Monarch Student^ VII - Napoleon

Even with wetness, this map makes every continent as barren as a post-nuclear apocalypse. I heavily edited the map to add grasslands to wide plains areas. Also this map makes a lot of rivers! Is that a good thing?

Look at that start... where's the food?

If you're teching Astronomy for intercontinental exploration, at least you get your UB. Heh heh.

Playing with huts, because I like huts. In this game, I REALLY like huts. Popped only three of them before Cathy's scout scooped up the rest, but the three were awesome. 126 gold, mysticism and animal husbandry. These were very un-monarch results, so I expect to experience some volcanoes and hurricanes in the future.

As you'll find out, Ms. creative bacstabber REX queen is directly to the north. As I slowly walked my warrior around her, I found Giggles directly to her North. Really close. Interesting. It makes me think she'll be sending her settlers my direction, and that is exactly what happened.

Well, once I had Paris working the improved resource tiles (farmed the sugar for now) I pretty much let the city grow to size six while I built a barracks. Then I started on a settler and was ready to send it towards the copper when I completed research on Iron Working (went for military techs with the idea of killing off the Russian fairly quickly.) Well, that was helpful, as I discover that I can found a city that will grab both the horse and the iron, and I did so on a spot 1S of the iron.

From there, I just started to build swordsmen. I had two cities and only two workers, but expected to have more of both via conquest. It was only a couple turns after I founded my iron city when I notice a Russian Archer/Settler right outside of that city. I think I beat her to it. Sure enough, it then made it's way down the east coast and founded a city right up against Paris's cultural border (1SW of the copper.) This would not do. I took my first two swords and headed over in that direction to stand on the copper.

Soon I was bounced off the copper as the creative kicked in and her city captured it. Two Russian workers immediately set to work on it, as I completed my third sword and a fourth was half done from the chop overflow. The second city was done with it's monument and started work on an Axe.

As soon as the copper was done, I attacked the two workers and pillaged the mine, thus starting the French/Russian War.

Mostly it was Archers (not on hills, thankfully) versus swords. Advantage, Napoleon.

I razed the copper city, since it was sadly 1N of what would be a much better spot for me.

I razed the city north of it on the coast with lots of dye, pigs and I think Sugar. I will need to map this out and settle that one next before Giggles makes any moves in that direction.

I captured Moscow and kept it in 1100BC when I quit. She has one more city to the west of Moscow. I am fairly certain that I will need to destroy her now, or she'll just end up being a giant pain later on if I don't.

After this, it's time for worker spam, with a couple settlers thrown in. Research path will probably be towards code of laws somehow. (Will almost certainly take a crack at getting it from the Oracle, given my high production capital with Marble.)

Will also probably think about hunting down some barb cities for money with my veteran army.

Lastly, I'm going to send a chariot off into Giggles's territory to see what kind of room he has to expand. I'd like to keep him on my good side for a while. His UU requires a different plan than just swords. Ideally, I'll pop a religion with CoL and we can become bestest buddies until I assimilate him.

Went ahead and killed off the Russian with a few swords. Kept the city due west of Moscow, not because it was great, but because Giggles was already putting pressure on it with his creative purpleness. (Most annoying, both the creative civs and the fact that I can barely tell where my borders end and his start.)

Anyway, went ahead and set my sights on Code of Laws, which involved Meditation, Preisthood, CoL. Research was pretty quick, actually, and I founded the religion. Sent the first cleric off to Giggles so we could bond over our common religious beliefs.

While this was going on, the two of us were REXing furiously. I got most of what I wanted. The only crap thing was that he settled a city ON THE GOLD over by the wheat to the west. WTF?!!! What a waste. Not only that, but he's eating my wheat that I'm trying to get back with the city I placed on the coast just south and east of it.

So, research is good. I was able to research Math and Alphabet on my own, which opened up Philosophy when my first scientist was born. Working on Construction now, and then I'm not sure. I could go with Civil Service, but before I make a decision, I think I need to come up with a medium term goal for what I'm planning to do now. Gotta figure out how and when I'm going to claim this continent for myself.

I'm not sure which one of my cities (I think I've got 8) will be my unit spammer. Paris would be the best, but it's currently running a couple of scientists and is generating a bunch of research and gold for me. I need to pick one, because Giggles has a nasty little power advantage over me right now.

So, that's the deal. Killing Cathy was most likely a good thing, but it certainly was as much of a boom for Giggles as it was for me. Now I've got to deal with him. I made sure to butter him up with a common religion, but I think I'll need to start making some trades with him as well. Will also probably check out his favorite civic and see if I can do that for him as well.

Settled in place. Got pottery really early from a hut (I like them!), so went to BW, AH. IW, Writing, Aesthetics, Polytheism, Literature, Code of Laws and started Music.

Got boxed in real quick so I rushed Cathy. Took all her cities but one, figuring that would give me time to get Gilgamesh to friendly. Unfortunately she capped as soon as he got Feudalism. The sad part is that I captured the Mids and the Stonehenge in Moscow, but I'm having to run Hereditary Rule to be friends with Giggles. I'm thinking of a medieval war to get the continent for myself. That would be a pain because I am investing heavily on cottages here.

Moscow is my GP farm. I captured it with SH and the Mids and also built the Parthenon and the Great Library there. I founded Tao and I think I'll move my capital there after I've taken the rest of the continent. I already have 9 cities with one more to go (the settler's already there). There's what seems to be an island just offshore. I think I'll build a WB to explore there and see if there are any more neighbors. I started to build courthouses everywhere and then I realized I had forgotten to build granaries in some of the cities. I'll change the builds.

I don't know how everybody killed Catherine so quick. I got hemmed in by her after I built my second city and she spammed cities all over the place. Obviously I attacked her ASAP, but the war has been going on for millenia and she's still not dead.

Looks like I need more practice. And to think I was considering moving up to emperor soon.

Playing with no huts of course, since huts hate me. Maybe I need to make friends with the huts.

She had four cities and actually sent out another settler while I was killing her. I only had two, but the big deal was that I had discovered Iron Working before settling my second city, which allowed me to bring swords and not axes against her archers. Also note that I made sure to deny her any metal.

Gilgamesh has been providing me a lot of money. Every wonder I try to build, he goes and completes it first. Other than that, we're the undisputed tech leaders of the game. I'm one turn awaty from steel and he already has grenadiers and started to research steel too. I was the first one to Liberalism and also circumnavigated the world. I've just completed the Taj Mahal. I can go draft happy while whipping cannons, but I don't know if I should wait for rifles before I attack. I would still have to research Replaceable Parts and Rifling itself. What do you guys think?

Next time you get a less-than-desirable result from a scout/safezone hut, remember this (if the image works):



Cathy is far too close for comfort, and there's a convenient Copper around, so Axe rush it is. Poor Cathy doesn't have Horse/Metal after I take his only Iron source on the second turn of the war. The Gem really makes this easy, I have time to finish Alphabet and extort a handful of techs from her before she's exterminated.

The tech pace seems seriously slow in this game, I get Confucianism from CoL at something like 200AD and spread it to Gilga for diplo (first religion around here). Moscow is under some cultural pressure and has a crapton of food, so I aim for (and get) TGL in there. Gilga steals Parthenon the turn I would have completed it in Rostov, and in the city opposite Moscow! Because of this I aim for another wonder in Moscow, and get MoM, which is nice. I also swap for Caste pretty early since most of my cities have decent production and there's not a whole lot to rush. This nets me tons of GSs quite fast. I have used 3 on Academies, 2 on Lib path bulbs and 1 on Printing Press so far.

Lib got me Nationalism, which got me Taj, which skyrocketed my tech rate while I went to meet the others. Sally is Fred's vassal, but no one is huge enough to be a threat - Gilga is still the main enemy. I'm currently aiming at a Cav blitz on Gilga (powered by my 1GP MoM GA shortly) and probably lazily to space from there. Gilga isn't certainly doing himself any favors in the tech department in this game by going Nat->Constitution->Economics->Corporation.

I wouldn't go into war at the slight tech deficit (Grenadiers) against Gilga in your situation, it's usually quite a chore when combined with a power deficit. Waiting for Rifles might be the way to go, while reinforcing with Cavs. I guess you know this but you absolutely need to wait out his SoD before going in here after DoW.

Rushed Cathy with 15 axes or so in about 1000BC. Quite late, but I made sure I went in force (settled three cities beforehand, all configured for max hammers), and her main cities didn't last very long at all. Now I have Giggles to worry about.

Annoyingly, Cathy isn't dead yet, because she managed to capture a barbarian city to her west that was on a hill, so I'll need to deal with that before long.

I also built the Oracle, mainly because we had marble and I popped Masonry from a hut. First time I've ever rushed and built a wonder, but it was very cheap and there were lots of forests to chop, so it was fine.

Fun game so far, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out when I have an economy up and running. I really feel that killing Cathy was the only thing to do in this game.

I feel your pain - my game would have turned out much the same if I hadn't committed to going with so many axes. The fact that copper is only in the third ring (meaning you have to wait until turn 75 to bring it online, or found a third city up there, which was what I did) makes life very difficult - and if Cathy gets cities all over the place she's a menace.

Third city? What happened to the second city? With a free Gem in the BFC it's quite a miracle to not have BW when you pop your first settler.