Monarch Student XIX - Justinian

Didn't edit anything, but there is a far away techer with a lot of land. I just want to see if he actually manages to pose a real threat or ends vassaled at the first chance as always.

I settled in place and really didn't like the capital. Only has 1 riverside grassland so it won't be a great bureaucracy, academy, oxford city probably. I will hopefully find a place to move the palace sometime.

Tech went ag-AH-mining-BW which gave my worker a lot of turns to just build roads. There must be some better way to start this but i couldn't think of it. Got hunting from a hut which was ok, but i would rather of had gold as you'll see in a bit.

Met izzy close by. I was roading to the horse just in case i wanted to chariot rush her. After i met a few other AI's and knew i'd have trading partners i decided to do it. I might have been better off waiting for BW since copper appeared just outside my 2nd cities BFC. Oh well - chariots it is.

I built too many and waited too long to attack - i went on strike just before the attack and had to rearrange tiles to keep from losing units.



Good news - i only lost 3 or 4 chariots taking madrid, bad news is she has 3 other cities. This made them all weakly defended though. 1 archer in barcelona. The eastern one had 2 and it was razed. (no screenshot)



I take peace with her since i can't finish off that 4th city anytime soon. I decide i can block off the land i have and use my remaining chariots to fogbust. As you can see in the screenshot i'm 2 turns from pottery at 1080BC, not looking too good here. (i went writing first)

I went for Aesthetics after that and manage to get alphabet, iron working and sailing from it around 400 BC. I settled one more city up north to finish the block once i saw izzy sending a settler. Currency came in right at 1 AD, 8 turns to COL. (mansa has it already)



Too bad i'm not going to have a shot at the great library even with 2 sources of marble. I really need COL, my 2nd great scientists will come 5 turns after that so i can use the philosophy bulb to really catch up. I don't have poly yet, but i'm sure a couple AI's have literature already. I might get poly before COL just to open up the monarchy trade. Gems popped in my capital around 500BC which was a nice help. They still need to be connected and i have ivory but monarchy still would be nice.



Hannibal went into war mode a long time ago and here he is. That other group is just as big. He's worst enemies with mansa and probably would have dow'd me by now if i was the target. Mao also is the worst enemy of 3 civs so hopefully i'll be ok to peacefully expand with no religion. Maybe he even is going to finish off izzy which would be fine too - i have some folks yearning to join her that i'd like to get rid of. I love how hannibal went construction before alphabet. I wish i could pull that off. As long as he's after someone else i should be ok - slider is up to 50% again so i started on another settler. I have room for 13 or 14 cities probably - if i can settle them peacefully this game should be no problem from here.

Settled in place; went Ag - AH - Mining - BW; built worker, worker, warriors till pop 4, then settler. Grabbed the horse to the NW. Got Stonehenge in cap (whipping 2), barracks in both cities, and chopped a BUNCH of chariots to visit Izzy.

(And because I'm still learning this level, I had to reload: I showed up at Madrid with 8 chars, which was only barely enough, and ended up sinking me on the first try. Live and learn. A second try with 11 and two on the way turned out much better bye Izzy.)

As I usually do, shot for the 'Mids (in Madrid) but lost just as my forests were chopped . So I've got a bunch of axes, anyway...

Aaaaand, I can't load the screenshots. 7 cities; most of the others are Buddhists who like me, but Mansa's at -5, Darius at -1. I'm a little behind in tech, but in score only behind Ham, 842-802. I'm thinking I should settle the rest of the jungle to the south, cottage it up, and build a nice stack to take out Ham (who got the 'Mids). Sound good?

Given the very forested start. BW will be a priority. There doesn’t appear to be much advantage in moving, so I settled in place. A religion would be nice, and I took a punt on meditation. The tech plan after that was agriculture and AH to get my food up and running, then mining and BW to start utilising the forests.

I soon found Isabella right next door. It’s very unlikely she’ll fail to found a religion, which means I either needed to crush her quickly, or adopt hers. As you’d probably expect, she beat me to Buddhism, so I ditched the religious research and moved straight onto improvements.


Interestingly, I also noticed that there appears to be someone across a 1-square ocean gap. A few centuries later, workboat contact reveals it to be Darius.


My resulting plan was simple: share a religion with Izzy, and REX peacefully to grab as much land as possible. Unfortunately, I delayed starting on my REX while I built Stonehenge, and Izzy managed to seize the spot between our two capitals – gaining the nearest iron as well. Irritating, but not insurmountable.

At 85 AD: I’ve managed to carve out a decent-sized empire around the coast of this landmass, and join up with the Buddhist religious bloc with contains everyone except for Darius and Mansa. I’m lagging behind in the tech race, but hopefully a few trades should put me back on track. I intend to be the first to crush one of the religious dissidents, thereby grabbing enough land to set me up for victory later.

Lightbulbing guilds with engineers is complicated and probably inefficient. Instead I just traded for the prerequisities and researched manually.




Who says guilds don't have a trade value:



All my 5 cities expect the capital are a production cities with workshops (guilds = +1H for WP) so I could probably build a stack of cataprachts pretty quickly by burning a scientist for GA. But are they so strong after all? Izzy has multiple sources of Ivory, and Elephants are pretty good counters to them.

I started this morning just to check while having my tea before work and the speed was normal so the game went on pretty fast and I got 1 hr late to work Alas, I forgot to take screenies..
looking at the start, I decided to start with AH->Agriculture->Mining->BW I had worker/warrior up to happy cap, then build another settler and 3 workers. BW was done and I decided to quickly settle the COW/BRONZE city right next to me (with many tiles overlapping. Got raxxes out and started chopping an army of Axes while teching to Writing->Alphabet.. Some turns later and while I chopped all forests available, Izzy was no more. I had 5 cities and decided to settle another two in the north(i also burned down the city western of Madrid. I had Madrid and Cordoba as holy cities so I decided against working scientists in order to build the shrines. The two extra cities made my economy to crash at 0% research with (fortunately +9 gold). I worked cottages everywhere and manually built science to try to catch up. Got Currency and started building wealth instead. Got Code of Laws but the AI is still super advanced. Teched manually to feudalism (some AIs still didnt have that and managed to trade for a couple of techs. Teched to Calendar to backfill some techs as well. Tech still looked grim but I decided to settle the fish/dye cities to the south. Maniacly started to cut down trees for courthouses/markets. Got the malhabodhi and started spamming missionaries. Power rating to the low side (0.4-0.9 with most AIs). I planned to settle 3 more cities ( had space) but the AI beated me to the second fish city on the south, which was weird for the AI to go that deep in my territory. Hamurabi DOWs me at 0.4. Switch to slavery and whip some spears & longbows. I fight him off and get a GG and get peace. Things STILL look grim but I think that I will settle the last city (also got the horse/Fish down south from Constantinople), finish up courthouses everywhere+markets and libraries on commerce cities, then spam produce catas and go against hammu. Hanny on the other side warred vs Quin I think and reached my borders with a big SoD which is spooky. Madrid has become my HE city, cranking out LBs at 1/turn. I am running Monarchy+Vassalage+OR or Theo at a time with swaps between CS and slavery to crack the whip. I will stick to CS when guilds are done and super workshops are rdy.. screenies will follow in the evening.
But tech situation STILL looks grim...

Hannibal DOW'd Izzy right when i started this segment. She capitulated to Hammy forcing him into the war as well. Decided to go for poly/priesthood to open up a currency for monarchy trade. Delayed COL even further for literature - figured i still might have a shot a TGL even though it's really late for it since i have marble. Went for COL after that. Had a lot of land which meant a horrible tech rate. Ended up getting TGL which slightly helped. Courthouses will help much more though. Build TGL in Madrid, which is a production city that will get Heroic Epic next. Didn't have much choice since i needed to build it as fast as possible.


Barcelona will be my late GP farm. Madrid is putting out my 3rd great scientist in 8 turns which is just in time for education. Still have cities to settle, and tech is still really slow. Getting lib first will be close since Mansa and Darius can both research education now.

Got MoM built and ended up being first to lib late (1200). Lots of worst enemies and not choosing a religion is making tech trading difficult. Mansa is teching fast as usual and Hammy has a lot of land. I will have more after i settle all my cities, but his population is probably double mine right now. Mansa got education a couple turns after me so it might have been really close. I choose nationalism and start on Taj in the capital. End up getting it, and using a GP on a golden age as well to get 24 turns of the GA. (due to MoM) This really helps my slow tech rate and also helps get universities and oxford built quicker.




Forgot the 1500 tech screen - it's not too bad, but i'm a few techs back of 2 or 3 AI's. I have steel on everyone. I built some cataphracts and am thinking about getting 15-20 cannons and attacking Mao. I switched to theocracy/judaism after i took the screenshot since it won't hurt relations with Darius/Mansa and it'll help get Hammy/Izzy up to friendly. I switched to free speech, but noticed it's not really worth it yet - i'll probably switch back to Bureau in 5 turns for the civic bonus with Hammy. I didn't think about Judaism being the AP religion - i need to spread it all over and build temples/monasteries. (might be a little late for monasteries) It's already spread to most of my cities, so i'm really hoping i have enough votes to block it when it comes up to stop the war vs Mao, which i'm sure it will. Tech rate is still not good. I think it's around ~500 and im still at the end of my 24 turn GA. All the cottages should start paying off soon i hope. Mao has been in war mode for a couple hundred years. Not sure who he's after. Could be hannibal but i think mansa is actually his worst enemy. If i can conquer mao and hannibal without falling too far back in tech i should be able to win. Maybe either get Darius or Mansa to build the UN (whichever Hammy likes the least) or late game wars vs Darius/Mansa for domination.

This game became pretty frustrating. I didn't manage diplo very well and got into some trouble, not with DOW's, but with trading. Only Mansa would trade because i hit WFYABTA limits early - i was stuck at pleased with Darius/Mao/Hammy and couldn't get any of them to friendly. Tried sharing religion/civis with Hammy and Mao- then gave up and went for free religion with Darius. Nothing was working. I couldn't do any war bribes either. I wasn't too far behind MM in tech, but unfortunately guessed wrong twice in a row on what to research. I think rifling, biology and medicine all got me nothing - he would get them a couple turns before me. I really should have used EP to see into his research.

Started a war with mao, took two cities including his capital - avoided the first AP vote barely, Hannibal attacks but i destroy his stack fairly easy. Take statue of zeus, 1 turn from taking a 3rd city and AP vote stops it. Big mistake here - switching out of the AP religion lost me 1/2 my votes, so MM and I no longer could block the vote.

Mao opens borders right away so my troops aren't trapped - i can now take a city or two from Hannibal, or completely eliminate him and declare again on Mao after i get infantry. Darius and Mansa hate Mao but neither will declare - even while i was at war. Hopefully i can get Darius up to friendly but i doubt it. So anyway, lack of tech trading and the AP is pretty frustrating. Game still is winnable i think, not sure if i'll finish it though, especially since it seems no one else is playing this. Pretty interesting map/mix of leaders, i guess everyone took this week off.

Only good news is the cottages are finally paying off. Went up 300 beakers/turn since the start of the war - finally getting a few towns. Still not over 1000 though - without tech trading i'm starting to get behind.

It's almost time for the next MS so I'm just playing catch up. This game hasn't been exciting and it likely won't end as exciting either. I settled out some cities and just threw down the cottages. Entire world other than mansa was buddhist, so I just went with that. Everyone but mansa can't declare on me now. Some quick screens:







I saved here. I usually would just go $$$ buy infantry/arty (later anti-tank) here and win because nobody will get forces that appropriately counter that before I kill or cap over half the world, but I'm feeling a little different. I will first try the fascism/flight route unclejj loves to talk up so much. He usually does a whipping type thing but since I'm living on cottage spam I'll just use $$$ buy for the paratroopers. I'll use the IW city to kick out the planes.

I might be able to hit izzy with that before she gets infantry...that would be insane. If I can't I can probably still take her. That would give me the AP and the possibility of going either UN or AP. I'll probably settle for diplo rather than try to take cities everywhere.

Izzy has a DP with hannibal right now, but that can easily be handled by a simple DoW bribe on Mansa.

An alternative approach to dom or peacehugger UN/AP (well, after izzy eats it) is chaincaps. I'll see what I feel like when I get back to this. I'm in control though.

9 final cities. Thanks to the pause yesterday to play other games, when I came back to this I had a new perspective. AP was impossible without war. However, I checked UN. I didn't feel like counting up cities, fortunately I didn't have to except for MM. I calculated hammy (my UN competitor should I build it) by going with his 17% pop * all pop. I just counted up the only other person who wouldn't vote for me (mansa), added them together, and realized that even without them I'd still have enough.

So I just beelined straight for mass media, partial built then rush bought it, and won.

Interestingly, my beaker rate would have been good enough for space, too. I was en route to 1st to internet easily.

One of my best low-city games, especially on immortal.