Best plan of action?

[teakbois]

I am not a strong warmonger at all, but its time to work on that.
Monarch difficulty.

Here is the Sumerian empire:

Spoiler :

And there is still plenty of open land to the south:

Spoiler :

As you can see i can easily get 10+ cities out of this, but i want to do some conquering. I have a settler on the way to settle the banana/horse/floodplains which is more of an intermediate city to connect down to where toledo and the barb city is and could be a good staging ground for an attack on Monte.

Copper was painfully far away (so cruel), and it didnt even cross my mind to go for IW to make Vultures. But I have a bunch of Horse Archers scattered around and now can crank out a bunch of cheap vultures.

So the questions are:

Is it better to make Vultures or Swordsmen? 25% melee and slightly cheaper vs 10% city attack? Gotta assume Monte will have lots of Jaguars so Vultures will be nice there, but Mansa's Skirmishers will be a pain in my ass.

At this point am I better focusing on infrastructure and wait for Elepult attack (never done that either)?

What is the best order of attack?

Both Monte and Mansa are willing to backstab each other, and Im working on alphabet so I can make that happen.

My thought was to take out Monte with HA/Vultures (with a little help from Mansa) and then wait to Elepult Mansa. And Izzy can sulk in her corner being all meek until Im done with those two.

 

[blunderwonder]

its gonna be difficult to war monger on such a big map youll probably have to raze alot of cities early in the game because the costs will bog you down so much that by the time you get to the 2nd or 3rd civ youll have been out teched On big maps its proably best to rush early only if someone is close by, and by close i mean with 2-3 cities distance away tops. otherwise you can just take advantage of a good techpath and beat them down with a better/quicker unit

 

[Strickl3r]

Farm Floodplain in capitols BFC imo, since it's very foodpoor and settle that irrigated rice much earlier. Rice city can also share the gold if you wanne whip something in the capitol and regrow.

Looks like you can also do the bulb math + oracle construction thing on this map.
You are creative, you start with the best starting techs, you have a gold mine, you have elephants and after all it's monarch and i don't see any amazing capitol spot, althought Lib MT or such is still no problem obv.
Mansa is kind of close and maintanance isn't such a big deal, so no need to raze citys.

 

[Izuul]

As mentioned above, that wet rice city should've been settled very early to help work the gold. A 0-food tile is a pretty big burden to growth, especially here where you don't have much food in the cap, so it's good to be able to pass the gold b/t a couple of cities.

150BC is a bit late to start a Vulture or HA attack, even on Monarch. It will probably still succeed, but that's not something that you want to get into the habit of doing if you trying to move up the difficulty ladder. What's your tech situation like? What path have you taken? Could you have gotten Construction by now? Cat + Ele + Vulture attack is vastly more powerful than Vulture and/or HA.

 

[teakbois]

As mentioned above, that wet rice city should've been settled very early to help work the gold. A 0-food tile is a pretty big burden to growth, especially here where you don't have much food in the cap, so it's good to be able to pass the gold b/t a couple of cities.

150BC is a bit late to start a Vulture or HA attack, even on Monarch. It will probably still succeed, but that's not something that you want to get into the habit of doing if you trying to move up the difficulty ladder. What's your tech situation like? What path have you taken? Could you have gotten Construction by now? Cat + Ele + Vulture attack is vastly more powerful than Vulture and/or HA.

One of my shortcomings is a get obsessed with a land grab. This map does have plenty of room (although Mansa got up in my grill fast) but I prefer to push outwards and then fill in spots like that later. Im still new to concept of overlapping BFCs to, and in this game I ended up with very little overlap again.

I guess one of the things i have to get used to is to make sure every food tile has at least one city that can work it.

As far as tech, I dont like not getting Great Library. If I see Elephants should I more or less beeline construction after worker techs/BW/pottery/writing and forget about TGL?

 

[Quibblesome]

You're too late to attack at the moment on this map. It could work but you're going to be bogged down. As Sumer your aim is to bronze working=>Vultures (chop/whip)=> GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO.

.... but you have 5 cities and the only civ in attacking range is Mansa and Mansa early game is suicide. It might have worked with GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO but now it's getting late and he might be not far off feudalism already (which is the END of swords and horse archers). If you really want to fight then scout Mansa and look for non-hill cities and whether or not he has copper/iron. If he has no metal/horses then sword a non-hilled city. If he has metal but no horses then axes. If he has horses and metal then give it up.

Instead I'd suggest exercising your UB (cheap courthouse) and expanding aggressively and teching towards a mid-game push. If you're technologically ahead it might be worth bribing someone to attack Mansa to slow him down. However that might be tough as I'd expect Izzy and Monty to start a war soon.

As far as tech goes the great library is good but remember that its only produces as much science as a city with 2 scientists. Playing without wonders is pretty good too!!!

 

[Izuul]

One of my shortcomings is a get obsessed with a land grab. This map does have plenty of room (although Mansa got up in my grill fast) but I prefer to push outwards and then fill in spots like that later. Im still new to concept of overlapping BFCs to, and in this game I ended up with very little overlap again.

I guess one of the things i have to get used to is to make sure every food tile has at least one city that can work it.

As far as tech, I dont like not getting Great Library. If I see Elephants should I more or less beeline construction after worker techs/BW/pottery/writing and forget about TGL?

Well, that's why it's important to come up with a rough plan early in the game. TGL is a very good wonder if you are playing something like a Lib game with a later breakout. The primary benefit is that it helps you get great scientists to bulb things like Philo and Education on the way to Lib. It's not so important if you plan to war early.

With the land you have here, you could definitely build TGL and play for Lib, but if you are going to do that you don't need to build Vultures right now.