Monarch Student II - Climbing from Prince (Joao II)

[nanomage]

let's simply play random leader, repicking those allready played and maybe financials - they are too strong

 

[gcm4738]

Ok - How about this... I played a game as Alex pretty recently, so I'm kinda off him at the moment what about choosing between these 3 options...

1) Pericles Phi/Cre
2) Asoka Spi/Org
3) Mehmed II Exp/Org

I've never played as Pericles, I had a really fun game as Mehmed once a long time ago. I'm not that keen on the Indian leaders, I think it's that pinky-purplish colour that puts me off.

I'm thinking of sticking with a fractal map. Although we could go back to continents (3?) or do something else. If we get some kind of coherent convergence on this that's great, otherwise I guess I'll just pick

 

[assass1n]

You aint keen on Indian leaders I feel they are the best though the UB sucks completely
my vote goes for Asoka / Gandhi especially because you hate them

 

[nanomage]

well if you aren't that keen on random i'd suggest pericles. i never played him too.
indian civ is great
as for the map - why don't we consider tectonics. from my memory, it creates nice maps, realistic and still unpredictable.
i think, we know too much when we play continents

 

[gcm4738]

Whoa, whoa - Let me be clear on this! I don't *hate* them. Seriously, it's just that light purple colour - yuk. I avoid playing other civs for the same reason, including England - although I changed 'em to red once and it was a lot better

And I suppose the fact that they have the only non-military UU. Mehmed is a fun leader, but maybe to similar to Joao anyway...

Ok - we'll let the discussion go for a little while to give everyone a chance to say their piece (not just those of you in the Indian time zone ), but I threw Asoka in there because singlemalt PM'd me and said he had a great game as Asoka that he'd played recently that he thought would make a good candidate for Monarch Students.

I'd rather have everyone give their opinion and see if we can get some agreement - otherwise we can always go random leader.

 

[nanomage]

bah - not at all indian!
but the stalin game is allready running in thread next to this

 

[gcm4738]

Ok - those of you in the Indian and Russian? time zones? How do I know where you're from if you don't put it in your "information"

And if you are Russian... Can we have the gas turned back on now please?

 

[nanomage]

That's not we! that's all evil ukranians sucking your gas!
if seriously that's just another reason for me to feel ashamed for my country
way too much of them recent time

and location is untruthworthy! yours says you're in UK, but your posts seem to have same timestamps as mine...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You know, if you make a WB save you can make the civs any color you want, and it's pretty easy to do it. The line with playercolor_X ----> just swap the color (make sure you keep the capitalization patterns the same though, damned thing is picky).

That's how I occasionally post games with green egypt or germany, or a couple noble's clubs back a black greece .

 

[gcm4738]

@nanomage... Well I'm no expert on how the timestamp thing works - but doesn't it adjust everyone's post to your own local timezone? I can assure you that I'm here in Gloucester in the UK (well, actually mid-way between Gloucester and Cheltenham) where it's foggy, but not too cold today. Where in Russia are you?

and @ TMIT - Yeah I've done some mucking around with civ colours, flags and so on. The problem is (as you well know I'm sure) that the more you fiddle with the WB save, the more you inadvertantly learn about the game beforehand, somewhat ruining it for yourself. I might play around with the next one a little though. (not the map or resources, etc. - just civ colours, leader names, etc.)

 

[nanomage]

@gcm4738
ah, you seem to be right.
i thought i had noticed some discrepancies in timestamps with some other posters, but now i checked and all seems to be ok. looks like i have mistaken.
edit: i'm in moscow
and @TMIT - do you mean opening WBsave with a text editor or this is an utility inside WBuilder to change all those lines?

 

[assass1n]

no utility exists the WB save is just a wall of text

 

[michmbk]

I'd sign up for Asoka - never played him, but spiritual organized sounds great for military rex.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@gcm4738
ah, you seem to be right.
i thought i had noticed some discrepancies in timestamps with some other posters, but now i checked and all seems to be ok. looks like i have mistaken.
edit: i'm in moscow
and @TMIT - do you mean opening WBsave with a text editor or this is an utility inside WBuilder to change all those lines?

You just open the file in a basic text editor. I recommend word or openoffice - looks nice and you can find/replace lines in the game.

"find" is especially important if you want to make changes to your civ without seeing other civs. For example, say you're Joao. Go into the WB file, and use "find" to zoom down to Joao (make his name the search item). Now you can change the player colors without seeing the others.

Once you get used to it, you could theoretically make a map and not know the leaders on the map, let alone where they are a located. Finding "PlayableCiv=1" and replacing it with "PlayableCiv=0", then manually switching your own back to 1 will make it so that only your civ will appear as a choice when the scenario is run.

Of course, the first couple times anyone does it they'll probably learn all kinds of spoilers, just to figure out what things in the WB save do.

Edit: Any leader is fine with me. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't be in a monarch-learning series, but I like posting shadows/games on the forum and hopefully it helps people. For me, it's just a fun diversion from more serious games.

 

[nanomage]

Thanks a lot, TMIT

 

[assass1n]

IMHO I would actually choose leaders on which traits have been done in the last 2-4 editions of the series but when you said Indian leaders suck I went overdrive
We should simply consider excluding Rome and Financial and actually play some of the weaker civs or traits and anyways the Indians have never been done in any of the series that I play neither NC nor here

 

[TheMeInTeam]

India is quite powerful. Decent starting techs, solid trait combos on both leaders, a UU that is always helpful, and a marginally good UB (happiness from a building is never bad since it can ease you out of HR, though unfortunately it comes later than other + buildings).

All in all they're solid, but I think he was just saying he didn't like light purple .

 

[gcm4738]

Yes - Let me be quite clear on this... Indian leaders do *not* suck. I like India - both in the game and in real life! I have Indian friends - one particularly good friend named Vish. We call him Vish the Fish. That was his idea BTW. Now that that's settled...

Ok - I'm hearing a lot of love for Asoka here.

@Single Malt - If you read this then you'd better send me the game you PM'd me about... I'll PM you as well to arrange it.

If this doesn't work for whatever reason, I'll come up with a good Asoka map - either fractal or tectonic or something. However in Monarch Student III they will probably be some colour other than light purple!

Thanks for chipping in your thoughts. I'll try and get it up by the weekend sometime, somewhat dependent on communications with Single Malt

 

[Single Malt]

How does a Red Asoka sound?

 

[gcm4738]

Red, Blue, Black... Orange? Anything but that pinky purple!

Might be best to pick a good contrasting colour to the other civs that are in the game... are you offering to put it up and host this round - or do you want to e-mail it to me?