Sons of Monarchy XV: Sitting Bull of Native America

I made this map about a month ago (yeah I know, it should've been posted well before now), but I believe it is a fractal map

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.

Got the AP cheese win in 1615, not too shabby.

very interesting map. the capital spot is crazy advantageous for cottages, but you don't have a lot else to work with. you have iron, but no horses, no marble, and no stone. i think the map might be ideal for a cannon rush.

anyways, what i did was settle 1NE on the floodplain, then teched TW->Pottery->Mining->BW->myst->med->priesthood->writing->oracled CoL with the help of tons of chops in 1600 B.C. i was then able to parlay that into alphabet (after sinking 1 turn into it) from hammy, and then monarchy from sitting bull shortly afterwards. infected saladin with CoL, while zara converted on his own; so, when zara demanded i convert, i did. next turn, saladin converts to judaism! ended up switching back out a little bit later, so that i could make huge trades for currency and feudalism. CoL still ended up working out OK i think, as it helped me justify holding off on an early library so that i could get a GP for the shrine; it's giving me 10 gpt in 50 B.C., not shabby but not great either. had really hoped for a bunch of saladin's cities too, oh well.

anyways, my tech path after the oracle was aesthetics -> poly -> literature -> music -> bureaucracy, which is where I am now. chopped TGL in mound city, which has both a lot of food and super duper production. settled the artist in mesa verde, hoping to flip the stone so that i can failgold sankore (and angkor watt?) for cannon/musket upgrades. maybe this was a stupid idea, trying to fight the jewish holy city for a bunch of rocks.

my tiny little empire:

tech situation is looking pretty good:

i stopped at 50B.C. instead of 1A.D. because i need to think quite a bit of where i want to go from here - cannons/maces or rifles/trebs? what do i want to lib in this case? i'm really not sure! i wonder if i can lib rifling, assuming i can get 3 scientists to bulb education and lib itself? and i've never tried the steel slingshot; it seems almost impossible unless all of the AIs hate each other... and there's been no wars yet. nobody wants my dirty bribe money.

Tried a HA rush. DoW WK and then Sury + Zara jumped in to attack me...Zara had a stack of like 13 units and gobs of troops behind them. I had to use some special tactics and lost 2 cities before capturing them back + capturing all the way to Ethiopian capitol. I took peace with ~13 cities, NIGHTMARISHLY behind in tech. At least peace deals with WK and Zara eventually got me like 9 technologies including major ones like alphabet, currency, monarchy and code of laws. Only reason I stopped vs Zara is that he had xbow + longbow + big elephant stack + was almost to engineering. You know...minor road bumps for HA rushes.

Still, sury and zara didn't actually hate me, I got Sal + Zara to pleased, and so I've just camped out with cottages and gasped my way back into relevence. I probably won't be able to move out until infantry/arty, but since I'm #1 in land and sury got DoW'd by charlie I'm probably going to win anyway.

I saw the discussion on the start and decided to settle 1NE on the flood plains. Tech path was Mining -> Bronze Working -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Animal Husbandry -> Writing -> Aesthetics -> Alphabet (trade) -> Mathematics -> Literature -> Currency -> CoL -> Philosophy (bulbed with a great scientist).

Settling 1NE of start left me with very little production power, with the only hill being underneath a forest. I decided to get BW first so I could chop and mine that hill for some early hammers. This move had a nice side effect of making Dog Soldiers available to me early, so I ended up building only two Warriors overall (both of whom were killed by barbs). The cap produced a Worker first then grew to size 3 before producing a Settler. I settled the copper/wheat/cow site to the east first to get some early production started. I settled the Fish/Corn to the NW next, right in Saladin's face. I settled city 4 1E of the northern Horses (Saladin's borders had this for a short while before a Library came online here and pushed the borders back). City 5 went 2 SW of the cap to work a cottage for the capital and to have access to some hills. City 6 was captured in the SW from barbs in the late BCs and once I got Calendar via trading I was able to get a nice boost to happiness and health resources. The last city was settled 1W of the stone to work cottages for the capital.

The overall strategy was BW first for defense, followed by getting Pottery ASAP to have some very early cottages. This worked really well since I was first to Aesthetics and Mathematics and could use those really effectively to pick up Alphabet and backfill techs. The fish/corn site had so much food that it has ran 2 great scientists full time since it got a Library and the city was still able to grow to size 6 for 3 pop. whips. Dog Soliders aren't super great at taking barb cities, but having solid production allowed me to make enough to take one and my strength rating has been good enough to avoid trouble so far. Saladin founded Islam and spread it around quickly while Wang Kon founded Confucianism and didn't really do anything with it, while HRE founded and spread Christianity around. Even with all the religions going around, nobody has declared war on someone else yet. I'll probably convert to Islam when somone demands it from me since Saladin and Zara are both Islamic and that should keep most of the neighbors at peace with me, plus Wang Kon will just draw the ire of someone get attacked eventually.

HRE has built tons of wonder, but I got the Great Library in the city to the NW, so I should be able to stockpile great scientists and go for Liberalism. I have horses and iron so a Cuirassier break-out seems easiest. Pics of the empire included:

Well, I just put myself into a corner which is going to be hard to get out of.
SIP and went BW then straight for pottery. Met Korea and Saladin early on and saw a gold mine with fps close by but closer to Korea. Si I decided to worker steal and choke. Damn good capitol Seoul. Settled 2nd city 3E and worked the stone after border pop and chopped out the mids. Then Sal that fool settled the horse north of me so I got no horses
Sal was in my religion and he had not great land so I wasn't really that interest to attack him. But Korea had horses in his capitol... And he was weak. So I went straight for construction and dowed him with cats and swords/axes. Well, short to say he had no chance but my economy was suffering esp as I went into police state during the war. And unfortunatley Sury, Hammy and Zara formed a conf block with me and Sal in Hindu and Charlie a lone Buddist. I had to make peace when Wk had one city for tech as I was getting far behind. Right after that Zara moved his big stack next to me and started plotting. It had to be me as he liked his other neighbours but he was just plotting. I had a big army and Zara just got feu so I couldn't just sit there with a big army as my economy was poor with no col. So I dowed Hammy instead.
Took out his stack and took his 1st city. Zara dropped out of plotting only to start plotting again a few turns later...
I am doing pretty well vs hammy taking a 2nd and 3rd city but I haven't got feu!And that is a disaster as he can't cap
Looks like I will be forced to make peace before he peacevassals to someone as I am getting was behind in tech. Hard to get out of my terrible financial funk with a vast 12 cities with Zara disliking me. And he is a capable AI...

SIP. First city to NW to block Sal (horses came as a nice surprise), second city copper/stone, managed to get gold/wheat city on WKs border. Once stone was quarried chopped out Pyramids (850bc) while heading for HbR. HA rush v Saladin 350-25bc. Cost me 9 HAs and a chariot but gained 5 cities, 6 workers, ToA and a GG medic. Ist GP was a GE from Pyramids who rushed Parthenon, will start Glib next turn.



Looking good for a standard lib>miltrad cuir rush.

Oh well, things went poorly diplowise.
Zara went out of plotting and my war vs Babylon was going well. I took Akkad, which was pakcked with umnits aftar a hard fight and Hammy was hurting badly. Just about to get feu in and looking to cap him. The turn I get feu Hammy bribes both WK and Zara on me and that's that. My army is deep in Baybylonian land and Zara is standing with a huge stack out side my cities and I can't do anything. The AP vote comes in and I thought I was saved. i made peace with Hammy hoping for The Ap next turn.
And Zara votes yes only for Hammy, the one I just made peace with, to defy it
So now I am way behind in tech, with the AI's got machinery, soon enigneering and Zara with a free reign in my territory.
No techs to bribe in anyone and really noone to bribe anyway.

I think it's easier to Lib Steel than Rifling. There's not too much more in it than Lib MT really. You have to self-tech Chemistry, but it's the same cost as Nationalism on the MT route. I guess the biggest difference is that you have to tech Gunpowder before completing Lib whereas with MT you can Lib it first, then tech GP.

I think the best way to do it is to avoid Machinery, put your bulbs into Philo, Edu, and Lib. Once Lib is bulbed and 1 turn from completion, you can trade for Machinery and possibly even Engineering. Start building your trebs and maces while you tech GP and Chemistry, and then when Steel comes in i think it's only 80g per treb to upgrade to cannons, so just one GM will give you more than enough gold to upgrade all of your trebs. You can go straight for Military Science next and then upgrade CR Maces to Grens with capture gold.

The problem here is that you only have 5 cities to build troops out of so you may not be able to get enough units while you tech GP > Chemistry. You may want to build some trash troops that you can start on earlier like Longbows or even Swords. The Cannons will be doing most of the work anyway, you really just need some warm bodies to finish off defenders. Maces can be added later.

I was mistaken earlier, I had closer to 20 cities after backfill. When I opened up this save again I realized I could just flatten the world with infantry/arty most likely. I have AL and Artillery (pretty good considering I had almost nothing in tech most of the game) and can easily just dogpile sury + cap him, then the rest of the world.

I'm not sure I'll even bother playing it out. HA rush slogged me down but since nobody declared I got away with sitting on cottages with like 18 cities and that will carry most games if you don't get killed.

thanks for this advice. i played my game out to 920 A.D. last night (forgot to email myself the screenshots so i could write it up on my lunch break though ), but i think i might re-play my turns from 50 BC, just for comparison, with your words in mind... my original turnset will still be my "real" turnset, but i'm interested in comparing the strength of the two rushes.

ok, so what happened: first of all, i did manage to handily win lib, but had to use it on replaceable parts instead of rifling as i foolishly traded for machinery before i was able to put a bulb into lib, which meant my GS path was optics -> astronomy. i had a monopoly on education right till the end, but hammy managed to get it too the turn i had finished self-teching liberalism. oh well.

this turnabout, this wasn't all bad, however, as i instead 1.) used the GS for a golden age, which i used to generate 1.7 great merchants with 7 turns of caste, and 2.) i was able to pump a lot of 6/8 XP crossbows for upgrading into riflemen. my rush, against either zara (the bigger tech threat) or saladin (weaker and less popular) will consist of 16 super rifles and 10 trebs. the AP buildings helped a ton here. anyways, both of these guys just recently self-teched mil trad, but cuirs and muskets should still be no match for me. will need to keep a small stack of rifles at home to defend against his inevitable counter attack though. i'd trade for nationalism but i don't want to give up replaceable parts to anybody...

anyways, i guess for the replay, i'll tech paper-> edu (w/ bulb) -> philo -> lib (w/ bulb except 1 turn) -> trade for machinery (with philo hopefully) -> gunpowder -> trade for engineering w/ gunpowder unless a philo/paper trade is still available -> chemistry (w/ bulb) -> lib steel. i guess that's a similar amount of beakers as i got last time. hmmm... however, i'm worried about obtaining a 2nd GS in time to bulb lib before i get machinery. maybe i should eat a turn of anarchy and switch into caste? alternatively, i could just put 2 GS into chemistry instead - not a big loss of beakers this way, and shouldnt need any anarchy. this path also doesn't leave a lot of time to build trebs, and upgrading catapults is expensive enough that i'd want a great merchant. OK, so instead I think the way I'd have to go here is similar to my original path, in that i'll trade for machinery w/ civil service + cash, and engineering for philo/paper, as soon as each trade is available, but now i'll want gunpowder instead of printing press, and i'd want to accelerate the 3rd GS instead of holding it back for a merchant. would be a lot stronger if I can pull it off... 16 cannons + 10 stack defenders would be a lot stronger in the long run than 16 rifles + 10 trebs...

Well, I did the same thing at the start, choking Korea. And the game developed pretty much the same way. But after stealing a few workers I made peace and tried to play more conservative with no wars. i got a bit lucky that TGW was late and got some failgold from it. The game turned out exactly the same religiouswise but instead it was judaism for Hammy, Zara and Sury. This made it hard as Sal was Hindu. So I did something I normally don't "waste" hammers on. I made missionaries and converted Zara to hindu. Then bribed him in on Hammy. Since Sury and Charlie are in different religions I would be surprised if they don't start a war yet. I will try to finish TGL and Mom but other civs have the techs too....
I did manage to get the marble spotto help me. Sitting at 8 cities surrounded by hindu friends I'll intend to do nothing until cannons. As I don't have horses.
Maybe a small war to take out WK, but I'll guess he'll vassal to someone.

T56 and WK gets Alpha