Sons of Monarchy VI: Julius Caesar

Terra map, as requested. Can you Praet stomp everyone off the map before they leave for the new world? Or will you play more peacefully and claim the new world for your own?

zoom all the way in, open worldbuilder, and add the appropriate techs to the barbarian civilization. This means archery at monarch or higher, hunting at emperor or higher, agriculture at immortal or deity, and the wheel at deity.

Started with a worker and then two workboats, and by researching agriculture and BW. Then went straight for IW to locate possible city sites. Found iron up north, so settled the second city there, which I plan to make a production city, possibly HE. Found gold to the west, so went there for the 3rd city. A bear scared me a bit, however, and only a while after did I see the city location should have been at least 1NW, and possibly 1N2W. Maybe the latter would be stretching it, but it would be an excellent new capital location primed for cottaging. Am still thinking about relocating the capital, but not entirely sure if this is the right place now.

Empire so far


Took until turn 66 before more neighbours than Victoria showed up, so wondered if this was somehow a semi-isolated start. Lots of interesting folks have turned up now, though.

Settled another city upriver with a crapload of floodplains, perhaps too many, but it's another capital possibility, and then settled a food and horse site further west, on the turn after AH came online. Luckily horses turned up there, but planned to settle there no matter what. Not a great deal of production capability in the near future, but might be a decent IW city far down the line, as the place has food and can be workshopped.

Need to get the economy sorted, and would then like to settle some more cities along the coast. Would also like the dyes place, but it's jungled and food-less, so not top priority (but can farm two floodplains).

May need to settle a city up north to totally block off the area, but I'm quite satisfied right now. A barb city popped up by river and rice up north, but it's perfectly position so will take it over a bit later when it has hopefully grown a few more pop.

Have gotten out a few prats already and producing more, but don't have any war plans right now. The target would be Victoria as she is closest, but no idea what her cities look like. She must have good land to the west and south though, cause she didn't go north to the food there or in my direction.

Bit iffy on research due to early IW, but think I'll continue with Writing (Cyrus got it already and we've opened borders) before taking Alphabet and backfilling a bit. Wondered about doing sailing now, but figured the race for the great lighthouse is well over anyway. Not even trying for the Oracle, as I can't possibly get it now.

PRAETS WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Vickie's gone. I took a couple of Toku's cities as well but finally depleted my forces in a bid to take Kyoto, so I sued for peace and got a bunch of techs. Everyone's Jewish except Saladin and Ragnar, but Sal is on good terms thanks to tech trading and a shared military struggle with Toku. If Ramesses builds the AP, this may well turn out to be a pain. Then again, Ramesses has the Pyramids, and I'd like to get them. Maybe I'll beat him to the punch.

Everyone's on the cusp of Feudalism, but I've got Catapults and--thanks to the war with Toku--jumbos. I've got 10 cities, second only to Cyrus's 11 (He's expanded to the north in territory I could've had were I not so concerned with warring Vickie and Toku.). I'm considering breaking my usual MilTrad beeline and teching towards Steel instead, seeing how long I can eke viability out of the Praets, then head to Cuirs later for mop-up if I need it.

Economy is still sort of a train wreck, but I've got CoL and Currency now, so it'll sort itself out. With the peace treaty with Toku, the plan is to build more workers, chop out some cheap Courthouses, and build jumbos/cats/praets for a showdown with Ramesses (who only has 5 cities).

I am really enjoying this map and praets. I understand why some people caution others not to get too excited about them, but that doesn't stop them from being fun.

SIP, began Agr->AH->BW while opening with a worker, work boat, and then settler. I really liked the spot 1W of the gold and was afraid that Vicky would get it, hence Settler first. Also took the hugish risk of sending it out sans escort, but luckily I avoided the animals. Antium should have gone 1 SW of where I put it to grab the pigs, but my warrior scout didn't venture far enough to see them. Whoops. Quickly expanded out to five cities and grabbed a 1280 BC Iron Working followed by the Oracle for CoL in 975. Confusicianism and its shrine were founded in Neapolis near the pigs/corn/iron/eventual Heroic Epic city. That city is a beast, almost pumping out a unit each turn. Turned my attention to Vicky and declared in 400 BC, capturing London & Nottingham and razing a couple cities before eventually wiping her out in 275 AD. I also completed the GL in Rome, which is now an excellent GP farm. I then shifted my attention to Ramesses. He's far away, but he built ssooooo many wonders. Mids, Great Wall, Stonehenge, MoM, ToA, SoZ, Parthenon, Paya, and the Jewish Shrine, which is currently at 15 gpt (the confucian is at 13 gpt). Ramesses has been capitulated now that I've captured the cities (and wonders/shrine) I want.

But now I'm at a cross roads at 1110AD with Egypt capitulated. I am the far and away leader in GNP, Mfg. Goods, Food, Soldiers, Land, & Population.


Diplomacy? What diplomacy?

You can get more with a kind word and [an army of Praets/cats/phants] than you can with just a kind word.

Tech Situation:


A look around the grand Roman Empire:
North Rome:


Central Rome:


Roman England:


& Roman Egypt:


Finally, current assets:


Basically, I'm just not sure how to proceed. Everyone now has longbows, and Cyrus is 5 turns away from maces while Toku and Ragnar already have them. I guess that's what siege is for, but I'm just not sure if I can subjugate the continent quickly enough. I'm more of a cuirs/cavalry guy, so the slow movement and bombarding is….a different type of war to say the least.

At this point I see a few options:
1) Continue with my well promoted praet/cat/phant army, working towards engineering for trebs/maces/faster roads. I have a strong enough production base that I really just need to knock each opponent down enough to force capitulation.
2) Turtle up to MT and cuir stomp the continent.
My concern with this is (a) I do a lot of cuir stomping so a change with praets/medieval war is fun and (b) can I subjugate everyone quickly enough before they flee to the New World and set up colonies? This is also a concern for the first option. Of course, I've only been going through Vicky and Ramesses, whose armies will be nothing compared to Toku/Sal/Ragnar.
3) Turtle up to Lib and take Astro, and dominate the new world.

I'm inclined to go option 1, as part of the reason I was happy to set up this round as Rome on a Terra map was to see if people were able to conquer the Old World before anyone got to the New World. That seems unlikely at this point, but it is possible that the AI would only have a small contingent in the new world, particularly if I target the AI in the correct order. I just don't have the experience in medieval war to know if I can sustain this against Rags/Toku/Saladin/Cyrus quickly enough.

Cyrus, who has MT and who BEAT ME TO LIB GRR,

I'd head into Japan next. He has a lot of units but his attack courage is just normal. Should capitulate pretty quick. Then you can invade Cyrus and since he's the tech leader, you can put your commerce into espionage and just take his techs when he's ready to capitulate.

Okay, Ragnar can eat a bag of hell.

As I'd left off, I was finishing teching HBR in preparation for hitting Ramesses. Grabbed Engineering as well. Then the craziest thing happened: Tokugawa peacevassaled to me. Yes, despite the fact that I'd previously declared war on him and had traded with his worst enemy (Saladin), Toku still came to me over anyone else. This roped me into war with Saladin, but nothing happened, and Sal paid me.

As I'd hoped, Ramesses built the Jewish AP (everyone had Judaism but Ragnar). Cyrus got residency. He tried to stop the war with Ramesses, but Toku, Sal, and I all voted no. That was the only time a vote came up to stop the war.

I love midgame wars with Ramesses. Why?




You can probably tell from that screeny, but my tech rate sort of blew. I had guessed the AI would go for Economics before Liberalism as it seems to, but nope! Cyrus beat me to Lib, and then later on I got the free Econ merchant basically uncontested. Grabbed Steel anyway.

Then this happened.



So then came the "climactic final battle" with Cyrus that I'd been talking about earlier. And what does he do? He bribes Ragnar into the fray! Rags of course had been waiting for this for a while and sent a doomstack of Grens to some of my holdings in Arabia. Sal got them back.

Take this, Cyrus!



So Cyrus has Military Science and had traded it to Rags to bribe him into the war. Then Cyrus got Rifling. What do I do about this?



ANYTHING PLUS CANNON EQUAL WINZ0R



Thanks for playing, Cy.

That led to the final showdown with Ragnar, who despite having 1/5 my power absolutely refused to capitulate. That's because my major army was slow getting to the front, I stopped building units and switched to wealth, and my vassals were getting in the best hit (Sal had a bigger army than me by game's end thanks to still having most of his core cities).

Even so, the praets--depleted though they were--marched with the army to the very end. With a few more zillion turns of building wealth, I might have even been able to upgrade the rest to Infantry.

Boom.



By game's end, no one had made it to the New World. Ragnar had Astronomy, but it died with him.



P.S. I built some praetorians.



Overall, I like praet spam with Jules in particular. I think what makes them great isn't just that they're an 8-strength unit available ridiculously early; it's that they're incredibly cheap for an 8-strength unit. I lost a holy metric ton of them, but with enough siege they were getting the job done, and it's only when my siege ran out and I stopped building units that things slowed down for me.

It has been quite the religious game with me. I dont mean this in the sense of me pursing a culture victory or AP cheese, but conf, hindu, and lonely vicky with buddism. It has been pretty peaceful with me giving into certain demands from toku and ragnar, up until the point when 4 AI's dog pilled vicky. I'm just at the point to start pumping out cavs with universal suffrage. Hopefully vicky wont cap with anyone until i get to her. Pretty confident I will b able to sweep the continent with them, because of the nice tech lead I have and strong economy.

Praet's against Viccy lost around 3 in total in the capture of 4 cities including capital, got her down to 2 cities and that upgraded 8 archers to longbows.

I decided to run over Cyrus and Ragnar with cavs. During this process Toku capped Vicky and Sal. Quickly before Toku did I capped Ram II. After that I regrouped and teched up to tanks and nukes! Toku p'ed me off so I rushed a SOD tanks into his land and nuked a few of main cities. Shortly after razing a few cities Vicky and Sal broke free and I eventually got the win at 1943 AD, which I know was late, but the game still was really fun.

Alll rigghhhttt. I decided upon path one, which was to just keep pumping praets/siege/elephants and roll over each civ one by one. Things got out of hand.

I turned to Cyrus first. He already had optics, and I wanted to be able to make sure he didn't get to astronomy. I wanted to prevent any new world cities from being founded/barb cities captured, and if I capped him quickly enough I could direct his research. He offered little resistance, and capped after I had taken just three cities.

I then shifted to Japan, who was also being punished by Saladin. I was concerned that Toku would cap to Saladin, but for some reason, they took peace with each other I was then able to take most of his main cities. He was left with only one city way up north (though he got a city back from the Arabs through the AP).

I had lib almost researched by 1270 AD and could have grabbed MT, but I decided to just stay away from cuirs (even though it probably would have been faster). Had a huge tech lead on those not under my subjugation and was directing Cyrus & the others away from Lib & Astro anyway. Finally settled on Steel in 1480 AD.


Declared on Saladin a few turns later, and he quickly capped. Ragnar had already declared beforehand so they had kind of beaten each other up a bit. I then moved my stacks to Ragnar's land, claimed Damascus and Haithabu, and got the capitulation in 1560 AD for the conquest win. Pretty similar game to Oz-Man's, so I'll show some of the same screens as he did.



Final Demographics

Just demolished everyone in every demographic. Good land and too much of it from all the conquering.

Another huge help: the conquered wonders. My GP generation started off very slow but really really took off around the time Egypt was destroyed. I ended the game on TRIPLE MoM boosted golden ages (end turn I still had 7 turns to go in my 36 turn Golden Epic) fueled by 2 & 3 GP's and the Taj.

I built (and lost) a couple units:

185+ units killed to 70 lost in the wars, and spawned 6 Great Generals in total.

And like Oz, I managed to keep everyone from settling in the New World.

Cyrus and myself were the only ones with Optics, and no one got Astro either.

Concluding Thoughts:
Praets praets pults. Elephants really didn't do a ton for me. This was basically all praets for England and a lot of Egypt, followed by pults/trebs doing what siege does best supported by my highly promoted CR Praets. The production edge was just way too much. I farmed/workshopped the heck out of basically everywhere but the flood plains to the west of the city of Rome. Those commerce sites combined with two strong shrines and Organized Trait meant I was at or above 50% research for basically the entire game. Just total domination, and it was good.

I love it already! A complete car-crash of a set of civs in a tight map. Needless to say, this game is going to be a bloodbath

Took Monarchy from Oracle to help recover from all the Praet whipping I'm going to do. IW just came in, already marked out my territory. Will probably have to DoW Vicky first although part of me would like to leave her alone to bribe her to DoW Toku.

Cyrus has gone WHEOORN already, think it might even be me because it happened on the turn I got Oracle and he hasn't got any diplo hassles with anyone. Already had a settler ready for the Iron, will settle the Iron in 2 turns.

I've marked out my planned city sites but they're tentative...hopefully the AI will provide me with all the cities I need. The Elephant site was settled because Vicky's got horses and copper and I'll need all the happy I can get in this map. Am eyeing up the dye fest to the NW but might leave it to Cyrus to settle for me.

Haven't found Ragnar yet but can't be too far away.