Just finished an exciting Monarch game as Russia where Cyrus shot ahead on the other side of the world and finished with 46 cities on a standard sized world. He didn't go for a cultural win and I could have won the Space Race if I had somehow managed to raze the UN before he won that way. Playing with Better AI and my personal mod which only changes a few things.
Anyway, some things of note. The Internet was extremely useful as I managed to nab 6-7 techs with it - I bee-lined Computers and somehow managed to build it before Cyrus did. Cyrus would give techs to his vassals it seems to trigger the wonder.
Cyrus had at least 10 times my power but was not able to launch a decent attack over water or land. My Bombers were useless against his land attack because of his range 10 Jet Fighter Interceptors but his Modern Armor I could take care of with Mobile Artillery/Missiles followed by Tanks.
Stealth Cruisers are NASTY and I had no plans on getting Stealth which is the only way to counter them. What he did to one of my cities is blockade it with a Stealth Cruiser (saw this after the game with World Builder). There was absolutely NOTHING I could do to prevent the blockade. One of his units just basically took out one of my cities from the game - this one was highly dependent on the sea spaces which were now totally unusable.
The AI does not protect his Missile Cruisers well. They have no intrinsic Air protection. I would bomb and/or missile them and then send a Destroyer to finish them off.
I checked out the Save and noticed that I would have been much better off switching from Free Market to Environmentalism even though I had Creative Constructions - I would have preferred to have found Sid's Sushi but I just wasn't able to generate a Great Merchant. Since Cyrus controlled most of the world, health resources were hard to come by and my cities were starving. Also, it looks like Representation might have been slightly better than Universal Suffrage since the hammers aren't as important as the extra science when going for the Space Race (which is Tech-bound anyway). Also ran Free Religion for the extra beakers and Organized Religion doesn't help with spaceship parts anyway. Would have liked to have run Caste System but the happiness hit from Emancipation was too great.
Also, since I moved the Space Elevator from Robotics to Fiber Optics (renamed Nanotechnology) what I did was not build any spaceship parts until after the Elevator was complete (Cyrus was off researching Stealth/Advanced Flight etc...) That allowed all my cities to build Wealth/Research to speed up research - again since the Space Race is tech bound.
The Research Center UB was very nice (my modded game requires a few more Space techs and parts) especially since I was running Representation.
Another mistake of mine was bribing Suleiman to declare war against Cyrus - this just allowed Cyrus to get another vassal and get to Diplo faster. Didn't realize the AI's warmongering would be so poor - Suleiman was of no help to me in the war.
Anyway, some things of note. The Internet was extremely useful as I managed to nab 6-7 techs with it - I bee-lined Computers and somehow managed to build it before Cyrus did. Cyrus would give techs to his vassals it seems to trigger the wonder.
Cyrus had at least 10 times my power but was not able to launch a decent attack over water or land. My Bombers were useless against his land attack because of his range 10 Jet Fighter Interceptors but his Modern Armor I could take care of with Mobile Artillery/Missiles followed by Tanks.
Stealth Cruisers are NASTY and I had no plans on getting Stealth which is the only way to counter them. What he did to one of my cities is blockade it with a Stealth Cruiser (saw this after the game with World Builder). There was absolutely NOTHING I could do to prevent the blockade. One of his units just basically took out one of my cities from the game - this one was highly dependent on the sea spaces which were now totally unusable.
The AI does not protect his Missile Cruisers well. They have no intrinsic Air protection. I would bomb and/or missile them and then send a Destroyer to finish them off.
I checked out the Save and noticed that I would have been much better off switching from Free Market to Environmentalism even though I had Creative Constructions - I would have preferred to have found Sid's Sushi but I just wasn't able to generate a Great Merchant. Since Cyrus controlled most of the world, health resources were hard to come by and my cities were starving. Also, it looks like Representation might have been slightly better than Universal Suffrage since the hammers aren't as important as the extra science when going for the Space Race (which is Tech-bound anyway). Also ran Free Religion for the extra beakers and Organized Religion doesn't help with spaceship parts anyway. Would have liked to have run Caste System but the happiness hit from Emancipation was too great.
Also, since I moved the Space Elevator from Robotics to Fiber Optics (renamed Nanotechnology) what I did was not build any spaceship parts until after the Elevator was complete (Cyrus was off researching Stealth/Advanced Flight etc...) That allowed all my cities to build Wealth/Research to speed up research - again since the Space Race is tech bound.
The Research Center UB was very nice (my modded game requires a few more Space techs and parts) especially since I was running Representation.
Another mistake of mine was bribing Suleiman to declare war against Cyrus - this just allowed Cyrus to get another vassal and get to Diplo faster. Didn't realize the AI's warmongering would be so poor - Suleiman was of no help to me in the war.
