Lonely Hearts Club, BTS Edition, Chapter VIII: Montezuma

Welcome to the 8th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one ): starting in isolation....

For the 8th game in BTS the choosed leader was Montezuma of the Aztecs :

Yeah, our favourite lunatic ...... Monty hasn't any of the traits that we normally assume to be useful in isolation, and that will be quite a chalenge. This leader seems to had be made for early war via extensive use of the whip, a thing that we obviouly can't do in isolation...
The techs that Monty has in the beggining allow a religious path as well, but the agg trait doesn't help a bit with that as well....

His UU.

Probably the worst famed UU of Civ IV, the Jaguar warrior is a replacement of the swordman with inferior base strenght and a extra Woodsman I promo.... Arguably the worst UU of the game, even with the beefing of the Woodman promo branch in BtS ( I don't agree with that: for me the worst UU is a military one that can't kill..... ), it is almost useless in a isolation scenario, unless you can somehow get a Medic 2 woodsman 3 unit ( only 4 promos away from a non barracks Jaguar )

His UB.

The sacrificial altar is a replacement of the regular courthouse and reduces whipping lenght to half.... I doubt that people will make a extensive use of the whip ( can be proved otherwise, of course ) so this is not such a avantage

So, here are the settings( from noble save ). Game is Fractal :

And the start:

Some food resources, woods ,coastal... seems pretty decent to me. It has enough food for extensive whipping, and the woods and the hills can give a decent prod.....

About saves: As usual, pick the level you prefer in the end of the post. Deity save is in the next post.

Again a small request ( not mandatory ) :

We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to ) post reports at this moments of the game:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).

As was suggested in last LHC by InvisibleStalke, I'll let some considerations about the map ,some hints and a evaluaiton of of the game dificulty . Open at your own risk



The last words are to wish good luck to all . And let the games begin!

P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy

Deity save below

I think i will give it a shot. I am just moved up to prince recently however, so i will play on prince.

By the way - how you get the same start save with different difficulties ?

^^I generate the start as usual, go to World builder, check isolation and if necessary switch the starting spot with other civ ( just to avoid being hours generating a lonely start ), save it as a WB save, and start it via "play scenario". There you can choose the dificulty level and the speed ( and the leader of the present in the map , but thas it is not the point here ), and do it for every level

Oh i see I was thinking there is a way without WB - because using WB means a lot less fun for your self - if you play it at all, after having seen all the map. Thanks for making the effort to provide us with those saves

Checking in for a nice cruise on the love boat with Monty aboard
Monarch for me, not confident about emperor with this guy.

@Refar

Gyathaar had a nice tool for changing things in the save with this messy aproach in Warlords, but it looks that BtS saves are far less prone to that kind of aproaches ..... And if you check the previous LHC ( see my sig link ) you'll notice that I still play them... first, you simply can't remember all the details of the map ( ATM I can't remember all the foes of this one ... how could I remember where all the resources are? ) and second, the map doesn't make necessary the game, like you can see on some SGs ( the trash type ones : all the people start with the same save, play a few turns then compare and decide if they keep their aproach or switch to other save )..... and there still are those nice barb events that can be game-breaking ( for you or for some AI )

Quick question on your rating system rolo: if all of the categories have more than 3 stars, how does the general rating have 2 stars??? I didn't look in the spoilers so I don't know more but that seemed a bit odd

** is because of the leader .... I really think this will be hard

I'm playing this on Emperor altough I have no plan for this guy. He's really anemic in isolation.

Just curious: Why is the deity save on second post?

^^ CFC forums only allow 5 attachements per post... Noble-Deity means 6 saves, so I need a 2nd post for the deity save or to use the easy upload system ( a thing I won't do because some people complained in the past that they couldn't download from it )

Good luck to everyone trying this isolation challenge. I am on a business trip and don't have civ4 installed on my work laptop, so I won't be able to play the save, but I will be following this thread on this forum. Just a thought, it might be possible to get the pyramid if we have access to stone. Then can run SE based representation, along frequent whipping (slavery has good synergy with our sacrificial altar UB). Since Monty is a warmonger, it would be more in character to go for a mid-late game conquering spree, then aim for domination or backdoor domination based UN victory. To make most out of the spiritual traits, frequent change between peace-time and war-time civics should be the order of the day.

Pyramids is risky and SE is not really good with whipping strats. Your city has to produce at least +6 food in order to grow while having 2 scientists.

I think I'll abandon whipping. I'll go CE like the last game with Persia.

I found some time to play some turns, but any immortal start is to easy to me and Domination screen i've seen too many times. I'll attach save, when I'll reach Astro or Lib.

Why so down on the leader? Monte is great.

Spiritual is always good - its setup for an SE, but helps you switch to a CE later. With the UB meaning only five turns of happiness, my approach will be to run long cycles of Caste System with a switch to slavery during which I will whip twice and then go back to Caste system for a long period. With only five turns unhappiness, the UB suits this well.

Anyway, the quality of the land matters a lot more - any leader can succeed well with good land.

Aggressive should shine when we decide to go militaristic - cheap barracks everywhere should be great when we go to Nationalism.

Anyway I haven't finished my Pericles game yet so I might be a late starter. I tried the "wait to the AIs find me" with Pericles and it worked well, so I might try that again.

Barb uprising loss - try again

I like Monty, I will surely try to leverage the spiritual into a nice victory Well, I'll play as non-Monty.

Give it an immortal try this week Rolo.

Giaur said:

I found some time to play some turns, but any immortal start is to easy to me and Domination screen i've seen too many times. I'll attach save, when I'll reach Astro or Lib.

Click to expand...

I know you're somewhat bored about the game my friend , immortal isn't what it used to be an anymore,
still Monty isolated can proove quite a challenge i think, enjoy!

^^My poor skills would let me in a very bad spot in a Immortal game ( or then I would need much more time that I currently have to do all the obsessive MM that I can do in the SG, where I only have to play 10 turns at a time ). But ( if that was a compliment and not a sarcastic regard ) I thank you for the compliment

No sarcastics intended at all Rolo, last save i won relatively easy on immortal,
so i'll try again, i try sometimes to copy Snaaty's strat, i come close but i never can quite copy it to perfection like he does, Giaur is a formidable player, i'm curious if he's serious how he handles this.