Monarch Student XII - Mehmed

ER, Wow, Hammy to the left bowmen) and Sitting Bull to the right (PRO) .... wow ....

Yeah I've only played the first 10 turns or so but this is one hell of an unforgiving random map script

Chariots work just fine vs Bowmen and horses are VERY close.

Trying emperor again. My last few games have gone well. I've gotten them to the point where the win is clinched, but maybe this time I can actually get to the victory screen.

Settled 1N. I actually popped a map that showed me the land to the SE like someone mentioned before, but it was nothing special. My warrior went off to the left and popped AH from a hut. This was a huge break. With no animals around and copper close, I probably would have put this off for a while. This would have changed things a lot.

I met the neighbors, Hammy and SB. All I have to say to the people that axe rush every game is have fun with those neighbors, at least there's no Gilgamesh. I settled my second city to the SE claiming horses and wheat in the first ring while teching off HBR. You can see where this is going.

I got a barracks and stable up in my two cities and started cranking out HAs. I pretty much completely deforested the capital, but that's a small price to pay. I was ready to go at 1000BC.



SB may have scary archers, but unfortunately for him, horse archers don't fear anything before longbows. 200 years later, the Native Americans are a thing of the past.



I should have waited for that city to grow to 2 pop, but he had a lot of defenders and settlers walking around, so I just wanted to get rid of him. My flanking HA actually won on a very low % when I was just trying to retreat.

-13 gold at 50% slider wasn't a big enough crash of the economy for me though. I mean, if you have a stack of veteran HAs, are you just going to use them for HR garrisons? Hammy was teching along pretty well, although he wasted the Oracle, taking CoL when he was 2 turns from teching it manually. I spent a few turns reinforcing my SoD and getting SB's land productive, and eventually I was ready to declare on Hammy ~400BC.

I blitzed in and easily took Akkad first turn. It's a great city with a lot of flood plains, not to mention a courthouse already there. From there I moved on his capital. This was actually a huge mistake, it was guarded by 2 spears, a sword and a bowman on a walled hill. I got my first GG for a super medic after Akkad, so I could have waited for him and rehealed the rest of my stack, but I decided to move quickly. I was ready to throw a brick threw my screen after 3 straight HA's didn't land a hit, but I got bailed out by winning a 3% and a 20% battle.

I saw a nice gold mine to the SW in Dur-K~, so I healed my stack and moved down there. Hammy's pretty much crippled at this point, and the city was only guarded by an axe and a bow. My 20exp+ HAs just ran over them.

My economy was very stretched at that point, so I looked at what I would get for peace. Not surprisingly really, he still wouldn't give me CoL for peace. I decided to teach him a lesson. He had two more cities on the peninsula, one guarded by a HA, another guarded by a bow. I quickly raze them both and bring him back to the negotiation table:



Note, this is actually from the first time I tried for peace, so I actually got CoL a few turns later.

Hammy had bribed Musa into the fight somewhere. He never sent a stack, but he did have an annoying exploring skirmisher that parked himself on a hill until I gave him 5 gold for peace.

I teched off currency a few turns after taking peace with Hammy, and along with quick 2 pop whip courthouses everywhere, my economy went from losing gold at 100% gold to being fine at 50%. Here is my empire at 10AD:



SB's cities are all pretty nice. His old capital looks to be the best candidate for a GP farm with all that food. Taoism also got founded there, so maybe that will even lead to a nat epic/Wall Street combo if I don't capture a better shrine. The 5cpt from being a holy city also means that the marble will be mine when I start building the GLib. Our initial land:



Not much there really. I need to get some cities down there to claim those happy resources, although I have HR now. Istanbul is a nice hybrid capital though. And Hammy's land:



I took a barb city a few turns ago, could have put it off a little, but why not. I may need to redeclare on Hammy to get rid of the culture pressure on Babylon. Hammy is down to 2 cities (3 if you count that crappy city he just settled that's guarded by a bow,) and I doubt he has any production. Still a lot of land to settle to the west there.

And techs:



Somehow I'm the tech leader, Keshik economy to the fullest I guess. I traded HBR around for alpha (researched 3 or 4 turns into it,) math, meditation and sailing. And once someone builds MoM I'll be able to get calendar off of Cyrus for alpha and something else. I didn't want to trade currency to Musa, but I needed monarchy pretty badly. I should have a clear shot at the GLib, no one else has aesthetics, and I have marble.

Musa is teching the best, and has the Hindu, Jewish and Christian (next turn) holy cities. On the other hand, Cyrus has a ton of land, but is backwards. I'm not sure which one I should wipe with cuirassiers and which one I should wait for cavalry.

Anyway, the game has started pretty well, hopefully I can finish this one up with an early domination win.

For clarification I've never been sure do chariots count as melee or not? Either way a very large group of them still work against bowmen

settled in place and started researching mining, very early i saw that we had bull and Hammu as nextdoor neighbours so choose to run a Chariot gambit wishing for horses ... luckily we had them so i send chariots directly down 2SE to Babylon and waited on his secondary bowman leaving the Babylon, and it left my direction ... took the chance hit since i figured that it would proberly settle so i couldn't take Babylon on first turn of the war and declared with 5 Chariots ... Bowmans are good against Axeman but they can't handle a couple of C1 Chariots very well, not while sitting alone on a hill ... Babylon is mine and i plan to continue my Chariot army redirecting and reenforcing it and kick Bull the same way before he can get around CGIII archers

hightened by the succes on Hammu i choose to try the same attack on Bull while he only had one city defender ... while i couldn't see he city i was trying to circle around, with my slightly reenforced (up to 5 again) chariot group, to see if i could get a open gap while waiting on him building the first city ... he builded it and i entered seeing only a archer and a dog soldier (worse than useless against chariots) ... one chariot died knocking the archer down to pitiful ammounts and the other two had a field day eating the dog soldier and the archer ... quickly looked around finding Property point giving it the same love autorazing it ... 2110bc and 3 capitals, which was owned by prehaps the hardest leaders to axerush ... pretty decent time if you ask me

No huge surprise that due to the wide open spaces I peacefully expanded for a good long time. This period lasted until around the completion of Animal Husbandry at which point the massive empire of two cities began to build chariots. Workers chopped out chariots as tech after the obvious BW opening followed by writing was followed by HBR and Archery. These two techs allowed the building of mounted settlers.







Tech rate has actually been decent due to the massive building of research combined with Caste System and the massive amount of food in places other than where our starting location was - for example Sitting Bull's capital... 4 FP, 3 Clam, 1 irrigated wheat.

I finished researching Currency and really should be building wealth and jacking up the slider. Also should see if merchants in a few of the cities would be more beneficial than scientists. Micro! AHHH!

First few turns made it look to not be a good game for me at all - but things ended up going well. To start it off, i decide to settle 1N - move the settler and his turn is over. What? Forest pops up a second later...



Bad luck i guess. Then i discover my two immediate neighbors - both not the easiest to rush and both pretty close. I get a blocking city to the east for sitting bull. He has plenty of land the other way so i figure he won't be too mad at me. My warriors scout much of the map without dying.

I don't want to mess around vs protective archers - sorry hammy - i see bowmen just get bonus vs melee, and i have horses in my capital. There we go.

Tech was mining/bronze working/AH/myst/pottery/writing I think. Not the fastest chariot rush ever but i think it will be enough. He has 2 cities, and i'll scout with my worker (who is roading there) to make sure it's possible.



He founded 2 religions in his capital - and it's only defended by 2 bowmen. This looks good. I got a scientist for an academy in my capital - but i just remembered it was 50/50 scientist/priest. Guess i should remember to check for wonders when i capture capitals...



And it works with a decent amount left over.



Barely take the other city. Hammy is gone and it seems i have enough land to play now.



I went monarchy early cause only Mansa was going to have it, and i had nothing to trade. Really wanted to get cities to grow. That along with the ivory, and wine helps a lot. Fur and silver are to come soon with the city (my 6th) i just founded. I'm 1 turn from currency. Then i need to focus on getting 3 or 4 more cities down, and taking the barb city all the way west. I finally got iron hooked up and 3 axemen out. I need a few more axemen and a few swords make sure i'm safe (and take out the barbs). They were pretty brutal before i got the south fogbusted. (hence the 2 heroic epic chariots)

Ankara will be used as a production city - i have 2 (at least) 10 xp chariots so it will be nice to be able to build the heroic epic after literature. Not good news for sitting bull i think. Someone just declared a war - forget who, but that's fine with me. Not even sure how much room i have to the west. Need to settle up the land bridge in the middle soon too to make sure mansa doesn't claim it all.







Overall i think i'm in a really good position. A lot better than i thought anyway - with 2 AI's that are tough to rush, and having to go with chariots vs a UU there is a big chance of failure here. I'm glad my chariots came through. Everyone of them that died without inflicting damage scared me a little. I had 2 or 3 really close calls with barbs attacking a lone defender in a city. Really lucky to not have lost one. Hopefully everyone else managed this start ok.

1 thing is for sure, everyone had a 1 turn head start on me!

After seeing what you guys did it made me wish i had built some horse archers and taken out sitting bull. For being organized, only having 6 cities at 1 AD is really slow. I can probably cue up some settlers and get up to 10-12 cities pretty quick but i'd rather be growing them now. Also i didn't realize how good of a GP farm sitting bull has there. Maybe i can still take him out early (i have ivory so beeline construction and his protective trait won't save him)

Both your games look really good. You guys are both doing really good in tech even with all that war and lots of cities early. Nice job taking advantage of organized.

Settled 1N like everyone else. Discovered that I was boxed in by Sitting Bull and Hammurabi, so the obvious thing to do was start whipping and chopping chariots. Can't remember why I chose to attack Hammy instead of Bull (they had both founded religions), but it worked out well. My stack of chariots ran into a city that had just been founded and defended by a single bowman, and my first chariot won with little damage, so the city auto-razed and I didn't even have to pause on my way to Babylon. Babylon, surprisingly, was also defended by just a single bowman (he probably had just sent a couple out with a settler), and apparently he didn't have BW yet because he didn't whip another. I lost three chariots trying to attack that single bowman on a hill with 20% cultural defense, but Hammy died and the Jewish holy city was mine.

From that point I just decided to expand peacefully rather than go after Sitting Bull. I wouldn't exactly call it REXing, since I took the time to build the ToA in Babylon and I never came close to crashing my economy, but I think I'm in a pretty strong position anyway. Here's my empire in 100 AD:

The Ottoman Homeland:

I had intended for Ankara to grab that iron along with the clams, but Cahokia being a holy city messed that up. There are also four fur resources and fish down south, so I'll put a fishing village down there before too long.

Former Babylonia:

I'll probably move my capital to Babylon to run Bureaucracy. The barb city to the southwest was kind enough to have a worker who had already built improvements, so that's a nice pickup. (Also, looking at this picture just now, why am I still building a monument in Konya? I guess I just completely forgot about that city.)

Other:

I settled Bursa pretty aggressively to block Mansa and grab marble before I had even killed that barb city you can see the ruins of. I'll send my next settler to where my swordsman is standing next to the bananas.

This is a pretty cool map with the whole inland sea thing. Looking ahead, I'm a little concerned about Cyrus because of all the territory he has and how he appears to have semi-blocked off Sitting Bull, who doesn't seem to be doing so great for some reason. For the time being, he's definitely the one I'll be nicest to.

Nothing to see here, because I didn't take any screenshots. Basically, I took out Sitting Bull with Trebs and Jannissaries, vassalized Mansa with Rifles and Cannons, and vassalized Cyrus with Infantry and Artillery. Plus I stuck a few units in some Galleons and easily made Stalin capitulate to get to the Domination limit a few turns earlier than waiting for border pops. Got a 120K score for my efforts, so that works for me. Fun map.

I don't have many screenshots as usual I just forget to take them
Settled Istanbul 1N and popped the hut which gave a map the second one gave me Pottery


Settled second city 1E of Eles and Third right next to SB's capital Fourth went near Pigs-Wheat site
After researching AH I find that we have horses in cap so I sacked Babylon and two more cities and wiped out Hammy who had founded Judaism and was spamming Missionaries instead of troops

MM founded Buddhism SB went Confu(Oracle) and Pericles got Hinduism
Buddhism spread luckily to one of my cities and I converted as later on Mansa built AP
I then teched to Liberalism and took Nationalism
I had GE for Taj and got Gunpowder and swapped to Nationhood and Theocracy and spammed Jans/Trebs
Cyrus meanwhile declared on SB and the turn I got my troops next to SB's city he asked me for help I accepted and he went up to Friendly
Wiped out SB and I had 300 + votes in AP but Stalin and Pericles didn't have Buddhism so I sent missionaries to Pericles while Stalin was in Theo soon Stalin swapped to OR and I was able to get it spread in one of the cities
The vote came up for diplo and I won it

I started this round by continuing to right the economy, and getting Hammy's cities up and running. Once that was done I decided to put him out of his misery.



I almost didn't bring enough units. I took that first city easily, but ran into some bad luck on the next two. Luckily good old Gustavus II Adolphus came threw as my last attack capable HA, and now there is no more Hammurabi problem.



I really should have focused on just blitzing MM from 10AD, I could have easily taken him over. I never realized that he was expanding so slowly, he only had 4 cities for a very long time, and he got feudalism late. Anyway, I decided to wait for cuirassiers. On a good note, it netted me some more wonders and shrines.

I got a surprise addition to my empire ~500AD:



Cyrus must be running the culture slider on a negative number or something, that city was there for a very long time at 0 culture.

I got liberalism ~1000AD. I could have put it off to tech off nationalism and take MT, but I think it's probably better to just take nationalism and then tech off MT under a golden age.



Around 1000AD I started thinking about victory conditions. At this point I could probably win any way I wanted to. Domination is the obvious route, but that would involve invading MM, as well as a giant (albeit very backwards,) Stalin or Cyrus. A war against Stalin would involve ferrying troops, and Cyrus would be able to churn out enough pikes and knights against my cavalry to slow me down more than I want to deal with. Then the AP popped up. MM built it under Judaism, Cyrus was Hindu (FR later,) so I could run unopposed. Get a missionary up to Stalin and Pericles and buddy up with Cyrus for an easy win.

Of course, to set this plan in motion, I need the AP and a friend. Cyrus is easy, I adopted vassalage, and got all the trade bonuses up. As for the AP, I tried to ask MM for it nicely, but he told me I would need to take it from his cold dead hands. Oh well, wish granted:



I took Gao second turn, and then quickly moved on Timbuktu. Cyrus really screwed up my plan here. MM was sitting at 3 defenders per city tops, but he had to declare on him ~100 years before me, so MM ended up with 3X more units than he would have if he was left to wonder spam like he was doing. Not to mention Cyrus suicided tons of units, leaving Djenne with a bunch of super veteran longbows. I bribed Cyrus to peace before I declared. The last thing I needed was him capping to Cyrus before I got the AP. Anyway, MM reinforced his capital a lot, and to make things worse, it was on a hill. In the end, I barely took Timbuktu. Unfortunately for MM, it takes me two turns to heal my units, but he isn't getting 90% of his production back. Timbuktu:



Some nice wonders there, although MoM and the AP are the only ones that actually help. He had the Jewish shrine and the ToA in other cities as well. That Jewish shrine payed for any possible expenses of this war.

After that, it was just a matter of time for MM. I didn't have much of a battle strategy, making this take longer than it should have. I took a city to the east, then the west, then the south, and finally his last city up north:



MM got a stop the war resolution off before I took him out. Unfortunately for him, he was spamming missionaries at me all game, so I could block the resolution myself.

After that, everything goes on automate while I spam Jewish missionaries. I got one to Stalin easily, but all of Pericles' cities were ~15 turns away by galley, and all had 2 religions. I sent the missionary off on his journey anyway though. After a long time just waiting, my galley finally gets to Pericles. Luckily it spread first try. I probably should have sent 2 or 3, but that would have slowed down domestic spread.

A turn or two later, the option pops up (I voted myself chair earlier.)



And as expected next turn:



I definitely shaved off a lot of turns and unnecessary micro by going AP instead of domination.



I'll definitely take 50k points higher than my second best score for my first official win on emperor.

First i settled in place, didnt see any reason to move and explored the area.




With the new bugmod 3.6 excellent mod! i made a dotmap. As you can see 2 civilizations are very close two me to the east (right) is sitting bull and to the left is hammurabi.

I used the following research order, mining, AH since i spotted the pigs and the sheep, bronzeworking since there was a lot of forest to chop. Then I started with pottery, switched to mystism for culture and finished pottery. Writing.


I decided to settle the red spot first with 2 food resources this would be excellent for some whiping.

Turns past while the chariots where comming and i signed open borders with hammurabi to found out there is a lot of land in the west. This, the fact that he has a holy city and sitting bull being protective made him a target.

1320BC ankarra is founded to claim the crab (even though i dont have fishing) and claim the wine.


His capital was defended by 2 bowman and the city of akkad only housed one bowman. i waited one extra turn in other to get hinduism spread to my capital. As you can see an other missoniary is underway to inspire my people, unfortuanatly i cannot wait anylonger.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207711&d=1237574249

I declare with 12 units in total 9 for the capital and 3 for akkad. To bad the missoniary does cost me an attack move. Still i manage to take akkad and i raze it. My other 9 brave chariots move to the capital of hammurabi. As hammurabi doesnt know how to use the whipe, im happy to see that i still face only two bowman. They are dealth with easely and recieve a free worker who didnt move away from farming the land south of akkad a dedicated worker. He may join my work force.




in 925 hammurabi is no more

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207709&d=1237574233

I played a few turn and went for astetics since it is good to trade it for and i thought the war delayed me a lot so i need to make some nice trading deals. Still at 775BC no one i know has the alphabet, MM must be sleeping or maybe he has some evil plans to rule the world. (also discoverd fishing)

So at 775BC i would like to get some hints and tips my current plan is the following.

Tech to the greatlibary since i have a lot of forest around my capital and then i can cottage it and use the forests to compleet the GL so i get some scientist in. After that my main goal expasion on the west part of the continent and discover code of laws asap. I want to use the edirne as my future gp farm and the greendot city with copper, sheep and corn as HE production city.


overview
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207710&d=1237574233

techs known

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=207712&d=1237574249

(i know all start techs except for hunting)



So let me know what you think is best

Get a few more cities down when you can - you can afford a bunch more probably. Try and get iron working and alphabet through trades (someone should get alphabet soon). Might have to put a couple turns of research into alphabet to open that up. Then go for priesthood to open up monarchy trade. Build research when you can to speed up getting currency. Get lots of workers to go with the new settlers.

Maybe put a city where the ruins are first to cottage up those floodplains. Run scientists in hammy's cap to get a great scientist to be used for an academy in your cap. Great library would be nice, but won't really matter if you miss it. Without marble close by i usually don't prioritize it. Expanding quick and growing with hereditary rule is priority here. (lots of workers)

You should be in pretty good shape - taking out hammy is key on this map.

Not too much going on. Just filling out my land and watching everyone else fight each other. I can't really trade too much with the AI's since they are fighting each other and not teching. Refused a lot of demands so i'm not friends with anyone really - but i'm safe so it doesn't matter.

This is the only wonder i built so far this game. Also put the jewish shrine down since a couple AI's were spreading it.



Didn't get a scientist to bulb philosophy so i skipped it for other things, but ended up getting there first anyway later. Followed a strange tech path since i'm not beelining liberalism like normal. Got construction first this game(don't think i've ever done that). Decided to go paper/education now - might go for lib just to grab gunpowder free.



Have 4 really good production cities set up that can each get a war elephant or catapult in 2-4 turns. Won't take long to build up enough to take out sitting bull. Cyrus hates sitting bull and just fought a war vs mansa, so i'll get brownie points from him probably.

Then i think i'll use janissaries and trebs to attack mansa - who is teching really well as usual, but won't have a big army. I have plenty of techs to bribe cyrus at will against either sitting bull or mansa. Then i'll attack cyrus and have the whole continent. No one besides mansa is teching well, so this should be a really easy game. Don't really care what those two guys are doing on the other continent. Whatever it is it won't stop me from winning. I know they fought a war earlier with each other - they should realize they need to team up, shake hands and start trading with each other.

@Tempesta13 thank you for the comments, to bad it took quit a while before the monarchy was discoverd.

Nothing much happend this round, i am still building up the empire with a lot of workers and i managed to get 10xp thx to the barbarians so the HE is up and running, just like the national epic. Got quite a few GP scientist but havent used them for a bulb, since i feel i am quite comforteble with my tech speed and im 100% sure to beat everyone to liberalism. Also i found it to early for a GA since the empire is not even half of what it should be.

Almost everyone is a buddhist so by changing to buddism i could held of military and start with a lot settlers and workers. To bad I neggleted the military so much i had to give away a lot of tech to demanding neighbours even MM.



I managed to build the GL and i also got the UoS with the last forests. Sitting bull build the AP so besides the hammer i recieve i also get 2 beakers from it. Sitting bull is teching like crazy, you will see in the F4 screen, that shrine is a goldmine for him.

Anyways i am in doubt what i should do now. Should i am for an AP victory? Or should i get to rifles/cannons. At this point though i am convinced there is no way to lose this its only a matter of time.

Here is an overview any (constructive ) comment is welcome.









Yes i gave away those horses cheap but there is no danger in selling them.



what should i Tech next, i was hoping more people had philosophy so i could trade for it.