Nobles' Club LI: Mao Zedong of China

[I<3PWG]

to grashopa

I<3

Spoiler :

The block on Izzy and move on Hammurabi was perfect, except of course Hammurabi's land sucks as you noted. You also have a ton of land to settle - that means even on noble you likely won't be able to keep the slider up. So worry about the expansion first then think about Oxford once you have your slider back up and are generating more beakers to be multiplied in the capital.

If you get the bug mod you'll be able to see on the tech selection screen what the GS will bulb next. You likely still have a lot of turns left so bulbing isn't obviously the best idea - so its up to settling or academy which you can calculate fairly easily. Obviously you have to decide on Oxford first.

first thanks much for the response, all help is greatly appreciated. i'm wondering to what degree you would suggest crashing the economy to expand? if the science slider falls as low as 30 / 40% is that still alright?

should the goal be to simply fill out all of the continent as quickly as possible - economy be damned?

lastly, what victory seems reasonable here? i can't imagine i'll ever control enough land. space?

also i'm not clear on how to calculate an academy vs. adding to the city can you provide a link or quick math on how i'd go about doing that kind of calculation?

 

[kalidude]

1826AD
Ever been declared on by a civ that doesn't have gunpowder when you are close to rifling? Me either, until this game. I just had to share this b/c it's such a lol.

The lucky contestant is

Spoiler :

Cathy. She demanded education or something over a hundred years ago and I noticed she went into weehorn mode as soon as I refused, but at the time she didn't even have optics yet. She finally declared and launched a massive invasion force of 3 knights which killed 1 choku and then fell to a musket. Currently I have several transports loaded with 20ish cannon and maybe 15 infantry (yes INFANTRY LOL) about 2 turns from landing on her shores and she STILL DOESN'T HAVE GUNPOWDER. OMFG I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm working on fission right now but I think I'm so far ahead tech and power wise already that I could probably just go industrialism and use tanks and not use nukes at all this game. I guess my only mistake in war preps has been not to get the tech that unlocks cavalry, so my advance will be a bit slower, but meh...infantry! Oh also the minute Cathy declared on me, Izzy asked to be a peace vassal and I accepted. I had been building an attacking force to take her out but I figure she'll be working for me the entire rest of the game this way so why not?

 

[kalidude]

I $#^#$ did it again. Forgot to change it to Monarch when I restarted. Makes me want to tear my hair out. I was soooo proud of myself about to glide to my first Monarch win. I think I'll be playing L4d for a while...

 

[drlake]

D'oh! That's a drag.

 

[Makesh]

Decided to play until 1400. But freaking one more turn decided to play until 1410 -_-

Spoiler :

Well, this session proved some good and bad. The good news is that on my very first turn on load, I got a GS, whom I used to bulb philosophy and found Taoism. Hmm... Thats Buddhism, Taoism... just need one more religion for three cathedrals! The good news continued on the next turn (92), when Sippur asked to join my empire. I of course couldn't say no to the pleading citizens They wanted to rejoin the next turn (fickle little...), but I would not allow it! So that brought my city count to six. Turn 95 I completed the Sistine Chapel, which should go nicely with my plans for a culture victory. On that same turn, Izzy sent her missionary to Hamm's lands, and he converted... but that should be no problem. Yup it seems everything was going great in China... Until...

Spoiler :

Hammy ing declared war on me!

Well we all knew it was going to happen. Luckily, I had prepared. I was surprised about how feeble his stacks were, the main force consisting of only ten units! Mao's Protective easily took care of that, and left me with plenty of units to spare. So I decided to hunt the hunter ^_^ I took out a city at the southern tip of his empire, and claimed it as my own. By then, he was ready to have peace with me (But first he converted to Buddhism? Strange AI), as well as give me a few parting gifts, namely Construction, Metal Casting, and Literature. The war went quite well, I didn't even have any tile improvement losses!

But by the time the peace treaty rolled around, I was staring at -8 gold a turn at 0% science... yikes. I traded for currency, boosting my gold up a little bit. But as it stands, I am researching Feudalism (18) losing 5 gold a turn at ten percent science. Not too good. I think I will go on a rapid market-building spree, as the cottages just aren't seeming to cut it. I desperately need to boost my feeble economy, but I don't really want to delete many units incase Ham decides to retake his cities. I finished off the round by founding Chengdu on one of the Peninsulas by the center of my empire. I now have eight cities.

One more thing I forgot to mention, I completed the Parthenon a turn after Ham's DOW. I also constructed the Heroic Epic in Guangzhou, as well as the National Epic in Nanjing (currently at pop 16). The Buddhist Stupa in Beijing will also be completed next turn. I've already C-Bombed it once, so it should definatley be the first to Legendary. I'm thinking Nanjing as another, but not too sure what the third culture city will be.

Diplo:
Isabella- Pleased, Buddhism, Founder
Hammurabi- Cautious, Buddhism
Charlemagne- Annoyed, Judaism (Pleased with Izzy...?)

Here are some pics of the empire:

Spoiler :

Please, ask questions, give answers, anything to help me out here. I would like to win this game haha...

Thanks!

 

[4077 Mash]

@Makesh

Spoiler :

I am hardly an expert, but I did a culture win in this same game on Noble.

Going from the screenshots, I'd say you are overbuilding. You have a number of markets being built, but it takes a long time for a market to make up for the gold that could have been produced by just generating wealth. I think in my game, I only built two markets: my capital, and my shrine city (and in my capital it was more for the extra happiness). Most of my cities ran weath if they were not building the appropriate temples, and I probably should have whipped the temples as soon as I could to get back to wealth. I was able to run 80%-100% science slider until I switched over to Free Speech and started doing culture. And I got up to 11 cities without crashing my economy.

Along the same lines, why are you building Pavillions in Chengdu and Opis? You don't expect those to be one of your 3 legendary cities, right? They should not be near any kind of happiness cap. I did end up building 6 Pavillions to get the Globe in my GPF in order to run extra artists prior to being in Caste, but I don't think it was really that helpful.

But pretty much I had four big cities: Capital, Shrine city, Great Person Farm, and military unit production. My first three were the focus of legendary culture. Other than that, I really just focused on getting all three temples built in each city. My other cities built: workers, settlers, missionaries, three temples, occasionally some military, and then wealth.

 

[drlake]

@Makesh

Spoiler :

4077 is right, you are overbuilding. You would be far better off building wealth in most of those cities you are currently building Markets, and using that to move the research slider up. I rarely build Markets these days (usually winning at Monarch) except for in cities with shrines or later in the game when my base commerce is high enough to generate an extra 5+ gpt from the market (so, base income for a city of 20gpt) unless I need more happiness there.

Likewise, build the Pavilions where you need culture or happiness. Otherwise, don't bother. Build Wealth to get your slider up, and put Libraries and such where they will pay off.

 

[Makesh]

@drlake, @4077 Mash

Spoiler :

Usually I will build pavillions because I just love to grow my cultural borders and get more land/resources, and to prevent rivals from doing the same. My main reason for building one in Opis though, is that it will hopefully get more Chinese and less Babylonian culture in the city to prevent a flip hopefully...
I'll switch to wealth in some cities. I attached the save (beware, it is 3.17), so if you want to take a look you can. I have a few questions though.

Where should I proceed? Since my war is over (for now), what should be my primary goal at the moment? Also, which city would be best for the third Legendary culture site? Once again, the save is attached so if you want to try and get a better look at what my situation is, feel free.

Should I have made the jump to caste system by now? I'm not sure when it will be oppourtune to start mass assigning artists.

Thanks for your advice you two!

 

[I<3PWG]

Update #2 to 1270 AD

Spoiler :

well i nearly finished my war with hammurabi. i took 10 turns of peace in the middle to regroup but he's now down to a single city. i should push him off the map completely soon.

unfortunately this is really the only type of expansion i've been able to do as i've been very focused on the war. the one other thing i did do was to build the taj mahal and start a golden age. i switched to caste system, ran extra specialists and pegged the slider at 100% for the entire time. i was getting around 420 or so beakers per turn for the duration.

the last significant development was that izzy offered to become my vassal. i really wasn't sure what effect this would have, first time i've seen the option so i agreed. she during the war with hammurabi took a single city inside my borders which was causing a -2 border tension. she was still friendly but i figured i try the vassal thing if for no other reason than i've never seen it before.

izzy has pretty much been willing to trade me anything she researches. she largely has gone a different route than me which has been nice. one time she was on compass which i already had so i gifted it to her to get her to work on something else. this appears to be working as she now is focused on military tradition.

i'm about 8 turns from communism and state property which i assume will be a huge boon to my maintenance costs. after that i plan to pump out enough universities to get oxford up and then i'm honestly not too sure. i have the heroic epic in a city with 2 settled great generals and the statue of zeus so i could continue to war.

i'm wondering what victory technique might win on this map as domination / conquest seems a tall order given the size of the map. then again i have a pretty decisive tech advantage that i imagine i could press to pump out cannons / rifles and launch an intercontinental invasion.

unfortunately izzy and i are very much the lone jews in this world so i'm not likely to create any new friends. definitely having fun but totally unsure what endgame is here.

any advice would be appreciated.

 

[drlake]

@I<3

You seem to be doing fine. With vassals, you can direct them to research specific technologies, which is simpler than gifting them any tech they start to research you find inconvenient.

SP is nice, and it really pays off as empires get bigger and spread to other land masses.

You could go for domination using your tech advantage, space race (but it can be a long game) or diplomacy via the UN. If you are going to try to boost your relations with other AI civs, switch to Free Religion and give them cities. They don't have to be good cities, just run a boat down to them, find a patch of land no one has, settle it, and give the city to them. It's a huge relations boost.

 

[pzschrek]

@ Makesh

Spoiler :

Took a quick look at the game. I am no expert by any means, but I have learned by watching these guys some. A few notes I saw.

You really need to get into the tech game if you want to live long enough to get a cultural win. Hammy has longbows; this means he will be unprofitable to take war to his towns until you get trebs at least. izzy has macemen. While her macemen arent a threat to you right now, they could be if she trades it to someone. Anyhow, even if you keep good with those two, one of those other religions on the other continent will DOW you when they get astronomy and attack your macemen with rifles someday if you aren't careful with units and diplo. It doesn't pay to rush after a cultural win until you have a good base originally. You do have a decent base of cities, but you've got to have more workers. I would have at least 4 more, at the very minimum. I see an awful lot of unimproved tiles being worked, and that is absolutely killing you, esp in Xian and Nanjing. Nanjing even has un-hooked up wine. That's another smiley face right there. Also, I see two wonders or 5 settlers or 10 axemen in those uncut woods around your core cities.

Why is Xian building a market? there arent even any cottages there. You will get zero benefit from this. Those multiplier buildings are worth the most when you have tile-generated commerce to get put through the slider and multiplied accordingly. This goes for cash, libraries, culture buildings, anything you are planning on running through the slider. Markets are very expensive buildings, lots of hammers. Also, always cottage your river grassland first...food neutral and gains an extra coin for river. This includes forested river grassland. Avoid wasting worker turns on cottaging plains unless/until you have all the food and pop cap to work them. And don't forget, for your production cities, once you get techs like chemistry and guilds your workshops become very powerful, worth as much as a mined hill by the end, and when you get state property they get that -1 food back as well. Epic win FTW.

"Buldingitis" is a killer disease, I know because I still frequently suffer from it. All those delicious buildings! But remember, a production city needs a forge, maybe a happy building a bit later, and that's IT, until maybe when you need the buildings for oxford u and wall street, if you go that route. Commerce cities at this stage of game will likely need a library and that's it! To cite an example, I made everything but nanjing, beijing, and I think the one down south building a pavilion for border pop into wealth. This enabled me to get the slider up to 60%, with feudalism in like 5 turns and at -8 gold, which is sustainable for a long time with what you have in the bank already. Don't be scared to trade techs that are starting to show their age for pure $$$ from some of the more behind AIs who will soon get it from someone else anyway...I am often able to keep up deficit research for much of the game this way if i can get an early lead. You could get something from Izzy and Hammy for philo, but this is a very risky trade when you are behind in tech, since philo is a key gate on the liberalism race, if you are going for that.

It's good to aggressively pursue a strategy early, the focus is admirable. But I'd advise making sure you have the key techs you need, snagging key wonders and key defenses before going fully cultural, especially when you are still learning...once you get to renaissance into early and mid industrial, with radio and emancipation and such, with a few of those key planning levers pulled as early as you are now, a lot of the infrastructure is in place, then you'd be amazed at how fast those culture points multiply! Getting to those key cultural and defensive techs as quickly as possible will garner you a win more quickly in the long run than killing your economy now to get a few extra cultural points per turn, I think.

 

[GGS]

Prince/Epic. 505 AD.

Spoiler :

Boat guys put in appearances - Suryavaraman II 900 BC, Charlemagne 55 AD. Lots of barbarian-killing axemen allowed the settlement of Nanjing (425 BC) 1NE of the eastern copper and Xian (235 AD) 2W of the further eastern copper.

The Chinese tech lead is close to appreciable; the population lead is solid; the lead in soldiers is very modest. Beijing did get the Pyramids, added the Hanging Gardens and the Statue of Zeus is probable.

The principle decision of this period occurred in 455 BC when China agreed to the single-city Spainish request to convert to Judaism. The fight for continental control will be with the rapidly expanding Hammurabi and the convertion should shut the back door. Hopefully, the Babylon War can be delayed until the commissioning on the Cho-Ko-No but if it comes earlier sobeit.

 

[Makesh]

A small update... Played a few more turns until 1600 AD

Spoiler :

This game is getting a bit irrtating. I got control of the reigns of my economy, and as it stands am at 50% science and gaining 10 gold a turn (better than 60% and losing 11 a turn i suppose).

Charles suggested a trade- 143 gold for my drama. I don't know why I took it, but I could use some cash, and he's too far behind to hurt (i hope). I did a similar trade with Ham, but I got calendar in exchange for forking over 225 shiny coins. Got a GA in Nanjing on turn 137, decided to settle it. I also got the "complete 7 forges" quest sometime around there, but I'm so close to the Renaissance era where the quest is invalidated that I don't think I'll bother. Besides, I have other things to worry about:

Spoiler :

D'OH!! Yet another "WHEOOHRN"!

This is why I'm irritated at this game. I absolutley hate when ai's will continue to come back for repeated wars, especially if little to no territory is gained. It's just menial, really bothersome. Oh well, guess I got to deal with it. On my last turn I bought me 10 peaceful turns by demanding 1 gold from Hammurabi... Dunno if that was a wise move, but oh well.

I discovered Feudalism and Machinery along the way, for a little bit of defense. I'll get Paper in 3 turns, after that I hope to get education for the Lib race (unless Izzy already has it. Wouldn't doubt it- she has Nationalism!).

I suppose the good that came out of this short session is knowing that I recovered my economy a bit (for now), and that I'm slowly but surely catching up in tech.

Questions:

1) Should I drop Science to 0% and upgrade all my archers to Longbows/Cho-ko-nus? I don't want to lose all my troops to his inconquerable stack of maces
2) Am I doing a little better with my economy, at least? Where to go from here?

Screenies and a save are attached, look at it if you please.

Spoiler :

Thanks!

 

[Y Draig]

Quick question....

Spoiler :

I've managed to plant a city in the north west of the other continent (no screenshots sorry as I'm away from my laptop at the moment) which I intend to use as a staging point for war against either the Greeks or holy roman empire, not sure which yet as I'm currently eliminating Hammurabi at the moment. The new city has picked up Hinduism which I have adopted which has pushed Cathy up to friendly. On the diplo screen she can now be bribed to war with other ai's with whom she is currntly pleased (greeks, holy roman, Khmer) This may seem a very stupid question but will bribing her to war alter the diplo with her? I will be at war with one of her current 'friends' but so will she. Does the mutual military struggle outweigh this or is the ai relationship re-evaluated after the Dow?

 

[pzschrek]

Ydraig

Spoiler :

I might be wrong, but so far in my experience, after she DOWs on them she probably won't be pleased with them anymore. So just get her to DOW before you do. Besides, I have found that their price often goes up if you ask them to join a war you are already in as opposed to bribe them to start one of their own. Turning the AIs against each other is such fun!

 

[I<3PWG]

Spoiler :

i was able to get a diplomatic victory in 1876. i likely could have gone for it earlier but i wasn't sure how vote count would work so i got all but one civ as vassals before building the UN.

is there a simple guide to figuring out if you have the votes that someone could post a link to?

thanks much for all the advice. the last time i really played civ i played vanilla and really had no idea how vassals worked. i really liked this aspect of the game. the stacking power of having multiple vassals was interesting. while it took me awhile to break pericles and get him to capitulate, my wars on charlemagne and catherine went quickly as they capitulated quickly. i imagine this has to do with having 3 or 4 people at war with them at once.

looking forward to the next noble's club for sure.

 

[Maxwell's_Demon]

Spoiler :

I played through a game last night on Noble and won a relatively easy (but late) culture victory. This was my first victory on Noble and it seemed uncharacteristically easy compared to the other Noble games I've played (and lost!). First, the starting position was pretty good but then I met Isabella early and blocked her off with my third city (which was near the eastern coast). The whole game she had to try to squeeze in cities around that one and eventually the ones she settled in the empty space between my capital and Guangzhou (city #3) were flipped to me. In fact, as I was going for culture, once I turned my slider up to 100% I popped every one of her cities west of Madrid!! Isabella founded Judaism early on and opening borders with her and Hammurabi spread it to both of us so that we formed a solid religious block. When Izzy built the AP we all became game-long friends and with a little bit of diplomacy I was able to bring the Khmer into the fold. As a result of my city-flipping I nearly doubled the size of my empire and was able to dominate the AP elections/decisions by the end of the game. I only faced one DoW, from Charlemagne, and the next turn I was able to single-handedly vote to stop the war with an AP resolution due to my relative population size. It's a good thing too because I had very few defensive units and they were outdated. I was ahead in tech so once I got my cities producing tanks and infantry I would have squashed him but I might have lost some border-towns. All together it seemed too easy. Maybe I am just getting better but I wonder...did anyone else think that this was a relatively easy game comparatively for their difficulty level?

 

[pzschrek]

@ max

Spoiler :

Hi! When you are discussing the current game, as opposed to some facet of the game everyone knows about, click the little "spoil" button in the message options and type in there. Some people join the game late and like to have everything be a surprise.

If you post screens, et al like you can see others doing on here, it will be vastly easier for people to give you advice. If you hit print screen on the keyboard while playing, they get stored in a screenshot folder in your Civ IV directory, and then you can use imageshack or some other free image host and link them into your posts. The whole process takes about 15 seconds once you figure out how to do it.

Nobles games are usually handicapped a tad in favor of the player compared to a normal randomized map. For example, you can bet that the resource you need for your UU will be within the radius of one of your core cities. Also, for example, the host swapped our starting location with Izzy because this better played to both our strengths. (and gave me an outstanding GPF after I killed her early ) They also typically change many of the deserts to plains. The point is to learn, not get screwed by the map. That and because you are playing it to be analyzed by everyone else, you will find that your gameplay is a bit tighter than when you are just killing time on a random game some evening. But, long answer longer, if you can beat Noble on any of these maps, you should be able to also beat it routinely on any random map.

Based on what you said about your game, I'd say you got a big lucky not to get steamrolled by someone. I find that the number one reason I was losing on Noble was a flimsy military. As I think Civilized Tiger likes to say on here, "I'd rather have [tech] at 500 AD and be alive than at 1 AD and be dead." So even if you are doing a non-military win, someone is eying your rich land and tech advantage hungrily. In nearly all situations, you'll have to fight sometime.

I was struggling above warlord and now I play prince and will probably move up to try monarch shortly pretty much just from watching NC games before I started posting. I'd say the 3 most important things I learned about are: 1. Effective military/warring, 2. City Specialization, 3. only build buildings/wonders you NEED; the rest of the time, build wealth. 4. It is almost impossible to have too many workers in your REX phase. Almost anything is better than working an unimproved tile...that pop is almost always better off being whipped into hammers (or def as a scientist post writing) than working an unimproved tile.

The early game is the most important part, so watch what people do with chopping/whipping/build order/tech order, that sort of stuff. For example, I didn't make the connection that I should almost always build a worker first until I got here. If you are comfortably ahead a few techs and cities by 1500 AD, it becomes a lot more difficult to mess up your own game than when it is 2000 BC.

Have fun!

 

[Maxwell's_Demon]

@pzschrek
Oops! I forgot the spoiler tag (fixed it though). Thanks.

 

[fenskinator]

Hey fellas, thought I'd give this one a try and I've run into a quandry!

Spoiler :

Not gonna post any screenies, this seems like a strategical problem at this point. The Spanish are gone first since they were able to make inroads to the sweet resources in the south. Hammurabi will be gone soon after I move my forces back west. I've got the GW so I'm not worried about barbarians, really. The problem I find is that my empire is going to be HUGE and I don't think I'm really close to Communism, so expansion is going to eat me alive unless I have a Forbidden Palace and Versailles. Should I expand like mad on my continent once Hammurabi is out of the picture and then make sure I get all the requisite maintenance buildings and wonders? I'd like to do a diplo victory on this one since I could scoop up a lot of resources to trade away and make other happy with me. Any thoughts?