Nobles' Club XCVI: Brennus of the Celts

[dalamb]

BC 4000-2625

I followed advice about city locations and now need to plan my first war.

Spoiler :

Long term plans: take out Charlemagne and Louis to get a nice territory, then decide whether to continue warring or choose a longer term victory such as my favourite (but slow) Space.

Status: I founded both cities mentioned previously, the eastern one first. I researched IW too early, having completely forgotten about AH for the sheep. Barbarians were a bit of a problem, but I only lost 1 scout and 1 warrior before getting some axemen online.

Spoiler barbarians :

Lost the scout; he ran away from the warrior smack into an archer.

Lost the warrior defending the sheep, but my first defender (a gallic warrior) took out the archer next turn.

I'm now 1 turn from writing on the way to Aesthetics, which I hope will get me a few techs. I plan to take out Charlie soon and maybe Louis before taking a while to consolidate, but that depends on getting Code of Laws, which might require some careful trades. I begin to regret No Tech Brokering since I realized I could probably benefit somewhat, but if I ever get ahead of the AI in tech (which I expect is possible at Monarch) I'd prefer they not be able to trade my techs around -- especially if somebody starts demanding techs when I'm not ready to defy them.

I paused after my first diplomatic decisions: Sulieman demanded I close borders with Mansa, and it looks like some people hate Mansa and nobody hates Sulieman -- who seems to have more techs to trade, sooner, than Mansa does, so I wanted to stay on his good side. I acceded to his demands, but wonder if that was right, since Mansa is usually the best tech trade partner.

Spoiler diplomatic status :

My territory:

Spoiler :

Charlemagne is my first target. I've built 4 Guerilla I/CR I Gallic Warriors and one promoted to G1/CR2 after killing one babarian.

I figure the CR line is more important that Guerilla II for the first attacks on Charlemagne, since he's close and doesn't have many hills in the way, but for Louis I think G2 first, followed by CR I after a battle, might be better. My problem is, as usual, how many units to build before attacking; I usually build too many out of fear of stalling. I expect to need an axeman or two for melee defence; do I need a chariot or two (for any HRE axemen who might counterattack)? But the critical question is how many Gallic Warriors?

Edit: attachment deleted

 

[Pwu.380]

tl;dr
I bet this is what Greece feels like

Spoiler :

Cottaging things up quickly since that is what people told me what I should do.

Things were looking alright, I got Alphabet and Math and started Construction in that order.


These are my enemies.


Now I'm down to 40% tech, you can check the save but militarily, the odds are not looking in my favour. Also, barbarians are hitting my borders.


I am looking okay with techs so far. It won't be good in a little while though.

So what's the plan? Wait for cats? Chop dudes right now and war asap?

 

[Archon_Wing]

@dalamb

Spoiler :

Getting writing a bit faster would help, as you really need to scout their territory. Scientists can help a lot as well.

@Last 2 posts:

Spoiler :

What's with all the trees left?! Chop the ones that aren't tundra or plains flatland down, and once they are gone chop the trees outside of your city BFC
I feel that for Gallics to work, or at least with that hill promotion thing is to head for IW really early, getting only the basic techs like wheel and food techs. Fortunately, you can find bronze in time for that. As of this point, catapults are needed to attack that. They'll have metal hooked by now, and axes will crush the gallics. In fact, since Charlemagne is PRO, even archers will present a problem.

 

[Pwu.380]

I decided to retry this and make less bad decisions this time.

Spoiler :

I think I was trying too hard with grabbing land the first time instead of just making profitable cities and just attacking.

 

[MrKlew]

I'm now up through 1810.

Spoiler :

I won liberalism around 1675. Won the merchant for economics right after that. Researched nationalism for a few turns after that, then burned the great merchant for a golden age. Managed to time it so Taj Mahal completed just as the golden age ended, giving me back to back golden ages.

I'm not exactly where I'd like to be, but I'm still clearly in the lead and now need to finish it off. While it seems ashamed to waste my #1 power ranking and that nice stack, Louis and Tokugawa are my best allies and serve as a nice buffer. Attacking either one of them would likely result either in a dogpile on me or frequent AP induced stop-starts to wars or both. Joining in on the AP called wars against Mansa or Suleiman would be easy but the distance would make the wars long and expensive. So I'm thinking the best option is to use my power rating and friendly neighbors as a buffer against attack and tech for space. I've already got the tech lead and some decent production cities. If I beeline rocketry I could maybe launch by the mid 1900s.

 

[GGS]

Prince/Normal. Huts&Events. 500 AD.

Spoiler :

In preperation for the HRE War the Celts built a western road toward Aachen which was more lightly defended than Prague on the pigs/wine desert square and the enemy appeared to be road-phobic. The GW-driven war kicked-off in 850 BC. Aachen fell in 800 BC. Inexplicably, the HRE sent archers to attempt the recapture of the capital. As that force was destroying itself Prague fell to the second Celtic force in 650 BC.

This war, for no apparent reason, brought Suleiman and Mansa Musa in on Charlemagne's side. As a result the super scout had to dig in on a forested hill and Montezuma was not met until rather late. Early in the process of destroying the last three HRE cities a Great General was granted and with a little care the warlord should allow for the Heroic Epic. The HRE was eliminated in 250 BC.

Even with only five cities this economy has been a management nightmare. That said, the tech deficency is not terrible and the Celts hold a narrow lead in soldiers and population. The march on the four-wonder Paris began in 450AD. The intervening French city of Orleans has just been razed.

 

[dalamb]

@all: I'd really appreciate a brief opinion about how many Gallic Warriors to build given my previously-mentioned plan -- at this point in a typical Monarch game, I mean, since I haven't been able to spy their cities out yet and won't for another dozen turns or more. Otherwise I'll likely go for my usual build-far-more-than-needed.

 

[GGS]

@ dalamb Re: Number of Gallic Warriors.

Spoiler :

You won't be going in blind. You'll know the enemy terrain, troop mix and have a fair idea of reinforcement capacity. As a rule of thumb I follow the standard 2-1 odds plus a spare concept. So, in this circumstance my minimum would be 9 and if I needed 17 I'd get a Plan B.

 

[i_imperator]

Question

Spoiler :

Ok so first off this map is terrible, however we do start with some decent strategic resources such as bronze and horse in my second/third city sites. Im wondering, considering the map itself, is it more beneficial to go for horse archers than to do a bronze based rush? My problem was trying to get the horse-archers up in time. Im leaning towards the horse archer rush for this one and im planning on taking out multiple civs with them.
Also dose everybody notice that charlie's and Louis lands is waaayyy better than ours? Just an observation.

 

[dalamb]

I was under the impression that a Dun gave Guerilla I to all units, but I just built an axeman in a city with a Dun and it didn't get the promo. Has anyone else seen this problem?

 

[Lewarks]

It gives GI to units which can have it. Axemen can't. But if you build an Archer, it will have it.

 

[dalamb]

Ah, so I was misled by the wording, which just said "units" without a qualifier. Thanks.

 

[MrKlew]

It looks like I lost this one. It's 2023. My spaceship is scheduled to reach Alpha Centauri in 2027, but the AI has it's 3rd city at 49000 culture. It looks like it has 1-2 turns before winning the culture victory. Kind of maddening to lose such a close race, makes you rething every single decision and see how any one of them could have won the game for me. More details in the spoiler tags.

Spoiler :

I had pretty much decided on the space race after taking out Charlemagne. Having Louis and Tokugawa friendly gave me a good buffer agains the rest of the world and I had some good production cities. Turns out that diplomatic strategy worked well, but perhaps a bit too well. I was cruising along in the tech lead when Montezume after vassaling Suleiman and Mansa decided to come after me next. I bribed Tokugawa and Louis in on the action, mostly to keep Montezuma from using their roads to quickly switch attacks and avoid my stack. A few turns later Louis came asking for protection. I granted it because it seemed good to have him friendly if I wanted an undisturbed space race and I definitely didn't want him capitulating to Montezuma. This is a decision that would come back to bite me. It took a while for my stack to get over to the East, but I wiped out Suleiman, took one of Mansa's cities and recaptured a Japanese city from Montezuma. At that point my siege was running low and reinforcements were taking forever so I got Montezuma to give me all his gold for 10 turns of peace while I built up some reinforcements.

About 15 turns later he switched back to war civics, but ended up declaring on Tokugawa maybe 5 turns after that. I stayed out of it for a while, but eventually got drawn back into it. My main stack rolled into Montezuma's territory, while a smaller stack of mostly tanks took 2 cities from Mansa. Louis and Tokugawa were pretty much trouncing Mansa, he broke off from Monte and eventually capitulated to Tokugawa. I took 3 of Montezuma's cities and capitulated him to focus back on the space race (already had the engines and a few more pieces done by this time). Looking back I should have just wiped out Montezuma and I probably would have had enough territory for the domination win.

At this point Paris was up around 38,000 culture I think, so it was clear I was going to need to beat Louis to the culture win. I switched him to bureacracy from free speech and started some espionage missions against him. Luckily I had infiltrated a great spy against him earlier. I set him researching fission too, hoping I could save some research time by having him research it for me. I knew I was in trouble when his research time for fission went from 6 turns to 316 turns, he had obviously maxed out his culture slider, the race was on. On that point I started really trying to stop him, started running two spies on continual sabotage missions, eventually got up to 4 or 5 spies. I took out a cathedral, switch him back out of free speech again, sabotage all his towns down to hamlets, and took out a windmill, and poisoned the water of his 3rd city. I also tried to incite him into a war with a stack of modern armour and cruise missiles sitting about 6 spaces away from his 3rd city. Unfortunately even though I demanded all of Louis's resources from him over the course of 4 or 5 turns he didn't bite and just gave me everything I asked for. Once I got fusion I set my two best cities to work on the engines and went state property/universal suffrage for the extra hammers. Also starved the cities to run a few extra engineers. Probably should have done this a bit earlier. Oh well, I guess lessons for next time.

 

[i_imperator]

2017Ad 'Diplomation' UN Win

Spoiler :

This map for the early game is perhaps one of the most fustrating maps i have ever played. Im going to admit to several reloads as i was trying to rush different AI's Had to drop down to monarch for this one. I managed to chariot rush charlie but he kept spamming cities so i couldnt finish him off. I know we had iron avaible to us but i decided that an iron based rush would be far too slow compared to a early horse rush. Im certian that better players than me would be well able to wipe the ai's out on this map with just horsearchers.

His cap was pretty nice though. So i decided to backfill my land and tech to monarchy for HR rule and For a change use caste system, a bit of a hybrid econ here.

I think i was the first, i remember building the taj so i musta taken nationlism from lib. Sory there was a big time difference when playing this game in between saves

I decided to cointinue this one by warring some more, teching to my favourite combo of rifles/cannons later infantry arty. Took out France, and Sully. I noticed that toko and mansa were doing a decent job in the tech picture, and that mansa was going for culture. Thankfully nobody liked mansa as he stupidly took christianity over the hindu block that i was in.

As for winning this game i was actually going to try a AP win, so i did go for tehology first so i could get the AP. The Ap win is the only win that i havent done in this gamem UN is tricky enough to do, btu least i have figured it out. I was in the marjority religion (hindu) with three other civs but they kept voting for toku, (who at the time had the biggest land/pop number.

So i decided to abandon my AP victory and go for a good ole diplomation. I did stop mansa from getting culture with Infantry Arty and Nukes, monty was vasssled to mansa and was at war with toku. I had to make peace with monty so that i could cap mansa, and i also had to make a 1gold per turn deal with toku so he wouldnt vassle mansa. Mansa was willing to cap as soon as i killed his stacks but i didnt take it because of his cultural cities i wanted them first.

So after i was finished with mansa i went for monty, and after a couple of nukes he was willing to give in.
I really don't like the highlands map script.But it was an interesting game nevertheless.
Final Pics
Demographics

Kills

Wonders

Crappy Score and its not even agustus caesar

 

[pigswill]

925bc. Monarch epic.

Spoiler :

Standard start: mining>bw. Copper in third ring, Chuck down south spamming cities. Time for some warfare. Barbs are a nuisance but Chuck's protective archers were worse. Declared c 1500bc with axes and gallics, captured four cities, kept three, razed one, lost 3 gallics and an axe to barbs. Economy is in a mess but at least I've got writing so it can be recovered.

Maybe I'll go pick on France to totally wreck the economy.

 

[GGS]

Prince/Normal. Huts &Events. 1200 AD.

Spoiler :

Paris fell in 560 AD and with four wonders at that point it promises to be a fine GPF. In 600, the more than problematic barbarians destroyed France.

During this era the principle Celtic struggle has been with the economy. There were defeats such as going cottages late, necessities such as wealth towns and victories such as a well-timed 1T/476G Chichen Itza miss. Five okay cities were built. Bibricate has the Heroic Epic; Prague the Hanging Gardens; Paris added the Great Library and the National Epic.

Tech-wise the Celts are in the middle of the pack, but hold a narrow lead in soldiers, land and population while running H/R, Bureaucracy & C/S.

The plan? Montezuma is back at war with Mana Musa and Suleiman. Tokugawa is the weak sister and the location of his capital is more or less known. Target Tokugawa.