Monarch Specialist Economy Walkthrough

...concluded (Part 2)

1740AD-Sack Philly; GG#3, settle him in Memphis:



1745-Reject Issy's demand
1750-Sack Boston
1760-Bio done, start Physics; Raze Detroit (plan to resettle); Sack Atlanta
1770-Found Avaris:



1780AD-Sack Chicago; our 18th GPerson is born, a GProphet; settle in Constantinople; found Lisht:



1785-Finish Physics (not 1st to it); Start electricity
1790-Finally finish Wall Street. Would've been nice to land it earlier, but war preparations got in the way. I never have to worry about my economy again:



Found Buto; Sack Houston:



1795-Found Edfu:



1802AD-Sack Seattle; GG#4; settle in Memphis:



1804-Electricity done, start Refridgeration
1808-Sack San Fran; Sack Portland; our 19th GPerson is born, a GS (keep him in reserve); found Pithom:



1812-Sack StLouis
1814-Refridgeration done, start Steel; sack Miami; Sack Buffalo
1818-Sack Cuman; Found Cereal Mills:



Unfortunately, I don't get much use out of this corporation as the game is already well in hand. War Weariness is really starting to add up:



1820-Found Busiris; sack Orleans:



1822-Our 20th GP is born, another GE (keep him in reserve):



1824-Steel done, start Radio; Reject Joao request to adopt HR; Complete another World Wonder:



Why not?

Never did find a good spot for the Moai:



Found Kahun:



1828-Sack LA; eliminate Lincoln:



Postwar New Empire:



Victory Conditions Screen:



Close, very close...

1830AD-Issy and Ragnar declare on Joao; Issy uses the AP to call for war on Joao; I say no as I am still mulling things over...Burn our GS on a GAge since he has nothing better to do:



1832-AP forces us to declare on Joao. Turns out that is ok, because I had a modest stack of rifles headed his way anyways...



A shot of a late-game SE city:



1836-Radio done, start Mass Media; spread CMills in Thebes; Use GE to rush most of the Eiffel Tower, but I never complete it...



1838: Sack Lisbon, Joao Capitulates:



That puts us over the top:



1840AD-Domination Victory:

Well played, although I think the order in which you founded filler cities on the rest of your continent after Asoka was out was highly dubious.

All in all I think it was a nice demonstration of a pure SE (PARCS ) and it showed me a thing or two. I think a SE doesn;t have to mean no cottages ever so I think you missed out there. Going for a solid Bureau capitol would have pulled you out of economic trouble a long time ago, and te high food would have allowed for specialists in the capital in addition to cottaging the FP's.

I wasn't really paying attention to filling out my continent. I knew the game was in the bag, so I was just playing leisurely. At that point in my games I usually give up and start over.

I agree that a bureaucracy capital would have helped a LOT in this particular game. Part of the difficulty though was that I needed to produce a lot of wonders early on. I could've swapped to cottages after that, but at that point I figured, ah what the heck, I will just show how fun it can be to scrape by at the bottom of the economic barrel

for showing nice cycling both regarding research/production, where a warmongering specialist-eco shines and regarding civics thanks to SPI (which I consider to be one of the 3 strogest traits if used properly, regardeless of eco).

for late game GP management. Even if it did not affect this game, no need to show lazy habits in a walkthrough

for late game GP management. Even if it did not affect this game, no need to show lazy habits in a walkthrough

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Yeah, I agree, but what was I to do with the late game GPs? Settling them wouldn't do much. Bulbing wouldn't do much. The only real legit option was golden ages. One I did use on a golden age. I could have used more golden ages I suppose, but the game was so in hand as not to be necessary. If the game had played out longer, I would've spread Cereal Mills and eventually Mining Inc to all my cities for an even more enhanced food and production empire. If this was emperor+ then that could be worthwhile.

I was advised in the pre-game thread to talk more about diplomacy, so I thought I would reflect on my diplo reasoning in this game.

Justinian is a religious fanatic who will come at you in the medieval era when his powerful cataphracts become available. I could've shared a religion with him and maybe worked to get him to friendly to keep the peace, but that is a lot of work for a nearby opponent lacking metal, when I have war chariots So, rather than take the risk, I took him out.

Asoka is a very friendly guy who will generally not attack you and will just be your friend. I kept the peace with him, making some tech and resource trades, until I was ready to take this low-military-producer out. He's very easy to get along with diplomacy-wise and you really, really have to do things to upset him in order to not get along with him.

Overseas diplo: I always do my overseas diplo based on tech pace. I often find I want to buddy up with the warmongerers who are behind in tech so that, if I gift them some military tech, they might be convinced to invade the techies to slow them down. However, alternatively, if any civilization is sufficiently backwards tech-wise, then they can also be a very appealing target for an overseas invasion.

In this particular game we have Lincoln, who is the overseas tech leader, isolated on a good sized island. Lincoln is really easy to get along with. You scratch his back, he'll scratch yours. If you really upset him he will come at you (ahem, Ragnar ), but if you are civil, he will be civil. I used that to my advantage to make some trades with him until I was ready to declare on him--can't have him building a spaceship on me.

Then we have Ragnar. He can be troubling if he starts nearby, but if he is overseas and backwards, his threats are hollow. In this case, he is just inhabiting your future empire should you choose to attack him. Do what you want diplomatically, he is never going to be a threat to you.

Issy is of course our premiere religious fanatic. Since I did not share a religion with her, I knew there was going to be trouble. If she had a tech lead on me that could really signal difficulty, but since I had the tech lead I just kept it in the back of my head that I might have to fend off an invasion at some point. I had the production to do so, if necessary. She came at me with numerous demands, many of which I refused. If someone is destined to be your enemy, then accept that and make preparations for defending yourself or invading them.

With the confucian love-fest overseas this could have been a very distressing situation, especially if they were teching well. Even for a monarch game though, the tech pace was really bad between Ragnar and Issy. For a financial leader Ragnar really doesn't know how to tech. If they were all tech-happy and buddy-buddy then I would have been more cautious about invading, lest I risk a 3-on-1 situation. In that case I would either try to break apart the love-fest by bribing them to stop trading with one another or sending spies to flip religion, or anything I could think of. If that proved impossible, and invasion seemed unlikely, I would consider changing plans and going for a rocketship.

A bit of an aside

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r107/futurehermit/SE1830GSonGA0000.jpg

Tycho Brahe the GS?!

Funny stuff. GA sure... but why scientist?

Plz, nobody say hey look at wiki, ja ja, I get it, thx.

I have a question. Why do you place cities in the middle of the tundra or even ice? Are these any good before the corporations?

Resources and seafood can make tundra cities worthwhile, even before corps. Corps make them more useful.

Hah, it's hard looking back at old games, and this one isn't even that old. I was playing really weak compared to now.

Since this is on monarch one could easily just war chariot rush the entire continent and fill in as necessary. Picking up pyramids or even just oracle on the way would make the transition seamless...and improvements in knowledge in both fogbusting and warrior whip gold overflow would make it even easier.

TheMeInTeam said:

Resources and seafood can make tundra cities worthwhile, even before corps. Corps make them more useful.

Hah, it's hard looking back at old games, and this one isn't even that old. I was playing really weak compared to now.

Since this is on monarch one could easily just war chariot rush the entire continent and fill in as necessary. Picking up pyramids or even just oracle on the way would make the transition seamless...and improvements in knowledge in both fogbusting and warrior whip gold overflow would make it even easier.

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How many chariots do you need to rush entire continent? I did not play Egypt but as for normal chariots I try to take 2.5 per archer (3 on hills) including the archer that will be whippedas you go through cultural borders.

There was a city in tundra with no resources nearby.

I don't plan exact counts I just feel it out...

War chariots are far superior to normal ones. They have 5 str and IGNORE FIRST STRIKES, meaning they're more likely to win and extremely likely to damage archers. IMO they're only slightly behind immortals and a top notch UU.

Hatty can really abuse them with CRE, since she can rush out mass land and then use writing/cheap libraries to put research on track rapidly. They're still good in some situations with ram tho.

In this game, I settled ice/tundra cities mainly to get the land % needed to win domination.

Just wondering, does the % land owned for domination victory depend on the cultural border or is it just the big cross in the cities that counts? I've always thought the cultural border but this walkthrough seems to suggest the latter...

A domination victory depends on the % of land tiles under your cultural control. Sea tiles don't count and the BFC is not particularly important except the tiles there are easier to control. The exception is when you have vassals with culture pressing on your cities; and then you will be credited with control of tiles inside your newly captured cities despite the vassal having much higher culture in them.

Most of my tundra cities were built to cover tiles to get the % for domination victory. There were some tiles that my cultural borders would not cover in time without building new cities.

Awesome tut, so insightful. HUUUUUGE score at the end, highest I have ever seen. Some questions:

A) I'm not clear on why you were using 20% or so of culture slider when you were at 0% research slider, at a time when you needed cash suuuper bad. Why did you do this?

B) In the conclusion, how did you get up to 81 Riflemen when you already said you deleted your macemen to save cash (not upgrade). I assume whip and draft, but how much of either, and how do you keep your cities from freaking out about it?

C) It looks like you only shipped rifles over to Lincoln and no catapults. Why the brute force approach?

(Pretty interested about the following two)

D) What is the mod that is showing the health above your unit stacks, and what is that thing marking the world map with square boxes where you should build cities?

E) You founded so many cities that were close to other cities, easily encroaching on them, and were in some of the worst imaginable terrain. WHY did you do this? Why did the benefit of doing this outweigh the cost and/or effort? Cities on Ice that are cramped together, cities on remote islands, cities on 1 square of habitable ice next to polar ice cap? why?? Was this strictly for the land area victory condition? Were you worried about the economic drain?

Andii said:

Awesome tut, so insightful. HUUUUUGE score at the end, highest I have ever seen. Some questions:

A) I'm not clear on why you were using 20% or so of culture slider when you were at 0% research slider, at a time when you needed cash suuuper bad. Why did you do this?

Combatting and giving

B) In the conclusion, how did you get up to 81 Riflemen when you already said you deleted your macemen to save cash (not upgrade). I assume whip and draft, but how much of either, and how do you keep your cities from freaking out about it?

Mostly drafting. 3/turn adds up quick.

C) It looks like you only shipped rifles over to Lincoln and no catapults. Why the brute force approach?

Gunpowder units ignore castles. I knew I had enough to force my way through his empire. Ideally, you would want cannons or spies, but I knew I had enough without.

(Pretty interested about the following two)

D) What is the mod that is showing the health above your unit stacks, and what is that thing marking the world map with square boxes where you should build cities?

It's not a mod. It's just an option in the regular game "show unit health" or something like that. Alt-s to post signs for yourself.

E) You founded so many cities that were close to other cities, easily encroaching on them, and were in some of the worst imaginable terrain. WHY did you do this? Why did the benefit of doing this outweigh the cost and/or effort? Cities on Ice that are cramped together, cities on remote islands, cities on 1 square of habitable ice next to polar ice cap? why?? Was this strictly for the land area victory condition? Were you worried about the economic drain?

It was all about getting the land % to win in terms of founding cities. Even an ice tile still counts toward your %. I didn't worry about the economic drain really because at a certain point I knew I could manage the economy without any concern.

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10 characters.

Yesod said:

I think you should mention these specifics a bit more, cause that's the difficulty in your type of SE. Like you said about the whole cycling thing. Perhaps number the turns in a war cycle and how much units are costing and how long your cities take to grow back?

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1 of his screenshots did say he's down to no money and almost no income even at 0% science at the end of 1 war period, if that helps.