Montezuma Immortal Cookbook

I was pretty torn by which way to go after seeing JC so close. If there was copper or even horses in the initial BFC a rush would have been inevitable, kudos to kossin for giving us such an interesting map. However, what led me to go with the "rex" (I didn't really rex, more of a block, then get writing, pottery, then rex) was 2 things.
1) We had plenty of good land to expand into, taking JC's cities means that Freddie will gobble up more of the south. So by blocking off both early then taking out JC later we "should" get more land in the long term.
2) JC has stone, we have Ivory. This was basically the deciding factor, he built the GW in my save and I hope he'll build the Mids. Getting the AI to build wonders for you saves double the hammers as while they're building wonders, they're not building units. There is the problem however that attacking Julius will be tougher if he has praets...

I'm not coming out and saying rex>rush, it may well not be. This was just how I reached my decision and I'm interested to see other peoples' rationale.

It depends on what's your ultimate way of rating one vs the other. If you want 'earliest winning date' (bar Religious), then war is the way to go. However this doesn't necessarily mean a rush, it could very well be a elepult war. Granted with JC it's less interesting to do so due to the 8 str Praetorians which suggests the rush a bit more.

In terms of hammers, rush expansion is usually more cost-effective than rex expansion when you count in the extra workers and free infrastructure (if any).

If you can grab a lot of gold and have Currency, you'll also come out ahead in tech, of course.

IMO it's too difficult to quantify it exactly. You have to evaluate neighbor(s), potential gain(neighbor's land and what comes with it) and potential loss (land you're giving up for another AI).

Here you can see the animated discussion between the Scout and the Settler in terms of picking our initial settling location. The conversation order goes:
1, 1b, 2, 3, 3b, 4, 5, 6, 6b


Our Scout spots Stone... is it too far to be able to grab for The Pyramids? Later, I decided to settle a City so that we'd get Stone in our second Cultural Border expansion there.


After a nice run of beating up Barb Animals, Fortifying, then beating more Barb Animals just as we'd finish healing, our Scout encircled Frederick's lands. However, it looks like he has finally met his end.


No, he has not met his end! We will live today! Our Woodsman II promotion plus the River plus the 75% terrain bonus gave us a solid victory.


Here's an overview of our lands.

As you can see, we have 13 citizens across 5 Cities. What's great is that every single citizen is working an improved square.

Every City besides the capital has a Monument.

Further, the western Clam City has an improved Clam and also has a Lighthouse.

Two Cities can even whip a Granary immediately, if you so choose.


We have a Settler for our 6th City sitting in our capital (it was just completed on Turn 70).

We know Sailing, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, and Bronze Working.

I'd rather have Axemen than Jaguars against Julius, since if we reasearch Iron Working, then he will save time on his research to Praetorians.

Julius went Religious-style and founded Hinduism. In addition, he built Stonehenge. So, that means that he will be creating a Hindu Shrine (on our behalf) in the near future.

I prioritized Mines over Cottages so that we could get our Granaries up before starting to work Cottages.

The upside is that we have a lot of Workers (6 of them) who can start to build Cottages for us soon.

The downside is that we are currently only working a single Cottage.



Julius is 10 turns away from Iron Working. That said, he only has 3 Cities. The Barbs were giving him troubles--he has a Settler for a 4th City but it was running away from a Barb unit that wounded one of his Archers--both the Archers and the Settler are near one of our eastern Cities.

We have a pretty good spawn-busting network set up. Actually, now that I look more closely at it, we have a redundant Warrior in the north, now that Justinian's Cultural Borders have expanded, so that Warrior can either move south to help complete our spawn-busting coverage or can go and act as Military Police in one of our Cities.


SUMMARY
So, where does that leave us? Well, we have 5 Cities to Julius' 3 and Frederick's 3. Julius founded us a Religion, which is great since we are Spiritual and thus having a Religion means the ability to make cheap Temples.

We are the Whipping King of Leaders, so whipping Happiness buildings, such as Temples, will be a great way for us to grow our Cities. The fact that Julius will build us the Holy Shrine, since he owns Stonehenge, will just be icing on the cake.

I avoided settling Cities that are heavy with Jungle squares, so as to avoid getting hit with an Unhealthiness penalty shortly after a City grows.

We are working 1 Riverside Cottage, will start working a second one in 2 turns, and we are working a fully-improved Clam (Work Boat + Lighthouse). No, we did not pop Silver, but we are working a lot of Mines, so there will be a chance of doing so during the next turnset.

Sure, we do not have any Strategic Resources connected, but that situation won't take long to rectify. In the meantime, we've got a pretty good spawn-busting network that will keep Barbs away from our Cities, especially now that we can see that they have settled at least 1 City of their own.

With 6 Workers, the plan will be to spam Cottages, get our Strategic Resources connected, then probably go to war before Julius gets a chance to start pumping out too many Praetorians. Of course, we will also have the option of remaining peaceful, too, since I DID NOT Worker-steal in this game.

I never like being sandwiched between 2 AIs, especially if one or both of them are dangerous. Admittedly there are no psychos here but Julius can usually be relied on to declare somebody fairly promptly in every game. My big worry with rexing was that the good land is basically all the land separating the two AIs, and if we have it it virtually guarantees we're the natural war target. So any kind of rex has to be done with a lot of defensive units (JC has high unit prob) and a horrible long front, or a much greater than usual hope for no DOW. For that reason I see the rush as superior to rex here. It gives you more control over how things play out rather than being perpetually at the mercy of the RNG gods.

Having said that I didn't rush as I find rushes boring - it succeeds, you win, it fails, you lose. Yawn, click click click, game over in half an hour

That's why I thought it was worth a try to semi-turtle for the initial phase, keeping an easily defensible and low maintenance core as well as letting the AIs come together and fight, encouraged by some religious and/or warbribe s**-stirring on our part. JC and Fred's expansion and fighting would keep them backward and we can come in later and clean it all up with cavs or something.

Not saying this way is most efficient. As Kossin said, if a rush is possible it usually turns out to be the best thing to do (if it works), and it's well accepted that land is power so rexing to claim land is usually superior to not doing so (if you can keep it). But if the name of the game is maximizing percentage chance of win, I think this map has a lot of risk either way, and the "sit-tight till the smoke clears" route might in this case be valid.

In this format, the only one of those approaches where the outcome can be seen clearly after 70 turns is the rush, and since there is a nearly-complete successful rush save posted, not choosing that one now would be insane.

The same would presumably be true of any start where a rush is possible, however low-percentage, since if 20 people try it and one succeeds, that successful one will now have a much greater prospects for the rest of the game than the rexers, who are all still alive but have a lot of uncertainty in their future.

Apologies if that issue has been discussed before - this is the first time I've played a cookbook game

rushing JC this game has only one disadvantage and that is semi-isolation, where it's tougher to get trades from the remaining AI.

But since I whole time thought about how to do rush on JC (which never happened), I am personally inclined to saying that rushing JC is best.

Would be interesting if taking out Freddy next turnset after taking out JC is doable, would streamline the game experience a bit . I don't see any value in staying in semiisolation which is almost the same as isolation with disadvantage of competition for land.

Given the problems I had when I tried to pull off a rush on JC, I gave up that plan and restarted with a standard opening. I settled where Dhoom did, and do think that is a better starting location than either SIP or 1SE on the Elephant.

I did not use the whip or chop much, probably because I was in a hurry when playing this set and forgot. I could probably redo it and get another city or even two established, but three times is enough to play one start.

The scout headed south in its initial arc, so I encountered Fred first (turn 5). Julius didn't show up until turn 18, at which point my scout was 1 turn from discovering him from the south after arcing all the way around my perimeter.

Tech order was Agr > TW > Mining > BW > AH > Pot > Writing, and now Aes is in progress. No tech trading is possible, yet.

Build order was Worker > Warrior x 4 > Settler > worker > warrior > Settler > worker > Axe > Settler. I should have used chops and whipping to get out at least another settler and axe, plus maybe the granary. Oh well.

3 cities. Tenochtitlan is pop 6, so at the happy cap and ready for a big whip (say, for a Library?). Teotihuacan is at the corn/copper/pig site, size 3, with monument and a border pop. A granary is almost done there. Tlatelolco is size 1, has a monument, and is fighting with JC for the Pig to the NE. I also have a Settler built, which has started to move S with an Axe escort.

JC founded Buddhism and built Stonehenge. Someone elsewhere built the GW. LOTS of Barbs have paid me a visit lately, giving my Axemen some exp.

Here are screenies: