Nobles' Club LXXI: Churchill of England

[humblegar]

Hey,

I'm mostly a lurker and I have had a long break from Civ IV, but I gave this one a go and it has been fun

Summary of my game so far (Noble - 1720 AD):

Spoiler :

I did sort of mess up my early game by going stonehenge and focusing on expanding to the west. This gave Mansa too much space, making him at least follow me easily. To my east there was practically always war, and everybody wanting me to help them. This led to me not exactly shining in the diplomatic area and had to keep up in power since I trusted noone.

Then GK started to win clearly and vassaled not only Hatshepsut but even Roosevelt. I felt I had to attack Mansa (before GK did) although I was not ready for it. The result was a long war with huge distances to cover as he had grabbed quite a lot of space. In the end I had to vassal him just to get back on my feet before GK grew restless with his new puppets. Montezuma was the one who weakened Roosevelt and Hatshepsut to begin with, no surprises there

Fortunately Montezuma decided to probably hand me the game as he recently attacked GK and made Roosevelt a sovereign nation again, they are still at war, while I have the luxury of stacking cannons and redcoats.

If someone would like to take a look at my save I have some questions that often show up in my games:
- Where should I put the ironworks? Should I spend a GE (one in York atm) on it?
- How can I improve my production; I never seem to have enough shields.
- Should I keep London as production and even convert York to ironworks?
- I guess I should attack Asoka now, although that is probably not enough for domination?
- It seems like GK has disappeared from the power charts? edit: I use the bug mod only.

Some screens:

Spoiler :

Overview:




Civics:


Relations:


Tech:

 

[PeterWolf]

@humblegar:
You need a certain amount of espionage against someone in order for their stats to show up...
On Espionage Screen it shows you how many EPs you need to see their demographics (power, GNP, Production..), what they're researching, their cities and how much would it cost to do spy missions in their territory.

Spoiler :

A funny thing happened in my game. Montezuma attacked Roosevel, who quickly came to me and became my vassal. I made peace with Monty and had him and Roosevelt stop fighting, then I went vassaling MM, Asoka, Monty (who decided to declare on Roosevelt again) and finally GK to win Domination.

In my 2 games (first one I loss to a uber tech lead by MM - that's why I went for him first 2nd game) Egypt was always very strong, so it's surprising that GK vassaled her. But the AI has some weird behavior, so who's to know?

My Ironworks city was somewhere around where your Coventry city is... but I had it emphasize hammers throughout the game. It can go anywhere really as long as you have been preparing it.

 

[humblegar]

@humblegar:
You need a certain amount of espionage against someone in order for their stats to show up...
On Espionage Screen it shows you how many EPs you need to see their demographics (power, GNP, Production..), what they're researching, their cities and how much would it cost to do spy missions in their territory.

Spoiler :

A funny thing happened in my game. Montezuma attacked Roosevel, who quickly came to me and became my vassal. I made peace with Monty and had him and Roosevelt stop fighting, then I went vassaling MM, Asoka, Monty (who decided to declare on Roosevelt again) and finally GK to win Domination.

In my 2 games (first one I loss to a uber tech lead by MM - that's why I went for him first 2nd game) Egypt was always very strong, so it's surprising that GK vassaled her. But the AI has some weird behavior, so who's to know?

My Ironworks city was somewhere around where your Coventry city is... but I had it emphasize hammers throughout the game. It can go anywhere really as long as you have been preparing it.

Ah I know that screen but since I have him prioritized I could not really see how that could happen. But now that you mention it I remember spending a few spies reducing his culture-producing buildings, how silly in hindsight to spend all the EP

Spoiler :

I could probably have gotten Roosevelt as a vassal too, had I been more friendly when he asked for help early in the game I did actually gift him some units to save his capitol, I swear!

I don't think I have played any game with as many wars as this, and I did not mention them all, nor do I remember them all. Egypt had both GK and Montezuma attacking her, maybe she managed her diplo better in your games?

 

[PeterWolf]

Spoiler :

I could probably have gotten Roosevelt as a vassal too, had I been more friendly when he asked for help early in the game I did actually gift him some units to save his capitol, I swear!

I don't think I have played any game with as many wars as this, and I did not mention them all, nor do I remember them all. Egypt had both GK and Montezuma attacking her, maybe she managed her diplo better in your games?

Spoiler :

She sure did, in my second game I was worried GK would vassal to her before I could win it, since she was Pleased at him. But in both my games she ended up fighting with Monty.

It's totally mad game when you have warmongers mixed with peace AIs. I definitely don't remember all the times I heard "Montezuma has declared war on Hatshepsut!" or whoever else, really. He declared on me just to send 2 Macemen to a border city and pillage a mine.

 

[dalamb]

@humblegar:
You need a certain amount of espionage against someone in order for their stats to show up...

Once you have a few courthouses to generate EP, or can afford to run an espionage slider, I find it usually only takes a few turns per AI to push my espionage against them high enough to see demographics. You might already have enough for the first couple of civs you met, so just need to direct everything against each AI in turn to push your numbers high enough. Later in the game, eg. to see how far you can delay Liberalism, you can do the same to push your numbers high enough to see what they're researching.

@folks: please be kind to each other; it's a little easier for people to learn if nobody is flaming at anybody.

 

[humblegar]

It took a while, but I got there in the end. It seems I can handle Noble with more than Inca at least

Spoiler :

I vassaled Asoka with redcoats and cannons (he had an island).

Then I turned around and tore GK's team apart with several SoD's and support from cavalry, airships, destroyers and machine guns. I rushed ironworks (GE) in coventry and had started west point but did not manage to complete it. I destroyed GK, made peace with the token resistance that was left of egypt, monty and roosevelt and spent a few turns with culture to get my 64% landmass

In the end I had extended myself so far that even with versailles in Asoka's old capitol and forbidden palace in Mansa's old capitol, I had to raze lots of cities to keep some sort of economy going.

Notice how Mansa never let go of that horse-pasture throughout the whole game (look for his lone city southeast of London on the minimap)

Domination:

 

[PeterWolf]

Once you have a few courthouses to generate EP, or can afford to run an espionage slider, I find it usually only takes a few turns per AI to push my espionage against them high enough to see demographics. You might already have enough for the first couple of civs you met, so just need to direct everything against each AI in turn to push your numbers high enough. Later in the game, eg. to see how far you can delay Liberalism, you can do the same to push your numbers high enough to see what they're researching.

I got a question on this: the different value of EPs that each AI requires depends only on their EPs on our civ? Or it has no relation to that?

Also if we have enough EPs on one AI it might lose info on our power/land? But I've seen somewhere that the AI always knows all civ's power, so that might not matter for them.

 

[kcostell]

I had been hoping to finish last weekend, but sickness intervened and I just got around to playing a few turns now.

Spoiler The state of my empire at the moment :

and my (Bureaucracy+Oxford) capital:


Haven't looked in on the city in a while...guess I should send a few workers over to cottage away those last couple forests...

Spoiler Key Events -- the World at War :

As I mentioned in a previous post, my plan was to nurse my tech lead over the Mongols until Heavy Horsemen and/or Cavalry came along, then run 'em over. Unfortunately, the rest of the world wasn't willing to wait that long.

So I figured I'd join in the fun. In the meantime, Monty (the last civ I hadn't contacted yet) conquered most of America and Vassaled them. I took a few Mongol cities, including Karakoram with its Pyramids. Annoyingly, Mr. Khan snuck around my back lines and "liberated" Old Sarai with a single Keshik left over. Given that the city was right next to a Malinese stack, the liberation didn't last long and the city ended up in Malinese hands instead of mine (bah!).

Around that time, Monty decided he wanted to cause trouble, declared war on me, and sent a stack of elephants and catapults over my way. While his units were too weak to take any of my cities (especially once I upgraded to Cavalry and flanked all his siege engines), they distracted me long enough that Hatshepshut got the last two Mongolian cities (bah!).

Spoiler What Now -- the World at Peace(?) :

I finally destroyed one stack too many and Monty was willing to declare peace for a while. I've been trying to recover my tech lead in the mean time with a crash university building scheme culminating in Oxford University in London. I also picked up a bunch of engineers, which I used to rush the Statue of Liberty (yay representation!). I still have one left over which I'm not sure what to do with at this point.

I expect Monty will be back for more at some point, but I plan on waiting until I can send a naval force over his way before I make any serious moves towards him. I'm a bit worried about India going for Culture, but that seems a way off still. Ideally I'd like a few years of peace here, though I'm not sure that's the optimal plan.

 

[Larwin]

Spoiler :

View attachment NC 71 Churchill AD-1420.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Optical]

Lol at the warmongers being the only leaders who aren't Pleased or Friendly. Just as expected.

 

[Larwin]

Lol at the warmongers being the only leaders who aren't Pleased or Friendly. Just as expected.

Yeah LOL. Might have to get the other one as a pet too. lmao.

 

[Kaosprophet]

You are reading the sentence wrong. I am saying that he has cottages where farms should be. Read things in between 2 comas like a side note. TMITs early LPs would be good for him, where he is only playing on Monarch.

Ah, thanks; that clears it up a bit.

 

[Um the Muse]

Played to AD 625. Still pretty small and pretty weak, but I think I'm in much better shape, thanks to vigorous trades. I've got most civs to Pleased, thanks to "fair" trades, but my science is too poor to do anything else. I used a golden age to start my climb up. Now I'm about to use espionage to accelerate further.

I've learned a couple of lessons here: units, especially workers, are way more important than most buildings. This even includes libraries and courthouses early on (except possibly for the 1st library, for the GS?).

Spoiler :

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I'm pretty sure that the only way to fully recover from here is to fight; an unpalatable situation, considering that I'm behind in soldiers (I don't think I have a single classical unit except catapults, much less medieval units).

I'm interested to hear what you think! Is it even worth continuing at this point?

 

[Larwin]

Spoiler :

 

[Optical]

Nice. Way higher score than me, :/

 

[TheDanish]

Prince/Normal, Domination 1836

Spoiler :

SIP, went Workboat -> Worker, BW first. Expanded to 6 cities by 1 AD and eventually settled 9 cities. I figured I was going for Domination victory as soon as I saw we were playing with Redcoats on Pangaea. Swapped to Vassalage/Theocracy for Drill 3/4 Redcoats off the bat. Ended up with a 68000 score.

First screenshot is the winning turn, second shows some of my settled cities.