Monarch Student XX - Darius

Since I'm still learning Monarch, I'm trying something different (for me). Normally I do the Pyramids/Rep/specialists/bulb/Lib sort of thing. But with no stone and no Ind--and with Fin--I thought I should try cottaging instead.

Settled SW, popped Scout. Teched Mining, AH, BW; built worker, warrior; finished that just as I hit size 3, then Settler.

Popped: more even more scouts, ~170 gold, and Wheel. Met Augustus , Mao, Bismarck, Toku , and Shaka in short order.

Plan: Block off all of our peninsula, and get a city on the mainland. Send the warrior to bust at the mouth of the peninsula, open borders with everyone so they can bust within the peninsula for me until I get the settlers out.

I end up build/chopping three settlers: one for the southernmost desert (rice and gems), one SE of the mountain, one NE of the horses. Looks like (also different for me) the cap will be a production rather than a science city. The horse city could be sciencey instead, but nothing is standing out at me yet.

Chop/whipped libraries for border pop (put off Myst forever, plus for all my cottages...). Beelined MC, then Aesthetics; chopping/whipping forges now. Did a little backfill trading with a pleased Augustus, but mostly no one seems to be in a trading mood...

By 500BC, I've circled the island to the west: huts and a barb city; there's also a barb city to the south of our peninsula (sugar). By ~100BC I've dropped a settler on the island (wheat/iron) and captured both barb cities

Finally, I used my nice production capital with a nice new forge to get (what I hope will be) a key Wonder:



So: 8 cities, Colossus, safe diplomatically (Hindu love-in) (but Shaka's WHEOOHRN, does he declare at pleased?), fairly protected geographically. Have good trade techs, but no one wants to trade Plan to fill in about 4-5 more cities on the islands, 1-2 on the mainland. I need (NEED) to build some more troops and get my power up, then I dunno. Turtle to space?

The shots:

Settled in place, hoping to use the production to immortal rush someone.

Nope, We're on a peninsula and the most touchy AI nearby is protective. Cute. At least the land could be worse. Go for gems like you mean it!



Found Confuc on the way to CS (I already self-tech currency, too).



1 AD







Alpha beeline + trade for monarchy/IW worked out nicely. Wish I had more land but them's the breaks.

I've been losing lib repeatedly on immortal, so this time I actually used a bulb on education. Hit it!



From there I go democracy, then toward banking, then steel (i have it), then rifles. I'm going to go $$$ buy for rifle/cannon vs mao first, hopefully take some good land + get capitulation, then see how far rifle/cannon takes me vs AC and shaka. Bismark is the big gun in this game but he's pleased w/ me so he'll probably target someone else first considering where he is...should he choose warpath.





Chaining capitulations looks like the way to go here. If I can dig into mao before he gets too many rifles I'll probably be in good shape.

Huts: Mining, Mysticism, 54 gold

Tech path: AH, BW, WhL, Fishing, Wrt, Alpha (not many forest to chop), Currency, CoL. Traded for Sailing and IW.

Build order: Worker, warrior, warrior, settler @ 3, SH, settler @ 4, worker, worker, worker, Library (2 scientist + academy), barracks, *Immortals. 2nd city went barracks, Immortal, WB, *Immortals. 3rd city went WB, *Immortals w/out barracks

Capital had 17H, 2nd city had 12H, 3rd city had 9H which gave me Immortals in 2t/approx 3t/approx 3t. I had adopted Buddhism which spread at my Capital. I improved 6 cottages and began working them around 750 BC while other cities kept pumping units until around 500 BC.

I captured 4 Chinese cities and killed them while also capturing 2 barb cities. In the screen shots you see I have marked city sites for the rest of my land. There are 9 more sites which will give me 18 cities well before 1000 AD. Immortals make the game very simple because capturing cities is economically more efficient than producing your own settlers.

So i began with a good start.
The wheel out of hut


building up Immortal force, barb city in the way, but on hill, decided to go for chinese instead.


Wut protective?


Instead of taking the last city I took peace for 10 turns. Lots of techs, and he had a pretty sizable stack with 50% defense, hopefully he starts building workers, so I can build up my stack and kill him.


First and late scientist, dont know what to do yet with him, maybe golden age?


Chinese last bastion of power, ripe for the taking!!


Tech overview + relations



After Chinese its either Romans or Zulu. Zulu have been waging war with Tokugawa the entire game, Romans have been taking barb cities and taking bad but sneaky settler spots.

Dial up some rush buy!



Kremlin captured? That's DIRTY!



And after a relatively easy war, Mao caps w/o giving me trouble. He didn't get rifles, only grenadiers at the end. I had so many rifles/cannons from $$$ by then.



So at this point I don't want to try to do any more rifle wars since everyone has steam power. I opt to head for infantry/arty (aka the "you don't need techs anymore techs" assuming land map). I was getting pretty close when:







Oof. That's not going to be pretty, considering he likes everyone else enough to not attack them.

And sho 'nuf

Treachery and deceit Bismark? You don't know the half of it. 1/2 your power, down a bunch of techs, bring it on you phallic hat!



Fortunately, I get too work in vassal territory here. This means siege initiative, which is very unfair to the AI.

The 2 idiot warmongers and bismark send wave after wave of cavalry, infantry, and arty, and get met with my own $$$ buy infantry/arty, fighting over china. Mao loses his city w/ all the culture wonders while I go off to raze shaka's 2 border cities that bismark took to cap him. I turn back and take it back. I don't get an option to return it so I just keep it. I have trouble moving for many, many turns. Every time I killed a stack and healed another would be on me. Slog slog slog.

Eventually, since I had a favorable K/D my #s built up enough, that I started to work shaka. This was important, it raised toku's land cap, and after a LOT of damage to zulu and 100's of units killed:



Oooh, that's a big, big deal. I hold off the northern front with more troop spam, and swing 'round south for some fried zulu:



HAHA! Cap mechanics! If I took shaka as a vassal it would be stupid b/c capping him would mean the others wouldn't due to gay averaging! But I know better! Sorry buddy, but gay rules are still rules! See you next game.

Now, toku was "scared of my enemies". Ok. I took cease fire w/ bis, and



What was that about deceit Bis?





This was a long time coming. Stupid panzer man. Fear the title wave of early industrial garbage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Whammy.





Isabella apparently wanted nothing of that fight, instead preferring to build and build and build up her military, then hit AC. Sorry izzy, but I want to win so I have to beat you to that.

Declare an easy war, even though he's ahead too my #'s are just too ridiculous now.



And once his cities come out of revolt:



CASH RUSH FTW



Here's the kills:



And the troop spam to end all troop spam!



Only a 60k score b/c it was late, but man does it feel good to get triple dow'd only to smack them all back and win. Bismark is a strong AI, stupid collateral loving crap is very effective against other AIs.

Fun and quick game.

Can’t say no to a Darius game however I just don’t see war as a really good option sadly. Move capital onto the coast and eventually decide to block off the peninsula, turtle and evaluate what happens in the world. Send the first two settlers down into the jungle building SH between them – it went really late. Unfortunately this forces me to tech IW myself which I loathe to do.




Someone designing the map likes me however and a border pop from Persepolis shows land to the SW across the ocean. Time to queue up a galley and take a look and…. Holy ****! That is one large nice chunk of land over there. As far as I can tell its all mine as long as I settle it soonish so before getting settlers out like a madman I take a brief sidestep for this baby.



I’m feeling pretty good about this game now. I’m a bit behind on techs but I still have a ton of land to fill out uncontested and a ton of cottages to mature. First GP was of course a prophet from SH which settled down in the capital, but the second was a merchant who took a stroll down to Ulundi. Education was done and with 1.5k+ gold to deficit research I felt good until I realized Mao had Education already. I trade around Education with Caesar and Shaka and feel better afterwards. Only 5 turns left to Lib and the dumb computer is likely going for Economics anyway.




Nope! He got it the turn before I did. Well that sucks but oh well.



With the stash of gold and another GM trade mission en route I decide to head towards Democracy to open up the full set of super Town civics. At this point the Confucius block is WAY ahead in techs and are all friendly with me, but Caesar and Shaka hate each other’s guts. To keep the peace I bribe them out of war every ten turns essentially until close to the end of the game when I give Shaka something else to do. Normally I would not care but I decide to go for a peaceful UN win and need to not get 10 or more not helping during war time demerits. I decide to send a couple settlers and a few troops to the island east of Bismark. He did not claim it yet and while I don’t really want it I don’t want him to get it either since he will be my UN opponent. So I spin it off into a colony and get the thoroughly bland…



Use a GSpy generated by not paying attention to start up a GA after Mass Media is in. Persepolis builds the UN while I run the slider at full gold. I’m not a very patient person and drop some cash a few years later.



The UN is in and do I win yet?



Close but no cigar. It takes about 200 years due to me not paying attention. First I decide to just nuke down Toku’s population. So I get Fission and build the Manhattan Project. Whoops! I need rocketry to build missiles. No problem, I’ll just research it. 10 or so turns later I rush buy a few missiles. It then occurs to me that if any of my friends like Bismark this could go poorly. Sure enough Caesar likes the guy and declaring war will cause me to lose his votes. Um… uh…. In the mean time I continue to hit enter and build this thing. It’s kinda nifty.



Aha! I can bribe my friends into war. Okay Mao likes Bismark too. Shaka doesn’t though! The furry of the Zulu is unleashed and a couple turns later Mao decides what the hell and joins in. I guess Shaka is more convincing then I am. Together they take several of his cities while Issy decides to declare war on me. Taking cities from her would work as well but I couldn’t declare her either as I would then lose Mao’s vote. I rush buy an army while Shaka and Mao slog away. Toku loses a few more cities and oh hey look at that.




Now just because I find the instant production of rush buying funny the final power graph. Issy felt pretty good up until the moment she declared which oddly enough coincides with the near vertical line.

I settled as much land as I could but it wasn't really enough so I took my pitiful army to wage war against Mao. I got just the one city but managed to right through to liberalism wit ha few logbows and walls.

Mao's army showed .5 against me but it was almost completely medieval. Cannons and drafted rifles took him off the continent with little resistance.
I'd been tech swapping exclusively with Bismark who was doing very well off the Jewish shrine so I was well ahead of Toku, Shaka and izzy so keeping them all busy in a triangular war was easy enough. Shaka had Caesar as his vassal after a long war and they were both in the way. I limped towards assembly line while building nothing but rifles and cannons and killed Caesar and capped Shaka. That's where I'm at now and it looks like I'm well on my way to the win. I've always wanted to use Shaka or Monty as a strong Vassal to do my warring for me so that will be the plan from here.

GLH in 75 AD? Wow..

4000BC:
Settled in place, was all ready for standard immortal rush on the nearest helpless neighbour but alas we are boxed in on this small peninsula with only one way in or out. Should have its advantages for defense later on, but no early blood for me sadly. Planning to just get as many cities up as possible in this area and cottage everything for full financial abuse. Tech went something like AG-mining-bw-etc, pretty standard stuff.

->1AD:
Grabbed the gems/banana/rice site below quick as possible then filled in everything else. Normally I hate overlapping cities too much, but lately having come to understand the mechanics of the game better I've realised that it doesn't matter so much, so here I fit 3 other cities around the capital to take all those seafood resources.

Due to the awesome hammers power of the capital I managed to get stonehenge and the oracle, from which I chose COL to found confucianism. I decided to switch since a few AI had no religion yet and I was hoping to cultivate a few religious brothers. In retrospect going for MC and getting the colossus would ahve been a fantastic move here with all those coastal cities, sadly I didn't think of it at the time.

->1000AD:
Out-teching the AIs something chronic here, really shows the power of the financial trait with all that coast and early cottage from the first 4-5 cities, if only I'd got colussus! I had converted Mao Zedong to confu before he got anything else so I decided that Augustus Caeser was my target; I wanted a few more cities for my small empire. Was tempted to go in with knights/cats in the medieval era but since my tech rate was so insane cannons/rifles wern't that far off so decided to wait it out; my economy was running smoothly anyway, no rush.

1000 - 1800AD
Got liberalism first by a long shot, traded away lots of techs to backfill. Then went straight for steel followed by rifling. Mao Zedong went to war with caeser first and I got in with a cannon/rifle stack and took most of cities bar two which mao got near his empire. The furthest down of augustus' cities were three fantastic production sites so began improving them fully for either space race or mass military assault on Shaka.

Now I'm at 1900ish still miles ahead in tech, and poised to either build the spaceship parts with ease or produce lots of marines/artillery to take out Shaka. Probably go for the spaceship since it would be difficult to get through to the other AI for domination because of the land layout.

I teched:
Animal husbandry
Mining
Bronsworking
Fishing (5)

I build:
Worker
Settler (until the corn got a farm)
Warrior (until city grew size 2)
Finished settler
Finished warrior
Started with a new worker

Scout moved around, found a map and later a lot of money, and died later against the third animal (should I have healed him, gave hin only a woodsman promotion?)

Worker build a farm on the corn, and a pasture on the cows, then a mine near my capial and finaly a mine near my new city. Got lucky with the copper.

The new city started with a worker, will switch to workboat as soon as possible.

I marked the possible next city locations, please let me know what you think of them. I think I'll build the south one first.

Screenshot (50%):


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