Monarch Student XIII - Isabella

Settled in place and explored the immediate surroundings, getting gold from a hut. Pretty brutal starting area. Boxed in by Pacal, and more than half of the land is tundra. I decided against going religion, which turned out to be the right decision, since Pacal founded Buddhism for me.

Clear plan is to axe rush Pacal. I settled the south east copper and started getting some axes out. Unfortunately, that city was very bad for production, so almost all the axes had to come from the capital. Took longer than I would like, but finally I had enough axes to take out Pacal.



Mutal was heavily defended by 2 archers and 2 axes at 60% defense. I took the city, but it cost me half of my force. I moved up to Lakhama next, but it was guarded by 4 guys on a hill, so I just moved down to the city below Mutal, also the Confu holy city. It was only guarded by 2 archers and a Holkan, so I took it easily. I razed the city, since it wasn't worth keeping, even as a holy city.

From there I reinforced my stack some and moved back on Lakhama. Pacal was nice enough to move most of his forces out of the city, so I was able to barely take it. After that Pacal was left with 3 more cities in the north, between a mountain range and an isthmus settled by Liz. I probably should have just ended the war right there and consolidated my winnings, but Pacal had nothing to give me for peace, so I just decided to get rid of him. His cities weren't heavily guarded now, but it still took a while to get rid of them. Finally I put the finishing blow on him in 245BC.



From there, it was just some more recovering the economy. Pacal had some nice land, so that helps out a lot. He built the oracle in Lakhama, so I'll try and get a priest out of there to shrine Buddhism, since it has a good chance to become a dominant religion if it spreads some more. Maybe I'll even try and get a missionary or two out.

Here's the land at 10AD:





I'm getting settlers out to claim the 3 food resources/copper to the south, as well as the horse near the English border. I overuse cuirassiers in every game I play, I'm not going to miss my chance to use conquistadors.

The AI also found another nice way to slow me down, just never tech alphabet.



I've got aesthetics for whoever gets to alphabet first, but it definitely slows down my path to currency.

Shaka is doing a nice job slowing Liz down, they've been at war for a while now, and they've actually traded a few cities. I got off to a slow start, but I see no reason why I can't run them both over with conquistadors. It's a very underrated UU. It really has no counter. Just promote half to combat1/pinch, and the rest to combat2/formation to deal with knights in cities. With pinch, cuirassiers have similar odds against muskets and longbows (>75%, even better with no CG promotions.) The only unit you won't roll over easily are war elephants, and hopefully there isn't much ivory around.

also with shaka and pacal on the starting continent...and no horses close by for the UU unless you sandwich a city in between them up northeast.

I settled in place and went ag-AH-mining-BW. Figured i'd farm the flood plains since the capital didn't have too much food, and to keep my worker from sitting around idle.

Built stonehenge, got copper and decided to axe rush Pacal. He has 3 holy cities and some decent land that i need.







And Pacal is eliminated.



Unfortunately Shaka beats me to this barb city by 1 turn.



Overall very similar to Phil's game. Eliminated Pacal early, Shaka and Liz were busy fighting each other. Good thing for me, since Shaka has a lot of troops, and Liz has a lot of land. I need them to slow each other down. Shaka can't tech since he has so many troops so i'll attack him with war elephants and cats later since he will only have horse archers/impi's/swordsmen for a long time.

My first city was aimed to block off the bottle neck so I could back fill after killing Pacal. 2nd city was right above the copper to my south. Tech path went Hunting, AH, Min, BW -> squeezed in sailing from conquest gold as I went up the Monarchy path. This map is pretty gay imo, lol because it makes getting your economy going a little challenging.

Settled in place. Didn't go religion. Went worker techs/expansion. Got pottery early to cottage the flood plains. Settled about 10 cities peacefully, then took cannons to pacal then shaka (won lib for printing press (since it had most trade value) around the 1100 AD time frame). Pacal was kicked off continent and vassaled. Shaka was bribed to attack liz then backstabbed/vassaled after losing his SoD and 1 city. I'm just getting infantry/arty for a push into liz while trying to keep mehmed at pleased until I kill liz. So far cannon seems to be far superior to rifles in tight games because the AI doesn't counter them well at all. Siege ftw

Basically just more peaceful teching. I feel like I'm doing terribly in this game. Largely due to the universal tech pace. Liz is the leader, she has banking, economics and some small stuff on me, and I have liberalism and gunpowder on her. That's a pretty normal tech situation for ~300 years earlier. I'm basically looking at getting a cuirassier rush started at 1500 at best. My last 3 games were clinched at that date.

Anyway, everything went pretty much as planned. I finished settling out my land. No one ever got alphabet, I ended up self teching it in ~500AD. In hindsight I should have just researched it when I went for aesthetics. I was able to trade for all the usual techs still, so same result, just hundreds of years later.

Tech trading wasn't nearly as easy I thought it was going to be either. I forgot that if your with 2 AIs on a continent, you need both of them to get a tech before they'll trade it. Plus with Shaka and Liz warring the entire game, you can't get either friendly without shutting one out, which I doubt is a good idea.

I struggled along for a while until I finally got a GPro from Lakhama. Just needed to have the Oracle, SPaya and a priest specialist. The Parthenon also helped, I started building it in my crappy copper city after the Pacal war and completely forgot about it. It finished around 900AD. The shrine was a huge boost, adding 20% to my research slider:



Its up around 30gpt now after spreading to all of Shaka's cities. From there it was just more peaceful teching towards lib. I got it pretty late in general, but everything is slow on this map.



I started building the Taj, but Liz recently teched off nationalism. I'm almost certain that she'll beat me to it. She has built every wonder in London except for the 3 that I built and I think the ToA. That includes the AP. Shaka likes me a lot more than Liz, so I should get control of it before I have to fight against it. Maybe I can keep Liz around for an easy AP win later. She should go FR, and she shouldn't be that hard to get to friendly even with the -3 for declaring war on her and the -6 or whatever for refusing to go to war on Shaka.

Mehmed just found me. He may be a little ahead of Liz overall in tech, he also has Willem as a vassal. I was able to backfill a ton of techs off of Will for education and philo. A map shows that Wang Kon is the last AI. He's pretty small, although I'm sure he's doing well in tech. I'm actually shocked he hasn't voluntarily vassaled to Mehmed yet. Hopefully I don't have to fight a monster Mehmed any time soon.

My plan is to get my conquistadors out as soon as possible, taking Liz's big cities to the west. She settled 5 or 6 cities on a big peninsula to the east, but as long as I get her mainland cities, especially London, she should be done as a threat. From there I can take out Shaka at will, and see where I'm at after that. All this hinges on Liz avoiding rifling though. I figure I'm pretty safe, but in my last game Hatty ended up vassalizing a continent after beelining rifling and then AL. So I wouldn't be surprised if she gets it sooner than usual. If that happens then I'll have to go after Shaka and then maybe go for steel. I hope it doesn't come to that, I hate 1 move warfare.

I settle in place. I go peaceful expansion, cottages in capitol. I went straight BW, mining the livestock and building my early workers/settlers off that (which is as good for workers/settlers as a pasture). We have copper but barbs were a joke. Pacal religion/wonder whored and fell behind on city count (ran away in tech a bit). I don't do anything special, it's super generic @ 1 AD...basic cottage cap heading for bureaucracy and using monarchy for (along with some nice resources).

Shaka stirs it up:



By the way, I won lib and took PP since nationalism was had but PP was not.

They'd be at each other's throats most of the game, and that gives me a window:



Problem is, pacal was teching quickly and got the usual magic rifles on immortal speed. Too bad for him I had massed CR II cannon. Die, you low city # ijiot.





I had some phony wars bribed vs me from the other continent. Saw nothing.

As I prep for shaka, I want to make sure the "no surprises" continues:



And I bribe shaka to war vs liz. I then sit in liz's territory. Hey look! Shaka's stack!



And oh, look at that. Shaka is a "land target" per capitulation rules...how unfortunate for him . I take a city and with just that + stack murder:



One of the most powerful warmongers in the game bends over quickly.

Onward to my war "ally" (who I had declared a ton of phony wars vs earlier:



Tanks huh? I have infantry/arty. All I need. You're mine.



At this point I realize I'm a bit short for UN. Liz was teching #1 but was now falling back of course. I had mehmed beat to computers for internet, but there was an easier out and I took it:

I continued my preparations for war on Liz. Building spies while teching off the rest of MT. I was planning on using conquistadors, but Will basically gave me rifling. I traded him education for a bunch of the prerequisites, then lib for PP, and finally MT for replaceable parts. From there it was only ~12 turns to rifling. So I continued building units, and then upgraded them to cavalry when I was ready to go. I hate wasting conquistadors, but who can pass up a cavalry vs longbow war against the land and tech leader? I kept some conquistadors for shock cav replacements, as well as city garrisons.



I almost lost the horses to Liz's culture pressure, but I whipped the Hermitage and some other culture buildings when the tile fell to 51% Spanish.

First turn I find out Liz got some help:



Fortunately for me, she didn't bribe him with astronomy. I saw one exploring caravel from him before he gave me 100 gold for peace later.

Anyway, cavalry against longbows is a joke. I took her first 3 cities losing maybe 1 unit. Her SoD (3 elephants, 3 maces, 10 siege and some archery units) wandered next to my stack, so I wiped that out 2nd or 3rd turn of the war. From there I moved on to her capital. I should have waited a turn, I timed it so that I would hit after the turn that she finished the Kremlin, but she switched production when my cavalry got next to the city. I'm not complaining about the prize though:



Stonehenge and the Pyramids were also there. I used the pyramids to flip to police state for a while.

From there Liz is even more pathetic. I stopped taking cities to let her keep working on the SoL in York, but at ~10 turns left she just lost all production in the city. I lost city visibility later, so I just decided to cut my losses and take the city.



Versailles was a nice boost there. I'm not sure why Liz built it 4 tiles from her capital, but I'll take it.

I took the city to the north of York before bringing Liz to the negotiation table.



I could have easily wiped her off the continent. She just kept teching stuff like communism, physics and chemistry while her cities were defended by longbows. Fortunately for her, I need her votes to avoid going up against Mehmed.

Here's Liz's land:





A lot of culture pressure from Shaka. I need to take care of that soon. Other than that, there is some nice land. Better than our crappy excuse for starting land.

Here's the tech situation:



Not great. I can catch up a little with WK. He went from annoyed to I think pleased since he was good buddies with Liz. Other than that, Shaka is ridiculously backwards, so his land is as good as mine. From there I should be on equal footing with Mehmed.

This game is going to come down to two super powers. Me with Liz/Shaka's land, against Mehmed with Will as a vassal, and he will have WK as a vassal when he finally decides to go after him (they've been worst enemies for a while.) If I can't pull off an AP win, it will be a huge bloody war of attrition with infantry/artillery at tech parity. I would like to avoid that.

I started the round by building infrastructure in all of Liz's cities while preparing war on Shaka. Eventually he started teching military science, so I decided that was a good time to attack. Cavalry vs grenadiers is still easy, but not nearly as fun as cavalry vs longbows.



Shaka sent a bunch of isolated knights at different points in my land to easily get picked off. His only other semblance of an SoD was a stack of 10 cats and 2 knights that were landed by galley next to enough conquistadors to get flanked to nothing easily.

I started in the south of his land, moving through 2 cities with long confusing names before taking Ulundi.



I traded Liz rifling before the war, and she occupied all of his forces in the east while I took my time on his western cities. After a while Shaka is finally done.



And his land.



Talk about a poor show by the AIs.



The most feared warmonger in the game and the dominating tech leader, both with more/better land managed to kill a combined 8 mounted units. I killed well over 50 longbows.

The game isn't over there though. Mehmed is basically even with me, and only getting stronger. He was actually the least advanced civ with Shaka gone since he wasn't trading anymore (gotta love when the AIs put themselves in the stone age because they think your too advanced.) But he has ~45% of the land, and spams units like crazy. Fortunately I have the AP.

I got a few galleons with missionaries out to get the true faith to the heathens.







WK and Will had tiny cities on the islands in the northeast. I got the religion to Mehmed's smallest city that I could find. I looked at the victory conditions after that.



Too many votes. No problem. I gave Canterbury, York and Hastings back to Liz, and next turn the option pops up.



And next turn



No worries about being behind in tech to everyone and behind in production to Mehmed now.

And the score



A lot lower than I was expecting actually. I had 50% of the land and pop and I won in the 18th century. Oh well, a win is a win.

This map is pretty brutal. Even with a perfect rush on Pacal, your still left with less/worse land than everyone else. It seems like everyone else is being forced to play from way behind too. Luckily the AI insists on avoiding military techs.

It looks bad. I traded quite a bit with Pacal who seemed to have an endless pit of gold and beelined to currency really fast. Liz as well who had Alphabet at least when I had just finished building the Oracle. Game really feels like a perfect storm that makes me look like a cheater and I can understand that. Perhaps I should just take my shots down or something. While it is just the internet I won't pretend that I don't care at all. I enjoy playing these games and comparing myself to other players. This board has done quite a bit for my understanding of the game and I don't want to muck it up with bull.

Took them down.
I'll just wait for next week and the third round of Emp cookbook.