Monarch Student III - Climbing from Prince (Asoka/India)

I settled in place. Build order was worker=>warrior=>warrior=>settler. Techs were Agri=>AH=>BW. BW finished towards the end of the settler. My explorations revealed Shaka very close by, and an army of axes was chopped/whipped. Shaka was removed at 1250BC. I kept his cap, and one other city, autorazed and resettled (on the bronze, to get both food resources nearby) the other. Further explorations revealed that Our Island is fairly cramped.
Piccie of my empire

WK is seriously encroaching on my territory. Unfortunately, I need to wait till maces/trebs, as hawachas have too good a survivability rate versus classical units.

I am quite advanced for this early part of the game, helped in part by clever gold trades, and a near miss on the 'mids


I have a fair number of cities

The Zulu cap is food poor

And the power ratings

My axe rush was extremely efficient, as When it was over I had 3 units left, including the two city garrison units.

Plan of action is get my economy in tip top shape. I am currently in heavy deficit research, but at this stage 100+ per turn cannot be sneezed at. Then Wan Kon will be fully removed, after which I will Remove Hammy or Pacal. Probably Hammy, as he ain't too happy with me, being Hindu. If I can I will have the island to myself before contact with the other continent.

i didn't like the start, so i decided not to raise level
moved warrior se, settler n
nothing good revealed, in order to have cows in BFC settled in initial position
(so, lost 1 turn for useless movement - negligible on marathon)
popped hut for 123 gold, and then a scout came from the west
View attachment 200558
then an archer comes from the north:
View attachment 200559
hell, this psychopat must not be allowed to live
i guess i should go sharpen my axe (if i find one)
met also this gui
View attachment 200560
and this
View attachment 200563
researched agri + bw
once i had BW copper popped right under a mine in Delhi's BFC.
so situation was crystal clear - either i kill shaka right now, or he kills me a bit later
i chop-whip 3axes and DoW him
View attachment 200566
surprisingly, his has barracks built and 2 C1+CG1 archers in cap. i lose 2 axes to no use and decide not to risk the third. instead, pillage his mines. continue whipping-chopping-tactical maneuvres, and, finally:
View attachment 200567
that's also hammy to the east, but he's not that shizophrenoid after all (well, of course he is, but compared to shaka he just a peaceful lamb)
pacal is quite a warmonger and backstabber too, as i remember, but gladly there are no his borders anywhere near me.
as i had jumbos in BFC, i headed further research straight to Elepults.
I planted cities on marble, stone locations, but was beat to Oracle, 'mids and henge, sadly. At least i managed to build GW
View attachment 200564
and HG.
View attachment 200568
Maybe will steal smthing from Ham, who's going to have a lead (he has 'mids and representation)
i remember that wang always teched very fast in my games and is damn protective with these walls everywhere and tons of CG3 longbows behind them, so i decide to smash him immediately with elephants (as a sign of gratitude for spreading buddhism to me.)
View attachment 200565
Well, real life Ashoka also had changed his ways much once he saw the light of Buddhism )

Now elepult war with koreans in progress, and they will barely survive it. It would be nice to extort some techs from them for peace, but repetitative DoWs would ruin my diplomacy and make me a pariah in the buddha bloc.
We shall see.
save follows
View attachment 200570

Tech path: agri - bw - hunting - wheel - ah - pottery - writing - alpha - currency - fishing (Wang) - IW and archery (Hammurabi) - CoL - sailing and meditation (Hamm) - math - masonry (Wang) - construction - calendar (Hamm) - researching philo

4000 - settle in place and 120 gold from the hut

3775 - First AI is Wang Kon. I don't remember him causing a lot of trouble in my previous games. He usually techs quite well, like any other financial leader and doesn't declare war at pleased. Fav civic is Caste System.

3725 - Two more AIs in the same turn and I'm not overjoyed. The first is Shaka (no need to introduce him).
The second is Pacal, a spoiled brat in my experience. Doesn't produce a lot of units but likes to build a huge empire if left unchecked. Declares at pleased and likes Hereditary Rule.

3150 - BW reveals copper in Delhi's BFC. Both Wang and Shaka are very close and the rush target isn't that hard to choose. Shaka is going to be completely blocked by me and Wang in the western corner of the continent. Not that he needs any specific reason to declare war anyway, but still.

2775 - The last AI on this continent is Hammurabi, the most reasonable of the aggressive leaders. He likes bureaucracy, doesn't declare at pleased and seems to be quite far away. I think he will be my future best bud for this game.

1875 - Ready to declare war on Shaka:



1950 - And the unpronounceable city is captured:



1350 - Ready at Ulundi:



And Shaka is dead. Sigh of relief throughout the continent:



1125 - I finally found my second city:



875 - Barb city captured:



750 - Vijayanagara founded. Forgot the screen, it's 4S-1E from Delhi and claims marble, jumbos, iron and fish.

470 - Another barb city captured. They settled it on the copper, wich isn't too bad, as it claims both the cow and the rice:



215 - Pataliputra founded, future Moai city:




Empire's core:



Old Shakaland:



Southern barrens. I hope to beat Hammurabi to the deer/wine/cow city:



Tech situation isn't bad. I'm usually behind at this point:



Cities. This is my main issue in this game. All my cities look very...hybrid. I still need to pick my super-prod city:



Glance. I'm still in no religion, waiting for Hammurabi to ask me to adopt Judaism. I have a -1 with Pacal from declaring on Shaka and -1 with Wang for border tension.




Not sure about the future plans. This continent looks big enough for an early dom victory. The obvious target is Wang, probably with elephants and catapults, followed by Pacal, who looks to be badly boxed by Wang and Hammu.

I've completely ignored wonders and great people so far. Still need to pick a good GS farm.


Overall, I bet Shaka isn't going to see the Anno Domini in any single game of this installment, but I think the other 3 AIs will provide some very interesting and variegated scenarios. Good map.

Gambled on losing the cow to settle 1N on the plains hill which seemed to work out well. Gave room for a decent coastal city to claim it and the other two good tiles down there. Axe rushed shaka obviously -Probably should have gone quicker since he just had just built a 3rd city, but it was fairly easy still. I built Stonehenge, and almost got the Oracle too - i saw Shaka had no copper and figured i'd could take a little extra time.

After shaka was gone i built the pyramids and joined hammy and wang as Hindus. Took out Wang a couple thousand years later with maces mostly, taking him as a vassal with only a few not so good cities in the center of the continent. He'll be a nice buffer for when i go to fight hammy. Waiting to recover from war weariness and for a few cannons (5 turns left for steel), then should be able to take the rest of the continent. Hammy's capital looks very tempting - hindu holy city and all.



Hope our continent is big enough for a dom victory so i dont have to build boats.

Here's the tech situation.



Seemed like an easy map. The easy rush giving us 4 gold tiles total and gems helped the research a lot. I usually never build pyramids since it seems like i never have stone -so im sure they also helped. Tech-wise the AI's were very slow this game. Did a decent amount of tech-trading early to catch up, but basically have had to self research everything for awhile now.

In retrospect I agree that the map is easy. I should have gone with my instincts and swapped Pacal with Shaka (starting location swap). Live and learn.

Looking pretty good so far. My first round can be summed up as... Two winners, two losers and a dead guy in a hindu lovefest.

Ok I've been proved wrong many times here before by predicting what people would do to win. And they've won and I've lost, so that shows you what I know, but is there *anyone* - Anyone at all out there - Who did not rush Shaka??? Copper in your capital BFC, sitting on a river, and Crazy Shaka next door? If this isn't a textbook case for axe rushing, I don't know what is.

Someone above said this was an "easy" map. And it would appear that way to me too. Resources galore. So many good city sites you can't hardly rush them all in time. I'm at 8 cities and building 2 more settlers. Calendar comes online this turn and then it's Katie bar the door. If I can't get my first Monarch win on this map... I oughta go play World of Warcraft or something.

In my game we're all Hindu so far. Lovefest going on. Someone's got Judiasm though, and I see a potential switch coming because Wang and Pacal are both boxed in with 3 or 4 cities (losers). Hammy and I are at 8 (winners). Everyone's getting along so far, but my money's on a Wang/Pacal blowout fairly soon. I got the food/starvation event with Wang so that netted me +3 diplo on him.

I got the stone hooked up and built the 'mids and Hanging gardens in Delhi. That plus 2 scientists running and a GS or GE is going to pop in 3 turns. I'm hoping to get Lit and the GLib if it's a GE that pops. Although I really could use metal casting for the triremes and forges...

The only bad news really is I'm behind 4-5 techs or so at this point. Construction's out there, Aesthetics is out there along with a few of your minor ones I haven't picked up yet... archery, polytheism... I think cause it's a hindu lovefest the AI's are trading generously with each other, and I haven't joined in yet. Soon, though, soon... All cities defended + I've got a nice wee stack of CRIII axemen from Shaka/barbs ready to form the base of a nice army. Lost one galley to the barbs so far and can't really work the seafood tiles until after metal casting... But all in all looking pretty good so far.

Must remember to keep checking WHEOOHRN for signs of trouble amongst the brethren.

Map note: I used this map as received from Single Malt. As far as I know, he did not make any changes to it (other than the civ colour). I made exactly one change to terrain. See if you can spot it! (Hint: It's not shown in the picture below). I'm embarrassed that I did it now because there was no reason to. See I didn't really look all that carefully at the map, cause I didn't want to spoil it. Here's what I knew about it: Copper was near (although I didn't think it was in BFC). Shaka was near. That's about it. So I made one tweak to try and provide a tempting alternative to Shaka axe rush... But in the end is there really anything tempting enough to sway you - the ardent player - away from a Shaka axe rush?

Empire core:

Dropped one level for a relaxing wonder-spamming game.A start is nearly ideal, good production capital and both Marble and Stone available.

Settled on place and built something like worker, warrior, Stonehenge, worker, settler.

2225 BC: second city. Stone and gold, automatically connected to cap via river.



After stone was connected, Cap built The Great Wall (not really needed here but was cheap), couple of more workers and a settler, and started The Pyramids.

Shaka is my neighbour, but for long time he did not seem to have anything but archers (obviously no bronze or horse), so he didn't seem like a threat he normally is.

1375BC: third city. 2 Fish and 3 hills.



1075BC: The Mids:



800 BC: 4th city. Connects Marble, one fish resource.



450 BC: 5th city. Cows, hills, a river and Calendar stuff.



140 BC: The greatest wonder:



65 BC: 6th city. Another production city. I have no else kind of cities than production cities.



5 BC. Temple of Artemis was built (it was available late in this game. Shaka has metal now, so I traded military techs from Wang.



10 AD: Parthenon was built and was the first wonder built in other city than Capital.

175 AD: Mauseleom of Maussollos, Another very good wonder.

235 AD: Position seems quite solid. Perhaps the only weakness is that I still have only 6 cities and there's not many good sites left. Teching speed is decent c. 250 bpt per turn (when switching to a tech mode with all caste/representation scientists) and since my all cities are production cities, it should'nt be hard to build a decent size army quick. Perhaps i'm going for trebs/maces and attack someone (Shaka perhaps to best target since he is disliked by others).



View attachment Monarch Student AD-0220.CivBeyondSwordSave

Rushed shaka because it was too convenient.
Early game:
Agriculture-BW-almost hunting (delayed so I could build a warrior instead of spearmen)-animal husbandry-wheel
Build:
Worker-worker when farm finishes switch queue to warrior and grow, mine hill, at size 2 switch back to worker (note: I know I won't be growing to size 3 anytime soon while building the barracks, so workers chop instead of improve). settler (aided by Chop 4x) barracks axe*
I settle the (no monument) bronze cow site, partially to deny shaka, partially because it's good production. Improve bronze first then chop then cow. Other worker is busy chopping grassland forests for axes then building a road toward shaka. Attack with 9 (whipped last axe from city 2), there's late axe from capital to deal with counterattacks.

Capital switches to settler because shaka is hemmed in and we still want to block the AIs (wang kon).
Attack capital, first 4 die, next 4 clean up. remaining 5 should be enough to finish his expansion. Tip: since his expansion is on a hill, I promote combat 1 for suicide attacking (math: 50% archer bonus, 50% from hill/archer, 25% fortified > 100%, so combat 1 10% > cr1 20%). City is razed because it will not be productive until iron working, which I plan on trading for. Got another worker.

The REX: axes switch to fogbusting duty. Settler from capital (remember the transition?) settles towards Wangkon, the horse/cow on the coast.


The important part of REX is production and not crashing your economy. I have 2 golds and there's another 2 golds east. Basically I can take land as fast as I can without crashing my economy. My secondary city and capital are pumping settlers, shaka's capital is going granary/library of course, then pumping settlers. Cottaging river grasslands at my capital.
Next city is double gold rice horse to the east. I improved the cow earlier at my capital's border pop so it doesn't waste turns on unimproved tiles.


Next city is fish city

I do this because it takes awhile to get a non-capital seafood city online, especially if it needs a monument, and I want GP sooner.
Next city, I survey land to the northeast and east. Barbarian city has popped up, I sent a city raider 2 axe to try to take it. There's fair odds my axe will die, but it takes out one, heals, takes out second, and is in position to take the 3rd

There's some terrible desert to the east, and further to the east, hammurabi's taken the useful land, so no point in blocking. To the northeast, there's a lot of jungle, which i don't mind the AI taking so they can improve it for me without my paying maintenance for it. Wang kon won't take shaka's second city site very soon (or so I thought, he settled close to it), and the fish city north of shaka's capital won't be settled soon. I take the iron/cow/sugar city to the northeast and a wheat/cow/calendar city near hammurabi.

I don't encroach upon pacal too much, because he's smallest, hammurabi's the off religion of wang kon and pacal, and I want him to be fighting for land with hammurabi.

The marble north of the fish city gets settled next in case hammurabi sends an aggressive settler.

Economy/tech: after the rush, it was pottery-writing. I then tech alphabet because there are 3 players, 2 of which are fairly peaceful, financial and willing to trade, and it's monarch so they don't get alphabet that fast. I get fishing and masonry for writing, 1/3 researched iron working for writing and something. Hold onto alphabet monopoly to slow AI until wang kon offers me mathematics. I have 3 economy cities, my capital who's priority is to grow to happy cap with cottages, shaka's 2 gold capital, and the 2 gold city to the east. They get library/markets. The rest of the cities stay small and build workers/settlers, although some are transitioning.
alphabet/currency/code of laws. Nobody has aesthetics (not sure about other continent), so I go for civil service for my anarchy-free bureaucracy capital. Switched to caste for a few turns to border pop two newest cities, although I am not using slavery much.
I have 3 happy resources (gold/gem/ivory), so I don't need hereditary rule. I'm not running specialists yet, so there was no need for pyramids, and I haven't border popped to stone yet.

I have the land I want, so soon it's time to fully switch to builder/war mode. I'm spiritual/organized, so I can trade for monotheism and run organized religion

Tech

I have 50% more land then the next largest rival, tech lead over everyone, I can probably grab great library, good diplomatic situation and a scapegoat rival who's the largest threat. Wang kon and pacal are clearing jungles for me for later and teching so I can backfill.

Settled in place.


Met Wang Kon :


Met Hammurabi :


Met Pacal II :


What about Shaka ? Well :


He will be sorely missed.

I then proceeded to plant two more cities and draw a dotmap:



An easy start : with a civ starting with mining, bronze in the BFC and a huge expanse of forest to chop, Shaka's fate was sealed. None of my three neighbours is very aggressive and I have a lot of land to play with. When all my Gold resources come online, my tech rate is going to soar. Looks like a fun game

A peaceful round of building. Everyone is still Hindu. No one is WHEEOOHRN. I've expanded to 10 cities, with no more room for expansion. That's ok as I could stand to get these ones up and going.

Made a couple of trades to backfill needed techs. Luckily everytime I managed to get something the AI doesn't have, someone will trade me 3 other cheap things for it, managed to beg metal casting off Hammy. But I'm still struggling to keep up tech-wise. That should start to come back as I do a little less whipping this coming round.

Have popped 2 GEng so far. One used to build the Shwed Paya (not in Delhi - don't want to pollute my GP farm) the other just build the GLib in Delhi. I switched to pacifism to juice the GP rate. I'm really starting to put some pressure on a couple of Wang's border cities now. Have just built first trireme - so starting to send those out with fish boats. Researching CoL for cheap courthouses. Mostly building markets right now.

Military is starting to look a little long in the tooth as other AI's have Feud and Construction. I will need to make sure and not fall behind too far - although everyone's still looking like getting along.

Overview and then techs... Need to see if I can get something for MC off Pacal...

400: Shaka declares on Wang
445: The Sistine Chapel
700: Notre Dame (I rarely get this wonder, AI prefers Engineering)
860: University of Sankore
910: Declared on Shaka. He is weak in this game, boxed in a rich but too small area.

1060: Liberalism. Took nationalism. Not Alphabet at this point AND I realized just now I had skipped Monotheism and Organized Religion too even when I've been hindu for >500 years and it's in all my cities. Quite big mistake...

1100: Shaka is dead. His land is quite rich but unfortunately don't have any new health resources. I have plenty of happiness, but low health cap keeps Delhi small (yeah, I forgot to build Aqueduct too..).


View attachment Monarch Student AD-1100.CivBeyondSwordSave

Stonhenge.

Aggressive placement.



And here come some axes.





Those are his only good cities for now so I take peace.





Cover some ground to the east too. MMMM cities.

This position is quite strong so I know I'll win.

Mostly a cottage spam game. I used delhi for hammers, made a few other hammer cities.

Mids goes late...to me. I had things blocked so I figured it's worth a shot:



Same thing with Hanging gardens.



Some war. Good. Distractions.



I jump in.





Not much bulbing here. It wasn't in danger. I just took nationalism because we have marble. Taj was easy too.

I unlocked HE taking a barb city and put it in capitol too. I had such a force that i was going to attack prior to having any rifles, since my power was well above WK's...but...

In 1480 he decides he never wants a peace of me.



Ok.

I was actually getting rifles online. So the game ends in true vassal abuse fashion.











Much nicer than that !#@$% immortal game .

I decided to not settle in place, but get the bonus hammer of the plain hill. I lost the cows, but will utilize them later with another city

Second city about to be founded in the year 2700. I am definitaly a REXer, normally playing Charlemagne. But organized is great ability for this. Will have to think about another leader.



Alphabet is ready and already sent away for new techs.



My realm at 875 BC. Enough settling, let the battle begin.

Techs: priesthood (extorted from Pacal) - hbr - monarchy (Wang) - CS - feudalism (Hammu) - paper - edu - lib - nationalism (free) - mc, compass, aesthetics and polytheism (Hammu) - machinery, literature, drama, monotheism (Hammu) - guilds

205 - First to philo and Taoism founded in Ulundi.

220 - I beat Hammurabi to one of the few decent sites left. He will settle 3-4 cities around Varanasi:



445 - I finally decide to convert to Judaism to please Hammurabi.

860 - Ready to declare war on Wang and he bribes Pacal. I'm Pacal's worst enemy:



870 - Cheju captured:



880 - I bribe Hammurabi vs Pacal.

890 - Hammurabi completes...the Pyramids. Wonders are going very slow in this game and I'm not helping in this regard. Didn't build a single wonder so far.

950 - P'yongyang captured:



1000 - Hyangsan:



1100 - Wonsan:



And Wang is sued for peace:



I'm still attacking with axes, cats and elephants. Need to stop and get some maces/knights/trebs.

1160 - Free tech from Liberalism:



And end of this round.

Continent. Wang has 4 cities on this side and 2 more behind Pacal's land. Pacal is very small, I think I'll wipe him right after Wang:



Western Korea:



Techs:



Glance. Hammurabi loves me for shared religion and wise civic choice (bureau):





Future plans.
Easy Taj with marble.
I'm teching to economics now, to get the free GM for Sushi later. Hammurabi is friendly, so I can trade to get maces and trebs to finish Wang and kill Pacal.

Overall, I'm playing very poorly. Zero wonders so far, zero great persons and all my cities are some kind of hybrid. Still have to build the Heroic Epic and pick a decent city for the Ironworks.
But I think I'm in very good shape anyway. Wang and Pacal are easy pickings and the tech situation is good.

Chose game settings: Monarch/Epic

Settle in place, start BW immediately (all those yummy forests!). Warrior pops Hunting from the hut!

And later, got another lucky pop: Masonry! We may want to disable those next game....

So we meet Korea, Babylon, and Maya. Then we have to go and meet Shaka. Ooh boy, that guy's a pain in the arse!


Well, explore, lots of good stuff ALL over the place, start expanding, and what do you know but Shaka is right next to us and the only way he can expand is towards our borders. Yeah...that's not gonna work for me.

Thanks to this handy random event, I can easily deal with the archer-on-a-hill city that popped up closest.


Time to die!





After that I built another city to capture the gold and horses, but had some bad luck with barbs and lost it. It's rebuilt now, and here's the status of the world: