Hatty - Monarch Cookbook Mark II (IC concurrent)

[i_imperator]

@ Vranasm:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the tips, i can't believe i made those noob mistakes, no wonder i nearly went mad while playing this round. I definatly need more work on my worker micro and city placement. Which of my cities should be producing the settlers then? Also, do you have any comments about the way i used my GS's , and any advice on what to do about my beakers per turn? Thanks again for pointing those mistakes out.

 

[vranasm]

@ Vranasm:

Spoiler :

Thanks for the tips, i can't believe i made those noob mistakes, no wonder i nearly went mad while playing this round. I definatly need more work on my worker micro and city placement. Which of my cities should be producing the settlers then? Also, do you have any comments about the way i used my GS's , and any advice on what to do about my beakers per turn? Thanks again for pointing those mistakes out.

Spoiler :

I used a lot ulundi and timbuktu on happy cap and thebes too. But you should let grow to happy cap first.
That problem with bpt is closely related to the problem with size of cities...you dont work cottages you dont have income.

For example all of forrests around Ulundi went into workers+settler/s. Forrests around thebes went into Oracle. Generally I deforrested outside of BFC too (especially around thebes).
You have too many forrests still around.

1 GS into Academy -> great.
2. GS alpha bulb -> bad. You could have/should have waited for Aesth<->Alpha trade even if it came very late probably. The first tech which gets usually bulbed is Philo since the "lesser" ones are not enough beakers.

edit:

Spoiler :

you seem to have pretty dense road network... that could have waited... the worker turns are wasted... until you have enough improvements and chopped forrests you need only 1 functional road (connect resources ofc!) and with sailing you can sometimes avoid roading completely (not on border cities near enemies...ehm AIs wanted to say!)

if i didnt mention...that silver city is heavily missed :-(. And marble for GL too... it's 100% hammer bonus :-( so much waste...

 

[Cenan]

@cenan

Spoiler :

Interresting approach to the 1st save.

As I understand it you wanted to go with specialists economy and that motivated your choice of improvements, but I am affraid this map is not for running specialists. with all those fp and grass riverside it's primary cottage land.
Even then when you choosed this route, you should have grown cities to their happy caps first, then work specialists.

and even then you build cottages on nonriverside tiles around Heliopolis... This I dont understand.

Workers for the amount of cities seems fine. but I think here applies the same thing as to Trynthlas. The decision building Mids without stone costed you some settlers+workers that are needed.

I would like 2-3 cities more, the land is there. Especially what baffles me most why you didnt settle that silver spot with its commerce + happy soon.

The hindu block against your buddh block is a bit uncomfort, but it's very tough to avoid such thing. Maybe it was better to join hindu block and let Charle eat the cake.

Spoiler :

Thanks for the input.

Yeh, SE isn't really optimal here, that i know. Mid's certainly cost me in the arms race.
Looking at the other saves, I could have just as easily chopped out a sizeable
army of axes or whatever and wiped out Charly and JC.
My approach came from the fact that everyone else was going to do a cottage spam fest,
tech to trade-bait-of-choice and keep the warmongers of the mostly hindu block happy.
I wanted to see if another approach could be just as viable a strategy. Since this is
a "best save" thread, nothing was lost.
Looking at where the economy is in my save versus the majority of other entries,
I'd say mine certainly isn't a leading contender, but at least I'm not behind tech wise.
I'm actually in front of a few too. Not too bad for a Noble player

On another note, I'd say any land save for brown tiles are good for specialists. The
more green the better. FPs too.
But then again, my games rarely reach the era where Emancipation is going to cripple a rep/caste econ.

Building cottages on riversidee grass, as i understand, is only to grab the extra
1 . That doesn't make a cottage on a normal green tile worthless, just
worth 1 less.

Edit:

Spoiler :

Yeah, not hooking up marble sooner was a blunder on my part. It is actually hooked up now,
but most of the hammers have already been spent into HE and GL.
I must admit i don't agree on silver city being that important yet. Rep nets me +3 in my 5 core
cities. I'm sure I'm missing something important with regards to that site, but during my round
i never had the urgent feeling of needing to settle, what i considered to be a very suboptimal
spot, for +1

 

[Aldor]

I didn't play first round in time, hope its ok to jump in and start with the save from round 2! I'm just starting monarch level really, have one won game so far (and some lost), so don't expect wonders Here's my attempt:

Spoiler :

I immediately went into settler build mode in Thebes and Ulundi, while starting the Oracle in Timbuktu. Unfortunately I lost it with only a few turns left there...could've chopped another forest but oh well.

I intended to take the barb city SW of Ulundi, but failed to notice it had only 1 pop...so it got razed, forcing me to build another settler to go there. The next settler went between that city and Timbuktu, to form a blocking line for Charlie. He still had enough room to put two cities there tho.

The barb city between Thebes and Ulundi was attacked by Charlie with a single axeman...very nice of him, I took it when only one archer was left.

After that I settled the spots in the area near Thebes and in the north eastern area (after razing the last barb city there).

My tech speed of course dropped like a rock with all those cities, anyway my path was roughly Monarchy, CoL, Currency and then Alphabet (since still no AI had it). This was rather slow as I didn't put scientists up early. Instead I used a priest to get a great prophet, and built the Confucianist shrine in Timbuktu with it. After that I set the specialists to science, but its still some turns before the first GS will arrive. The moment I got Alphabet I traded around for some backfill techs (especially iron working, only to find that Charly had claimed the nearest iron source). Next plan is calendar to finally get all the luxury resources up, then Civil Service.

Diplo wise, JC went into a rather long war with Cathy. I didn't wish to interfere there really. Charly is cautios as our borders are now close. Asoka is pleased. Biggest threat right now is Charlie, he has a large enough stack in his border city. He doesn't have too much on his hands yet but I suppose he will soon.

Comparing to the other saves, my tech is very low. I tried to bring my cities to reasonable sizes, and built libraries everywhere. Also looked to use all the cottages. I am currently building markets in my main cities, which will help. Also as soon as calendar is available, the luxury resources will further bring the economy back up. With the confu shrine, there's also the option of building missionaries and spread it for extra cash.

Big next job is to build more military, especially axemen and spearmen since I only built chariots so far. Power rating is dangerously low.

Btw. on workers: I have currently set most of them on "build road network" since until a few turns ago I didn't have iron working available. My intent was to activate them again and start chopping the forest over the luxuries, but I forgot to do so before saving the game.

It was too late to take and post pictures, hope its ok to just add the save.

 

[lymond]

I didn't play first round in time, hope its ok to jump in and start with the save from round 2!

Yep...welcome

 

[lymond]

I wonder if lymond can beat this date.

Very nice, GB. I might try but you've always been the better warmonger. Must be a Brit thang. I'm just good at whipping walls

 

[Fezzik]

EDIT: actually I'll submit my round in a later post when I have time to write it up better.

 

[vranasm]

@Cenan

Spoiler :

Yeah I love doing different things too, so it was interesting to see it, but I didnt like that you didnt let the cities grow (thebes and timbuktu) to really abuse those specs. If you did that I think you would be on par with cottage spammers in bpt (maybe a bit forward, tough for me to calculate...)

Riverside cottages... well on epic...first 15 turns you produce 100% more commerce, then you produce 50% more commerce the next XX turns (can't remember! it's 30?), then 25% more commerce... on 1 tile you work anyway...
At first I thought you really wanted to try no cottage run, but when I saw heliopolis I got a bit angry since building 6 cottages on grass without river and not building them on 6 riverside tiles is wasting a lot of commerce.

 

[Cenan]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

Hehe. I'm sorry i made you angry with my weird placement of cottages.
A spec econ does not exclude using cottages for commerce too.
Heliopolis is a blocking city. I could either have stagnated it at 2 or 3 pop
and wait for CS, or let it grow on the cows and let it make me a tiny bit of cash
while doing so.
I opted to chop the forests around Heliopolis to put in granary, lib, market and
courthouse.

It's true what you said about 100% more from a riverside cottage,
which is another way of saying that it's simply making you 1 more
than a normal grass tile.
You could flip the argument, and say a Town on a grass tile will net you 4
+1 with PP, +2 with FS for a total of 7
A riverside cottage would then net you 8 given the same civics.
The point is, the riverside cottage advantage erodes with time.
If we imagine a city with all grass river tiles, and another with only grass tiles,
the difference would be exactly 20

Oh, and do remember that the +1 from a riverside tile doesn't go away
just becausee it's not cottaged

Edit:

Spoiler :

About not growing Thebes and Timbuktu. I might have overrun specs there to get
the two GS during my round, to the point of starving those cities.
I actually do think im close to being on par bpt wise with the cottage econs.
At 0% slider, my save can muster 125 and a surplus of 57
now, putting the slider at 100% nets 317 and a loss of 89
That means Paper would be in, in 3 turns...

 

[vranasm]

@Cenan

Spoiler :

Did you actually readjust some more citizens? I would have to check ingame, but every save I checked bpt at 100% and I think I saw yours around 250 bpt...but I reviewed yesterday a lot of saves...so it's a question of my memory ;-).

I am already thinking about replaying the round 2 with GPP focus...

 

[Cenan]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

Yeah, right now the empire is in build mode, so not running many specs.
You would have to readjust citizens to get the full benefit of the academies
and rep.
The 125 number comes from me putting scientists in every city
except Ulundi, until they are at +1 or stagnated. As you said earlier,
growing the cities will in the end be a better option, as they could then run
even more specs.

Oh, and thanks for very enligthening input. I joined this MC2 to learn something,
and it's been paying off nicely.

 

[Gumbolt]

Very nice, GB. I might try but you've always been the better warmonger. Must be a Brit thang. I'm just good at whipping walls

Hahaha at wall. Those things can save cities you know. lol

There is one thing I forgot till late late! When you whip units you get gold as an over flow. Manipulate this and you can avoid strikes! Not really a spoiler.

In all honesty I think there is a reason why we set this at emperor level. This game will be prolly won by end of this round or next.

 

[vranasm]

Hahaha at wall. Those things can save cities you know. lol

There is one thing I forgot till late late! When you whip units you get gold as an over flow. Manipulate this and you can avoid strikes! Not really a spoiler.

In all honesty I think there is a reason why we set this at emperor level. This game will be prolly won by end of this round or next.

yeah that gold overflow I saw sometimes... I never know why it gives money :-D I suppose because the overflow of hammers is too big.
But I viewed it as cost ineffective and I try usually in strike zone to refocus citizens to commerce tiles and hope for best.
This round I almost striked out for I think something like 5 turns, then the cottages and courthouses catched up .

 

[Gumbolt]

@stevoh

Spoiler :

you actually have a lot of workers (that's good), but for some unknown reason you have a lot of unimproved land around some cities, that's reason 1.

Reason 2 (and bigger one) small size of important cities. timbuktu size 4 with cottages around - biggest mistake, that city should be size 10 at least.
Elephantine should be 2E1N there is much more riverside and bigger size of course.
Dye city another great cottage site, only size 1.

that barb city near wine north is 1 off coast, I razed it and resettled 1E, but it has no influence to your question.
Generally the first 2 things.

Ah and small reason 3... there is that silver spot NW from cap which would have bring you 1 happy (thebes for example wouldnt be unhappy).

Alexandria missed the fish...1S would be a lot better.

At the dye city you should make at least 1 farm (maybe 2)

edit:

Spoiler :

you are building GL and have not the marble connected...that's a mistake too btw.

Spoiler :

Thebes has an unhappy face.

I still don't get the JC blocker cities. Upkeep of around -12.88 and -14.26 over -26 in total a turn!! Cities built close to your capital have cheaper upkeep. I would of liked to see the marble and silver city before the expensive blocker cities you built. Not

Timbuktu at size 4 is a real shame!! Not even working cottages at present. Why is it building a settler??

Cherokee is running 2 forest tiles. Whip a worker?

Ulundi should probably be just production. Cottages were probably a mistake.

Elephantine could of used some irrigation to help growth.

Memphis has 4 unworked tiles.

I am not sure what that new barb city up north will do for you. It has no commerce tiles.

As Vranasm stated you failed to hook up marble and you are building GLib.

I am not sure you did have enough workers really. You could do with 15 or so at present.

City placement is not great either in some cases and some cities at times lack direction.

Overall 34 science beakers a turn is not great. Lots to improve really.

 

[Gumbolt]

yeah that gold overflow I saw sometimes... I never know why it gives money :-D I suppose because the overflow of hammers is too big.
But I viewed it as cost ineffective and I try usually in strike zone to refocus citizens to commerce tiles and hope for best.
This round I almost striked out for I think something like 5 turns, then the cottages and courthouses catched up .

Yes I micromanaged commerce. Some times there is only so much you can do. Especially when you have 20-30+ units roaming the map.

 

[Cenan]

Yes I micromanaged commerce. Some times there is only so much you can do. Especially when you have 20-30+ units roaming the map.

I've seen this overflow thing in BUG, but never quite got it. Does this happen
when you whip a unit that's a few from completion?

 

[vranasm]

Yes I micromanaged commerce. Some times there is only so much you can do. Especially when you have 20-30+ units roaming the map.

I am sure you did know what to do with them! razing cities and pillaging is good source of income :-D

 

[i_imperator]

@ Gumbolt:

Spoiler :

I read your post, thanks for the feedback. Was there anything i did that was correct?

 

[Gumbolt]

I didn't play first round in time, hope its ok to jump in and start with the save from round 2! I'm just starting monarch level really, have one won game so far (and some lost), so don't expect wonders Here's my attempt:

Spoiler :

I immediately went into settler build mode in Thebes and Ulundi, while starting the Oracle in Timbuktu. Unfortunately I lost it with only a few turns left there...could've chopped another forest but oh well.

I intended to take the barb city SW of Ulundi, but failed to notice it had only 1 pop...so it got razed, forcing me to build another settler to go there. The next settler went between that city and Timbuktu, to form a blocking line for Charlie. He still had enough room to put two cities there tho.

The barb city between Thebes and Ulundi was attacked by Charlie with a single axeman...very nice of him, I took it when only one archer was left.

After that I settled the spots in the area near Thebes and in the north eastern area (after razing the last barb city there).

My tech speed of course dropped like a rock with all those cities, anyway my path was roughly Monarchy, CoL, Currency and then Alphabet (since still no AI had it). This was rather slow as I didn't put scientists up early. Instead I used a priest to get a great prophet, and built the Confucianist shrine in Timbuktu with it. After that I set the specialists to science, but its still some turns before the first GS will arrive. The moment I got Alphabet I traded around for some backfill techs (especially iron working, only to find that Charly had claimed the nearest iron source). Next plan is calendar to finally get all the luxury resources up, then Civil Service.

Diplo wise, JC went into a rather long war with Cathy. I didn't wish to interfere there really. Charly is cautios as our borders are now close. Asoka is pleased. Biggest threat right now is Charlie, he has a large enough stack in his border city. He doesn't have too much on his hands yet but I suppose he will soon.

Comparing to the other saves, my tech is very low. I tried to bring my cities to reasonable sizes, and built libraries everywhere. Also looked to use all the cottages. I am currently building markets in my main cities, which will help. Also as soon as calendar is available, the luxury resources will further bring the economy back up. With the confu shrine, there's also the option of building missionaries and spread it for extra cash.

Big next job is to build more military, especially axemen and spearmen since I only built chariots so far. Power rating is dangerously low.

Btw. on workers: I have currently set most of them on "build road network" since until a few turns ago I didn't have iron working available. My intent was to activate them again and start chopping the forest over the luxuries, but I forgot to do so before saving the game.

It was too late to take and post pictures, hope its ok to just add the save.

Spoiler :

Few thoughts. I can see you are using chariots for happiness. You do have 26 war chariots!!

I don't like fact you are building workers in new cities. This stops them from growing. Better to whip/chop larger cities.

Thebes is still size 9 and not working the clams or pigs. No idea why you have not grown this more. 4 forest covering the grassland too. No academy in Thebes and science at 13 is poor. I think those 4 grassland cottaged would help come bur. civic.

You still don't have the silver hooked up. Real shame considering the year.

Ulundi is building a market. Not sure about this build. When science recovers this will yield little gold. I see Ulundi as a unit pump production city really.

Heliopolis needs to chop out a court hosue.

As stated to others Pigs/Clams?wheat city would of made a great GP farm. It is not as though thebes is using any of these resources.

HRE stack in Florence is a big worry.

You do have 15 workers but I think you have just done too much road and left too much forest.

Techwise you are behind the other saves. Probably due to larger empire and number of units. Overall you have about 11 cities pretty much struggling to make in commerce what they are costing you. With a science rate of 30% this is not great.

Once your cottages develop you will do a lot better.

 

[Fezzik]

Here's my report. This went much better than expected.

Spoiler :

Highlights:
10 Cities (including Pop 16 Thebes, Pop 13 Timbuktu, Pop 11 Anasazi)
3rd GS just popped, GP farm started
145 beakers at break even (256 @ 100%)
Built Oracle, Parthenon, and building TGL
Strong score (1385 vs 920 Cathy) and tech lead
HRE choked and JC blocked

Demographics - City Advisor - Techs

Northern Empire - Southern Empire

HRE Empire

Thebes - Timbuktu - Anasazi (top 3 cities)


Around Turn 120:
Captured Cherokee and Anasazi
Began choke of HRE (Using 3 WC, destroyed both copper, blocked workers from both sides)
Built The Oracle (Discovered CoL, founded Confuscianism)
Discovered Aesthetics

Around Turn 130:
Discovered Sailing
Built Courthouses in Ulundi and Timbuktu

Around Turn 140-150:
Discovered Monarchy
Adopted Hereditary Rule and began spamming warriors to grow happy caps
Founded Memphis and Heliopolis (JC blocker)
Ended HRE choke (due to his trade for Iron - Swordsman, Spearman)

Around Turn 160-170:
Discovered Iron Working
Traded for Alphabet and backfilled
Began building research and researching Currency with a crashed economy
Captured barb city Visigoth
Razed barb city Teoihuacan
Spammed Confuscian missionaries to JC planning to give him some enemies when he converts

Around Turn 185-190:
Built Parthenon
Founded Elephantine (GP farm)

Around Turn 190-195:
Discovered Currency, Literature
Began building wealth and continued building research

Turn 200:
Popped 3rd GS
Began building TGL