. Pretty much everyone else has it 1W of the desert...why?

 

[Pengu]

The time of peaceful rexing is about to come to an end:

Spoiler :

Got iron hooked up from the NE island one turn ago, I have a nice stack of musketmen and longbows ready and most cities are working on catapults already, which will come out as cannons! Then smoke shall darken the western sky for several decades, and when the smoke clears, the Roman citizens shall be liberated from their current oppressor!

Rather late lib date imo. Surprised that it didn't go earlier on this difficulty... But nobody on this continent has edu yet and from other continents I've heard nothing but news of Great Generals emerging, so I dared delay it until I was ready to grab Steel. I figured I'd try cannons this time here as the rocky climate would slow down cuirs and I also want to use redcoats later when I get there.

I played Imm. Nice to get lib! I had twice the cities, which delayed me, so missed it

 

[Pangaea]

@Pangaea:

Spoiler :

As I'm no expert on early rushes, I'm no expert on recovery either. But I think a market in York could be useful. You have room to run more specialists and it certainly wouldn't be harmful to pop a GM in this spot.

Why OR? You adapted it 250 years before you even had a state religion and since you got your state religion you have only built one barracks in a Buddhist city. As it's high upkeep, I've started avoiding OR quite a lot, unless I'm in the middle of some building stage.

Also, I'm curious about the placement of York. I prefer to settle it more inland here, for example 1W of pigs with London in the same spot. This claims a bit more land and makes for a stronger production site. Then there is still room to add a city in the desert that can use all 3 food tiles if you want that for a GP farm, or settle south of desert for fish and another one on the coast for corn/horse. Your York claims all 3 food resources and makes it quite hard to place any other good cities in that direction, especially as you can expect Hammy to grab any open land west of your borders pretty fast.

@elitetroops

Spoiler :

Very good points on the placement of York. In hindsight it wasn't a great spot, but my thinking at the time was it would become a great GP farm, and as always I wanted food in the inner ring, and placing it there meant I didn't have to slowproduce a workboat for food with a size 1 city. Would have been better teh way you laid it out though, and grabbed more land as you say. I found it tough to get enough land in this game, which is why I tried again and declared early on AC. Praets are not fun to fight at all, so it was best to take him out early, which would also give me more land, and pretty good land.

I did a double-change in civics IIRC, so I went with OR too, as I expected Izzy to mass-spread her religion, like she usually does. I don't like lost turns to anarchy, so felt it was better to go to OR as well. It costs a little bit more (think it was 6) so perhaps it would have been better to not make the change.

I'm playing a new game now where I've gone more directly for Alpha and Currency, without the usual Aesthetics tradebait route, so hopefully the recovery goes better this time. It's something I need to get better at, because I like an early rush if feasible, to grab land and take out an AI before he gets powerful. Perhaps I still have bad habits from playing at lower levels, where it's easier to do everything at once. In the new game I'm running research everywhere I can while 0%-ing to Currency. Crossing my fingers it will end up okay, preferably before 1000AD

It's why this game is so wonderful though. There are so many paths to take, and nothing is a given. There are risks and rewards, or pitfalls, with just about every choice.

 

[elitetroops]

IMM 1420AD:

Spoiler :

I don't get why you all are so freaked out by AC and his Praets. My cannons didn't complain at all! The former Roman empire is no more and now my 20+ cannons are looking for a new target. I also have a notable stack of CRIII maces that will make great redcoats as soon as I research rifling.

When JC capped he gave me contact with the rest of the world. They are nothing but a big bunch of backwards clowns! The score sheet at the moment puts Spain on top, followed by Babylon and myself. Hammurabi is by far the most advanced, he's a few techs ahead of me while the rest of the world is hopelessly behind. Hammy has no counters to my cannons though, so I shall probably devour him first.

Izzy has 17 cities and just got grenadiers. Does the grenadier +50% attack vs. riflemen also apply to redcoats?

 

[dmd175]

Spoiler :

I ended up taking my axe army that conquered Rome up to Hammy. Razed his city by marble/gold. Gave a tech for peace. I built a city to claim gold/corn/deer and he replaced his city, but despite him having SH I have my BFC b/c I rushed monument/Lib/etc.

Izzy has founded Bud Hind Confu (beat me to Oracle) Christianity and just now Taoism. Met Darius who is in Judaism. Izzy demanded I convert to Hindu so I did, Hammy had no religion but then Christianity spread to him so he is in that.

I built GLH in Rome and Mids in London. I teched CoL and currency, then MC since no one I met had it and will get Colossus soon, and right now on literature for TGL in London. Have built CH in most cities and filling in around capital (e.g. gold city to E, clams city to W, and just took a barb city on SW Peninsula). Economy has not crashed.

Hammy just declared in 300 AD but he has no stack. Sent a lone bowmen and then a lone chariot which did nothing. He has a sword and settler dancing in the north doing nothing. I'll wait for peace but I think I'll build SoZ in Rome for the heck of it to make him unhappy.

Plan is to finish off/vassalize Hammy and then decide on Izzy. I suppose this is what you have to get used to at higher levels (e.g. never founding a religion or having one religion whore AI). I suppose if I remain in Hindu she could be a powerful ally, and I'm sure she has the AP cooking somewhere.

As far as tech, CoL was just recently gotten by all (~200s-300s) and Izzy just got alpha but no one has currency or MC. I have to back fill archery, IW, etc. Maybe a mistake to not get PRO archers but my remaining axe force is the garrisons as needed, and I never needed IW and have read most people trade instead of self tech. I'll go for feudalism (for vassal above) and then probably optics for finding our friends abroad. Thoughts on tech path/plan?

 

[elitetroops]

Is anyone playing this on the lower levels? Would be interesting to know how this map feels to a noble player, it is the Noble's club after all!

@dmd175:

Spoiler :

Sounds like you have this game in the bag. With GLH it's probably a good idea to get to astro asap for trade. And please don't build SoZ... I believe the war weariness effect on the AI is almost negligible, doubling it has no significant effect. It also pollutes you GP pool with useless GA points.

How many cities do the babylonians have? If not too many you could probably just conquer them all instead of waiting for Feud. With GLH in place most of them should be profitable right from the start.

 

[Amao]

@elitetroops, I could play noble level, thought I'm no longer a noble level player...

 

[dmd175]

@elitetroops

Spoiler :

thanks for info. That's a useful point about soz not helping much but then polluting pool. I'm trying to better my gpf planning.

Babylon has 4 cities and cap I think. What is best and quickest counter to his defending bowmen? They have bonus v melee and many are cg1. ? HA, ? Swords ok, or either with lots of cats?

 

[Pangaea]

1300AD. Think it's time to call it quits

Spoiler :

As mentioned earlier my economy has been hosed. Have been bulding research and wealth to get techs, but it has still been slow going, and I'm probably dead last according to demographics. Managed to get some money though, and bulbs, and was slowing my way through Education. The turn before I got it, Hammurabi got it too, so couldn't trade with him, but did with Izzy. Had enough gold now to 100% through Liberalism, so I did that in 5 turns.

Spoiler :

Could try to whip out a force of trebuchets and maces, but Hammy can research gunpowder now, so there is a good chance he will have that before I'm even ready to declare. Bit of a traincrash really. Never properly recovered after the early rush, and the economy has been terrible ever since. A game of "almost". 3 turns behind to GLH. 1 turn behind to Edu, and 1 turn behind to Lib

One success is that I managed to get on Hammy's good side by voting for him though, shortly after asking him for money because he was plotting on me again. He hasn't gone back to plotting since he got Pleased, so I suppose he can't plot at Pleased.

Whipped like crAZy the last 20-ish turns, which was kind of fun, but it didn't help all that much in the end. Hammy has been wonderspamming too, so I'm losing the culture battle.

 

[elitetroops]

Nooooo! Don't give up!

Spoiler :

Okay, I understand that's rather frustrating and can't really help you with how to proceed without a save.

Seeing how hard it is to recover and stay competitive, I am more and more convinced that it's not the best idea to take out AC early. By rushing AC, you crash your economy and give Hammy a lot of extra space to expand. By leaving him intact you have one extra tech trading partner (he is actually the best tech trader on your continent), you can expand more to the north while Hammy and AC compete for lands in the west and Augustus will probably take care of building lots of nice stuff so that your economy doesn't crash when you eventually invade him. Rome when I took it:

Spoiler :

Those praetorians are nothing to fear as long as you are not at war and avoiding war with him is no problem at all.

Btw. Are these lib dates normal on IMM (1170-1300AD)? Or is it just an exceptionally slow map?

 

[dmd175]

@Pangaea

Spoiler :

Don't quit: I lost lib too and I made a totally boneheaded mistake. When I got monotheism in ~300AD I'm sure I clicked onto OR for civics and then I spread Hinduism around my cities. I didn't realize until about 1000 years later that I was still in paganism. Complete messup, and one can only imagine the lost shields and opportunity costs...watching some let's plays I know people survive deity with bigger mistakes so...

I've crashed the economy many a time but I avoided it this time by only taking Rome and Antium, expansion at a very measured pace, Col and curr as priorities and binary research. (*disclosure, also had GLH)

Our hemisphere seems to have a pretty robust tech pace. I too lost lib, something rare for me, easily by 10 or more turns to Izzy. Darius out of nowhere founded Islam and went for philo, edu, banking, nationalism. I guess it must be shrine income driving them. Far from "looking in the bag" at 400 AD, now in 1300 AD it's going to be a slog. Whereas I thought Babs had 5 cities, he actually had 8 so I called off earlier plans to destroy him.

It's fun though. I've completely lapsed into bad habits by wonderwhoring (but that is in part to fend off Babylonian culture, and I am winning tiles back from a city 4 spaces from Babylon capital). I just got optics and going to meet the other crew: I think they are going to be a bit backward, all in Buddhism (the only religion on other continent(s)), and maybe all very friendly (I've only seen on GG message and I know it's not from our neighborhood).