Carthage, Monarch, 25AD - Where would you go from here?

tobiasn · Jun 4, 2012

I'm playing my first real game at monarch - previously I've tweaked the settings a bit in my favor. Now I went all in, and it looks allright - I think?

As I'm new on the level, I'd value some input! Very grateful if you would take a peak at the save and give me some pointers.

Some info:

- Good post-calendar start (heh..) but my land was kinda lacking in food.
- Harassed by barbs early and chickened out on my settler move for city # 2, but OK spot
- City #3 (Hadrumetum, north) is total crap, I only grabbed it so I could make Numinian Cavalry and get Lizzie's cities.
- Beelined(ish) to HBR and took out England, got me to the #2 spot
- On a decent sized continent (continents map), alone with Persia and Sumeria after me taking England out. I'm #1 in score atm.
- Srsly harassed by barbs, took out a lot of my forces. Cities still suffer from post-war whipping :mad:

, so I've been slow-building/chopping for quite a few turns
- Got too few workers now that I can clear jungle, but have no real expansion strategy
- Putting a few beakers in Alpha to try and get it from Darius -- think I want to get to Astro first and find the other 5 civs. That other continent is either huge or really crammed (or both)

Any input would be really nice, I'm trying to up my game a little

Screens (1920x1200px):

Spoiler :

Riflin'Joe · Jun 5, 2012

While you've done well enough taking out Liz early, you've let your economy really slide. You need to stop building military now and get out about 6-8 more workers asap. You need to be spamming cottages everywhere. Also run some scientists to get an academy.

jokulmorder · Jun 5, 2012

i think hadrumetum should have been 1SE or 1S so it could share pig with utica. utica already has the corn; it doesn't really need the pig too. another option would have been 1NE of the horse so it could share the corn and then switch to the clam, but you lose out on working a lot of land the current hadrum/my suggestion would have worked.

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Thanks for the feedback guys;

jokulmorder said:
i think hadrumetum should have been 1SE or 1S so it could share pig with utica. utica already has the corn; it doesn't really need the pig too. another option would have been 1NE of the horse so it could share the corn and then switch to the clam, but you lose out on working a lot of land the current hadrum/my suggestion would have worked.

That's good input, placing the city there was a weedy decision for real. Both your suggestions are better. I'd probably favor the 1NE of horses spot - grabs horses in BFC (proved to be important) clam and possible corn-share.

Riflin'Joe said:
You need to stop building military now and get out about 6-8 more workers asap. You need to be spamming cottages everywhere. Also run some scientists to get an academy.

Without London gems capture I'd be tanking fast yeah... I've prioritized food, chopping and trade network... and forgot about the economy. I'll see if I can turn things around in 10-15 turns.

Kallikrates · Jun 5, 2012

Hadrumetum doesn't have enough food before civil service, but I have settled cities in worse places to get resources early (suffering 3-5 desert/tundra/peak squares to get stone).
The land generally seems very good too me (I usually get rather crappy land, but for me that's part of the challenge, so I usually don't reroll. And one frequently gets a decent to good site for the capital, but only crap for cities 3-5 which is not clear at the start of the game) and especially good for financial! Check whether it might be better to cottage some of the plantation spots to get them earlier (one still gets a little bonus). And get currency/calender asap, if you haven't already.

gems are my favorite luxury resource, because they usually are on grass not desert hills, can be worked almost immediately (other than plantation goods) and get doubled by the forge, a building you need anyway asap. BTW, does the map generator make a point of putting some resources on otherwise crappy terrain, so you don't get full benefits? Eg. Silver, Marble in the Tundra (is that geologically sound...) Iron or Stone in the desert. If a city has three plains hills, the gold is usually on a fourth, a desert hill.

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Kallikrates said:
BTW, does the map generator make a point of putting some resources on otherwise crappy terrain, so you don't get full benefits? Eg. Silver, Marble in the Tundra (is that geologically sound...) Iron or Stone in the desert. If a city has three plains hills, the gold is usually on a fourth, a desert hill.

I agree, gems are real nice. Too bad I didn't REX fast enough to get the rest of them. Oh well, there's always war.

The rest of the resources aren't in bad locations at all, I just think there's little of it. I was lucky and had iron close by, but copper was hooked up later (for denial purposes, mainly). No stone, marble is still 8-9 turns away.

Kallikrates · Jun 5, 2012

Little diversity? or what do you mean? I think you have a lot of resource squares
I don't see the copper. Maybe I am jaded, but I treat marble and stone as "luxury", meaning I never count on getting it early enough. Of course it is somewhat reasonable to get them after the first war. But from my experience this is a map way above average. And very apt for a financial leader with a horse based UU, not pressing need for early copper/iron.
I almost always have either tundra or desert in at least one direction from my capital, so I have to put already the 3rd or 4th city too far away for my taste and plenty of useless space in between. I haven't figured out yet, if I should prefer a start with lots of useless, barbarian-spawning tundra/forest/ice north/south of capital to having 3 or 4 neighbours or not.
Probably I should start rerolling maps...

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Yeah I sounded kinda jaded I guess

Yeah it's pretty decent amount of resouces - the horses obv helped

My main concern is actually getting enough food to expand without cities getting too far apart. The marble city is somewhat of a tradeoff in that regard, I experimented with lots of different setups there. I'm normally a builder kinda guy, and usually at this point I have some wonders, now I have none. Feels weird.

I think this being my first "real" crack at Monarch, I'm just a little more worried than usual.

Anyway, I guess I'll do the following the next few days:

Economy:
- Get/whip more workers online, 1 for each city at least, focus expansion on high commerce spots

Science:
- Trade for alpha, get currency, then astro before cats.. don't think i'll be warring for some time

Military/Espinoage:
- Focus on Gigla/Sumeria as long time target to take out (he's the main threat right now anyway)

Htadus · Jun 5, 2012

that is a cool start, do you have the 4000BC start file?

Good that you Captured London. Do you have Calander yet? That should have been a priority. Also you do not need Astro if your need is just to make contact for tech trades, just get to caravals. Then take you time as needed getting to Astro.

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Htadus said:
that is a cool start, do you have the 4000BC start file?

Yeah I should have.. At least I have a real early one. I'll check when I get home.

Yeah getting London was a real early priority, before I settled town 2 even. I thought that with the diff level and my MM-weedyness I needed a second developed capitol early to cut it.

Htadus · Jun 5, 2012

Btw if you have not started a new BTS game, there should be a 4000BC autosave in the autosave folder. Every time you start and play the turn 0 Autosaves get deleted.

Also to bad you did not settle your capital on that riverside Forested plains hill.

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Htadus said:
Also to bad you did not settle your capital on that riverside Forested plains hill.

hah, oh man...

That I did not see. That would be a pretty nice start yeah...

tobiasn · Jun 5, 2012

Here's the initial autosave

Htadus · Jun 6, 2012

This was a fun map. I played till 200AD thinking that is where you stopped at.

Spoiler :

About your game:

You have 2 options:
Take out the next Ai or expand to east-southeast peacefully.
In my game if I were to continue, i would take out the rest of the continent while founding more cities. With cats you wont need too many units to take Ai at this level.

tobiasn · Jun 6, 2012

Hehe, wow! impressive stuff. Thanks for writing the report. Looking fw to checking out the saves and check out how you ran things.

jokulmorder · Jun 6, 2012

i too decided to try this out and man you cannot rely on this AI to tech at all!

Spoiler :

Edit:

Spoiler :

tobiasn · Jun 6, 2012

Damn you guys make me look proper n00b :lol:

Obv city placements are lots better than mine, and tbh I should've seen those blunders. However, you're way ahead of me when it comes to optimal tech routes, worker and city/specialist MM.

I really enjoy the comparisons though, makes it easier to learn from my mistakes when I actually can spot them

Htadus · Jun 6, 2012

tobiasn said:
I really enjoy the comparisons though, makes it easier to learn from my mistakes when I actually can spot them

I agree, the only way to learn is to identify mistake made in past games and preventing the same actions repeating. Also I have found looking at someone elses game sometime help identify another approach to the same goal. I am glad the saves were helpful.

BTW, Nottingham is not a true crap city, you can use it as a decent hammer city with a few farms, mines and workshops. Also if you build the Collosus, it will be that much better. First use farms to get the city growing asap. Once it get to useful size of between 12-15, change some of the farms to workshops. Also by 0AD it is time to not build cottages and switch to farms and hammer improvements. Then once the Forge is in use the hammers to build wealth or units.

I am quite sure that you can Liberate Medicine in this game. But as an insurance, be the first to Philo and do not trade it. Once the religion is founded, Ai loose interest in it. Also set up 2 GP farms and run as many scientists as possible. Plan to use 1 GS each for Edu, PP, Chem, SciMeth and Bio. In order to bulb Bio fastest you need to skip compass. So I do not know if you want to do that since you want Astro. If you learn compass, then optics and Astro come before Bio. So it is your call as to how you want to proceed.

I am pretty sure that you know bulbing optics and compass is a waste of a good GS, but I figure I say it out loud. It is better in this game to get to Optics asap since you have two lousy tech partners and find the others and get rid of locals.

Gumbolt · Jun 6, 2012

@Htadus - He will never bulb anything if he does not run scientists. So far he has had no great people.

Okay the game.

The capital could be running 2 scientists instead of 1 food/commerce tiles. Same for other cities. Will mean a great scientist in 17 turns? The capital is really underworked. Size 6 is okay but I have seen games where the capital is size 10-12 by 1ad. Which means a mix of farms and cottages for growth or mainly farms and specialists.

COL would really help pumping out specialists. (scientists)

The economy has 30 gold spare. You could still take the war to another AI if you whipped 10 or so Numidian cavalry. More than possible. You can still run scientists in most cities. You could then demand techs for peace. Shouldn't be too hard for monarch level. Hopefully you can capture 2-3 workers too if you delcare.

For me the economy can go one of two ways. Start laying cottages or start farming out land to run lots of scientists. That or you start whipping out 10-15 NC.

You have choices. The cottage choice will be slow. The scientist approach could give results quicker.

City build wise. You don't need the galley or sword. You have so much forest to chop out workers or units. Those forest are covering up grassland.

tobiasn · Jun 6, 2012

@Htadus

Thanks for the concrete tips. What to bulb and not and when -- good examples of where my game is 100% more haphazard than yours. Most of my game is pretty whimsical, at least when I'm in the classical era without any pressing/acute objectives. I had to read Liberate Medicine twice before I understood what you meant

I'll take a crack at it, though!

@Gumbolt

I've played a little further and have indeed started some scientists, as well as deforestation. Sword ang galley was to counter barb offensives (ne barb city now captured + seafood protection for new city 2e of north clam). But there was no real build strat at 1ad, you're right about that.

The 2 other civs are ar war, and I have a plan for taking Gilga's best commerce cities as well as taking away his horses+metal while getting to Optics. Currency is in, Calendar almost in. That helped.

I'll post a new save when I've come a little further.

Again, thanks guys, for the tips and constructive critisism. It helps a lot!

Carthage, Monarch, 25AD - Where would you go from here?

Warlord

Attachments

Prince

Chieftain

Warlord

Prince

Warlord

Prince

Warlord

A and L's dad

Warlord

A and L's dad

Warlord

Warlord

A and L's dad

Attachments

Warlord

Chieftain

Warlord

A and L's dad

Phoenix Rising

Warlord

Similar threads