Monarch Student^ V - Justinian

[TheMeInTeam]

TMIT - I state this map is A LOT easier but of course if someone struggles that means very little. Games vary a lot even between players of the same map and difficulty based on how certain early wonders and religions fall. A few things seem to hold on this map however -

Spoiler :

Mainly that Asoka grabs an early religion along with Issy and one of the two are likely to grab Judaism. The only other AI with a high chance *normally* to grab a religion in my experience is then Liz. So the human has a very good chance to be in a religious group hug on a very green continent.

As you mentioned with sailing and some scouting foreign trade and even intercontinental foreign trade is opened up fairly easily in this game along with 3 local AIs that are easy to please and do not declare at pleased. Add in the large swath of resource rich jungle to block the AI out of (even on higher levels the AI seems to expand into jungle as a last resort with the first few settlers) and the game just felt easy.

As you mention though reads like this are becoming easier for me and assuming everyone can make them, or that I will even make them in time, is likely an ignorant assumption.

The last map was frustrating simply due to the rate the AI expands and at least for me the lack of various strategic resources to which the human player could beat the AI to without being lucky.

Yeah...the last map looked pretty brutal. I already stated why and you seem to agree . Non-water maps are just rough unless extra civs are added to compensate. It's kind of like playing deity/huge with 6 opponents...that would be extremely difficult to manage.

As for this:

Spoiler :

Mainly that Asoka grabs an early religion along with Issy and one of the two are likely to grab Judaism. The only other AI with a high chance *normally* to grab a religion in my experience is then Liz. So the human has a very good chance to be in a religious group hug on a very green continent.

Fred is christian (which I founded) and has been since the BC's (I initially ran hindu to be part of that group of 3, but once wang went FR I decided to go back to christianity). He never converted to another religion. Later on (still in the BCs) Wang founded confuc. which happens to be his favorite religion. There's a good chance he'd have converted to it if he didn't build paya and go early FR, since Asoka founded hindu and wang has a couple cities with confuc (was starting to spread it).

Unlike our continent, the other one was all buddhist although peace weights and general backstabbing came into play over there.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMM/Normal No Events

To 1720 AD

Spoiler :

Went to town on korea...he got rifles after I took his 2 western cities. I took cease fire till rifling, built some cavalry, then hit again. He vassaled to asoka with 3 cities left (1 on a tiny island somewhere). Asoka hit me with infantry/cannon/cavalry to my cavalry. I lost my 2 western korean conquests, but finally took the last mainland korean city, supermedic healed, then got over there. I killed asoka's stack in the field while it was marching toward a 3rd city (lots of flanking promos followed up by combat II pinch) and took my cities back pretty easily. With painstaking zerging, I then proceeded to take all of asoka's cities on the continent using nothing but cavalry. Wang broke free and I just took him as a vassal (might abuse him for some tech trades later, like steal something he doesn't have from fred and trade for even more for instance).

War just finished and I've got intelligence agencies and jails going up. focused on fred. Since I'm christian and have the holy city, I can get holy city bonus. I will move my capitol near him and take down a bureau if necessary. I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-35% cost out of 100% to steal then. I am very far back but that might change very rapidly. Will probably change to EP rather than beakers as my multipliers there are going to be 100% in all cities soon and my size should allow me to beat anybody at parity.

The buddhist continent has not been too peaceful with itself and they're throwing hissyfits. I'm at cautious with 2 of them and pleased with the other, but I don't think they can do anything to 50+ cavalry via intercontinental invasions anyway.

Having just axed the culture threat, the only civ left of substance is fred. I have way more cities than him and a solid production lead. He is doing well but is still a long, long way from space. He probably won't survive long after some espionage rape!

 

[Meatbuster]

For everyone's sake, I added a new save with huts gone, to the second post.
Here's a quick link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=228835&d=1253715235

@TMIT:
Awesome bloody wars! Look at all those troops lost. I'm surprised you have much more than that remaining.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For everyone's sake, I added a new save with huts gone, to the second post.
Here's a quick link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=228835&d=1253715235

@TMIT:
Awesome bloody wars! Look at all those troops lost. I'm surprised you have much more than that remaining.

It's still 145 kills:75 deaths. Just under a 2:1 ratio, which isn't bad when you get caught fighting multiple opponents in a significant tech hole . More importantly, I think it was worth it to get the position I'm in.

 

[Murky]

Some thoughts:

Spoiler :

The difficult parts of this scenario; leveraging the leader traits and making good use of the UU at the critical moment.

It's really easy for the mainland AIs to run away in the tech race. They tend to share a religion and have great lands for doing research.

I've played the scenario a few times already.

Hints:

Settling 1W gives you a great early production capital, but 1S gives you a good food capital for running early specialists. You can do multiple slingshots. In one game, I managed the MC slingshot and generated a GE for Mids. Running Rep+Caste allowed me to compete in the tech race and get Liberalism first.

Winning and diplomacy:

The main starting continent is most likely going all be the same religion and most of the leaders won't declare at Pleased. You should be able to pull off a culture, space or diplomatic win without too much difficulty. Rather than attacking the big rivals on the mainland target Izzy or Charlie the go after Gilgamesh. You want Astronomy and Guilds early to accomplish this. Once you've go two or more vassals under your boot, the game is pretty much in the bag.

 

[artificialj]

Wow, this has been a weird game:

Spoiler :

Mainly weird due to the most bizarre war/aftermath I've ever had:

So our continent was a giant buddhist love fest, then, out of nowhere, Wang, who I thought was above the pleased threashhold, DOWed me. He had just gotten his UU, but I had about 2.5 times his military might, so it was basically just an annoyance. Captured 3 of his cities, including his cap, then sued for peace, getting 300 gold, and Monarchy.

Immeadiatly after the war, he goes back to pleased, and over the next 500 - 1000 years or so I've asked if he could spare techs for a close friend, and I'm fairly sure he's given me 4 more techs, including HBR, Aesth, Lit, and Feudalism. WTH? I've never had anything like this happen. I'm not even that far behind the tech lead anymore, so I don't think they're pity gifts, and I'm not absolutely overwhelming him in the power graphs...

 

[Meatbuster]

^

Spoiler :

That sounds like Wang is really sorry for his war declaration in the past. He's just trying to make it up to you.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMM/Normal No events

1905 Domination

*Note*: This segment showcases the ridiculous potential of espionage in tech catchup...

Spoiler :

The war with Asoka was painful and I had fallen far back as seen in my last segment. However, I had some very important advantages: a strong military, a lot of cities, and state property/nationalism.

After putting up jails/intelligence agencies and using nationhood, I was able to cough up over 1000 EP/turn using the buildings themselves + slider. I focused it on Fred. Now, you might say 1000-1500 EP/turn isn't very impressive. After all, 1 EP is often < 1 beaker. But not in this situation. In this situation...well...the end result is below. In this case, thanks to moving palace and a few extra modifiers, 1 EP was giving me 5 (!) beakers, BEFORE trade whoring a bit with my new-found island vassal using techs I just stole.

Panzers aren't fun to fight but I compensated with less tank more infantry+spy. Thanks to stealing fascism I went PS/rushmore/Jail and was immune to WW. Punting Fred off the continent was the last moderately challenging action. Hitting pre-industrialism targets with tanks and cruise missiles (en MASSE) does not make for difficult goings. I'd started building a navy while fighting fred so I just moved troops down and sailed across. Liz was voluntary vassaled to izzy and stayed that way until death. I only captured 2 spanish cities...the instant liz was gone, izzy put up a white flag. Our starting continent + capping the one to the west was enough to win.

It's kind of funny to finish the game undisputed tech leader with 500 beakers/turn, but if one has enough land EP is just overwhelming...

 

[NihilZero]

Spoiler :

So nobody else experienced the dreaded Monster Wang p) phenomenon? Must have just been a freak incident in my game.

In brief, here's what happened:

I gimped myself at the start by trying for, and failing to get, an early religion. Yeah, I know, this was suicidal, but I must have been getting cocky because I haven't lost a game in a while. Then after that I had a slow start, and I think this was partially due to playing on Epic speed. On normal speed I know how fast is fast and how slow is slow, and when I need to get a move on and whip or chop if necessary. In this game, I just hung around doing very little. Even cheap settlers did little to help me, although I got the first few sites I wanted without any trouble.

The real problem was not that I was doing particularly terrible (although I certainly wasn't doing very well), it was more that Wang was doing great. He got the polytheism religion (I was two turns behind him at the time), and just expanded massively. He claimed all the jungle territory very fast indeed, which is really unusual for an AI, and Asoka voluntary became his vassal. There went my plan to compensate for my own inadequacies by picking on Asoka.

By now I was massively behind in tech. I abandoned the idea of miltary action, never built any units, built currency, ran scientists and pacifism and turned up the research slider. Managed to narrowly beat Asoka to liberalism and took astronomy. Frederick volunteered to become Wang's next vassal. Tried to use my narrow astronomy lead to finally expand my territory beyond the six cities I'd had since antiquity by settling the barb continent to the east, but, you guessed it, Wang beat me to it.

So now I'm pretty much ready to abandon the game, maybe I'll restart it. I could pick on the Western continent (who are extremely backward and riven by inter-religious conflict), but I have no armed forces at all and poor production so that will take a long time, by which stage Wang will probably be packing his zero-gravity toothbrush for the trip to Alpha Centauri. Alternatively he might sitch to free religion, decide he doesn't like me any more, and then massace my three warriors and two chariots and put me out of my misery.

Peaceful games suck. I hate harmony.

 

[cripp7]

Spoiler :

Kept playing it out. Researched Lib to 1 turn, then tech Nationalism for Nationhood, bulbed Democracy with Lib and did a Rep/Nat/CS/Theo switch. Missed the TM by 8 turns but netted 800. Used 2 GS to bulb PP, and with some trades got caught back up on techs. Got MT in 1305AD, then went Chem>SM on my way to Communism with a shortcut to Astro. Fred is a techwhore monster here who has the AP which gave back one of my cities to Osaka. Once galleons/frigates in, I'll take out Osaka then reproup and hit Wang as he's getting close to Steel.

 

[darreljnz]

Hi all,
I've been on Prince for ages, tried Monarch and got caned, moved back to Prince for a month and now I'm back to Monarch and getting caned. I've decided to give the Monarch Bullpen a go to improve my game. This will be my first game so here we go!

Cheers,
Darrel

 

[Meatbuster]

^
If you're not too confident about your gameplay, you could also try the less difficult Lizzy and Augustus Caesar games.

@cripp:
Looks like you're in a pretty good position despite losing a city via the AP. Just build up an army and go for it.

@Nihilzero:

Spoiler :

Nope, Wang never gets monstrous in my tests. Usually it's Fred because he's closest to the barb island. I really don't like attacking my religious buddies. Sometimes I just should.

@TMIT:

Spoiler :

Awesome game. I still can't get over how much troops you built and it's on NORMAL speed. I'm amazed.

 

[shyuhe]

@TMIT - That's an interesting idea to move the capital super close for massive discounts, especially since the capital location isn't as important in the late stage. How were you able to get so much culture discount though? Does your vassal's culture count as your culture for the discount? Or were you pumping out a lot of culture?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spoiler :

@TMIT - That's an interesting idea to move the capital super close for massive discounts, especially since the capital location isn't as important in the late stage. How were you able to get so much culture discount though? Does Wang's culture count as your culture for the discount? Or were you pumping out a lot of culture?

I took that city initially, but it got flipped. It managed to get a border pop or so before doing so however, and the adjacent cities of mine got pops enough to press it also. The other side's culture still was dominant, but the discount you see was from that turn of events.

I usually can't do any better than a net of -70% or so (some EP spending, and stationary spy/open borders). Having the holy city and some culture available just made the conversion RIDICULOUS. It's a good way for a SP hammer setup to drag itself back into relevance.

Where I struggle, though, is that unlike guys like you or U Sun, I don't usually get state property at 700 AD or something .

Edit: Moving the palace in state property doesn't hurt at ALL once you're out of bureaucracy. I'd long switched to nationhood when I moved it, because emancipation was starting to hurt (and +2 barracks super temples helped) and nationhood has very favorable maintenance. Of course, the whole +25% EP bonus didn't hurt either, especially when the lack of cottages means giving up FS has a low opportunity cost.

 

[NihilZero]

There is still so much I don't yet know about this game. Spies? Cruise missiles? Who would have thought that such things could be useful?

When I get access to my other PC in a few days, I think I'll post a few saves from my ill-fated game and see what the resident civ experts make of my predicament. To me it's hopeless but an experienced player might find a way to turn things around.

 

[Teelman]

Epic/Monarch

1st Checkpoint

Spoiler :

So it started pretty easy for me. I expanded to 6 decent cities sites and was helped by the thick band of jungle in the middle. However, interestingly this happened really early....

Somehow the Spanish were gone by 2650BC....wierd. Anyways, I really didn't have much trouble with Asoka or Freddy this game. The main problem was Wang. Everyone was different religions, but no one ever asked me to convert either so I was just a heathen atheist the entire game! I traded with both Asoka and Fred fairly regularly and neither of them ever even went into WHEORN mode. Anyways here's the empire circa 115 AD and shortly before my war with wang.

2nd Checkpoint to Victory

Spoiler :

Before the war with wang.....

Go lib and took nationalism from it. Here's the empire at 1100 AD

So Wang went wheoorn mode and I was his target.....bad mistake. I had even tried to bribe him with civil service to stay out of way, and that didn't even work. Anyways, I bribed Fred to war with me as well which helped tie up his stack for a while. I took his two closest cities and was running out of seige so I peaced for 10 turns then rolled him over and got to use my UU some woot!!! After this personally this was a pretty easy game since Asoka and Fred were such pushover's. I went after Asoka first who only had 5 cities left on this island.

And look at all the lovely wonders Asoka built just for me!!!

She had 3-4 cities left on the small island to the NW so I just vassaled instead of dealing with those. Next, was fred then the island was mine!!!!

And look at all the wonders fred decided to build for me as well!!!

I had to tech lead starting from liberalism, so calvary/riflemen/cannon vs trebs/macemen really wasnt hard so Asoka and Fred went down pretty easy. I met Elizabeth and Gilgi on the other island and they were really tech backwards so instead of dealing with the micro of invading i just decided to space it since i was so far ahead anyways. So in 1915 AD....woohoo I win!

Once I got rid of wang, this was a pretty easy win in my book I think.

 

[Grashopa]

Need some opinions on whether the cataphract "rush" will work at this point.

Spoiler :

Its 1120 AD and below is the tech situation, my city chart and Gilgamesh's SoD. Gilgamesh has about 100 beakers per turn right now. As it took him 7 turns to get optics. I am in a GA for 3 more turns, and then 2 more coming up. 11 turns for the Taj and 6 for a GM ( at 1% chance I got a GA this turn so I have the 2 GPs I need). I have a bit more production coming online as I'm working food right now before switching to workshops.

I'm not sure its worth going after Gilgamesh unless I can go on to vassalize the entire continent... What do you think my next move should be? I can get chemistry in <15 turns which gives me a lot more hammers. Or I goto cavalry and state property first then attack? Oh yeah - I have 3 GGs settled in the 100 hammers per turn after HE capital.

How I got to this point:

Spoiler :

I scouted my continent early, and we have 3 civs that won't declare at pleased. Korea and Germany went hindu, and India was Jewish. The Indian lands are really really good and he has a shrine. Korean lands are ok, and Germany got boxed in badly. I have a lot of hammers in my land, so I decided to spam 6 or 7 cities with +50% settlers and then HA rush India. At 500 BC he had 1 archer in every city and archer axe spear in his capital to go along with being behind badly in tech since he was chopping out the jungle for me. He also had MoM, GLh, and GW MoM and GLh were going to be really really good for me.

Unfortunately for me he kept up with my HA spam by building only units from that point. Then when I attacked someone gave him construction AND ivory. Still I built 40 HAs, lost 18 and built 10 too many. And ugh as a consequence of him keeping up in power with me, he stopped spreading his religion so the shrine is only 10 gpt..

I peaced him out leaving him 5 cities - 1 on the mainland and apparently 4 on an island NW. I'm putting turns into CS before trading it to frederick for aesthetics (hehe) and code of laws. It will take me all of 10 turns to gain tech parity here as I have 3 trading partners and will get Korea and Germany to friendly. My tech path from defeating india was Aesthetics (no one had it at 600 AD) Lit, drama and music.

I noticed the coast off my SW was reachable just after defeating India, so I settled a city and chopped a monument and found the other continent. The great library went at 940 AD I actually could have built it myself.

The other continent was very backward - gilgamesh just vassalized England around 1000 AD and was at war constantly from the BCs. At this point I was running serfhood? to get the faster worker times as I was workshopping the heck out of my lands for production once I got guilds and my UU. Then switched to caste to get Korea friendly and a GP for a golden age since I have MoM and would get the Taj first for my 2nd GA.

EDIT - Hehe forgot my first GA was actually from grabbing music first at 1010 AD!

 

[Teelman]

@Grashopa

Spoiler :

I found that focusing on getting control of the whole island and getting rid of Wang and Frederick was the difference for me. Once I got the whole island, Gilgi and Eliz were so tech backwards they were no real threat. Once you get the whole island you can chose what victory you want. I didnt want to deal with invading Gigli for the dom victory so I just teched to a really EASY space race. By the end of my space race I was over 3000 beakers per turn running at 90% science and a few cities running 150+ hammers.

 

[Grashopa]

@Teelman

Spoiler :

Actually I think if I had finished off India's last city on the continent space would have been very doable with just that land. Theres more than enough workshop hammers with the land I have, and everyone is teching so poorly. My problem is all I think about is conquering everyone.

My original plan was to take out Germany first with the UU then see about Korea.. Then I saw how backwards Gilgamesh was. I guess with how many hammers I have it doesn't matter that Korea is at tech parity.

 

[Grashopa]

@nihil

Spoiler :

Haha I never considered that happening, but in my game as well Germany was significantly boxed in and I could see him vassalizing. With the hammers we start with I figure war has to be in the cards, but India vassalizing to Wang?? I don't know what I'd be thinking at that point.

I wish I had seen the coast to the SW earlier for access to the other continent that is also a game changer that may have helped you some. Hehe I actually accidentally saw it, because I picked up the GLh from India and then went looking for coastal spots.

@Murky

Spoiler :

Hehe I pretty much see it as you did now. But am going for the vassalize the other continent option. Missed seeing an easy space after taking out India if I had just cleaned him off the main continent. The city I left him stole 2 food resources from me gimping 2 cities, 1 that could have had some 50 base hammers after chemistry workshops.

Map thoughts

Spoiler :

I'm surprised no one rushed India, our starting land was heavy on hammers and the second I saw his capital I knew I had to take it. I actually made a horrid mistake leaving him a city on the mainland. I left it because I saw the aesthetics line had not been researched by anyone and I felt I had to kill off 20 HAs for my opportunity to grab tech parity by the time caste workshops are good.

Either way we have the best starting position by far on this map productionwise early. Top that with India who builds wonders, doesn't build any units and with such good land.. I love maps that I build the HE in my capital.

@TMIT

Spoiler :

It never occurred to me how much paya could have hurt me if say Korea of Germany went to FR. I actually built it for cash in my game and Germany got it but remained in our religion. My plan required Korea and Germany at friendly for tech trading past "you are too advanced". Since I went for Philosophy and Divine Right as trades.