Sons of Monarchy IX: Asoka of India

Fractal map, no edits.

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.

Without giving too much away, this is why I like using fractal--really bizarre landmasses rather than essentially rectangular blocks for continents. By the time you get SH or calendar and the world map is centered you may be inclined to think we're on a terra type map or that there's another continent. Whether that's true or not, I leave for you to find out.

I guessed from the fog that there's a flood plain to the SE and plains to the SW. I decided to move the warrior 1 NW to see what lies in the fog to the North and the settler 1 South to see if I can see anything besides the Floodplains.

The land in either direction didn't look 'must settle' territory to me. But I decided to settle 1 South of the Cow as although it picks up plains tiles, it has most riverside tiles among the three starting points I picked out and it will make a solid hammer city. (I decided right from the start that I will move the cap as the starting point isn't amazing for cottaging.)
I moved Settler 1 NW and then 1 W to settle Delhi. And as if to compensate for the crappy Plains, I pick up Stone!


First build was worker. I start teching Agriculture for the wet corn. Then it's a flurry AIs that bump into me.


They are all coming from South and the West as initial exploring shows I am right up against Tundra on the North and Coast to the East.

After Agriculture I teched Masonry to quarry the stone. India starts with Mining and Mysticism, so Masonry seemed like the obvious choice over Animal Husbandry. I also wanted to get into the fail-gold business immediately.

Delhi built a warrior, grew to size three and built a settler who founded Bombay.

I intend to make this my future capital. It will have cottages, windmills and a gold-mine. Not an amazing cap, but better than Delhi.

After Masonry I tech Hunting and Animal Husbandry. It would have saved me three turns to just straight tech AH, but I wanted Hunting in case there's no Horse, for going Archery for barb defence. In my last attempts at Immortal, Barbs were my biggest challenge. And of course, there's no Horse to be found.

I next teched Wheel -> Pottery. I have two workers currently who will both attack the flood plains in Bombay and cottage them up. Delhi will grow next turn and it will be one turn from finishing Great Wall.

Bombay:

The Stonehenge was built this turn IAFAL. So that's some fail gold from it. Bombay will next build a monument to pick up the Gold tile.

What I know of the land:

Tech situation:


Espionage:


Diplo:


That's upto 48 turns. I now have a few questions I need help with.

1. What do I tech now? Should I tech Bronze Working and hope I have Copper for barb defence? (8 turns) Or just tech to Archery in four turns?

2. I want to stop building the GW next turn for the fail gold. Delhi will start on a settler to settle the cottage helper to the South of Bombay. Should I just let GW finish instead? (If I let it finish, I might not need to worry about barb defence, but it probably won't teach me to handle Barbs on Immortal)

3. I currently have my EPs on Mansa Musa. MM as usual, is the most popular guy on the block. Since we have met two war mongers and a third AI who is not shy to build troops, I am not sure how long MM is going to survive as he founded and adopted Hindu. Should I switch my EPs to Darius instead?

Ended up choosing to SIP: Wouldn't want to risk getting too much brown tiles Played just several turns into it: initial warrior was beckoned into the wilderness by the desert goddesses whose bodies were manifested into the sand... The damned deities lured him into hell: he died at 3600 BC to a barb lion... On the other hand, look at what I've found (Plenty of unhealth though )

Don't bother with TGW, just get the stone boosted fail gold from it. Considering you have wet corn and green cow, t37 for city 2 is every so slightly slower than I'd expect.
and btw, Delhi is a GREAT capital site! I would go for BW, take the gamble. Why are you building farms rather than cottages in Delhi btw? You have pottery! You could change your tiles in Bombay to work the forest and wine, city grows slower, but you're working unimproved floodplains anyway and by working hammers, you're more likely to get more fail gold out of SH. Oh and that incense city seems like such a waste at the moment.

Tech Path AG->AH->BW->TW->Pottery

Moved the worker 1SE to uncover the FP tile but decided to SIP. Really good site, lots of food, hills and river tiles. Got a worker and then a couple of warriors out early to go exploring, met Charle to the South and Darius to the West. Also met Boadicea but no idea where she is yet. Settled my second city to the south in 2400BC to get the horse and block Charlie off, will settle my third city (see below) in 2 turns time and am 4 turns from Stonehenge.

Current city sites and dotmap for planned city sites below. White dotmaps are backfill cities. With Asoka's Organised trait and 3-move workers I've focussed on setting aggresive early borders to the South, hence why I'm building Stonehenge.

I'm about to settle 'City A' site (Red dotmap) on the far SW of the floodplain basin to block off the unhappy Darius (stole a worker off him ). When it's settled I'll sue for peace. City B site (Green Dotmap) to the SE of City A gets the Elephant and Copper and secures my southern borders however it needs IW and Hunting before it's of any value, so that can wait until after I've settled the nearby City C site (Yellow Dotmap) on the wine for the gold and stone which I'll fp-cottage up as my early commerce city.

Easy map for me. Ten middling-to-great cities easily settled (#11 was one of Darius's). Got the 'mids, spent most of the time in Representation, and avoided useless religious techs. Built the Parthenon, Sistine, and SoL to help win and the Statue of Zeus and Taj Mahal (with a GE) as a lark (my only Golden Age as it turned out). Two other cultural cities were on the floodplains river.

Diplomacy relied on buddying up to Chuck since Darius doesn't care much about religion. Chuck and I were the only Buddhists; Mansa, Darius, and Boudica were all Hindu; Bismarck and Giggles were Jewish (the AP religion). Since Darius started as a Buddhist, he spent most of his time pounding on Boudica; the Boudica vs. Chuck/Darius war lasted nearly all game. Lib'd Democracy, teched up to Rifles, then shut research off and ran the Culture slider. Still had plenty to do late game as I got Judaism fairly late. But I stayed in Slavery until it was pretty clear I was getting Lib, switched to Caste for the final push, then ran artists. Delhi (NE city) got there first, but a few extra artists on hand culture-bombed the other two to victory. You can see them in this shot as well as the fruits of my "eh, I'm bored, let's build a bunch of roads" project:

Techs - Agriculture > AH > Wheel > BW > Pottery > Writing

The Empire


Dotmap for the future


Long term plan? Due to lack of horsies, hoping for Iron and some kind of siege breakout later.

On your dotmap, may I ask why your northernmost plot is on a corn tile? Why not 1NW: wouldn't it be better to hog the 2 fish AND 1 corn? Or is there something I'm missing?

SIP and teched Agr > Bw > Ah > Wrt > Wheel > Med > Priest > Alpha > Aesth > Lit > Currency > Cs > Calendar > Music almost finished. Literally traded for everything else. Gonna trade for Feud soon too.

Don't remember my initial buid but it went something like worker, warrior to 2 pop, improve corn, improve mine, chop a settler (2 pop). Also my warrior stole a worker from Darius. That extra Fast worker really helped me explode my start, especially with the 3 movement.......no need to escort him back.

So with Stone nearby and being Spiritual/Philo the obvious play was The Mids. I was trying to get some fail gold with Stone H but all the AI' on this map seemed slow so I just completed it around 1600 BC, then finished The Oracle around 1300 BC, and finally grabbed The Mids around 900 BC. So, My Capital has SH, Oracle, Mids, TGL, NE, HG almost finished, and will have the Taj after that. Gonna start my 1st 12t GA right after HG, Parth are finished. I should be right around 130 GPP/turn.

From there I just focused on expanding as hard as possible with the normal switches between caste/slavery to coincide with infrastructure and research. I founded Confus and was in religion/OR early. I chopped out MoM and have almost finished Parth.

I made a mistake of building a settler when I meant to have a worker, then settled the city way up north @ fish/bw, then went into WB, delted the City, and made me a worker lol. Probably wasted some 10+ worker turns, but whatever.

I was able to get a level 4 WIII. Who says barbs make things tougher!! Anyways, probably gonna attack Holy Romans with Mace/Trebs around 500 BC and should start my 2nd GA from the Taj a few turns after. Just gotta work out the timing of getting Universities/Oxford up while I head to Communism/Kremlin/Whip Rush buy 10000000000X Cav ftw.

Settled 7 cities: horses, iron and copper all hooked up This calls for the cuir rush hammer: separated from Darius by mountain-chain, separated from everyone else by Darius, portents therefore all point to Charlemagne as first target. However, I fell victim to poor scouting so the map is barely revealed. Still, there seems to be an inland sea, so we can just go round-the-mulberry-bush from Charlemagne and finish the kill on Darius (depending on circumstances.)





Tech situation:



Got beaten by Mansa to CoL (and Confu, therefore) by 1 turn Asoka is not amused: he will remember that when he burns Mansa's cities to the ground and enslave the Malinese scum.

International tech situation:



As expected, Mansa is the techmonger... next to me, of course Now, we attempt to survive until the cuirs arrive

As a bit of sport, Asoka will NOT switch to Buddhism no matter what until the very final turn, until the world recognises his right to rule everyone under an iron yoke

Interesting map so far, plenty of decent-excellent city sites... From 2Fish+Corn to floodplain bonanza, you can't be disappointed

...until the barbs come for you in their swarms, that is. Darius built the Great Wall so Bombay became the honey that lured the barbaric bees in Ah, well, managed to survive.

Will continue tomorrow, save attached for those who we wish to take a look

Yeah, I'm not dead set on that spot yet. The move you suggest sacrifices 3 grass hills and a shared grass cottage in the cap for an extra 2-3 food, a tundra, and some coast. 1NW could make a killer NE city, though.

GP farm or GT city

SIP. Opening went Ag->AH->BW->Wheel->Pottery->Meditation->Masonry->PH, with builds being worker, a few warriors while Delhi grew, followed by a settler to build Bombay on the wine while grabbing FP, stone and gold. Built great wall b/c of the large amount of land to our north followed by a 1080 oracle for CoL

I would eventually settle 9 of my own cities, but in between I decided to stray from my usual path by DOWing Darius in 250AD and elepulting him. It was a really really long war as I took a few peace treaties to heal up/rebuild, but finally had wiped him out by 1050 AD. Grabbed GLibrary, Sankore, and even built the AP myself for the super cheap powerful Jewish temples (1 , 2 per turn, 2 per turn, plus culture for 40 hammers? Sounds good to me). Also moved the capital to Bombay for the cottaged goods.

At this point I had a lot of land, but wasn't really in shape to grab MT for a cuirassier stomp from liberalism. A few were close to gunpowder, and I figured I was unlikely to wipe the map before someone got rifles to stop my cuirs.

Instead I took democracy in a 1300AD from lib and made my way to tanks. After building Taj and a ton of factories, and settling Mining Inc, and Cereal Mills, everywhere turned to building tanks. Mansa had capped to Boudica, so they were the first targets in 1780. Cleared them off the continent before turning to Charlie and Bismarck and annihilating both off the map. Was moving on Giggles but got the 1842 domination win first.

City sites
Northern India:


Southern India:


Old Persia:



I generally don't war early, but I really need to use elepults more. Just so good. And it's been a while since a good tank blitz.

More importantly, I think this will be my last game on Monarch. Only Mansa ever had infantry by the time I was DOWing everyone, and well, he's Mansa and incompetent militarily. It's probably time to move up to Emperor!

I SIP, then peacefully expanded to ten cities. I stayed away from wonder whoring and focused mainly on keeping my economy strong pre-war. I surprising won lib (very easily) and took MT. With horses, iron, and enough room to expand to ten cities I had to go for a Cur rush. Also I'm confident with this kind of rush and it being my first game on Monarch I didn't want to try anything fancy.

Charlie seemed like the best target, I hit him and easily took out his nine cities. He had a decent stack in the first city I attacked then it was a cake walk. Now I'm getting the economy back up to par and catching up a bit with Mansa on teching. Also as soon as I took out Charlie, Darius peace vassaled to me. Mansa has Boudica under his belt from a earlier war. Now my 35 Cavs sit and wait to attack Bismark next or maybe go for Mansa... I will have to think about that.

Continuing from my previous post I decided to take Bismark out all the way. I didn't really incounter any problems, except the ol' RNG gods giving it to me! But anyways I then took two cities from Giggles, capped him, then waited a couple turns for pacification, turned the culture slider up to 100% and next turn I grabbed the victory.