Sons of Monarchy XIV: Ramesses II of Egypt

Fractal. One edit that won't factor into the early game but could later.

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.

very, very food-poor around our starting point... I even don't know where to put our 2nd city...

We've got one of the most abusive UUs in the game so it seems pretty simple. Tech towards AH, settled horsies, and go conquer. Well, we have horses in our BFC and to make things even better we can do 2 turn WCs.

I opted to open with worker > warrior > barracks > grow to 4 pop > Settler > worker > then build around 6-8 WCs. I scouted Alexander and declared on him 2X for 3 early workers while settling my 2nd city with Rice/Copper/Stone. I chopped out SH in my 2nd city, killed Alexander and declared on Louis, stealing several workers, capturing a Holy City (gifted it back too expensive), and pillaged improvements to help get me to Writing. At one point I was at zero slider with -9 GPT (100+ gold surplus though). All the free workers (I'm at 11 or 12 total so far [built 5 myself]) helped me quickly chop, build cottages, grab gold, etc to catch up quick enough.

I conquered a barb city (Corn/Copper/Gold), expanded 2 more times, and will soon conquer another barb city by my old Capital. I've already moved my Capital, chopped out a granary and a Library in Alexanders old Capital. I've begun to start chopping The Mids and the future plans are to head up towards Aesth > trade for Alpha towards Currency and use PS to make me a lot of WCs to take over America. So I'm hoping to own around 15-18 cities by 500 AD.

Thoughts on the map so far. Not great surrounding land but access to quick WCs quickly solves this problem. All in all, assuming you balance your economy, then the map is on the extreme easy side, so far.

Settled in place and teched AH>Mining>BW then I think it went Pottery>writing

2nd city to the East to share cow and get river/stone.

Attacked Louis 1480 BC
Louis eliminated 800 BC - captured Stonehenge.

Try to recover economy. Pyramids and Aesthetics came in 425 BC. Rep and some fail gold help the tech rate. Washington and Alex are as behind as me so trading with them will help catch up to the 2 dudes up North.

Grabbed marble way down south. Lost the city to barbs once Built Parthenon in Paris without the marble since I couldn't get it hooked up in time. Still had a bunch of War Chariots up North but didn't think to have them go down south and fogbust.

Alex and Washington are fighting each other. Everyone is Hindu so diplo is good - Saladin and Hannibal teching fast. Will need lots of fail gold in this game.

Got Great Library and National Epic in the Pigs/Corn/Gold up North. Lost the gold to Sal's culture but hopefully those wonders will help get it back eventually.
Built MoM in 520 AD
Built AP in 580 AD
Founded Islam 760 AD
Hannibal gets Lib 880 AD
1 turn after 880 AD: Moved Palace to better commerce city around jungle river. Once I get Education and get Oxford there it will make for better beakers.

I got a Great Priest to bulb Theology when I wanted a scientist. Same thing happened a few turns later so I bulbed Divine Right. Almost never tech those two. The Unique Building/Stonehenge combo here getting me priests really made the tech path weird. Both techs were good to help catch up though since they trade very well. Hannibal also beat me to Theology but no one else had it. I "won" the music race but "the other guy" must have got it first since I got no great artist for it.

Built the Taj and used a GP for a 24 turn Golden Age to help get infrastructure finished and build Cuirs.
1210 AD Alex has too many units so I bribe him to attack Washington.
1240 Backstab him with Cuirassiers.

AP forces peace w/ Washington which makes the war tougher. He has some Pikemen and Cuirs but I just overwhelm him eventually. I built Heroic Epic in my original capital early and it was producing 1 turn Cuirs all through my long GA.

1370 Have enough to block AP vote for peace.
1460 Alex capitulates - left him with 3 cities, one in tundra down south.





I let Saladin get too strong w/ all the land and tech trading him and Hannibal have. I built up a decent number of cannons and cavs but I was still 1/2 his power. I could have out produced him eventually and won even at tech disadvantage (he was 2 or 3 techs ahead) but it would have been ugly and very time consuming. He was producing units like mad - he attacked Asoka around 1530 AD. I probably would have had to wait until fighters/bombers - didn't feel up to that since this game was set up perfect for a UN win as soon as I became #1 in land due to the Hindu love fest on this continent.

Had so much positive diplo with Sal I could afford the -4 trading with worst enemies (goal was to have India build UN). So I just build gold/beaker multipliers everywhere, then switch to building Wealth and beeline MM - gave Asoka Physics>Electricity>Radio>Mass Media. At this point Hannibal and Sal (while still even or maybe ahead in overall tech) weren't even close to MM (one had Electricity at the point I gave India MM but.... Asoka never builds the thing - Saladin does

So I look and I'm +15 or something with Washington, and if Hannibal votes for me I'll just have enough. I gift Hannibal about 5 techs, give him about 10 resources, and go 100% espionage. His favorite civic is Free Market (which I'm in) but he's in Environmentalism. I change him to Free Market and I'm now at +10 with him (he loves Alex too). Vote comes up and I barely win with Hannibal's votes.

SIP. Tech Path – AH, Mining, BW, Myst, Med, PR, Just started Masonry.

Well, it would have been a waste not to use those awesome War Chariots on somebody, and poor old Louis kindly obliged by building his cap to a pop of 7 and not settling anywhere. And now there will never be a Louis XVII…

Settled the second city site 1NE of the stone to the west before killing Louis, when I eventually get to Alpha it’ll be my scientist pump and looks a good NE candidate, Paris looks great for an early worker/settler pump with Fishing and my next site will be to the west for the copper/stone. The cap is going to build/chop the Mids as nobody’s yet taken GW or Henge and I’m guessing there’s no wonder-whores left on the map now that Louis is dead.

I’m 1 turn from Oracle but haven’t decided on what to take….CoL is good for Caste and tech-trading and Alex would be a good choice for religion hate-bait but I think Monarchy would also be good as early happy is an issue and there’s also lots of good land to the north once IW and Calendar come in, so maybe HR whipped workers/settlers would be better than CoL?

Both cities that i captured from Alex were defended by 1 archer. I killed two archers outside of his 2nd city and then took the city with 2 injured WCs. I then i moved on to his capitol with 3 WCs to start pillaging and causing some trouble while more WCs caught up, and i found it was also defended by a single archer. Two more archers were escorting a settler 2 tiles away, but that's still only a grand total of 6 archers. On top of that, i had stolen a worker fairly early on so he should've been in unit spamming mode. He also had copper hooked up for at least a few turns and i never saw a single metal unit. He didn't even whip his size 4 or 5 capitol to try to save it when my WC showed up. Just a second archer likely would've prevented me from capturing the city with those 3 WCs.

War Chariots ahoy!

Settle in place. Early exploration reveals Louis XIV being relatively close to my starting location. I really want to rush him. Tech path is mining-->AH to get the Chariots online. I settle my second city 1NW of the stone. At this moment, however, I get distracted by the shiny land to the north (I find the south very underwhelming) and decide to rex and try to get some premium land before Saladin or Hannibal can. Hannibal loses one of his cities to a Barbarian Spearman uprising (which I am glad to see never made it to my part of the world), and Saladin takes it off him. Saladin founded Buddhism and Washington Hinduism. Buddhism is quickly becoming the major religion, and everyone except Washington joins in.



I figured at this point that I could take out Louis at my leisure, given that my early expansion served mainly to take land that was supposed to be his. My economy is also in pretty bad shape, with a lot of my early production going into the Chariots that I was planning to take Louis out with (which I probably should've done at this moment, but I was afraid that I was already too late and had hoped to get more wonders out of the deal). I have three production sites, with my capital, Alexandria and Pi-Ramesses taking care of that while the other cities focus on commerce. At some point, everybody dogpiles Washington, and this state makes Louis want to become my vassal. Saladin caps Washington, which makes him all the more dangerous. At this point, my economy is still crap, so I need to use my production advantage to get somewhere. I build a bunch of wonders (Hanging Gardens/Mausoleum of Mausollos/Great Library/Notre Dame in my capital, Chichen Itza in the northern city to help fend off Saladin's culture and to make sure nobody else gets it) The hilariously backwards Alexander is the obvious target. Now, my War Chariots do become useful, as many of them were veteran barbslayers and, promoted as Knights, they make short work of Alexander's cities.



I do have to defy an AP resolution to keep the war going, but I really need to take all of Alexander's land and add commerce to my production. I let Louis take Alexander's southern cities, though.

Louis also researches Optics for me, which I get off him and use to find Asoka, who is doing amazingly well for an isolated AI.



He actually has techs on me and might beat me to the Taj Mahal.

I'm going to leave it there for now. Planning to go conquest here, leveraging my production advantage at this point to take down everybody else (Cuirassiers should help).

Map:



I really really regret not razing Knossos. One to the south it'd take Gold, Copper and Clams and loses 3 tiles of crappy overlap with Athens. Man, I really should be paying more attention. I will probably leave it empty when I declare on Saladin and hope he takes it so that I can raze it from him.



Demographics aren't bad, though I am second in almost everything. I hope that Hannibal will peacevassal to me after I destroy Alexander so that I can take out Saladin easily.

Teched AH - Mining - BW - Masonry - Pottery - Writing. Because AH revealed Horse and Alex and Louie were nearby, I started planning War Chariot rush against Louie. I really don't know how to whip War Chariots They cost 30 which is exactly the amount received via a 1 pop whip. But people say that 1 pop whips are bad, so I avoided whipping them. As a result, I only have 6 WC's in 1000 BC.

Because it has taken ridiculously long to prepare a WC rush, I decided to gradually transform it to a HA rush. I already have researched HBR. As soon as I get Archery, I can start building HA's. Fortunately, HA's are much easier to whip than WC's.

By 1160 BC I settled 4 cities. Here's how they lay out: Managed to build 2 wonders as well: The Great Wall and Pyramids. I'm running Representation, but the only benefit I get from it is happiness. Since I've been concentrating on military, I didn't find any time to build libraries and sacrifice production for scientist specialists. I've heard that in civ 4, doing many things at once is not a good thing.

DoW'ed on Louie in 725 BC. On Monarch, the AI is really warlike "You declared war on our friend!" was a reason good enough for Alex to DoW on me in 600 BC. Despite experiencing a terrible RNG misfortune against Louie's Archers, I was able to finish off Louie by 425 BC. He had only 3 cities. After Louie was gone, I concentrated my military effort on wiping out Alex which I did in 50 ADAs my economy started to collapse, I was forced to build Libraries in midst of the war, and run scientists/build Research in Thebes in order to crawl to Currency.

I guess now my military ventures are over and I'm gonna concentrate on recovering my economy and filling the land with cities. My total city count is 12 at the moment.

I never tried a WC rush before but after playing this map for about 50 turns and building stonehenge and Great Wall, just because! I decided I would try the other thing Ramesses is known for besides spamming wonders. (Though Hatty is a better rusher...)

I settled in place as I didn't see a point to moving. Teched AH, Mining and Bronze Working. Immediately hooked up horses and revolted immediately after BW. I found Louis early enough and I wanted to steal a worker but his Creative borders kept getting in the way.


I settled a city 1 NW of the stone to share the cow and give me one more base to pump WCs out and it was all them from this point. The cap was churning them out about 2 every 5 turns. I chopped a bunch of forests to accelerate the process.

In 2080 BC I gathered five WCs on Louis' borders and declared.


Paris was terribly defended with only two archers. Piece of cake.


Orleans fell the following turn.


I waited for Lyon to grow to size two before hitting it and finished Louis off.


At this point I could have settled all the land and teched to Cuirs or something. But Alexander teched BW very late. (Turn 50 if memory serves) Since the French war went very smoothly and my cap was still pumping out WCs at a nice clip, I dared to be stupid and declared on Alex in 1800 BC!


Sparta was lightly defended and easily captured.


Athens proved a little troublesome to get to as I had to fight a few spears to pillage his copper first and Alex didn't chop all the trees, slowing my WCs down. But it too fell in 1440 BC.


I razed one more city and kept the last Greek city to eliminate Alex. (Screenshot lost) At this point I was hurting massively. My economy was totally trashed. I was more than happy to take advantage of Spiritual and accept this to keep Hanni off my back.


Now that I abused WCs, I decided to abuse Ramesses' Industrious trait and converted all those forests Alex was kind enough to leave for me into this:


The pyramids were much needed as my economy was completely shot to bits. I had lost 10 workers to strike and was left with none.


I used Rep scientists and self-teched Math, Alpha, Currency and will have Metal Casting next turn as a monopoly. My economy is still awfully fragile, but I am starting to recover, my worker force is being rebuilt and as I clear away all the jungle and settle all the land I secured, I should be able to get into a stronger position and win Lib. Washington has thankfully decided to be Taoist and draw Confu Sal and Hanni's ire. I will adopt Confu as soon as it spreads to me.

Plan now is to hold onto MC, tech to Compass, use that as trade bait, switch caps to Athens as it is a better cottage capital, build NE in Paris, get to Optics and meet our mystery wonder spammer, kill everyone.

Alexander is easily destroyed. I find an extra continent around Asoka and my economy is crashing. I get Banking for Nationalism and Divine Right and Paper from Asoka for some of the techs that he lacks and start on the various wonders (Taj Mahal in Thebes, Spiral Minaret in Memphis, University of Sankore in Alexandria, Versailles in Athens). I win the Taj and Versailles (the second of which I strongly prioritised, chopping forests around Athens to improve my economy) and get failgold for the rest. My economy now starts to quickly recuperate, especially with Universities, Banks and Courthouses (in Greece) coming online throughout my empire. I prioritise Military Tradition and Gunpowder so that I can get Cuirassiers and take Saladin by the throat. I get to them first and declare on Saladin. That doesn't really work out as well as I expected. I quickly lose Sparta and have to redirect all my reinforcements there in an attempt to reconquer it. I also lose Ephesus and Knossos, which I quickly reconquer with some leftover Cuirassiers (I left Knossos without a garrison, wanting to raze it). Najran falls relatively easily to my new-fangled Cuirassiers and Medina also falls, though it is already more problematic (and I have to redirect some troops back to Najran after it is shortly recaptured), but I truly falter when trying to take out Saladin's pocket city of Kufah. I lose almost all my siege in that assault and I lose a lot of soldiers there and in recapturing Sparta. With my technological advantage also gone, I sue for peace. Saladin bribed Asoka into the war, but he doesn't really play any role and I get gold from him for peace when I feel like it.



I resettle Knossos one to the south for a much-improved city. I win Liberalism and take Replaceable Parts to get closer to Rifling, though I am beaten to Economics.

With Rifling in hand, I redeclare on Saladin. Riflemen and Cavalry give me a huge advantage, and after I destroy one of Saladin's stacks, I march on Mecca and take it out handily. At this point, Washington declares independence from Saladin and I decide to take peace from Saladin so that I can take out Washington (who has a higher score than Saladin at this point). Not having to face those darned protective units will really improve my lot. I get Steel just before I march into Washington's territory, but my siege is highly unimpressive and it takes me a lot of time to take out the first cities. Washington throws a stack at Athens, but that's just suicidal. My reinforcements, however, have to be redirected towards Mecca and Sparta, now both under cultural pressure from Saladin. I use these wars to upgrade some of my old Macemen into nice City Raider III Rifles, which greatly helps me. I relegate Washington to his own little peninsula and the vassalise him, keeping his cities on the mainland. My next priority is Assembly Line, which will let me have the technological edge on Saladin, which is pretty important when fighting a Protective opponent.



Asoka and Saladin have a defensive pact, which allows me this nice little trick...



A war on three fronts will be far too much for Saladin to handle, and I hope that it will also take Hannibal down a notch so that I can take him down. Sadly, I doubt that Saladin will be able to really do some damage to Hannibal and force him to vassalise to me, but maybe I can manage that.



The demographics now show me ahead in everything, which means this game is pretty much won.



This graph really shows my semi-failed war with Saladin. I won land and my relative power did increase compared to him, but it did allow the rest to catch up to me. I'm not sure I should've done anything else, though. Maybe I should have just settled in and gone for the Space Race, but that would also have been a difficult path. The second war was a real romp, though, and I am now well ahead.

Having got rid of Louis I had no commerce but lots of Chariots and needed some money fast...say goodbye Sal! At least he was kind enough to found a religion for me before feeling the pointy end of a War Chariot, and with Louis also founding one and me taking CoL from oracle and Tao from a Philo bulb I've been playing some religion shenagans with the other civs. Alex DoW'd Washington ages ago and is still giving him a kicking whilst Hannibal is quietly seething in the corner. With no tech trading going on between the AI civs, their tech rate is terrible.

With Sal dead I quickly chopped out the Mids just before I want completely bankrupt to run caste merchants, a quick currency bulb soon sorted my economy out and then I just went about settling the huge amount of land I've got. I'm up to 14 cities already and I'm blasting the tech tree running specialists, Economics is already in and I'm now teching around Lib.

Yup, WC's are cheesy early on and on this map they are lethal, with neither Sal or Louis having metals nearby they really are lambs to the slaughter. The land doesn't really help the AI civs Expansive trait either and they been very slow to expand, although being on bad terms with each other probably doesn't help.

With a commerce-poor capital the Mids are a must, but with the Mids built the amount of riverside green tiles and food from Plantations available once the jungle has been cleared out means this is probably the easiest SoM map I've played.

ben-jammin said:

Is this gonna be addressed? Sounds like maybe the starting techs were changed but the AI bonuses werent?

Click to expand...

I am playing this on Immortal and Alex was more than happy to spam out the few spears he could before I crushed him with WCs. I loaded this game as a Custom Scenario though, don't know if that makes any difference.