Radio Rides Again (Monarch)

Why hello there everybody, after two, count them two successful forum games, one on Prince and my most recent one as Cyrus on Monarch. I've decided to try this Monarch thing out again, with a few variations on my Cyrus game.

Settings:
Monarch
NORMAL Speed
Standard/Fractal
Huts/events OFF

The Leader:



Looks like no ridiculously powerful immortal rushes for me, I'll just maybe have to wait for the modern (or is it industrial) era for the Panzernihilation! The assembly plant seems like it would be nice for getting a GE for finishing a late wonder or something but looks lackluster to me, perhaps I'm just seeing my situation wrong.

The start:



I moved the scout 1 SW of the settler to reveal just some forested grasslands and a plains hill I believe, SIP seems to be the way to go here and SIP would give me an extra hammer to begin with.

I hope everyone enjoys .

The Save

Two pigs, plains hill under the settler, and a chance for a strategic resource 1NW or 2S(I'm calling horses right now!). A pretty good start.

SIP or 1S seem the best options, 1S nabs you some hills, I can't tell what's up north. Definitely go AH first.

Assembly plant's OK, it comes at the time where GP's start to come a bit slower and your cities are reaching 20+ pop, so you can run engineers for more production. Panzers are iffy unless you're fighting tanks/modern armor.

SIP looks right - faster worker as I think you'll have 4 base hammers. Production looks mediocre, but that is a cottage bureau capital. Premature to speculate, but I suspect you are going to want to prioritize monarchy (unless there's a lot of happy resources nearby).

Find a good production city to build all your nice shiny IND wonders.

1NW is probably a resource - hopefully horses or copper. AH is a no-brainer. Probably BW after that to clear those trees.

I won't get to it tonight, but I'll definitely mess around with this one - I like Bis even if I never use his UU - it's a solid trait combo and it always reminds me to build more workers!

strong site, SIP, turn resource bubbles on next time some of us poor souls can't see resources without the bubbles.

I wouldn't be surprised if you go with AH->BW-->pottery

vranasm said:

strong site, SIP, turn resource bubbles on next time some of us poor souls can't see resources without the bubbles.

I wouldn't be surprised if you go with AH->BW-->pottery

Click to expand...

+1, and duel worker opening sounds cool for the forests.

SIP looks right - faster worker as I think you'll have 4 base hammers.

Click to expand...

This is one of those handy little tips/things to loook out for. By settling on a square that gives two as an expansive leader & working another tile with 2 you get a bonus hammer for producing your worker. Note the +25% only applies to hammers, not to food put towards the worker. So 4 hammers + 1 food will yield 6 a turn whereas 3 hammers + 2 excess food will only contribute 5 a turn.

Looks like a strong cottage/beauro capital, with some early wonders too thanks to industrious and a metric crapton of forests.

Alright, to begin with I SIP and then proceeded Worker, Worker, Warrior, Settler while researching AH, then BW, Agr, Wheel, and pottery.

I founded Hamburg here for the quick pigs and also great cottage potential along with the possibility to grab the marble and ivory after a border pop.



While I was exploring I met my supporting cast

First:



Then I met



Charlemagne is one of my most hated leaders, he always seems to love expanding ridiculously, and Pericles is creative, quickly boxing me out.

Then I encountered



And I finally met



I really hope that Charlemagne and Justinian stay in the same religion or things could get messy.

Anyways, taking advantage of my IND trait and my "metric crapton " of trees, I chopped out The Great Wall and the 'Mids.





At some point I founded Munich for copper and maybe a dye or two later.



After a while and realizing I only had 3 cities, I quickly made 2 Settlers and founded Cologne and Frankfurt, Cologne for fish, horse, and cows and Frankfurt for wheat, blocking, and perhaps a riverside powerhouse with Machinery (which is what I'm currently researching).



And so I saved without a single war, a real accomplishment for me .

The wonder you built made you the least numbered city among known world. Just compare the map of 2040BC and 25AD.

I got home late last night, so only messed with this for about 10 minutes, but I see you and I are taking different approaches (not that either one is necessarily wrong).

There were way too many civs on our landmass, and when AH revealed horses in our BFC, I used my trees to chop out the "free AI capital" wonder. We'll see if I get it tonight - I too hate Charlie, and he's close, so I chopped & whipped chariots at lightning speed. PRO AI with hill cities vs. the fastest massing of a chariot army I think I've ever had - who will prevail? I'll play a little while longer tonight and post a shadow, but with the speed & number of my chariots, I liked my chances enough to cut off before the attack...

As for your game, IND definitely means wonders make sense, but I'm not sure I would have gone GW here - there's 5 civs total on our landmass, and with coast nearby, barbs don't seem like they'll be an issue. Mids was probably a good call IF you plan to use it - there's a lot of food/FP near our start, and if you wanted to farm everything up instead of cottage, you can make a pretty powerful caste/rep economy based on the nearby land. However, it's not totally necessary here, because it looks like we have pretty good happiness nearby and fantastic cottage land. I'm willing to bet my shadow will involve cottages in at least the capital and 1-2 nearby cities.

A couple other thoughts - do you already have monuments & granaries in the two cities that are building archers? Granaries at a minimum, but I wouldn't even bother with archers anyway - I'd rather build offensive units I can use for war later. If I need defense in new cities, I prefer to build them in more established cities. Almost any new city for me starts with monument (if I need border pop) and granary first, before anything else - the more established cities can get a unit out in a few turns. It's not like a new city even needs defense until about size 4-5, especially when you have GW.

Also, I can't remember the last time I've self-teched machinery. You're IND with marble - seems like the aesthetics line would make more sense. T of A, GLib, Sistine, Parthenon would be in my more immediate plans if I were you.

One more thought to consider - what's going on with your scouting - it doesn't look like you've explored the world at all - I would suggest you get a chariot out and send him on auto-explore - you want to see what everyone else is up to as well. Once you get up to higher levels, some of these little areas of focus make a big difference between winning and losing.

I expected the Great libary to be int he plans too. Marble was netted with second city and ind leader.

Radio, could you please post a save?

Yep, here you go.

On an unrelated note, I feel that I somehow bungled the opening, it needs more war and a reevaluation of the Industrious trait so I may have to shadow my own game in a sense and post a second version where things go a tad bit different, tell me what you guys think about that.

1585 domination

Very nice, I'm almost to 1400's and my initial builder phase took a 180, those initial hammers could have been used for units, I believe I will play again, this time with no wonders.

Next section was pretty slow but big, until the end where I finally get a win but remain at the bottom of the pack, will probably post tomorrow.

Can chariots dislodge a PRO civ with archers on a hill?

Of course they can...



vranasm clearly played this much better than me, as I imagined he actually paid attention to his game somewhat after the early rush. I get really bored these days once the game is in a dominant position, but I at least finished this one out for once.

@mich
well my gametime is 2h 26 min according to that stats screen

I think the difference was in different tech path. I settled that "Prague" spot on my own because I raced there with settler at size 2 (2 pigs are good thing) and built cottages while going for HBR (I had catched the other massive FP spot more east from "Prague").
It probably allowed me quicker recovery.

OTOH I chose worse target of 2nd war... I somehow turned off brain when choosing the target.
Justy in my game had Mahabodhi, Great Wall and Stonehenge, so he looked attractive and I hoped he will build Pyramids too... he didn't. instead spammed troops the bugger!

I at one point totally stalled in the war, because I stopped the build units machine and had to maneuver with the rest of troops and since the Justy cap was on hill I had to take it as last, which definitely slowed me a lot...

I automated workers probably a bit later, I think after hitting CS and spreading farms the way I wanted.

vranasm said:

@mich
well my gametime is 2h 26 min according to that stats screen

Click to expand...

I got pulled away for kid duty for about 45 min or so - so I'm guessing our games probably took about the same amount of time. I just realized I didn't even print that screen right - not very helpful since it doesn't even show what I built!

Justinian always seems to have a lot of troops - I think it's because he settles so many cities, so he ends up with more troops than a lot of civs. Not sure what his unitprob is, but I don't think it's up there with guys like monte and mehmed.

Hammurabi was boxed in bad in my game, so he seemed like an obvious target, sitting there with just 3 lowly cities. But I paid for that with some evil maintenance until I got courthouses laid down.

Another section played, still more difficulties, I really should have gone with an early rush after I met the 3rd civ, perhaps later I will replay but for now I will share my most recent section.

Right off the bat I got Lit which I used to get the Great Library, shortly thereafter I decided enough was enough, no more being boxed in, this of course meant war with the only civ I had a greater power rating than, Justinian.



One brief war later and I had an additional two cities, but he capitulated to Charlie, that little good for nothing son of a...nutcracker perhaps.

After that disappointment I decided to redirect my attention to the only person worse off than me, Hammurabi. Especially since I had a decent rifle draft going and I had some Cavs already out.



Right before war I met:



And his vassal



Note that SB doesn't even have gunpowder yet, after I get rid of Charlie and Justinian, he's probably next.

Anyways, I DOW'd on Hammurabi and took two cities before peace.



And his peace offering:



Finally, a win under my belt but pericles is on to Assembly Line already, this game is only going to get harder I imagine.

And so we go...