Monarch Student XI Sury

[mjg5591]

Hello everyone, I am trying to revive this series in hopes to help people improve.

I hope Meatbuster and AiShizuka don't mind if I try to host a game and maybe more after if people still want them. I would also like to thank both of them for hosting the series.

Copying this from Meatbusters bullpen so if anyone wants to play the older MS games.

Thanks AiShizuka for hosting the old Monarch Student series, of which this was the index/bullpen: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=317468

Here is the current Bullpen thread. I'll use Meatbuster's for the first and if more games follow i'll start new bullpen. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=333702

Leader, I also left huts and events on. If you do not want you'll have to remove them.

I decided to go with the leader that Meatbuster had for MSXI. Suryavarman II. He is Creative which gives +2 culture and faster Libraries, Theatres, and Colossuems. He is also expansive +2 health, faster worker builds, and faster graniries and harbors. His starting techs are Hunting and mining.

I also decided to go with the map type he was going to use. I did no editing to the map. I don't know how yet. This is a learning experiance for me aswell.

Map: Temperate Archipelago "Snaky Continents"



His UU uit is the Balista Elephant a replacement for the War Elephant. It targets other mounted units it stack when it attacks.

His UB is the Baray, a replacement for the aqeudect. It gives an extra food. Which is nice for growth. Never can have enough food.

The start,

Now to paste from Meatbuster's old Monarch Student games. Hopefully he is ok I did this.

EDIT: Thanks to TMIT who helped me get a better save up, instaed of the last one I had here.

Save the file and place it in your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then unzip it into your Documents/BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Then use Playing a scenario to play your desired level. Or use custom scenario if you want to remove huts and events.

As it is my first time making a public WB save, please feel free to point out any errors before any disasters happen.

Recommended Checkpoints:
*1000BC or 1AD
*500AD
*1000AD or Liberalism
*Victory!

Please remember to put the journals of your adventures inside spoiler tags.

I also made 3 saves for diffuculty. Noble-Monarch-Immortal. Please tell me if anything is wrong. I don't know how to add archery to barbs on immortal saves, so you might need to do this. Hopefully they are all ok. Let me know if they aren't. I am not very computer smart and if problems might take me some time to try and fix. Thanks goes out to TMIT also for his guide and walkthrough which I used.

The save, cross your fingers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't know how to add archery to barbs on immortal saves, so you might need to do this.

Unfortunately you *can't* do it as a host, we have to do it. There's no line in WB saves that allow the barbs to start with archery (You'll notice there is no reference to barbarians at all in there).

I'll take immortal and have a quick look see .

Edit: I took a look in the WB save, I have a few comments:

1. You used some kind of weird stacked compression. You don't need to compress anything but the 3 world builder saves into one .zip or .rar or .7z. You definitely don't need to compress each individually and then compress all 3 into 1 again!
2. I checked the immortal one and it looks ok. Since I bothered to do this I will now run my Khmer using the black color instead of middle blue .

 

[mjg5591]

Unfortunately you *can't* do it as a host, we have to do it. There's no line in WB saves that allow the barbs to start with archery (You'll notice there is no reference to barbarians at all in there).

I'll take immortal and have a quick look see .

Edit: I took a look in the WB save, I have a few comments:

1. You used some kind of weird stacked compression. You don't need to compress anything but the 3 world builder saves into one .zip or .rar or .7z. You definitely don't need to compress each individually and then compress all 3 into 1 again!
2. I checked the immortal one and it looks ok. Since I bothered to do this I will now run my Khmer using the black color instead of middle blue .

Thanks for the info TMIT. I know I stacked it twice, but I don't know how to compress all 3 into 1 file. It took me 5 hours to get this game up. Your video part was insanely easy follwing your walkthrough, only took 30 mins for this. Thanks for that. But getting it from there to compressed files to CFC was 4 hours 30 min. I just kept tinkering til I got something to open. I still don't know if it opens into playing a scenario or not. I open it right from the files using BTS.

Also thatnks for the info on barbs. I did notice that I didn't see anthing on barbs. It's why it didn't have.

Thanks Mike

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The easiest way to compress 3 at once is to select all 3, right click, and pick a "compress to..." which AFAIK should work with anything after windows 2000 assuming you have a zip program. I use 7zip personally since it's open source (free) and opens pretty much everything.

 

[mjg5591]

The easiest way to compress 3 at once is to select all 3, right click, and pick a "compress to..." which AFAIK should work with anything after windows 2000 assuming you have a zip program. I use 7zip personally since it's open source (free) and opens pretty much everything.

I use 7zip also. Thanks goes out to Ignorant Teacher for that, when I couldn't get to open a zip before. I'll try that out TMIT. If I can get it to work out, I'll try and switch out the saves to make it easier for everyone.

 

[Nares]

Events are easily re-disabled, but I think you need to remove the huts manually, either in worldbuilder or a worldbuilder save.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Events are easily re-disabled, but I think you need to remove the huts manually, either in worldbuilder or a worldbuilder save.

Find/replace goody huts with nothing in the text to easily sweep them all. TBH I never bother but it's pretty easy.

 

[Nares]

Since I bothered to do this I will now run my Khmer using the black color instead of middle blue .

Dark red.

Find/replace goody huts with nothing in the text to easily sweep them all. TBH I never bother but it's pretty easy.

I didn't say it was impossible, just not as simple as toggling the option at the custom scenario screen.

 

[BigTime]

Signing in. Monarch player hoping to move up to Emperor soon, hope this helps! I should be able to get to this tomorrow. Yay for the most useless UU in the game!

 

[L-Plate Ruler]

LPR signing in

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Some quick comments about the map itself (I'm finishing up the game but not done yet)

Spoiler :

This one isn't kind to rooks. We get limited land and we share it with kublai (at least it's not genghis...). Cottage land is minimal and wonders go early. GLH on immortal went ~ 1900 BC!

I was behind in tech for most of the early-mid game so I sat there with my miserable 8 cities teching alllllllllll the way to industrialism + advanced flight. On a map like this, marines + jet fighters can kill anything. Even Mech inf/modern armor, so right now I'm in the thick of beating down the tech leader who built internet and then starting a blitz on the rest of the world, chopping whoever is closest to victory until that person is me.

 

[lymond]

I have a few games going but will try this one out. I played Sury only once with one of the mods, but didn't play long as I didn't really like that mod. Should be interesting and the traits are good. Love me some jumbos

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMM/Normal

To liberalism

Spoiler :

Odd, I don't seem to have screen shots before lib...guess I forgot. Anyway, I settled in place. AH ---> fishing ---> BW ---> sailing --->wheel ---> AG and so on.

Our capitol is production poor w/o the whip, and the requirement to hit worker techs (lots of them) precluded early wonders. Not that you'd want gwall on this map, there's not a lot of land and CRE reduces the need for SH.

GLH went just after 1900 BC. Christ. Other wonders went very early for a water map as well. I managed to settle the riverside dye/fish/cow site near kublai and a fairly weak city to the W of that. That gave me...7 cities, one of which would be terrible for a long time.

Capitol got NE + maoi. I didn't build any cottages at ALL, going for farms + whips. I moved the palace to the dye site near KK since it had the best commerce, good food, and I was out of national wonder slots in the original site...got a late academy there also (got a lot of low-odds priests off maoi :/).

Bur picked me up, and also allowed that + KK's religion to get him friendly. Oddly enough, cyrus founded confuc, qin christianity, KK taoism, so there was less love between them than expected.

I got oxford after 1000 AD but not long after, and managed to snag lib since this map didn't feature an AI group hug. Close race though and nationalism was only minimal trade bait (still my best).

All farms baby. Better go biology after constitution, eh?

1942 UN

Spoiler :

I picked up an 8th city bordering alex because wars caused him to settle just a little slow. Bismark eventually capped alex. Mansa was the best culture threat but since qin took sistine mansa was far less daunting in culture than normal (that and bis kept harassing him).

Hermitage and 2 cathedrals went in my junker to the W of my new cap, and along with an artist bomb I culture flipped the stone and some other good tiles from KK, making it a workable city. Bio made all my cities pretty good. Qin got mining inc. I went environmentalism + sushi (penchant for pain, I know).

I was actually interested if I could use 8 cities, some subpar, to take space on immortal. The answer was no. Qin was winning the race to computers, so I abandoned that plan. Emancipation was hurting me so I went emancipation despite heavy use of specs + bio farms. I put national park in my cap and preserved those 3 plains forests for a strong cap. Ultimately my tech rate was at least decent given the city count (~1500 BPT at one point!). So for the entire game until advanced flight + industrialism, I stayed out of wars.

Then, my suped up bio farm cities with a gazillion specs off bio farms + sushi went into war mode, with the first target space-racing Qin:

Mr internet tech whore was running away a bit:

And by the time the war ended, he had every military tech in the game except stealth. Then he had no techs at all.

Now, I hadn't built FP yet, so I stuck it on his main continent (in his cap). This alleviated the combined problem of having mining (which he spread to all my own cities as well as his) and sushi (which I had wall street for) in environmentalism with 2 continents with > 5 cities. Further conquest forced me to get a little creative. Next up was Cyrus and vassal Sal, who were busy fighting kublai:

Yeah. He doesn't even have mechinf like Qin (who had CG III mechinf on hills to give me < 50% odds SOMETIMES, though usually I was odds-on with marines). I decided to skip micro or attempting to pay for these cities, and promptly made cyrus' mainland into a colony (stalin). I turned all of persia's mainland cities into russia, kept the 2 city island to the west, and took dual-cap:

Mansa built the UN. I figured I'd keep fighting in this game, going for kublai and vassal hammy (keep kublai's cities since they're on my continent, capitulate the hamster), then pay MM a visit to end the culture attempt and force a UN win.

I didn't have to force it:

The kill/death should show just how scary the marines+jets can be. Most of the marines I lost were those left as garrison after capturing cities (well over half of the losses).

Overall I'm not a big fan of the snaky continent archipelago type games, and this one was pretty challenging...yet it was still fun somehow. I imagine some people will struggle if they're not playing at comfort level...coming up with enough production and tech on limited land to the effect of competing with superior AI city numbers takes some planning. I rarely move the palace, rarely use national park or hermitage outside of culture attempts, and yet all 3 happened here.

Also note this was a specialist game w/o the pyramids (or any other wonder...!), or without *ever* using caste! But early on, more research was coming from trade routes, passive commerce tiles like dye, and building wealth...so even with no cottages specs were only marginal...at first.

 

[Nilmerf]

I'll play the next one, kind of an odd map to leverage Khmer's traits or uniques. Would rather play Hannibal/John II/Ragnar; it gives you an advantage but it's fun anyways.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'll play the next one, kind of an odd map to leverage Khmer's traits or uniques. Would rather play Hannibal/John II/Ragnar; it gives you an advantage but it's fun anyways.

His traits are fine on this map...both help. The UB is very handy too.

IMO the ballista elephant always sucks as a UU, but at least it's still an elephant.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

I'd like to try this game out as well. I've never played monarch, and I'm curious how I'd fare. I've won noble only three times and no other victories on any difficulty . I'd like to ask for some advice though.

Starting thoughts-questions

Spoiler :

Considering expansive, techable AH and plains cows to the north, I am thinking of starting with a worker and teching AH right away.

After that, I'll go for fishing while building a mine. When fishing is done, a fishing boat then claim the clams while building the pasture, I think the border pops in time for that , then warrior, then settler. (I imagine I find a good city spot while scouting up until this point) After fishing I am thinking of teching BW, although I have my doubts about close copper, considering the probable latitude. But one has to find out a way, and slavery is not a bad thing to have access to. And I need the ability to cut the forests.

As for settling, I don't like losing one grasshill, but I don't yet know whether it's acceptable to lose the clams for the mines by settling 1N.

Is this a good idea?

 

[mjg5591]

I'll play the next one, kind of an odd map to leverage Khmer's traits or uniques. Would rather play Hannibal/John II/Ragnar; it gives you an advantage but it's fun anyways.

I just used the next game Meatbuster had listed in the monarch student bullpen. With the same map type.

I also didn't edit the map at all. I just went with the map generated.

 

[lsgag]

Hey mgj5591 could you also post the file in a normal .zip file or .rar file?

thank you!

 

[obsolete]

IMO the ballista elephant always sucks as a UU, but at least it's still an elephant.

I just can't get over how this terrible UU has the MOBILITY promotion allowed for it.

WHO THE HELL would do such a thing!? It only has a movement of 1 correct? How the HELL is mobility supposed to be useful there? It's like using flank II on a knight to ignore first strikes.

Rediculous...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Technically they upgrade to cuirassers and cavalry, although I don't know why one would build elephants ant take mobility just for that.