Im a monarch virgin

[asdad]

Ive read a couple of game walkthroughs here, some by beginners, some by veteran players and either through cunning strategies employed by the vets or chastising received by the newbies, some interesting points seem to come up. So, i figured i'd try one myself.
I had plenty of time to cheese out some maps while watching the absolutely epic nadal-verdasco AO semi on tv. But it only taught me that tectonic produces some very freaky maps, so i just went with a fractal and picked the first decent one that showed up.

so here we go, incas, large tectonic map, epic speed, no special rules.


settle in place here. crabs are not great imo, but decent enough. site has potential for cottages, mines or gp farm.

since i start with mysticism, i'll go for buddhism (maybe a mistake in hindsight, seems that hinduism is generally a safer bet since the ai will almost always beat me to the first tech if competing). capital will produce another quechua.



pretty sweet spot for my second (obviously cottage) city right here. i also pop animal husbandry from a hut. sweet. im planning on settling on the forest in SE.



i also pop writing from a hut. maybe i set the difficulty on chieftain afterall?
anyway, the map looks pretty sweet. theres someone yellow nearby, so i need to grab all the best lands asap. this is my expansion plan. not sure about the one in SW. can i screw myself somehow by settling right next to an enemys (probably capitals) cultural borders? it will lead to border diplo penalties at best, i guess, but i dont want to waste a floodplains square by settling on it and there arent that many resources to go around here.

since i have two awesome commerce/food cities and plenty of hills around cuchco, i will probably turn it into a mining town.

i paused my quechua and started a settler instead to grab the land. planning on pumping out another immediately afterwards to claim the south center spot. maybe try a quechua rush after that, depending on who the yellow guy actually is..

 

[Soirana]

No workers in BC - counts as no special rules? o_O

 

[asdad]

yellow guy is ramses of egypt.
theres some more good land with rivers and grasslands (not too many hills or bonus resources) west of the mountains.

i got buddhism and someone other than ramses got hinduism shortly after. research plan is now fishing (for the crabs), wheel, pottery (start cottaging), mining, bw (mines and chops)

 

[Bostock]

I'd put in a spot 2W of the stone - should make it easy to snag the Pyramids.

 

[asdad]

I'd put in a spot 2W of the stone - should make it easy to snag the Pyramids.

instead of the middle marked spot? my plan was to get as much cottagable space as possible and try not to overlap. getting stone early is something to go for as well though.

 

[asdad]

No workers in BC - counts as no special rules? o_O

huh?
you are suggesting that i produce no workers at all until 1AD?
does the map look too easy or something?

 

[Bostock]

Avoiding overlap is nice, but of lower priority than acquiring resources. Avoided overlap helps you 200 turns from now. Gained resources help you within 20 turns (and sometimes within 2 turns). Normally, the only thing more important for a site than "getting resources" is "getting food"... of course often, resources are food!

The stone site should be a passable early GP farm or production city. Its less than enormous long term potential will be more than made up for by the benefits of the super-cheap 'Mids.

As for cottageable cities, there will be plenty others of them in the world, especially with all the space you'll have to yourself after your Quechas take down the yellow guy. Or gal.

I believe the "no workers" comment was sarcastic: the person couldn't see any workers in your empire--do you have them?

 

[Divaythsarmour]

That's a beautiful map for Inca's. You have marble on one side and stone on the other. You'll be able to do some great wonder spamming. You have plenty of floodplain for cottages. The only problem I see is Ramses II. I would immediately build 6 quechas and go take him out of the picture. That would mean one less industrious AI to compete with.

 

[CreeDakota]

founded religion, industrious stone and marble in sight...I would be thinking about a cultural victory

 

[asdad]

those screens are like 20 turns into the game on epic speed. so i wouldnt have any workers yet even if it were my first build.

3000bc

founded 2w of stone.
paused other research for hunting (since i have deer right next to my capital), which completed same turn as my first worker, who is camping the deer. will mine the plains hill next, then move the worker down the the second city to cottage and grab the stone.
capital is building workboat, then quechuas.

2nd city is building a quechua. whats the best plan to expand its culture? theres a river almost connecting the two cities, so if i convert and research sailing, religion might get it done the fastest/cheapest?

scouted the egyptian city. not on a hill, 1 archer garrisoned, 1 more walking about.

e: pic


no horses or ivory in sight.
dont want to walk my quechua too far since i will need him for combat soon-ish. i stupidly upgraded him to shock instead of cover, thinking of the bears and lions .

 

[Belisar]

huh?
you are suggesting that i produce no workers at all until 1AD?
does the map look too easy or something?

No, but the important early techs for this start are BW to chop, hunting for the deer and fishing for the crabs, not chasing religion and building settlers at size 1 with unimproved tiles before worker. (It's a rare exception going settler first).

 

[Bostock]

Yeah, focus. Don't delay your Quecha rush (which if done ASAP will be secure with just four or six of them - 2 each for each archer that will be there by the time you arrive) any further or you'll be needing more and more Quechas for the job.

Only use one or two growth tiles in the cap; the rest should be on hammers so as to pump out the Quechas as quickly as possible. Don't bother with a barracks btw.

Connecting your cities is worth 2 GPT (2 1-GPT trade routes.) Nice, but not critical. Focus! Once there's time, Sailing is definitely superior to religion. As for culture to snag the stone, let terraces handle it.

 

[azzaman333]

Honestly, with a map like that, Quecha rush is so on.

 

[asdad]

using my original q. to keep an eye on egyptians. thebes is size 5 with some farms and pastures and 1 archer in defence. they founded a 2nd city on the rice (which i am planning to raze since i want to work the rice and it interferes with my original placement plan). 1 archer in 2nd city as well.
i just finished my 4th q., 8 turns to get in position.

some bad research decisions early on.

whats next in line for capital? 5th quecha wont be useful for the war, so workers and settlers?

 

[CreeDakota]

is Eygpt in slavery? 4 Q's to attack him seems too weak to wipe him out. I would want six if he is in slavery, ATTACK fast if he is not.

I would have gone fishing and hunting early for your food, but your religion gamble will pay off since you got Budda. It was a gamble.

 

[Joshua368]

Early religion on a seafood no-fishing start, no workers, size 1 settler? Could never tell you're new to monarch.

Food is your highest priority, dangit. Comes way before a silly early religion. You began with agriculture so if you had wheat you could have made the detour, but here not taking fishing right away and building workboats is seriously costing you. Your entire empire is much slower than it should have been, just for a couple culture per turn.

Kind of too late now though, you can try a Quechua rush but the clock is ticking. You let him hook up metals and you're screwed.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Asdad,
As you attempt to try more difficult levels, you'll want to learn to recognize and take advantage of opportunities. This becomes increasingly more necessary with higher difficulties as the AI will have increasingly more production and financial advantages which will hurt the human player over the long haul.

In this game so far you missed a really big one which will have snowballing consequences as you proceed. The opportunitiy was to make Thebes your second city with a small quecha rush. Think of what you would have accomplished with a single maneuver. 1) Cusco would be growing in population as you're building the quechas, rather than stagnating (building a settler). 2) You end up with a second city in a really good site. 3) You take out a huge rival really early and have that whole beatiful area with stone, marble and floodplains all to yourself.

One idea, play it the way that you normally would and see where you end up around 1AD. Then re-load the 4000BC save and take Thebes with an early quecha rush. Play that game until 1AD. Then compare the two.

 

[Bostock]

Oh, you already went for religion... my bad. Well, your gambit worked. You've been told it's a gambit, but it did work, so you should certainly make the best of it! Above all that means placing higher than usual priority on Organized Religion so you can get the +25% buildings bonus for Buddhist cities, assuming you've revolted into Buddhism. (The bonus applies to wonders too!)

Build that 5th quecha before workers/settlers - the cost of building one too many is much lower than the cost of partial success.

EDIT: Short of 4-base-hammer starts with an Imperialistic civ, building a settler from at 1 pop with no worker to improve tiles or chop really is a bad idea, I've just not been stressing it so as not to stress you out.

 

[Supr49er]

Welcome to the Forums asdad.

 

[asdad]

aghh

the very turn i was going to dow, he switches to slavery. probably had BW earlier as he also completed stonehenge that turn (which will take care of my 2nd city and other culture problems, tyvm).
anyway, seeing as he switched to slavery, i waited until i had 6 Qs to take on his lone archer and his whipped companion.


he whipped a third archer, who appears to be moving to attack.
i'll have to pour out a bunch more Qs to mop up his last city.

researching priesthood, see if i can make something happen (or fumble) with the oracle.