Auspicious Start - 4000BC

Ooops, forgot the save.

Ah well, it's 1638AD and the outcome has not been in doubt since Rifling a long time ago. GNP is more than 2:1 over the nearest civ and I'm a bundle of techs ahead with several space parts already built, mech infantry, and researching composites.

I couldn't have asked for a more enjoyable first Monarch/Marathon game.

Quiche could have taken the entire continent and probably even the other continent, but the turns were taking too long and my computer has been freezing up (only 512MB ... can't wait for the new one, 4GB).

Also, I mined all the hills around Beijing and kept all the forests, which proved to be a good move overall as health was a problem recently and a fourth gold deposit appeared in the Beijing fat cross!

Mongols and Germans keep fighting each other and I just keep stacking up troops and running a positive cash flow at 80% science (possible at 90 if I want).

Fun game, but it's now at the "let's just finish the space race stage."

I still have the Cyrus save to post, but check out the Katie save ... Ares has spoken!

Hope you all have had fun.

I'm not good enough for Monarch, yet, and I don't play marathon at all, but isn't this supposed to be really hard?



Obviously, if you look at the minimap you can see that I was treating this as an exercise, rather than actual play, and did ever I learn a lot! (Among other things, I started the Oracle too soon, and really got screwed over by hammer rot).

But boy oh boy does that city start up in a hurry.

Sounds like you have cracked it Eggolas!

I am at 1626, killed inca, killed mongol, 1000 points ahead of Hatty. Behind Hatty, Mansu and Asoka in techs.
I'm researching tanks and will invade Asoka once I build a few.
I've as good as won the game in terms of score, but the space race will kick in before 2050. So I am going for the domination win as I am behind in techs, also my population is massive.

I made a few mistakes with this game - the big ones were not taking on the Inca sooner, and concentrating on the Persian and the Mongol when I should have smacked Asoka (Asoka is the tech leader).

My current save file is too big to post as an attachment which is disappointing.

It has been a fun game to play. Cheers

Yeah, when you control the holy-city for a religion with almost 50% of the world converted, and are settled on green flatlands full of jungle-resources, you tend to get pretty good in tech.

Of course, you're not going to beat an Empire twice your size whose Capitol city is raking in 500+ science per turn...

I'm around 1500AD, and beginning my militarization for a planned take-down of Asoka. The only reason he can match my tech is because he focused on wealth instead of production, but my net manufactured goods output is almost triple his, so once I beat him in battle, he won't recover. I want that Buddhist holy city soooo bad. The rest of the continent should roll-over after that, I'm not sure if they have enough good city locations to even justify conquering though.

I think that after Asoka is dead, I will conduct an amphibious invasion of Memphis, the Hindu holy city. Surely that will be worth the 45gpt I would lose from selling resources to Hatshepsut. I'm actually raking in 127gpt from foreign civs, selling them my surplus resources (that I stole from the mongols and Inca. Except the gold, that's domestic).

Hans, do you think that the continent will provide 60% of the land area when it's completely conquered?

I dearly hope not, I wanna get some extra-continental action going on before the end. I'd estimate the larger continent at about 58% of the landmass.

But as I said, a lot of the land is really rather worthless, the Germans now have a monopoly on frozen wastelands, and I'll let them have it. Karakorum, Beshbalik, and Susa (though they may be in different places for you) are the only non-Indian cities that I would feel the urge to conquer. Interestingly, all of those belong to Persia at this point.

Beshbalik was in interesting story, as my scout was searching around that area, a barbarian party (2 axes and an archer) appeared out of the fog. Not wanting anything to do with them, I high-tailed it out of there, and a few turns later "Beshbalik has been captured by the Barbarians!!!". The Mongols never recovered. Later, the Persian army liberated Beshbalik, and it became a little island of blue surrounded by brown. In my first war of expansion, I took New and Old Sarai, and so freed the city from encirclement. In modern times, it has been joined with the rest of Persia, after the conquest of Karakorum. Beshbalik held ivory, 2 silk, rice, and was on a long river. It was some of the best land that Mongolia had secured* for itself. (*note, it was not very secure).

I think one of the interesting facts about this game is the proximity with which the Persians, Germans and Mongols all started to each other, leaving the Indians and Inca to run wild.

Something to note: In my game at least, Persepolis and Berlin have only 2 squares seperating them, and Pesepolis was founded in 3960 BC. What does that tell you about the proximity with which the Germans and Persians started? (I think they're starts were adjacent. Lemme check the worldbuilder.)
***Edit***

Wow, that's the start position. I added the journey the settler must have taken, and other significant cities in the region. Hamburg flipped to the Persians fairly early on.

Huh, odd ending to this game I had After I conquered Incan empire and rebuilt it, I got greedy and went for Asoka, took 4 of his cities when Hatty completed Apollo Program. Since I had no military big enough to invade her, I declared peace with Asoka. I had 3 cities with better production than Hatty, but she was ahead of me with techs required. So I switched all cities to produce science and kept the science at 90%. When I finally got the final tech she just started to build last part, stasis chamber, I started production of docking bay and stasis chamber and engine was just about to be finished. It was mine 40 turns against hers 29, so I switched city production to welth and sent 4 spies to sabotage her. She beat me to Space Elevator too, by 4 turns. I spent about 50k gold to slow her down when I finally got the edge, 24 mine turns against Hatty's 26 .

Then Cyrus hammered me. Luckily, his blow was concentrated on former Incan and Indian cities so my spaceship production wasn't in danger. He sent 3 SoDs my way, I managed to stop 2 of them but 3rd one did the damage, he took 3 of my cities, and was threatening to pillage the crap out of me. I sued for peace and gave him some money and 1 incan city, phew. And bastard was friendly with me all the time . Accidentally, 2 of 4 cities I lost, flipped back to me just after 10 turns or so Anyway, space race ended at about 1740.

Demographics screen was favoring me in all categories except approval rate, scorewise, I was about 900 pts ahead of Hatty, Cyrus was 1500 behind, Asoka just behind Cyrus. I should have gone to war earlier and try for domination or go all peace and win space, this way, it was a pretty messy game.

NuWorld said:

I was about 900 pts ahead of Hatty, Cyrus was 1500 behind, Asoka just behind Cyrus. I should have gone to war earlier and try for domination or go all peace and win space, this way, it was a pretty messy game.

Click to expand...

I'm beginning to understand now why higher level players say that one should decide early on a victory condition and then pursue it with all available resources and strategies.

Yep. But for domination, I think you would have to take the chunk of other continent to have enough land mass. In my game, Hatty had defensive pacts with both Mansa & Isabella, with modern era warfare, it would require enormous invasion fleet. I usually play pangaea maps, no place to hide

I did an approximate square-count of each continent, and I believe that our big one holds just under 60% of the land, so you'll need to cross the ocean for domination. Conquering the frozen island, and a small beach-head on the continent should be enough to push you over the edge.

When I counted, Hatshepsut had 15.00% of the land area, and I counted that up to be 240 tiles of land, and from that I extrapolate that there are 1600 land-tiles in total on the map. The smaller continent I estimated to hold about 640 tiles, and adding on the frozen island leaves just under 60% for the big continent.

Does domination count only land tiles, or all tiles within your cultural borders?

Hans Lemurson said:

I did an approximate square-count of each continent, and I believe that our big one holds just under 60% of the land, so you'll need to cross the ocean for domination. Conquering the frozen island, and a small beach-head on the continent should be enough to push you over the edge.

When I counted, Hatshepsut had 15.00% of the land area, and I counted that up to be 240 tiles of land, and from that I extrapolate that there are 1600 land-tiles in total on the map. The smaller continent I estimated to hold about 640 tiles, and adding on the frozen island leaves just under 60% for the big continent.

Does domination count only land tiles, or all tiles within your cultural borders?

Click to expand...

If it counts the first two rows of water tiles, then the larger continent will probably make 60%.

Anyone know?

Hans Lemurson said:

I did an approximate square-count of each continent, and I believe that our big one holds just under 60% of the land, so you'll need to cross the ocean for domination. Conquering the frozen island, and a small beach-head on the continent should be enough to push you over the edge.

When I counted, Hatshepsut had 15.00% of the land area, and I counted that up to be 240 tiles of land, and from that I extrapolate that there are 1600 land-tiles in total on the map. The smaller continent I estimated to hold about 640 tiles, and adding on the frozen island leaves just under 60% for the big continent.

Does domination count only land tiles, or all tiles within your cultural borders?

Click to expand...

Land, in one of my domination wins I pushed borders a bit, of 2 inland cities, to get required percentage.

And the number is rounded, I actually had something like 59,78% on the "victories" screen.

NuWorld said:

Hans Lemurson said:

Does domination count only land tiles, or all tiles within your cultural borders?

Click to expand...

Land, in one of my domination wins I pushed borders a bit, of 2 inland cities, to get required percentage.

Click to expand...

That didn't actually answer the question...
I know that it measures land, but does it measure anything else like water tiles that are within your borders?

Sea tiles - no, can't really say about lakes, blind guess - no

Has anyone achieved a domination victory?

Holy moley, what's with the Barbarians? I checked the setting and it wasn't on "Raging Barbs", however there were new Barbarian Archers showing up in packs of 3-4 every 5 turns early on.

Chris Woods

Chris Woods said:

Holy moley, what's with the Barbarians? I checked the setting and it wasn't on "Raging Barbs", however there were new Barbarian Archers showing up in packs of 3-4 every 5 turns early on.

Chris Woods

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Hi, Chris. Definitely something was up with the barbarians in this game. Someone else pointed out the same thing. It was touch and go for awhile at the beginning. It must have been all that gold attracting them.