Empire of Cards - No Metal Challenge 2

[shyuhe]

We successfully built an empire out of cards (or wood? who knows). However, it was a little too easy the first time around so this time, I've made the difficulty level higher. It's the same settings, except that it'll be played on monarch now:

Vanilla
Standard map size
Catherine
Monarch, pangaea, arid climate, everything else standard.

Variant: We are never allowed to research bronze working.

So who's up for trying no metals on monarch?

Roster:
shyuhe
open
open
open
open

 

[yena]

Well, I'll give it another go, but I would prefer another leader this time. If this was Prince I would suggest France/Napoleon, but Monarch will be tough so maybe we need cossacks. But how about going for Peter and SE? Let's try to get liberalism by 500AD.

 

[shyuhe]

Sure, we can swap to Peter instead. SE will be interesting with these settings

 

[yena]

Sure, we can swap to Peter instead. SE will be interesting with these settings

Yes, maybe you're right. OTOH we didn't really use the financial trait in the previous game. Except for the capital most tiles were farmed, if improved at all.

 

[Mowque]

i will take part, if i may. Leader doesn't matter, other then Peter for oboivus reasons.

 

[shyuhe]

I think we had to farm more than usual because of the arid setting - there weren't many grasslands that we could use effectively. Should we change the climate settings? I think temperate is going to have too many forests to make this viable...

 

[tycoonist]

i am not too comfortable on monarch but if you guys are prepared to lend me a hand i'd like to play. peter sounds good.

 

[Giaur]

Why Vanilla?

 

[tycoonist]

vanilla because that's what we played the first one on, i assume

 

[yena]

vanilla because that's what we played the first one on, i assume

And because at least one of us (==me ) don't even own Warlords

 

[shyuhe]

It's mostly for the reason yena gave I only got warlords recently so I wanted to continue this challenge in vanilla for now.

 

[tycoonist]

i dont have warlords either

 

[yena]

So, we have a few players and seem to agree on the civ. How about generating a map to kick this game off?

 

[tycoonist]

yeah lets get it going

 

[shyuhe]

ok. I was hoping for a few more but looks like we're doing it with 4 I'll roll up a start shortly.

 

[yena]

There hasn't been an announcement for this game in the registration thread yet. Maybe someone will join if you roll a nice start for us and tell everyone how much fun the first game was

 

[tycoonist]

liberalism by 500 ad sounds like a challenge considering we only made it at around 1150 last time

 

[yena]

liberalism by 500 ad sounds like a challenge considering we only made it at around 1150 last time

It was more of a joke, although I've got it in 560 on Emperor recently (and could have gotten it even earlier if I hadn't researched Drama as well). No wonders - just beeline to Alphabet, lots of scientists, and lightbulbing. My game has certainly improved since I started experimenting with the SE/FE approach, but like many other people I find that it is stronger in the early game. I usually start building cottages in my core cities after liberalism.

Compared to the previous game we have to put less effort on wonders since we cannot whip or chop, but I think we should try for the pyramids, especially if we can find stone in time. The benefits are great for our variant, and even if we lose we will get lots of money to finance army and expansion. The critical resource is horses, but ivory, stone, and marble would be nice too. Scouting and some fog-busting warriors seems like the way to go.

Just my 2 cents, feel free to disagree

 

[shyuhe]

I've pushed liberalism into the sub 300 AD territory before. It involves getting a lucky start with a lot of food though. Unfortunately, the AI was keeping up with me in tech that game

Here's the start position:

Roster:
shyuhe
yena
Mowque
tycoonist
open
open

I think we'll do 15 turns around, then 10 turns after that. We'll probably want to discuss more on monarch than noble

 

[tycoonist]

alright, lets get this started!

i would move the scout SE-SE. depending on that, settle on the grass forest (remember we cant chop them!) or maybe on spot. i definetely want both cows and gold. pretty good roll, i've a feeling we will need it...