Many Leaders Game 4 - The Cultured Monarch

Well, we left our French stuck in a war with Joao. I was way behind in tech and war seemed to me the only chance of getting more and better land. On the 2nd turn came a nasty surprise:



Joao was lucky here - won with 43% odds. There goes my 9th city. Roosey immediately grabbed the spot, so no re-settling there.



In revenge I took Oporto, home of the Mausoleum of Mossollus. I lost the city later on after capturing Lisbon though.


I finally got a Great Prophet for constructing the shrine. This did help greatly in terms of finances.



A nice event for a cultural game.



I then used a Spy for bringing down the cities defenses. It was a one-timer though as this did expend all my EP vs. Joao.



I then captured the Taoist Holy City too.



I then made peace with Joao - which was wise as he vassalized to Roosey shortly after.



Speaking of Roosey, he made my game:



Now I'm literally safe from everyone. No one will dare to attack me because Roosey is completely out of the roof...

I climbed out of the tech hole somewhat and snagged Liberalism and the free tech - 700 years later than most have done...



The first city flip. Note that Joao already has Infantry whereas Maces are my best units still. Scary.



To relieve my situation with Joao I decided to gift him back Lisbon, his former Capital. I then built a junk city as temple replacement. Remember I have only 2 religions available...



But gifting was weed, I only got a mere +2 for trade relations. Should have liberated it...



Yet my units got teleported back to the Taoist Holy City, including a Great Prophet. Shrine Time ! Couldn't have done this otherwise as Joao didn't open borders and the city was completely drowned in Portugese culture.



Roosey was a nice uncle. Gifted me Theology too.



Another game saver. Now I can hire enough Artists at Orleans, the gems city housing National Epic and the Globe...



World War time.



Paris goes Legendary.



The most shocking second. If Joao now comes for me I'm toast.



Never did I concede a demand more willingly ! That's 10 turns of peace that allow me winning this game...



continues...

The situation is as follows: Orleans will hit 30,000 culture soon, 5 Artists are waiting there to bring it to Legendary. Kyoto is close to 42,000, one Artist is waiting there. So - I need just one Artist more. Now let's hope for RNG luck...



YES ! The game is won ! Although Orleans would have produced an Artist 4 turns later, but the travel time might have been enough for the forced peace to expire...



2 bombs for Kyoto...



...and 5 bombs for Orleans...



A last, hilarious flip (Creative Constructions in there !) !



Victory in 1961 AD !





Well, not the best score, but I'll take it...



I didn't think I'll pull this off (with only 2 religions and that tech hole, Roosey had Mech Inf already at the end), this is my first BtS Monarch win and my first intentional Culture Victory. Thanks for setting it up, Oz ! It was a fun game to play ! The save is 1 turn before victory...

Despite the somewhat later date, still an impressive victory given how hard you had to fight for it.

An unfortunate ending. I too felt like I was racing against free religion, since that was a large part of what was holding the peace, but I got more fortunate in how the AIs played.

After about 100 turns, I didn't think any peaceful strategy would work well due to land constraints and threatening AIs. Well done.

I see lots of people building culture in their legendary cities. This seems like a bad idea, since the built culture doesn't get the benefit of the culture multipliers. I think a better strategy would be to build wealth and then run the culture slider higher, except in odd cases where you are set to run 100% culture until the end of the game.

what's worse, I was one more GA away from going FR after Pascifism!

Thanks. I'm really impressed though how you all managed that early finishes. I'm not used to Monarch, I always lose at that level. So I consider this game to be one of my best BtS efforts so far .

On building culture: It really depends. If you have a high production-low commerce site raising the culture slider does not generate that much culture compared to building it...

My slider never dropped below 100% the whole game, so building culture was fine for me.

Nicely manufactured war . Seems luck with GA popping didn't happen to everyone. Nice win.

Well done. Just in time too it seems. Good to see you break your Monarch duck!

And the epic tale comes to an end. After coming back to the game several times, and pressing Enter even more times and after all of this:













, this finally happened:





My empire:



Culture graph:



Top 5 Cities:





The Save before Victory: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96336/Gandhi_AD-1740.CivBeyondSwordSave

So apologies for the delay in completing the last turnset. As I left the game I was contemplating turning off research very early and then realised I really did need to get into Mercantilism to both keep Toku happy and for the free specialst who would secure me an earlier finish…

Highlights of the last set where.

Traded for Guilds and Banking and then hand researched economics securing the free Great Merchant in 1350 AD. At this point I did genuinely turn off research!!

Following economics it was the classic rush buy of all cultural buildings in my 3 legendary cities (they go up fast with research set to zero!!) and then basically husbanding my great people, giving into everyone’s non conflicting demands before hitting legendary culture in 1755AD.

So why a moderately late finish?

Well firstly Ozbenno was right and I had picked slightly wrongly in terms of legendary cities in not picking heliopolis for my 3rd legendary city with its high commerce and food setting.

On the other hand a random event made me glad I had as a Volcano wiped ouit some towns to rubble which would have been a disaster.

Also aiming for a peaceful game meant I was left with what I had been dealt and struggled to get my cities as big as I would like with some poor decisions (delaying harbour and grocers) and a lack of sufficient health resources.

But then again I was pleased with managing my diplomacy with a tiny military and only 2 experience gathering combats all game!!

Having carefully focussed on only Great Artist wonders I did get just the scientist I intended for Philosophy + the free Great merchant (used on a golden age) and a ton of artists (14 if I have kept track properly!!)

Lucky breaks? The major one was Joao founding Islam and spamming me with Missionaries and getting me a 4th religion in my empire.

Overall a fun game and thanks to Ozbenno

I will now set up MLG 6 so keep an eye in the MLG discussion thread as I expect it to start in 2 weeks time at the latest!!

i'd decided to try and keep everyone happy and have a peaceful stroll to victory. This was made difficult to do because toku and joao were with me in religion while roosy resolutely stayed christian. in view of this i decided to tech my way to rifling to ensure safety with my redcoats.

The turns passed slowly with only the completion of the Taj Mahal as excitement in 1510AD.

i was happy to find out i was the most cultured civ (if i hadn't of been i would have been amazed)



Everything was ticking over nicely until 1780AD, when true to form Toku finally lost his mind and attacked. Joao jumped in with me and our combined forces were just to much for our former friend. Satsuma fell in 1800 and after i let Joao do most of the fighting I captured Kyoto in 1816. Toku had enough and vasselised himself to Joao in 1818.

from then on in it was just a matter of keeping everyone else happy until the end.

London became legendary in 1834 with the final nottingham and canterbury following in 1856.







in retrospect i should have made York one of my legendary cities and i should have taken Toku out at the beginning

I started the final set with a a plan to take out Toku. For that purpose I traded Engineering from Joao for Philo + Optics. I quickly switched to Caste System as well, and remained in it for the rest of the game. The AP managed to vote OB with everyone including Toku, which made scouting for the invasion simpler.

1330 AD: Second artist is born.

1370 AD: I met Brennus.

1410 AD: I met Zara. He was the only distant civ that seemed to want to trade, Brennus and Hannibal were Annoyed and wouldn't OB. This meant I had to finish the game with only two religions.

1505 AD: I grab Liberalism since Hannibal had Education by now, took Printing Press. Then it was time to get into Free Religion + Theocracy.

1515 AD: Teotihuacan is now up to size 20.



1525 AD: My maceman/trebuchet/jumbo stack invades Japan.

1560 AD: Tokyo falls.

1590 AD: I get a GS by a stroke of bad luck.

1595 AD: Kagoshima falls. It took quite a while to take Toku's cities because they had 100% cultural defenses.

1605 AD: Third artist is born.

1675 AD: Satsuma falls. I was in no particular hurry since all three cities had been pumping out culture for a while now.

1680 AD: Fourth artist is born.

1705 AD: Aztecs are the largest civ.

1710 AD: Rifling is in. I turn the tech rate to 0%, but thanks to Representation and all those artists I am still getting a decent amount of beakers.

1725 AD: Nara falls and Toku is history.



1735 AD: I agreed DP with Roosevelt. This could have been a since I knew Hannibal was about to attack either myself of the Americans, but I figured it would be easier to get Roosevelt in the war this way.

1745 AD: Fifth artist is born.

1765 AD: My DP goes poof as Roosevelt attacks Hannibal first. That was a bit fortunate. Brennus is bribed to join the war in Hannibal's side, but he is a small player. Soon afterwards Zara declares on Hannibal as well. This is world war.

1780 AD: Sixth artist is born.

1818 AD: Brennus loses a city and immediately capitulates to the Americans.

1838 AD: At Zara's request I join the war against Hannibal.



1842 AD: AP votes to declare war on Hannibal, who is now fighting alone against everyone else. He's alone on his little continent and I can't see any invasion fleets headed there. This war would be a naval one and last until the end of the game. This made my job easy since there was no fear of anyone else suddenly declaring on me. I was a bit worried when Carthage sent destroyers and transports to my coasts, but they never had any units in them.

1888 AD: Seventh artist is born.

1909 AD: Eight and final artist is born, just in time to pop the third city into legendary culture.



My first BtS Monarch Cultural Victory! It was quite fortunate that Roosevelt was our neighbor since he is good ally and really took care of Hannibal for me. The Aztecs were a nice choice because I switched civics quite a bit and the early warfare against Toku went painlessly with Jaguars. I only had two religions and stopped building World Wonders after the Sistine. Because of the long war against Japan, I never did run Pacifism either.

I continued to build temples and cathedrals, and once liberalism was researched I cranked up the cultural slider, employed a few artists, and built culture in the soon to be legendary cities, and gold and troops in the others. Washington was my best friend, while Tokugawa hated me. Fortunately he hated Zara even more, and while they were fighting their 500 year war I was fairly safe from being attacked. I was a bit nervous when tanks started to appear at the border though, since I had nothing better than longbows to defend with. The finish date (1932) and the score (12888) is nothing to be proud of, but a win is a win. At least I got all the three cities to become legendary in the same turn

I have to admit, if this were an offline game, I would have trashed it when Zara and Brennus declared war in 1880. Brennus barely took Corinth on my east coast, leaving him with only a knight remaining. Zara easily took Knossos on my west coast.


I switched into Nationalism, and over the course of several turns, drafted about fifteen or so muskets. I was actually able to use four muskets (and I needed every one of them) to retake Corinth from Brennus, who only had a single cavalry (upgraded from the knight) in the city.



About the same time I noticed that Zara had upgraded the troops in Knossos to infantry :O (You’ll notice the screenshot is from 1884. At that time I didn’t realize there were infantry in the city.)



For the duration of the war, there was only one threat to a culture city, and fortunately it was a weak one.



There were additional concerns beyond the war:



Brennus sent an additional landing party back to Corinth. It wouldn’t stand a chance. However, a funny thing, I wish I had the screenshot. Zara was willing to take peace for Corinth!



Ha Ha Brennus!

As it turns out, I was able to secure peace with Brennus anyway.


I don’t seem to have the screenshot, but that very turn that I made peace with Zara and brennus, Hannibal declared war. His war was completely ineffective. He sent one offensive to Seattle which failed, and spent the rest of the game bombarding it.

The only delay after that was the oppressive corporation spam. At the same time, Joao was chugging along, and Carthage went legendary. Fortunately the other two cities were in their teens, culturally.



So, after some micromanaging, starving, and 16 GA bombs:




I can’t believe I did it, honestly. I’m so happy I stuck it out. It’s only my 3rd win on Monarch (all Cultural)