Nobles Club X - Zara Yaqob!

Do you think epic speed allows you to scout the map twice as much before placing a settler?

Edit: Not to mention more relative time to move your Settlers before settling them?
 
Do you think epic speed allows you to scout the map twice as much before placing a settler?

This is my first Epic game. There's a huge difference in the amount I was able to explore prior to building the settler. The speed change is kind of disorienting, actually. It takes me longer to build units and then they move around relatively faster... It is taking some getting used to, but I don't think I'll be going back to Normal anytime soon - I can see slower speed being incredibly advantageous for warring.
 
Do you think epic speed allows you to scout the map twice as much before placing a settler?

I think it lets you scout it 1.5 times as much ;). My first build was a warrior though, so I scouted along the coast in both directions. The key factor in settling strategy then on this map is less the speed (no quick though, you'd probably not be able to scout much on quick) than it is KEEPING SCOUT UNITS ALIVE.

DaveMCW is a big advocate of exploring along the coast. I agree for several reasons (as if it matters, he's a lot better than me): You see the landmass shape more quickly, you actually reveal more map tiles, you open up sailing trade routes, and it's fairly efficient in terms of scouting. Finally, there are less directions animals can surprise you from so you have better statistical chances of not losing exploring units (though it definitely still happens).

On epic I actually had looped most of the continent before I settled a city (seafood starts like this usually delay the settler slightly, although once set up can churn them out faster than normal). IIRC there were only tiny pieces of fog here and there around 2k BC!

Normal should scout about 2/3 of what epic does as that's how units move relative to building speed on the two difficulties.
 
rolo is right, I play Epic, I think its the most "natural" of the speeds. I also now consider myself "60% Emperor" which means I feel I can win Random/Random on Emp 60% of the time (have been running a lot of half-games at Emp and to find my "pace" and streamline my play, because I think pace and streamlining are HUGE factors in going up levels once you hit Monarch)

I honestly do understand why some feel this map is more difficult than others, its because you just cannot grab hold of the lead and keep adding to it. You have to play a bit from behind. Usually, in these Monarch Light games, I feel like the game is won by the time I hit Lib, since I often have a commanding lead, but this game, I have been changing the lead with 2 other AIs for the last 100 turns. I have lost a pile of techs to Espionage (Nationalism, those buggers!) and watched as they traded em among themselves. I cannot run as many cottages as I would like, I simply do not have the food. None of my cities are growing as fast as my "usual" style, because I am a big fan of the Slavery Based FE for the first half of the game. In fact, I stay in Slavery most of the game, but this game, its hard to whip, because each pop takes so long to grow back.

Seriously guys, give me some thoughts about what you feel is harder about this map. I do not mind making more "play themselves" maps, but I dont see a big problem here. Yes, its a tougher than normal map, but so what? Every game cant be a cherry-picker, I felt the Joao map was very solid, and the De Gaulle map pretty much "played itself", with stone in the BFC, rivers to settle in the south, LOTS of resources, and such wimpy AIs as Liz and Pacal. I am not trying to come off as abrasive here, I really do want some specific thoughts about the map. I dont mind a bit of WB editing to add a resource here, or remove a tile there, etc etc.
 
I said twice because you have relatively fewer moves before Barbarian Warriors start showing up. They will wipe out your scout unless you get lucky.

I would say that's the biggest difficulty with me -- optimal play on this map requires more scouting than can reasonably expected on normal speed.

Edit:
Spoiler :
For example, blocking off Montezuma would have been great -- if my scout hadn't been killed by a Barbarian Warrior before being able to really scout out the land so I could make an intelligent choice to do so. I don't play by sending my Settlers off into great distances in unexplored territory on the chance that I'll be able to block of Montezuma and be able to defend such a blind town with reinforcements that take far longer to arrive, relatively, than on epic. I may restart this and post some screenshots and ask what plays people would make based on what I've scouted so far, but I think people are underestimating how much extra info and settling options you get from longer game speeds.
 
IMO the hard things about it are as follows:
Spoiler :

1. Spawn distance from nearest AIs -----> less ability to benchmark what you're doing. Also, it changes the build a bit since there's so much peaceful expansion - THIS much peaceful expansion is unusual and it affects people's timing.
2. Building on above, the food. Everyone's mentioned it. I whipped a lot less in this game - by necessity. A lot of cities have to rely on a lone cow or wheat and (if you're smarter than me) some lake tiles. ANOTHER adjustment to make.
3. The neighbors - players have to balance a tech whore and a warmonger while sandwiched.
4. No stone/marble (at least not before like city # 3-4 for stone if you want it (and it'd be a bad city) and MUCH later for marble) - a lot of players default to wonders when they have a ton of room to expand. There's not much going on here that supports wonders other than trees though. Wonders will build incredibly slowly and a lot of players don't like that. My first wonder was university of sankore!

It's just a combination of factors ----> unfamiliar terrain/starting situation/a rough neighbor.

I didn't think it was any worse than Joao, honestly, but the last few NC maps have played a bit harder. I'd say after De Gaulle it started getting rough. De Gaulle was reasonable for noble players - you had the ability to build wonders or attack the weaksauce leaders nearby, with the biggest threat being sury.


Edit: I've seen players do VERY similar things on normal speed, although they're generally from the Immortal University crowd. IMO you can easily scout your neighbors and then some by the time you see stuff other than animals on normal. The problem is that some animals will easily kill scouts anyway, and neither speed has an answer for that :(. I hate the idea of animals, I'd turn them off if I could still leave barbs on, or just make them extremely weak so maybe you still have to escort stuff.

Seriously, what animal group could take out a group of armed men? A unit represents a large # of people. Is civ a world where you get attacked by 1000 bears (is this the golden compass? Do they have armor?). I really hate losing scout units to animals. Even worse is when they attack and kill a warrior en route to attacking an AI...there's something logically wrong with that picture.

Edit #2: I actually built an extra warrior to scout straightaway, and later popped another from a hut or I might have built a 3rd. You're absolutely right on making decisions based on scout information, which is why I'm willing to slow myself down a bit to get that info.
 
Update
Round 2 (565 AD):

At the beginning of this round, I wasn't feeling to pleased with my position, and was thinking that my first challenging Noble game would be a miserable experience. I knew I was ahead in tech, but was highly concerned about my cities' poor health and unhappiness (not to mention an unhappy neighbor). Lucky for me, things would be changing rather quickly...

Spoiler :

My primary concern entering this round was Monty. He was expanding his empire rapidly, apparently by capturing barb cities. He'd acquired one very close to my empire (seen in the screen below), and I figured it wouldn't be long before he was on the attack.

New City.JPG\

I learned Theology so I could get the +2 experience from Theocracy, and started pumping out Axemen. After roughly 10 were built/whipped I checked the demo screen to get an idea of where I was at and I saw I was in 1st, but slightly. Figuring Monty was right behind me, I went after that first city, Scythian (former barb city). It was guarded by a couple Jaguars and an Archer, but fell quickly. A few reinforcements arrived while my stack healed, and we marched on to Teohiticuan (sp?) where, again, minimal resistance was found, and led to a march to the capitol Tenochtitlan. The capitol was a better better defended, but was still captured. Although the Aztec Empire was now in shambles, my stack was decimated and I called a Peace Treaty soon after capturing the Tenochtitlan.

This really would not have been possible without a couple of lucky events coming my way: First, a great merchant popped in the capitol and bulbed Currency. Soon after, Mansa came along trying to purchase Theology, but would up with Currency for 405 gold:eek: . The newly-infused cash allowed me to continue teching while my stack conquered the Aztecs and my cities built happy and health buildings.

Here's the empire at the end of the round (Tenochtitlan is still in revolt):
Original area (plus Scythia):
Area1.JPG

Newly conquered area:
Area2.JPG

Place of next city placement (revised):
New City.JPG


Goals for next round include:
- Eliminate Monty
- Control (some of the) Northern portion of this continent
- Decide what to do with Mansa
- Figure out what's going on in the rest of the world...

Goals for game:
- Domination Victory


Aside from my game, and to comment on the map, itself:
Spoiler :

I can definitely see the difficulty people are having with this map, and I think it stems largely from the food supply (as has been mentioned a few times already) and peaks. In most of my games, the desert and mountain ranges are generally devoid of food, and might contain a resource or two. The difficult part about this map is that, in order to get the resources and food you're after, a few tiles have to be sacrificed to peaks.

I don't think that the map is terribly difficult, but it definitely requires looking at it differently than usual, and *that's* what makes it challenging.
 
Hi

My 2 cents bout game difficulty and some other stuff.

I think mostly TMiT covered lots of them. Low food. Low health. Neighbors who are a pain to deal with. Screwy map that requires lots of adjustments to more standard style of play on more average maps.

I managed to scout out the land mass pretty good before Monty came in with his axes. My build order was a scout while teching fishing and then I also got a scout from a goody hut plus I play on marathon so I got good lay of land by point my game ended.

And my heart sank about enjoying this game since all I saw when I went through game in my head was smally sickly cities taking forever to to grow and produce anything and taking even longer than normal since most would have to be working on making troops to go deal with monty. Where even if I ended up winning somehow it would be a long unfun grind.

I think some fo the problem is perspective. Like when bleys mentioned trying this map on emp first and finding it an unfun grind. And then trying it again on monarch felt it played better. Thats from a monarch skill level perspective. From a noble skill level perspective this map would be just as much an unfun grind on noble as someone on Bleys level found it on emperor.

I think thats what I mean when i say series feels like it losing focus. When series first started I think idea was mostly like hey we are gonna do basic maps playing basic style which is still always not easy for noble level players but we can learn from each other and if any higher level players want to try then coolies. I mean yeah we know players that high are gonna own these kinds set ups but by showing how it was so easy for them it would still help the noble level players.

Then as more and more of regulars posting started turning out to play on prince and then monarch and higher the focus seems to have shifted perspective to be what would be "challenging" or interesting for people on monarch-emperor skill level. But the things that make it challenging and interesting on monarch skill level tend to make it unfun frustrating grind on noble level. And things that may seem boringly easy on noble to a monarch level player are still very challenging to noble level players.

One difference in perspective is in what players "see" when they look at a game. I mean some have seen this game as a "straight forward" use of creative trait to block people and dont get how some have said it doesnt feel like map offers chance to get much use out of creative.

Well from my perspective a "straight forward" use of creative for blocking is more like a big wide open map like pangea or something with lots of space and not very crowded and coming to a gap were other leaders might need 3 or 4 cities to cut off a space a creative leader would just need 2 and count on getting faster border pops to cover the gaps. On map like this full of thin choke points my mind was pretty much more with whoever said they would have been thriilled to be Wang on this map. Little thin chokepoints dont need wide borderpoping cities just walls and tuff archers. Pluss all the coast would make financial much handier. So while from a monarch level perspective this map may be straight forward on how to use creative it isnt so straght forward to lower skilled players.

Or what would be a "no brainer" city site for monarch level player is STILL very much hit or miss for noble level. So deciding to make a map with more "subtle" city site locations and avoid what from a monarch perspective would be boring unchallening "no brainer" decisions is gonna be VERY frustrating to those of us who still havent even figured out all the obvious "no brainer" decisions yet.

And yeah maybe sometimes a tuffer map where say-- potential city locations are LOTS more subtle then normal or difficult neighbors are present but are too far away to just rush asap so have to be contained some other way or resources are poor or hammers and lack of easy growth are such that chopping will be MAIN source of hammers and NOT just something for wonders and big projects or that all lakes dictate more of some kind of lighthouse ecoonomy since most land tiles wont be worth working or worked as easily--may be a learning experince once in a while where ONE of those things is thrown in to be dealt with. But a map where ALL those curves are thrown in at once--from perspective of people still trying to get hang of basics on average noble game--is beyond challening to just plain frustrating and unfun.

Now I know this is easy for me to say since I am not running this series. I mean I think I recall it even said in one fo earlier bullpen threads how thse games would NOT be challening at all to higher skill players. But there were tons of series like Diety challenges, or Immortal U or shadowing ALC games or LHC or things where high level players want maps and games where when they look at em go "whoa this is gonna be tough". But here the game will be of types that players that skilled and good with the game will own in their sleep but if they want to do it for grins it could still be very helpful and appreciated if they posted some reports on what they did that made games so easy.

But now vast majority of players are all playing way beyond noble level. And challenges and aspects of game a monarch level player may want to work on or try or see as fun are probably TOTALLY different than aspects of game a noble skilled level player finds challenging. So maybe in order to keep interest of majority of participants the focus of series needs to include difficulties that would interest monarch level players in which case that should be made very clear since that means it would no longer be as much a noble level series as name implies but more something like a monarch club or something.

On other hand if it decided that it would be nice for series to stay focused on noble skill level then the higher skilled players need to realize just because something is easy and a no brainer for them--that for a lower skilled player trying to learn that same easy no brainer map is still a challenge for them.

Kaytie

PS

@BT All my life :p First name Kaytie (I wasnt consulted on wierd spelling when name was picked out so blame parents for that :p) middle name Katrina = KaytieKat :)

@TMiT yeah when scouts die its annoying but at LEAST it over quickly. I hate even more things like scout fighting a animal and living but sooo wounded they take 10 plus truns to heal then RIGHT after they heal fight again and have to take ANOTHER 10 plus turns to heal. it like some kind of slow annoying torture .

Plus dying to bears isnt so bad since bears are godless killing machines. it when my woody 2 scout who is on a forest on a hill AND across a river dies from a wolf which has happend like two or three diffrent times that make me want to put curse on whoever thought up animals in game grrrrr.

And it could be worse--rem back in civ vanilla first came out? how animals couldnt END a turn in your borders but the two move animals could move in and out of them so unprotected workers minding their own business building a farm or something on a border square could be snatched by wolf or panther if you didnt protect em.
 
I started a new game just to go through a detailed scouting run.

Spoiler :

I settle in place and move my scout the only sensible direction - 1 NW.

Turn 2: 1 SW with my scout; I'm doing a worker and BW to chop some of those Forests.

Turn 3: Border Pop reveals tundra to my North. Since there's no guarantee that my scout can even make it to that area and it's tundra anyway, I'm going to do the sensible thing and turn my scout south. I can gamble on east or west. There are forests either way, but I'll want to see whether there's anything around the gold that will let me feed it. I move on top of the gold for potential hill view.

Turn 4: Move 1NE to get full movement.

Hmmm . . . plains, mountains, and I KNOW there's tundra up there. I will leave it for later. I move southeast.

A Cattle/Gold city wouldn't be too bad.

Turn 5: Moved 2 SE. More plains and mountains to the north; it makes sense to leave that area for later. I can continue south and go either west or east from here. The Tribal hut decides it.

Turn 6: Doh! The hut gave me a Scout. Somewhat spoils the purity of the experiment. I will send this Scout back to my capital to act as an escort for my first Settler. In a normal game, I would be rejoicing at my luck and happily sending him in the opposite direction of my first scout, but I want to see what I can actually see with just this one Scout.

Turn 7: The first animal has appeared.

More tundra to the South? Already? What kind of a map is this?

Turn 8: Marble far away. Ivory closer. I'm going to see if there's some kind of food to support this Ivory.

Turn 9: The RNG is determined to foil me; the tribal hut gave me a map that detailed a huge amount of land. Perhaps I just had a run of bad luck in my previous game with Scout, but I got next to no information that would have allowed me to cut off Montezuma. As with any other normal speed game, you're using your starting unit to look for potential nearby city sites primarily and secondarily to determine the shape of the land. You don't have time for much else in the early game. After you've placed a Settler or two, if your scout is still alive, you'll probably have a better idea of where more strategic cities can go. Since I've got that Map, I'll turn the Scout inward and make sure I've got interior land well mapped out so that I don't screw up my city placement by missing a vital resource.

The area revealed by the Tribal Hut Map:


The immediate area of my scout:


I'll probably put a city 1 NE of the empty Tundra tile in order to get a lot of 3F2C tiles. The Granite seems too far away and there are a lot of plains. In addition, I haven't seen much seafood except for that which was obviously generated by the starting position script. I'm going to scout and see if there's any real food for that Ivory. (I would need to spend several turns doing this if the villager map had not revealed that 1 SW is a fairly good spot).

The area near my capital:


There seems to be very little choice in where to put a city to get the Cattle to feed to Gold Mine. Lots of plains, peaks, and forests. The best spot will probably be 1W of the wolves, which offers three irrigable grassland tiles.

I've got to be looking at these things right now because I'm going to be chopping out a Warrior and a Settler starting in 6 turns. I've got to be blowing Scout turns on making sure of city sites because I don't have time on normal speed -- the Settler arrives that much sooner compared to slower speeds. It's already going to be a painfully slow four turns after I get the Settler out to get to the nearest decent city spot, which seems to be the Cattle city. I haven't run into any AI yet, so I know they're not close enough that I'd want to drop my first city to cut them off.

Without that Map revealing the Wheat and the one-tile river near the Ivory, I'd have even less to go on than I do now. I'm probably going to spend more scout turns having to go through forests and hills, which pretty much annihilates the usefulness of a two-move exploration unit. A slower game speed perhaps means means that slogging through hills and forests with normally two-move units isn't as painful. Even if I started with roads, the path to the mainland seems to run right across a river, I think -- corner rules throw me.

Would any of you have done differently so far?
 
I agree. With all that has been said. But there is always a but.

I've chosen this game for my first emperor level try and after playing till 500 AD read some spoilers saying it's a really bad one to move up a level. :lol: Very weird that I still seem to do good - even without a single wonder. Sneak peak:
Spoiler :

Pics from 175 BC.
Civ4ScreenShot0053.JPGCiv4ScreenShot0054.JPG
This is nobles club. I'm not gonna post emperor stuff because I want more noble level players here. Right now we're university students sitting in kindergarten chairs. No offence to noble. That's not rolos fault.

I didn't find the map unplayable but rather interesting. And having been a real noble for a long while I can say with confidence that even a noble player likes a challenge once in a while, so I'm absolutely fine with this map. Just make sure the next one will be between DeGaulle and this one.

I want to thank rolo for what he does. All the maps I've played from him so far felt different than the random/random-stuff and were quite interesting and interesting means fun to me. :king:
 
KaytieKat said:

I think some fo the problem is perspective. Like when bleys mentioned trying this map on emp first and finding it an unfun grind. And then trying it again on monarch felt it played better. Thats from a monarch skill level perspective. From a noble skill level perspective this map would be just as much an unfun grind on noble as someone on Bleys level found it on emperor.

Personally, I disagree. This is the second game I've played on Noble. The first I played Incan on a Pangea map and just crushed it, so that doesn't really count. Furthermore, I have almost always played Continents or Terra (ever since learning how to use a navy competently; prior to that it was Pangea all the way).

Yet I'm having a fine game. As long as you move quickly (with a decent stack) our neighbor-friend shouldn't be too much of an issue ;).

I said earlier: the difficulty with this map is not that it's so terribly difficult, but it is abnormal and does require adjustments.

Furthermore, I've definitely learned a lot from the map, especially regarding food resources. Food is usually plentiful enough that I won't worry about have enough of the resources, and only consider their placements within a city's BFC; in this game, I've come to see how significant food can be in keeping an entire empire's population healthy. Since learning is the primary goal of this series, I think it has done really well with this map.
 
Yet I'm having a fine game. As long as you move quickly (with a decent stack) our neighbor-friend shouldn't be too much of an issue ;).

Moving quickly with a decent stack=unfun grind to me. I don't like to war until the Modern Era; Cavalry is early for me to be attacking. ;)
 
Emperor/Epic - Round 3! To 1901! Game over...MAN! Victory method? CONQUEST :devil:. OK technically it gave me domination, but it was really conquest!

Spoiler :
Soooooo, in the down time after last night it occurred to me that I CAN'T fall into AP troubles, as I control the AP. DoWing Monty wouldn't be a problem unless it pisses Joao off too much. My goals then at the start of this segment are:

1. Get to communism ASAP for the Kremlin and
2. Knock some heads - preferably monty as he's really poor in tech.

Most people are near rifling - Monty is not. I think I can go kremlin before wiping him off the map. That will also allow me to spam missionaries peacefully some more until I can rush buy cavalry en masse'

OK, let's go.

1525 Democracy completes. Time for Emancipation and US. Divine Right and MT to Lincoln for SM (hurts to give up monastaries, but I need the Kremlin. Constitution and 700 gold to lincoln for replaceable parts! The only person with techs I don't have now is vicky.
1550 I pop a great merchant - why not trigger another GA? I can revolt to SP freely then and will be in my end civics!
1565 Revolt to SP - running the slider is a 23 gpt deficit now at 100%. Anything less and I net positive.
1570 GE rush and some hammers net me SoL in capitol
1580 Finish corp - going Rifling, but first turning slider off to BUY kremlin since vicky is near it too maybe.
1590 Monty cancels the DP to DOW me :cry:.

...JUST KIDDING! He declares on Vicky, his worst enemy. I'm still friendly with him.
1595 Asoka declares on monty. AP forces war on Vicky (yes, I did this ;)). This forces everyone but asoka into war with vicky, which is a pretty big screwjob on her - she's next to Joao and Freddy after all!
1620 Rush buy finishes the Kremlin
1650 Vicky pillaged a ton of seafood, but now I gave her 55 gold for peace. She's everyone elses problem now. Aztec took a city so change of plan - I'm teching to industrialism, then turning the slider off to buy my way to a very, very fast sequence of wars!
1665 DR, Communism, MT to Joao for Physics. BTW, 100% science, +10 GPT. 794 BPT...all w/o GA.
1690 Joao goes FR - pleased now. The game is still bugged too - AIs in their favorite civic consider ALL CURRENT CIVICS their favorite civic in the trade screen. Monty also fell to pleased, which kind of means he hast to die.
1704 Revolt to theocracy.
1706 Asoka makes peace with Monty.
1708 I bribe Monty into war with Freddy. I don't want him getting too much on his hands early.
1724 Monty wants war with Freddy - I REFUSE!!!!!! ;).
1732 Rush buy has gotten me 50 Cavalry - I now go back to teching.
1734 :backstab: Monty, whose best unit is the musket. Too much Cavalry for that I think! I instantly capture 2 cities.
1736 Another Aztec city falls.
1740 Huge field battle win for me, another city.
1742 Aztec recapture Teotihuacan - not for long!
1748 It's mine again with backup cavalry - main stack is healing to charge Monty's capitol. After taking it I'll probably take capitulation because I'm afraid of Joao taking Monty as a vassal - that would suck. Actually, scratch that, I will keep on Monty until Joao makes peace with Vicky - I don't think the AIs will take a vassal and DoW while at a major war like that.
1750 Monty makes peace with Freddy. Ok.
1752 The intelligence agencies I built kick in - I can see all of monty now. He's in BAD shape :).
1754 Aztec capitol is mine :). Buddhist shine? He has it. 37 GPT :lol:. FIVE SHRINES FOR ME (though I'm not bothering with islamic). I'm already netting positive at 100% slider (currently 20% in culture). Another shrine? Yes please!
1762 Joao makes peace with Vicky. OK, I'll stop smacking Monty down now! The shrine is what I wanted and I did enough damage so that the city won't revolt too! Monty capitulates, giving me 120 gold also.
1778 Where am I techwise? Combustion just finished. 1083 BPT. The war slowed me up a bit (did turn the slider off to rush buy after all). Joao has assembly line on me but pretty much I'm pushing towards industrialism and will get there first! Since most of asoka's cities are coastal, that will get very ugly fast. Actually, now that I look at it, EVERY SINGLE CITY HE HAS IS COASTAL ;).
1780 Um...on this entire land mass, monty is the only one with oil, alternatively I can settle a junk city in the southern mountains. I will do that, because if I didn't I'd have to wait 12 turns to tech out fission.
1790 Monty settled the oil first :(. Whatever, I'll just gift him techs and make him give it to me.
1820 I'm an idiot. I had oil after all...there's some near Texcoco, which I captured.
1828 Industrialism. Slider off time. Massed marines/destro time - Asoka then Vicky are going to leave the map.
1859 DoW Asoka - He doesn't have infantry yet, and I have marines/destros :lol:. As I mentioned...ALL of his cities are coastal!!!!!!!!!
1860 Nevermind, he is getting infantry now :(. Still doubt this will take long. Delhi falls. So does Bombay. See what I mean?
1861 Most advanced civs comes out - Lincoln, the COLONY, leads :lol:. I'm 5th. Do I care? Of course not. I want this to end fast, so I capitulate asoka even though I could obliterate him.
1869 DoW Vicky. Much better force, since she's actually ahead of me in tech a bit. She is, however, in no condition to stop forces like this - my power rating is more than double hers - and she's the strongest AI left ;). I capture 2 cities the same turn.
1876 I use the AP to force war on vicky. Yes, that means the entire world vs vicky :p. I also have triple her and Joao's power now.
1877 Vicky capitulates ;).
1878 Lincoln and Joao have both made apollo, though neither have parts yet.
1885 It's time to cut down Germany.
1889 I take all of freddy's coastal cities, asoka takes an inland city, freddy has capitulated!
1896 No time to waste! Time to take out lincoln/joao. USA first - they're on my continent and I doubt Joao will capitulate nicely if he still has is vassal. Also, I think Joao may just be distracted by the dogpile coming from his own continent :mischief:. I take 3 of Lincoln's 4 cities instantly - 2 coastal and one of them using leftover cavalry ;). 3 infantry don't do well against 30 cavalry, even with 80% defense.
1897 Lincoln is off the map...Back where you came from guy, the real america will debut elsewhere ;).
1898 I capture a portugese city, so does vicky. I cut through the captured city to take lisbon.
1900 After I take a few more cities and vicky gets her 2nd, Joao capitulates.
1901 I'm somewhat angry, as this triggered conquest and domination simultaneously, but I got the latter :p.

Let's review:

















Took a little longer than usual mostly because I was typing this as I went and taking the pics - I upload them afterward.



See, wasn't that more fun than culture? I think so ;).
 
@ BT:

You just scout differently from me. I took my first scout, sent him HUGGING THE COAST headed north. The first thing I built in my capitol was a warrior, this guy HUGGED THE COAST DUE SOUTH. After the worker I started making units to fogbust nearby and find city sites - these are the ones that revealed the territory to the east, and although on epic there was plenty of time there would probably be enough to see nearby settle-able resources on normal also. Doing this, I think you'd find the information you needed quickly enough on normal. The assumption that "the first scout always reveals the land you plan to settle" isn't necessarily true - that was never even a piece of the consideration for my first scout. My first scout's intent was to determine what kind of landmass we were on, find the AI, and allow for trade routes via the sailing tech. Ditto for #2.

I used to go worker/worker/settler as opening build on most maps and just cheese out a 2nd city ASAP but over time I've learned making a scout unit early early then worker THEN fogbusters/settler to allow a more dynamic adjustment to the map. Whether you choose to explore like you do, adopt what I do, or pick something completely different, it has consequences on your game...however before saying x isn't possible, it's usually a good idea to take a look at the situation you're in and the assumptions you're using!
 
Interesting . . .

I'm going to have to work on varying my scouting methods depending on the map type, it seems. (Hooray, I've learned something new! :))
 
Moving quickly with a decent stack=unfun grind to me. I don't like to war until the Modern Era; Cavalry is early for me to be attacking. ;)
I will concede that this map is much more difficult at Normal than a slower speed where you can scout more land earlier in the scheme of the game.

But given this style you have, I would think this map would suit you better than some closed-quarters packed map with AIs 10 tiles in every direction. This map offered a LOT of land to settle before you butt heads, now granted, its not the best land I have seen, but its there, and with enough workers to chop, you can get infrastructure up pretty quickly. Zara is an excellent leader to play the "Cities make the best fogbusters" strategy, with a Steele, cheap Libraries and Theaters, and CRE, he pops borders like a madman.

I will definitely admit that this map is far more resource-poor than almost any map I have seen. Many city sites have to rely on nothing more than lake tiles with a lighthouse for extra food, which means slow growth, limited whipping, and (as I am discovering right now) limited drafting. With Zara, I took Nationalism from Lib, promptly got it stolen, lost the Taj, so I had to manually switch civics when I hit Gunpowder to draft UUs. After drafter 10 or so, I was already running into the 40s on unhappiness in my "best growth" cities, and I didnt dare draft from my smaller, slower growth ones.

But I disagree that being able to play amd adapt to a situation like this isnt a useful tool for the noble player. I suggest people play this map multiple times, to try out various city placements, REX strategies, etc etc. OK, so you got smashed the first time you played it, so it goes, fire it up again, scout differently, get those Workboats out to find the seafood you need to base a city on, and those warriors wandering through the forests to discover the best city placements. Learning is the goal here, and sometimes, to learn, you need to get your butt handed to you. Being able to cake-walk through every game isnt going to teach folks anything.

Rolo specifically asked me to play my start before posting the game, to see if I thought we should keep it or regen. I gotta say, after 50 turns, I was ready to tell him "this map BLOWS bro! Lets do another, easier one!". But then I got my 4th and 5th cities out, and started looking over the continent, and saw that Mansa and Monty could be confined to their respective corners, and yeah, I noticed the cities were going to suck, and grow like snails, etc etc, but it WAS playable. Lots of lakes to use for food, and chain farms in from. Lots of natural choke points to use with a leader who thrives on fast border pops. I knew there would be back-lash, heh, but hey, its ONE game folks. Next one will be up in a week or so, and we can return to the "city layout is obvious" style if you guys wish too. But I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we keep trotting out tailor-made maps for tailor-made leaders. Play this one again, see if you learned anything, and if you do, your that much better at this game than you were before this round started.
 
A general comment:

While bad land for the human and good land for the AI is a pretty severe handicap, GLOBAL BAD LAND is NOT. The AI is not smart - it will play its normal game when drowning in peaks, desert, ocean tiles, or other AIs. To this effect, the AI global tech rate is often awful on maps like this - and this one isn't an exception (2 AIs will tend to tech OK, the rest were teching so poorly that I almost couldn't believe I was playing on emperor).

This is also why archipelago maps and maps that are extremely arid favor the human - the AI just can't handle these things.
 
@TMiT yeah when scouts die its annoying but at LEAST it over quickly. I hate even more things like scout fighting a animal and living but sooo wounded they take 10 plus truns to heal then RIGHT after they heal fight again and have to take ANOTHER 10 plus turns to heal. it like some kind of slow annoying torture .

When that happens to me I usually just figure that scout's days are numbered and keep on going with him until he meets the next animal and bites it. I usually have 2 scouts running (more if I get one from a hut) and in /most/ cases by the time one gets bad hurt I can either make do with one less scout or else build another. I figure it's better to eventually sacrifice a scout and maybe make it to another hut or two before the AI does... but maybe others disagree! I"ve yet to finish a game on Noble.
 
Well I have to admit I'm struggling with this map too! But it's purley a combination of falling into some bad habits and not playing the map to its full advantage. It was also a bad call choosing to attempt Monarch on this map! (not that I'm particulaly against this map I just didn't play it well). So I'm going to play through again on my native prince level. See spoiler below for a more detailed report.

Monarch/Epic 200 AD

Spoiler :
A few things happened that scuppered my game.

Mansa getting wiped by the barbs early in game left me capturing his capital while trying to settle cities to block off Monty. This all left my economy crippled for some time.

Becuase I was playing my first attempt at monarch I focused too much on getting my beaker output going as I feared I would lag behind if I didn't and as usual I fell behind in military output and it wasn't long before Monty came a callin. Survived his first attack, got peace, but his second DoW was too strong and I just didn't have the military to stop him! :sad:

And lastly I just didn't play the map well. My city placement was poor and I just didn't have the strength in my economy to expand and tech well. I'm planning on taking a peek at others games to see if I can learn a thing or two.


As to the discussion in this thread regarding this map, I don't have a problem playing these unusual maps, they are really interesting to play and I probably have learnt more playing them, particularly when they end in defeat. But I agree with the comments about attracting more Noble and below players to the club.

A big thanks to Bleys & Rolo for all the effort you guys have put into this series and of course Krick for starting them up. :goodjob:
 
This game seems to be going really slowly for me -- not just RL slowly ('cause I don't play very fast) but game-slowly: I have the feeling I ought to have accomplished more by 235 AD than I have so far.
Spoiler history :

I went fishing > BW > wheel > pottery to set up for whipping; since by then I'd found the cows near the gold I went AH > writing > math and held off chopping until math to maximize the hammers. I currently have 5 cities (Aksum, gold/cows/horses east of Aksum, stone/iron in the far north near Mansa, cows/gold south of that, and just planted a 5th city on the island to the west between the bronze island and the mainland fish). Monty has expanded to just south of me, and I'm gearing up to take him on; iron should become available shortly.

I expect to leave Mansa alone for a while. His missionaries have been hindu-izing my cities for me, which has helped the happiness cap.

No wonders, though with stone available soon I might be able to go for the Hanging Gardens while all but Aksum are enough below the happiness cap not to suffer for the extra population.

I've found Joao, Victoria, Asoka, and Frederick to the west. I haven't been able to get much variety in trades; they seem to all be going for the same techs.

Does anyone build steles?

Time to look at everyone else' postings before proceeding, but with a vacation trip starting tomorrow and my slow playing rate I likely won't finish until early August.
 
Top Bottom