Monarch Student^ XXV Charlemagne

BigTime

BigTime

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Hello all and Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Luckily for us, on our day off we get to play the 25th edition of Monarch Student Prime!
Our glorious leader this week, Charlemagne of Holy Rome!



Can I have fries with that? Poor ol' Burger King unfortunately does not have the best set of traits in protective and imperialistic. Imperialistic is good for spamming cities out, which is important in the map script we are playing this week!

His UU is the Landsknecht:



A pike replacement with a 100% bonus against melee units. This unit is very "Meh" due to the fact that medieval warfare is probably the hardest and most ineffective out of all era warfares, and that even the bonus it gets won't help it against the likes of longbows and crossbows. At best, it will keep it safe in the field against maces and axes.

His UB is the Rathaus:



A courthouse replacement that provides 75% maintenance as opposed to the courthouse's 50%. I quite like it, it works well with imperialistic as you can spam out cities then pay for them using the rathaus. Helps you save money at the same cost of a courthouse, what's not to love?

The start:



Irrigated corn, early happiness in ivory, and what looks like a lot of riverside grassland. Probably a resource in the fog as well. Pretty nice start can't see any reason to not settle in place.

This time we have a Pangaea map! Be sure to expand quickly and block off your city sites or you may have to fight! I thought this map would showcase Charlemagne's traits best because imperialistic helps you get out cities quickly and protective will help protect you against the many wars that happen on Pangaea.

Huts and Events are OFF, add events in the custom scenario if you wish. (just make sure to cover the top part with your hand so you don't see the AIs )

And a cut-and-paste from Meatbuster's Monarch Student games:

Save the file and place it in your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then unzip it into your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then use Playing a scenario to play your desired level. Or use custom scenario if you want to remove huts and/or events.

Recommended Checkpoints:
*1000BC or 1AD
*500AD
*1000AD or Liberalism
*Victory!

Please remember to put the journals of your adventures inside spoiler tags.

For Monarch+ players please try to add archery back to the barbs in WB. If you don't, AIs will capture cities with archers very early in the game, which is no fun. If you prefer easymode barbs, that's fine too, just don't go wondering why an AI captured a barb city in the very early BCs!

Thanks go to TMIT for making an excellent map creation guide and to mjg5591 for getting this series back on track!

And finally, the save!
 

Attachments

  • MSXXV Charlemagne.zip
    42 KB · Views: 178
Deity - NSC

Spoiler :
Everyone is horrendously backwards, due to non-stop warring all over the board. Obviously, Japan not only attacked me but bribed just about everyone else in with him. Idiot AI kept slamming units into my protective archers, which kept giving me GG after GG after GG....

Stone + Marble = easy win...

I'm unstoppable now... after just capturing Frederik's capital and he is willing to capitulate now.

Time to quit.



 
Immortal/normal to 1 AD

Spoiler :


Settled in place. Met Toku turn 2, yikes! Tech BW and we have copper in BFC. Although Toku is Protective, he settles right in my face on a good city site and REXs very well, leaving each city with only 1-2 defenders.



I take peace after taking 3 cities to regroup and produce some more troops. Then redeclare to get his final 3 cities:







Although my research is terrible due to my number of cities, all the pillaged gold lets me tech aesthetics and trade it around for alphabet, math, and a bunch of lower techs. I continue on to currency and CoL and my economy is saved. Funnily enough, I pick up Confucianism with my horrid tech rate.





9 cities at 1 AD is pretty good. Sadly, Kublai daggers me, but only sends 2 keshiks and a chariot. Currently I am producing spears and archers for defense and want to get construction to possibly poach some cities. Fred got REALLY big because I didn't expand south and he got a lot of land to his north. Plan is to end Mongolian hostilities and then tech off to Lib. It's pretty gay though that I got a -1 with basically everyone for DoW on Toku the 2nd time, despite him being a heathen at the time of the 2nd Dow( which is when I got all the demerits).

 
As it happens, I am learning to play Monarch, so this is a great opportunity for me to compare notes. Thanks to the organizers of this series.

I played MS^ XXIV, but I got didn't notice that I got defaulted to noble difficulty in the custom scenario setup. Whoops. :blush: That turned into a bit of a romp. :rolleyes:

Anyway, this time I checked (several times) that I set the difficulty correctly.

Progress to AD 1:

Spoiler :
Settled in place--I saw nothing to make me move.
Started warrior->worker. With no techs and nothing for him to work on, it seemed pointless to start with a worker.
Initial tech path was Ag -> mining -> BW (Hey, look! Copper next to Aachen!) -> AH (Hey, look! Horses next to...that city that Jules just founded. :mad:)

After a couple more of the basic techs (masonry and writing, I think), I went for Currency. Once I get that, the AI usually has Alphabet, so I can get that plus cash from at least one of them, then turn around and trade Alphabet to the rest for whatever I can get.

I built the pyramids in Aachen on turn 98 thanks to stone and lots of chopping, and I'm now running Rep.

The scouting situation is terrible. My initial scout got eaten by a lion on turn 13. His replacement was shot full of arrows before I had OB with anybody. Since then, my citizens have refused to be trained as scouts, so I don't know much about the geography.

I got a great scientist, but I didn't want to bulb alphabet since I was almost done with Currency (see above). He's parked in the capital now, but I forgot to see what he'd bulb now. (Edit: It's compass, which won't be terribly useful right now--or possibly ever. I need to figure out where I want my academy, I guess.)

I traded for many, many techs. I'm a little worried about WFYABTA on a Pangaea map, but I needed to backfill my tech tree. Overall, the tech situation is good. I've got at least one tech each AI "wants," and they collectively have only a couple I don't.

Currently I've got six cities, with one settler on the way to a new site and another settler in production. I was able to block off the little peninsula to the east, although Freddie made it a bit difficult by founding a city literally one step ahead of my second settler. I've got iron hooked up, and horses coming within a turn or two.

Next steps are:
- Figure out my diplo strategy. I haven't picked a religion yet, and everybody's cautious toward me.
- Fill in the last couple of cities.
- Scout!
- Build an army and start the conquest.

I don't see enough good commerce city sites for a culture win, and the AP is too unreliable. Any other peaceful win will take too long. Which means...
:hammer: :splat: :ar15:
...domination is going to be the way to go for me.

(No screenshots, unfortunately. I need to figure out the best way to post those.)
 
Vaidd said:
As it happens, I am learning to play Monarch, so this is a great opportunity for me to compare notes. Thanks to the organizers of this series.

I played MS^ XXIV, but I got didn't notice that I got defaulted to noble difficulty in the custom scenario setup. Whoops. :blush: That turned into a bit of a romp. :rolleyes:

Anyway, this time I checked (several times) that I set the difficulty correctly.

Progress to AD 1:

Spoiler :
Settled in place--I saw nothing to make me move.
Started warrior->worker. With no techs and nothing for him to work on, it seemed pointless to start with a worker.
Initial tech path was Ag -> mining -> BW (Hey, look! Copper next to Aachen!) -> AH (Hey, look! Horses next to...that city that Jules just founded. :mad:)

After a couple more of the basic techs (masonry and writing, I think), I went for Currency. Once I get that, the AI usually has Alphabet, so I can get that plus cash from at least one of them, then turn around and trade Alphabet to the rest for whatever I can get.

I built the pyramids in Aachen on turn 98 thanks to stone and lots of chopping, and I'm now running Rep.

The scouting situation is terrible. My initial scout got eaten by a lion on turn 13. His replacement was shot full of arrows before I had OB with anybody. Since then, my citizens have refused to be trained as scouts, so I don't know much about the geography.

I got a great scientist, but I didn't want to bulb alphabet since I was almost done with Currency (see above). He's parked in the capital now, but I forgot to see what he'd bulb now. (Edit: It's compass, which won't be terribly useful right now--or possibly ever. I need to figure out where I want my academy, I guess.)

I traded for many, many techs. I'm a little worried about WFYABTA on a Pangaea map, but I needed to backfill my tech tree. Overall, the tech situation is good. I've got at least one tech each AI "wants," and they collectively have only a couple I don't.

Currently I've got six cities, with one settler on the way to a new site and another settler in production. I was able to block off the little peninsula to the east, although Freddie made it a bit difficult by founding a city literally one step ahead of my second settler. I've got iron hooked up, and horses coming within a turn or two.

Next steps are:
- Figure out my diplo strategy. I haven't picked a religion yet, and everybody's cautious toward me.
- Fill in the last couple of cities.
- Scout!
- Build an army and start the conquest.

I don't see enough good commerce city sites for a culture win, and the AP is too unreliable. Any other peaceful win will take too long. Which means...
:hammer: :splat: :ar15:
...domination is going to be the way to go for me.

(No screenshots, unfortunately. I need to figure out the best way to post those.)
Click to expand...
Spoiler :
Pretty sure charle starts with hunting, so worker first and ag-bw tech you can farm the corn, camp the ivory, mine the bare hill and BW should be done by then (??).


Spoiler :
I played this game twice, abandoned first because it was not going that well, 2nd time was a nuke(kremlin whipfest)conquest win in the 1900s (ugh). I might replay this, since I am still learning monarch. I didn't really put the rep-caste scientists to use, they would do well here. Oxford was built in nuremburg, which ran a ton of scientists. I don't think this was optimal. Cottages+palace+oxford in prague might have worked since aachen was production heavy.

a few screenshots: 1ad, settled those east cities far too late. This delayed caste because of the massive whipping needed, which really hurt my techrate.


Tech situation: KK demanded I stop trading with fred, and since he had much higher power I agreed. As a result, I couldn't trade with him for most of the game. Eventually he did peace vassal to me when I started making cavalry.


Toku being Toku. he sent 2 decent stacks at that city. A few archers died, but otherwise I was not in danger. I overreacted and made far too many archers which could have been turned into wealth, a huge mistake. I bribed KK into the war, which was actually an extremely effective thing to do. Those 2 stayed at war for a thousand years. Switched to judaism after KK did.



Lib to communism. Had a GE sitting around for kremlin. This was really late. I started to mass whip cavalry soon after, was thinking of going after fred but we had a peace treaty (I think he asked for something, and he had recently started talking with me again so I complied). My horses were out for blood so I went after toku. Took one of his cities, at that point he vassaled to KK so I sued for peace asap and decided to wait for nukes. Cyrus and Saladin has a defensive pact early on, I really didn't want to take both at the same time. I should have went after JC here.
(yes that is national epic going up 1000 years late!)



Forgot to grab the victory SS, but it was really late (1900s). Saladin had actually built SDI the turn I started nuking him. I ended up sending some tanks over while my vassals did some work in reducing his power. Overall, very sloppy play from me. It is worth nothing that I hit WFYABTA pretty early, trading astronomy to 4 or 5 civs on the same turn for some cheaper techs.

 
BigTime said:
A let's play a day keeps the rapid youtube fans away? :lol:

Anyway this map is pretty challenging; I think a challenging map for a change would be good for your youtube material. :p
Click to expand...

Well, it's harder than the last few games posted on here but there's been WAY worse in MS/NC/IU :p.
 
@west45:

Spoiler :
west45 said:
Pretty sure charle starts with hunting, so worker first and ag-bw tech you can farm the corn, camp the ivory, mine the bare hill and BW should be done by then (??).
Click to expand...

I replayed the start that way, and you're exactly right. I'm not used to thinking that way yet. I guess that's the point of these forum games, right? :)


I finished playing up to AD 1000:

Spoiler :
The GS from last session built an academy in the capital. It's not the best science city I've ever made, but it's the best I've got now.

On turn 131, Toku declared on me. It was not difficult to defeat the 1 HA and 3 chariots that he attacked with. :crazyeye: Nor was the next stack, which actually included a couple of elephants. He had ivory the whole time (In my game, Tokyo is very close to Aachen, just to the north), so he must not have had the tech for 'phants to begin with. After that, he gave me Aesthetics and some gold for peace.

Just before the war, I started to scout with a +1 visibility HA. Toku killed the scout. :( I still don't know much about the fantastic lands beyond my borders, other than that they probably exist. I'll have to just trade maps in a few more turns.

Rome went WHEOOHRN, but I was in a peace treaty at the time (Sure, Jules. You can have my spare fish for 10 turns. All you had to do was ask.)

Darius doesn't seem to have iron; perhaps as a result, he peace-vassaled to Saladin. They're both at war with Kublai Khan at the moment.

Near the end of the turn set, Toku re-declared on me. I'm even less worried about his attack now, since my army is considerably stronger than the first war. I might just counterattack and take a city or two after I take out his stack.

Nobody's got liberalism yet, but I think I'm in good shape to get it. My teching has been a little slower than I'd like, but the AIs are obligingly going slow as well. I was able to bump the slider up considrably after finishing Rathauses (Rathausen?). Might as well get some benefit from having to play Charlie. :)

My arms buildup is going slower than I had hoped. One way or another, I need to start putting the beatdown on someone soon.

 
Nice, another one!! I presume these games will be out every week? I'll give this a go tonight, Emperor/Normal, and i'll do my best not to watch TMIT's lp untill im finished!:D
 
This game screws me again :mad:

Spoiler :


Frederick DoWs with a huge medieval stack despite having 2 other annoyed targets, while I was at cautious. I mean what the hell... Kublai and Toku were both much more legit targets than me and they were both weak enough. I'm tired of this RNG BS, but maybe I should have pre-built some PRO longbows but I wasn't expecting something quite this dumb.

So, I lose.

 
BigTime said:
This game screws me again :mad:

Spoiler :


Frederick DoWs with a huge medieval stack despite having 2 other annoyed targets, while I was at cautious. I mean what the hell... Kublai and Toku were both much more legit targets than me and they were both weak enough. I'm tired of this RNG BS, but maybe I should have pre-built some PRO longbows but I wasn't expecting something quite this dumb.

So, I lose.

Click to expand...

If you think that's bad, you should see what happened to me in my youtube game :p.
 
BigTime said:
I did :p But at least you prebuilt some troops, I had literally NOTHING because I thought "No way in hell would a peacemonger AI DoW me over his worst enemies" Turns out I was wrong.
Click to expand...

Yeah...well...experience of getting that BS multiple times in my past hardened my conscious. All AI are douches. All AI must die. All AI are the enemy. All AI stain the planet. Nukes are bleach, but sometimes a good sponge + soap is enough.
 
To 500BC- Emperor/Epic/No Events/No vassles.

Spoiler :

I decided to SIP and start on a worker. My Tech went Agriculture-Mining-BW-Myst-Wheel-AH-Writing-Pot-Alpha.


I met most of the AI's pretty early on, and i decided to rush freddy, as he was the nearest AI. Having toko next door wasn't welcome either. at around 1400BC freddy was dead. My builds went- Worker-Warrior-warrior-settler-worker-barracks-Aexs

I started a Worker-settler in my seccond city first as i was planning to gift toko a city to get him to pleased and border demerits with Kublia.



I was about to take freddy's cap after hamburg, but he had 50% defenses, three archers and a Axe with walls.EEK! I knew from rush experience that 8 axes would not beat that so i backed off for a few turns to reinforce, allow freddy to move his troops out of his cap, and kill an archer, that was trying to escourte a settler back to the hamburg site. But i missed the settler somehow. I later found out that he founded munich.



Freddy for some strange reason decided to found Buddism, and salidin founded hindu. JC was buddist for awhile untill i killed freddy then he switched into Hindu. Most of the AI's are hindu at 500BC and are pleased with me. I razed hamburg, kept Berlin and munich. Freddy also stupidly built henge for me so that was a nice bonus.

Toko built the GW and i have managed to get barb fogbusters out so barbs are no longer a prob. Wonders are going pretty late on this map so i might go for mids and mabey Collusus. I was thinking about the GreatLighthouse but it got built.

My resarch is in the toliet right now but i have a library in my cap, granery's in most of my cities and im going for the mids, as i have settled the Rice/Stone site.Barb cities and binary research helped me get to Alphabet.I Also got a HE Axe and a GG. Im not too concerned about the stone wonders on this map, i will probally go for the great library and prthenon, with the marble. Im teching currency now, but i might switch to astehetics. From here on, its a normal, after rush rebuild!



I made several good tech trades with toko,salidin,Kublia and Cyrus. I will probally go for domination for this game, just because its a warmongers map. Hopefully i dont get screwed by a sudden DOW though, like what happened to TMIT and big time. :D



 
To 1520AD
Spoiler :
Not much really happened up to this point so i wont put pics into this spoiler, i will provide a save though. I basically rebuilt my economy and attempted to go for lib (Which i lost to cyrus). I decided not to tech monarchy myself as, i could get it in a trade with a few other AI's and i had pleanty of happy resources. Barbs and barb galleys werent too bad in this game, mostly because i fogbusted the cointent, they also helped me get a HE Axe as i might have said in my last post.

My first GP was a prophet which i used for theology. I bulbed this for trades. The AP was built shortly after and it was hindu, so i built the AP stuff in my cities after spreading Hindu. I was actually eligibal for the AP diplo victory which was a nice change, but i did'nt have enough votes.

The diplo situation was a mess with the AI's, thankfully they stayed away from me, but salidin ended up being dogpilled and eventually dead (Thank god i turned off vassles, otherwise he would've capped. I bribed kublia a couple of times on toku, which got him top friendly. Toko eventually dropped to annoyed, and has signed a defensive pact with Cyrus. I realised that i could get toko to give me tribute, so i might take that and go after ceasar (who is running away with the game). If toko dowes after the 10 turns, i'll be ready.

Right now im doing bad in tech, but i think im going for Infantry/Arty. I might use Rifles/Muskets/cannons against JC as he dosent even have gunpowder. As for wonders i managed to get Versailles (Built in berlin), the parthenon, and the great library. I think this game is in controll now, but some feedback would be apperiated.Any advice on wheather or not i should go after JC or toko?
 

Attachments

  • MSXXV BurgerKing AD-1520.CivBeyondSwordSave
    249.5 KB · Views: 77
To Finish- 1894AD Domination Win

Spoiler :

I attacked ceasar and took 4 of his cities with muskets/rifles/trebs/cannons, Toko joined in to the war an captured a city i was originally going to take. I took peace with ceasar to heal and build infrastructure untill i was able to take on toko. Toko had a defensive pact with cyrus and i signed one with cryus aswell. I dowed on toko, causing cyrus to dow but i bribed kublia into war with cyrus to keep him busy. I took out two of toko's stacks, one that was threatning a former roman city and another in osaka. He had a few cities near my roman ones, so my plan was to use Infantry/Arty, take his core and then go after his other cities. After that i decided to go after kublia for the win.My plan for the win worked as this pic will confirm.

Some end game stats:



Built

Kills



Im happy enough with the score as No.4 in my top five top scores. I could've gotten the AP win if i tried for it, but domination is more fun!Rushing Freddy works pretty well abd berlin was a very good city.This game was a little longer than usual but thats because of epic speed. I probally should've played it on normal. It was nice to play pangea again, i havent played pangea for a while before playing this. Looking foward to the next one.:D

 
Domination win - 1921. Score 42,004.

Spoiler :

When we last saw our intrepid hero, he was being attacked by Tokugawa. Which was fine, because I was gearing up to attack him anyway. I fought off a couple of his stacks, then went on offense. After I captured three of his cities, including Kyoto and my eventual Oxford city, Tokyo, he capitulated and offered me another city besides.

Saladin and his vassal Cyrus were fighting a relatively weak Kublai Khan. I thought I might be able to help keep KK independent until I was able to cap him myself (which turned out to be wrong), so I joined the war. I liberated a city that Sal had captured and then made peace, after which KK lost the same city to Cyrus and then capitulated. Somewhere after this time, Cyrus broke free, though he later signed a DP with Saladin.

Meanwhile, I turned my attention to Freddie to my south. He was already fighting Julius, so he capitulated (to me) after I took only two cities.

My war machine was still in high gear, so I went after Jules. His tech wasn't very good, and I know I fought at least a few praetorians with my cavalry. An amusing side note: he had been at war with Sal + KK at some point, but ended it before I declared. However, his stack of doom was stuck in a city that was completely surrounded by enemy culture, and they wouldn't sign OB with him, so I had a pretty easy time capping him. He ended up offering my that city as part of the peace deal, which pushed his army back to his own territory.

So now I had three vassals, but when I declared next, I would be fighting Saladin, his vassal Kublai Khan, and their ally Cyrus. I could tell from espionage that Sal was about to finish Assembly Line. I know from hard experience that attacking infantry with rifles is not fun, so I also teched AL and upgraded my army.

Once I was ready, I declared. Cyrus took a peace deal early after throwing away a stack against a heavily defended city. I only captured two of Saladin's cities, and defeated a few small-ish stacks before he was ready to cap, and KK followed the same turn once his master abandoned him.

Game summary:

Even though I walled off the "Holy Roman Peninsula," the land there wasn't all that great, IMO, so it took a while to get my economy and production going. I'm interested to see how others settled their games to try to overcome the land disadvantage.

Once I did get the snowball rolling, it helped that the weaker civs were next to me, and I could take them out and use their land to boost my own empire. Eventually, the snowball was too big for even the tech and score leader (Saladin) to stand against.

 
@TMIT:

Impressive use of Drill. Seeing a lot of highly promoted units (due to winning tons of fights!) i have a question: What is your experience with the Drill line in contrast to the Combat line? Is it more likely to end up with such high-level units using Drill? Does it depend on circumstances a lot?

I'd say that with cannon-softened enemies the Drill line gets higher promotions because you like never take damage from any fight and thus never fall significantly below 95%. The chance of losing a highly promoted unit with 4 first strikes minimum tends to go to zero, i guess. You also don't have to heal as much and get quicker wars that way.

Is that logic flawed somewhere? I have little experience warring so i ask that.

I'd really love to try out Drill with Privateers against Caravels. Got a good island game going where i'm like miles ahead in tech already, closing in on Lib while having circumvented the world with Astro already.
 
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