Round 0: Hey! The King's Back!
Round 1: A Mad World (4000-1850 B.C.)
Round 2: March to Glory (1850-500 B.C.)
Round 3: Warships and Wonders (500 B.C.-115 A.D.)
Round 4: The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (115-685 A.D.)
Round 5: Forging an Empire (685-1040 A.D.)
Round 6: The Mondo-Mega-Round (1040-1425 A.D.)
Round 7: Guns, Guns, Guns (1425-1706 A.D.)
Round 8: We Are the Champions, My Friends (1706-1792 A.D.)
Welcome back to the stage of history. It's been a while, so I'll fill you in on the basics. The King of the World series focuses on Civ IV's various Earth maps, sacrificing the excitement of exploration for more consistent starts. We know where we're starting, we know who our neighbors are, heck, we even know where to look for goody huts. This doesn't make it any less of a game, though. It just shifts the focus a bit.
I've been away from the game for a while, and this game features a pretty massive curve ball, so we'll be dialing it back to Monarch for this entry in the series. We'll be playing as Qin Shi Huang of China on the Earth18Civs map. Now the First Emperor is normally a powerhouse on this map, and there's no reason he can't be again. Heck, this might be a cakewalk. But the map is set to Always War, with the Real Always War mod in effect. So this won't be a formulaic game of tech brokering and backstabbing unready chumps. No, the world is going to be in flames, with everyone at war with everyone else, with no quarter asked or given. So, let's take a look at our entrant for this battle royale:
Qin's Industriousness will speed up the production of Wonders and Forges. I expect that we'll be building more troops than Wonders in this game, though a few are appropriate for a military-minded leader, particularly if we live long enough to get the fighting front away from our doorstep. The Protective boost to garrison units could well save our bacon (after all, we will be starting with Pigs in our radius), and may even make defensive structures such as Walls and Castles worth considering. Protective's real boost, though, will be to our Unique Unit, the Cho-Ko-Nu, China's devastating Collateral-Damage-dealing Crossbowmen. If we can get these online, they could be a massive boost to our war machine. Our Unique Building, the Pavilion, is just a Theater with an additional Culture boost; I don't think it'll factor into our strategy until we start considering victory conditions (assuming we get that far).
So that said, let's get to it:
For the uninitiated, we're gonna have Genghis Khan to our northwest, Tokugawa to the east, and Asoka to the southwest. Of the three, Asoka is probably the biggest long-term threat, though the other two, with their aggressive tendencies, can be real thorns early. That coast to the east is an entrance to the Pacific, and it's stocked with Fish, besides, so I think settling 1E is a no-brainer (stupid 1-off-the-coast starts!). Beyond that, though, we have some decisions to make. We could send our Warrior north and crush Mongolia before they can even get a Warrior online, but that feels a bit cheap to me. Which way should our research go? Archery is obviously going to be more important here than it is in a lot of our other games, but should we consider Fishing first to grow Beijing? What should our build order be?
Oh, and in terms of map changes, I did indeed move the Inca to the coast and open up the Andes:
But I'm leaving Isabella where she starts. Europe is going to be a mess early on, and I want to see who comes out on top without any undue interference. If she's strong enough, she can get a coastal city very easily
So those of you who want to shadow the game, remember to check out this mod. Without it, the rest of the world will only be at war with you. And what fun would that be?
(Oh, and five points to the first person to identify my two non-Civ gaming references in there.)
Round 1: A Mad World (4000-1850 B.C.)
Round 2: March to Glory (1850-500 B.C.)
Round 3: Warships and Wonders (500 B.C.-115 A.D.)
Round 4: The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (115-685 A.D.)
Round 5: Forging an Empire (685-1040 A.D.)
Round 6: The Mondo-Mega-Round (1040-1425 A.D.)
Round 7: Guns, Guns, Guns (1425-1706 A.D.)
Round 8: We Are the Champions, My Friends (1706-1792 A.D.)
Welcome back to the stage of history. It's been a while, so I'll fill you in on the basics. The King of the World series focuses on Civ IV's various Earth maps, sacrificing the excitement of exploration for more consistent starts. We know where we're starting, we know who our neighbors are, heck, we even know where to look for goody huts. This doesn't make it any less of a game, though. It just shifts the focus a bit.
I've been away from the game for a while, and this game features a pretty massive curve ball, so we'll be dialing it back to Monarch for this entry in the series. We'll be playing as Qin Shi Huang of China on the Earth18Civs map. Now the First Emperor is normally a powerhouse on this map, and there's no reason he can't be again. Heck, this might be a cakewalk. But the map is set to Always War, with the Real Always War mod in effect. So this won't be a formulaic game of tech brokering and backstabbing unready chumps. No, the world is going to be in flames, with everyone at war with everyone else, with no quarter asked or given. So, let's take a look at our entrant for this battle royale:
Qin's Industriousness will speed up the production of Wonders and Forges. I expect that we'll be building more troops than Wonders in this game, though a few are appropriate for a military-minded leader, particularly if we live long enough to get the fighting front away from our doorstep. The Protective boost to garrison units could well save our bacon (after all, we will be starting with Pigs in our radius), and may even make defensive structures such as Walls and Castles worth considering. Protective's real boost, though, will be to our Unique Unit, the Cho-Ko-Nu, China's devastating Collateral-Damage-dealing Crossbowmen. If we can get these online, they could be a massive boost to our war machine. Our Unique Building, the Pavilion, is just a Theater with an additional Culture boost; I don't think it'll factor into our strategy until we start considering victory conditions (assuming we get that far).
So that said, let's get to it:
For the uninitiated, we're gonna have Genghis Khan to our northwest, Tokugawa to the east, and Asoka to the southwest. Of the three, Asoka is probably the biggest long-term threat, though the other two, with their aggressive tendencies, can be real thorns early. That coast to the east is an entrance to the Pacific, and it's stocked with Fish, besides, so I think settling 1E is a no-brainer (stupid 1-off-the-coast starts!). Beyond that, though, we have some decisions to make. We could send our Warrior north and crush Mongolia before they can even get a Warrior online, but that feels a bit cheap to me. Which way should our research go? Archery is obviously going to be more important here than it is in a lot of our other games, but should we consider Fishing first to grow Beijing? What should our build order be?
Oh, and in terms of map changes, I did indeed move the Inca to the coast and open up the Andes:
But I'm leaving Isabella where she starts. Europe is going to be a mess early on, and I want to see who comes out on top without any undue interference. If she's strong enough, she can get a coastal city very easily
So those of you who want to shadow the game, remember to check out this mod. Without it, the rest of the world will only be at war with you. And what fun would that be?
(Oh, and five points to the first person to identify my two non-Civ gaming references in there.)
) and post Round 1 Monday morning/early afternoon.
