Monarch Student II - Climbing from Prince (Joao II)

[Trynthlas]

Spoiler :

I think I'm the only person that COMPLETELY cut hammy off from settling to his north by hitting the REX west .

I understand that hannibal is somewhat threatening, but if you survive the very early game with him and he gets to pleased, he won't declare. Hammy is the same.

The way I look at it is this: If you REX, hammy and hannibal each get to 6-8 cities top. If you rush Hannibal, you get the same amount of cities as just expanding west, but now hammy gets 12+ and hannibal is gone.

I almost always prefer 2 small AIs to one big one. Even if they get ahead in tech you can just stamp them out with production or play nice and trade past them with all the cities then kill them. I'd be more inclined to rid myself of backstabbers earlier but neither of these guys do that. You get them to pleased, you can focus on empire development until it comes such a time that you want even more cities .

Spoiler :

Errr...Hammy who? I only know Hannibal and Brennus.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spoiler :

Errr...Hammy who? I only know Hannibal and Brennus.

Spoiler :

Switch hammy for brennus then. I've played a loooooot of games recently, and hammy was in more than one . Confusion abounds.

 

[Trynthlas]

Erf. Not sure how to explain the situation now, but I've attached the save if someone's got the time to look

Spoiler :

I did end up declaring on Hannibal, and burned 2 cities. I also managed to expand with 2 more cities to the west, and 1 up north to encroach on hannibal's former territory (he beat me to the better spot up there by 1 turn ).

I've just met Zara, who is miles ahead (in score at least) of the rest of us. Also one of those ranking charts just popped up, and I'm the lowest guy on the totem pole as far as techs go. My tech position SUCKS compared to where I would normally be at 400 AD on a prince game.

I have a large stack in my northern city to go after hannibal or at least deter him from trying anything. Spy running around his territory shows that he has copper and horses but no iron. However he's also got ivory, which could be interesting if he starts building some jumbos later. Not sure how to handle that front as it stands.

Economy sucks, mainly due to no courthouses yet. Working on that, but it's slow

I have absolutely sucked at thinking about a GP farm in this game, so I have built ZERO great people at this point in the game. Blah.

Anyhoo, take a look and offer some advice if you would be so kind

 

[michmbk]

Spoiler :

I think I'm the only person that COMPLETELY cut hammy off from settling to his north by hitting the REX west .

I understand that hannibal is somewhat threatening, but if you survive the very early game with him and he gets to pleased, he won't declare. Hammy is the same.

The way I look at it is this: If you REX, hammy and hannibal each get to 6-8 cities top. If you rush Hannibal, you get the same amount of cities as just expanding west, but now hammy gets 12+ and hannibal is gone.

I almost always prefer 2 small AIs to one big one. Even if they get ahead in tech you can just stamp them out with production or play nice and trade past them with all the cities then kill them. I'd be more inclined to rid myself of backstabbers earlier but neither of these guys do that. You get them to pleased, you can focus on empire development until it comes such a time that you want even more cities .

TMIT

Spoiler :

it's funny, I actually used a hybrid of the cutoff strategy and the rush. I rushed Hanny, and stopped when he had 1 city left, immediately whipped out three settlers and blocked a good portion of the land to the west. I'm not sure what Brennus was doing over there - I think he was too busy whoring religions to expand (he founded 4). He was kind enough to spread them all to me, so the cities he did found to the west, I flipped with culture from buildings for his religions.

After I finished my game and read up on everyone else's, I read yours and we had the same mindset, it's just you were focused on it from turn 1, whereas I tried to wait until Hanny was bye bye.

 

[assass1n]

@michmbk
thats spoiler info which you have posted

 

[michmbk]

@michmbk
thats spoiler info which you have posted

Sorry - you're right - I fixed it.

 

[tycoonist]

i finally finished playing my game. 15 bloody hours it took. (backdoor) diplo victory (immortal level) in late 1800s. i can post a report if anyone is intersted in how to do it the hard way...

 

[nanomage]

yes, certainly, please.
We (at least i perconally) eagerly await this report - it's always interesting to read how do people play and win at higher difficulties.

 

[assass1n]

me too
post the report please

 

[tycoonist]

ok. i have exams tomorrow, so i will try and post on wednesday/thursday if possible

 

[assass1n]

Are we making this a regular series for Monarch players ??
If yes I think we should poll next time for the leader

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Are we making this a regular series for Monarch players ??
If yes I think we should poll next time for the leader

The alternate approach is to repeat the methods used in the immortal U for a long time:

Roll a random leader. If it's one that the series has played, reroll until it's a new leader.

 

[gcm4738]

First - @tycoonist - yeah it would be great if you could post a report. I shadowed an Immortal game you played several months ago (Don't even remember what series) but I do remember it was playing as the Chinese, lots of jungle around. Starting position on the south shore of a big lake, Alexander nearby to the south - funny how some games really stick in your head. Anyway I learned a lot of things watching you and some of the other guys in that game!

As far as making this a regular thing for those of us Monarch or Monarch-wannabe's around... Here's the deal. I've got some time on my hands at the moment, so I'm playing a lot of Civ. Ai Shizuka and I just happened to want to have a go at Monarch together and he set the first one up. He wasn't around for a little while, and I was bored so I set the second one up.

I feel like it's Ai Shiz's right-of-first-refusal if he wants to do something with the "monarch student" series. If not, I don't mind throwing it open for discussion. Would you guys like either him or myself to put one of these up every few weeks or so? Should we rotate it around so other people put one up? (singlemalt told me that he had a good game saved that he thought would be a fun candidate for "monarch students")

Ah - maybe I'm thinking too hard about it. If there's enough interest in a Prince/Monarch/Emperor type game series let's just agree what leader/map type and either me or someone else can stick one up after things quiet down with NC XIX....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

First - @tycoonist - yeah it would be great if you could post a report. I shadowed an Immortal game you played several months ago (Don't even remember what series) but I do remember it was playing as the Chinese, lots of jungle around. Starting position on the south shore of a big lake, Alexander nearby to the south - funny how some games really stick in your head. Anyway I learned a lot of things watching you and some of the other guys in that game!

As far as making this a regular thing for those of us Monarch or Monarch-wannabe's around... Here's the deal. I've got some time on my hands at the moment, so I'm playing a lot of Civ. Ai Shizuka and I just happened to want to have a go at Monarch together and he set the first one up. He wasn't around for a little while, and I was bored so I set the second one up.

I feel like it's Ai Shiz's right-of-first-refusal if he wants to do something with the "monarch student" series. If not, I don't mind throwing it open for discussion. Would you guys like either him or myself to put one of these up every few weeks or so? Should we rotate it around so other people put one up? (singlemalt told me that he had a good game saved that he thought would be a fun candidate for "monarch students")

Ah - maybe I'm thinking too hard about it. If there's enough interest in a Prince/Monarch/Emperor type game series let's just agree what leader/map type and either me or someone else can stick one up after things quiet down with NC XIX....

Don't be shy about hosting games! To my knowledge, nobody "owns" any series on this subforum - Noble's Club, PYL, LHC, and Immortal University all have current hosts different from their original one (someone had an interesting map and "guest hosted" a LHC over the summer). Essentially, if you want to host a map, host it . Indeed, the reason I took over NC/PYL is that Bleys didn't feel like hosting them as frequently anymore, and I was getting impatient so I learned how to do the maps .

Also, it's a bit hard to fit games in between other games. I'd say just post it haha. By the time NC cools down, the next LHC, immortal U, or PYL will be active. Different games/leaders appeal to different players, and of course some people might happen to play all of them...

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Do it, no problem. I don't have the time to host/play anything at this moment. And I'm not in the mood to play videogames at all, really.

Looks like there is a gap in the forum games between noble/prince and immortal. So if you want to keep this going, definitely go for it.

 

[tycoonist]

there is a slight problem with the report in that i only have about 4 screenies, so i will try and resurrect some saves and piece together what i can.

 

[michmbk]

gcm - definitely do it - I moved up to monarch level about 5-6 games ago, so I'd love to have the series on monarch games continue to keep learning how others approach similar maps.

As for leaders, I'm totally ok with random - I haven't played with the creative trait in awhile, and that's one that helps a bit in the early game, which is a critical part of establishing a good game. Again, ok with random, but I would suggest creative if others are also interested in that.

 

[gcm4738]

@Ai Shizuka - Hey dude - sorry you're not in a civving mood at the moment. I know it comes and goes for me. Hence my slight reluctance at taking on the honour of hosting what I still feel like is "your" series! Hope you're elbow's healing up.

And while TMIT's right that there are a lot of series here - all of them different, I also felt like Ai did that there was a little group of us hanging around that had moved beyond Noble, weren't ready for Emp or Immortal and wanted to play some fairly regular games together on Monarch. And it's been kinda fun doing it cause we've got some other folks out of the woodwork, so I'm all for keeping it going.

I'm going to finish NC XIX first and let the dust start to settle on that. Then I'll stick up Monarch Students III. If I go off the whole thing before Monarch Students IV, I'll hand over to someone else if possible. On the other hand, who knows, maybe we'll keep it rolling for awhile if enough of us are interested. When I first put this game up, as long as at least one other person was playing I was happy. Having joined in on some of these games, I find playing *cough* with myself kinda boring.

In the meantime if you have any ideas about you do or don't want to see in Mon Stu III stick 'em here and we'll try to get a game that all of us want to have a go at.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I'm at that point where I own Prince, and I'm improving on Monarch, but still have a ways to go....so I'd love to see this continue!

There can never be too many series for me! I love them all! I can't quite get to as many as TMIT but I try

My biggest problem is I'm lazy and I'm always doing like 20 things while playing so I never take SS and rarely post my games...and I think you guys could probably help me quite a bit so I'm gonna make it a point to post when you come out with the next game.

Of course, I swear I really wanted to do a write up for Napolean...I really did!... but before I knew it game was over and I hadn't taken any ss or notes, doh! I'm so easily distracted!

 

[assass1n]

we had Ind Spi Exp Imp and we had Chm Org which leaves us only with Agg Phil Cre and Pro remaining xD
go Alex/Pericles/Toku/SB/Giggles
Toku SB and Giggles done in PYL/NC so I think its between Alex and Pericles