AFter what felt like FOREVER I managed to shuttle over my mian army off of the western cont back to the big cont and got em into position near Mansa's borders:
Meanwhile while they were getting ready I got a little stack built up near cys borders:
I checked vic con and it seems like all land I already had =62.78 % or something like that out of 64 needed so looked like I had no choice:
I dow and my stacks move in. I take one of cy's cities right off the bat but OF Course since it liek that late in game and EVERY fricking city has like 60-80% culure it is SWAMPED so land 5 doesnt move at all. Plus I accidently moved reinforcements over a hill so they didnt get into city I just took. Which meant very next turn cy takes it back grrrr.
But I retake it that turn and THIS time reinforce it. Meanwhile my stack on mansa's side still hasnt made the trp to mansa cities cuz his culture pushing out 4 tiles grrr.
SO next few turns I take counter attacks from cy naval harrassment on my seafood and stuff like this:
Most games spies NEVER blow up stuff in cities mostly just tile improvements much less like 4 or 5 all at once. it is VERY annoying.
But slowly but surely I make headway. I hold off lots of cy's counter attacks and then take another one of his cities.
On other side I take one of mansa's cities then my stack make ANOTHER looooong slog through mansa's culture and take another city and after checking vicon:
It looks like I'm over the top. SO just to get rid of war weariness so it can maybe pad my score hehe:
Even if it doesnt help score at least it got rid of lots of sad faces--cy built the SoZ so ww started hitting hard after a few battles. Then I hit shift return and:
I get my very first win on monarch on my first try
Final stats:
The graphs:
close up of power:
Cy was the big boy on block pretty much whole game. Luckily tho for most of game I had him at pleased-friendly. Felt kinda bad backstabbing him but there just wasnt ANY more land left on map not even itty bitty one tile islands off somewhere to settle so I had no choice. Plus it was HIS bright idea to accept mansa's vassalizing to him so that what he gets hehe
Final demos:
Here what my empire looked like at end.
Main cont:
Little cont:
My best cities:
My cap:
Semi decent sci city but not all that great. Plus I didnt hardly get ANY wonders done so it just BARELY past influential by end of game
Babylon:
Thanks to VERY weird combo of Wall street and IW it ended up being my top money and my top hammer city. yeah yeah I KNOW building internet kinda useless but after I got GW done I built ZERO wonders until i manged to build three gorges. That is a LOOOONG time to go without shinies {{pout}}. If it werent for fact that Peri and SB managed to build a few useful ones I wouldnt have had hardly any at all as it was that lil wonderhog mansa built like a GAZILLION of em it seems like.
I did manage to make a nice military city. Another city got HE early on and for while wa smy main unit maker but then I got redcross, westpoint, built here and it already had a settled gg so added another one and then gave it a mil academy so it maged to make very nice units out of the box.
And all of that adds up to:
Nice score but I think that mostly from diff level. Im glad I managed to win but it was HARD. Mansa and cy and even peri for awhile just kept teching and teching and it took FOREVER to get ANY kind of lead. I just got lucky and early on I was able to fin a cpl of wars without getting on Cy's bad side. It looked like he just had TONS of spce to settle out. And Mansa was teching faster than me even with LOTS less land it wasnt until he went to 100% culture that I really had chance to get a lil lead.
I think I better go back to prince for a little while till I get the hang of things there. I feel like I still have LOTS to learn before I go permantly up to monarch. But it was interesting trying it out even if it was NERVE wracking just trying to keep up. Maybe after a few more prince games Ill give another monarch school game a try
