Monarch Student XI Sury

This one isn't kind to rooks. We get limited land and we share it with kublai (at least it's not genghis...). Cottage land is minimal and wonders go early. GLH on immortal went ~ 1900 BC!

I was behind in tech for most of the early-mid game so I sat there with my miserable 8 cities teching alllllllllll the way to industrialism + advanced flight. On a map like this, marines + jet fighters can kill anything. Even Mech inf/modern armor, so right now I'm in the thick of beating down the tech leader who built internet and then starting a blitz on the rest of the world, chopping whoever is closest to victory until that person is me.

Odd, I don't seem to have screen shots before lib...guess I forgot. Anyway, I settled in place. AH ---> fishing ---> BW ---> sailing --->wheel ---> AG and so on.

Our capitol is production poor w/o the whip, and the requirement to hit worker techs (lots of them) precluded early wonders. Not that you'd want gwall on this map, there's not a lot of land and CRE reduces the need for SH.

GLH went just after 1900 BC. Christ. Other wonders went very early for a water map as well. I managed to settle the riverside dye/fish/cow site near kublai and a fairly weak city to the W of that. That gave me...7 cities, one of which would be terrible for a long time.

Capitol got NE + maoi. I didn't build any cottages at ALL, going for farms + whips. I moved the palace to the dye site near KK since it had the best commerce, good food, and I was out of national wonder slots in the original site...got a late academy there also (got a lot of low-odds priests off maoi :/).

Bur picked me up, and also allowed that + KK's religion to get him friendly. Oddly enough, cyrus founded confuc, qin christianity, KK taoism, so there was less love between them than expected.

I got oxford after 1000 AD but not long after, and managed to snag lib since this map didn't feature an AI group hug. Close race though and nationalism was only minimal trade bait (still my best).



All farms baby. Better go biology after constitution, eh?

I picked up an 8th city bordering alex because wars caused him to settle just a little slow. Bismark eventually capped alex. Mansa was the best culture threat but since qin took sistine mansa was far less daunting in culture than normal (that and bis kept harassing him).

Hermitage and 2 cathedrals went in my junker to the W of my new cap, and along with an artist bomb I culture flipped the stone and some other good tiles from KK, making it a workable city. Bio made all my cities pretty good. Qin got mining inc. I went environmentalism + sushi (penchant for pain, I know).

I was actually interested if I could use 8 cities, some subpar, to take space on immortal. The answer was no. Qin was winning the race to computers, so I abandoned that plan. Emancipation was hurting me so I went emancipation despite heavy use of specs + bio farms. I put national park in my cap and preserved those 3 plains forests for a strong cap. Ultimately my tech rate was at least decent given the city count (~1500 BPT at one point!). So for the entire game until advanced flight + industrialism, I stayed out of wars.

Then, my suped up bio farm cities with a gazillion specs off bio farms + sushi went into war mode, with the first target space-racing Qin:



Mr internet tech whore was running away a bit:





And by the time the war ended, he had every military tech in the game except stealth. Then he had no techs at all.



Now, I hadn't built FP yet, so I stuck it on his main continent (in his cap). This alleviated the combined problem of having mining (which he spread to all my own cities as well as his) and sushi (which I had wall street for) in environmentalism with 2 continents with > 5 cities. Further conquest forced me to get a little creative. Next up was Cyrus and vassal Sal, who were busy fighting kublai:



Yeah. He doesn't even have mechinf like Qin (who had CG III mechinf on hills to give me < 50% odds SOMETIMES, though usually I was odds-on with marines). I decided to skip micro or attempting to pay for these cities, and promptly made cyrus' mainland into a colony (stalin). I turned all of persia's mainland cities into russia, kept the 2 city island to the west, and took dual-cap:







Mansa built the UN. I figured I'd keep fighting in this game, going for kublai and vassal hammy (keep kublai's cities since they're on my continent, capitulate the hamster), then pay MM a visit to end the culture attempt and force a UN win.



I didn't have to force it:









The kill/death should show just how scary the marines+jets can be. Most of the marines I lost were those left as garrison after capturing cities (well over half of the losses).

Overall I'm not a big fan of the snaky continent archipelago type games, and this one was pretty challenging...yet it was still fun somehow. I imagine some people will struggle if they're not playing at comfort level...coming up with enough production and tech on limited land to the effect of competing with superior AI city numbers takes some planning. I rarely move the palace, rarely use national park or hermitage outside of culture attempts, and yet all 3 happened here.

Also note this was a specialist game w/o the pyramids (or any other wonder...!), or without *ever* using caste! But early on, more research was coming from trade routes, passive commerce tiles like dye, and building wealth...so even with no cottages specs were only marginal...at first.

Considering expansive, techable AH and plains cows to the north, I am thinking of starting with a worker and teching AH right away.

After that, I'll go for fishing while building a mine. When fishing is done, a fishing boat then claim the clams while building the pasture, I think the border pops in time for that , then warrior, then settler. (I imagine I find a good city spot while scouting up until this point) After fishing I am thinking of teching BW, although I have my doubts about close copper, considering the probable latitude. But one has to find out a way, and slavery is not a bad thing to have access to. And I need the ability to cut the forests.

As for settling, I don't like losing one grasshill, but I don't yet know whether it's acceptable to lose the clams for the mines by settling 1N.

Is this a good idea?