Monarch Student^ XXII Huayna Capac

[drlake]

@oppy

Spoiler :

The one time I went after Nidaros itself, I lost 5 CR 1/2 Axes and only managed to kill one defending Axe (there were also two Archers there, fully fortified of course). After that, I gave up and decided to wait until I had cats since the RNG hated me.

I declared on him every time, but when I tried to do anything besides take the workers could never get any decent odds on Nidaros. I maxed out at about 5% chance of victory with a CR2 Axe. I thought about a Quechua rush back in the early days, but couldn't get better than about 2% chance of victory with them. Just taking Uppsala cost a couple of Axes, and that is on grassland rather than a hill.

I've been contemplating restarting, and trying it again. I wasn't happy with where things were when I stopped, but wasn't sure how best to deal with it. I suppose I could pump out a couple more settlers and fill in some of the open areas, but at the cost of crashing my economy again.

 

[mrdoe]

@oppy

Spoiler :

The one time I went after Nidaros itself, I lost 5 CR 1/2 Axes and only managed to kill one defending Axe (there were also two Archers there, fully fortified of course). After that, I gave up and decided to wait until I had cats since the RNG hated me.

I declared on him every time, but when I tried to do anything besides take the workers could never get any decent odds on Nidaros. I maxed out at about 5% chance of victory with a CR2 Axe. I thought about a Quechua rush back in the early days, but couldn't get better than about 2% chance of victory with them. Just taking Uppsala cost a couple of Axes, and that is on grassland rather than a hill.

I've been contemplating restarting, and trying it again. I wasn't happy with where things were when I stopped, but wasn't sure how best to deal with it. I suppose I could pump out a couple more settlers and fill in some of the open areas, but at the cost of crashing my economy again.

Attacking with 5 troops vs 3 fortified on a hill is iffy at best. You'd want a stack of 9 (all axemen/sword) or a stack of 5 with tons of siege, if you expect to win that situation.

Edit: just read the part about RNG hating you. RNG doesn't hate you if you keep losing at 2%

 

[drlake]

Attacking with 5 troops vs 3 fortified on a hill is iffy at best. You'd want a stack of 9 (all axemen/sword) or a stack of 5 with tons of siege, if you expect to win that situation.

Edit: just read the part about RNG hating you. RNG doesn't hate you if you keep losing at 2%

That wasn't my evidence. My evidence was losing 61% chance of victory attacks on a barb city 3 times in a row.

 

[drlake]

Spoiler :

So, thinking about starting over. I could play this out, but I seem to have made a hash of the beginning. Play it out, or start over? Q rush Ragnar or peacefully expand until I'm ready to take him out with Cats? If I start over, go for a religion so I have one?

I'm really not liking the semi-isolation of this start. I'm very concerned that by the time I contact the other civs I'll be so far behind in Tech I'll be screwed.

 

[drlake]

Looks like I'm still the only one playing this game...

Monarch/Epic to 1160AD:

Spoiler :

I finally took out Ragnar a couple of turns ago. While I was building up for war with him, he DoW'd me a bit before I was ready. That made for a slower war than I wanted, and resulted in us exchanging Uppsala a couple of times, but in the end I'm alone on the continent. I suspect I'm way behind on Tech (I certainly am behind AC, see below) so I'm going to see if I can pull out a culture win.

Here's the empire:

I've got room for two cities in the NW, one at the corn/rice/cow site and the other in the middle of the jungle, to get a couple of the dyes.


I can put one more city on the coast NE of Cuzco and work the clam and cow, but it'll be somewhat limited in potential. I'll also put one to cover the grasslands on the East coast, and get the cow.

Current city production:

I'm working on moving my capital to Macchu Pichu to cut maintenance. I think that is also a better site for a Bureaucracy capital. Cuzco will become my GP farm, with all that seafood. Tentative cities for the culture win will be Cuzco, Macchu Pichu, and either Huamanga or Nidaros. Huamanga is going to be a very good cottage city, so I suspect it'll be better for culture than Nidaros. Nidaros will be a better production city, methinks.

Tech situation:

I haven't gotten AC to Friendly yet, but should be able to when I declare a state religion.



I think after Code of Laws I'll go Compass/Optics to make contact with the other civs, and then go Aesthetics/Drama and maybe a run at Liberalism.

Religion:

I've been holding off on switching to Confucionism, but will be doing so since that is AC's religion.

VC screen:

Obviously, I don't know squat about most of the remaining Civs...

Demographics:

It hasn't been a great game so far, but I think I can still pull out a culture win.

 

[David7]

This is my first time playing one of these Student games, so I apologize in advance for any errors. I also don't have screen shots as this is posted from my non-gaming computer.

Emperor/Normal to about 1000 BC. (I play in 1/2 hour increments so its a bit off).

Spoiler :

So I think I had a lot of crazy luck here. I managed to take out Ragnar with just 5 Quechas. I'm thinking in hindsight that I probably had virtually no odds. He even founded Hinduism for me right before I took him. A little bit later I met whichever one of the Caesars. I decided I would be going for peace then... I placed various settlers to hopefully block Caesar, although I probably should have waited for them as well. I think I took the spot with 2 clams by the capital, the spot with incense and a cow, the spot with I believe a cow and rice, and that's probably all of them. For wonders, I managed to get a fish for marble trade with Rome, so I quickly built the Oracle + Metal Casting, the Temple of Artemis (which probably was unnecessary but I didn't want military and had no buildings to get and sufficient workers), and also the Colussus in the capital. I didn't use many specialists, but I got a Merchant (settled) and a Engineer (at 2% odds which was also settled).

I think technologically I went Mining, Bronze Working, Polytheism, Preisthood, Fishing, Wheel, Writing, Monarchy, Alphabet (to find Caesar believes he holds several monopolies, so I'm definitely alone), and now I think that I'm on Code of Laws or maybe currency. I realize that not getting Fishing for so long=Fail, and I think I picked several other dumb techs.

One other thing is that Caesar is the founder of Confucianism. Hopefully I can convert and do whatever he wants to get to friendly. Otherwise I won't get to make any trades until I get those nice ships.

To 500 AD and liberalism

Spoiler :

After last time the game was pretty boring for a while, I basically went to improve the cities I already had/did nothing. Confucianism finally spread to me so I converted to get Augustus to Pleased and eventually Friendly only to go back down for being too close to him since he settled on my landmass because I stopped paying attention. I researched along the music path of the tech tree, grabbed Calendar along the way, and I also got compass and optics after a while. After optics, I sent a ship to traverse the world and meet all of the new people. I began researching astronomy to get back on trades. The first AI I met was Peter. Moctezuma was next. Neither one was very happy with my Confucian ways so I decided to switch back to no religion. I also met Justinian and Pericles. Peter was highest in score, followed by Rome, Moctezuma, Pericles, and Justinian and me :S. I was surprisingly not too far behind in technologies, especially after trading Astronomy multiple times. I think after Astronomy I just clicked on liberalism. At this time and for a while I was at 60% Science and 40% Culture. After getting Education I checked and found it would take me 6 turns for liberalism, when Caesar and Peter were both 5 away. Fortunately changing to 100% got me down to 4 turns. I won the race and took Nationalism for the Hermitage for my lagging 3rd Culture city (Maccu Pichu). I of course immediately switched to Free Speech and I also went to Mercantilism for the artists. I actually didn't go to free religion even though I had no religion because Pacifism was 10 Gold per turn cheaper, which was the difference between surplus money per turn or losing money. Rome during this time period had somehow managed to become every other civ's worst enemy. I decided still to keep him as a buddy, since I didn't want his superior army to come and kill me. He also set his cities on my land into a colony (England). Moctezuma became a monster, capitulating first Justinian and then Pericles with the help of Peter. Despite them being different religions they were pretty strong allies. I also gifted Caesar and Peter Liberalism as they were 1 turn away and I wanted the diplomacy bonus.

Victory

Spoiler :

I started by shutting off all research for the sake of culture, and setting up about 6-7 artists in my capital. I traded for any health resources I could get my hands on with all of the newer civilizations. Somewhere during this time Rome finally was attacked by the Aztecs and Russians, I stayed neutral. Fortunately this didn't hurt diplomacy too much, since for some reason they sent their vassals to ask for my support. Since they can't even declare war on me, I told them all no. Eventually Rome managed to get peace. At this point all of my cities were basically building wealth or culture since all useful buildings were built. I had one miniature nightmare when my health starved capital had the water poisoned and was simultaneously blockaded by some frigates. Several dead citizens later, the game essentially became clicking the enter button and responding to the occasional diplomatic request. The one exciting point was when Moctezuma Peter. He took a couple cities, and I was somewhat concerned that Moctezuma would win by domination, but after only about 20 turns they chose peace again and resumed dogpiling on Rome. I sent all of the Great Artists I was cranking out of my capital every 10-20 turns to Maccu Pichu. After much waiting, my cities hit legendary culture. Just for fun, I declared war on the Aztecs, Russia, and Rome one turn before my last city became legendary. For the final score I was ranked as Charlemagne.

Overall this was a fairly fun game, even if culture wins and Quechas are somewhat unfair. Now I just have to wonder if I could have won without getting a very low odds win.

 

[Arimae70]

Built 2 more and went for Nidaros which at the time had 2 archers. 2 dead quechuas, 2 dead archers and 2 capitals for me.

I managed to take out Ragnar with just 5 Quechas.

How did you guys manage to take the city with 4-5 quechuas - victory is <5% and I hardly make a dent!

 

[David7]

How did you guys manage to take the city with 4-5 quechuas - victory is <5% and I hardly make a dent!

Luck and . I actually realized I was basically screwed, but decided to not reload because it feels like cheating and to just give it a shot...

I think everyone else was on a different speed so it was probably reasonable for them.

 

[jwez11007]

Spoiler :

I went for fishing first and built a quecha->fishing boat. I stole my first worker from ragnar and sued for peace ASAP. After settling to the north on the coast and next to the stone I focused on making a slow expansion settling five cities total and grabbing both the oracle, pyramids, and hanging gardens. I negotiated a trade with JC for marble and beelined for Great Library. Then I shot for construction and started building up a stack to attack Ragnar. I managed to unlock heroic epic by attacking a barb city to the northwest allowing me to spam cat reinforcements just as I declared with my main stack. The war with ragnar was quick and relatively bloodless. After picking up CoL and Currency from war gold, I was forced to settle a little faster to the northwest when I saw JC sending a galley up that way. At current I have lib locked up and am looking to either go for astro and prepare for some overseas warring or aim for space. Screen shots are in the second spoiler

Spoiler :

This was on the first turn of war.

And after the war.

 

[Morthis]

My first Monarch game and one of my first game in over a year. TMIT's videos really helped get me up to speed again and improve my gameplay so that I can take higher level AI's more easily.

I took a lot longer than I could have. I commented in the spoiler about some of the things I probably should have changed for a better finish time. Anyway 1989 space.

Spoiler :

Settled in place and built a Quechua while researching fishing. After that I went 2x work boat, settler, worker. Bit late on the worker, but I was only working the fish early game anyway (which had the boats) and I needed that settler out to claim the stone and try to prevent Ragnar from expanding towards me. It ended up working well, and Ragnar expanded towards his back instead of towards me.

After this I settled to the left of the stone city (see screenie below), and then another one around where my Quechua is in that screenie. I also took the iron up north (the clam was 1 square from my BFC because it wasn't revealed when I settled), and then settled in the bottom right near the fish and one in the middle for the cow and incense. I never actually got that fish near Rome until much much later because Rome was going for culture and border pushing like crazy.

I was first planning to attack Ragnar (hence the axe in my screenie, I didn't have iron for swords) but decided against it because I had so much room to expand still. I managed to box him in pretty good and simply teched up. I was first to CoL founding Confucianism. This quickly spread to Ragnar and Caesar, neither of whom had a religion so they both adopted it, giving me great relations with them. With this in mind, I kept teching ahead.

I was first to lib and grabbed nationalism, going straight for rifles and canons after that. I used my capital with globe theatre to draft a lot of rifles while my production cities focused mainly on canons and easily took out Ragnar. Ragnar had built a city in the middle of nowhere on a one tile island, so since I couldn't wipe him out entirely without going after that one island, I decided to just vassal him. While building a small navy to move to Caesar I teched artillery and upgraded my canons. By the time I crossed the ocean Caesar had destroyers, so I simply dropped my units off and then ignored the ocean entirely, since I did not have combustion yet. He bombarded a bunch of my cities and pillaged all my work boats while I took over all his cities on land. He had grenadiers on land, but my army was way too big for him to stop.

At this point I probably could have went across the ocean to take out the other civs instead since I still had a big army left (~50 rifles and ~35 arty after taking out Caesar), but I was teching so fast I decided to just go with a space victory since it's a lot less hassle. This is where having Ragnar as vassal saved the game for me. One of the cities I took from Caesar had Buddhism, which was the AP religion. It was the only city I had with that religion. Meanwhile, Justinian had 2 vassals (Pericles and Montezuma), all of whom had Buddhism in all their cities. With Peter being smaller than them and me only having one Buddhism city, Justinian had well over 75% of the votes and could have won an easy diplo victory, except Ragnar's one useless city did not have Buddhism so an AP victory was not possible.

Halfway through building my spaceship Justinian war decced me, on the same turn it was time for an AP vote. Since the only possible vote was for peace, that's what he picked, which succeeded. In that one turn of war, he razed Ragnar's one city, which now meant AP victory was possible again. If I didn't know any better I'd say it was a brilliant play by the AI. I immediately researched mass media and gifted is to Justinian, who was very happy to get free techs when he would have won the game if he hadn't accepted it (and I could have sworn I've had a game where the AI refused mass media because it would obsolete the AP, so I'm not sure why he took it). They built the UN but since I had 36% of the world population he couldn't win that vote (and I won the secretary-general vote anyway since Peter voted for me). Justinian war decced Peter and nuked him to hell until he became a vassal, but by then my spaceship was already flying off. I won spaceship in 1989. Not bad for my first monarch I guess, although it's a lot later than I had planned. I probably should have built a lot smaller army and just taken Ragnar only, and then gone spaceship, I think I would have finished a lot sooner.

Spoiler :

 

[Isikien]

Spoiler :

Hahaha Monarch is hard.

Well the tech rate is insane. AC must've had a very good start however. I went for the alphabet gambit but found i couldn't trade off writing with those stingy ai, Ragnar didn't want to trade with me period.

As was stated by previous players in this thread, there's no chance in hell for a Quecha rush, seeing the nearest opponent was right over the sea.

Went for fast early rex into about 4 cities, then I spammed axes till the cows came home. Noticed Ragnar had chariots so then I resorted to spears as well.

After the war declaration Ragnar seemed to have a lot more than the power graph was telling me, and nidaros, bloody place was on a hill. I hate hill cities in ancient era. By this point my economy was in ruins and I was about to strike, despite being SOOOO close to currency. So I disbanded a couple of units and went for one last gamble on his home city. Didn't work out.

Sad to say that I didn't play on and I'm not planning on reloading. However, I've got a good idea on how I'll be playing ze next one. Hopefully I get a military leader in the next Monarch game

 

[Sveon]

Spoiler :

Monarch culture win 1899. I met Ragnar after I found the stone/rice spot to the north. I had directed all efforts towards early expansion. Built Q, WB, WB, Worker, Q, Worker, Settler (whipped). My start and Ragnars capital on a hill made me pursue a peaceful relation. I know it's kinda impossible in the beginning when you are the only land target but I have done this before with Ragnar.

First, I like Ragnar, Vikings is my civ, second I have found that he is one of the best allies in the game when he is friendly. So if your ego can handle to bend over to all his early demands, give him a few favorable tech trades, and fight off his first two, three male bonding wars you got a super attack dog pal with decent tech trade potential for the duration of the game. He never culture press. He mainly go about his business and hardly ever asks for anything. He will also sign defensive pact.

Anyway I decided then and there I would go for a culture win. I was hoping to get as many of the early stone wonders as possible to get a head start on culture. I finally got SH and Pyramids. Met AC across the channel and placed what would be my third legendary to cover the two seafoods there. Pumped out settlers and workers until my borders sparked tension with Ragnar at which point I had copper hooked up and built up defences in the border cities. I had 6 early cities with room for at least 3-4 overlap cities between them. All that food allowed for lots of scientists and with mids I had the best tech rate I have ever had in an early monarch game.

Rags founded Confucianism and it spread really fast to me but not to AC so I thought I was pretty safe for a while. But Ragnar being Ragnar, he declared on his +8 land target rather than his -2 worst enemy. Your a Viking Ragnar! - build a longship! (BTW Longships should be the UU for Vikings.) So I fought defensively with some vigour earning me a favourable peace treaty, 90 gold. He declares again once the treaty ended and we danced one more time. This war was pathetic, his "stack" had 6 units.

When AC finally converts things ease down and we are one happy family. Soon enough Ragnar is friendly with me and all I need is to get a defensive pact to be on a prawn sandwich trail to Culture. Funny enough Ragnar is teching that path and gets it for me. I traded him Astronomy which I won on Liberalism so he could finally put all his zerkers to use elsewhere.

One of my cities is Christian so I start spreading it and backfilling 3 overlap cities hoping to catch one more religion with 9 cities total. Would make 3 cathedrals in each Legendary. Taoism spreads after a while and then its just standard procedure culture all the way.

I did run into a few snags on the way. First with AC switching to Taoism and Ragnar instantly declaring. Also, Peter had vassal all but Monty on his rather large end of the world. I had lots of "please join me/stop trading" crap to tip toe through. In the end Peter had over 50% pop/land to his name and was way ahead of me in tech. But he was pleased with me through-out and even gave me free techs when I fell drastically behind.

I was at this point going 80% culture with Rep-FS-Caste-Pacifism. I made a lot of minor mistakes now and could have finished culture earlier I think if I did not start teching again to go for Mass media in a vain attempt to get more culture buildings/ possibly UN. Peter got them all. I could trade the techs for corp techs and got Sid's and Mining inc. Mining inc didn't help my culture as I was hoping but was a nice production boost.

Another nail-biter was when Peter lost Diplo victory by 8 votes. I voted for Monty - now that was a first! (I know I could have abstained but it's not like he was going to win) Peter made a few annoying civic resolutions but he sort of got stuck on Environmentalism and proposed it no less than three times after it was already passed. I don't get that. But better that then Emancipation or Free religion. With Sid's I was running over 10 artists in some cities.

Got a pretty crappy score, 28k I think. But culture never really pays off. It's sort of a poor mans win I guess. Had it not been my good buddy Ragnar up north I would probably be less forgiving about the declarations. I had a good chance at wiping him out after the second war. But I was really close to being friendly once the "this war spoils our relationship" was gone. I'm going to try do more of these Monarch Student games. It's fun to compare even if many of you do it on higher difficulty.

 

[drlake]

Monarch/Epic to 1560AD:

Spoiler :

I decided to play a bit more for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to see if I could recover from the economy crash I'd induced through a combination of expansion and taking out Ragnar. Two, I wanted to see if any kind of victory was still viable.

To recover from the crash, I disbanded a few troops, whipped some markets and libraries, and used specialists heavily. I moved my palace form Cuzco to Machu Picchu since it was a better Bureaucracy capital site, and centrally located. Cuzco was repurposed as a GP farm due to all the seafood there.

It took a lot of work to get the tech rate back up. It bottomed out at under 50bpt at one point, but is now running 240+. Still low for this late, but one hell of a lot better than it had been.

Tech tree went Aesthetics > Literature (the GL was gone!) > CS > Compass > Optics > Philo > Paper > Edu > and now working on Liberalism.

Peter dropped by to say "hi" and I was able to trade for his map. That gave me an idea where to send my caravel once I had built it, and I encountered Justinian, Monty, and Pericles shortly.

Here's my empire:

Huamanga is one of my commerce cities, which is good since it has virtually no hammer production. I'm just whipping its infrastructure one building at a time. I'm not even going to try to spell the city due north of it, but it's a hybrid production/specialist city at current config. To it's NE around the coast is another one I won't try to spell. That was one of my unit pumps back in the day, but it is also a hybrid commerce city. Over in the Eastern part Uppsala, Nidaros, and whatever that city on the East coast is are all focusing on rebuilding and commerce. The East coastal city has the same basic problem as Huamanga, no production. I should have probably razed it when I took it. I've got room for one more nice commerce city right in the middle of this all, and will build that in the near future if I keep playing.


The middle tier includes Cori (commerce/specialists), Machu Picchu (Bur capital), and Vilcas (prod). I wanted to build Vilcas where AC build Circei, but wasn't in time.


The south includes Cuzco and Tiwanaku. Cuzco is my main GP farm, while Tiwanaku is a pretty good commerce city. I had my misgivings about building them that close together, but it seems to have worked OK. I have room for another city to the NE of Cuzco to get the clam and cow, but it would be pretty pinched in there.

City Production:

Wealth and infrastructure!

Civics:

I don't have a state religion, so in Paganism. Once I get Liberalism I'll be working on Constitution to get Representation, and will revolt to caste system at that time. At the moment, I need whipping to keep building infrastructure in a couple of my cities.

Foreign Relations:

Justinian has been on a mad tear, vassalizing Monty and Pericles, but I think Peter is strong enough to hold him off. I'm not worried about a naval invasion yet.

Tech Race:

It sucks, to be blunt, but now that we've encountered other civs AC is willing to trade with me, and I've been able to make some ground back up. I should get Liberalism before he does, which will allow me to backfill further. That said, I don't expect to catch up in this game.

Tech Tree:

I'm working on Liberalism right now, and that is the only thing on the next screen I have or am working on. Like I said, next step is a constitution beeline.

Religion:

I've got OB with Peter and Justinian, and am hoping something spreads to me before Confu takes over.

VC:

I think I'm screwed. My only options are Space Race, Cultural, or maybe Diplo. AC built the AP and he and I are the only Confucian civs, so that isn't an option for Diplo. I can't imagine being able to compete for Diplo once the UN is built, but stranger things have happened. I'm too far behind for Space Race, and it looks like Peter may be working on Cultural. If so, I think I'm way too far behind to catch him.

Demographics:

I did well to recover, after bottoming out down at 5th in population.

So, I'm probably going to write this game off as a learning experience, rather than continue. Lessons learned:

1) If I'm going to rush, rush harder. Otherwise, REX a bit to grab land and dig in for the inevitable wars with Ragnar.

2) Watch city placement. Some of the ones I built would be better if one tile away. Machu Picchu comes to mind.

Other than that, this was good practice at city and empire management at a higher difficulty level than I'd done before, so it's all good.