Nobles Club IV - Frederick of Germany

[OTAKUjbski]

@ godevils

Spoiler :

1 city @ 1AD? Are you trying to play a forced OCC? I can't imagine that's a good way to start. I'd love to see pictures. That's pretty good if you're managing to keep up with the rest of the world.

 

[Jaaboo]

Well poo, here it is Thursday and I haven't really had the motivation to play again, or really the time. Freakin' work. So, I'm sorry guys, as much as I love Ready Freddy and I think I have a good start on this game, I don't think I'm going to finish it. Bleh.

Some thoughts:

Spoiler :

I think I did well too. This was a game in which I didn't want to go all warmonger like Kublai, but managed a very efficient early war against Pacal and was in a good position to manage my empire behind the iron wall that is Montezuma. This was a tough map, but I think it could cater well to builders with all the religious nutjobs to the east, leaving Freddy only one weak nation to usurp. So even though this game is in limbo for me, I'm going to count it as a loss (might even officialy retire so I can see it in my HOF.) Gotta love huge work projects.

 

[Solon70]

4000 BC: here

2000 BC: here

1 AD and looking for help:

Spoiler :

Here's how my little corner of the world looks in 1 AD:



I managed to cut Pacal off from expanding any farther into my territory, so now we're at close quarters with conflict looking inevitable. Frustratingly, both Pacal and Monty are Buddhist, and I have Hinduism and Confucianism within my borders but not Buddhism. I've refrained from adopting either religion to avoid pissing them off.

I feel I've made a number of mistakes this game, most notably teching without a plan. My actual tech path since the last update went Pottery>Archery>Writing>Meditation>Priesthood>CoL>IW>Sailing>Masonry>Alphabet>Currency. Along the way I traded CoL to Wang Kon for Monarchy; I felt I had little choice because I seemed to be lagging way behind everyone else. While I've met Washington, Huayna, and Wang Kon, I actually have no idea where any of them are.

Among my clearest mistakes was forgetting some good advice I got earlier and putting off IW too long. There's simply too much jungle on this map and in particular, I wasn't able to improve the resource tiles in Munich's inner ring without the ability to clear jungle. Generally speaking, I feel I was just wandering around the tech tree without a clear idea where my focus should be; I'd appreciate any thoughts on what I should have done as well as where I should go from here.

I wish I had researched Metal Casting because Cologne is really hurting from a total lack of production. At this point, I'm figuring on just being able to trade for it in the near future. On the positive side, I've stabilized my economy fairly well, built courthouses everywhere, and I have 3 libraries up for culture and specialists. I'm trying to get up walls and build some more archers to discourage aggression.

I got my first Great Scientist in 275 BC. I could have lightbulbed Math, but I decided to build the academy in my capital instead. Not sure if that was the right call, I still don't understand when to strategically lightbulb. Maybe I should have, as CS would really help me irrigate some of these cities that lack river tiles.

I've refused numerous open borders requests, as I still have a lot of undeveloped territory and I don't want anyone to sneak in a settler. Here's the broad lay of the land; I'm building a settler right now, and I'm pretty sure I want to set up a couple more cities, but I'm not exactly sure where my first priority should be:



Any thoughts on what my plan should be from here?

 

[schwartz]

Solon:

Spoiler :

I think the key on this map is getting war elephants quickly, you need construction and HBR, plus ivory (obviously), seems that with early enough eles-catapults, Pacal should be easy to take out (I waited too long in my game).
The academy (settling might have been better, but that depends on your beaker output..) was the right call with the GS, bulbing math wastes a TON of beakers.
At this point, you look like you need more workers and a focus on getting to elephants or maces to grab a bit more land (or all of it, if thats your plan.)

Put up a save if you want something more detailed, I find it sort of tough to give good advice without being able to poke around in your game.

 

[Solon70]

My 1 AD save file:

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Round 0: 4000 BC - 4000 BC
Round 1: 4000 BC - 2000 BC
Round 2: 2000 BC - 25 AD
Round 3: 25 AD - 990 AD
Round 4: 990 AD - 1480 AD

Final Round: 1480 - 1869

I shouldn't've even played today, but I just had to finish this game.

Longstoryshort: Domination Victory in 1869.

Spoiler short version (not enough posting time right now) :

This game was a lot of fun all the way through. At the end, I went Colony crazy and colonized Celtia, Russia and Egypt just because I was too lazy to defend and manage the cities, lol.

I used a string of 2 Golden Ages just before RailRoad to jumpstart everything.

I got lucky with an AP vote (which I controlled) and was able to assign Delhi back to Gandhi as I was preparing to attack him, lol ... so I avoided HC until the end!

I switched into Nationhood and Drafted a LOT of Riflemen (yay Globe Theatre) -- one per turn for the longest time ... probably 30 in a row! (NOTE: Drafting Infantry is borderline HORRIBLE ... I don't know about other Warmongers, but I hate Nationhood after Assembly Line.)

I later used another Golden Age (Great Spy + Great Prophet) just before Electricity > Industrialism to make the final switch into all my "wartime" civics of Police State/Vassalage/Caste System/State Property/Theocracy.

Immediately after Industrialism, I turned off research in favour of Culture and Gold. When going for a Domination or Conquest win, I find it's very seldom to need any techs past Industrialism/Fascism/Artillery ... flight's cool, but there's no reason to speed tech it if you need the Gold or happiness.

NOTE: This is just like in an early Culture Victory when research is turned off in favour of Culture just after Liberalism. If you don't need the techs and are certain you can win with what you've got, amass Gold for upgrades instead.​

All of my cities began pumping out lvl2 (9/10) *Cannon & *Machine Gun (Barracks + Vassalage + Theocracy + Pentagon). My two military production cities (Heroic Epic/Military Academy & IronWorks/Military Academy) began pumping out lvl 3 (yay Military Instructor) *Infantry (later *Panzer) only.

I took out Delhi -- the double holy city -- and made it my Wall Street before HC could get to it then later vassalized Wang Kon after wiping him off my continent.

India was stubborn, so I eliminated Gandhi completely.

I then turned on HC, whom I never really liked to start with. I took his capital and a couple border cities on turn 1 then systematically wiped him from my continent over the next 10 or so turns (City capture + army of Railroading Workers + reinforcements = FAST city capture).

HC had created a colony (Victoria of England), so I had to eliminate her islands 'manually'.

During that entire time, I was also pumping out Transports & Settlers to colonize/settle the great many islands between Delhi and Berlin (every little bit counts).

Though I was prepared to for the win, I never once declared war against Montezuma!

There's something to say about staying on the good side of a crazy mo-fo like Montezuma. If you can keep him just a little more +diplo than the rest of the world as well as just a little bit "less weaker" than the rest of the world, he'll never betray you. However, if Montezuma is ever less-than-Pleased ... watch your back!





Strong MFG = iWin button. (slight military tech deficit or better required)



Don't underestimate Nationhood.

You can see 3 very clear Power surges: 1500 when I adopted Nationhood (the double Golden Age certainly helped, too) ... 1774 when I discovered Assembly Line ... 1834 when I discovered Industrialism:



A high GNP certainly helps, but you have to remember it wasn't that way for the whole game. Up until just before my Golden Ages, I was at relative tech parity with HC and Wang Kon. Even after that, HC still put up a good race.



Not the greatest score, and I wish it could've been higher, but I'll take any win any day, you know.

 

[o-zoe]

I won't be able to finish the game. stupid harddrive went rip. but most likely i would have won anyway. no domination, but space race or diplomacy. although i never did play germany before. the panzers might have inspired me after all ^_^

i did make a lot of mistakes though. and definately was lucky monte declared on pascal destroying most of his army without taking a single city. but i'm definately still way too much of a buildaholic. cities should be pretty. and civ definately should have had a multiplier for that in score.

anywho, it was fun. definately will try to play next game again. thanks for all the c&c everyone!

 

[grandad1982]

@Solon70

Spoiler :

I reckon you game is shaping up pretty well. If I was you I'd try to get at least one more city to your west to really close off you hinterland to the AIs expansion.

I also think Feud is important here as for the first time in god knows how long, I've switched to serfdom to chop the jungle out faster! Also Longbows are pretty good with an aggresive nieghbor.

Sadly I've lost the Cologne spot to Pacal. I'll get that dye eventaully!

Also theres a nice production spot south of rice and west of the mountains. It would need to use Munichs rice but would be a good military city - which could be pretty handy!

 

[godevils]

My first post lost to Monty in a Domination win.

Here goes another try would love some feedback

Up to 2000BC

Spoiler :

settled in place
techs found myst.>BW>masonry>fish>ag?wheel
great wall

Up to 1 AD

Spoiler :

cities hamburg and munich built waited too long for cities in first attempt
techs poly>priest>writing>math>Aesthetics>sailing?>ah>med>mon>archery in trade for math
oracle built
great spy and prophet settled
converted to buddhism trying to keep pacal and monty happy

 

[schwartz]

Bleh, I went to play my next round and got hit by a huge dogpile.. Looking forward to the next one, my start here was just way too sloppy for a win.

 

[Solon70]

840 AD and a longish update in hopes of getting some sage advice before the next round of turns.

4000 BC: here

2000 BC: here

1 AD: here

Spoiler :

After the last round, some smart people suggested I focus on researching a military tech (either axemen or longbows) so I can take on Pacal ASAP. When I open the save file, though, I have 7 turns left on... Currency. Should I switch and come back to that one later? I decide to finish it off in hopes of trading it for something useful like Metal Casting.

In 150 AD I finish Currency and start on Math, checking the foreign advisor every turn to see if a trade is available.

I had a settler in the oven all this time so now I have to decide where my next city is going to be. I'm not thrilled with my terrain overall, but it needs to be filled in whether I like it or not, so I found Frankfurt in 225 AD by the rice to the east. This gives me copper in the outer ring, not a big priority for me since I have iron hooked up, but always nice to have.



I think about whether to start with a monument, but decide that since I have 2 religions floating around my cities already, I can afford to take a chance that one of them will spread to the new city in the next few turns and give it some culture. I start with a granary instead, and my gamble pays off in a few turns when Confucianism spreads to Frankfurt. I'm still not taking any state religion as my most immediate danger comes from the two Buddhists, Pacal and Monty, and I don't have access to that religion.

A few turns later I finally get a chance to play wheeler-dealer with Currency.



Do I take it? Calendar isn't my first choice, but it's useful to me as I have bananas and dye I can hook up. If I trade it now I may miss the chance to swap it multiple times later, but I decide to go with the bird in the hand and take the deal.

In 325 AD Washington and Monty go to war. I still have no clue where anyone is except for Pacal and Monty. I decide to build a scout to have a look around, although I'm mostly building axes for the inevitable conflict with Pacal. I've noticed one of my weaknesses is not building nearly as many units as I should (I tend to get distracted by buildings) and I'm trying to work on that. Meanwhile I finish up Construction and Horseback Riding and get to work on Civil Service.

In 520 AD, just as Christianity is founded in a distant land, Pacal declares war on me. I'm not thrilled, but I feel I have enough units to be ready. Strangely, he doesn't really mount much of an attack at all, just a couple stacks of 4 or 5 units that kind of stick their noses into my territory. I stay cool and keep building elephants and axes.

Somewhere along the line here I get a Great Scientist and decide to settle him in Berlin where I built an academy with the first one. Berlin doesn't really have the look of a super science city to me - too much production, I think - but none of my cities really excite me, so I decide to start getting beakers now rather than sitting around waiting for the perfect gambit with the GS.

The battle with Pacal rages on, somewhat slowly. I move a stack up to his border to see if there's an opportunity, but he has a few too many units on defense for me to get excited. I content myself with taking out a couple of his offensive stacks through elephant power. I keep looking for a chance to talk peace since it doesn't seem like I'll be able to get anything positive out of this war. Finally the chance comes.



Heh, no thanks. That same turn I manage to swap Currency and Horseback Riding to someone for Metal Casting and Polytheism; the next turn I finish researching Civil Service, hooray.

I kill off a few more of Pacal's units and he finally agrees to peace on reasonable terms in 820 AD, actually giving me a few gold in the deal. I ask Huayna for Monotheism as a gift and to my surprise, he coughs it up. Now I am researching Machinery, and with peace in the air, it's time to take a step back and assess where we stand.

Here is a map of my little corner of the world, as well as screenshots of my five lovely cities:













Since I just got CS, I'm going to revolt to Bureaucracy ASAP, the only question being whether I want to change any other civic at the same time. I feel that slavery still has some utility to me and I'm not quite ready to realize a benefit from Caste System just yet, so I'm inclined to leave that one alone. I don't want to revolt to Organized Religion because I still don't want to alienate Pacal and Monty by taking something other than Buddhism. (Er, what happens if I revolt to OR without having a state religion? Will it let me?)

I should probably build cities 6 and 7 along the lower edge of the peninsula although that terrain all sucks in my book. Still, beggars can't be choosers. Any thoughts on placement are welcome.

Looks like I'm still doing quite well on techs even after all those turns of war.



Wang Kon seems to be the tech leader - I'd sure love to get that yummy Feudalism off him. I've already traded with him 2 or 3 times so it's probably my fault he is where he is.

Any thoughts for the next set of turns? I've attached a save file if anyone wants to see it.

 

[baronmonkeyback]

First time on the forums here and first time playing nobles club. I played at Prince although I usually do "monarch". Should have this time
Anyway, I got domination victory at 1878, should have been sooner but it took surprisingly long to run longbowman over with panzers

Anyway, without going too long as to how I got there, I killed Pacal asap (before the AD era) and took his 4 or 5 cities which were thankfully filled with wonders!! Mutal became just a beast of a city, having founded 2 religions and containing the great wall among other goodies

Basically I fast tracked Iron working and construction, built lots of settlers and workers (which I usually don't do but the forests were just way to tempting). Using my many early cities and workers I chop built lots of cataputs and swordsmen to kill pacal. Meanwhile my research was minimal, but I was willing to sacrifice economy for military. Once Pacal was destroyed I spread my religions (Hinduism founded by him, Christianity by me) like a demon grew some great people, built the religious buildings, went cottage crazy and within 1000 years or so made up my technology deficit. Monty was my biggest competition, but I got to infantry before him, and while he was busy wiping out the Americans, declared war on him, took about 4 cities in the first war and then about 4 more 10 turns after our peace treaty and that was that. Both Gandhi (voluntarily) and Monty were vassels, I had tanks and the next best civ had just invented rifles. Domination victory became easy.

Basically I got lucky that Pacal was so concerned with building wonders and neglected his military while I was able to chop build a force that could take him out. With so many more cities than everyone else and with wonders in them victory was assured even before 500 ad.

Next time I'm going for Monarch with Hannibal, this is fun

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Gonna try this, never noticed these threads before!

 

[NintendoTogepi]

Well

Spoiler :

I'm at around turn 300. I've got Apollo Program, but my production is horrible. Montezuma and the others have been in a state of constant war, and Washington is Pacal's vassal and Gandhi is Wang Kon's vassal. State religion is Confucianism, but there's also Hinduism in Berlin.

It's going alright I suppose...just another standard one city challenge.

 

[Yoda47Yoda]

Yet another completely untapped skill!

So UU and UB are looong-term considerations at best. Looks like settle in place, ->BW-->Fish-->Pot for starters; figuring out map type is a priority too. Big focus (besides micromanaging the SE as it will be my first one) will be military. I don't intend to be caught with my pants or resources down!

2000 BC

Spoiler :

Hoo boy this is gonna be tough. New economy to learn and I got off to a slow expansion. So we've met our challengers and I'm thirsting for Alpha so I can get some idea of the tech situation. Here's the first 80 turns:
Huts: 168g, Map, 51g, Fishing
Builds: Scout Worker WB WB Archer Archer Settler
Techs: BW Wheel Arch Agri Pot Writing Masonry
Sites: Red Dot will become 2nd city to access copper. White and Grey dots have potential, Green is nice. Blue is superior; looks like that should be the Super Science city. Magenta presents a quandry: are two grassland gems worth one banana? I say yes.
America is in the NE and far away, India in the SE and somewhat closer Monty to the NE and close; he either needs to go or give me Buddhism in a damn hurry. As you can see he's already making lots of friends (he's the worst enemy of Pacal, Ghandi, AND George already) Pacal to the N could pinch off expansion and war may come sooner than we'd ideally like. Here's hoping he flows east.
So, we need to expand and fast. Following the granary/library SE path; not sure I can avoid cottage temptation, but I'll try!

1 AD

Spoiler :

Well, this is going better than I expected!
Techs: Myst Alpha IW Math (lightbulbed) Calender Sailing (from Wang for Writing) AH (from Washington for Writing) Med & Poly (to Gandhi for Alpha) Aesthetics
Diplo: America asks us to cancel with Monty, we do. Huaynan and Gandhi convert to rub Monty's Buddha. Monty demands Fish, we give it to him, and he promptly DoC's Pacal. Oh beautiful day! I thank any number of animist gods.
Domestic: Pacal's Hinduism spreads to all our cities. We found Munich on blue dot, Cologne on maroon (just in time; Gandhi and Pacal were looking to take over the barb city 2 S). And now for the fateful decision; in 5 BC Pacal sends some Hindu heebie-jeebies to the palace. We eat the blessed naan and convert! Pacal and I will end up dominating or suffering together. Long live Germomaya! (Mayany?)
Plans: Continue getting the SE economy going, plantations all over for the multiple resources (sugar and bananas are great food resources, IMO.) Get white dot and green dot settled ASAP. Beeline Civil Service, build on tech lead to maces. GrLib & Nat'l Epic in Munich. Go go Zuperzecrit German Zcientists!

1000 AD

Spoiler :

Hoo Boy! Making buddies with Pacal the Metalless was a bad idea! Even with me pumping copper up his pooper he was a complete wuss; I spent a vast amount of resources defending him and losing units to Insane Monty Ver. 3.17 while Pacal quietly split my empire with cities and put cultural pressure on me. Needless to say, it's 1200 AD and this game is going nowhere fast. Wang and I are the only ones with maces, but I've been taking the smelly end of Monty's ceremonial club and I've got very poor outlooks for the future. I put it to a vote! Reload or take me punishment?
PS. Sure is tough to build the GrLib in a city with ONE tile of hammers; it still has 9 turns to go at this point.

1500 AD

Spoiler :

res

Conclusion

Spoiler :

res

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ooooh, this was the first monarch NC for me . I still remember taking grenadiers + cannons vs infantry...and winning . I can't believe I used to think our neighbors expand quickly.

 

[JTMacc99]

Gonna give this one a try at Monarch/Epic. I'm looking to do a little work on my specialist economy skills. I can win with a good cottage or trade route map at emperor and have to struggle all the way to the end on Prince without them. It's this damn capitalist mentality I have. I insist on deploying it into my games and am up . .. .. .. .'s creek when I don't have the land to do so.

I've already started this one and explored a little:

Spoiler :

First we met the little guy, who seems to have come through the jungle. Haven't seen his borders yet, but there does look like some really nice land (for cottages, heh) to the northeast of our capital. I would hope to grab some of it before he does. I see elephants pretty close, we'll probably want to bring those into the fold quickly just for the happy faces.

I then actually sucked a little air in through my teeth when I met my second neighbor. Oy vey. The maniac is in the area. Well, at least he's already founded a religion. I think I'll shoot for being his religious buddy. If I'm lucky, we can all just get along until I'm damn well ready for him.

Techs and builds have been standard moves to work the food first and then bronze working to get into slavery and chop some trees. REALLY not sure what to do next. If I find copper, I will seriously consider killing one of these two guys as my top priority. If I don't, I'm not sure exactly when I should go for writing. It seems like it would help to have open borders with Monty to get some religion. Also, I think I could probably run a scientist fairly soon in the capital, but this seems to go against my desire to pump out workers and settlers with all that food and production there.

I'm not going to read what everybody else did yet. I've done that before in this series and found that I would get 115,000 point final scores because of the advantage I got.

 

[Shafi]

i'm having trouble with opening the world builder mode save. Can someone post a save of the game at 4000 BC if you have it please ....
I would love to give the game a shot.

 

[KaytieKat]

i'm having trouble with opening the world builder mode save. Can someone post a save of the game at 4000 BC if you have it please ....
I would love to give the game a shot.

Hi

Are you just trying to open it? To play a worldbuilder save just put it in your worldbuildersaves folder then choose "play scenario" or "play custom scenario" if you want to tweak the settings a lil bit.

Kaytie

 

[r_rolo1]

Or you can simply define to open the WB files with BtS... by some reason sometimes the game install does not define automatically that BtS WB files should open with BtS