Monarch Student^ XVII- Peter

[Grashopa]

Big Time

Spoiler :

An irrigated corn is worth a lot of hammers, if you took a look at my game where 40% of my army was whipped off that corn. I was still running all of the cottages during the whipping. I started at my max pop 6, 2 pop whip puts me at 4 next turn im at 5 so I'm still running 4 cottages basically during the time I'm whipping every 4 turn i think it was. 2pop'd the city 5 times I think thats 300 hammers almost 20/turn really.

The land at the start looks production poor, until you realize you can put your second city by that corn and whip.

 

[Grashopa]

Xoxsen

Spoiler :

You need to go cats and elephants on Hammurabi as soon as possible. Cats and elephants are very very strong. Just suicide a cat or two for collateral damage and attack with your stack of elephants.

And I didn't open your save, but your cottages look underdeveloped, run more of them. Grabbing the land to the north is ok, but it probably slowed you down as it isn't as green as the south... And by now you should have scouted all the land. Use a workboat. It would be real nice to know what GKs land looks like. That would tell you more about whether you have to worry or not.

 

[Grashopa]

Treso - Use image shack to upload images and have them resize them to something smaller 1024x768?. I've got a widescreen, but can't see your pics so am unable to follow.

 

[Nothingontv]

I did a rather stupid thing. I managed to add in archery for the barbs but then i forgot to choose emperor in the menu so i started playing the game on Noble.
It took a while before i noticed it was too easy, and by the time that i did i knew too much of the map too start over again.

 

[Treso]

Treso - Use image shack to upload images and have them resize them to something smaller 1024x768?. I've got a widescreen, but can't see your pics so am unable to follow.

I just use photobucket due not resizing...

 

[tmd171]

Finally got around to finishing this game. 1924 Domination Victory.

Emperor/Epic

Spoiler :

Not a lot of land to claim because of pacal to the south, and hammy very close to the east. North's a lot of desert and kinda far. I blocked pacal right away with 2nd or 3rd city, turned out he had a decent amount of land down there but I didn't know at the time. Everyone on my continent was jewish so it was pretty friendly until later on in the game. Expanded to some decent cottage lands to the east even though hammy's very close by.

Hammy trying to come to my land. Lucky I had settler already waiting.

Tech was very slow until I got writing and was able to run a few scientists. Love philosophical, lots of great scientists this game. After writing went alpha then poly/aesth/lit for GL. Even though I didn't have marble I was the first to have lit so I thought I had a good chance, I also prechopped lots of trees around my capital. Was able to get GL, probably the only wonder I built this game.

Land and cities around 1ADish

Ghengis went into WHEOOHRN mode and I massed axes/catas to the north but he never attacked. Would later discover he was busy capping china during this time. After that I tried for Lib. Got lots of helped with great scientists, bulbed philo, paper, and part of education. However, pacal got Lib between 800-1000 AD when I was finishing up on education. I finished education and decided to claim some more land and made a rush for steel. Was able to trade education and philo for lots of the prereqs and I bulbed part of chemistry. Decided on Hammy because Ghengis seemed a lot stronger and I wanted to claim some more land before I faced him.

Cannons + medieval units vs hammy

Was able to defeat Hammy easily, he didn't have many troops. I capped him as soon as I could because he was very very friendly with pacal and I didn't want him to vassal him. I then set my sights on WvO.

My land after war

By the time that war was over with Hammy I had teched to rifles and spent some turns upgrading my troops for WvO. WvO didn't have rifling during my buildup but soon I saw cuirassers and rifles running around. I took my luck with cannons and attacked anyways.

My SoD where I just got rifles

WvO's cute stack. He was able to take Hammy's city but I doubled back after taking Rotterdam and took hammy's old city for my own.

I took all WvO's cities, lost a decent amount of troops because of his calvary/rifles.

Lots of land now

After that, I decided on Ghengis because he was behind in tech and the other possible target pacal, was wayyyyyyyy ahead of me in tech. Ghengis had a huge amount of troops but luckily they were only calvary/rifles/cannons.

Huge power score, I think I was only at .3 of his power rating at this time

Sad stack after WvO war

I had to spend some turns getting arty/assembly line to get some better troops to face the hoard.

Better looking stack after upgrades, I split that stack up, and one went north while the other went west.

Was able to take all his cities eventually, he couldn't compete with infantry/arty but spammed so many troops it was still annoying. After that, I was less than 10% to domination land and pacal was going for culture so I headed towards him.

Not happening pacal

With my huge production I just spammed tanks from every city and overran him even though he was many techs ahead.

Last pacal city, almost there 63.94% land

Border pop got me domination on the next turn, 1924

Nice to win a domination on emperor. Thanks for hosting, look forward to the next game.

 

[Silu]

Dual -

Spoiler :

I'd be afraid of Willem. I know I am in my game. He just started gearing up for war. But you border him, I don't. Not sure its a big enough border to matter??

But protect yourself in case and just cottage up. I'd probably go for an academy at this point not sure its a big deal since I don't see you racing to anything. You may be able to take some more land if someone attacks Ham..

Spoiler :

The threshold is 8 (literally "over 7") of your land tiles being adjacent (diagonally counts) to the AI's tiles. I count 5 in the screenshot which isn't enough to be counted as a land target.

 

[Xoxsen]

Xoxsen

Spoiler :

You need to go cats and elephants on Hammurabi as soon as possible. Cats and elephants are very very strong. Just suicide a cat or two for collateral damage and attack with your stack of elephants.

And I didn't open your save, but your cottages look underdeveloped, run more of them. Grabbing the land to the north is ok, but it probably slowed you down as it isn't as green as the south... And by now you should have scouted all the land. Use a workboat. It would be real nice to know what GKs land looks like. That would tell you more about whether you have to worry or not.

I'll give it a go. Thanks for the feedback!

- X

 

[champinoman]

Monarch/Normal

Spoiler :

Played up until about turn 250 but decided to quit after what seems to be a common GK backstab. After only being able to expand to 6 cities while the bigger civs made it to almost double that size I decided it was time to war. I decided to attack Pacal as he was the only one not in Confucianism (which I founded). I attacked right after GK also declared war for some nice diplo bonuses and managed to take 5 of Pacals cities while GK took 1 (leaving 3) before getting Pacal as a vassal. It was at this point that GK took china as a vassal and preceded to head in my direction (he was pleased with me and hated isabella). After taking heavy losses and having half the power rating of GK I decided not to continue.

Lesson learnt: Build more troops. I need to balance my tech needs and my troop needs a little better as I had just started spamming research bonus buildings when the war came around.

I'll just try again in the next Monarch Student.

P.S. No screenies attached as I kind of quit the game in annoyance

 

[Grashopa]

Champino

Spoiler :

Getting GK to friendly is possible with a shared religion, tech trades, resource trades and a liberated city. I didn't think about it in my game, but it would have been nice if I had set a city near him. He settled his last city north of me very late, so I had more than enough time to squeeze one in. Doing this would have also helped me immensely on trades as well.

 

[Burning Stone]

Delurking here. I tried this and made quite a mess of it. I always struggle with seafood starts, particularly if I don't start with fishing. Any advice on initial build order?

 

[Grashopa]

Burning - my start:

Spoiler :

AH fishing roads (worker had to wait 6 turns for roads to come in, but having cows up pronto is important )
worker - warrior - wb - wb - ... - settler size 4

 

[Burning Stone]

Burning - my start:

Spoiler :

AH fishing roads (worker had to wait 6 turns for roads to come in, but having cows up pronto is important )
worker - warrior - wb - wb - ... - settler size 4

Spoiler :

Hmm, that's similar to what I did (I think I went worker - boat - warrior). I thought it was a mistake because I too had my worker sitting around, and the cows and elephants are weaker resources. Perhaps an earlier bronze working to let the worker chop would have been a good idea?

 

[Grashopa]

Burning, time your first 2 settlers and your commerce. Always get a 6 yield tile up as soon as possible, and early commerce is sweet. Working a 3 yield tile and chopping forest every 4 turns vs a 6 yield tile isn't that much better... Of course you also get to know where the bronze is..

Spoiler :

But I got bronze before settling my 3rd city, so I could have settled on the bronze with it if necessary.

Full tech path was AH - fishing - wheel - Agriculture - mysticism - BW - pottery - writing.

2280 first city, 2080 BW, 1960? 3rd city. Throwing BW in earlier would have really delayed the first 2 cities. Even if you chop out the settler, the first city is sitting on an unimproved corn so you lose even more yield here by chopping.

 

[champinoman]

Champino

Spoiler :

Getting GK to friendly is possible with a shared religion, tech trades, resource trades and a liberated city. I didn't think about it in my game, but it would have been nice if I had set a city near him. He settled his last city north of me very late, so I had more than enough time to squeeze one in. Doing this would have also helped me immensely on trades as well.

Spoiler :

The only thing I didn't do from that list is to liberate a city to him. I wasn't sure if that extra +1 would be enough to get me to friendly or not.

 

[Treso]

Are you guys not being able to see the pictures I uploaded?

 

[Grashopa]

champino

Spoiler :

And you don't want to border him which I ended up doing anyway.

 

[champinoman]

champino

Spoiler :

And you don't want to border him which I ended up doing anyway.

Spoiler :

I managed to border everyone on the island (except china who was miles away). Even WvO managed to get a long border with me after he stole a barb village from me and had a settler already made ready to pounce on this new culture opening. GK was actually my shortest border in the north however he was running troops through my borders to invade everyone else.

Despite the loss I quite enjoyed this game. Its only my 2nd game on Monarch and was the first time I really got to warmonger.

 

[Grashopa]

I like this map a lot, though it appears to be more challenging than normal. Glad I didn't choose to play on deity.

 

[gagnarath]

My real first attempt at playing Monarch. I started with some trepidation, in fact far too much as I made a pretty horrible mistake >.> I was doing ok with expansion got 6 cities by 700 BC, but by 1AD I still only had 6 cities I was at 0 gold with 0 research and gaining 0 per turn 8O Yes, I somehow forgot that with libraries I could run scientists and ran my first attempt into the ground at great speed

Thankfully my oldest autosave was at 475BC and the damage done upto that point wasn't irreparable

4000 BC -> 500 AD Monarch / Normal (Looking for some advice at the end)

Spoiler :

Settled in place, built warrior (while researching fishing) -> Workboat (while researching AH) -> Worker -> warrior -> Settler -> warrior -> Settler. I definately underdid it on workers initially but I wasn't really sure how fast the AI expands on Monarch and wanted to make sure I got a decent start in terms of city placement.

While I only have 6 cities at 500 AD I think they're all atleast decent, if a little production light they all have high pops and I can whip them regularly if all goes to plan. I should be founding another city in 1 turn in the north (cows/incense/wine) I ended up spending a reasonable amount of time/hammers on spreading religions and a few religious buildings on border cities being a little too paranoid about culture spread from Hammurabi. This does have the side effect of atleast initially making me the most populous Hindu/AP nation so I'm up for votes initially with Pacal. I lost the first election but it was narrow so converting any of his votes to me or acquiring population could swing it my way so I can stop unwanted declarations on myself.

Teched Fishing -> AH -> BW -> Wheel -> Pottery -> IW -> Writing -> Monarchy (inc pre-reqs)

I probably could have done that in a much better order, Monarchy was the tech I really struggled through but in attempt 1.1 with Scientists I was able to make it through and get a few bulbs + an academy in St Petersburg (Probably, no now I look back at it definately, the wrong place given I have a 5 dye city zzzz) Another scientist bulbed Maths allowing Currency after Monarchy for trade purposes, was almost sorely disappointed as GK got Currency one turn before me but as he didn't have Alphabet yet he didn't trade it and no one offered him anything seemingly. So Currency and brokering got me Alphabet, Masonry, Sailing, Archery, Calendar (after 1 turn research) and gold which allowed me to quickly pick up Construction and HBR my plan intially being to go after Hammurabi. However I noticed that Pacal has lower power level, I could gain the AP, if I tech Feudalism I might be able to get him to Cap and have him as a tech slave

My Empire at 500 AD

Spoiler :

Mayan scouting

Spoiler :

Tech Situation

Spoiler :

I bulbed Compass recently, I have another GS inc in 8 turns, currently only one city running scientists, but I can change that. That GS could be an academy in Yaroslav.

Spoiler :

Or can bulb Aesthetics, or if I research that can bulb Metal Casting for forges for more war production, atleast in the cities that have ok hammers.


Soooo, my questions to you, more experienced players.
Hammurabi, Pacal or delay war?
Should I use my meager tech advantage to attempt to bribe someone else in first?
My upcoming Great Scientist, use it to bulb (and if so what?) or Academy somewhere?