Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXXII: Boudica

[krikav]

@ T228:

Spoiler :

I have lost soo many hammers in units that it aint funny.

I got a bunch of military academies, and police state is helping out alot. But I don't even have a large army, just scattered units here and there.

Gandhi won't give me steampower, this is his offer:

Total tech situation:
To have some chance of catching up, I probably have to get either WvO or Gilgamesh as a vassal quickly. Going down the combustion line myself could ensure a few trades with at least Gandhi.
I have 2 Gpersons and haven't run a GA yet, so there is some possibilites for teching.

However, the clock is ticking fast.
70 turns on the paper is likely closer to 30-40 turns before HC wins culture.

Diplo situation.
Having Gandhi as a vassal might backfire. But do I have time to afford to care...?
Both Charly and HC are plotting, but it's likely that charly is after Gandhi, and in all probability HC is unlikely to start attacking charly.
Unlikely that I'll be able to stir up some trouble between HC and Gilgamesh as well.

Empire overview:
Homeland... CopperPigRiver, Cow and Capital are all equipped with a military academy, and Rice has Heroic.
This paired with the fact that I have police-state from pyramids make it possible that just ignoring factories might be an option.

With only a few boats with units, I think WvO old cities could produce enough of an army to take him down by itself.

If I had time. I think I would want to just take all of Gandhis cities, to avoid motherland anger. The diplo penalty toward the rest of the crowd is also considerable.
Gilga doesn't have assembly line or artilery yet. So one option could be to just run full tilt with units, ship them over and go for him, if I could vassal him quickly enough there might be time to deal with HC.

All in all, I think the situation is looking rather grim. I was seriously set back by Gandhis peace vassaling right before I was about to hit him.

 

[krikav]

And the grand finale!! T228 -> T253.

Spoiler :

At T230 I start a GA, and to my suprise and delight it lasted for 12 turns, apparantly Gandhi had built MoM for me without me noticing it.
I start with 5 turns of slavery+theocracy, to whip out alot of units. Captured Delhi which got out of revolt is cold-whipped on grenadier+rifleman+cannon+barracks, from pop16 to pop2.

I capture one more city from Gandhi, and then make peace with him. Didn't dare take him as a vassal, and it would take me too long time to get some trades going.

At T235 I had shipped over a few units, and built some more in WvO cities. It was time to switch to pacifism to ensure I could run another GA later on, fitting that I switch to pacifism and declare war at the same turn!

At T244 WvO becomes my vassal, and at the same turn Gandhi becomes vassal to Charly, and everyone in the whole world stops plotting.
I reach scientific method at T245 and set course as a snail toward physics. Because I eventually want to reach artilery.... But I'm starting to get in a real hurry here!

HC is winning culture in 8 turns. But luckily enough one of his three cities are readily accesable from Gilgamesh land. So I just waltz in!

Abit weird to just walk past a city ripe for taking. But I really have no time for such small fry!

The next turn, I start to worry abit. Bombers and tanks and paratroopers and every kind of exotic unit hurts my noble army. But they press onward. Tiwanaku MUST fall!

The next turn, I lose contact with my troops. Some sort of radio-jamming from HC? Oh wait, I don't have radio... Oh well. I guess they will send a dove once they crush them incan scumbags.

And with that, I retire!

 

[krikav]

Post game analysis, if anyone has any pointers at what I might have done wrong that I might have missed. Do point it out!

Spoiler :

Well. the map was kind of unbalanced, both Charly and HC had a land advantage to their neighbours, (and Gilga too, to a lesser extent).

First of all, I reached optics abit too late. I didn't get circumnavigation, and I didn't get as many trades as I hoped for, then I overestimated the rate of my GPerson generation, and couldn't hit MilSci quick enough for an early attack, and when I did get there... Well Gandhi had peace vassaled. I had to go for a secondary target which got enough time to toughen up.

I was also too much in love with the idea of amphibious grenadiers. When it was obvious that I would reach steel and MilSci at the same time, I should have paused and instead spent much more time to amass a larger army, and instead hit some competition, instead of the small fry.
Possibly even HC direcly, perhaps through his weak spot Montezuma, or possibly attack Gilgamesh to get him as a vassal early on.

When I did attack, I did so recklessly, and lost waaaay to many units, especially boats. This hammer sink delayed any potential secondary attack that I would have hit Gilgamesh with for too long.

 

[Fippy]

Nice suicide commando lol, they must be alive somewhere still..
taking a quick look, you were too slow pre-optics imo.
1AD and only starting MC will get you in troubles.

Looks like you were a bit in builder mood, rather than quick Optics.
Fun stuff like naval grens will get more difficult this way.

 

[krikav]

Thanks @Fippy !

Builder... well perhaps.
I really wanted to have 3 cities able to produce some great people up (with at least granary) in time before reaching CoL.
Could it be that CoL before optics is a mistake on this map? I had so much success with it on the Fredrich map (where it really fitted in, him being Phi/Org), that I might be blindsided.

Also torn between different things, farms for the rep specialists, or cottages to tech? Building infra/settlers or failgold? Didn't really have a easy time balancing things.

 

[Fish Man]

Post game analysis, if anyone has any pointers at what I might have done wrong that I might have missed. Do point it out!

Spoiler :

Well. the map was kind of unbalanced, both Charly and HC had a land advantage to their neighbours, (and Gilga too, to a lesser extent).

First of all, I reached optics abit too late. I didn't get circumnavigation, and I didn't get as many trades as I hoped for, then I overestimated the rate of my GPerson generation, and couldn't hit MilSci quick enough for an early attack, and when I did get there... Well Gandhi had peace vassaled. I had to go for a secondary target which got enough time to toughen up.

I was also too much in love with the idea of amphibious grenadiers. When it was obvious that I would reach steel and MilSci at the same time, I should have paused and instead spent much more time to amass a larger army, and instead hit some competition, instead of the small fry.
Possibly even HC direcly, perhaps through his weak spot Montezuma, or possibly attack Gilgamesh to get him as a vassal early on.

When I did attack, I did so recklessly, and lost waaaay to many units, especially boats. This hammer sink delayed any potential secondary attack that I would have hit Gilgamesh with for too long.

What did I tell you about grens

In all seriousness, though - this was a valiant attempt. Bravo to your valiant army for their courageous and fearless last stand against the fearsome and exotic war machines that they never would've imagined even existed.

When I play iso maps like these, I take care to avoid wasting beakers. In essence, every beaker that I could've otherwise gotten in a trade, unless it's critical to my military strategy, I consider a waste. I could've traded for the entire CoL line with optics, so by going for that, I consider 750-1250 beakers wasted (depending on how you reached it). Combined with the fact that it didn't even help you that much (courthouses are a massive hammersink with very slow payoff), and as Fippy said, you already got yourself behind by 1AD. In fact I might've even skipped mids. The food is good but not that great, and the stone city was also 100h thrown into the wind and mostly a dead weight until very much later on. Then again the happiness situation is certainly tricky here, so jury's still out on that.

The second mistake was, as you said it yourself, grenadiers. The thing with military science is that its opportunity cost is far too high. It's a dead-end tech that unlocks a unit that gets eaten up starting at cavs and definitely including everything beyond, as I'm sure you're aware of when at the receiving end of a tank massacre. Rifling, in comparison, is not that much more expensive - you can trade astro for everything before RP, including PP if you're not unlucky. And the sooner you trade it the better, because with deity tech pace once AIs decide to go for astro or physics or whatever they'll gobble up your only bargaining chip in 3-4 turns. Besides, giving AIs astro strongly incentives them to shoot for stuff like physics and electricity, in the process avoiding dangerous military techs like railroad, rifling, or even AL. So in conclusion: pawning astro sooner rather than later (which is a good thing) means the beaker cost of rifling is not really that much higher than of MS (just RP + rifling itself, really). Now you could say that people won't have PP in time for trade, but...on a map like this, with as good techers as Huayna and Willem, they'll get it very soon. And PP is one of the techs that AIs will trade instantly, like alpha, which means once one person has it you get it instantly if you so choose - and AIs prioritize techs others haven't researched yet which means if you get astro early you can lock them out of it, so to speak. The other reason for rifling is perhaps more convincing is that you WILL need it sooner or later, whereas that's not the case with MS. With monsters like Giggles, Huayna, and Charlie at play, you can take maybe 2 guys with whatever/cannons and you'll have to get AL or artillery (preferably both) ASAP to avoid getting crushed by tanks and...literally anything else in the industrial era, really.

Finally, a word about teching. It was sorta clear to me at the end that you needed infantry + artillery at the very least to take on HC, no? But your economy - it's basically nonfunctional at that point, and the more cities you take on other continents, the worse it gets. You needed something far better than the slave-based decentralized stuff that's gotten you to cannons and rifles. That's where communism comes in. On iso maps, I consider communism to be of the utmost importance. Once you start taking cities and whipping yours to the ground, crippling maintenance means your tech pace grinds to a standstill - and that means that with slavery/decentralization or whatever, you have no chance of reaching constitution, economics, corporation, scientific method, physics, steam power, artillery, and AL, which is again what you need. Communist caste workshops enable you to grow every one of your cities to their commerce potential while allowing them to be monsters at production, slashing maintenance costs by 80%+ in some cases, AND gives you a free golden age if you're lucky as well as powerful tradebait for many industrial techs (or at least half of some techs, which is still far better than nothing). What I do after I reach the military techs I need is immediately go for communism, because while it also seems like a dead-end tech, it's not. It's the only thing that will allow you to continue researching, period, after the conquest ball gets rolling.

The above also means that you will need lib at some point. This is probably the optimist in me talking, but...if so, why not try to win lib race as well? Not always possible, but if you can get something good out of it, like MT or chem or RP (not worth trying for something spectacular like rifling or steel, probably), then it'll secure your position that much more.

Something about cuirs - high risk, high reward, and probably the gutsy move I would've tried. If you could've somehow capped Charlie and Willem with them you would've been an absolute beast and, with some careful managing of a culture win from Huayna, been able to steamroll everyone else with your over 30 cities. But if you failed or if either of them got grens or rifles...then you're kinda in an awkward position without any recourse. And the speed thing - galleons aren't fast when they're instantly sunk out of port by frigates. Nor can they hit inland cities with any degree of speed, and are even slower if you don't wanna waste promos on amphibious.

Apologies for the wall of text and if I was too harsh. But that's my take on things, at least.

 

[krikav]

No problem at all and thanks for the feedback @Undefeatable I know I have plenty of things to learn about this game still, and the more opinions I hear the better.
More walls of text from you are very appreciated!

Something that makes abit of sense now, that I consider lunacy prior to you mentioning it, is trading away astro sooner rather than later.
I almost always treasure my monopoly tech as long as I can, and in normal continents maps I also think it's important to keep the AIs away from trading resources with each other, else they can become unavailable to me, also nice to avoid letting the AIs get intercontinental trade routes.
None of that is valid here, as they already have trade routes with each other, being connected pre optics.
Making more AIs tech physics and electricity instead of rifling does sound very tempting.
I'll absolutely consider more aggressively trading away astro.

Regarding grenadiers... well. I'll have to fail with them about a half dozen more times before seriously considering them an dead end tech. I mean... Just look at them hats!

I certainly do get everything you say about a pitiful economy though, I didn't get anywhere!
Something that I did notice however, is how little, or it's quite abit but relatively speaking, tech that would have been needed to start throwing nukes.
through artilery and up to rocketry and fision through physics.
Don't even need to get education or nationalism.
So if I would have had abit more teching power, that could have been an option.

 

[Fish Man]

No problem at all and thanks for the feedback @Undefeatable I know I have plenty of things to learn about this game still, and the more opinions I hear the better.
More walls of text from you are very appreciated!

Something that makes abit of sense now, that I consider lunacy prior to you mentioning it, is trading away astro sooner rather than later.
I almost always treasure my monopoly tech as long as I can, and in normal continents maps I also think it's important to keep the AIs away from trading resources with each other, else they can become unavailable to me, also nice to avoid letting the AIs get intercontinental trade routes.
None of that is valid here, as they already have trade routes with each other, being connected pre optics.
Making more AIs tech physics and electricity instead of rifling does sound very tempting.
I'll absolutely consider more aggressively trading away astro.

Regarding grenadiers... well. I'll have to fail with them about a half dozen more times before seriously considering them an dead end tech. I mean... Just look at them hats!

I certainly do get everything you say about a pitiful economy though, I didn't get anywhere!
Something that I did notice however, is how little, or it's quite abit but relatively speaking, tech that would have been needed to start throwing nukes.
through artilery and up to rocketry and fision through physics.
Don't even need to get education or nationalism.
So if I would have had abit more teching power, that could have been an option.

I'm glad about the positive reception, I have a history of people not really taking advice well so...either way, I digress.

I didn't even notice the fact that everyone else was connected pre-optics, huh...that makes this game a lot harder, then. Another reason why you should feel free to trade away astro: it doesn't help the AI nearly as much as the human. Most AIs love to go into mercantilism as soon as they get banking, which...makes no sense, and kinda hurts them more than it helps. But merc also means no foreign TR so it doesn't matter if they have astro, it won't help them any for a while. Even for the AIs that wisely chose to avoid that civic, their happy/health caps are still much higher than yours since they have the hammers to spare for every happy/health building in the game, this being deity, and also they already have trading partners. And since AIs love putting cottages everywhere, the ratio of commerce they get from foreign trade is far less than what the player gets. So even if they weren't connected astro isn't nearly as big of a deal for them as it would be for you.

That's a fair point regarding grens . Though I'm of the opinion that they do look a little silly in those hats.

As for the nukes...that's a nice idea but it's not really feasible to skip stuff like nationalism or education. Here's why: nukes, and especially the Manhattan Project, are bloody expensive. Reaching fission and rocketry and finishing at least 20 turns before t250ish requires a very good economy, which again you need communism for (I'm beginning to think this game was intended as some form of pro-Marxist propaganda given that communism is virtually required to stay in the running on deity past the early industrial era). The costs of techs rises very rapidly starting this stage of the game (seriously...rocketry is 8000 beakers, electricity is 7000, and fission is 10000, so after artillery you still have to pull 25000 beakers out of thin air). Even if you could somehow power-tech your way to fission and rocketry without communism, there comes a point where things just get too expensive to build with whips, and without factories/coal plants. The MP is a whopping 750 hammers WITH uranium, non-whippable. Before communist workshops your highest production city will have 25 hammers a turn, maybe. That means it will take 30 turns just to unlock nukes AFTER you get the techs. By that time Huayna will have won culture twice over, probably. And let's not even talk about the 250h tactical nukes and 500h ICBMs which you'll need at least half a dozen of to really make any significant impact on how fast he's gonna win or dent his army. Nuke tech with a fully industrialized communist economy is useless. And also nukes are useless without significant ground support. If you start lobbing them around, unless you have stuff to take cities with, you'll just make everyone furious at you very soon, and ruin any chance of diplo win while only slowing down the top AI(s) by a bit.

 

[Fish Man]

I'll avenge you @krikav !!! Just because HC is the most OP and blatantly broken leader in the game doesn't mean he should be able to get away with slaughtering defenseless innocents like this (well...you technically had an army...but a rifle against a tank/bomber is basically defenseless). Boudicca iso here I come!

 

[Fish Man]

t192 update

Spoiler :

Holy mother of tech pace, I've never seen any AI blaze this fast. Either HC or Willem or both of them are probably gonna get infantry before t200. Capping Giggles is my last hope; fingers crossed he doesn't go AL. And also sure hope I can safetybeg Willem in time, I think he might be plotting on me (was annoyed when he started).

Gandhi capped after I took 2 cities. I didn't want to since everyone hates him but I have no choice; I need him to go physics so I can go communism, and then rush artillery. Tech pace remains pitiful; I'll need at least 10 more cities up and running to get it up to speed. But at least I traded for SM successfully, which is the most important thing I need going forward, unlocking both communism and artillery eventually.

Good news is nobody's decided to go full-tilt culture yet. It's only a matter of time though...

And some hope:
-Gandhi is 4 turns from physics. Once I get lib I can trade for it and then head for artillery after communism.
-Judging from the looks of it, Giggle's army is actually...not that big. If what's in Pataliputra's all he got, then I can actually destroy it the first turn of the war and basically take whatever I want with impunity afterwards.

I'll need a lot of luck to win this, but though I'm hanging on by a thread it's still certainly doable. The next 20 turns will be some of the toughest I'll have faced yet.

 

[Fish Man]

@krikav @Fippy: So, thoughts on how I should proceed? I think my only chance is a mad dash for Giggles. I'll have a chance if I cap him. After him, if by some miracle I cap Huayna (not really a stretch considering how AIs love to break free the second their master loses enough land), then I'll have effectively won.

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I replayed about 5 turns, this time trading steel around instead of letting the AIs tech it (I was absent-minded, dealing with the Gandhi war, and sorta let them all just get it for free). The results:

Got lib, economics, constitution, corporation, and a bit of rifling for that one tech. Now I have the Renaissance nice and filled in, and I'm just 2 techs away from infantry myself, and one from artillery (once Gandhi gives me physics).

 

[Fish Man]

A couple notes so far:

Spoiler :

I think the key to success on this map really is smart trading. Monty as HC's vassal is useful because the latter spoonfeeds him techs that can then be used to bypass the WFYABTA limit. I got some of PP for gunpowder and RP for chem, which was crucial. And the only way I could catch up was getting all of the medieval era by pawning astro, and now most of the Renaissance by pawning steel.

Prevented Gandhi from peacevassaling by getting HC to friendly and then declaring on Gandhi as soon as he reached cautious with HC. It was super risky and I had no idea of knowing whether his fleet would sink mine before I reached him, or if he would reach cautious way too long before I was ready, but as it turned out it was diplomatically safe (literally everyone hated him) and I was 1 turn from setting sail to invade when he crossed that threshold.

@krikav , I think you tried to have your cake and eat it too with the mids and CoL . Both are nice investments but IMO they don't pay off very well, unfortunately. Take a look:

By t77 I had 20 more bpt than you did 5 turns later. By 1AD I had metal casting and machinery on you. I got 620AD astro (t141); I don't think it's really possible to do earlier than 600-ish on this map on deity, so all things considered I think you and I did pretty darn well.

I'm not sure what happened but despite a rough early game you and I were basically in the same state, come astro (though I think my bpt was ahead by quite a fair margin). So, kudos on the recovery! But I think what went wrong after was you holding onto astro for far too long. As I said earlier...it does you no good to be missing half the medieval era while you take some grenade-lobbing drunkards wearing funny hats on a romp . I traded for CS which was crucial in giving me bureaucracy (a VERY good civic for this map, all things considered), guilds + paper (and later banking) which are on the path to cannons and rifles, philo and nationalism which are on the way to AL (which you probably know by now you'll need to have sooner or later), and literature for the HE that I put in the clam city.

Even after you pawn away astro watch out for trades you can get from the steel line, which AIs seem happy to avoid most of the time. Unfortunately Willem decided to troll me by getting gunpowder, chem, and then steel each 5 turns before I did, meaning I couldn't get the good stuff like PP or edu out of him. But at least the other AIs played nice. I got education this way, along with, as I said earlier, parts of PP and RP. And then the steel mega-trade, which happened in 2 turns and the effectiveness of which surprised even me.

Still...mids are eh on this map, IMO, not nearly enough food to make it work. You'd need something like double wetcorn + all grassland + a ton of seafood to justify it. Otherwise you'll have to farm everything just to run 2 scientists a city. And that's giving up eventual 2f6c tiles, which are far superior to rep scientists especially with a buro cap:

On that note...HC's army is concerning. He was plotting for a bit before I vassaled Gandhi but now he's got:

(I WB'd in a worker since my scout passed by a few turns ago but I forgot to take a screenie. Well, now y'all know what I'm up against. Imagine all of that but it's become infantry and artillery .)

One thing you did really well on that I'd just completely blown off at this point: great person generation. I got 2 GS for astro, 1 for academy, and then afterwards gave up on them completely. A golden age would be nice but what I need right now are cities, and Giggles is gonna give me his in very short order. And when I whip to get the units to take those cities I can't run specialists well. So...while a couple extra bulbs would've been nice, a dozen more units are nicer. Still, I'm sure I could've micro'd a bit more to get at least ONE for a golden age. Ah well, the game's gone too much in my favor at this point to go back that far.

Grens are fun units for fun maps. This is not a fun map. This is an anxiety-inducing grind, a pit of doom and ladder of chaos. Even with the miracle trades it's going to be an uphill fight in taking down the next couple of targets.

 

[Fish Man]

Apologies for spamming, but 6 more things:

Spoiler :

1. GW was a mistake. Besides spy points you're agg + char; a single battle with barracks gives you archer immunity, basically. Just park a few guys in forest and watch the hordes slam into your guys with 80%+ odds. And this is not a big island anyways. You might even want to leave some parts of the island unbusted, so you can farm barbs for a level 4 unit, opening the path to HE (char allows you to do that with 5 defensive kills and a barracks). Anyways...looks like you didn't build GW the 2nd time which is good.

2. Mids happiness is far less important with free 2 from cha. And from this I can very safely say that cha is the best trait in iso situations (or at least ones without happy resources), because it gives a huuuge amount of free (extra 2 citizens per city with minimal effort is a big deal without anyone to trade with), because it makes HE easier, and because it allows your cannons to get CR2 after just one fight (a retreat always giving 1XP).

3. Pottery before BW! I learned this the hard way when I sank my economy for too long to get out any sort of viable astro date after getting chopping/whipping a bunch of settlers/workers. The whip is pretty unneeded for the capital and my sheep/cow city before granaries, which are my first 2 cities. So I don't want nor have to rush for BW. And pottery will allow you to get the commerce you need for other ancient era techs before you go broke expanding. It also lets you start developing cottages sooner, which is crucial. A good rule of thumb is: on deity, when your best commerce tile pre-cottages is literally an improved sheep, you might want to consider prioritizing before .

4. Agriculture is totally useless and skippable until after optics. I traded for it 200AD, which is something that I've always wanted to do (play until the ADs without teching it, then trading for agri; I can almost imagine the astonished look on other civs' faces as our people asks what a "farm" is). You have a dry rice that you probably shouldn't settle anyways until you get astro trade routes.

5. WvO teched optics/astro before me, too. Screw that guy. I might put him twice in next week's NC just so we can kill him twice. Which, BTW, has been delayed again. Because I'm busy with...this.

6. I'm beginning to realize this iso map is so hard that you have to play ruthlessly optimally to win, and even with map knowledge and optimal play you have to be really lucky. It's almost a given that HC will cap Monty and snowball away, and that Willem will too if he gets even a bit too much land. I'd like to have tried grens here too, heck I would've gone for cuirs if that was possible...but it's not. My only option was cannons and even now my army is 5 sizes smaller than HC's, and an era behind (soon).

I'll continue this the day after, probably. Got stuff to do tomorrow. In the meantime, happy to hear everyone's thoughts!

 

[Bibor]

In the meantime, happy to hear everyone's thoughts!

I don't know how, but I think you need artillery for HC. Nothing else, but you need arty.

 

[krikav]

Oh, nice game @Undefeatable !

Nice to see that the map was not entierly a breeze for others as well.
Seeing from your T192 tech situation, they are even abit further ahead in tech compared to me.

Getting Gandhi under the boot early I think is necessery, either him or Wilhelm, but I failed with either.
I agree with you on going for Giggles next. Probably have to hit HC not that much later after that. But with better things than grenadiers!

Especially interested in the early game though...
Yes, I felt that early pottery would be in order here. But if you want the shiny mids (or failgold) then you really need to go BW first.
If you get lucky with failgold, it's a good economic path too.

I think I'm with you 100% that CoL was a mistake. Not only in itself, but that it made it absolutely necessery to go early agriculture and put farms where there should have been cottages.
Getting mids and being content with just the happycap boost, and doing fine with the regular 3-4 libraries +2scientists in each I think would have been better.
It's also about the later utility of early police state!

I don't really like early CS here, I would postpone it at least to get one bulb into chem. Likely to be in vassalage quite often anyway. Better to spread out cottages instead and skimp on the academy.

I see 10 pop in capital at 1AD screenshot, did you go for a detour to monarchy instead, or did you too build mids?

 

[Fish Man]

I don't know how, but I think you need artillery for HC. Nothing else, but you need arty.

I can tech it in 10 turns. Once I get physics from Gandhi the way is clear for arty.

 

[Fish Man]

Oh, nice game @Undefeatable !

Nice to see that the map was not entierly a breeze for others as well.
Seeing from your T192 tech situation, they are even abit further ahead in tech compared to me.

Getting Gandhi under the boot early I think is necessery, either him or Wilhelm, but I failed with either.
I agree with you on going for Giggles next. Probably have to hit HC not that much later after that. But with better things than grenadiers!

Especially interested in the early game though...
Yes, I felt that early pottery would be in order here. But if you want the shiny mids (or failgold) then you really need to go BW first.
If you get lucky with failgold, it's a good economic path too.

I think I'm with you 100% that CoL was a mistake. Not only in itself, but that it made it absolutely necessery to go early agriculture and put farms where there should have been cottages.
Getting mids and being content with just the happycap boost, and doing fine with the regular 3-4 libraries +2scientists in each I think would have been better.
It's also about the later utility of early police state!

I don't really like early CS here, I would postpone it at least to get one bulb into chem. Likely to be in vassalage quite often anyway. Better to spread out cottages instead and skimp on the academy.

I see 10 pop in capital at 1AD screenshot, did you go for a detour to monarchy instead, or did you too build mids?

They’re probably further ahead because the tech leaders got 2-3 more cities .

Failgold is good. But I can’t really afford a detour to masonry. And I didn’t build any wonders at all. As I said, I think mids are rather mediocre here. Police state is nice but, again, the hammer and commerce investment for the stone city is not so nice. Pre-optics you want only 6 cities at most, 7 if you got a really baller start. Any more will usually just drag you down.

No monarchy, no mids. Just toughed out the unhappy until astro trades. A 7 happy cap was good enough to get me there without throwing away hundreds of beakers or hammers on other things.

 

[krikav]

I guess I'll have to play the ragnar map now...

 

[Fish Man]

I guess I'll have to play the ragnar map now...

Good luck!

Spoiler :

You get astro trade routes without astro and also only Spain really has space for more than 9 cities so it’ll be a good break IMO .