Role Play Challenge: Elizabeth and the Colonial Question!

Welcome to a restart of the Elizabeth RPC, the Colonial Question. well, not the title of the previous incarnation of Elizabeth but you get the point. The first game while winnable and we did OK at emperor certainly lost the flavor of a good RPC game because of the insane techrate of the emperor level. No excuses on my part, but I think Monarch certainly plays out alot better.

So I will alter the rules/guidelines on the restart, with some limitations and a game that leads up to a monumental decision for our English Redhead. What to do with the Colonies!?

Settings:
Large Terra map
Monarch difficulty/Marathon speed
Once again we have an off continent land mass to ourselves (thanks to Sem for donating another map for this!) although we are not isolated.
Choose religions are on.

Leaders:
Louis
Peter
Fred
Isabella
Mehmed
Willem
Mansa
Zara
Again no leader with any military edge as per the previous game

Rules:

1) Liz must beeline Optics and astronomy ASAP, just as the last game. Great Scientists must be saved to bulb it, thus no early Academy.

2) State Property is forbidden

3) Liz cannot conquer any Continental cities (The new world is OK though) although she can war there. She would need to raise captured cities (HELLO PARIS!!!!).

4) Liz MUST establish as large of a colonial empire as she can, which leads to

THE COLONIAL QUESTION!

She has a choice on what to do with it, final irrevocable decision to be made by 1776 (because I am American God dammit!). I will make a very clear statement when I mnake this decision, and no going back.

Now, Liz cannot adopt the following civics until she liberates a colony

Representation
Universal Sufferage
Nationhood
Free Speech
Emancipation
Free Market
Environmentalism
Free Religion

That's right, she is stuck with the old civics if she keeps those colonies.


And our darling English Lass



And the start



A non-coastal start! We start with Fishing and Mining, so I guess we begin teching agriculture. What then?

Settling in place sounds good. It'll be a good early prod. city, considering those 2 corns and all those hills. I don't really know what you should make london in the long term, but you could just churn out settlers/troops for a while.

Ag >BW while going worker > warrior and do some exploring. Maybe a short first round then post again when you know the immediate surroundings and can plan further ahead.

Looks like you've got some coast of some sort there in the SE corner, but I can't be sure...

Maybe have your Warrior take a peek from the Grasslands Hill?

Ultimately, though, settling in place should be fine.

I guess no Pyramids this game-I always like trying for them when I have a philosophical leader. But without the advantage of being able to switch to Representation until a colony is formed, there is not a point.

I would send the warrior 1SE-but I think that settling in place is good. I would start exploring more to the south since it appears that you are just below the southern tropical region since there is a jungle square 2NE of the warrior.

Pretty stiff penalty for keeping colonial cities. The 1776 date is an ETERNITY, especially on marathon but on any difficulty really, when you're "beelining astro"

By the way, what does that mean? Certainly you're not suggesting just opening up the tech screen, clicking on "astronomy", and closing it are you? It'd be a lot slower than getting writing first, and probably slower than getting currency/col/monarchy also. I normally advocate the religious line more than other players but to get astro early we need to NOT research meditation, CS, or theology, because researching those will screw the bulb (can still get priesthood via poly and you'll probably want it for monarchy if no mids, and definitely if you have marble and can snag TGL easily).

As usual I recommend GLH. Abuse abuse abuse .

Elizabeth is interesting bucause her traits make her good for cottage spam and bulbing. I reckon you´d find it faster to get to astronomy by using a GS for an early academy because you´ll need some techs that you can´t bulb. You´ll need a minimum of alphabet, maths, IW, sailing, compass, MC, machinery, optics, calendar before astronomy.
You´ll need alphabet and maths before you could bulb compass.
Depending on avilability and amiability of the AI civs you could go for something slightly different: go for MC early and use it for trade bait, ideally you wqould pick up alphabet, maths and IW as a minimum which would set you up for early optics/astronomy.

TheMeInTeam said:

Pretty stiff penalty for keeping colonial cities. The 1776 date is an ETERNITY, especially on marathon but on any difficulty really, when you're "beelining astro"

By the way, what does that mean? Certainly you're not suggesting just opening up the tech screen, clicking on "astronomy", and closing it are you? It'd be a lot slower than getting writing first, and probably slower than getting currency/col/monarchy also. I normally advocate the religious line more than other players but to get astro early we need to NOT research meditation, CS, or theology, because researching those will screw the bulb (can still get priesthood via poly and you'll probably want it for monarchy if no mids, and definitely if you have marble and can snag TGL easily).

As usual I recommend GLH. Abuse abuse abuse .

Click to expand...

Since Liz id Philosphical, I am betting I can get 2 GSs before I get Optics, just by the starting position of London alone. A third GS is possible which I may use for Compass.

So what is the beeline to optics? Let me elaborate

All worker techs first which includes Calandar and thus Math. Mysticism, Polytheism, priesthood, Monarchy, Currency, alphabet are allowed for the economy. Oracle is OUT as I do not want to foul up the Astronomy Bulb.

To get Optics we need

IW
MC
Compass
Machinery

For Astronomy

Optics
Calander

We need to avoid meditation/Theology/CS

Off the top of my head I do not recall if CoL is off limits, I seam to think it's OK.

You can get oracle. To bulb down the optics/astro line:

1. No meditation (to block philosophy), no CS or Theology (block paper).
2. Have calendar/sailing/alphabet/others

If you avoid meditation you can get CoL and STILL not bulb philosophy. You can also get priesthood through poly without messing up the bulb (This is what I get for playing in every LHC game starting with Mansa Musa ).

TheMeInTeam said:

You can get oracle. To bulb down the optics/astro line:

1. No meditation (to block philosophy), no CS or Theology (block paper).
2. Have calendar/sailing/alphabet/others

If you avoid meditation you can get CoL and STILL not bulb philosophy. You can also get priesthood through poly without messing up the bulb (This is what I get for playing in every LHC game starting with Mansa Musa ).

Click to expand...

The problem with the Oracle is that i dilutes the GP pool with prophet points. Unless I can get the Oracle is a secondary city while running 2 scientists full speed in London, I think no.

That's what I thought on CoL.

So we avoid

Meditation
Theology
Civil Service

No problem. I view London as a GP farm with lot's of production anyway, Bureacracy won't be missed too much.

It's monarch, so chopping oracle in city #2 or even #3 is quite possible! I probably wouldn't try forcing it either though. There are more important options/wonders/etc.

I take it by the term Liberate we have the choice to either create a vassal out of our colony to be able to access the other civic options. If we don't we're stuck with the old ones?

Sorry new to this

Are you allowd to make it a colony before 1776?

@NeoSeeker, Welcome to the forums! By liberate I mean we spin off a colony which becomes a vassal. Only then can I adopt the "Modern Civics"

@ Orzio: Yes.

Rule #3). May I suggest you change that rule so that you can liberate old world cities back to their original owner, e.g. liberate Metz back to France from the conquering Germans. That might help to keep the balance of power and fits your lady quite well.

good suggestion, this only slightly changes the rule to:
3) Liz cannot keep any cities on the continent they must be razed or liberated

it just gives another option to maintain balance of power and razing cities affects relations with anyone with culture in that city, regardless of who you took it off

Elizabeth and the Colonial Question: Part I

The You English Queen looks over the lands. Corn and hills, the very simple things in life, and the English people have brought that skill to mine but not grow. "The River Thames brings life and an entry way onto the sea, we will settle here and learn how to harvest the yellow grain." But first The English warrior evaluates the south from a hill.



"Yes, Settle in Place"

On further exploration, Our warrior finds a native hut which gives a map.




So far so a good, a decently sized landmass. More exploration found another map and experience for 2 warriors! But no gold and no technology.

The English teched: Agriculture/BW/Wheel and started Mysticism.

For Elizabeth's trait we have rather low beakers!

After exploring the island we find



Extensive! Some really good Internal area for good core cities and lot's of coastal regions! Alot of happiness resources too which may allow us to delay Monarchy a bit and further beeline Optics.

After BW we find




Copper nearby but far enough to require another city. Well, being on a land mass ourselves we can delay archery although we do want hunting for the jumbos.

Built order went Worker then warriors until the population reached 5, then a settler.

After the settler finished we saved, a view of London



Quite a production powerhouse already.

So my question is where do we settle



The hill south of the copper get's us Pigs/corn/jumbos and of course the copper right away. 2N of the copper on the lake get's us Fresh water, corn and bananas but requires a border pop for the copper and has some jungles.

Also note the marble 1N of London. With Polytheism/Priesthoood/masonry/pottery we can quickly buld the Oracle although would interefere with our required GSs for astronomy.

Plenty of area to settle, and fast. Pottery soon as we will need several cottages to make up for not gold from huts and the weak commerce from London.

Suggestions??

If you plan to skip Archery, you need the copper now. And you dont have time to wait for a border pop. Settle the hill 1S. Decent food and production and more important immediate acces to copper. And jungle is the last thing you need right now.

One more note. While the previous island was smaller, it was all yours. Now this isn't the case. AIs will soon take a look at your juicy land and shortly after this they'll come with boats and settlers. You do need a plan how to prevent this.

I'd say put the city on the hill south of the copper for easy access to the copper and
then a city to the north of the lake. More chopping, but you still get the fresh water, corn and bananas

semirami said:

If you plan to skip Archery, you need the copper now. And you dont have time to wait for a border pop. Settle the hill 1S. Decent food and production and more important immediate acces to copper. And jungle is the last thing you need right now.

One more note. While the previous island was smaller, it was all yours. Now this isn't the case. AIs will soon take a look at your juicy land and shortly after this they'll come with boats and settlers. You do need a plan how to prevent this.

Click to expand...

What, settle our Island. We shall fight them in the Air, we shall fight them on the land, we shall fight them on teh seas, we shall never...

Oops, that was Churchill. Never mind, I'll figure something out!