Monarch Student X - Charlemagne

[Phil725]

Monarch - Epic - 1550AD

Spoiler :

Everything went pretty much as planned. I was first to lib and took nationalism and started building the Taj in Aachen. I was planning on waiting for rifles to start warring, but I always get these currasier urges. So I start building knights while teching off MT. 60 gold to upgrade each, get a few more built, and I'm ready to take out Nappy.

He was nice enough to keep most of his troops in Lyons, so I was able to knock out more than half of his troops first turn. From there I moved over to take out Paris, which had the majority of his leftover troops. From there Nappy's crippled and its just a formality taking him out right? Nope, the AP pops up:

Not a huge deal. My happy cap is still very high thanks to free religion/HR and resources, but now I'm very limited on time. I have to wipe him out before the next resolution, and now I have less wiggle room for WW.

The rest of his cities were significantly less defended though. My next set back was running out of EP after taking his 4th city. I turned up the slider, but still took his next two cities sans revolt, although I lost a lot more units than I would've liked.

Eventually he was left with only a crappy tundra/culture pressed city that he took off of Church. I get my only healthy units down there quickly since another resolution is coming up soon, throw it into revolt, and bye Nappy:

I razed that city as it was pretty worthless. Next turn the resolution pops up, and Brennus stops his own war that he declared the turn before. And the rest of his land:

He has more green land in his few cities than in all of our starting area. Unfortunately, he farmed almost all of it, so now I have to rebuild almost everything. Tours was a huge disappointment. I would have razed it if I had known those were desert rivers and not flood plains.

Techs are OK, I'm not planning on fighting Han and KK, so I've been trading with them, but not the people to the south.

I'm shooting for an AP win here, domination really, but AP should come earlier. If I take it from Brennus and wipe him and Sully off the map, I should run unopposed. Han and KK will vote for me. They will both be at friendly just from favorite civic, although I'll adopt Judaism when I go to war with Sully anyway. If something goes wrong with that (hibernating AP glitch) I should be close to domination. Hopefully I can win without going after KK and Han.

I just finished teching off rifling, so a few turns at 100% gold to upgrade to cavalry and a few turns with the EP slider for revolts in Brennus' cities and I'll be ready to go. I figure I can wait for a resolution to pop up, and then beeline to Bibactre to take control of the AP.

The other problem with this game is that everyone is warring. When that happens, my computer can only handle ~20 turns or so before It completely freezes up and I have to restart my computer, which is why the earlier I win the better.

 

[djvandrake]

Monarch / Epic to 870 A.D.

Spoiler :

I finally met the rest of the neighbors.

ARE YOU BLINKING KIDDING ME?!?!?

Kubli Khan, Shaka, Nappy, Hannibal and Brennus all on the same land mass? This is going to be ridiculous.

Anywho, I played a bit more and used the Marble to pick up..

Free priest and trade routes are a big plus. Last wonder I'll be able to build most likely.

From my first great prophet I bulbed Theology.

Very good trade bait and for running Theocracy. The extra holy city will help too. I sent my missionary down to Brennus to try and convert him, but he had Judiaism spread around already. I still put Christianity in one of his cities and he's spreading it around.

With my next great prophet I built the Confucian Shrine.

It wasn't long before Nappy and Brennus started a dogpile on Churchill. They asked me to join in and I did just for the diplo bonus, and I did nothing to help. A few others joined the party too.

I'm building units and units and more units, and I can't keep up with this mess power wise.

Churchill is down to two cities, and once he's gone the dopgile party will come to my borders I'm sure. War elephants are the order of the day. Here's the state of things.

I traded maps with Suliman right after these shots were taken and got most of the lay of the land. Everybody except Khan.

And techs.

I don't think I'll have the luxury of pursuing Liberalism even though I'm the only one with paper. If I don't get some longbows fast I'm done for. It's rather odd how Nappy already has a gaggle of longbows when he just got fudalism a few turns ago.

I highly doubt I survive another 300 years.

 

[Sleepless]

- 1888AD

Spoiler :

Not often I play a game with so much fighting so it makes a change. With settled GG's my HE city (did have wp as well) was putting out 19xp units at then end and a couple of other cities had settled GGs as well.

First war was with Han/Shaka. Next war was with Nap had 3 with him. Churchill vassaled Brennus earlyish so I left him in peace for quite a while. 2 wars with Suly which didn't amount to much unit wise. Think he was probably bribed in. Ditto my next wars with Shaka. Protective really shined in this game for me.

Managed to build quite a few wonders. Missed out on the Eiffel Tower, 3 Gorges, and SoL by a couple of turns. Aachen at the end.

The route to victory.

Vassaled Nap first as he was getting annoying using esp to damage my buildings/improvements. I was kind enough to leave him Paris and a few of his other cities so I could use him to get a few techs which worked quite well.

Next was Churchill/Brennus. I should really have gone for Brennus early as Church couldn't cap whilst he still had a vassal. So had the great idea of killing Brennus off then vassalling Churchill. Nearly worked but didn't realise Bren had built a city on the little island. Luckily he broke free soon after. So vassaled Church and Brennus. Suly had joined in this war on Churchills side and had taken one of Naps cities. I had got a peace deal while I was still fighting Church so all his main troops were stuck in a one tile city. After Church I declared on Suly. Killed his stuck SOD took one of his main cities for vassal number 4.

Yet again Shaka had attacked me at this time. KK had stopped the war by using the AP a couple of times. So after our latest enforced peace deal I had moved my troops into position. Threatened one of his cities and he capitulated. Bit wimpish I thought but he only had rifles/cav/cannon against tanks/bombers so probably I good move by him.

Time for the last war. Han and KK had a DP pact so it would be both together. I gifted Shaka a lot of techs and gave him time to upgrade a few units as he would be facing KK for the first part on his own.

Although Han was more advanced than me. There was no way he could produce the amount of troops I could. Took one of his cities for vassal number 6. I'd eventually made it to Laser for Mob Arty. Upgraded my regular Art which had been the long term aim and never got to use them. I took one of KKs cities which Shaka had removed the defences from and vassal number 7.

So conquest victory in 1888. My favourite sort.

 

[Bleys]

I got DEMOLISHED at Immortal (kinda knew I would).

I barely held on on Emperor (kind of surprised me, I didnt finish because it would have been a tedious grind).

So I played it at Monarch, with the intention of ripping them to shreds, a bit of payback.

Monarch, Epic, through 1000 AD:

Spoiler :

Founded 5 religions, missing Buddhism and Islam, but the AP and most of the Southern AIs are in the one I missed, so I am also in that religion, LOL. I had 2 wars with Nappy, in the 2nd I took two of his cities, including Paris, and now we are buddies. I have had multiple wars with Shaka and Hannibal, but no cities changed hands.

I am far ahead in the Lib race, planning Steel, and I am just going to run over the AIs from there. A fun, old-school butt-whupping. I built Henge, Oracle, and AW to generate Prophets for me, and have 2 Shrines so far and 3 more Holy Cities to Shrine up (no city got 2 religions, I messed that up, was hoping for a Double at least)

Not going to do a big report, 3rd try and a level below my skill made it way easy, heh, so there isnt much educational value, since I knew where I was going to settle ahead of time. I will mention I have made over 1000 gold on failed Wonders, LOL.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

First part, Emperor epic, to 10 AD:

Spoiler :

Stupid religions have put me in a tricky position. Hannibal, Shaka and Kublai to the east are jewish, Nap and everyone else to the SW are buddhist. I'm in the middle with no state religion yet.
Luckily Nap entered wheoohrn vs Churchill when he wasn't buddhist and declared vs him anyway.

Techs: agri - mining - bw - archery - masonry - wheel - meditation - priesthood - writing - CoL (Oracle) - pottery - alpha (Brennus) - AH (Churchill) - fishing (Han) - IW (Han) - mathematics (Han) - sailing (Church) - HBR (Bren) - construction (Hab) - aesthetics - poly - researching literature

No fancy stuff like early religions or settler first. Worker techs and worker - warriors - settler.

4000 - Settle 1S.

3950 - 144 gold hut.

3550 - Meet Nap.

3225 - Map from hut.

2625 - Churchill.

2425 - First blocking city:

1875 - Meet Shaka.

1725 - Vienna:

1175 - Almost screwed CoL from Oracle. I was at 70 turns from writing with 1 turn left on the Oracle. But the gold at Prague wasn't mined.

Founded Confucianism in Vienna. Used the free missionary in a french city and Nap converted. But a few turns later he adopted buddhism. Can't compete with Brennus' missionary spam.

485 - The block is completed:

350 - Suleiman.

215 - Nap DoW Churchill.

200 - And Sulei DoW Nap.

170 - Last AI is Kublai.

10 AD - And Augsburg. I don't want Hannibal to expand beyond the chokepoint. I'll quickly settle another city near the copper to cut him off:

Empire:

I have to capture Cherokee quickly or Hannibal will get it with that elephant.
Tech rate is poor, those distant blocking cities really crippled my economy. And I had A LOT of stupid random events. TWO slave revolts, gold mine collapse and jumbo camp destroyed. On a positive note, I had 1 turn shaved from the Wheel to compensate .
Tech board is decent anyway:

Diplo is under control. I'm in no state religion, so nobody hates me. Hannibal is pleased, so I'm safe on the E front. I'm thinking about the Shwedagon Paya to adopt FR and prevent stupid religious requests:

Overall, I think I'm in good shape. Blocked a nice chunk of land and I can build elephants for self-defense.

 

[michmbk]

Emperor epic 1140 AD to the finish, a slow, painful dom win in the 1800s. The maximum of 30 screenshots in spoiler, because words wouldn't do this much warring enough justice.

Spoiler :

I left off closing in on lib - waiting on my education GS. First things first…finish guilds, the GS shows up, bulbs the rest of edu, and the race to lib is on.. Will I make it?

Sure looks like it based on espionage, since only Hanny could tech it. Of course, he's heading toward constitution – he just started it last turn, so he’s able to tech constitution in 7 turns. Insane. Oh, and Brennus hasn’t fought me yet this game, so he was feeling left out:

To quote one of my favorite Die Hard lines, welcome to the party pal! Seriously, this is absolutely nuts. I’ve now been at war with everyone except khan, despite having no state religion most of the game. Kublai is pleased with me, so who knows when he’ll join the fun. But here’s a neat trick to stop Brennus:

Hahahaha! Try getting through Nappy’s lands now, Brenny old boy. And lib...forgot the screen, but I opt for chemistry – I’m heading for steel to upgrade my trebs to cannons and recreate Waterloo. And building knights the whole time while teching up to steel – the great equalizer. If I have cannons and knights, and am going against anything below rifles…it’s going to get ugly. While building knights, I get this:

What the hey, I have Oracle, and am building knights, so that’s easy. And the reward:

Flanking 1 for all knights or a prophet. I’ll take the promotion. Get peace with Brennus for a few gold…and as I’m about to hit steel…Nappy voluntarily becomes Brennus’s vassal. What BS. So now I have to basically go 1 against 3 (Nappy, Brennus and Churchill) or take on the tech leader, Hanny. Keeping with the Die Hard theme…Yippiekayay, motherf*****! 1 on 3 action! - Steel, tech off a few turns for upgrading trebs, and we come for Nappy:

Shaka, you so crazy! I wanted some 1 on 3 action down south, and one turn later, you pull that stunt! You forgot one little thing though - I have a good memory of your antics, so I kept a little secret in my border city over there – 25 units, which included 4 cannons, elephants and longbows. He has to go through Hanny's land to get to me, so we go 1 on 3 to the south first - Orleans:

And my war to the north is a cakewalk – only 1 on 1! Shaka, say goodbye to your stack – I’ll sacrifice 7 units to blow away your 25. Note to Shaka – never DOW me with cats & elephants when I have cannons waiting for you. I’ll take tech and gold for peace:

And Paris:

The world considers me a villain for defying a peace resolution, but soon there will be no French left. Only Lyons and Tours to go. The techies on the other side, Hanny and Shaka better keep teching, because as I get more land, it’s going to get ugly. And a second defiance - the dictator hereby decrees his hindu cities will starve rather than accept peace with their hindu brothers. And Waterloo - it’s now 1 on 2 to the south:

I give Brennus a break so I can rebuild and assimilate all my new cities. Tech doesn’t look too good, does it?

Luckily I have a LOT of units now, and a LOT of cities. A great engineer pops – he’s for ironworks in my HE city, so it can unit spam faster. Cavalry and cannons in 1-2 turns each with 4 settled GGs adding XP - sign me up! Suleiman is kind enough to tech trade with me to help me catch up – he’s pleased with me. If he stays that way, maybe I’ll wait to kill him until last as a gesture of kindness. So, let’s see…if I DOW Brennus (who doesn’t have steel or rifles), I’ll likely have sky high war weariness plus emancipation problems, but should mow him down fast. Hanny is the tech leader and is headed toward teching the dreaded railroad. He only has 10 cities though, and I have 16…all producing military. How big is your stack Hanny??

I thought I took a screenshot, but can't find it - that sucks. Anyway, my stack is 74 strong, with lots of CR cannons and flanking cavalry, and it’s a race on Hanny – he’s 11 turns from machine guns – I can make it to Carthage in 10 turns if I don’t stop…so race is on – hoping for some anarchy from him too. Kublai must have had a defensive pact with him, because he was immediately at war with me when I DOWed Hanny – great - 1 on 2 to the north.

I kept 15 knights & landsknechts protecting south in case Brennus tries anything funny. 1 turn later – what a shock:

First Hanny city obviously easy, and on we go! 1 on 2 north, and 1 on 2 south - awesome. Hanny's stack meets me in his second city – I count 24 units, half cannons, half cavalry. That should be good news for me…and it is!

I lost 10 cannons and 2-3 other units, he lost 24. That’s good overall – no complaints about that trade. Meanwhile, Brennus has a bunch of maces, elephants and crossbows he’s sending at my cavalry and cannons in Lyons – I upgraded knights furiously hoping I can hold him off, and it was close. My cavalry barely held – I was down to 2 against a stack of 4-5 weakened elephants and a pike…and then 2 rifles arrived – no chance for him to take Lyons once the rifles got there. I keep debating whether to go nationhood and draft, but I’m opting not to for now. That may be an option soon though. Tech is nonexistent – I have to drop to 20% and 10% culture to offset ridiculous WW and unit upkeep. City #3 of Hannibal:

And Kublai sent a "stack" toward me too – here it is:

Ha – I mock your mini-stack. Two turns later, he gives me 260 gold for peace, which I’m desperate for. Bleeding gold with all the emancipation unhappiness, unit upkeep and WW. Apparently I’m now Kublai’s worst enemy – from pleased to worst enemy thanks to the defensive pact. Limping to democracy…limping. But Carthage is the turning point!

Take that Mr. tech leader! Notre Dame for happiness, Parthenon, MoM will come in handy, and the OH SO IMPORTANT STATUE OF ZEUS!!!!!!!! That should help WW. And this will help everything – Brennus takes peace and gives me the tech I’ve been waiting for:

Now the tide has turned. I can get rid of emancipation anger and keep beating down hanny. And war breaks out everywhere!

Awesome – I love it. Nobody has any friends now. As I’m continuing to beat down Hanny, my great person finally shows up. 15 turn golden age and civics…

I opt for nationhood – hey, let’s add some drafting to the mix! At least barracks add some happiness. Drafting my poor production cities ridiculously - unhappiness in those cities is irrelevant at this point. Hanny has two stupid island cities, so I figured I didn't want him as a vassal, but he won’t have anything meaningful left on the mainland, that’s for sure. I finally take peace for economics. He has no chance to win now. Hit communism, and now it’s all over for sure. State property is ridiculous for production and economy with the size of my empire. Brennus still doesn’t have steel or rifling, so I turn my attention back to him. I’ll send my mini-stack his way.

He’s also at war with Suleiman – bad bad news for him. And hey, I’ve been warring all game – why not get Shaka while he’s distracted with Kublai:

Take one city, and it’s not enough to get him to cap. And I’m beating up Brennus, but he caps to Suleiman instead, which forces me to peace and moves my stack all the way out of Brennus's land. Everything about this game has been slow and ugly. The whole point of not vassaling Hanny was to get easy caps from Brennus and Shaka. Ugh. Finally, I get Shaka to give.

One down. And Brennus apparently was gifted about 10 techs from Suleiman, because he went from no rifles 2 turns ago to building infantry - amazing. Whenever I do that, my vassals turn around and trade those techs to the world. Anyway, that just won’t do:

Oh, and another massive slog through war. Pictures don’t even do it justice. War on Brennus’s land – I take a city, Suleiman responds, and then I counterattack:

That’s the larger of my two stacks. And it mows through Vienne and Bibracte – war booty:

And more ridiculous warfare with Suleiman. He has a tech lead, and an obscene amounts of units, but I have more units. And I marched my giant stack straight to Istanbul – forgetting everything else, to take it…and the Pentagon sure is nice:

And Brennus is done:

Now Suleiman has no more vassals – not good for him. No one will cap to me, but at long last, after slogging through hours and hours of nonstop war it seemed, victory:

Stats – think I built a lot of cavalry and cannons?

All cities producing pretty much only cavalry and cannons the last 200 turns. The stats screen doesn't show the 30 or so rifles I drafted killing off three of my cities. I guess a win is a win, but this sure was painful with constant war. I don't think I've ever had a game where every single civ DOWed on me at one point in the game.

 

[michmbk]

Ai Shizuka:

Spoiler :

Wow - except for the slightly different starting approach (religion/settler vs worker techs), I think you were describing my exact game. I settled Prague and Nuremberg right where you did, and Vienne 1 square north of your site. We both converted Nappy to confucian, only to watch him switch to Brennus's religion.

Be ready for a nappy backstab at some point - he doesn't have enough land once you block him in like that.

 

[Lansky]

Emperor Epic - Domination 1826

Spoiler :

Really fun game.

Started the game off by putting the finishing touches on the religious economy and completing the Library quest to further enhance the GP farm.

Sistine Chapel was more of a throw in because it was still available late on in the game, but higher cultural defense never hurts.

Saving the Propeht from the last round ended up working out since my next GP was a dumb Artist. Go ahead and start a 2nd GA.

I then get a little GA crazy. I really like these things early on when I'm not running the pyramids. Not entirely ideal technically but before corporations I find it helps get infrastructure up in more backwater cities and I did build the MoM for a reason. Sooo...

So I'm cruising along and really pulling out ahead. I then realize I have not been paying attention to what the AI's are doing and um... oops. Oh well

At this point I tech out to Industrialism and put research down to 0%. From this point forward I just buy an army (built the Kremlin along the way) and ran over Hannibal. Kublai was a bit more difficult. After capturing a few cities of his he capitulates to Napoleon, who is the only AI with a power score in the same vicinity as me. He also happens to be friendly with me and due to this has a great view of my now exposed underbelly with oh... 90% or so of my troops 8 turns to the east taking out the rest of Kublai. Prague and Vienna, my IW and WS cities respectively also happen to be sitting right on the border with Napoleon. My only saving grace is Prague can put out a tank per turn, Vienna takes 1-2 turns, and I can rush buy from 5 cities close enough to send tanks in one turn to the incoming SoD. After suiciding 30 or so tanks and a ton of artillery into the stack it finally goes down around the same time I eliminate Kublai. My own SoD returns west and consequently Napoleon is screwed. I can raze Orleans at this point as I only need the additional land percentage from Paris' borders expanding.

My 3 pretty cities.

The super priest specialist is really amazing. They completely trivialize engineers and to me merchants as well. Optimal hammers from a specialist with a little cash on top. Gotta love it. Well anywho game is over officially in the 1800's. Excuse the WB shot, I forgot to take a picture before I ended the game.
.

Just for good order. Sushi and Mining Corporations make the late game trivial as always.

 

[michmbk]

Lansky:

Spoiler :

I love it - we're both playing emperor epic, we finish at close to the same time, except you're teching superconductors in 1826 and I'm teching biology in 1836.

You really had an unbelievable city in Vienne - that's really amazing. I think sometimes I slow the global tech rate down on emperor with all my wargames.

 

[Lansky]

Michmbk

Spoiler :

Quite a large difference between starting the first non-phony war in 1500 as opposed to 500ish years earlier hah. I actually wanted to be really lazy and wait until MI to start fighting but the era bonuses started to kick in and my tech lead dissipated at an alarming rate

Your game looked like more fun anyway!

 

[nanomage]

wow extremely interesting game.

Spoiler :

I'm still alive only thanks to churchill, poor gui. They seem dogpile him in every game i read, and it saves human player (and gets him easy +3 or +5 for dogpiling WC, too).
I have not yet won, but it's 1640+, i'm first in land, pop and score and have kublai and hanny at friendly.
Winston got dogpiled and killed really soon. Only brennus didn't join in. I think this saved me, as i surely wouldn't stay against 5AI's.
Nappy bacame annoying, and i capped him in a medieval war (he was about to be saved by AP election, but foolishly accepted capitulation. In this game it's helpful to have him as vassal, because it greatly helps your diplo)
Brennus got dogpiled and surrendered to hannibal.
Suly got dogpiled too, but held his own until i came i wiped him out totally to avoid motherland unhappiness in his cities and huge demerits for having him as vassal (he had everyone at furios/annoyed).
Hannibal is huge tech monster. too bad he switched away from FM, but he's still friendly.
Kublai fares well in my game, too. not that of a monster, but he founded biddhism and spammed missionaries through all continent, so he's economically strong, despite beeing relatively small.
Shake is quite oeacefull in my game. Well, not goody goody, but no stupid DoW's against me at pleased with having to march a stack thgough half-continent. Only some dogpiles, and never against me.
I'll finish the game tomorrow and post a proper report.
BtW, i missed hindu Brennus bet me to it, damnet zzealot. And 6 turns later Kublai founded Buddhism. So, it's an example of settler-first start without even founding a religion

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Michmbk:

Spoiler :

Oh yes, Nap will declare at some point, but he's falling behind already and is very small, so no worries there. I'll keep a few elephants ready if he gets some fancy ideas.

Not sure about religion here. If I adopt buddhism I'm probably safe with Shaka and Kub. Well, not 100% safe but they should hate someone else more. But if I join the buddhist block I risk some massive dogpiling by the jewish guys. And I'm right at the jewish/buddhist border, the most obvious target ever.

 

[Phil725]

Monarch - Epic - 1758 Domination victory

Spoiler :

Everything went as planned at first. I upgraded my army, and got enough EP on Brennus to realize that he has spent 90% of his hammers this game on missionaries. His two best cities were each guarded by 2 grenadiers, a longbow and 2 axe/sword units. And that was the most resistance he put up at all. I decided against waiting for a resolution, the more I wait, the more troops he would get.

My plan was to go through Vienne his second biggest city, right to the capital. I threw Vienne into revolt and took out the 5 crappy defenders easily. Found a nice prize that I was hoping to get:

40 gpt before modifiers, that was a nice boost to the economy. Then, you knew it was coming, the game gave me hope, but the turn before I would have taken control of it:

Oh well, I was ready for it, the unhappiness from the last defied resolution is gone, so as far as I'm concerned I'm back at the normal level. Next turn I hit the mother load in Bibactre:

A lot of those wonders helped the economy out some more, I never got to actually use the AP though.

From there I split my stack up, I was only facing a longbow or two per city. I got my only loss of the war when I razed a crappy tundra city and my cavalry got picked off by the partisans. I easily wiped him off the continent:

Three holy cities and a ton of wonders (Notre Dame was in another city.) He didn't have much land, but all the wonders kept him near the tech lead, too bad missionaries suck at defending.

That's when things stopped going by plan. Brennus was the first to astronomy, so he settled the island. To get him I started teching off astronomy. After I researched it (losing ~40 gpt from obsoleting the Collosus,) Brennus vassaled to Sully, and as a result, I'm at war with him. To make it worse, Sully is the only person that can compete with me on power and production. I'm not sure how this happened really, Sully can't declare at pleased, and I know I was at pleased, unless this uses a formula that I don't know about.

Anyway, I quickly forget about Brennus and focus on Sully. He's big with a ton of production, but he's kind of backwards. Cavs vs curraisers/Jans/pikes isn't a blow out, but if he had rifling, this would have been a lot worse.

A quick check of the victory conditions gives me some reassuring info:

My land (Brennus' old land still hadn't come out of revolt) and Sully's is enough to win.

He had a lot of cities (his land and Church's,) so my plan was to blast right through the middle. I wanted to quickly take London, Bursa, and Istanbul. Getting rid of Istanbul was the key, it was around 200 hammers per turn with bureau.

Unfortunately I had one more run in with the AP, apparently Sully was the resident, not Brennus, so I had to defy a stop the war against Sully resolution. He declares on me and then tries to hide behind the pope? Yeah right. 10% on the culture slider took care of the unhappiness in the few cities that were big enough to be affected.

Sully didn't have a SoD ready to fight me when he declared (it was off to the east from his war with Shaka,) but he started sending stacks of 5-10 curaissers/pikes at me. Eventually I got my forces down to Sully's border, and I was ready to take the fight to him. London and Bursa fell pretty easily, but it was tough getting Istanbul. The problem with blasting through the middle of an empire is that you get attacked from all sides by curaissers on roads. Eventually he ran out of units, and I was able to take Istanbul. He made his last ditch attack a little after I took Istanbul, he suicided all of his units down to 3-4 defenders per city. He almost retook his capital, but 1 cav survived, and that was pretty much it for him as a problem.

Brennus broke free from him somewhere in here, so I took him as a vassal instead. Not like I have to worry about diplomacy anymore. It took a while to take the rest of his cities, they were spread out, and Jans are problematic when they get to CG2. Churchill actually retook a city that I took off of Sully and had defended with a single cav. I was surprised to find that he was still alive actually, so I put him out of his misery:

After taking out all of his core cities, I moved back east to take Sully's English cities that I had skipped over earlier. Eventually, he's down to only a single crappy tundra city, and I'll take that next turn, so what does he do? Caps to KK. Now I get to fight the biggest AI, who happens to be the tech leader. Fortunately he's far off, and I actually have ~1.5 his power, but fighting at tech parity sucks. Hiding behind the pope didn't work, did he really expect hiding behind KK to work? I easily took his last city in the area:

I thought that it was it for him, but he has a city that he took off of Shaka that is completely surrounded by culture, and guarded by ~20 longbows. I would have taken it if I had the time though. Here's Sully's continent:

There was some more to the south, the quality doesn't matter, but the quantity does. I started moving my cavs up to Nuremburg to defend, but building culture in all of the cities was enough:

You can see Shaka and KK finally getting some troops up to me, but I had plenty of troops to defend. If the game hadn't ended, I could've razed KK's barb city (that was separated from his land by Shaka and Han) and gotten peace. Not really sure what I would have done for victory if I didn't get domination though, probably work on that AP win some more.

Some post game info:

Power graph, Sully was surprisingly ahead of me before he made his critical misstep:

Statistics, it seems like all I build anymore is cavs and spies:

And the score, my first one above 100K:

Fun game, although it seemed like I had a lot easier time than others. I'm going to try the next one at emperor, I've lost my 2 offline tries at that difficulty (with Darius no less,) so I may need some help from the people here.

 

[_EGO_]

I've tried it out during the weekend, at monarch, normal speed.

That was sad, really sad...

Spoiler :

i've initially expanded well, blocking napoleon to the south and settling over the mountain chockepoint to the west. Napoleon has begun to become every turn more demanding, he wants tribute, free techs, etc.. i've denied to him and he quickly became annoyed. I've managed to maintain a decent tech lead and a decent military (not so tough to attack someone - i was trying to build up peacefully my 7 good cities...), but when i've got Civil Service - ta-dah - in *the same* turn Shaka, kublai and napoleon DoW'ed on me. In about 15 turns it was the end...

sigh...

I don't know exactly *what* happened, they suddendly (shaka & kublay were @ cautious) decided to obliterate me. I'm not a *so* good player to stop three armies heading for my cities... as i was saying, that was sadly one of my worst performance...

See you soon guys, i'll wait for the next monarch student

 

[michmbk]

Ego - you may want to put your info in spoiler, in case there's anyone else who might give it a go.

But don't fret about the outcome - this was the toughest diplo game I've seen on the forums in awhile. Very tough to maintain diplo on this map IMO - I failed miserably at the diplo aspect of this game.

 

[_EGO_]

Ego - you may want to put your info in spoiler, in case there's anyone else who might give it a go.

But don't fret about the outcome - this was the toughest diplo game I've seen on the forums in awhile. Very tough to maintain diplo on this map IMO - I failed miserably at the diplo aspect of this game.

michmbk, you're completely right, i'm very sorry about the spoilers... it was my first post on this type of thread so i'm not used - i hope noone has taken damage from that.

Nice to hear that diplo was hard for you too there, i felt like a steak in a lions cage.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I lost my first one due to founding religion. I, too, failed diplo but SOLELY because I opened settler + meditation first. All my cities got buddhism, nobody sent a missionary so I stayed NSR, and that got me chain declared on after the first AI declared, likely from war bribes. It was incredibly annoying. I'm going to replay it without religion, perhaps proving once and for all that unless you start coastal with a trade network to some other suckers, founding early religion is OVERTLY BAD on difficulties where diplo matters. Stay tuned.

Ok, it won't prove that. However, it will add another piece of a strong body of evidence that founding early religion without a way to mass spread it = not good.

 

[Gumbolt]

I lost my first one due to founding religion. I, too, failed diplo but SOLELY because I opened settler + meditation first. All my cities got buddhism, nobody sent a missionary so I stayed NSR, and that got me chain declared on after the first AI declared, likely from war bribes. It was incredibly annoying. I'm going to replay it without religion, perhaps proving once and for all that unless you start coastal with a trade network to some other suckers, founding early religion is OVERTLY BAD on difficulties where diplo matters. Stay tuned.

Ok, it won't prove that. However, it will add another piece of a strong body of evidence that founding early religion without a way to mass spread it = not good.

Spoiler :

It is possible to grab Hindu, jewish and xtian religions. Trouble is even with a shrine they wont spread. Grrrr.

 

[michmbk]

I lost my first one due to founding religion. I, too, failed diplo but SOLELY because I opened settler + meditation first. All my cities got buddhism, nobody sent a missionary so I stayed NSR, and that got me chain declared on after the first AI declared, likely from war bribes. It was incredibly annoying. I'm going to replay it without religion, perhaps proving once and for all that unless you start coastal with a trade network to some other suckers, founding early religion is OVERTLY BAD on difficulties where diplo matters. Stay tuned.

Ok, it won't prove that. However, it will add another piece of a strong body of evidence that founding early religion without a way to mass spread it = not good.

I agree completely on failed diplo - I nearly lost because of the exact same start. PRO saved me - anything but PRO and I would have lost my key production city early - too much to recover from.

 

[djvandrake]

I lost my first one due to founding religion. I, too, failed diplo but SOLELY because I opened settler + meditation first. All my cities got buddhism, nobody sent a missionary so I stayed NSR, and that got me chain declared on after the first AI declared, likely from war bribes. It was incredibly annoying.

Did someone say "Chain declared on"? Oh boy do I resemble that statmement. I got slaughtered. Poor Charle. Every time I play him I get stuck bwetween the worst war mongers.