Nobles' Club LXXXV: Augustus Caesar of Rome

[popalopa]

Hey...
I'm noble too....

I have a few questions
for exploration, what's the best way to do,

• Just explore around your main city?
• Explore till you know where you're going to place your 2-3rd cities?
• Explore till you map out when your opponents are?

Spoiler :

I went for Boat->Worker, but then should I go for a boat or a worker again?
Also I want to beeline for IW, going for Agri+AH (because of the resources), but I don't know if that's the best way to do.

Thanks.

 

[krikav]

Hey...
I'm noble too....

I have a few questions
for exploration, what's the best way to do,

• Just explore around your main city?
• Explore till you know where you're going to place your 2-3rd cities?
• Explore till you map out when your opponents are?

Spoiler :

I went for Boat->Worker, but then should I go for a boat or a worker again?
Also I want to beeline for IW, going for Agri+AH (because of the resources), but I don't know if that's the best way to do.

Thanks.

For exploration, since I usually play on marathon, exploration is less of a problem (much more turns to move around), but what you _need_ to know early, is where to place your second city. And the second city should be at some food resource, preferably in the direction of a opponent. So prioritize scouting of the area inbetween you and your closest AI.


I did certainly not beeline for IW. I find that it is usefull to have some axes mixed in with the prets, and you can build axes while waiting for IW.
It's very important to have pottery (for cottages) and in most cases writing (for the libraries), so that you can keep your research going, even after you have conqured alot of cities.
One should allways play with what is in sight. And cows and rice calls for agriculture and animal husbundry.
Agriculture is a "must have", since that rice can be shared with a good gem-city. AH you can wait with, but you better have a good reason to do so!


About your question on what do do after workboat -> worker, I think that I built my first settler at that point, can't remember.
But either workboat or worker is fine. This map isn't so cramped that you need to rush your second city so much.

I think I would lean toward a second worker above the second workboat, just to get the close gem-city connected with road and up to speed asap. The extra commerce from the gems is very important.

Since you ask about exploration, the tip to build a workboat to scout the coasts might be good for you. It takes a good while for barb galleys to spawn, and a workboat kan more or less map out the entire coast.
This also opens up trade routes to AIs with coastal cities as soon as you have sailing!

 

[mtr12]

The primary purpose of exploration is to find a suitable point for your cities, and to be able to construct a dotmap. Therefore, you don't just want to charge off into the wilderness, you want to explore in a more circular manner.

 

[jdros13]

Ok, finished up. 1913 Diplo victory, just couldn't be bothered to attack the other continent but used early war to expand.

This was Emperor, Normal, no huts or events.

To 1AD

Spoiler :

And here's how it went:
Started WB, WB while teching BW and IW. I can't tell from the log, but I think I went warrior next before building my first worker.

3440 BC - BW
2680 BC - IW - I had decided to try for Iron early because of the Praets going in, but the Jungle land S made it a reasonable decision in my mind even if Iron was hard to come by.
2480 BC - Agriculture
2360 BC - Founded Antium to the NE, on the coast 2S of the Marble (right next to the Iron). I had already decided that I was not going to attack Mansa since he typically techs pretty well and there appeared to be 2 civs and lots of land to the S.
2200 BC - wheel
1920 BC - masonry. I think I started building the great wall in Antium either on this turn or within a couple of turns. It was basically a gamble to use the wall for border pops / great person points or a little extra cash. Not having to mess with the Barbs at all would be a very small bonus for me on this map.
1720 BC - mysticism. I was going for the Oracle and I was going to build a monument in Antium if the great wall failed.
1560 BC - Built Cumae pretty far south of rome, on the coast right next to the Iron that was available there.
1520 BC - finally revolted into slavery. I had been mostly working the hills in Rome and had even mined the Gems even though I couldn't work them for a little extra happy. Pretty sure I revolted at this time so I could whip the end of the great wall
1480 BC - Completed TGW
1280 BC - Polytheism. Looks like my tech pace had already slowed significantly at this point. Probably ran at 0% science to build up gold for too long though.
975 BC - Priest. Started on Oracle in Antium
900 BC - Declared on Fred. Rome has been pumping out Praets since that possibility existed and Cumae is doing the same now.
775 BC - Took Berlin. For all intents and purposes the Germans are done now, although I have to actually capture the other cities. Berlin becomes my main military city for the rest of the game.
750 BC - Pottery
725 BC - Oracle / Metal Casting. This is really late...and while I'm never going to turn down getting the Oracle, some fail gold early it turns out would have been helpful from one of these wonders coming up.
625 BC - Hamburg falls
575 BC - Writing
450 BC - Munich falls. Hamburg and Munich were really good city locations. Wound up building the Great Library in Munich, but neither city really did as much as they probably could have in hindsight.
425 BC - Animal Husbandry
400 BC - Great Prophet in Antium - odds were in favor of a spy, but I was thankful for the little bit of gold relief the prophet brought.
300 BC - Cologne falls, Germans are dead, Pyramids finish in Rome. Again, I always like to have the pyramids, but I REALLY could have used the fail gold I'm about to discover.
175 BC - Colossus finishes in Antium. This was very important because my empire is very spread out and about to get worse when I declare on Monty next. Spent many turns in the next 700 years or so working non-ideal tiles just to keep from going on strike.

1 AD to Lib

Spoiler :

100 AD - I didn't wait long, got my small stack in position and declared on Monty who had a couple of Jaguars but was really not in a good military position at all.
125 AD - Sailing. The Great Lighthouse had already gone, but I was on 0% research and Aesthetics was taking forever, so I diverted to Sailing so I could at least still have a chance at growing while working as many water tiles as possible. Rome had built cottages on the riverside grass, but they were still maturing.
150 AD - Destroy Tlaxcala. I typically hate to raze cities and I wound up building this one again in the same spot, but I simply couldn't afford it if I was going to keep their capital.
250 AD - Capture Tenochtitlan. Triple Holy City (Bud, Hindu, Jew) and while none of the shrines had been built yet I was able to build them and this wound up being a pretty damn good Wall Street city with no cottages. I was very happy to see that Monty was willing to take peace on this turn, because I was in danger of having the city taken right back from me if he didn't and I would have lost my super medic if that happened. I used the break to get some more Praets to the front line. His military was basically broken at this point anyway, so once I was healed I used a couple of smaller stacks to finish him off.
275 AD - Aesthetics
400 AD - Lit and GSpy. Running as many specialists as I can right now to keep the tech pace at least moving forward. Running out of money though.
475 AD - Mansa FINALLY gets Alphabet and I make some kind of trade with him involving Metal Casting for Hunting, Meditation, Math, Code of Laws. Need courthouses soon in a big way.
540 AD - Calendar. I think this was a trade (possibly a gift from Mansa who is always such a nice friend), because I know I was trying to get Currency next.
560 AD - finish Parthenon in Rome. Declare on Monty again. All my military units are being produced by the southern cities at this point obviously.
600 AD - Currency and The Great Library (built in Munich I believe) both finish. I am now unable to go broke.
800 AD - Maus of Mauss finishes in Rome. Unfortunately I only ever ran 2 GAs, so this wasn't as valuable as I make it sometimes. Also got Civil Service on this turn and revolted to Bureau and OR.
920 AD - Aztecs destroyed after chasing them around for a while. Apostolic Palace was also built on this turn on the other continent. I was kind of hoping Mansa would build it for us...oh well.
1230 AD - Liberalism race is won. Took Nationalism. I was actually racing as fast as I could without bulbs. Mansa should have won the race easily, but skipped education as the AI tends to do and had already self teched through economics and nationalism. This helped me catch up just a bit.

Will finish and add a couple of screens later (have to pick up one of my kids now). Attached a save just before Lib if anyone wants to take a peek

 

[strijder20]

Spoiler :

Won at 1775 AD Domination, right after taking out the Americans. Wait, that has some historical coincidence, hasn't it? Only 89K score. I left Mansa alone, rexed the northern half of the continent and took out Freddy with Praets + trebs and Praets + cannons consecutively, then landed rifles + cannons (later infantries and tanks) on the other continent. Played on noble, which might explain why everything went so easy.

 

[jdros13]

and the Finish....

Liberalism to the End

Spoiler :

1290 AD - Built the Sistine Chapel. I'm sure there are a lot of people that never build this, but since it was still available I had decided to go for it. Personally I find it helpful to expand borders and make the initial capture of border cities easier if I'm at war and the value of denying it from the AI if they are going for a cultural victory is pretty high as well imo. Basically it bought me a lot of time if anyone was thinking about culture.

1565 AD - basically the 275 years in between Sistine and now was stabilizing the economy, building some wonders and deciding what to do with Mansa. I probably could have used the Praets and Trebs to take some of his cities, but instead I used him for quite a few tech trades...just basically kept an eye on what he was doing and went in a different direction. In 1565 AD I got rifling and started thinking about how to make him my slave reasonably quickly. I was starting to tech reasonably well at this point as well, and was about to pass Mansa by.

1620 AD - Corporations. I had been spamming all the different missionaries out of my triple holy city which by now had all 3 shrines, and as soon as I got Corps I was able to start building Wall Street. I also popped a GE somewhere around here and he was in position to found Mining Inc as soon as possible.

1650 AD - Railroad. Immediately founded Mining Inc and finished Wall Street. Started spamming Executives. In Free Market at this point and at 0% on the science slider most of the time.

1720 AD - Declared on Mansa. Had teched Assembly Line in between and promoted my CR3 Praets to CR3 Infantry. Berlin had been building Cavalry for a long time as well, so sent a small stack of Infantry up the coast and a very large stack of Cavalry up the middle towards Timbuktu. Took 2 border cities on the first turn of the war and while the power graph said Mansa might be able to hang, I could see what he had and it was simply a matter of time. Had a couple of cannons heading up the middle as well and was filling in with extra cannons along the coast out of Rome. The plan was to take Timbuktu and everything inbetween that and Rome, but I didn't want to completely cripple him before capitulation since he could be useful as a teching vassal.

1745 AD - Took Djenne. Almost to Timbuktu. Djenne was a very good city and came with a Levee already built, which was nice.

1790 AD - Kumbi Saleh was the next coastal city and I finally made my way up there on this turn. Was being careful not to lose units on the way up (had my medic over here).

1795 AD - Timbuktu is mine. He capitulates and I took optics, communism and Astro....yes, I had made it to almost 1800AD in a 2 continent game without even having optics, which I'm sure was a mistake but seemed to work out ok.

From there I focused on getting a Merchant...took a couple of tries, but in 1822 I was able to found Sid's Sushi in my Wall Street triple shrine, double corporation Tenochtitlan. Spammed Sushi after that. Had to switch to environmentalism for a bit so I could grow the cities while building enough health buildings to support the population growth, then switched back to free market while that was accomplished (built Cristo, so not a big deal...other than the maintenance costs).

By the end I had a massive army since I had been building Mech Infantry for a long time. Had just moved my Transports into position to load everyone on the boats to conquer the rest of the world (it was going to be a slaughter) but global warming hit near Timbuktu and a diplomatic victory opportunity presented itself so I decided just to end it.

Fun map and I'm sure it could be played many different ways. I just really hate micromanaging the city tiles in the early game to keep my economy afloat...once I got past that it was smooth sailing.

Built too many wonders, including the Space Elevator which I'm pretty sure I've never built before. Once I was in position to take out Mansa though it was pretty much over. The corporations are simply too powerful for the AI to overcome if you are in the lead at that point.

Some pics from various points:

Tenochtitlan when I captured it

Then when I founded Mining Inc:

And some of my better cities at the end of the game:

Attached 2 more saves. First is before Wall Street is built, 2nd is right at the end of the game. If anyone wants to have some fun destroying the other continent, you can build ICBM's in 2 turns out of Rome if you want to and you have lots of Mech Infantry ready to be used, some of which are CR3 and some of which are amphibious

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

To my mind, this is the key position to understand in the workboat -> worker opening

Spoiler :

I would normally go 0/6, 2/4 to reach this position.

The two food are important, because when we whip the worker, the food bar will be at 2/22. Working just the clams, five turns brings the bar to exactly 0/24. Any lower amount of food overflow costs a turn.

We need at least two hammers of overflow, because the rice and the clams generate 7 / turn for the worker. Four turns at that rate is 28/60 - not enough to whip.

The chop for the workboat is done in four turns - 20 hammers of chop, 8 hammers from the city tile, and 2+4 hammers of overflow earned on the turn we whip. So the timing of the workboat doesn't change at all.

The workboat finished in 4 turns, but the growth doesn't happen for 5, which gives us the time we need to move the workboat to position. We hit 0/24, as mentioned before, and now we have 4 turns at +6F/+2P before we hit 0/26 on the nose.

4 hammers of overflow from the workboat, 2 hammers while the boat was in transit, plus the eight hammers we earn while working both clams, puts at 14/15....

Which is why we need the third hammer of overflow from the initial workboat. That gives us our 15/15 warrior.

The important lesson? Micro is not worth your time! Yes, it's very pretty when everything works out, but it takes a near perfect storm to line everything up without "wasting" any good tiles.

 

[ecuwins]

snip

Halfway through your essay I started to have flashbacks and thought to myself, is this guy nuts? Well played, sir

 

[popalopa]

Thanks for the tips guys... I still have a lot to learn

 

[krikav]

Thanks for the tips guys! I still have a lot to learn

We all have.

 

[mtr12]

Just a thought: you usually learn more from games with harder starts than games with easy starts like this one. Here, you have plenty of room to expand, plenty of coast, Marble, Iron, and IND, which lends itself to an easy GLH REX. There's not much to learn from a game that feels like you're playing 2 levels lower.

If you want a challenging game, play NC 83: Peter. Basically you're stuck with a bunch of crappy, food-poor Plains while an IMP Cyrus is REXing onto massed amounts of Grasslands. Either you can rush Cyrus, and then play an isolation game (not sure this works on Emperor/Immortal, but it worked on Monarch). Or you can play a peace-minded game and try to win by wrecking the backwards Izzy-and-Monty continent later on, but then you have to deal with a super-Zara.

 

[popalopa]

^^ I tried Peter ... Not very successful ..

I tried a dotmap... Looking for suggestions.

Spoiler :

Second city is for the gems.
I researched BW and I saw the bronze up north but it's a little far... I don't know if I should go for it.
For the south I don't know how to divide... The city SW of the rice is nice but not a lot of production... I was thinking of sharing the cows...
I think the second gems city looks nice, but then in the middle, I don't know..

 

[Archon_Wing]

@popalopa

Spoiler :

Gems City was good. But a good city after that would be the one with the marble, fish and wheat.

 

[popalopa]

^^

Spoiler :

Thanks for the input... I was hesitant to expand towards the north, due to the plains

 

[ecuwins]

^^

Spoiler :

Thanks for the input... I was hesitant to expand towards the north, due to the plains

Spoiler :

Gems is a definite yes. It can immediately take that river rice from the capital. If you wish to deny that copper from Mansa, it'd be better to settle 1NE of the clams. You better take that with the first settler, though. Second, as mentioned, the marble/fish/wheat city will pwn. Then you can worry about that jungle to the south. There are a couple nice spots down there that can share food with the cap whilst their own food comes online. By that point, you should have a target for the Praetorian/Catapult hammer.

 

[mtr12]

Spoiler :

You're missing the city 2S of Marble, 2 N of Fish. After a border pop it's working a lot of high yield tiles, and it gives you Marble for GLib and maybe Sistine.

I dotmapped the south differently in my game. I prized a proximate advantage provided by having more cities for a coastal REX, rather than having some beastly cities lategame like you're apparently looking for.

 

[krikav]

I charged toward the northern copper with my second city.
Took the gem city second.
Then I more or less only expanded in the north, while conquring in the south.

Much plains, isn't a problem as long as there are good resources around to work.
Those plains only start to be a problem when the cities run out of other good tiles to work, which should be a long way of.

 

[popalopa]

So if I understand right, I tend to plan too much ahead, when I should just try to grab the resources/block my opponents?

Mid game I always hit a wall... I have expanded, and this time, even pretty nicely with around 6-7 cities by 1AD... But then things get extremely slow, because I don't know what to build and how to specialize...
Anyway here's some screenshots and my saving game, if you have any feedback. I played with BAT 2.2 on a Mac.

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

 

[MeowZeDung]

Spoiler :

Well I elepulted and knocked the crap out of Fred. Took him down to 4 cities and took peace for capitulation and techs. I was hoping at this point Mansa might peace vassal, but he never did

I got lib and took astro with it. Started cranking out galleons and teching for Chemistry/Frigates. Had already sent some caravels out and met Sury/Shaka/Washington. Shaka and Washington were Hindu and Sury was Jewish. Shaka was in the middle of warring Sury. As soon as I had 10 or so Galleons loaded down with Praets/phants/catapults I sent them on over with some frigates to blockade/bombard. The plan was to dogpile Sury, but literally one turn after my DOW he vassaled to Shaka. Rage.

So I dowed shaka, landed, razed two cities, had bombarded the capital down to 20% defenses, the next turn was going to take it handily, when suddenly a Zulu ninja stack of seven million knights eats my 30ish units. Rage.

So I kept my frigate bombard/blockade up, and came back with Rifles and cannons. Landed, razed two cities, then the capital, then the next capital, and I'm now headed for his third new capital and he still won't vassal at 7 cities. Rage.

I was hoping to go Dom/Diplomation. Mansa is friendly, Washington is pleased, and I figured with Shaka/Sury vassaled I would have dom or enough votes for diplo. Beelining MM at the moment, working on electricity. I have a GE stashed for the UN. I just hope I can get Shaka and Sury vassaled without having to send more troops across the pond. It's 1600ish at the moment.