Carthage, Monarch, 25AD - Where would you go from here?

For me with your UU playing carthage you should mop up this continent quite quickly. With all that forest left I wonder if you had built 1-2 more workers/ or chopped them how many NC could you of built. +50% vs melee units is huge.

Gumbolt said:

For me with your UU playing carthage you should mop up this continent quite quickly. With all that forest left I wonder if you had built 1-2 more workers/ or chopped them how many NC could you of built. +50% vs melee units is huge.

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Hmmm.. It's kinda tempting I might try that, I have a decent amount of workers now. The window is closing on my UU though. Might need cats now.

tobiasn said:

Hmmm.. It's kinda tempting I might try that, I have a decent amount of workers now. The window is closing on my UU though. Might need cats now.

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If you go all out war it is about managing the city commerce tiles at 100% tax. Eak out as much commerce as possible to max your gold while running at a 20 gold loss a turn burning up existing gold in your treasury.This is possible even on immortal. I was running at -20-30 gold a turn on my current game and living off pillage/city capture gold.

To be fair this is what you should of done from the start. Just go full out war and take the continent. Monarch level is a lot of fun and you can easily play out fun strategies.

Sounds fun for sure, and it's totally doable - I've no real whip anger left, cities are growing and a more reasonable amount of workers at hand. But -- won't my economy tank with all those cities?

tobiasn said:

Sounds fun for sure, and it's totally doable - I've no real whip anger left, cities are growing and a more reasonable amount of workers at hand. But -- won't my economy tank with all those cities?

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You don't have to capture them all! Just make sure you cover the basic techs for a good economy.

Writing for libraries and scientists.
Alphabet to demand techs for peace and build science.
Currency to build wealth and the extra trade route.
COL for court houses and merchants from caste system.
Pottery for cottages.
Sailing for foreign trade routes.

If you start with 100-150 gold war chest then you have a nice buffer. So if you do lose 20-30 gold a turn you have 6-7 turns to capture the next city. All the time you are working to reduce the deficit. Once you have currency you can run wealth to bridge the deficit gap.

We did a curs war in the Series Game of the month 14. (Phoenix Rising) We spammed curs from about 600ad to 1300ad non stop. We were losing 200+ gold a turn come the final turn when we got a domination win.


End of the day you have to try it.

Just for fun using NC I did this up to around 150ad.

Up to 1000ad

On continent and Monarch, I would not kill off all the AI in a hurry, Only aquire land in segments. The main reason is unit maintanance after conquest.

When/if I pick up the game next I had all intention of going after Gilga, but Cyrus built the Mids and sealed his doom. But I may not finish him off untill I meet the missing AI. So i can occationally trade with gilga.

True but the main point of the save was to show NC could take out the 3 Ai quite easily. I had no problems maintaining the economy. I only had 10 or so extra units after the attack. Perhaps I should of demanded 3-4 techs off each Ai for peace. An oversight on my part.

Not sure I will finish this either. See what time I have. Will need 20-30+ curs.

Okay I missed a minor detail 'large map'!

Played it out to a lazy 1826ad win via the AP.

Took 3 vassels to make this happen. Mainly used curs/galleons.

So I finally played this out.. Was real fun! I'm not gonna do a big write-up, as that would be of limited value as I'm still pretty new at this level.

I did take some advice from here.. I slow-built and whipped out some infrastructure to get a better economic base for warfare. I then took out Gilgamesh (nearest neighbor) in two instances -- first capturing his closest cities and his cap, letting him re-settle some spots in the 10-15 turns of peace while I re-grouped and re-built some units. Took him out almost exclusively with Numidian/UU).

After/during war I sailed around the globe, met the other continent. I was backwards in tech, but got up to speed by trading and stealing techs from Darius. After I took all his techs I declared and took him out quite fast (upgraded UU to Cav).

From there and in I was solidly in front, and I could pretty much pick and choose victory. I went for space (around 1940.. not very impressive, but first time at Monarch, so I'm happy enough) while taking out the one civ on the other continent that was not in war.. just for fun, really. The war lasted 3 turns (modern armor vs rifles.. mostly).

Could probably have won by Diplo some time before 1900, didn't cause it seemed kinda boring , or domination around the same time as the space victory.

I have a lot of saves if there's any interest.

Lessons learned:

Espy was fun -- was the first time I've ever used it. I switched between 100% espy, 100% science and 100% gold, and got up to speed on techs real fast, stealing techs every ~6-7 turns. Religion modifiers and stationary spy made it very cheap compared to self-teching.

Played the other continent quite well -- was only intermittently able to get the largest civs there to friendly, but was at all times the "best liked" civ on the map. Gave in to some demands and ran a horrible deficit on trades, and was never worse than pleased. Monty and Peter was cannon fodder on the other continent, and I planned on taking out Monty to get the war struggle diplo bonus, but was too late as Monty vassaled to Babylon. Peter vassaled to Sitting Bull, and the two vassal powers ended up in war, predictably enough.

All in all very enjoyable game. Thanks again for the tips! I'm tempted to try Immortal next...