Nobles' Club XCI: Alexander of Greece

[MilesBeyond]

Am I supposed to do a new post like this for every update? Or should I edit it all into my first one?

Anyway,

Spoiler :

1000 BC:

SIP, of course. Got a couple of lucky hut grabs at the start, upgrading my Scout enough to give him Woodsman II (double movement in all those forests!) and a free tech: Archery (not my favourite one to get, but free technology is free technology). After I knocked down all the Worker techs I needed, I decided to snag Writing for those snazzy Libraries and so I can sign Open Borders with everyone for a slight diplo boost (and so I can map out their territory, of course), and of course Iron Working, fitting Mathematics in there as well.

Settled two cities so far apart from cap, Sparta slightly to the south, just NW of the Marble tile. Gives me grain, marble, some deer, and shared gems with Athens. Not a terrible spot, but mostly settled for the marble. Corinth is down south a ways, in a lovely little spot with two grain, two gems, one deer, and one coveted iron. I have high hopes for that city. Maintenance on it is a bit higher than I'd like for now, but it'll pay off. Next city, when circumstances allow, will be to the east, in an area with some grain, horses and some coveted grassland river tiles.

My scout, zooming around all those forest tiles (and almost impervious to barbs with such high forest defence bonus) has been scoping out some enemy civs and it turns out that Carthage has got some very nice land indeed, and it's right on my border (or at least, Corinth's border). So long as I can keep Caesar happy I should be able to knock him down in fairly short order (snagging the Great Wall in the process).

Speaking of wonders, I managed to procure Stonehenge. I researched Mysticism horrendously late (after IW and Writing, at least) and so I was surprised as even on Noble it's usually gone by then, but I guess no one else was interested. I was building it mostly for the failgold myself, but the free Monument will help a ton to capitalize on all these resource tiles.

I'm going to hold off on switching to a religion until I see how the chips fall. I'm planning on converting to whatever religion Ragnar takes, since he's the guy I want to buddy up with for now. With any luck, him and Caesar will be the same, which would make my diplo game easier.

Spoiler :

500 AD:

Things are going more or less according to plan. I ended up teching Alpha too early and no one had anything to trade except Polytheism, which everyone was holding on to as tightly as they could (I guess they really like the Temple of Artemis?).

Gilgamesh ended up beating me to the spot where I had originally planned on expanding to, but that's okay because the war with Hannibal has gone swimmingly. I've lost maybe one or two (he only had chariots and archers, while I had phalanxes, swords, horse archers and catapults) while I've taken down most of his cities. I ended up having to sue for peace, though (extorting him mercilessly in the process, of course) because in the meantime my science slider had dropped to 10%. I'm new to invading so I don't really know how to manage my economy during an all out war. That being said, I'm still light-years ahead of the other civs in research (maybe Prince would have been a better choice...)

I did manage to nab the Pyramids, so I ran Police State during the war and am now running Representation in an effort to get my economy back on track.

Annoyingly enough, Caesar backstabbed me and invaded Athens while all my troops were down in Carthage. Fortunately he didn't succeed (you'd be surprised what fortified shock phalanxes can do to praetorians), but I was still surprised he did it at all. I had him at Pleased, and I hadn't really given him any reason to DOW me. I guess it's just his nature, but he's always seemed to be a nicer guy than that in past games. Oh well.

The Phalanx is a fun little unit. One of my favourite UUs, probably, because it's a useful upgrade without being too easy to exploit (Praets, I'm looking at you). Glad to have them around.

I've also been learning a lot about fighting wars this game. I've begun to appreciate Aggressive more as a skill. The Combat I bonus isn't bad, but the real bonus is that it means you can give things like shock and medic on a unit's first promotion. Or even take higher levels of combat. When you think about it, a barracks+Feudalism, Theocracy or a settled GG means that you could have troops walking around with Combat III or advanced medic skills right out of the gates. Not the best trait, but not as worthless as I had originally thought.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Actually culture is one of the logical choices for a high-level attempt on a script like this. Basically if the AI doesn't kill you, you'll win:

1. AI has no concept of how to play culture on this map script, and as a result the one victory condition it typically threatens at a reasonable time is gimped
2. Global tech pace is slower on this script
3. Culture buildings, artists in high food cities, and sistine chapel (marble is reasonably common in boreal) help culture along. The usual cottage approach is a no-go on this script, sistine specs, religion spam, and alex's philo trait function as normal. Tiles like the gems help the base culture out quite a bit too.

Basically, thanks to palace commerce and capitol head start on culture in general, you need to find 1 reasonable non-capitol city and 1 reasonable GPP farm and to make 6 cities. You do those things and avoid death by military, and you'll win even at deity.

 

[Habitus]

Small Map as well so can get by with 4 cities if needed

 

[MilesBeyond]

Discovering in this game that I'm bloody awful when it comes to warring. Glad I played it on Noble.

Spoiler :

1500 AD:

First part of this was economic cleanup. With my coffers completely exhausted from the war on Carthage, I had to call things off with only one city left to take lest my entire empire collapse. This proved to be a mistake, because this one last city (which wasn't even their capitol) held such massive cultural influence that it was difficult for my other captured cities to do very much. I used not one but two culture bombs to no avail. Huge pain.

On the other hand, I think I made the right choice because not one turn after signing the peace treaty with Hannibal, Ragnar decides to invade my lands. He dashed his troops against my city, then retreated, then lost interest. As soon as we signed peace, he was all buddy-buddy again, back to "Pleased" and all offering me trades. This happened over and over again: Random invasion, army is defeated, retreats, peace, acting like nothing happened. What a jerk. I got tired of his shenanigans and I was still recovering from the Carthage fiasco so I built the AP instead to slap him with a mandatory peace resolution every time he randomly DOWs me.

The funny part is that it's always "Stop the war against Ragnar," like I'm the badguy or something, but whatever.

After I built my economy back up, I eventually got sick of that last Carthaginian city but I noticed that Hannibal had vassaled to Frederick, who's the second most powerful civ (after myself). So, what else to do but turn the entire map at war. Caesar and I are pretty good buddies at this point, so he joins in without much incentive. He's the military superpower at this point so I feel like I'm in pretty good company. Since Ragnar seems to be so easily bored, I get him to join in too. Maybe that will keep him out of my lands for a bit. The year 1500 AD dawns with the last Carthaginian city falling, and Germany not doing too well against Rome.

Gilgamesh is just sitting quietly. He hasn't done a thing since the start and doesn't look to be changing that anytime soon.

I really don't know where things will go from here. I get the feeling that this war will end with Freddy vassaled to Julius, leaving Rome as my prime competitor. I'm assuming Ragnar will go back to sporadically invading me, but maybe I can engineer a reason for him to pick on Sumeria instead. As it stands right now, Caesar's captured German cities will be divided from his empire by my empire, so I'm wondering if maybe culture flipping a couple of them and knocking out another civ (Gilgamesh, most likely. Ragnar is annoying, but in a weird sort of way he's fun to have around. Plus with so few luxury resources I'm having a hard enough time keeping my people happy without DOWing my brothers in the faith), I could get a Domination victory. It's worth a shot, anyway.

 

[Killroyan]

Holy crap, that is a strong start for a capital with this map. Commerce is one of the things that is hardest to get by and production second and you get both with enough food. Nice start.

 

[vranasm]

this is actually pretty interesting map/start... plenty of food all around... maybe commerce light, but who needs commerce with food?

would liked a bit more good hills though...

btw when we're at it... did people chopped the tundra trees? I admit i just let them grow and think about using lumbermills for a change.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I only chopped them when other improvements are available. Naked tundra is not worth anything.

Economy isn't as bad as one might think on this map because with such an excess of food resources combined with a bunch of tiles that aren't worth working, you're going to have specialists through the roof. I feel like this map demands Caste System: Both for all those specialists, and because that extra hammer on Workshops (when you can build them) really comes in handy in an otherwise hammer-low set-up.

Prioritizing Replaceable Parts does seem wise, though.

 

[Wulf38]

This is a map script where hammer tiles are weak but food specials are plentiful, so you're better off just using all those deer to whip for your production. I chopped the tundra trees mercilessly into units. By the time of replaceable parts, I had no trees left but 2 vassals. Better than lumbermills IMO :3

I won conquest in 1730, Immortal/Normal.

Spoiler :

My opening plan was oracle metal casting, pre-chop + whip a forge in the second city and farm an engineer before the prophet finishes in the capitol. People have used this trick before to rush pyramids, but I used him to bulb machinery.

More specifically, the tech opening was BW, agriculture, myst/meditation/priesthood, wheel, pottery. Build order was 2 workers (to compensate for the slowness of improving tundra), 2 phalanxes, settler, then oracle. Second city went 1 south of the gems, third went east for the nice cottage spot, fourth went northeast of that to get iron.

Between the gems, the cottages, and the machinery bulb, I got engineering before the AIs had feudalism or machinery. I chopped + whipped an army of trebs/crossbows/pikes to capitulate Gilgamesh, then Caesar.

By then it was getting late for medieval war and Ragnar and Hannibal were fairly big (Fredrick got dogpiled and bent over to Ragnar early). I libbed nationalism, rushed Taj and burned some other great people for a 36 turn golden age (stole mausoleum from Caesar), got cavalry and cleaned up the remaining rivals for the win.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Not a lot of takers for the Boreal map, eh?

I won Domination in 1959 (wanted to hold off a bit so I could experiment with modern warfare).

Spoiler :

Freddy ended up vassaling to me instead, which ended up being a huge mistake. I've never had someone capitulate to me before (like I said, I'm a peacemonger through and through) so I didn't know that I couldn't DOW him. I kept making absurd demands of him but he always gave in.

So, the next step was obvious: bring down Gilgamesh. He had a nice big chunk of land, and I had Rifles and Cavalry. What else could I have done? This went fairly quickly, as his army was basically non-existent.

After that, like I said, I wanted to wait until the Modern era to win the game so I could experiment with things a bit there. This ended up being not terribly productive because I was so far advanced in both tech and prod that I just steamrolled Ragnar with tanks, winning the game, but it was worth it on the home front to learn more about the value of Corporations (I think I was getting something like +20 hammers per city from Mining Inc.) and the very delicate balance between pollution and health at that point in time (I usually go for culture victory so my games rarely make it to Modern). There's a lot of really interesting stuff happening there. I think my next few games I'm going to aim for Space Race victories so I can experience the full breadth of the game again.

 

[Grashopa]

MilesBeyond - Yeah thats a good way to play (holding off a bit and playing around) I must have played a hundred games before going to space my first time and another hundred before going cultural. There is a lot more to the game than just the early game I always play.

 

[BurN]

Not going to play this one but looked at the map out of curiosity.

Spoiler :

Isn`t this map type very easy even on deity? I`m predicting the AI will have no idea how to play this land. Seems very easy to chop all forrests into mids. Beeline col. Let hammers for infrastructure come from chops while running as many rep scientists as possible. Bulb like crazy... get curs/riffles... whip/draft... win?

 

[Manco Capac]

Not going to play this one but looked at the map out of curiosity.

Spoiler :

Isn`t this map type very easy even on deity? I`m predicting the AI will have no idea how to play this land. Seems very easy to chop all forrests into mids. Beeline col. Let hammers for infrastructure come from chops while running as many rep scientists as possible. Bulb like crazy... get curs/riffles... whip/draft... win?

Likely the best way.

Especially considering my biggest fail beeline ever...because I didn't do it a long time. I was about to make a feudalism sling-shot around 1500 BC just to discover just on the last turn of Oracle completion: "Uh? Where's feudalism? Crap, I remember, Writing is a pre-requisire!" No one to tech trade writing by that time!

Epic facepalm.

 

[stormlefty4life]

...... Why the hell did you pick the worst map script ever?

Then don't play it...troll else where...this isn't HOF games, its a learning experience for most!

 

[Manco Capac]

Then don't play it...troll else where...this isn't HOF games, its a learning experience for most!

HOF games accept boreal mapscript btw. Some gauntlets/challenges require this mapscript for competition.

 

[dalamb]

I've played a couple of restarts (advancing a little with each one), and need a bit of advice on the current one. I played Noble+Epic as usual.

Spoiler :

The first two restarts were from finding out I needed to be more fanatic about following a plan once I set some goals, instead of pursuing several at once. In the first game I "rushed" Caesar after he had praets and died horribly. In the second I restarted after an early lucky hut and didn't go for a 2nd city until I'd chopped and whipped a suitable army of Phananx, and managed to take Rome long before Iron Working -- but failed to push to chop the 'mids fast enough and lost them. In both I did get the Oracle, aided by the marble to the SE.

In the third I think I followed a suggestion in a different thread, but did it in the wrong circumstances, so I have a couple of questions. The tactic was to use the CoL missionary to convert a religion-less AI to a religion nobody else had (Carthage had given my Hinduism by this point). I converted Gilgamesh when Fred was buddhist (and widely hated), and everyone else was Hindu. Unfortunately this eventually made Giggles mad enough to invade while I was slowly building up a bigger army with macemen. It seemed to me I erred because he had no other close neighbour, so it was less likely he'd attack anybody but me. I think if Ragnar had happened not to get a religion, he'd have been a better target. So was it dumb to apply the "unpopular religion" tactic on this map? Or did I err in not pursuing a sword+catapult attack on Sumer earlier? I put it off because his nearest land is terrible and I'd wind up with just 3 cities far, far from the rest of my land, thus crashing my somewhat fragile economy.

I plan to back up until just after the 'mids+oracle (which I built a few turns apart) and before converting Super, then pursue a more aggressive strategy towards Sumer if I repeat the conversion approach -- or don't convert him, and wait until Rifles/Cannons to conquer the world as I'd originally planned.

Second, on this low- map, is it important to get the AP and its corresponding religious buildings? My production has mostly been chopping and whipping, but with Thebes in the east as a good GP farm, I want to switch to Caste System as soon as I can get by without Slavery.

 

[Archon_Wing]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

If I didn't flub with the GW messing with the GPP pool, I think Stonehenge/Oracle is easy to get on this map and you can mass settle Priests with PHI. Not sure if it's that great, but it sure is funny. I was getting good production despite getting 2 spies in the beginning. You don't really need the AP, though it'd be nice. I had tried this previously on the last Boreal game that was posted, because I felt that since the land didn't have that many hammers that I'd try to create "artificial" ones.

Since there is marble nearby, I'd think should be a great focus on getting TGL.

Your religion tactic is a bit too complex. With people like Ragnar running around it's easy to bribe him to someone. Then Julius will follow on the dogpile. Julius had no religion in my game for a long time yet I managed to get them all to dogpile a single person. Once you get one in, others follow in easily.

 

[dalamb]

@Archon_wing:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the comments. The religion tactic is something I read recently but it was likely from someone who plays well above Noble. I'd like to eventually understand how to use it and when it's appropriate, but I guess for now you're right that it's too complex at my level of play.

 

[popalopa]

I cannot load the game, Civ restart everytime. I've tried both huts& no huts for Noble, does anyone have the same problem?

 

[Keilah]

Not going to play this one but looked at the map out of curiosity.

Spoiler :

Isn`t this map type very easy even on deity? I`m predicting the AI will have no idea how to play this land. Seems very easy to chop all forrests into mids. Beeline col. Let hammers for infrastructure come from chops while running as many rep scientists as possible. Bulb like crazy... get curs/riffles... whip/draft... win?

That was my plan as well, except I figured I'd try steel instead of miltrad

 

[FlyingSwan]

View attachment NC 91 Alexander BC-0275 .CivBeyondSwordSave

This boreal map has a coast with 13 tiles,you can build a workboat,so I assumed I would be able to build a galley because you can build a lighthouse.You cant,so can anyone tell me why not so I don't make the same mistake again as this has totally messed up my settling plans so its a restart.I was going to build the Moao statues on this little island.,now I cant get my fish..grrr