Nobles Club IV - Frederick of Germany

[OTAKUjbski]

@ r_rolo1:

Is there any way to tell for certain when the next election will be?

 

[r_rolo1]

Any AP vote can only be called from 9 to 9 turns ( normal speed ,apply current multipliers to other speeds ) ..... not sure if there is a mandatory election from time to time ( I'm completely dugged in a WB problem now... otherwise I would check the XML ).

 

[Jaaboo]

@Diamondeye:

That's a pretty good idea. My thought for the hill was to leverage the extra defense, but I won't need that if I keep on Monty's good side and use him as a shield.

 

[o-zoe]

@ OTAKUjbski

And well... anyone else interested in a quick update without eye candies ^_^

Spoiler :

omg.. i managed to spell ur name out without checking it first Anywho, thanks for ur help. And don't worry about the gem spoiler. It would have made a very nice city, so I went for it anyway. And of course I did not get there in time.

It actually turned out to be easier then any of my thoughts. Monte declared on Pascal out of the blue. No clue why, he didn't manage to capture a single city so far.

Thinking it was now or never, I waited till he moved most troops towards his border with Monte, gathered all of my soldier boys and stabbed him in the back.

And it was fugly. Fortified longbows on top of a hill in 60-100% culture cities are nothing to laugh at. Took a lot of time and trebuchets to knock culture down, only to suicide them for collateral damage. Very few survived. Only to be destroyed the very next turn when they had another go.

So far I captured 3 cities including his capital and destroyed most of his army. I'm very disappointed in Monte, for the record. War weariness is kicking in, but I can't stop. Too much cultural pressure from the remaining cities. But I do have to wait for more trebs to arrive.

 

[o-zoe]

@Jerrymander

Spoiler :

Pascal actually does have military in my game. A lot of it. Would have been game over if he stabbed me in the back while I was fooling around with Monte. But I dunno... he might have dowed Monte instead. Or not at all.

Thanks for your advice though. Looking back it probably would have been easier that way

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spoiler :

OK, Here's around 200AD. Pascal to the North surprise attacked me, but I have not lost any cities. So far only lost a worker and a couple of improvements. My I am trying to encourage population growth in my cities, so I can try to run the specialist economy.

Spoiler :

View attachment 173298

Spoiler :

I lost this in the shuffle until now. You need more workers/sooner workers, there's too many unimproved tiles still. Also, if you had time to settle a 4th city before Pacal that !@#$ started settling into you, I'd have done so (AKA, use the SE city up higher to wall him off). It's rare for Pacal to surprise DoW...most of the other players had more problems with Monty jumping in while they fought Pacal (I worked around this by keeping him friendly). This map puts the player in a very tight spot because he's got a REX pro and a warmonger sitting on him from the get go. Even if you prefer peace, you might want to spam some troops or even capture cities to deal with them. If not, at least guard border cities well and keep the power rating up. I don't think you can afford to do otherwise with them as neighbors.

Edit: Being in a "Heathen" religion relative to most of the world is dangerous.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

@ r_rolo1:

So, if the last vote was in 1450, then 9 * 1.5 = 13[.5] * 5 = 65 + 1450 = 1515 AD ... is that basically right? (Either way, I think that means I have 7 turns before another vote comes up.)

@ o-zoe:

Spoiler o-zoe :

lol ... that sounds like the Monty I know!

Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to get Monty to Capitulate, so I think you'll be in this one for the long haul.

You probably already are, but just in case: remember to take a stack of 'pillagers' (mostly just stack defender types like Formation Pikemen and Shock/Cover Macemen with a few mounted units) to run around Monty's back-country pillaging everything you can run across.

As long as he doesn't summon a stack against you (which it doesn't sound like he will), then you pillaging his roads and improvements will lessen his ability to mount more offense & defense as well as cripple him after the war.


just some more of my 2

keep it up

Did Monty build any wonders in your game?

 

[Solon70]

4000 BC: here

2000 BC:

Spoiler :

Looks like lots of space, for once!

As discussed, I settled in place and started by teching Ag. While I was still working on it, I popped Mysticism from a hut, which is handy. I have no particular interest in an early religion (and as it turns out, I had no shot at one anyway) so I stay on course. Tech path ends up as Ag>Fishing>TW>BW>AH>Pottery.

I head north to scope out my potential second city site on the north side of the water, and in 3840 BC I find Pacal to the north. Actually my first time ever seeing him, which tells you what a noob I am. This confirms for me that I want to grab some territory to the north in a hurry so I can get there before he does.

Berlin pops out a worker on schedule and I start a work boat. The worker farms the rice, mines the hill to the NE of town, and then I decide to start roading towards my second city. I briefly consider popping out a second settler super-early to stake out my land, but I still have about 10 turns left on BW so I can't chop. Instead I make a second work boat and then chop a settler. Sometimes I'm nervous about chopping inside my BFC since I'm not comfortable enough with city design to know I won't need the forests back later, but on this map there's so much forest I'm not worried.

I pop a free warrior from a goody hut, which helps out with the exploring. He's poking around up near Pacal's territory when I spot a settler escorted by what I assume is the Mayan UU. I briefly worry that he's headed for my spot but I decide that's way too far for him to put his second city. Not much my wimpy warrior can do about it either way.

Meanwhile Berlin pops out the settler and I found Hamburg in 2040 BC, while I chop out a second worker. First build in Hamburg is a monument, which I'm going to chop because all 3 resources are in the outer part of the BFC.

About the time Hamburg is founded, I meet Monty to the far NE. He turns out to be the founder of Buddhism.

Here's a bigger shot of the map in 2000 BC:

I'm usually a fan of the early rush, even though my last few haven't worked out so well, but it seems clear to me that it won't be happening on this map. The only copper I can see is far to the SE and I won't be hooking it up any time soon. I lucked out with horses in the BFC of the spot where I was intending to build Hamburg, but even if I build horse archers there's no way I can attack Pacal when his UU is spears. Monty just seems too far off for any kind of early war.

So with all the space I have at the moment, rapid expansion sounds like the plan instead. I know I want one city on the coast to get the corn and dyes. Otherwise, I don't know exactly where I want my other cities, but there's clearly room for several to my east, if I can cut off Monty from expanding in that direction. I feel like I usually build my cities too far apart; I'll try to do better this game, although I may want to take a big leap to claim territory and then fill in the gap. In the next few turns my scout will figure out exactly how far east this continent extends; I'm not sure yet if Monty is in the NE corner or if he has room to grow in that direction.

With this in mind, I'm going to pass on IW for the time being and move quickly in the direction of courthouses. As soon as I get writing I should be able to build a library in my capital and get 2 scientists going ASAP. I guess the idea is Writing>Meditation>Priesthood>CoL. Depending on how seriously I'm pushing the happy cap, maybe Monarchy along the way since I'm not particularly interested in founding a religion and upsetting Monty.

Thoughts are welcome, especially on the techs I should be looking at. I'm really not a great planner when it comes to techs and I need to improve my long-range thinking.

 

[Jerrymander]

I'm at 1692 and I'm just going to retire. I'll post a log/writeup in a bit here.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm starting to feel less bad for struggling in this one. I was pretty damned happy to get out of it with a (late) win, so gratz to anyone else who's managed, this is one of the harder map setups I've played. I had an easier time in the LHC games (harder than isolation is saying alot), and would easily have lost this had I not learned from them first and applied some tactically dirty warmongering .

 

[OTAKUjbski]

@ Solon70:

Spoiler Solon70 :

It looks like you're doing great ... your start feels strong so far.

A word of caution: Pacal is a ridiculous Expansionist ... he'll REX out to 12 cities if you're not careful ... he's crazy like that.

If you want to REX, you're better off moving towards him than away (or laterally), which means you'll want IW and an army of Workers to chop & improve all that Jungle you're likely to find yourself in.

If you REX away from him, the chances are very high he'll have poorly-placed cities all over the place blocking you in.

Also, you might want to build a Worker before the Granary. In 4 turns, Berlin will be working unimproved tiles, but your 1 Worker will be busy in Hamburg by then.

I recommend building a Worker to chop/Mine then whipping the Granary at the latest moment for 2 pop just before reaching pop 5 (or 6) for maximum overflow and 1 pop back.

Oh yeah ... good job on knowing Pacal has a resourceless UU Spear. The first time I had him as a neighbour, I was Hatty with Horse in the BFC. I shlt a brick when I realized he was still whipping Holkan even after I pillaged his freshly-mined Copper. That's a hard lesson to learn.

 

[Groogaroo]

Finally got around to finishing this game, and maganed to pull a win out of the bag in the end!

Previous reports

4000BC initial thoughts
4000BC - 2000BC
2000BC - 1AD
1AD - 1000AD
1000AD - 1500AD
1500AD - 1752AD

Victory - spacerace 1963

Spoiler :

In the end I couldn't have won this game without going to war to expand my empire. I took out Pacal with rifles and expanded into monty with Panzers eventually vasselling him, gandhi also became a vollentary vassel.

I pretty much stuck to a pure specialist economy the entire game and never built a cottage, allthough I ended up keeping the odd few that monty had built, I just could be bothered to wake all my workers up afters centuries of sleep.

I never felt very much in control or in the lead until very late in the game a few of the AI were very strong and had a tech lead on me but in the end they seemed to just give up on victory? except huayna capac who went for culture. The others built the Apollo program and then just stopped?

I'm not complaining, heres the victory screen.

and heres a stack preparing to take out HC's legendary cities if needed. unfortunatley it wasn't neccessary!

I would never normally keep an SE running this long, and stuck with Caste even with the emancipation anger wasn't too bad with 40% of the slider on culture. But I do feel I would have had a much easier ride if I had begun cottaging my empire in the late game.

That was a toughie! I think I'll be sticking to Prince a little while longer after that.

 

[Rub'Rum]

I'm always wary of voluntary vassals, they always end up trying for cultural victory. It's rather cheap of the A.I. Ghandi seems to be a prime candidate for this sort of unscrupulous idiocy.

 

[Groogaroo]

@SimonL

Spoiler :

I hate voluntary vassels generally! But I knew Gandhi didn't have a shot at cultural, HC had hogged most of the late wonders and all of the big Culture wonders too. I guess I was just trying to push my power rating through the roof to keep the AI's of my back for the last bit of the game. Probably not a good move generally but nobody dared attack me, which might have had more to do with my rediculous amount of modernarmour's

 

[AndiD]

I had a hugely educational game.

Spoiler :

Strategy was space race ASAP - diplomatically was out of the question with warmonger Monty in between everything and earning constant negative modifiers while keeping him at bay.

Caste System around 1 AD, and the Merchants in Berlin payed for my upkeep, did some more expansion to the south since I was boxed in by Pacal to the north. Grabbed the GL in Munich (north to Berlin across the inlet) - Cologne (directly NE of Berllin) ended up as Oxford city in the long term though. I built wonders sparsely with the small empire.

Liberalism around 1100 AD and happily trading tech around to keep in a solid lead. Monty vassalized Gandhi rather quickly during the renaissance and kept warring against everyone except me (only one not sharing a border with him).

I went for Rifling and Assembly Line before Scientfic Method for defense and the UB, then went towards Industrialism for tanks. Grabbed the SoL thanks to a GE and had to switch to Emp just after finishing Oxford and long before Wall Street. Meanwhile Monty had vassallized Washington and crushed Pacal in a few turns. Wang Kon and Huayana manged to fend him off at the expense of a few cities. Two of Pacal's captured cities flipped to me quite quickly since I had run Free Speech and Free Religion very early.

I feared the worst and it happened. He had a huge powergraph but the diplo screen showed he didn't have rifling?! (I surpassed this power rating only much later when I got Modern Armor and upgraded a few Panzer )

It turned out that he had huge stacks of Cuirassiers, Musketman and a few Cannons, Grenadiers and Macemen in between. I was practically defeated once when I chose to reload and to learn how to decently improve my defenses. That was with Infantry, Machine Guns and Tanks on my end by the way... Statistics in the end showed I killed 68 Cuirassiers over a few turns.

I had Zeus (deliberately, anticipating this kind of showdown...) and he didn't have Fascism in the beginning - I would have loved to see his WW statistics. ^^

When I had killed half his army I finally managed to get on the offensive and slowly took out his entire empire and after taking a few of Washington's previous cities he vassalized to me. Space race was quickly won afterwards.

The whole war took ages in real-time (epic) and was not terribly easy - he always managed to assemble a small but strong stack for a counter-offensive every few turns. This even though I was usually one step ahead, it was Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry and Panzers against Cuirassiers, Rifleman and Cannons in the beginning and when he got Infantry I got Flight, later Mechanized Infantry, Modern Armor and Advanced Flight when he finally got Artillery, SAM Infantry, Anti-Tank and Flight. I once lost a few Panzers and Mech Infantry in a counterattack involving tons of suicide Artilleries.

It was the first time I build Jails, Mt. Rushmore and ran Police State and I got better at blitzkrieg in the end with my SoD of MechInf and Modern Armor constantly waltzing through his empire, his cities softened by air bombardment before. I never got to appreciate the UU since he became vassal while researching Industrialism (so no Panzer against Tanks) and I had Modern Armor by that time. I never got a unit up to lvl6 for West Point though. (One MechInf was close but didn't make it in the end)

Research could remain at 80-90% as soon as I got the WW quelled, except for a few dips before a new tech for mass upgrading. In the end I even managed to found Aluminium Co. to spam it to the AI I could bribe out of State Property. Organized shone since I could run Free Market for the whole game despite taking over 2/3 - 3/4 of the continent without suffering in terms of upkeep. Sid's Sushi was quite a cornerstone for my productivity since my main production cities three cities east of Berlin were quite light on food.

So technically I lost but learned a lot by reloading, standing my ground and winning.

 

[Groogaroo]

@AndiD

Spoiler :

I found monty to be a right pain in the butt!!! even tho I had a tech edge when I went to war with him he kept coming out with crazily promoted units. Later when I managed to take his capital I found out why!

Crazy!

 

[Solon70]

@OTAKUjbski:

Spoiler :

Thanks for all the tips. I'll check when I bring up the save file, but I think I actually may have already changed that granary production to a worker. You're definitely right about that.

For my third city I think the more urgent priority is to extend Hamburg to the right to cut off Pacal, even though the coastal site looks primo. I might try to found my 3rd and 4th city relatively soon after one another one the time comes. I really hate those guys like Huayna where you check out their territory after you've left them alone for a while and they've somehow managed to fit in 14 cities with interlocking roads on every space.

 

[schwartz]

I've read through some spoilers here to the 500~ AD point and everyone looks to be in better shape than I am.... I was about to play my next set when I changed my mind at the last minute to play a Fractal-Monarch-Normal game with Willem.. After chariot rushing Hannibal and seeing his capital, I don't regret it. I heard a voice screaming "GP FARM!!!" to me..

Yes, that is, count them, 5 seafood AND a rice that can be irrigated @ civil service.
So my next set will be delayed until tomorrow, or tonight at the earliest

 

[Jerrymander]

Uh, what are you doing? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

 

[Bleys]

No worries Jerry. Schwartz is one of the original NC members, heh, and is in our NC Succession Game, and was just posting the excellent start that distracted him from finishing up this Freddy game. Its all in good fun, and I dont think a few off-topic posts are going to hurt anyone.

My own Freddy game is still in progress as well, up to about 1700 AD:

Spoiler :

Currently wiping Monty off the map, and HCs cities that arent in his own little corner, and moving to a couple of Pacals next as well, none of them bothered with Rifling and I am really mopping up. Once I get all the crappy culture pressure cities out of the way, I can tech to Space with ease, or even continue on for a Dom win, but the lag is already getting huge on battles, heh.