Sons of Monarchy II: Suleiman

Spoiler :
OK, from memory...
I took the copper city, then the northeastern stone/floodplains, then the southern fish, and later the clams/elephants/iron spot (didn't know it was iron there until later but whatevs). Elephants were so awkward to get, the clams AND elephants were 2nd ring, and i settled it probably 8 turns too late, which delayed my elepult attack a little.
I used the stone to chop out the pyramids, a hammam, and the hanging gardens (figured why not? I have stone + math and hammam is > aquaduct). I built an academy in the cap and let my rep scientists slow tech me to hbr & construction, which led to a pretty late attack date around 200-300ad.

Cleaned up Kublai and kept most of his cities by 900-1000ad (slooooooooowwwwwwww), then used a great engineer on Taj Mahal for a golden age and went paci/caste (bulbed philo earlier), 2x bulbed education, 1x bulb on each of printing press and chemistry, and got steel with liberalism. China almost beat me to Lib.

Went Police State/Nationalism/Slavery/Theocracy as soon as steel came in and whip/drafted a nice army astoundingly fast (also upgraded some cats to cannons), then attacked Charly and crossed my fingers. He had huuuuuuuuuge stacks of knights and trebs but apparently cannons/janissaries do quite well against that because it was an absolute slaughter. I had to take 5 of his cities before he capitulated, including one which held both a shrine and the great lighthouse, which helped.

From that point on I just rolled through opponents, taking a few turns of peace to gather my army but not even stopping to heal as my army + production were huge.

My economy was total garbage but it didn't matter, trades + failgold + city captures + golden ages got me through it until the end where I built wealth instead of cannons. Took 20-ish turns to reinforce across the continent anyways =p

Spoiler :
I am surprised Kublai did not go after you, he came for me all the time. Building the mids synergises well with Suli, I guess, since he is philosophical, but I somehow miss the whole picture here. The maintainance for the stone city is a real drain to my research. Did you build some cottages for base commerce or did you directly go to writing?
 
Spoiler :
errr well kublai didn't attack me because I attacked him. He was in WHEOOHRN when I hit. If he'd attacked a bit sooner it'd have been annoying since I'd need to spend hammers on spears, but no big deal.
I took writing early... I think I went mining -> bw -> ah -> writing. Might have been ah -> writing -> mining -> bw, but I'm 70% sure it was the first option.
 
I decided to try something new, and join the Monarch's club (i'm a monarch winner, and an emperor doormat), as I've never played Sulei, so I figured I'd try this out.

I took the map with the following caveats:
1) Events are ON (I like events, and hate huts--I find events/quests fun)
2) Marathon speed
3) No tech trading (I have read that some of the better imm players think this is useful, but I find without the ability to trade the AIs unresearched techs the game is a bit harder).....

And discovered that this map is BRUTAL for these settings. Never have I felt so lacking on commerce when starting on a river.

My goal this game was to be better at specializing cities, especially my GP city and a military production city.

Decided that capital was ripe for GP farm, but the start was supremely SLOW. AH yielded no horses, but let me know that the landlocked, nearby Kublai had horses in his starting fat cross (what dick made this map?!).

Thankfully I had to shut it down for work at that point, b/c otherwise I wouldn't have realized how painfully obvious/necessary an axe rush was. choices: 1) wait for kubles to get keshiks and mow me over 2) kick his ass, and consolidate my end of the island and then cross the desert.

For better/worse Mr. Kublai founded Hinduism as well... Normally I'd wait until he'd build the shrine for me, but this is not a waiting map, esp when Hinduism was founded in a nightmare spot for me (could put culture pressure on my lucked-into bronze, which it did for about 2 turns before i luck-takedowned Beshalbik.)

I made a general mistake early on by settling a city across the desert... while this eventually helped me with stone and a luck into mids (?!), i was so incredibly cash-strapped that my army was near disbandment at a couple points in the axe rush... On emperor, that city too far would've been my undoing.


Still playing @ 750AD. Will try to finish up in the next couple days.
I've included 990BC and 750AD uploads. Both demonstrate the main feature of this game for me: total economic collapse. Even now that I'm up/running and firing away, my ledgers only balance around 20% (soon to be helped by Charlie's hindu shrine coming online for papa).

I'm going for a domination win. Thats what Marathon is for :).

Present Plan;
tech:
--mapped out. Go for a liberalism race with a brief sidenote to pickup my helpful UU.
(I plan on using the liberalism to grab Nationalism if I win it... should I try to prep a Shakespeares city first?)

War: Keep pressing against Charlie; at least wipeout his border cities to me (taking him mostly out of the game to be mopped up later)

Economy:
1) get courhouses up/running so that my empire gets cheaper while I can start running some spies
2) Get Bureaucracy to beef up my new, deliciously commercial capital
3) Spam Uni's once I hit education... Then build Oxford in Istanbul (?)
4) Run max priests out of Aachen in hope of a second shrine for Hinduism
5) Get that Money-GP to a city capital and cash in some monies!

My goal is to have my economy on sounder footing, with Charlie beaten out of the picture so that I can work on subduing the now-grand Chinese empire in about 50-100 turns.
 

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And then there was collapse.

And then China showed up.
With a catapult-laden doomstack. They crushed my stack; took the buddhist shrine spot, my econ stayed crap, and I rage-quit about 30 turns later (as the even bigger Chinese stacks made it to my borders); apparently I didn't save, so my last save on this was what I have here (i played other games since).


Moral of this story: better AI management. I need to spend more time worrying about my religion and keeping AIs on the side of the good guys.
 
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