Monarch Student^ XXVIII Mao Zedong

BigTime

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Welcome to the 28th edition of Monarch Student Prime! In this edition we use one of the perceived "weaker leaders in the game"



Mao is expansive and protective. Expansive is a pretty solid trait, allowing quicker setting up of cities due to cheaper granaries and workers, as well as gives you a health boost when factories/coal plants begin to take their toll. Protective is fairly weak, but will help your gunpowder units later on with the free drill and city garrison promos.

His UU is the Cho-Ko-Nu:



A crossbow replacement that gets two first strikes and can inflict collateral damage. It sounds great in theory, but medieval war is so weak and crossbows are not exactly the best attackers. And if you want to use them as strict siege anyway, catapults and trebs are still better. No great UU from China unfortunately.

His UB is the Pavilion:



A theater replacement that also provides a 25% boost to culture. I really like this UB. When going culture, it is a great asset to have, and even when not going culture really helps those border wars. Very nice to have.

The Start:



Double corn! And the possibility for TRIPLE corn if we move. Lots of riverside as well. Looks like a pretty strong bureaucracy if I do say so myself.

Back to basics, we got us a fractal map this time.


Huts and Events are OFF, add events in the custom scenario if you wish. (just make sure to cover the top part with your hand so you don't see the AIs )

And a cut-and-paste from Meatbuster's Monarch Student games:

Save the file and place it in your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then unzip it into your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then use Playing a scenario to play your desired level. Or use custom scenario if you want to remove huts and/or events.

Recommended Checkpoints:
*1000BC or 1AD
*500AD
*1000AD or Liberalism
*Victory!

Please remember to put the journals of your adventures inside spoiler tags.

For Monarch+ players please try to add archery back to the barbs in WB. If you don't, AIs will capture cities with archers very early in the game, which is no fun. If you prefer easymode barbs, that's fine too, just don't go wondering why an AI captured a barb city in the very early BCs!

Thanks go to TMIT for making an excellent map creation guide and to mjg5591 for getting this series back on track!

And finally, the save!
 

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I'd move the warrior SE and then debate wether to SIP or move to the grasslands hill for triple corn and possibly some nice tiles that are hidden in the fog.

Immortal/Normal - 875 BC

Spoiler :

I've decided for Hunting/Archery/Bronzeworking/Animal Husbandry/Mysticism/Road/Pottery

This game started out with a HUGE gamble. As you can see in the following screenshot, I'm trying to claim the gold and cows and my archer was already fortified on the hill, when I saw Hannibal moving to the plain SE with an archer and a settler. Since I wanted to have this piece of land very badly I declared war and won the 53% battle for a builder and a city spot. God bless protective archers! :lol:
Later on I made peace with him.

Spoiler :


Around 900 BC Shaka declared war on me (yeah, no big surprise there), but I guess I can defend myself with protective arches easily, as long as Hannibal doesn't decide to backstab me.

This is the land I managed to claim and the only city spot I'm going to found in the next turns:

Spoiler :


Spoiler :


Shanghai and Ghuanghzou are my production cities and the rest is going to be cottaged up pretty soon.


Oh, and by the way: Are those screens too big? Should I resize them and edit my post?

edit: Thanks, I've reorganzided my post now.
 
Screenshots are fine as long as you put them in spoilers. I actually recommend putting each shot in a spoiler and just keep the write-ups on the outside. That way we can just pop open the screenshot when we want to view but read the text normal.
 
Shall try to take this slowly, to avoid screwing up too quickly.

SIP:
So the tile SSE of the settler lacks a forest and may therefore contain a strat res, right?
And the river looks glorious for city connecting trade routes.


NW:
Settles on a hill, gets triple corn, a turn later.

Damn I have no idea - double corn already sounds pretty good, we can always leave the other corn for sugar city. Is triple corn so good we need to move the warrior SE in order to possibly justify not moving the settler? What is the minimum good news we need to go ahead and SIP? I have no idea :(. Ideas anyone?
 
@vogon:

I settled in place as I always have happiness problems in cities with 3 strong food tiles early on. I didn't see any reasonable source of early happiness (ok, hereditary rule perhaps) nor I'm charismatic, so I left the western corn for City #2. In my game I kept my cities from getting unhappy pretty well, which is like my highest priority. LOL.

I'm around 1AD and I will perhaps post some stuff later when I'm done.
 
Shall try to take this slowly, to avoid screwing up too quickly.

SIP:
So the tile SSE of the settler lacks a forest and may therefore contain a strat res, right?
And the river looks glorious for city connecting trade routes.


NW:
Settles on a hill, gets triple corn, a turn later.

Damn I have no idea - double corn already sounds pretty good, we can always leave the other corn for sugar city. Is triple corn so good we need to move the warrior SE in order to possibly justify not moving the settler? What is the minimum good news we need to go ahead and SIP? I have no idea :(. Ideas anyone?

I'm also torn on this. I would SIP if there was an additional non-calendar non-wine ressource in the BFC, else move up to the hill and grab a juicy 18-food-3-pop capital. I'd really like to hear some more opinions about this.

Spoiler :
I went ahead and settled on the hill, I don't regret it. The capital really manages to pump out a lot of settlers and builders on this map, where we are located right between competitors and need to quickly grab a lot of land. However it's granted that we don't know this at the start of the game when we need to make our decision.
 
I would SIP. There should be somewhere 3rd hill and you don't know which way it is. plenty of forests... good potential site.

ag+bw obvious first tech targets (right now can't remember the starting techs)
 
ag+bw obvious first tech targets (right now can't remember the starting techs)

ag and mining are the starting techs, which has led me to research hunting -> archery -> bw since you haven't got time to chop anything before anyway.
 
Emperor/Epic - Been a while since I have played and I am rusty:
Spoiler :

SIP
BW>Wheel>Myst>Pottery>Writing...

Manged to grab copper+corn to SE, then gold+cow to east. Even got the cow+corn to the west.

Tech was really slow to start because of no commerce resources. I also forgot to prioritize happy resources so for a long time I was at small city pops.

The only good thing is that the global tech rate is really slow and now there is a bunch of war to keep things slow.

Spoiler :


Shaka DOWed me, but I bribed Sully into war with him and Sully forms a protective shield around me so no problems there. I'm also in a phony war with Washington, though I probably shouldn't have done this.

As of 130 AD:
Spoiler :


Just got the Great Artist from Music. Also, managed to pick up GLib in the ADs.

Tech situation:

Spoiler :


Hannibal is not in a war and is teching ahead pretty well. Unfortunately he also refuses to trade. Not sure what to do about him. I guess I'll tech towards Lib and see if I can get a military edge to stomp Hannibal with.
 
Lots of BS, complete summary to come later as I'm taking a break.

Spoiler :


Hooray for mass warmongers that all start pleased with each other.

Shaka capped washington, and PERMANENT ALLY VASSAL'D SULLY despite the fact that BOTH me AND GK were at war with sully (who declared on me initially mind you).

I've killed the ottomans off but was left in the awkward position of defending against shaka's cannons with medieval stuff. I managed barely and gave him education for peace since I'm closing on my own cannons. Hannibal is running away in tech but isn't that large (I have the most raw land area, shaka is high score though not by much).

I have a big army of treb/ckn/musket/longbow/mace on my northern border. Despite my efforts to expand, sully (who is IMPERIALISTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) was trapped on like 4 cities and essentially gave the rest to shaka; a turn 0 permanent alliance.

On the bright side, nappy and GK are my war allies and adore me (I realized shaka's primary force was initially in washington's land post-vassal. When he permanent ally vassal'd sully I bribed nap to war with him using education, effectively cutting him off). Hannibal seems content to leave everyone alone for now. I've managed to pick up glib and sistine so I have culture control. It's a little after 1400 AD and I'm still teching steel, but on the bright side almost nobody is materially ahead of me despite this being immortal.

One reason I don't play games like this to the finish a lot is that they are slugfests and somewhat trashy as the AI's DoW logic and vassal decisions are completely illogical. Peacevassals should really be banned from the base game; the AI accepts offers w/o thought and then GIFTS techs to them when they can break away at any time. It really is like a permanent alliance, but I DISABLED those!!!!

Highly likely I'll still win since nobody is actually closing on a VC and with cannons (and shaka not even having nationalism) I should have all the oomph I need to rip his core to shreds in 10-20 turns when I'm ready to declare again.

 
Wow, Mao Zedong is THIS unpopular? Or, are people playing the map and not posting it because it isn't nice :p?

I know he doesn't have the generic ubertraits that people always look for, but:

1. Protective: Never shiny, but it is good for survival. It offers a SIGNIFICANT earlygame advantage in terms of cost-effective defenses and even a little offensive potential later on.

2. Expansive: One of the more underrated traits, this allows faster horizontal AND vertical balance and offers a reasonable permanent benefit on top of that. Very balanced lots of little bonuses that people don't appreciate.

Anyway, the summary:

Immortal/Normal

1866 UN (accident while gaining domination traction)

Spoiler :


I settled in place, teched right for BW, then AH, then writing, then wheel/pottery. Lots of farms this game. I got alpha early-ish and used that for IW and some lesser tech. Later I'd go aesthetics -----> music and get TGL/Sistine and some trade bait.

Hannibal declared on sully early and I bribed GK into that. Shaka went after his hated washington. Hindu went sully/shaka, buddha me/carthage/france/mongols.

Eventually after the early wars with sully ended the AI turned its attentions elsewhere (mostly on washington) giving sully the opportunity to attack me. He did.

I whipped walls + longbows (in vassalage) and easily stalled him out. Teched/traded to engineering and got some trebs cr II with elephant/CKN/Mace/Longbow and started taking some cities from him. GK joined in on this war on my side.

While fighting sully, Shaka PAssal'd sully and declared on both of us :sad:. This was bad; shaka had just capped washington. The answer was to give nappy education and have him join the fun. Shaka had likely a massive stack over there; nappy lost 2 cities however that kept shaka's main forces from reaching me in time to cause a 2 front situation. I killed the ottomons while using CG III muskets to barely stop a cannon stack and bought out of the war.

For 20 turns.

Shaka capped GK :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Then, I declared myself (had to give hannibal a lopsided traded to get him to pleased after doing it because I declared war on his heathen friend with disliked vassals after said asshat declared on me :mad:). This time, I also had grenadier/cannon (shaka didn't have anything new). I had .6 of his power but much of his was tied up in stock garrison duty and over there near nappy. His offensive stack was in a border city and that got MAULED by cr II/III cannons. He built a lot more units after that but was minimal in consequence since he really only employed them as literal cannon fodder attempting to defend. I took all of shaka's cities except the eastern ones (nap turned the war around too, taking his 2 cities back and even some american ones) then made shaka give me 2 techs for peace.

At this point hannibal was pushing culture despite my getting sistine (5 religions and mass media wonders @#R%$@#). He also had a reasonably large tech lead, though I was blowing the game out in production/pop/land. I had a little time though (thank you sistine abuse) and teched infantry/arty to deal with his infantry/arty/para/marine/etc. This also made me solidly #2 in tech (not counting his little vassal izzy).

I declared with ~20 turns to him winning culture. Utica was only about 6 tiles away. On declaration, I also bribed nappy + his new vassal washington into the battle as well as the now-free GK (despite him being only cautious to me). Shaka was hannibal's PAssal (why? WHY game? He only had 1 small city completely enveloped in american culture) so I ate a lot of insta-WW due to nonsense. No matter, Nappy killed that little @#$@% soon enough with some help from washington.

Then, after taking that culture eyesore within my borders and marching on utica (I had about 7 turns left), I called UN (hannibal built it) and voted for myself because that's easier than scrolling down for none.

I won. With just my votes and nappy's, too! Curious, I played on to see if I could make it to utica in time to block a culture win. I could :goodjob:, taking it with a few turns to spare. Hannibal was already willing to capitulate despite still having his colony thanks to the whole world bearing down on him. I could easily have chained everyone, having 2x the 2nd best power at that point, but no point to continuing what was (finally!) a blowout lead when I'd already secured a W.

Screens:

Some mid game situations, war is hell and I bribed a lot of it:



Ottomans can suck a duck for daring to declare on me:



The parity war with shaka shows why I always name my rival shaka in pokemon LP's:



The turn I DoW hannibal and brought the world with me:



And victory!



 
Well, I went to finish my game today and realized that I forgot to save it :smoke: I don't feel like replaying it so maybe I'll pick up on the next MS game.
 
I'm playing it :lol:

Immortal/normal to 150 AD

Spoiler :


Settled in place. Whoops Shaka. Whoops GK. Whoops Napoleon. Went BW-TW-Pottery for early commerce. Slogged to aesthetics for alphabet, around 250 BC. AIs tech slow when this happens:



Managed to expand decently. Was originally contemplating Sistine, but forgoed it in order to salvage my economy. Picked up SoZ since we have ivory though to fight back Hannibal's culture.

Lands:





Techs:



And the eventual world war I, but early this game:



GK and Hannibal just made peace. Hannibal is the only one teching well, everybody else is busy warring. Everyone is hindu besides washington, who will serve as a nice distraction for all the warmongers, who luckily are all at pleased now.

Time to tech up a storm and get a military advantage before I blast all these AIs to hell.

 
If you move the settler NW to get the 3 corns, then you run the risk of having a 1 hill capital. That would be very bad.

If one wanted to gamble and move the settler, I would move 1E :
You keep the initial 2 corns + 3 hills in the BFC. There may be more hills eastwards or even food.

SIP looks fine, though. Really. That is very green land.


I will give the map a try :)
 
@TMIT: on protective.

Spoiler :
I don't know what kind of problems people have with protective. I solidly walled the first Shaka attack on a hill, behind walls, being protective, using one defender with CG for the horses and the rest was drill. I don't think I even had longbows by the time he showed up with his mix of Impi / Sword / HA. Perhaps I lost like one archer or something. Don't remember, but he basically shattered his troops there.
After my counter on Shaka I had multiple West Point units along the drill line.

I could have steamrolled the whole map just with Drill Chu-Ko-Nus/Elephants/Catapults but I screwed around a bit for the fun. I declared and fought multiple fronts (mainly not finishing off GK midwar and instead going for Washington at the same time. I also destroyed Washingtons stack of Grenadiers/Knights/Cannons with my Chu-Ko-Nus/Elephants/Catapults, that was fun. Lost about 20 Catapults :)

After the first war with Shaka I had multiple West Point units along the drill line. Chu-Ko-Nus just refuse to take damage and thus never die.

Protective is situational and other traits perhaps just make you avoid those situations where it comes in handy by just being "better in general". But it still isn't useless.
 
Trouble.
Spoiler :

Monarch-normal. I settled on the middle corn and probably my biggest weakness has been a lack of production. I emphasized getting to calendar/monarchy with all the silk and wine around. This got me easily to liberalism first at about 1070 AD, with a few minor wars. Unfortunately none of these were able to cripple anybody. At a few turns from liberalism, everyone but napoleon and GW attack me. It's been nonstop war on multiple fronts, building nothing but units for 2 centuries and I just lost national epic/production city to enormous shaka.



Edit: lost capital a few turns later. good diplomacy gets you nothing on this map.
 

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Immortal difficulty, to 100 B.C.
No detailed review of the game but a boatload of screenshots :
Spoiler :
Settler @ size 2 + Worker steal ensured I got a juicy site in the west.
AIs being at war with each other (Napoleon is near dead, Genghis not doing much better) delayed the wonder building a lot and gave me plenty of failure gold. 200g at least will come from the Statue of Zeus.
Hannibal is a major techer. He is currently researching Engineering...
We tried to REx, which was risky for a while, without strategic resources, but things are becoming safer now.

Construction is selected as the next tech. Maybe it will be something else. I'd like to get Suleiman's land. His empire is a long strip, hard to defend. Or it could be Music. We have plenty of cottages and pop to make a golden age worth it.

Slideshow :
http://img829.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=civ4screenshot0000i.jpg


EDIT : sideshow is of really bad quality : save attached.
 

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Monarch/Normal - 300 BC

Spoiler :
Settled in place, worker, and Bronze Working to start. Sent the warrior west and then started to circle around my capital to the north.

Build order: Worker, Warrior, Warrior, Settler, Settler, Worker, Worker
Research: Bronze Working, Wheel, Pottery, Hunting, Mysticsm, Animal Husbandry, Writing

I didn't find copper with my initial warrior so I was concerned when I started meeting leaders like Shaka, Napolean, Genghis, and Hannibal.

Luckily my second and third warriors found copper to my east otherwise I would have settled my 2nd city by the elephants or the gold to the northeast.

Settled Shanghai on the wine as it seemed to be a better site. I really wanted the corn but I was worried about culture from Hannibal and not enough hills for an early production city. I guess maintenance and the 2 commerce city tile was nice but not my first thought at the time.

Settled Guangzhou with the corn and elephants and decided at this point to make a run for Construction and Elephants. I was going to try and get the gold to the northeast but Hannibal beat me to it.

Set science slider to 0% while building a library in Guangzhou while Beijing produced a few more settlers, military, and eventually a library. Once first library was up with scientists I increased research to 100% and teched Horseback Riding, Masonry, and Construction. Built some cottages around the capital but haven't used them yet. Guangzhou and Beijing sharing corn was a nice bonus as I could grow Guangzhou to quickly to whip a monument and library.

Wondering if Construction before Horseback Riding would have made more sense to get a head start on some catapults. My better production cities will make elephants while the weaker ones will make catapults.

Having troubles picking my target...

  • Would prefer Napolean but I don't know where he is.
  • Hannibal has a few holy cities and what appears to be better land.
  • Only seen archers from Suleiman so far but I believe he has iron.
  • Genghis is on the other side of Hannibal and has already asked for tribute.
  • Waiting for Shaka to target me eventually... I think he is to the north.
Setting science to 0% while I try to get a decent army together and attack someone. Not sure if I should use cash to try and get currency, sailing, monarchy, alphabet, or aesthetics. Nobody has alphabet at the moment and I don't think I want to trade construction or horseback riding to anyone anyways. Currency/sailing would be nice with a growing empire and so would monarchy leading eventually to feudalism could come in handy pending the war situation. Not sure if I will have the available resources to go for aesthetics and wonders since I am going to war.

Going to scout as much land as I can while making war preparations and leaning towards attacking Hannibal and maybe Genghis after that. Having trouble deciding between currency and monarchy paths.

I'm curious to see what others have done with the crowded start, with marble close by, and a decent amount of food and hammers.



 
To 680 A.D. :

Spoiler :
We prepared for war slowly : Beijing being entirely focused on commerce / health infrastructure, it couldn't contribute much to the military build up.
Suleiman was a good target because :
- Our 2nd city was very close to his capital, meaning we could reach it on the 2nd turn of the war ;
- He's been at war with Napoleon for ever (even captured 2 cities), meaning his stacks would be far away ;
- The shape of his Empire is a thin semi-circle around mine : capturing his cities would just extend my "natural" borders
- We were researching at a rate of 90bpt at equilibrium, which meant our Empire could absorb more land easily. Courtesy of early Pottery.
- Istanbul is an awesome GP farm, which I lack. These last 2 points are enough to justify a war in the early ADs, I think.

Hannibal reached Enginnering very fast but then went for Compass -> Optics. His tech lead isn't very impressive anymore. His war against Napoleon also slowed him down, I guess, as well as his low city count.
Our Espionnage points are still all focused on him. He's likely to be the next war target. Shaka could be as well. Shaka is big and threatening, being of a different religion, whereas Hannibal is pleased with me.

We're currently researching Education. Next turn a GP will pop in Beijing. It is likely to be a scientist, in which case we will bulb it to gain a few turns.
Winning the Music race (after Civil Service was done) granted us a Great Artist, which we saved. The Golden Age will be triggered when we'll start the production of the Universities.

Another slideshow, I hope this is an ok manner of doing a report. You can ask me if some things don't appear clearly or are missing :
http://img687.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=civ4screenshot0024x.jpg
 

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