Double Gems Monarch start - Mehmed

[goldys_lackey]

Drew this start a few days ago. It was a very fun game. I think it would make a good jumping point for any Prince player. Great start, with wet corn and double gems, and solid UB and UU.

Our leader, Mehmed (Organized, Expansive).

The start:

Settings: Pangaea, Monarch, normal, no huts.

 

[Timo33]

Yay, i've always loved Mehmed xD

If you say that this map would be a good jumping point, then i dont know if i should try that on Emperor or not, it might be too early for me to try that.
I'll play 1 or 2 more Monarch games, and if i feel confident enough i'll give this map a try on Emperor

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Look at those forests too ! It just screams an early run at maths for the 50% chopping boost and the hamman

 

[michmbk]

Actually, this map screams something else early too...two gems and wet corn, plus close neighbors...

Spoiler :

Lightning fast HA rush!!!!

While teching alphabet - a quick 10 turn peace means two techs...

So two HAs lost means three free settlers plus one worker so far. 10 turns later, she's dead, and the army would move on to Hannibal. Already on the way to currency too - this map is clearly set up to take over the world with HAs - one of those games where you build 200 HAs, and mop up the last few AI's longbows & pikes with a massive HA swarm...

I don't finish too many games these days, but this one would clearly be one of those where HAs snowball into an early dom win...

 

[vranasm]

I did something different then michmbk... expanded to ~8 cities, no wonders except Oracle->CoL which I didn't abuse at all.

cca 1180 AD attack date against celts with Cuirs...

then it will be northern neighbor and then east... I think kill Celts completely, Hanni maybe vassal tough to say... he has so many open cities for attack T0 of war that if I build enough cuirs I could get like 1/2 of his cities T2.

But I guess HA stomp would probably do quick conquest on this map...

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Look at those forests too ! It just screams an early run at maths for the 50% chopping boost and the hamman

I like this idea

1) Ottoman Hammam offers +2 @ Math + Masonry
2) Math is on the Civil Service beeline anyway

My inner builder is fascinated[1] by the idea of an early Academy on this map.

I gave it a try on this map, with a result that was "fine", but not quite as juicy as I had hoped.

My usual approach is to gun for an early library in a second city - a food special and a hill or two in the inner ring will normally suffice. At size 4, the city would normally run food special + mine + 2x scientists, churning out cheap units during the 17 turn wait.

On this map, that really didn't work as well as I would have liked - my early production felt really crippled.

The alternative here would be to get a quick settler out, then run a library and the two scientists in the capital. That saves 90 hammers off the bat (don't need the second library), and leaves the secondary production center available to churn hammers. I'm not quite so keen on this because I'd like to get cottages running; but maybe it will look better after a few experiments.

[1] My inner builder doesn't get out much.

 

[The Oz-Man]

I deem this map "fun as hay-ull."

I played differently than I usually would. Rather than settling like mad, I elected to only build one city besides the capital to capture the first available strategic resource. In order of priority, these were...

1. Horses
2. Copper
3. Iron

Any other cities would have to be captured, which made razing a tougher decision than usual to make.

How'd it go?

Spoiler :

Fortunately, horses were close enough for the second city, which I think I just managed to beat Boudica to. HA rushed her extremely early, but not so early that she didn't get out a third city. Tech path was Mining -> AH -> BW, followed by a Maths beeline. Kept all of Boudica's cities, healed up, and immediately declared on Pericles--and, since Hannibal was already expanding well and could be counted on to take Pericles's old land if I left it open, I kept all five of his cities and wiped him out completely.

Changed name away from goldys_lackey at this point and declared my love for Mehmed in all things.

Healed up and immediately declared on Monty, but during the first war the economy crashed hard. The solution to this problem was, of course, "build more workers." I was doing a CS beeline and had Currency pretty early, but that wasn't enough. Eventually got CS for Bureau, which helped, but I'd lost a ton of HAs to Monty and therefore called the war off for a breather. Declared again, took a couple more nice cities, and called the war off again--at which point he peacevassaled to Hannibal and got Longbows in trade.

Turtled up at that point and did some peaceful building (MoM, Sistine Chapel, and for some reason the Shwedagon Paya). Diplo was extremely touch-and-go. Shared religion wasn't helping with Hannibal, so I went FR... which didn't help much with Mao or Washington, either (George hated my guts because apparently Pericles and Monty were his bestest buds in the world!). Tech path was a straight Cuirassiers beeline.

Literally the same term I Lib'd MT, Monty relinquished the vassal status! So I whipped out the Taj, upgraded all of the old HA's, and declared that same turn, then used a GP to double the length of the Golden Age... then got another pair of GPs a few turns later (one from Economics) to add another 12 turns!

Monty peacevassaled to tech leader (behind me) Hannibal during the first turn of the war, but that was just fine because I was producing Cuirs like mad and nobody was fielding better than Longbows. Took most of the rest of Monty's cities (razed one), then rushed the Cuirs to the front just as Hannibal finished the AP. Which he had in the same city as the Statue of Zeus. Yeah, I took great pleasure in razing that one.

So of course Monty was wiped out and Hannibal capitulated when I took Carthage, and from there it was a simple matter of taking a few annoying cities Mao had placed in the middle of my Greek and Celtic holdings, then rolling over a couple of his major cities to get him to capitulate. Washington took much less--just taking Philly and DC was enough.

95 mounted units--close to the most I've ever built.

I love you, Mehmed. Let's get married and have all sorts of strange mutant babies with giant beards.

 

[Archbob]

Actually, this map screams something else early too...two gems and wet corn, plus close neighbors...

Spoiler :

Lightning fast HA rush!!!!

While teching alphabet - a quick 10 turn peace means two techs...

So two HAs lost means three free settlers plus one worker so far. 10 turns later, she's dead, and the army would move on to Hannibal. Already on the way to currency too - this map is clearly set up to take over the world with HAs - one of those games where you build 200 HAs, and mop up the last few AI's longbows & pikes with a massive HA swarm...

I don't finish too many games these days, but this one would clearly be one of those where HAs snowball into an early dom win...

Yep, just what I was thinking.

 

[goldys_lackey]

Wow that is a much different path than I took but faster.

Spoiler :

I vassaled Boutica with a HA -> Jumbo war. Midway through that (bizarrely horrible city placement for Booty, took only 3 of her best cities), I embarked on Hannibal with a Jumbo-cat war, which became a cat-knight war, which vassaled him (building GLibrary in capital). Then onto a Phants/Knight-Cat war with Greece, and then a Janissary-treb war which spilled into Aztec, China, and America (I love Janissaries). 1800 dom finish, thereabouts.

 

[vicawoo]

Double gold makes for an easy civil service sligngshot. Double gems might be even better because the academy is a lot easier.

 

[vranasm]

thought about giving it another try... for knights rush.

1 AD got guilds, 75 AD HBR so I guess the attack date will be around 400 AD...

 

[Htadus]

I am a sucker for good starts. I did a traditional rush with chariots.

Spoiler :

SIP, started a worker and mining (I think)
From there it was to BW and then to AH. The second city was on a plains hill to the south with horses. Bodicia almost got that site. I opened borders to recon for copper in her area. Once i got 6 chariots and when she sent her 3rd settler party, I attacked her capital for loss of 3 chariot against 1 archer. Just timed it right. I did a few silly tings and lost a few good 2 star chariot against the next city protected by 4 archers. All in all she was gone before 1000BC.

In the mean time did a CS sling and had the capital build an Academy. I did my usual Diplo, which is to play like a grumpy AI. So I had many Ai not liking me.

Hanibal built the Mids and the ToA in his capital. So the next Target was him. I stopped playing before 500AD. Took 3 of Hanibals cities and will re dow in 10 turns with some jumbos to augment the maces and cats.

 

[ben-jammin]

Did the obvious HA rush...not blazing fast as I settled a third city, and actually ended up building i think 5 settlers throughout the game. Might have actually been able to win with just horse archers with a more focused approach but ended up finishing using knights...which was still slower than it could have been because I researched things like calendar and civil service for no reason, and used my only great person for a golden age at some point. Made poor use of whipping and fail-gold abuse instead of building wealth. Really kind of a scattered play-through. Anyway, 1130 domination, it's nice to move down a few difficulty levels once in a while and just cruise

Spoiler :

Immediately reduced Boudica to one city, got techs for peace, then reduced hannibal to a couple cities, did the same. Then reduced Alex to one city, this by around the late BCs. Destroyed them completely for no real reason...unhappiness modifiers I guess, before building a few dozen knights and capping the last three AIs. Razed a bunch of useles cities, probably slowed myself down getting to feudalism and guilds a lot by using no GP strategy and by keeping too many distant cities that I should have just destroyed.

 

[Archon_Wing]

1800 AP

Spoiler :

Well, I figured there was no way in hell can I grab that cow with Boudica's capital so close, so this city grabs the gold, marble, and horses. The marble and gold will benefit the capital greatly.

With Boudica dead, I got myself some currency and aesthetics. Wait, Mao already has it? >.>

Tech pace was slow due to an international hate fest. Monty hates America, Hannibal hates Greece, and Mao is sorta just there.

Hannibal Caps poor Pericles which got Dow'd by everyone except Washington.

So apparently I am only 4th in GNP. Derp. But I win the lib race and nobody even has guilds yet. Wut? Monty finally finishes the AP in like 1300 and I go Hindu with him, but Hannibal isn't happy. Win economics and head for rifling when Hannibal attacks me 3 turns before rifling finishes. Couldn't he have waited 3 more turns to commit suicide? Well, Curs were a bit less successful in attacking his elephant/pike/treb stack but it was crushed nonetheless. Sic'd the Hindu alliance on him. He took forever to capitulate because losing a city every 2-3 turns is doing fine on their own.

Then his vassal breaks away and surrenders immediately to Montezuma. DERPPPPP. Hannibal caps after his vassal leaves him.

I had squandered my first GG on settling, and thus only came out with a medic 1 explorer unit to heal. Whoops.

I then spread Hindu to Hannibal, and the whole world has Hinduism. Monty's still in charge but has since switched to FR...Mao and Monty dogpile Washington AGAIN. Seeing this as a chance and Mao closing on to Rifling... Hmm, Mao's been a nice ally, but since he voted against me, he must die.

Monty tries to stop the war with a vote, but with me capturing Mao's votes it wasn't gonna pass.

After Mao caps, I have a supermajority in the AP. I can't call for a vote since Monty is still resident, so I decide to go after Monty next. However, Monty in his infinite wisdom decides to be a bro and hold an election he has no chance of winning. Well, I guess he doesn't have to die then. Good job!

I would have been better off getting Constitution after rifling instead of going off to steel. How many cannons did I end up using in combat? 0

 

[cseanny]

After seeing some of the screen shots I decided to play and do this:

Spoiler :

Settle on the corn allowing me to pick up cows (plus 3F and 3H forrested hills w/ Exp makes quick work of 1st worker), another corn, and a 3 food calendar. Went Min>BW>Iron>Myst(SH Capital + border pops to get iron)>AH>Pot>Wrt>Alpha>Currency>Math>CoL>HBR>Construction>turned the slider to zero for the rest of the game.

Alternatively, if you didn't want to turn the slider off it would have been very easy to chop the Pyramids out of Hannibals captured city which had stone (especially since we got math).

I scouted Hannibal north with a great city, stole a worker, then made peace..... and Alex to my NE with decent city sites so the plan was a Sword rush. As I was waiting for IW/and hook up the resource I built two settlers, one north grabbing a wine/ivory/corn city with some good forest for chopping units later and another settler 1W of Iron, picking me up fish, wheat, and hills.

3rd settler was finished 1 turn before Iron mine hooked up, then 1 turn later barracks was done in Capital. Built/chopped almost 16 sword and sent 4 to Hannibal and the rest to Alex. Took Hanni's capital then sued for techs/peace and traded with Alex 1 turn before I kill/captured his 3 cities. 10 turns later finished off Hanni with 2 nice cities grabbed.

After meeting/scouting Monty I noticed he was in missionary spam so I chopped/built another 20 sword and took all his cities. Cities had been/were in process of putting up hammonds and focusing on nothing but producing units/gold/or whipping units. After killing Monty I switched exclusively to HA/Cats (2 of Monty's cities needed HA support cause those damn jags are nasty) and ended up getting the Forbidden palace in Monty's old Capital.

Conquest victory in 1200s.

Edit: I forgot how abusive this leader can be on lower levels . Expansive for chopping every single tree, quick 2 pop whip CHs for unhappy citizens in captured cities, and quick granaries means you can whip harder sooner as/while/after you're chopping everything. Very easy to own 18+ cities (normal speed) via war by 500 AD (and that's with razing 3 or 4 too).