Monarch Student^ III - Sitting Bull

The Age of Ice has ended.
What was left of the empires of Erebus... wait, wait! Wrong game!

Sitting Bull and the Native Americans crawl out of their igloos. The climate was getting warmer, so they decide to abandon the igloos (they were melting anyway) and start a new city.

Sitting Bull is Philosophical and Protective. Philosophical is for increasing Great People birth rate, which is always great! Protective is meh. But sometimes, that extra City Garrison 1 and Drill archer or quick wall can save the day. Who knows?

The Natives start with Fishing and Agriculture. Fishing is more useful on this map for an instant work boat, because we actually have a coastal start. And as for Agri... hmm... don't seem to see any grains resources around the start.




Dog Soldiers are an excellent counter to melee units everywhere. Unfortunately, due to their weaker attack strength, they're worse than regular axemen for attacking archer-fortified cities.




The Totem Pole looks nice, and gives archery units +3 experience. Combined with the Protective trait, you can mass-produce beefy archers, perfect to defend Native American cities or to garrison newly captured cities... or perhaps as instant medics?




Map Settings...
Map: Standard Ice Age
Oppnents: 7
Sealevel: Medium
Climate: N/A
Landmass: Narrow Continents

This is the start:



The Worldbuilder save is below. It is good for Monarch or Emperor starts. Nobles and Princes may need to remove archery from the computer players. Immortals and Deities may need to give the computer some more free techs.

To play, unzip the worldbuilder file and place it in your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game by choosing Single Player -> Play a Scenario, where you may adjust the speed and difficulty to your liking. Or Custom Scenario, if you also wish to turn off huts, barbs or events and adjust other settings.

Let us compare strategies and progress with other players as well as learn to play. Win or lose, for better or worse, feel free to report on your glorious exploits. Perhaps other players can give you advice on your game.

Please keep your reports in spoiler tags to ensure and safeguard the richness of others' playing experience.

Recommended Checkpoints:
*1000BC or 1AD or 100AD
*500AD, 1000AD or Liberalism
*1200AD or 1400AD
*Victory!

Save is ready... enjoy!

What happened to posting this on the 9th as planned?
I can't complain though, as I was actually looking forward to this game.

I believe first build should be Work Boat (Working highest hammer yield tile) -> Worker. Tech path should be Mining -> BW to chop out workers/settler and to improve those hills, plus we get to unlock our UU! After that I believe it all depends on what we reveal in the closer tiles. Depending on what we reveal and who our neighbors are we should go The Wheel -> Mysticism -> Masonry -> Poly -> Monotheism. I'd only go that path if we have a lot of aggressive AIs around, as we can then work on Diplo a lot quicker (assuming we get Judaism) while we already have our UU to rush / defend. If we have a religious fanatic around and possibly another camp resource I'd go The Wheel -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Mysticism -> Archery (uber-upgraded archers!) -> Masonry -> Writing.

Again, it all depends on the map, and I will start this game later tonight.

On a final note, I think a SE might work with Mids + Philo (We also have a hammer-heavy stone capital!) but again that all depends on how much food is in the surrounding area.

Not liking the start position of the settler. Considering moving 1N to get the deer in the BFC...or maybe take a risk and try the west coast to get on the river.

Haven't played Ice Age in a while, so I'll have to run a few maps to see how the resource distribution looks.

cas

Hopefully Persia is not next door this time around.

^ I would be inclined to settle 1N as well. Stone would be in the cultural borders by the 2nd border pop and you would have more food to grow. The only disadvantage is the initial production hit of not settling on the plains hill.

Not my favorite kind of start but I'll give it a shot.

Hard to say without walking around with at least the warrior. A very bleh start that seems to want you to move.

If you settle 1N you miss out on the Stone. For a start like this I would be more inclined to settle on the Wine, but for this particular start (with what looks like water on both sides of this peninsula) settling on the Wine would put you in a very bad position.

I may actually try this game out, settle on the Wine and go Settler first to snag a coastal spot to build a Workboat for the capital. I'm not sure how this would work out, but if I tech Mining / BW then do that, it might be feasible.

Scratch that last idea, that idea would only seem good with a Financial / Imperialistic leader for the extra commerce from the sea tiles / wine and for settler-first-builds. I say we settle in place again.

Or settle on the Stone and place a second city 1N of the Sheep grabbing the Deer and Fish. Think I'll try that.

1N would be nice, if it had more hills; only 3 minable vs the 1+1½(stone)+½(city tile) of settling in place. Food gain isn't that epic; could be a food-shortage as it's Ice Age so no use in hogging everything for the capital. Losing some useless water tiles would be a bonus though. Not sure about this.

Itching to try a PHI WE/SSE with this. Too bad there's not more production.

The only problem I see with settleing on the Stone is the fact that I'm fairly sure that there's going to be water on that side of land, and if you get unlucky in those fog tiles, it could potentially lack in production and food which will then slow your expansion.

Kadazzle said:

The only problem I see with settleing on the Stone is the fact that I'm fairly sure that there's going to be water on that side of land, and if you get unlucky in those fog tiles, it could potentially lack in production and food which will then slow your expansion.

Click to expand...

True. What Silu said tickled my fancy to do a WE/SSE. Let's see if the map allows such a thing.

Moving 1NW would unlock all the visible resources while adding more hills. The only problem with this is that it's not coastal and is 1 tile away from the coast on both "sides" of the peninsula. Adding to that, you can't connect the fish until you build another coastal city.

Ugh, I so wish I was Vicky for this map, that was a couple water tiles wouldn't be the end of the world, and I'd feel good about settling on a hill while going Settler first.

Maybe a very dumb question:

How do you all know there's sea to the other side?

Ignorant Teacher said:

Maybe a very dumb question:

How do you all know there's sea to the other side?

Click to expand...

It's possible that those 2 fog-hidden water tiles are lakes, and that the river originating from the lake near the settler loops back around into the east side, but the body of evidence for that being coast to the west is fairly strong.

You can tell by the curve of the tiles to the west. Also, beside the westernmost plains hill and forested tundra hill you can visibly see the water and curvature of the map. So, most likely there's water on the other side

Ah good call kadazzle. A large lake is still a possibility, but not a great one, especially given the "narrow continents" setting meaning that this is in fact most likely a narrow continent .

So, what would people think of settling NE of the Sheep on the (what looks like) grassland tile? That would mean that you could place a second city site on the wine which could use the fish for growth. NE of the Sheep gives you lots of food so getting out those early Workers/Settlers would be fairly easy, and you could make a fairly good commerce/production site by settling on the Wine (plus you can borrow the fish if there's no other food close-by).

Another Monarch student and I havent even finished the last one. But this does look fun......!!!!